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Environment & Sustainability

39 posts
Ezekiel Jones, Operational Coordinator, coaxes the animals out to pasture in the morning. GrowingChange's donkey, Miss Easter, was born on Easter Sunday five years ago.
View Post
  • Environment & Sustainability

Unlocking Potential

  • Ben Speggen
  • November 16, 2022
At-risk youth in North Carolina hold the keys to flipping a decommissioned prison into a sustainable farm and community asset.
A man using a battery-powered leaf blower.
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  • Environment & Sustainability

What’s the Quickest Way to Make a Big Difference, Through a Little Step? It’s Right There in the Backyard.

  • James Fallows
  • October 6, 2022
Change comes slowly, then all at once.
A map showing western movement of the center of US population
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  • Environment & Sustainability

Another Look Into the ‘Heart’ of America

  • James Fallows
  • October 2, 2022
First, a geographic perspective. Then, the country's struggle to recognize ways in which it is changing—and might be improving.
University of Wyoming student Taryn Brooke Bradley interviews Colorado ranchers Penny and Cal Howe. (Adlynn Jamaludin)
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  • Environment & Sustainability

UW student project aims to spur climate change conversations

  • Dustin Bleizeffer, WyoFile.com
  • October 1, 2022
New website features local voices to help encourage people to take part in conversations about a changing environment.
The Comic Gallery climbing area at Pictured Rocks County Park in Indiana before the trail project in July 2022. (Photo by John Klein/Jones County Conservation)
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  • Environment & Sustainability

A Delicate Balance – Marrying Recreation and Preservation in Iowa

  • Rachel Cramer, The Daily Yonder
  • September 22, 2022
Local climbing coalition and authorities found a way to collaborate and keep access to a popular climbing area and preserve the environment.
Two members of the Turtle Patrol at Manasota Key, Florida work on the beach on a turtle nest site.
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  • Environment & Sustainability

Turning the Tides

  • Deborah Fallows
  • September 6, 2022
Turtles, and people — a connected story, with an outcome you might not have guessed.
A wall canvas reading GIS -- Mapping Common Ground, as seen at the Esri 2022 User Conference in San Diego
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  • Environment & Sustainability

‘Mapping Common Ground’: What I learned this summer in San Diego

  • James Fallows
  • August 3, 2022
New reason to “think globally, and act locally.”
A small child points as two older adults look at him. In the background, Bucksport, Maine's paper mill can be seen.
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  • Parks & Recreation

Past, Present, and Future on the Water: Using StoryMaps to Explore Bucksport, Maine

  • Ben Speggen
  • July 28, 2022
What does a mile-long stretch along the Penobscot River tell the walker about Bucksport, Maine? As it turns out, a lot.
A 32 lobster boat with a blue haul named The Perseverance in Eastport, Maine
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  • Environment & Sustainability

A Look at Lobstering and Craftsmanship

  • Ben Speggen
  • July 19, 2022
Eastport, Maine has a long history of resilience. It’s still there today in Elijah Brice.
Along the C&O Canal in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Deborah Fallows.)
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  • Parks & Recreation

The River Walk Theory of Life

  • Deborah Fallows
  • February 2, 2022
Bucksport's waterfront is a major natural asset for the Maine town. And along it runs Bucksport's Walkway. Here's a look at the river walk and why it matters.
Gas is out. Battery is in. Sign sitting in a snowy yard.
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  • Environment & Sustainability

Bringing a City Together: How Leaf Blowers Did It

  • James Fallows
  • January 19, 2022
This is the story of how citizens worked together toward a common goal in Washington, D.C. The story involves a change on the local level with significant, positive implications for other parts of the country and beyond.
Students on university campus at tree-planting event
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  • Civic Life

‘New Old Ideas’: A Modern CCC

  • James Fallows
  • May 24, 2021
American history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. Crises keep cropping up—and so do ideas and solutions. Many innovations from the 1930s have new relevance for the post-pandemic 2020s. Here is an example, and the thinking behind it.
Three people holding shovels planting trees.
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  • Trees

A Plan to Grow 90,000 Trees in Los Angeles

  • James Fallows
  • May 17, 2021
Using tree planting as an axis to connect job creation, climate sustainability, urban renewal, and economic equity and inclusion.
The burnt remains of trees in the hills of Santa Barbara, California, after the Cave Fire in 2019.
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  • Civic Life

A ‘Climate Corps’ of California Volunteers

  • James Fallows
  • September 28, 2020
Designed to address both the causes and the effects of California's exposure to climate change.
Mehmet McMillan, founder of WildPlaces, and Shelley Forbes, of Otis College, at the seedling-shipping ceremony last week.
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  • Trees

Planting a ‘Trail of Giants’

  • James Fallows
  • November 11, 2019
Last month, as part of a “Big Little Ideas” series, I mentioned a surprisingly valuable short-term step that communities can take, on their own, for positive climate effects. That is to start planting…
People planting a tree.
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  • Trees

Start Planting Trees

  • James Fallows
  • October 13, 2019
Recently Deb Fallows kicked off a series of “Big Little Ideas”—innovations or reforms that could be applied fairly easily at the local level and that might have cumulatively very important effect.…

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