Climate Change

If you’ve ever pumped gas in the United States, you’ve seen the sticker: “This product may contain up to 10 percent ethanol by volume,” declares one at a Massachusetts Shell station. Since 2005, Washington has mandated that an increasing amount of ethanol be mixed into gasoline every year, encouraging refiners and retailers with cash incentives.

Author Michael Pollan discussed the Farm Bill’s far-reaching impact on the U.S. food system and the environment, how journalists can better cover food policy, and more during a visit to Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media Politics and Public Policy. Below are the highlights:

When engineers build roads, they use weather models to decide what kind of pavement can withstand the local climate. Currently, many American engineers use temperature data from 1964 to 1995 to select materials. But the climate is changing.

Hurricane season in the U.S. generally runs from late spring to late fall. Hurricane season in the Atlantic basin, which encompasses the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico, starts June 1 and ends Nov. 30. It’s slightly longer for the Eastern Pacific basin, which includes the waters off the nation’s west coast. Its season lasts from May 15 to Nov. 30.

It can be expensive making your home or business conform to local building codes. Ensuring a building does not get blown down in a storm or toppled in an earthquake can require costly materials. Adding confusion to the cost, states and many municipalities have unique requirements for builders and contractors.

Fires have always burned in the planet’s temperate forests. They hasten regeneration by thinning undergrowth and fertilizing the soil. Before there were humans to flick cigarette butts into the brush, there were lightning storms and cyclical droughts.