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Archive for October 19th, 2014
Divestment campaign urges customers to boycott banks which support fracking and fossil-fuel industry
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 19th, 2014
Independent: Customers of Britain’s biggest banks are threatening to close their accounts unless the institutions cut all ties with coal, tar sands, fracking and other fossil-fuel industries as part of a new campaign launched today.
The attempt to force Britain’s Big Five banks into ending their £66bn involvement with “dirty” energy marks a new direction for the growing divestment campaign, as part of which this month the University of Glasgow pledged to stop investing in fossil fuels.
The new campaign...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Divestment campaign urges customers to boycott banks which support fracking and fossil-fuel industry‘Water cops’ seek sprinkler scofflaws in drought-parched California
Posted by Reuters: Sharon Bernstein on October 19th, 2014
Reuters: It was still dark on Kokomo Drive in Sacramento's Natomas district as Paul Brown edged his city-issued Honda Civic past a row of beige stucco houses with tiny front lawns, looking for water wasters.
He heard the scofflaws before he saw their lush green lawns amid the otherwise parched turf. The buzz of a sprinkler system gave them away on a day that the city, desperate to save water amid California's ongoing drought, had forbidden watering.
"If I can get a good picture - if there's a lot of...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on ‘Water cops’ seek sprinkler scofflaws in drought-parched CaliforniaChanging rainfall common problem for entire globe, says UN-sponsored book
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 19th, 2014
Canadian Press: Algae is killing Lake Winnipeg. Siberian wildfires are so intense they melted the permafrost beneath them. Flooding in Alberta paralyzed a major city. They're all linked, say the authors of a new United Nations-sponsored book titled Water, Energy and the Arab Awakening, being released Monday.
Siberian wildfires so intense they melted the permafrost beneath them. Flooding in Alberta that paralyzed a major city. Toxic algae blooms in Lake Winnipeg that have grown 1,000 per cent since 1990.
They're...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Changing rainfall common problem for entire globe, says UN-sponsored bookCincinnati joins worldwide day of action calling for ban on fracking
Posted by WCPO: Casey Weldon on October 19th, 2014
WCPO: A coalition of four organizations gathered at Fountain Square last weekend to call for a ban on fracking and to ask Ohio's governor to be a major part of making that happen.
The event in downtown Cincinnati was one of more than 200 that took place around the world Saturday, Oct. 11 as part of the third annual Global Frackdown , a worldwide day of action against fracking and related oil and gas infrastructure.
Fracking, short for hydraulic fracturing or hydrofracturing, is a technique used in...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Cincinnati joins worldwide day of action calling for ban on frackingCompanies pulling out of Canadian tar sands oil
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 19th, 2014
Living on Earth: With crude prices sharply down and the future of the Keystone XL pipeline in doubt, energy companies are dubious about investing in oil from the Alberta Tar Sands. OnEarth writer Brian Palmer discusses the problems facing the industry with host Steve Curwood.
Transcript
CURWOOD: From the Jennifer and Ted Stanley Studios in Boston and PRI, this is Living on Earth. I'm Steve Curwood. The price of oil has been plummeting, down some 25 percent since June, and as we record this show, the price per...
Link between environmental degradation & Ebola
Posted by Star: Peter Stoett Catherine Machalaba Cristina Romanelli on October 19th, 2014
Star: The Ebola epidemic besieging West Africa is perhaps the starkest warning yet that as we tear down forests, we open ourselves up to new strains of virulent disease. Among the key lessons from the current outbreak is that human-created pressures such as intensified food production, rapid trade and travel, and climate change, are putting future generations at risk of further Ebola-like catastrophes.
Through some mix of travel control, medical advances, and humanitarian assistance, we can hopefully...
The Kissimmee: A River Recurved
Posted by National Public Radio: Amy Green on October 19th, 2014
National Public Radio: It sounds almost superhuman to try straighten a river and then recarve the curves.
That's what federal and state officials did to the Kissimmee River in central Florida. They straightened the river in the 1960s into a canal to drain swampland and make way for the state's explosive growth. It worked - and it created an ecological disaster. So officials decided to restore the river's slow-flowing, meandering path.
That billion-dollar restoration - the world's largest - is a few years from completion....