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Archive for January, 2012
Drought and Cold Snap Cause Food Crisis in Northern Mexico
Posted by New York Times: Karla Zabludovsky on January 31st, 2012
New York Times: A drought that a government official called the most severe Mexico had ever faced has left two million people without access to water and, coupled with a cold snap, has devastated cropland in nearly half of the country. The government in the past week has authorized $2.63 billion in aid, including potable water, food and temporary jobs for the most affected areas, rural communities in 19 of Mexico’s 31 states. But officials warned that no serious relief was expected for at least another five months,...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Drought and Cold Snap Cause Food Crisis in Northern MexicoCanada: A Vast Canadian Wilderness Poised for a Uranium Boom
Posted by Yale Environment 360: Ed Struzik on January 30th, 2012
Yale Environment 360: Until her semi-nomadic family moved into the tiny Inuit community of Baker Lake in the 1950s, Joan Scottie never knew there was a wider world beyond her own on the tundra of the Nunavut Territory in the Canadian Arctic. She didn’t see the inside of a school until she was a teenager and didn’t venture south until she was an adult.
But that all changed in 1978, when a Soviet satellite carrying 100 pounds of enriched uranium for an onboard nuclear reactor crashed into the middle of the wilderness...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Canada: A Vast Canadian Wilderness Poised for a Uranium BoomA Plea for Southern Treasures
Posted by New York Times: Joanna M. Foster on January 30th, 2012
New York Times: The Southern Environmental Law Center, a Virginia-based nonprofit legal advocacy group, has released its 2012 list of the top 10 endangered places in the Southeast, environmentally speaking. While the list changes from year to year, certain places like Chesapeake Bay remain a top concern - and issues like pollution from coal-fired power plants and the protection of public lands and old-growth forest are recurring themes. While the list only considers six states, the issues raised by each site resonate...
GOP aims to force Obama into Keystone decision all over again
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 30th, 2012
Business Green: History has a habit of repeating itself, and as a result President Obama is unlikely to be surprised if he is forced to make yet another controversial decision on the future of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline in the next few months.
Republican House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner yesterday provided fresh details on how the GOP aims to keep the debate on the future of the $7bn pipeline a live election-year issue, despite the President's decision earlier this month to reject the plans....
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on GOP aims to force Obama into Keystone decision all over againFracking does not need more regulation, report says
Posted by EurActiv: Ana-Maria Tolbaru on January 30th, 2012
EurActiv: There is no need for more environmental legislation in the case of shale gas exploration, at least until it reaches commercial scale, says a new study published by the European commission.
The activities relating to exploration of shale gas are already subject to EU and national laws and regulations, says the report, carried out for the European commission by Belgian law firm Philippe & Partners.
Water protection issues, for instance, which have been raised as an issue by shale gas detractors,...
Research shows climate change may shrink wheat crops
Posted by Australian Broadcasting Corporation: Meredith Griffiths on January 30th, 2012
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: MARK COLVIN: New research predicts that climate change will have a far greater impact on wheat crops than expected.
Scientists from Stanford University found that a two degree increase in temperatures would reduce the growing season by nine days, yielding 20 per cent less wheat.
This could have a dire effect on global food security.
Meredith Griffiths reports.
MEREDITH GRIFFITHS: Wheat is the world's second biggest crop and provides a fifth of the world's protein. But it doesn't grow...
Climate-driven heat peaks may shrink wheat crops
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 30th, 2012
Agence France-Presse: More intense heat waves due to global warming could diminish wheat crop yields around the world through premature ageing, according to a study published Sunday in Nature Climate Change.
Current projections based on computer models underestimate the extent to which hotter weather in the future will accelerate this process, the researchers warned.
Wheat is harvested in temperate zones on more than 220 million hectares (545 million acres), making it the most widely grown crop on Earth.
In some...
UN maps ‘future worth choosing’
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 30th, 2012
BBC: Growing inequality, environmental decline and "teetering" economies mean the world must change the way it does business, a UN report concludes.
Health and education must improve, it says. Subsidies on fossil fuels should end, and governments must look beyond the standard economic indicator of GDP.
The High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability was established in 2010 by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
Its report will feed into discussions leading to the Rio+20 summit in June.
It is being...
China Says It Averted Spread of Toxic Metal in River
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 30th, 2012
New York Times: Officials in southern China appear to have averted environmental calamity by halting the spread of a toxic metal that had threatened to foul drinking water for tens of millions of people, the state media reported Monday. Officials said they had successfully diluted the concentration of cadmium, a poisonous component of batteries, that has been coursing down the Longjiang River in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The spill, which first occurred two weeks ago, prompted a rush on bottled water...
Japan finds water leaks at stricken nuclear plant
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 29th, 2012
Reuters: Japan's stricken nuclear power plant has leaked more than 600 liters of water, forcing it to briefly suspend cooling operations at a spent-fuel pond at the weekend, but none is thought to have escaped into the ocean, the plant's operator and domestic media said.
The Fukushima plant, on the coast north of Tokyo, was wrecked by a huge earthquake and tsunami in March last year, triggering the evacuation of around 80,000 people in the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years.
The operator of the...