Peak News and Blog

China builds an ‘Ecological Civilization’ To avert and adapt to the consequences of climate change, civilization must act boldly and with haste. How do we change the course of entire civilizations and how do we do it quickly? China with its 1.3 billion people is accelerating steps to tackle the climate crisis with the concept of “ecological…

Working lands are the future of conservation From the earliest indigenous peoples to later European arrivals, those who settled in the American West naturally staked out the best pieces of country they could find. They didn’t settle on the high mountain tops or extreme deserts, places we’ve since designated as wilderness. Instead they etched out…

When a river is a person: from Ecuador to New Zealand New Zealand passed its first rights for nature law in March 2017. In the early 2000s, the idea of giving legal rights to nature was on the fringes of environmental legal theory and public consciousness. There, the Whanganui River, which flows across the North Island, has…

Emissions impossible? Why meat and dairy companies need to be monitored Did you know that the average American eats 3 burgers per week? Our farm animals outnumber humans. The combined total of chickens (19 billion), cows (1.5 billion), sheep (1 billion) and pigs (1 billion) living at any one time is three times higher than…

The next big push for green buildingFor the building industry, reducing embodied carbon is the next big challenge. Green building uses less energy. Today, and in the years ahead, the building industry will need to think about not just a building’s operational emissions but all the energy that goes into creating it—from the harvesting and manufacturing…

The “green” Joe Biden The United States officially rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement last week. The Keystone XL Pipeline was canceled. Climate action has been defined as an urgent national security threat. The federal government has committed to a transition to an electric vehicle fleet. The 11th hour, 59th minute Arctic Wildlife Refuge oil lease sale is…