August 2012
A BEAUTIFUL LIE: We’ve Already Used Up Earth’s... →
ablorg:
In the era of the worst recession (don’t say “depression”) since the 1930s, the burst of the housing bubble, a banking industry meltdown, the European Union on the brink of disaster, and a global protest that is now approaching, mind-bogglingly, its one-year anniversary, fiscal…
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World Water Week : 26th - 31st August
Water Image; Credit: © Shutterstock
World Water Week 2012: 26th - 31stAugust
World Water Week coincides with the annual conference that is hosted by the Stockholm International Water Institute. This year the conference takes place during the last week of August.
The conference is a global meeting place for more than 2,000 participants, including key decision-makers and more than 200...
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Obama approves preparation for oil drilling in...
Approximate site of preliminarily approved drilling by Shell in the Chukchi Sea. Pink outline is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Image made with Google Earth.
In the same week that sea ice in the Arctic Ocean hit another record low due to climate change, the Obama Administration has given final approval to Royal Dutch Shell to prepare for exploratory drilling in the region....
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Biogas Boom in Germany Leads to Modern-Day Land...
Getty Images
Wind turbines near a new biogas plant in the German state of Lower Saxony.
Creating energy from corn once seemed like a revolutionary idea in Germany. But subsidies for the biogas industry have led to entire regions of the country being covered by the crop, and investors are eagerly waiting for local farmers’ land to go for sale. Some of those farmers who lease their...
Watchdoctorswithoutborders:
If you missed our Live Chat you can watch the video of Situation Critical: A frontline report on South Sudan above.
Learn more about the situation in South Sudan here.
The Game Is Rigged: Venezuela investigates alleged... →
mochente:
Venezuela’s public prosecutor on Wednesday said it is investigating an alleged massacre of indigenous people in the Amazon rainforest, after a tribal group told the government that a village of 80 natives was attacked in July from a helicopter.
In a statement, the government said…
A BEAUTIFUL LIE: Global Warming “Irreversible”,... →
ablorg:
Governments, corporations and individuals could cut greenhouse gas emissions today, and it would still be too late to stave off disaster. What is left to us now is mitigation and adaptation. That is the conclusion of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) in an…
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Germany Rethinks Path to Green Future
dapd
German Environment Minister Peter Altmeier: ” I have personally greeted almost every wind turbine and solar panel in Germany.”
Germany’s energy revolution is the government’s only major project — but the problems keep piling up. The pace of grid expansion is sluggish, and electricity costs for consumers are rising. The environment minister wants to...
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Waste Food, Waste Water — A Message From World... →
World Water Week —an annual conference in Stockholm dedicated to discussing the management of global water resources—opened Monday with a message about cleaning your plate.
Food waste, according to experts at the conference, accounts for significant water waste.
A third to a half of all food grown globally either sits untouched on our plates or rots before it even gets there. A new report from...
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Plastic-Filled Albatrosses Are Pollution Canaries... →
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In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” a seaman shoots an albatross that has been following his ship. The act curses the crew and the voyage, and as punishment the mariner is made to wear the dead bird around his neck. The reference and metaphor have taken on...
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“There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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The day the world went mad
As record sea ice melt scarcely makes the news while the third runway grabs headlines, is there a form of reactive denial at work?
Satellite image of Arctic sea ice. Photograph: Reuters
Yesterday was August 28th 2012. Remember that date. It marks the day when the world went raving mad.
Three things of note happened. The first is that a record Arctic ice melt had just been announced by the...
Food shortages could force world into... →
thesepostsarenotcoercive:
Leadingwaterscientists have issued one of the sternest warnings yet about globalfoodsupplies, saying that the world’spopulationmay have to switch almost completely to a vegetarian diet over the next 40 years to avoid catastrophic shortages.
Humans derive about 20% of their protein from animal-based products now, but this may need to drop to just 5% to feed the extra 2...
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World Water Week Kicks Off With Global Call To...
STOCKHOLM, Sweden - World Water Week commenced this morning with a global call to action.
This year’s annual summit led by the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) opened with a global appeal to reduce food waste as a means to preserve water.
“More than one-fourth of all the water we use worldwide is taken to grow over one billion tons of food that nobody eats. That...
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Research charts growing threats to biodiversity...
Many of the world’s tropical protected areas are struggling to sustain biodiversity, researchers say
From environmentresearchweb part of the Guardian Environment Network
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 28 August 2012 12.39 BST
Coral Rag Forest nature reserve, Chumbe Island, Tanzania. Photograph: Alamy
Many of the world’s tropical protected areas are struggling to sustain...
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Germany Hits Brakes on Race to Renewable Energy...
dapd
Germany’s switch to renewables has hit some snags.
The share of renewable energies in Germany’s power mix has shot up so high that the electricity grid and the subsidy framework has been unable to keep up. Now, the government wants to slow down the process. German commentators say that the current chaos endangers the entire project.
Many scoffed at the initial target...
