IoES in the News
Headline
Video: Pritzker Finalist Leah Penniman in Yahoo! New: This Farmer Is Determined To Use Food To Help End Racism & Injustice
Soul Fire Farm manager & co-director and 2020 Pritzker Award finalist Leah Penniman explains how the community training farm educates young people + delivers food to people in need.
Headline
Daniel Swain in KQED: Rain Next Week? Forecast Models Give Some Hope, But Too Early to Count on It
Moisture for a low-pressure system expected to arrive in Northern California late next week. UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, a weather nerd and Twitter must-follow, made much the same point about…
Headline
Ann Carlson in The Hill: Supreme Court to decide whether climate suit can be moved to federal court
The Supreme Court says it will hear arguments over whether the city of Baltimore’s lawsuit against several oil companies can be moved to federal court. Ann Carlson, a professor at…
Headline
Daniel Swain on KCRW’s “Press Play:” California fires have burned some 4 million acres. How to protect people and property
This year has been full of natural disasters for California: record temperatures, hazardous air, and the worst fire season ever. The fires have collectively burned nearly 4 million acres in…
Headline
Daniel Blumstein in The Scientist: Wielding Fear
Harnessing fear can lead to responsible behavior & sound thinking. UCLA Institute of Environment and Sustainability animal behavior researcher Daniel Blumstein discusses the ecological power &evolutionary history of fear, an…
Headline
Tom Smith in World War Zero: The Congo Basin in an Era of Climate Change
World War Zero, a coalition fighting the climate crisis, features an op-ed by CBI’s Founding Co-Executive Director Tom Smith discussing the effects of climate change on Congo Basin biodiversity. “Climate…
Headline
Daniel Swain in WIRED: The Debate Was a Disaster. But Hey, Climate Change Came Up
The good news: The presidential debate addressed global warming. The bad news: Trump dodged it, especially when it came to wildfires. “It was kind of interesting that that was the…
Headline
Daniel Swain in Desert Sun: Tired of triple-digit heat? Palm Springs set to break record for most 100-degree days in a year
Thursday will be the city’s 136th day with triple-digit temperatures in 2020, surpassing the previous record of 135 days set in 1958, according to the National Weather Service. Moving forward, 2020’s…
Headline
Daniel Swain in San Francisco Chronicle: Wine Country fires burn homes, force evacuations from Santa Rosa to Napa Valley
The Wine Country awoke in flames Monday as windblown wildfires closed in on the Napa Valley from the east and west and swept into Santa Rosa, forcing thousands of North…
Headline
Daniel Swain in The Washington Post: Wildfire danger in West to escalate as intense heat dome builds this weekend
Record highs and dry land-to-sea winds are in the forecast yet again. According to Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California at Los Angeles, the fire weather…
Headline
Daniel Swain in The New York Times: Record Wildfires on the West Coast Are Capping a Disastrous Decade
“We’ve broken almost every record there is to break,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, referring to his home state, where catastrophic fires…
Headline
2020 Pritzker Finalist Leah Penniman in Mic: Our food system is broken and racist. Meet the farmers trying to change the way we eat
“You have to wonder how we as a society justify that approximately 98% of the farmable land in this country is white-owned,’ says 2020 Pritzker finalist and co-founder of Soul…
Blog
Daniel Swain in The Los Angeles Times — ‘If you think it’s bad now, just wait’: California faces new fire threats, further straining resources
The forecast is not encouraging. This upcoming heat event is on track to be “major, prolonged and potentially record-breaking,” according to UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain. It appears Central California…
Headline
CBI field station featured in Travel Africa
Travel Africa Magazine featured the Congo Basin Institute’s Bouamir Field Station located in the Dja Faunal Reserve of Cameroon. Aided by local researchers and guides, visitors conducting field research in…
Headline
Daniel Swain in The New York Times: Heat and Drought Team Up More Frequently, With Disastrous Results
A new study finds that what used to be a rare weather double whammy has been occurring more frequently in recent decades because of climate change. A climate scientist who…
Headline
Ann Carlson in CalMatters: Newsom orders ban of new gas-powered cars by 2035
In a dramatic move to tackle climate change, Gov. Gavin Newsom today ordered state officials to ban new gasoline-powered cars within 15 years. Under the Clean Air Act, California must…
Awards
Professor Michael Stenstrom Recognized as Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors Fellow
Professor Michael K. Stenstrom, of the UCLA Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has recently been recognized as an Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors (AEESP) Fellow. AEESP Fellows…
Headline
Daniel Swain in NBC News: As wildfires rage, climate experts warn: The future we were worried about is here
Wildfires in the U.S., Australia and Siberia have driven home how climate change is already threatening to destroy ecosystems in various parts of the world. Wildfires in the U.S., Australia…
Headline
Research Director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities Eric Fournier in UCLA Newsroom: What the wildfires tell us about the shortcomings of California’s electric grid
In addition to the vast destruction they have caused, the wildfires that have engulfed California in recent weeks have laid bare serious concerns about the state’s electric grid. In an…
Headline
Daniel Swain in The Washington Post: Trump’s plan for managing forests won’t save us in a more flammable world, experts say
On a single day last week, red-flag warnings on fire weather stretched along the entire West Coast from the U.S. border with Mexico to Canada. “It really is a shocking escalation,”…
Headline
Zifang Zhu in The New York Times: The Air We Breathe
The worst effects of the wildfires are the direct ones: the deaths, the loss of homes and the destruction of natural habitat. But the secondary pollution effects — from the…
Headline
Daniel Swain in The Atlantic: The Most Important Number for the West’s Hideous Fire Season
A little-noticed indicator was flashing red before any of the blazes began. The vapor-pressure deficit VPD indexes 2 measurements: the air temperature and the relative humidity. In California this year,…
Headline
Jon Christensen Christensen in KCET: Environmental Politics and the Work of Nevada Senator Harry Reid Highlighted in New 90-Minute Documentary from EARTH FOCUS
Anew documentary exploring environmental politics, which was researched, reported and produced by UCLA faculty and students in conjunction with the Southern California public media channel KCET, is slated to air…
Headline
Daniel Swain in The New York Times: Where the Wildfires Are Burning, and Other Answers You Need
Daniel Swain, a California climate expert, said recently that he was stunned by the sheer breadth and acreage of the blazes burning at the same time across a variety of…
Headline
Jon Christensen and “Earth Focus” on Link TV
Environmental Politics and the Work of Nevada Senator Harry Reid Highlighted in New 90-Minute Documentary from EARTH FOCUS “The New West and the Politics of the Environment” Premieres Sept. 29…