Pope makes impassioned plea to save the Amazon — will the world listen?
‘Multinationals have cut the veins of our mother Earth,’ warned Pope Francis, urging conservation of the rapidly vanishing Amazon — but the world’s media barely took notice.
Articles by Justin Catanoso
Justin Catanoso is a professor of the practice at Wake Forest University and director of its journalism program from 2011-2016. His environmental reporting is often supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting in Washington, D.C., and the Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability at Wake Forest.
Success of Microsoft’s ‘moonshot’ climate pledge hinges on forest conservation
Tech giant Microsoft says it will go “carbon negative” by 2030; to get there, it will rely on Pachama, a startup using LIDAR and artificial intelligence to truthfully track forest carbon storage projects.
COP25: Self-serving G20 spites youth, humanity, world at climate talks
Analysts are calling the COP25 climate summit in Madrid a colossal failure — undermining the carbon reduction goals set by the 2015 Paris Agreement, leaving the world in mortal danger.
COP25: EU officials say biomass burning policy to come under critical review
Two top officials have announced that after 2020 the EU will look at closing the biomass carbon neutrality loophole that has created a boom in emission-producing wood pellets.
COP25: Wood pellet CEO claims biomass carbon neutrality, despite science
Interviewed in Madrid, Will Gardiner, CEO of the UK’s largest biomass plant, said his firm leads way in energy decarbonization, despite scientific evidence to the contrary.
Indonesian dam raises questions about UN hydropower carbon loophole
A company attending the COP25 climate summit says its dam will reduce Indonesia’s carbon emissions, but current science says tropical dams are greenhouse gas emitters.
COP25: Laura Vargas inspires with power of faith in defense of forests
Even as delegates to COP25, the Madrid climate summit, sidestep the environmental and human rights goals of the Paris Agreement, a godly 71-year-old woman steps up.
Hopes dim as COP25 delegates dicker over Article 6 and world burns: critics
Negotiators drafting Paris Agreement Article 6 rules appear to be assuring loopholes to up carbon emissions, turn forests into plantations, and failing to protect human rights.
COP25 may put climate at greater risk by failing to address forests
Madrid negotiators plan to create rules for a global carbon market, but a failure so far to include forest incentives, and a silence on a biomass carbon accounting loophole could hinder progress.
Vatican calls landmark meeting to conserve Amazon, protect indigenous peoples
Starting October 6, the Catholic Church will hold its first ever synod focused on an ecological biome. Bishops, indigenous leaders and activists will meet and set plans to help save the Amazon.
Interfaith leaders step up to protect the world’s ‘sacred’ rainforests
During Climate Week, starting September 22 at the UN in New York City, interfaith leaders will unveil the Faiths for Forests Declaration, with a call to political action by global congregations.
Gov’t takedown of illegal gold mining in Peru shows promise, but at a cost
PUERTO MALDONADO, Peru — Luis Hidalgo Okimura, the new governor of Peru’s Madre de Dios region, entered his conference room in the regional government building here carrying a half-empty bottle…
Carbon to burn: UK net-zero emissions pledge undermined by biomass energy
The UK and EU say they plan to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, even as both pursue plans to burn massive amounts of carbon-producing wood pellets.
EU sued to stop burning trees for energy; it’s not carbon neutral: plaintiffs
In a suit filed Monday, accusers say European nations burning wood pellets and chips for energy are putting the world at risk with carbon emissions greater than from coal burning.
COP24: Summit a step forward, but fails to address climate urgency
Poland climate meeting addressed some issues, including Paris rulebook, but fell far short. UN’s António Guterres to convene special September climate action meeting in New York.
COP24: Will they stay or will they go? Brazil’s threat to leave Paris
Jair Bolsonaro pledged to leave the Paris accord during his presidential run. But his Amazon agribusiness and mining expansion plans may pose a far bigger threat to forests and global climate.
COP24: Nations complicit in ignoring bioenergy climate bomb, experts say
Burning wood pellets, once deemed as carbon neutral, produces big CO2 emissions instead. But developed nations are cooking the books on bioenergy, toying with climate disaster.
COP24: Trumpers tout clean coal; protesters call it ‘climate suicide’
Demonstrators, subnationals, NGOs and COP24 delegates have moved beyond the Trump administration delegation’s public farce advocating coal as a viable climate solution.
COP24: US, Russia, Saudis downplay IPCC report in display of disunity
Vulnerable nations were eager to praise the IPCC report, the US was not. Environmental activist Tom Steyer sees another blue wave as the only route to global climate action.
COP24: World’s nations gather to grapple with looming climate disaster
As scientists’ warnings over climate catastrophe mount, will nonstate actors at COP24 in Poland be able to goad nations to finally take decisive climate change action?
Special series
Endangered environmentalists
- On anniversary of nun’s murder Amazon land rights activists at high risk
- Iran upholds heavy sentences for conservationists convicted of spying
- Two deaths trigger alarm at Mexico’s Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve
Indonesias forest guardians
- Reforesting a village in Indonesia, one batch of gourmet beans at a time
- Restoring Sumatra’s Leuser Ecosystem, one small farm at a time
- Indigenous Iban community defends rainforests, but awaits lands rights recognition
Amazon infrastructure
- BR-319 illegal side road threatens Amazon protected area, indigenous land (commentary)
- Barrage of mining requests targets Brazil’s isolated indigenous peoples
- Database offers new details on the dams that hold mining waste
Asian rhinos
- Indonesia-WWF split puts rhino breeding project in Borneo in limbo
- Indonesian officials wield sharia law in defense of Sumatran rhinos
- Love triangle complicates efforts to breed Sumatran rhinos
