CRC's Students for a Sustainable Future

10/06/2024

Starting this fall, first-year students in bachelor’s degree programs must take a one-quarter course related to climate change. Scripps Institution of Oceanography offers several of them. Others are in departments like urban planning, anthropology and economics.

Read more: https://ow.ly/JNTp50TEI2P

02/18/2024

“The Keeling Curve — a graph of global, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration readings from the Hawaiian volcano Mauna Loa — registered a record carbon concentration of 426.5 parts per million.”

For the first time, the measurement station atop the Mauna Loa volcano crossed 425 parts per million.

02/03/2024

Global temperatures in 2023 smashed records by a wide margin, surprising climate scientists and highlighting the need for more research.

01/14/2024

Reusable water bottles can save carbon emissions and avoid plastic waste, but the material they’re made from can affect your health and the environment.

01/10/2024

Yet another reason NOT to drink bottled water from plastic bottles.

“A new paper released Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found about 240,000 particles in the average liter of bottled water, most of which were “nanoplastics” — particles measuring less than one micrometer (less than one-seventieth the width of a human hair).”

A new study finds that “nanoplastics” in bottled water are even more common than microplastics.

11/21/2023

"On Friday, November 17, 2023, the Earth appeared to have crossed a threshold into new climatic territory. That day was the first that the average air temperature near the surface of the Earth was 2 degrees Celsius warmer than preindustrial levels. Saturday was the second.

The planet has been this hot before, but never in the era relevant to modern humanity. For those two days, we were the furthest we have ever been from the average climate of 1850–1900, the time just before humans began industrializing in earnest and adding large quantities of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. We are now a large margin away from the climate in which nearly all of human history has played out."

We all just lived through our first 2-degree Celsius day.

07/31/2023

"Unlike in countries such as Germany, which has standardized what can be collected for recycling and enforced presorting of waste, U.S. policymakers never sat down to figure out how to make this easy on consumers. In fact, it was the plastics industry that created the system of resin codes that include the “chasing arrows” and a number between 1 and 7 to denote the primary material included.

Nowadays, the only plastic items that are consistently recycled are bottles and jugs made out of polyethylene terephthalate (which is labeled with a “1”) and high-density polyethylene (labeled with a “2”), as a survey of recycling facilities by Greenpeace shows. Recycling plants typically reject almost everything else, meaning it ends up in landfills."

The government is the reason recycling is a mess. It should take responsibility for fixing it.

07/21/2023

07/05/2023

"This is not a milestone we should be celebrating…"

Monday, July 3, was the hottest day ever recorded globally, according to data from the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Prediction.

06/06/2023

As planet-warming carbon emissions rise, a major solution to climate change is growing beneath our feet. A study published Monday in Current Biology found that fungi gobble up more than a…

04/06/2023

With Easter right around the corner, remember that plastic Easter basket grass (left) lasts forever in the environment, often ending up in bird's nests and our waterways. Opt for the crinkled paper version (right). It eventually biodegrades and is much safer. Or even better, make your own re-purposed paper Easter grass so you can skip the plastic packaging all together! 🐰🐣🌱

04/04/2023

Great PSA about the win-win benefits of winter bike commuting.