Environment & Climate

First commercialized by Monsanto under the name Roundup, glyphosate has come under scrutiny in the past, mostly in relation to its potential toxicity. This new research, published recently in the Ecological Society of America's Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, focuses not on direct health risks associated with the herbicide, but on its contribution to environmental phosphorus levels, an issue that has yet to receive much attention.

Last year, a few days before Christmas, Gail Fuller drove me out to the middle of a wind-whipped field just north of Emporia, Kansas. “This is really where it started for me,” he said as he climbed out of the truck, spade in hand. With a thunk, he drove the spade into the ground and pulled out a hunk of earth, holding it up so I could see the texture, which he described as like “chocolate cake” and “black cottage cheese.”

Parents may think their kids are too involved with school, friends and activities to pay much attention to climate change. But many kids actually are worried about climate change, according to an article on the Green Living website. The article cited reports of children as young as 7 years old losing sleep over climate concerns.

Now, a new study published in Current Psychiatry Reports says concerns about global warming are putting children “at risk of mental health consequences including PTSD, depression, anxiety, phobias, sleep disorders, attachment disorders and substance abuse.”

It’s a bright and chilly Friday and 13-year-old Alexandria Villasenor has been sitting in 40-degree cold for two and a half hours. The seventh-grader has come to the United Nations in Manhattan every Friday for 11 weeks, including during the polar vortex that hit the city a month ago, to protest climate inaction, a vigil that has earned her an enormous amount of attention.