"The 2022 BIPOC Forest Bathing immersion is for aspiring, beginner, and experienced backpackers in the Northeast to connect to wild spaces while learning basic backcountry skills. By the end of this 4-day program, you will know how to pack your own pack, set up your tent, identify trees and plants, practice ancestral living skills such as making cordage and fire by friction, and engage in group activities that heighten your awareness of the natural world. Our intention is to empower you to feel equipped with the knowledge you need to take your own wilderness trips and offer an opportunity to connect with nature in a safe and non-competitive space with other BIPOC folks." Learn More

"A pair of statewide incentive programs in Massachusetts is driving a surge of apartment buildings designed to the highly energy-efficient passive house standard. In the past year, families have moved into 257 affordable housing units in complexes built to the standard, and about 6,000 additional units are now in various stages of development. Early numbers indicate that this building approach costs, on average, less than 3% more than conventional construction and can slash energy use roughly in half. Air quality is higher in these buildings and residents report the units being more comfortable to live in. Many developers who have tried passive house building have been so pleased with the benefits for residents that they are eager to pursue more projects built to the standard. [...] In 2018, the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center stepped in with a grant program aimed at easing these financial concerns. The Passive House Design Challenge awarded eight affordable housing developments $4,000 per unit — for a total of $1.73 million — for new construction built to the passive house standard. [...] Then, in July 2019, Mass Save, the organization that administers the utilities’ legally mandated energy efficiency programs, launched its own passive house incentives." Read More

"...The EPA is widely expected to confirm a proposed plan outlined last year that will extend the use of imidacloprid, thiamethoxam, clothianidin, and dinotefuran on US farmland for the next 15 years, even though the agency has noted 'ecological risks of concern, particularly to pollinators and aquatic invertebrates'. These four insecticides are all types of neonicotinoids, a class of chemicals that is widely used on crops to treat them for pests but has been found to cause devastation among non-target insects, such as bees. The chemicals assault receptors in an insect’s nerve synapse, causing uncontrollable shaking, paralysis, and death. Neonicotinoids are used across 150m acres of American cropland, an area roughly the size of Texas, and have contributed to the land becoming 48 times more toxic than it was a quarter of a century ago. The chemicals are water soluble and quickly leach out of plants into soils and streams, causing such harmful impacts to wildlife that Canada has restricted their use while the EU has banned the outdoor deployment of clothianidin, imidacloprid, and thiamethoxam. [...] Neonicotinoids also harm birds, studies have shown, while their benefits are questionable, with crop yields in many cases not improved by the indiscriminate use of the chemicals." See Infographics & Read More

"Lightweight and sophisticated tracking devices have made it possible to study the behavior of birds in all kinds of useful ways, for example, helping keep them safe from ships or monitoring their changing migration patterns in a warming world. For a research team in Australia, however, these efforts haven't quite gone to plan, with a group of tagged magpies promptly removing each other's tracking devices in a previously unsighted display of altruism. [...] Within 10 minutes of fitting the final tracker, the team watched on as an adult female used her bill to remove the harness from a younger bird in the group. A few hours on, most of the other trackers had been removed. By day three, they were all gone. It's unclear whether one bird was helping out all the others, or if they shared the unclipping responsibilities between the group, but this is the first instance the scientists know of where birds have cooperated to remove tracking devices, and the first example of altruism in magpies." Read More

"From the first harsh (but oh-so-welcome) kong-ga-ree of a red-winged blackbird as early as late February, to the complex and voluptuous harmonic of a wood thrush in mid-May, our northern forest airwaves are dominated by birdsong in spring. The resurgence of vocal behavior by both returning migrants and hardy year-round residents revives our senses and stirs our souls. No other animal group on the planet produces as many diverse and complex sounds – both vocal and non-vocal – as birds (although amphibians come close). [...] Whether woodcock, warbler, or wren, produced vocally or not, birdsong adds a layer of lushness to our northern landscape in spring. We mark time by the return of singing birds, delighting as the earliest announce themselves, exulting as the full symphony unfolds. Their chorus is truly among the greatest of nature’s many marvels." Read More

"With his climate agenda stalled in Congress, President Joe Biden has managed to win billions in federal spending for one pillar of his platform that is gaining increased attention globally: carbon capture. In a major win for oil, coal, utilities, and other industries, the federal government is poised to make its largest investment ever—more than $12 billion from last year’s infrastructure bill—in technologies that capture carbon dioxide from smokestack emissions or straight from the air. [...] [Supporters'] arguments have won unprecedented spending on carbon capture over the past year, with governments in Europe, Canada, and Australia also committing billions in subsidies. Proponents say all this funding could prove transformative and, within a decade, could help cut hundreds of millions of metric tons of pollution annually. But many progressive climate groups like Greenpeace and 350.org say oil companies are promoting the technologies as a distraction to avoid phasing out their products. At best, they argue, carbon capture and removal will play a marginal role in limiting emissions. At worst, they warn, subsidies for the technologies will prolong demand for fossil fuels, squandering money that would be better spent on replacing coal, oil, and gas altogether. While the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in 2018 that carbon capture and removal technologies may be critical to limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), it also said that carbon removal, in particular, remains unproven and that relying on it posed “a major risk” to meeting climate targets. Carbon capture prevents emissions, by pulling them out of smokestacks, while carbon removal refers to processes that suck the gas from the atmosphere." Read More