By Cristine Russell
December 14, 2020
GROWING UP in Connecticut and New Jersey, Harvey Brooks Professor of International Science Bill Clark was the classic outdoorsy kid, wading in streams, looking under rocks, and catching critters, preferably snakes. As a Yale college student in the late 1960s pulled between ecology and political science he worked on environmental policy in New York City under Mayor John Lindsay and in Washington, D.C., for the federal government of Richard Nixon. In grad school in the 1970s, Clark studied resource management, shinnying up balsam fir trees and using computer modeling to understand how rare but catastrophic insect outbreaks periodically destroyed boreal forests and forest-based jobs in eastern Canada and the United States.
Credit: The MIT PRESS, 2020.
In Mercury Stories, Henrik Selin and Noelle Eckley Selin examine sustainability through analyzing human interactions with mercury over thousands of years. They explore how people have made beneficial use of this volatile element, how they have been harmed by its toxic properties, and how they have tried to protect themselves and the environment from its damaging effects. Taking a systems approach, they develop and apply an analytical framework that can inform other efforts to evaluate and promote sustainability.
After introducing the framework, which uses the lens of a human-technical environmental system and a matrix-based approach to analyze mercury use and exposure, the authors examine five topical mercury systems that each illustrate important issues in mercury science and governance: global cycling of mercury through the atmosphere, land, oceans, and societies; mercury s dangers to human health, including from occupational, medical, and dietary e
Biden Bets the Farm on Climate Feb 15, 2021 The Biden administration has proposed creating a carbon bank for agriculture. Photography by john smith williams on Shutterstock
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President Joe Biden has made no secret of his grand plans to tackle climate change. Before he even took office, he’d assembled a team of experienced climate experts to serve in his cabinet and spoke openly of a net-zero emissions future. Within hours of his swearing in, he’d formalized plans to re-enter the Paris climate accords. And within days, he’d made climate-related pronouncements covering everything from new federal oil leases (now on pause) to the government’s fleet of cars and trucks (soon to be all-electric).