Elizabeth Shogren

College Divestment Campaigns Creating Passionate Environmentalists

Elizabeth Shogren — Fri, 10 May 2013 07:16:00 +0000

At about 300 colleges across the country, young activists worried about climate change are borrowing a strategy that students successfully used in decades past. In the 1980s, students enraged about South Africa's racist Apartheid regime got their schools to drop stocks in companies that did business with that government. In the 1990s students pressured their schools to divest in Big Tobacco.

This time, the student activists are targeting a mainstay of the economy: large oil and coal companies.

So far only a few small colleges have opted to drop investments in fossil fuel companies.

Lionfish Attack The Gulf Of Mexico Like A Living Oil Spill

Elizabeth Shogren — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 06:56:00 +0000

A gluttonous predator is power-eating its way through reefs from New York to Venezuela. It's the lionfish.

And although researchers are coming up with new ways to protect some reefs from the flamboyant maroon-striped fish, they have no hope of stopping its unparalleled invasion.

Lad Akins has scuba dived in the vibrant reefs of the Bahamas for many years.

Arkansas Oil Spill Sheds Light On Aging Pipeline System

Elizabeth Shogren — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 07:21:00 +0000

Amber Bartlett was waiting last Friday for her kids to come home from school. One of them called from the entrance to the upscale subdivision near Little Rock, Ark., to tell her the community was being evacuated because of an oil spill. Bartlett was amazed by what she saw out her front door.

"I mean, just rolling oil. I mean, it was like a river," she says.

After Keystone Review, Environmentalists Vow To Continue Fight

Elizabeth Shogren — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 05:52:00 +0000

Environmentalists have a hope.

If they can block the Keystone XL pipeline, they can keep Canada from developing more of its dirty tar sands oil.

Protesters Call On Obama To Reject Keystone XL Pipeline

Elizabeth Shogren — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 10:37:00 +0000

Tens of thousands of protesters turned out on the National Mall Sunday to encourage President Obama to make good on his commitment to act on climate change.

In his Inaugural address from outside the U.S. Capitol, the president said: "We will respond to the threat of climate change knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations."

Just a few weeks later, next to the Washington Monument, Paul Birkeland was one of a couple dozen people holding a long white tube above their heads.

"It's a backbone. It's a spine.