China's National People's Council meeting took place early this month amid crippling smog in Beijing. This was no surprise. China's chronic air pollution has become so bad it has been dubbed "airpocalypse" and is now the leading cause of public dissatisfaction.
Little wonder then that Premier Li Ke...
Ohio authorities shut down a hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, natural gas operation in Mahoning County on Monday after two earthquakes were felt in the area, near the Pennsylvania border, local newspapers and broadcasters reported.
The quakes registered magnitudes of 3.0 and 2.6, the U.S. Geologi...
Nonhuman persons are real close to having more rights, including Habeas Corpus. As animal activists take center stage in protecting the rights of animals, attorneys have been hired to defend their cases. Citing the right to appear before a judge and be released from unlawful detention, hab...
Scientists have made an impassioned plea for humanity to pause and think before making a headlong rush to exploit the deep sea.
The researchers said the oceans' lowest reaches had untold riches that could benefit mankind enormously, but not if the harvesting were done destructively.
The scientists...
Oil train spill, new Oregon wolf pack, offshore wind energy announcement
The big news on the environment beat Wednesday was the Oregon Department of Forestry's settlement of a lawsuit over the threatened marbled murrelet. The state agreed to cancel 28 timber sales on 1,956 acres of state forest to ...
Health Experts Disagree on Chemical Spill's Impact Water Supply
Heath officials in West Virginia are continuing to advise pregnant women affected by the chemical spill to refrain from drinking tap water due to the unknown heath affects related to the contaminated water.
However many pregnant resid...
Not surprisingly, the largest market for bottled water is here in the United States. In 2007, Americans purchased 8.8 billion gallons of water and bottled water sales netted a hefty $11.7 billion. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, bottled water costs 240 to over 10,000 times more p...
Resting near the bottom of the food chain, Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba) underpin much of the Southern Ocean's ecosystem. But in a rapidly warming world, these hugely-abundant crustaceans could see their habitat shrink considerably. In a recent paper in PLOS ONE, scientists predict that Antarc...
The climate crisis of the 21st century has been caused largely by just 90 companies, which between them produced nearly two-thirds of the greenhouse gas emissions generated since the dawning of the industrial age, new research suggests.
The companies range from investor-owned firms—household names ...
Bees have a much greater economic value than is widely known, according to a scientific probe into strawberry-growing.
Strawberries pollinated by bees were of far higher commercial value than fruit that was self-pollinated or pollinated by the wind.
They were heavier, firmer and redder and had a l...
China’s demand for luxury knickknacks lies beneath some spectacular carnage of late. As we highlighted in August, the illegal ivory trade funds al-Shabaab, the terrorist group behind the Westgate Mall massacre in Kenya late last month. Al-Shabaab finances as much as 40% of its operations&n...
Congress was unable to pass the funding bill before the deadline, and as of midnight tonight the US government has begun shutting down.
The US government is headed for a shutdown after members of Congress were unable to reach a compromise on the federal budget. They have until midnight tonight...
Alan Weisman, bestselling author of "The World Without Us," tackles the world's exploding human population in his new book, "Countdown."
Today, as the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change releases its latest megareport, averring a 95 percent certainty that humans are heating up...
hold back on environmental campaigning.
Highly-regarded former Toronto Mayor David Miller says he is “very excited” about becoming the new President and CEO of the World Wildlife Fund-Canada in September.
“They’ve made such a difference,” Miller told The Toronto Star, “and to be part of an organiz...
In the quest to head off rising global temperatures, some scientists have argued for steep curbs in how much soot and methane are released into the air. But a new study suggests that targeting such emissions in the next couple of decades may make much less of a dent than previously thought.
While c...
Should some of the most social, intelligent and charismatic animals on the planet be kept in captivity by human beings?
That is a question asked more frequently than ever by both scientists and animal welfare advocates, sometimes about close human cousins like chimpanzees and other great apes, but ...
MANILA – Fishermen and others who suffered economic losses due to the oil spill in Manila Bay are entitled to compensation from those responsible for it, House Deputy Minority Leader Arnel Ty said Sunday. Those who are responsible for the oil spill also need the cost of the cleanup.
“We have a...
Today, President Obama announced his plan to make a major address on climate change this Tuesday, June 25.
At 1:35pm on Tuesday June 25th President Obama will speak at Georgetown University on the growing threat of climate change. He will lay out his vision of where we need to go, to do what we can...
It can be hard for youth to deal with the overwhelming effects of climate change. But, by taking action, we can erode the hold that oil, fracking, and coal has on people and the environment.
by Sarah van Gelder
"The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere just hit 400 parts per million," I ...
The recent announcement by climate watchers that carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere has crossed a psychologically significant barrier of 400 parts per million raised all the intended alarm bells world over. In a field which has been continually consuming a lot of public attention, and where the ...
