By Suzanne York. At first glance, the recent UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on global warming may not seem to have much to do with the International Day of the Girl, observed on October 11th. But climate change has a lot to do with girls, and especially the rights of girls. For one
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By Suzanne York. As the planet is literally burning up, awareness of our greater human impact on the world may just be increasing.  It does get more difficult to deny climate change as the daytime temperature records are broken in Scotland, Japan faces floods and then a heatwave and Yosemite National Park closes due to
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By Suzanne York. It’s an almost unbelievable statistic in an age of shocking facts – humans make up just .01% of all life on Earth but have destroyed 83% of wild mammals and 50% of plants since the dawn of civilization. Of all the mammals on Earth, 96% are livestock and humans and only 4% are
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By Joshua Mirondo, guest blogger for Transition Earth. Uganda is a very young country. Young people below the age of 30 constitute over 75% of the nation’s population and eight million are youth aged 15-30. About 25% of these are in institutions of higher learning like universities and vocational technical institutes. Research shows that almost
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By Suzanne York. As the world recognizes International Women’s Day this March 8th, there is no shortage of important issues affecting women that should be brought to the table. As movements such as #MeToo and #TimesUp have brought little discussed problems to the forefront, there is reason, at long last, to feel hope that “society”
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By Suzanne York. The allegory couldn’t be more fitting – humanity burying our collective heads in the sand, as the planet heats up and water scarcity becomes more of a reality in many places around the globe. For the past week or so, there have been numerous headlines on the water tap running dry in
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By Suzanne York.   Amazingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, climate change has been barely mentioned in the U.S. presidential elections. This, despite the fact that 2016 is likely to be the hottest year on record. Fortunately, the leaders of other countries seem to have a better handle on it. A landmark international climate agreement was
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By Suzanne York. It’s official, more or less – we have entered the Anthropocene epoch, a time when humanity’s impact on the planet is so transformational that it’s pushed the world into a new geological period. “New Age of Man” An international working group, after seven years of deliberation, voted unanimously (with one abstention) at
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By Suzanne York. Child marriage is a difficult issue that is complicated by culture and religion, and especially by poverty.  Now it seems that climate change is another complicating factor. It might be surprising to find out that extreme weather could be increasing the rate of child marriage and other detrimental impacts on children. But
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org. It’s still a month until summer begins, and the drought in the western U.S. continues to be headline news.  Just wait until August. A couple of news items from the past week perfectly highlight the scope of the drought that is impacting the western U.S., and the role of human hubris
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