A Killer Weed Finds New Life as Fertilizer, Filter, and Fuel

An Invasive Vine Threatening Nepal's Fragile Ecosystem Becomes Part of the Area's Sustainability Solution

Nepal’s Chitwan National Park, a stretch of grasslands, forests, and wetlands in the humid foothills of the Himalayas, is home to an enormous diversity of plants and animals. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the park provides refuge to Bengal tigers and some of the last of the world’s single-horned Asiatic rhinoceroses, among other endangered species. Most people in the region scrape out a living through smallholder farming, almost fully dependent on the environment and its resources for their livelihoods.

That environment is changing, in part as a result of global …

Letting Go of Green Lawns

Lush Yards Once Defined the Southern California Dream, Today Grass Means Fines and Disdain

“Here, it was two stories and a lawn, two stories and a lawn, two stories and a lawn”
– Carolyn See from The Handyman

Sometime during the last-blast furnace heat of …

Phoenix Is a Survivor

This City in the Sonoran Desert Is an Old Hand at Grappling with Its Thirst for Water and Electricity

The fact that people question Phoenix’s existence has been good for the city. That was the headline lesson from Tuesday night’s Zócalo/ASU College of Public Service & Community Solutions event, …

Your Electric Car Isn’t Making California’s Air Any Cleaner

The Environmental Benefits of Rich People’s Teslas Are Canceled Out By All the Gas-Guzzling Clunkers Still on Our Roads

This is a tale of two zip codes.

First there’s 94582: San Ramon, California.

Since 2010, the roughly 38,000 citizens and businesses of this prosperous Bay Area suburb, where the median household …

ASU Sustainability Scholar Michael Hanemann

Where Book Reviews Are a Blood Sport

Michael Hanemann is a sustainability scholar at Arizona State University. He is an environmental economist who works in the areas of water economics and policy, climate change, and non-market valuation. …

California’s Coast Doesn’t Have a Sustainability Monopoly

How A Brown, Dusty San Joaquin Valley Town Is Going Green

Rey Leon works on sustainability in the city of Huron, California. Sustainability is a common enough word on the California coast, where hybrid cars, organic food, and solar power are …