By: Bob DeAngelis The Earth is facing a critical moment: climate change and the severe weather it causes are upon us. Examples include the recent record highs on the West Coast: Portland at 116 F, Seattle at 108 F, Canada’s all time high at 121 F, and the devastating floods from torrential rains in Germany and Belgium causing many deaths. …
By: Patty L. Buchanan* The excess of greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere is destabilizing global climate systems to the perilous point of “Code Red for Humanity” in the words of the United Nations Secretary General. The scale of the crisis can be overwhelming, sometimes leaving people to feel that individual actions cannot influence the necessary changes to achieve net-zero…
By: Chandu Visweswariah Words matter. I once received a letter from the Carter Center in which former President Jimmy Carter urged me to donate money so that he could “wage peace” all over the world. I remember thinking at the time that the wording was clever. It indicated to me that President Carter was proposing a proactive and vigorous effort…
By: Chandu Visweswariah Did he who made the Lamb make thee? In the old days, humans threatened animal species by rapaciously hunting them for meat, skin, fur and ivory. Now we have found more efficient ways of wiping out not just individual creatures but entire species. The unthinkable has happened! The last living members of 34 different species died without…
By: Chandu Visweswariah In 1982, I registered for a class called “Communications Circuits” on the leafy campus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chennai, India. The instructor was Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala (picture on the left and bio here and here). Fast forward almost 40 years since then, and Prof. Jhunjhunwala (who I’ll call Prof. J. in the rest…
By: Chandu Visweswariah The recent United Nations IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) 6th Assessment Report has set off a frenzy of “after-market analysis” in the environmental community to help the public make sense of the scientific jargon in the report. There is no ambiguity that we must reduce emissions to a level that can be absorbed by natural systems;…
By Chandu Visweswariah “There is no time for delay and no room for excuses, the report is a code red for humanity.”— UN Secretary General António Guterres “Now is the critical decade for keeping the 1.5-degree target within reach.”— Jane Lubchenco, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy The United Nations released the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)…
By: Chandu Visweswariah “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to…
