Tag Archives: Justin Catanoso

Radio  Trouble In Paradise–Too Much Plastic In Our Oceans

13My radio commentary for March 27, 2015 was based on my Spring Break trip to Lighthouse Reef Atoll and Long Caye, which is located 47 miles off the coast of Belize in the Caribbean. In such a tiny, remote and pristine place, I was stunned by the sight of so much plastic waste. I wrestled with how to localize this international problem for my Triad Business Journal column. Fortunately, Will Scott, the Yadkin Riverkeeper, offered exactly what I needed to hear. The radio report with Keri Brown is here.

Excerpt: “I think the first thing is understanding that when it comes to the environment, our actions here have an impact just about everywhere else. That’s when you realize that how you answer the question ‘paper or plastic’ can make a difference. So can buying a Brita filter instead of a case of bottled water.”

Radio  WUNC: How Is Climate Change Affecting Tropical Forests?

The view from 13,000 feet in Manu National Park, Andes Mountains, southeastern Peru.

This radio report (7:17 minutes) for WUNC-North Carolina Public Radio overviews my climate change reporting in summer 2013 from the Amazon basin of Peru. It discusses the implications of upslope tree migration in the Amazon jungles as a result of warming temperatures.

The second recording (12 minutes) is of Wake Forest biologist MIles Silman and me on the afternoon news program at WUNC, The State of Things, with Frank Stasio, discussing the same topic.

Wake Forest biologist Miles Silman in the Peruvian cloud forest.

Photos by Justin Catanoso

Environment  BusinessInsider.com: Hiking Through Peru Showed One Journalist The True Dangers Of Climate Change

These areas are threatened by miners who want to dig into these mountain sides for the untold riches in the ground beneath them — the oil, iron, gold. To stop this, carbon offsets from richer, industrialized countries could help pay these poorer countries back for leaving these pristine and important forests untouched.

This story by Jennifer Welch about about reporting trip to southern Peru and the slideshow of photos I took attracted significant “heat” at BusinessInsider.com — more than 76,000 page views.