By Timmons Roberts 

The day after the People’s Climate March, and I’m awash with emotion. I’m exhausted, and exhilarated, from having gotten up before dawn to take a four-hour bus ride from Providence, Rhode Island to march for six hours through the streets of New York City with my 11-year-old daughter.

By Marcela Jaramillo and Camila Bustos

Here we share a summary of Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos speech at the UN Climate Summit and our reflection on it. While we praise Santos rhetoric calling for a progressive and ambitious agreement in 2015, we wonder if his commitment to sustainable development will also apply to domestic policies on fossil fuel exploration, particularly fracking.

Por Alicia Villamizar* y Guy Edwards

El gobierno de Venezuela recibió elogios por la organización de la "Pre-COP Social", en julio pasado. El evento contó con la participación de más de 100 organizaciones dedicadas a promover la participación de la sociedad civil en las negociaciones del cambio climático ante la ONU. Para el próximo noviembre, se espera la elaboración de una declaración generada por las organizaciones invitadas bajo la coordinación del gobierno venezolano. Dicha declaración será entregada en el evento a ministros de varios países de cara a la Conferencia de las Partes de diciembre en Lima, Perú.

By Timmons Roberts 

Just as world leaders begin to assemble in New York for Ban Ki Moon’s summit to discuss how to increase global action to confront global warming, over 100,000 people took to the city’s streets demanding they do more than talk. Most of those leaders have been woefully behind the curve, but this may finally be the occasion upon which they have to listen and pay attention to citizens, who in growing numbers are calling for action.  The devastating effects of the ongoing drought in California, the tragic impacts of Hurricane Sandy, and dozens of other extreme weather events have pushed public concern over a tipping point.  Even the long silent Obama administration has begun to spend some political capital on the issue, with the President and his EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy sharply proclaiming public health threats from climate change like soaring asthma rates, the economic impacts of droughts and floods, and the moral irresponsibility of inaction. 

By Timmons Roberts, Guy Edwards and David Ciplet 

As world leaders gather at the United Nations in New York next Tuesday to discuss how to increase global action to confront global warming, tens of thousands will take to the streets demanding they act. Most leaders have been woefully behind the curve. Now they need to listen and pay attention to citizens, who in growing numbers are calling for action.

By Timmons Roberts 

The Seekonk is five miles of beautiful open water, alive with fish, eels, crabs, cormorants, osprey, herons, ducks, kingfishers, muskrats and many other forms of life. Though it’s right here in town, the Seekonk is “rewilding” after its de-industrialization: the wood pilings are rotting, sea walls collapsing, and the trees, vines, bushes and flowers are returning. Still, the Seekonk bears fascinating remnants of a storied industrial past.

Twice each day, millions of gallons of salty water swirl up from the ocean past Fox Point into the Seekonk, and thousands of gallons of fresh water fall from the Blackstone and Ten Mile Rivers (the latter falls over the dam at Omega pond, where the fish ladder project stands incomplete and seemingly abandoned). Other smaller creeks and sewer outlets pour in a lot or a little, depending on the rain.

Kayakers, people fishing on the banks and in small boats, and dozens of rowers from the Narragansett Boat Club and the Brown Boat House, motor and paddle their way up and down this five-mile playground of sun and wind and water. I’m one of the rowers.