5 Environmental Stories You Don't Want To Miss

By Catherine Schuknecht

November 13, 2015

POTUS, locusts, and cougars! Oh my!

Photo by iStock/Wavebreakmedia

 

POTUS ONLINE: Bad news, Sasha and Malia: your Dad’s on Facebook. President Obama launched his new personal Facebook page by posting a video of himself taking a stroll on the White House’s South Lawn to raise awareness about national parks preservation and climate change.

LOCUST SALAD: An architecture student in the UK returned from a routine trip to the grocers to discover what he described as a “whopping great locust” inside a bag of Sainsbury's rocket salad. Watch the video here, if you dare.

SCHOOL HARD: A new study has found that four California sixth-grade science textbooks from major publishers frame climate change as a matter of opinion. The books claim that global warming may or may not be human-caused and that the need for mitigation is unclear.

COUGAR KINGDOM: Cougars may recolonize the American heartland within 25 years, according to a new analysis published in the journal Ecological Modelling.

GUILTY AS CHARGED: Scientists have found that 14 out of 28 extreme weather events in 2014 were influenced by human-caused climate change.

 

Watch President Obama give a tour of his backyard:

 

Hello, Facebook! I finally got my very own page. I hope you’ll think of this as a place where we can have real conversations about the most important issues facing our country – a place where you can hear directly from me, and share your own thoughts and stories. (You can expect some just-for-fun stuff, too.)I’m kicking it off by inviting you to take a walk with me in my backyard – something I try to do at the end of the day before I head in for dinner. I say this often, but that’s because it’s always at the front of my mind: We’ve got to preserve this beautiful planet of ours for our kids and grandkids. And that means taking serious steps to address climate change once and for all. Now, we've made a lot of progress to cut carbon pollution here at home, and we're leading the world to take action as well. But we’ve got to do more. In a few weeks, I’m heading to Paris to meet with world leaders about a global agreement to meet this challenge.I hope you'll join me in speaking out on climate change and educating your friends about why this issue is so important. At a time when nearly three in four adults online use Facebook, this feels like a great place to do it. Share your thoughts in the comments, and pass this message on to folks you think need to see it.If we're all in this together, I'm confident we can solve this and do right by future generations.

Posted by President Obama on Monday, November 9, 2015