Science

It's easy to feel dispirited about climate change because the challenge of dealing with it seems so overwhelming. But Miguel Modestino is actually excited about the challenge. He's part of a large team hoping to make an artificial leaf — a device that would make motor fuel from sunlight and carbon dioxide rather than from fossil fuels.

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AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

We've reported on how cheap natural gas is revolutionizing the energy industry. It's plentiful, thanks to the drilling technique known as fracking. Well, that's also changing American manufacturing. Factories are turning to natural gas to replace oil and even biomass sources like woodchips. And here's an example, a paper mill in East Millinocket, Maine.

Jay field of Maine Public Radio has the story.

When was the last time you met someone who didn't tell you they were "crazy busy"? It seems like everyone these days is overwhelmed. From the endless tasks of maintaining home and family life to the ever-accelerating pressures of the endlessly troubled, endlessly competitive economy, it seems that all of us are running ragged.

Harvard psychologist Mahzarin Banaji was once approached by a reporter for an interview. When Banaji heard the name of the magazine the reporter was writing for, she declined the interview: She didn't think much of the magazine and believed it portrayed research in psychology inaccurately.

But then the reporter said something that made her reconsider, Banaji recalled: "She said, 'You know, I used to be a student at Yale when you were there, and even though I didn't take a course with you, I do remember hearing about your work.' "

Monday kicks off US VegWeek 2013, a campaign by Compassion Over Killing that invites people to go vegetarian for a week "to explore a wide variety of meat-free foods and discover the many benefits of vegetarian eating—for our health, the planet, and animals."

Now in its 43rd year, Earth Day has become an international day dedicated to promoting environmental awareness and action. Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, explains what's changed, as concern about climate change and green energy have come to the forefront of the movement.

Dr. Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, a cardiologist at the UCLA Medical Center, coined the term "zoobiquity" to describe the idea of looking to animals and the doctors who care for them to better understand human health. Veterinary medicine had not been on her radar at all until about 10 years ago. That's when she was asked to join the medical advisory board for the Los Angeles Zoo and she began hearing about "congestive heart failure in a gorilla or leukemia in a rhinoceros or breast cancer in a tiger or a lion."

On Earth Day 2013, I'd like to draw your notice to a fantastic essay by Andrea Wulf in The New York Times Book Review. Wulf explains how information recorded by Henry David Thoreau in his journals is now informing modern climate-change research.