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Archive for October 7th, 2010
West Virginia Sues U.S. Over Mining Restrictions
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 7th, 2010
NYT: The state of West Virginia sued two federal agencies on Wednesday, seeking to reverse the stricter controls on mountaintop coal mining adopted in 2009 by the Obama administration. Governor Joe Manchin III said that the regulations were unlawful, usurped state rights, were based on inadequate science and harmed the state by preventing new mining projects. Announcing the suit against the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers, Mr. Manchin, a Democrat, condemned ...
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Hungary toxic spill reaches Danube branch
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 7th, 2010
Guardian: A toxic red mud spill that killed four people in western Hungary has reached the Mosoni-Danube, a southern branch of the Danube, Hungarian disaster officials said today. Tibor Dobson of Hungary's national disaster unit told Reuters the spill reached the branch of Europe's second-longest river near Hungary's border with Slovakia and Austria this morning. But Dobson said the highly caustic slurry has been reduced to the point where it is unlikely to cause further damage to the ...
Don’t Blame PNG!
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 7th, 2010
RECOFTC Word Press: The REDD+ partnership descended into a public farce on Tuesday evening. I'm not letting any cats out of the bag by noting that the Papua New Guinea delegation is being pointedly blamed for derailing these important discussions, by the whole spectrum of participants here in Tianjin. This is a tragedy for PNG. Two years ago, the country and its negotiating team was still central to the rapid development of REDD as a concept and as a model of progress for the wider climate debate. As ...
Crop Failures Like Russia’s to Increase as Climate Changes, Study Shows
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 7th, 2010
Bloomberg: Crop failures such as this year in Russia are likely to become more common as climate change causes more extreme weather with heat and drought stress, according to a study led by the U.K.'s University of Leeds. A simulation of climate change's effect on spring wheat in northeast China showed that in the worst case, more than 35 percent of crops may fail through 2099, compared with a baseline rate of about 13 percent, the study showed. "More extreme weather events are expected ...
Canadian Rain Forest Edges Oil Pipeline Path
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 7th, 2010
National Geographic: Canada's pristine western coastline could be endangered by a plan to build a new oil pipeline from Alberta to the coast in order to export oil overseas, say environmental activists and native people who rely on these waters. Oil company Enbridge plans to link the oil sands of Athabasca, in central Alberta, to the port town of Kitimat in British Columbia, with a new pipeline that would carry 525,000 barrels of oil to the coast per day. There's just one problem: the pipeline ...
Nitrogen Fingered As Latest Ecosystem Evildoer
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 7th, 2010
LiveScience.com: While nitrogen is an element that is essential to life, it is an environmental scourge at high levels. Humans are overloading ecosystems with nitrogen through the burning of fossil fuels and an increase in nitrogen-producing industrial and agricultural activities, according to a new study. Excess nitrogen from human activities pollutes fresh waters and coastal zones, and may contribute to climate change, according to the study. Nevertheless, such ecological damage could be reduced by ...
PNG stalling UN climate talks:Greenpeace
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 7th, 2010
AAP: Greenpeace has criticised Papua New Guinea for stalling crucial global climate change talks in China. Delegates from more than 170 countries are meeting in Tianjin, China to try to revive UN climate negotiations that failed to create a binding agreement in Copenhagen last year. The talks are a prelude to a UN summit starting next month in Mexico, but the US on Wednesday said they had so far failed to make significant progress. The global bickering centres on the details ...
Water, Sanitation Gain Traction as Basic Human Rights
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 7th, 2010
Inter Press Service: When the 47-member Human Rights Council (HRC) affirmed last week that the right to water and sanitation was a basic human right, the consensus resolution was described as a "historic first" for the U.N.'s premier human rights body based in Geneva. "This landmark decision has the potential to change the lives of billions of human beings who still lack access to water and sanitation," claimed Catarina de Albuquerque, a U.N. independent expert on human rights obligations. What ...