I’ll admit, my favorite part of Super Bowl Sunday is the food, the beer, and the commercials. And the more I watched the commercials last night the more I started to realize that there was something different about the commercials this year. And before you try to guess...

Climate Change Impacts

Much of central and northern United States faced extreme cold temperatures this week, with temperatures reaching -60F with windchill in parts of the Midwest. These temperatures were caused by the polar vortex, a wind formation that forms every win...

One of the great things about city life is how close you are to everything and everyone else. In many cities, most people can get by without owning a car and just rely on some combination of walking, biking, taking the bus or train, ridesharing, and even scootering. Wi...

Five companies were recently approved to begin seismic airgun blasting to find oil under the Atlantic Ocean between Delaware and Florida. Seismic blasting is devastating for whales (dolphins included), negatively impacting how they communicate, feed, and mate.

One speci...

The United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) most recent Special Report in October 2018 highlighted the need for global action to address climate change and lower carbon emissions. One of the most impactful collaborative actions that could...

I recently read a book, The Ends of the World by Peter Brannen, that talks quite a lot about carbon. The amount of carbon dioxide that was in the atmosphere millions of years ago, the burning of carbon based fuels, the potential of carbon free energy, the global econom...

The origin of many American environmental regulations can be traced back to the 1960's, when policy makers and scientists united in agreement that pollution and environmental degradation needed to be addressed. Over the next two decades much progress happened on that f...

Despite the presence of women in the field of urban planning there are very few aspects of urban planning that are predominantly designed with women in mind. It’s not that urban planners are specifically designing places for men - it’s that they aren’t specifically rea...

Cities across the globe are learning that they have to pay more attention to the natural world around them. Whether that's because of flooding, wildfires, droughts, landslides, or storms, they have to make some big changes. In 2015, after fatal floods had become a regu...

Robert Moses was one of the biggest names in urban planning in the mid-twentieth century, and one of the most polarizing. He was widely known for his strong opinions and disagreements. He had some incredible achievements, among them persuading the United Nations to loc...

According to the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), flooding causes more damage in the United States than any other severe weather related event. Flooding damages cost an average of $5 billion a year in the United States, and flooding occurs in all f...