TIME 10/02/15 By Michael Shank and US Congressman Raul Grijalva The world wastes more than 1.3 billion metric tons of edible food each year When it comes to tackling climate change, one of the greatest challenges we face is understanding the myriad factors that influence our warming planet. Addressing some […]
MEDIUM 10/02/15 By Michael Shank With the United Nations serving up a vegetarian luncheon for world leaders this past week, made entirely from food waste, and with Hollywood filmmakers talking about how diets can save the planet, we’re starting to witness a sea change in how we think and talk […]
THE CONVERSATION 09/23/15 By Michael Shank Cities are acting ambitiously on climate change and that has big implications for the rest of the planet. Urban officials last week attended the US-China Climate Leaders summit and announced a raft of carbon emissions targets, clean energy partnerships, and initiatives around transpacific climate […]
HUFFINGTON POST 07/21/15 By Michael Shank Rarely am I inspired by a piece of writing so revolutionary that it cuts through the hubris and cacophony of contemporary society. Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Si’, did that for me. There is hardly a more widely and recently distributed piece of literature that […]
SLATE 05/01/15 By Michael Shank The Vatican and United Nations present the beatitudes of a new movement. This week, while at Vatican City in Rome to manage press for the first-ever meeting on climate change between Pope Francis and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, my faith in a force more […]
HUFFINGTON POST 4/17/15 By Michael Shank As Turkish President Recept Tayyip Erdogan made his rounds recently in the Middle East, talking with Iran about ending sectarianism in the region, and with Egypt about freeing political prisoners, he would’ve done well to start at home. There’s much to do, and Erdogan […]
NEWSWEEK 03/19/15 By Michael Shank and US Congresswoman Yvette Clarke In the wake of island nation Vanuatu’s devastation by Cyclone Pam, in which 320 mile-per-hour winds killed dozens of people and destroyed 90 percent of the buildings in the capital city of Port Vila, public health experts fear that the […]
HUFFINGTON POST 03/12/15 By Michael Shank Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s recent attack on the West for “hate speech” and misattributing terrorism during the Paris attacks is ironic. Erdogan is erroneously doing both already: labeling the Gulen movement a terrorist organization and using hate speech to characterize it. In fact, […]
HUFFINGTON POST 03/03/15 By Michael Shank With Yemen politics in perpetual disarray – as President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi escapes house arrest, rescinds his resignation, seeks refuge in the south, and a transitional council commences in the capital – the country’s economy and currency remain on the brink of collapse, water […]
NATIONAL INTEREST 01/26/15 By Michael Shank and Des Browne We are facing a new security threat, and, if left unaddressed, it has the potential to kill thousands of people in a single summer. We are talking, of course, about climate change. A new study authored by the British Met Office […]