Climate Change

How 'Rights of Nature' Is Recasting the Relationship Between Law and the Earth

In 2006, a local government council in Pennsylvania concerned about sewage sludge dumping enacted the Western legal system’s first formal “rights of nature” instrument. Today, numerous countries have laws recognizing specific rights or even legal personhood for nature. As legal expert Alice Bleby explains, this new perspective arises from a wide range of contexts and plays out in many different ways.

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Amid Heat Waves, Data on Heat Deaths Deadly Serious

Heat waves, heat domes … heat deaths. The reality of climate change means a grim uptick in fatalities, more so from excess heat than any other kind of extreme weather event. Reporter’s Toolbox points to useful data sources for covering the crisis, with insights on how to go behind the numbers to find the stories of those most vulnerable to heat’s effects.

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"Drought And Bark Beetles Are Killing The Oldest Trees On Earth"

"Forest pathologist Martin MacKenzie strode forward on a narrow path through California’s mythic bristlecone pine forest in the White Mountains near the Nevada border, methodically scanning gnarled limbs for the invaders that threaten the lives of some of the world’s oldest trees."

Source: LA Times, 06/27/2022

"New Colombian President Pledges To Protect Rainforest"

"Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first elected leftist president, will take office in August with ambitious proposals to halt the record-high rates of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. Petro has promised to limit agribusiness expansion into the forest, and create reserves where Indigenous communities and others are allowed to harvest rubber, acai and other non-timber forest products."

Source: AP, 06/27/2022

"Heat Waves Around the World Push People and Nations ‘To the Edge’"

"Millions of Americans are once again in the grips of dangerous heat. Hot air blanketed Europe last weekend, causing parts of France and Spain to feel the way it usually does in July or August. High temperatures scorched northern and central China even as heavy rains caused flooding in the country’s south. Some places in India began experiencing extraordinary heat in March, though the start of the monsoon rains has brought some relief."

Source: NYTimes, 06/27/2022

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