My father’s environmental legacy is grounded in the past, but President Biden’s is being decided now as our future hangs in the balance. Can the President lead international action to reverse the current climate change trends? I am hopeful.
My father, the late U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson, would be deeply gratified to see the Biden administration choose his signature achievement, Earth Day, as the launching pad for our nation’s recommitment to international action on climate change, when the U.S. will host a world leaders climate summit on Thursday, April 22.
It’s also a fitting coda to the relationship between President Biden and my dad, dating back to Biden’s election to the Senate, just two years after the first Earth Day helped galvanize collective national action on the environment.
Biden won an upset victory to the U.S. …
I support Joe Biden for president, and endorse his climate change leadership
No election in my lifetime has been more important than this one. Everything I care about, from the strength of our democracy to the challenges of addressing the greatest environmental threat in human history, is at stake. And so it is with enormous pride and pleasure that I worked with The League of Conservation Voters Victory Project to support Joe Biden for president, and endorse his climate change leadership in this video.
Joe and my father served in the U.S …
At a time when we face political inaction and a looming climate crisis, the significance of Earth Day’s 50th anniversary is more relevant than ever.
It’s hard for me to believe that it’s been a half-century since the first Earth Day. I was almost fourteen years old on April 22, 1970, and like many kids, I spent the day picking up trash at my junior high school. I often reflect on my father’s vision for “an environmental teach-in” which would spark a global movement successful beyond his wildest dreams. “The purpose of Earth Day”, he said, “is to get a nationwide demonstration of concern for the environment so large that it would shake the political establishment out of its lethargy.”
Today, this vision could not…
When Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez rejected the idea of a Presidential debate focused on climate change, his explanation was that he didn’t want a single-issue debate.
The flaw in that logic is that what we are talking about isn’t a single issue. Climate change is in fact many issues, from taxes to agriculture policy, from transportation infrastructure to land-use, from national security to public health, just to name a few. It affects every aspect of our government’s investment in America’s future and economy.
Today’s young climate advocates get it. As Garrett Blad, national press coordinator for the Sunrise…
It’s striking to see how much the Republican Party has changed its tune on the environment. Both Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush showed leadership on the issue as presidents, and even more recently, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) called on the nation to address climate change.
Today, conservatives have largely abandoned environmental causes in a fog of climate change denial set in motion long ago by the fossil fuel industry. But we’re beginning to see some cracks, even from that very industry itself.
You can help reduce climate change, save money, conserve energy and feed the hungry. All you need to do is stop wasting and tossing out so much food.
Wasting food has been called the “world’s dumbest environmental problem.” Every year, the average family of four in the U.S. tosses roughly $2,000 in food; 30 to 40 percent of food produced in this country ends up discarded.
At dinner, our parents urged us to finish everything on our plates. Beyond the moral and economic reasons to do so, it turns out there’s a significant environmental one, too. …
When government suppresses science, we lose
Facts matter a lot to me, never more so than in the era following the most recent presidential election in which “post-truth” is added to our lexicon. So in 2015 when the Wisconsin Board of Commissioners of Public Lands (BCPL), where I served as executive secretary, voted 2–1 to prohibit me from speaking the words climate change or global warming during work hours, I was quick to correct those who blamed Gov. Scott Walker.
The national media had promptly made links between the situation in Wisconsin and the actions taken by Florida Gov. Rick Scott to prohibit his state’s employees…
When I step on the ground in Paris this month, it will be a sort of homecoming for me. It’s not that I am French, but that I am returning to a global community I left over 11 years ago. I will be re-joining thousands of business leaders, scholars, climate researchers, politicians, activists, and citizens concerned about finding policy solutions to reduce carbon pollution and man-made global warming.
I’m not there yet and I already feel a sense of excitement as I prepare to attend the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change…
Tia Nelson
Conservationst. Rational Thinker. Musical Foodie. Managing Director, Climate at Outrider Foundation. All views my own.
