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Archive for October 30th, 2010
Lurching from One Disaster to the Next
Posted by Inter Press Service: Paul Weinberg on October 30th, 2010
Inter Press Service: The world is ill-prepared for the human toll from the expected increase in floods, droughts and extreme storms and hurricanes on the horizon.
So say experts like Peter Walker, director of the Tufts University-based Feinstein International Center near Boston. In late 2008, his organisation authored a report titled "Humanitarian Costs of Climate Change" for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
"We may be keeping people alive, we may be helping people to survive,"...
Landmark UN Nagoya biodiversity deal agreed to save natural world
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 30th, 2010
Telegraph: Delegates from more than 190 countries meeting in Nagoya, Japan, agreed a programme to conserve global biodiversity and the natural habitats that support the most threatened animals and plants.
The last minute deal at the UN Convention on Biodiversity sets out 20 goals to be implemented by in the next 10 years to help tackle the mass extinction of species around the world.
They include increasing the area of protected land in the world from 12.5% to 17%, and the area of protected oceans from...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Landmark UN Nagoya biodiversity deal agreed to save natural worldA cut-and dry forecast: U.S. Southwest’s dry spell may become long-lasting and intensify as climate change takes hold
Posted by ScientificAmerican: Mike Orcutt on October 30th, 2010
ScientificAmerican: Lake Mead, the massive reservoir created in the late 1930s by Hoover Dam on the Arizona--Nevada border, has dropped to its lowest level ever, it was reported earlier this month. The lake has been steadily growing shallower since drought began reducing the flow of its source, the Colorado River, starting in 2000 due to below-average snowfall in the Rockies.
It is still too early to know whether the situation at Lake Mead and recent droughts throughout the U.S. Southwest are due to anthropogenic...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on A cut-and dry forecast: U.S. Southwest’s dry spell may become long-lasting and intensify as climate change takes holdKey outcomes at U.N. talks to preserve nature
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 30th, 2010
Reuters: A U.N. meeting of nearly 200 countries agreed on Saturday new targets for 2020 to protect nature and a new global pact aimed at giving developing countries more share of profits made from their genetic resources.
The following are key outcomes of the meeting:
2020 TARGET, STRATEGIC PLAN
Delegates agreed to "take effective and urgent action to halt the loss of biodiversity in order to ensure that by 2020 ecosystems are resilient and continue to provide essential services".
The new goal...
Senators raise concerns on oil sands pipeline
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 30th, 2010
Reuters: Nearly a dozen U.S. Senators on Friday raised questions about the need for a proposed $7 billion pipeline that they said will bring "dirty oil" from Canadian oil sands to U.S. refineries and significantly increase the country's reliance on fossil fuels.
The lawmakers, 10 Democrats and one independent, said the State Department needs to answer several key questions before deciding whether to approve TransCanada's application to build the 2,000-mile Keystone XL pipeline.
"Approval of this pipeline...
Why have Britons lost touch with the natural world?
Posted by Guardian: Fiona Reynolds on October 30th, 2010
Guardian: Octavia Hill, one of the founders of the National Trust, observed as early as 1895 that "the need of quiet, the need of air, the need of exercise, the sight of sky and of things growing seem human needs, are common to all men". A growing body of research is now backing her intuition up with science, but 115 years later we still, as a nation, don't seem to value enough the physical and spiritual refreshment we get from our surroundings.
Indeed, if the media does, as they say, produce the first...