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We’ve been down this path before; a new species, a new crop, a new product. A silver bullet plant that can be grown on degraded land and provide exactly what industry needs. And yet typically such plants go one of two ways; the way of Jatropha, which after a few years of being touted as the miracle plant of the biofuel industry, simply faded into nothingness; or the way of oil palm, where industrialization boomed, and with it came a mile wide trench of environmental devastation.

No plant is inherently green. And bamboo is no different. It can be grown well, and sustainably. Or it can be the cause of deforestation, conversion of natural ecosystems, and subsequent environmental and social degradation.

So why is bamboo forging a path that is likely to be different? Simply, the foremost player currently responsible for the plant’s industrialization at a global and commercial scale is setting a benchmark of sustainability in front as they pioneer and grow the plant at scale, rather than in their wake as an after thought.

In the midst of the California rainy season, scientists are embarking on a field campaign designed to improve the understanding of the natural and human-caused phenomena that determine when and how the state gets its precipitation. They will do so by studying atmospheric rivers, meteorological events that include the famous rainmaker known as the Pineapple Express.

CalWater 2015 is an interagency, interdisciplinary field campaign starting January 14, 2015. CalWater 2015 will entail four research aircraft flying through major storms while a ship outfitted with additional instruments cruises below. The research team includes scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, NOAA, and NASA and uses resources from the DOE’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility—a national scientific user facility.

Just one degree of global warming could cut wheat yields by 42 million tonnes worldwide, around 6% of the crop, writes Paul Brown - causing devastating shortages of this staple food.

Market shortages would cause price rises. Many developing countries, and the hungry poor within them, would not be able to afford wheat or bread.

The ocean surrounding Easter Island is vast and great, so large it seems impossible that one could ever sail away and find a home away from home.  Trees and animals fill the land to the very coast, a paradise, a home.  This is where the Rapanui reside, a great Polynesian people, a great nation.  They built great Moai to their gods. They ripped the trees from their roots, used them for rope, homes, fire and boat.  Their people reached in the tens of thousands, vast and great.  This is where the Rapanui reside, in their island, in an ocean so far from anything, so alone.  They did not take notice to the consequences of destroying their land, they did not notice that the destruction of nature was the destruction their home, their paradise.  For many generations they lived taking what they wanted from the island, and despite the changes their home had gone through they still did not change their ways.  The droughts, the famine, the changes, in their home happening too slowly for them to notice in time.  The lack of food, the starvation of the poor, the absence of other life.  Even if some of them had known what was to come if they stayed their course it did not matter, and once the very last tree on Easter island was slain their fate was sealed.  The death of an entire people, an extinction.  This is where the Rapanui reside, in the dirt, in their tombs, lost, forgotten, the only thing left are their great Moai, and one day they will be gone too.

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Sometimes we do the wrong thing for the right reasons. That appears to be the case for countless Americans hoping to aid the monarch butterfly. Hearing that pesticides have destroyed the milkweed that monarchs rely on for survival, sympathetic animal lovers have attempted to do their part to support the butterflies by growing milkweed in their own gardens. Alas, emerging research suggests that this well-intentioned plan appears to actually be harming the species even further.

Unfortunately, most of the milkweed purchased for this purpose is the “wrong kind.” This kind, known as tropical milkweed, is popular with gardening companies since it continues to bloom longer than the type to which monarch butterflies are accustomed. While monarchs are still more than content to eat this milkweed, that doesn’t make it good for them.