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Archive for January, 2013
Turning on Taps a Risky Business in Zimbabwe
Posted by Inter Press Service: Stanley Kwenda on January 28th, 2013
Inter Press Service: For three weeks Tavonga Kwidini and his wife Maria had no tap water in their home in Glen View, one of the many dry suburbs in Zimbabwe's capital, Harare.
The couple was just about at the end of their tether when heavy rains came like a gift from the heavens.
"We now harvest rainwater and that's what we use to bathe, drink and flush our toilets," Kwidini told IPS as he lined up his buckets underneath the roof of his house in anticipation of the January showers.
Such has been his life since...
Coffee farmers struggle to adjust to climate change
Posted by Seattle Times: Melissa Allison on January 28th, 2013
Seattle Times: One of the biggest problems facing coffee farmers in India and elsewhere is climate change. Fluctuations in the weather have always happened, but they come more frequently now and are often more extreme, farmers say.
Like many tropical crops, coffee needs predictable dry and wet seasons and cannot tolerate extreme temperature fluctuations.
"Climate change is hitting us hard,' said Jacob Mammen, managing director of India's Badra Estates. Three times in recent years, Badra has lost a third of...
Deal Could Halt Keystone XL Pipeline Protests in Texas
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 28th, 2013
Associated Press: An agreement reached in an East Texas court between attorneys for a company building a Canada-to-Gulf Coast oil pipeline and various groups protesting the project could signal a retreat on the part of demonstrators.
The Longview News-Journal reported Saturday (http://bit.ly/14mwHZG) that lawyers for TransCanada obtained a permanent injunction against Tar Sands Blockade, Rising Tide North America, Rising Tide Texas and others on Friday in Wood County District Court.
Under the injunction, protesters...
Japanese Energy, Business Groups Urge U.S. Gas Export Approvals
Posted by The Hill: Ben Geman on January 28th, 2013
The Hill: Japanese utilities and business groups are pressing U.S. regulators to approve natural gas exports at a time when Japan’s idled nuclear production has boosted its need for other energy sources.
New letters to the Energy Department (DOE) urge approval of an array of pending applications to export liquefied natural gas to nations that do not have free-trade deals with the U.S. – including Japan.
“We, as Japanese utilities, are in significant need of secure sources of energy supply,” states a...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Japanese Energy, Business Groups Urge U.S. Gas Export ApprovalsGoldman to advise Siemens on water unit sale -sources
Posted by Reuters: Sale May Be Launched In Second Quarter on January 28th, 2013
Reuters: Siemens has picked Goldman Sachs to advise on the sale of its Water Technologies unit, part of the engineering conglomerate's efforts to streamline operations and stay competitive in a weak global economy, two people familiar with the matter said.
The sale may be launched officially in the second quarter, the sources added.
Siemens and Goldman Sachs declined to comment.
Siemens, Germany's second-most valuable company which makes products ranging from fast trains and gas turbines to hearing...
Boom in North Dakota Weighs Heavily on Health Care
Posted by New York Times: John Eligon on January 28th, 2013
New York Times: The patients come with burns from hot water, with hands and fingers crushed by steel tongs, with injuries from chains that have whipsawed them off their feet. Ambulances carry mangled, bloodied bodies from accidents on roads packed with trucks and heavy-footed drivers. The furious pace of oil exploration that has made North Dakota one of the healthiest economies in the country has had the opposite effect on the region’s health care providers. Swamped by uninsured laborers flocking to dangerous jobs,...
What Has Nature Ever Done For Us?, By Tony Juniper
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 28th, 2013
Independent: Mangroves are the salt-water woodlands found fringing many coastlines in the tropics. Imagine this: the authorities in coastal zone X, with a rapidly expanding city behind it, decide to cut down its mangrove swamps because the shallow waters in which they are rooted provide an ideal site for shrimp farms. If developed properly, those shrimp farms might produce, say, two million dollars' worth of exports over five years.
Sure-fire business case. Fantastic. Fetch the chainsaws.
But mangroves...
Changes needed to save resources
Posted by BBC: Roger Harrabin on January 28th, 2013
BBC: Governments need to spark a lightweight revolution in the way things are made so the world can keep up with the demand for resources, say scientists.
They say homes will have to be built with less cement; cars with less steel; and gadgets with less plastic.
And it will need to be done in a way that radically cuts emissions from producing the materials, they add.
These are among the conclusions presented in the journal
Several papers in the journal tackle the dual problem created by the...
Sandra Steingraber: Next 12 Steps to Stop Fracking in New York
Posted by EcoWatch: Sandra Steingraber on January 28th, 2013
EcoWatch: 1. I am writing you from an airport in Wisconsin.
People here, and across the river in Minnesota, are trying desperately to halt the strip mining of their communities for frac-sand. Trucks are rolling. Silica dust is flying. Hill by hill, bluff by bluff--the land itself is shoveled into railcars and shipped off to the gas fields of America where grains of silica sand are shot into the cracks of fractured bedrock so methane can flow out of it.
What’s left behind in Wisconsin and Minnesota are...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Sandra Steingraber: Next 12 Steps to Stop Fracking in New YorkWasted heat from large cities affects temperatures in distant regions
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 27th, 2013
Independent: The waste heat generated by large cities can affect temperatures in areas hundreds of miles away by changing wind patterns in the upper atmosphere, a study has found. Scientists have estimated that the heat released into the atmosphere from buildings, cars and factories could play a significant role in the warming – and the cooling – of locations in other countries. Using computer models of how heat is transported around the globe, the study published in the journal Nature Climate Change says that...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Wasted heat from large cities affects temperatures in distant regions