RSS Feed
Archive for April 10th, 2011
Britain’s taste for cheap food that’s killing Brazil’s ‘other wilderness’
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 10th, 2011
Independent: An "upside-down forest" of small trees with deep roots, Brazil's wildlife-rich outback is home to a 20th of the world's species, including the spectacular blue and yellow macaw and giant armadillos.
Yet this vast wilderness -- as big the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain put together -- is being rapidly lost to feed the heavily carnivorous appetites of Britons and others.
What was, only a generation ago, an almost unbroken two million square kilometre mass of trees and bushes in central...
Posted in 
Hot, dry weather stokes raging Texas wildfires
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 10th, 2011
Associated Press: Firefighters from 25 states were battling more than a dozen blazes across much of West Texas on Sunday in what state forest service officials called the single worst fire day the state has ever seen.
A fast-moving wildfire had spread to more than 60,000 acres Sunday in Presidio County and Jeff Davis County, where it destroyed about 20 homes in Fort Davis, about 200 miles southeast of El Paso. Widespread electricity outages were reported after numerous power poles burned.
But the blaze that...
Bolivia enshrines natural world’s rights with equal status for Mother Earth
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 10th, 2011
Guardian: Bolivia is set to pass the world's first laws granting all nature equal rights to humans. The Law of Mother Earth, now agreed by politicians and grassroots social groups, redefines the country's rich mineral deposits as "blessings" and is expected to lead to radical new conservation and social measures to reduce pollution and control industry.
The country, which has been pilloried by the US and Britain in the UN climate talks for demanding steep carbon emission cuts, will establish 11 new rights...
Nuclear power evokes nightmares, but coal poses greater risks to your health
Posted by Edmonton Journal: None Given on April 10th, 2011
Edmonton Journal: History suggests nuclear power rarely kills and causes little illness. That's also what engineers have concluded when they model scenarios for potential accidents at nuclear facilities such as this one, the San Onofre power plant in California.
Radioactive water is leaking into the sea, there's a little plutonium in the soil, and traces of nuclear fallout have been detected in places as far apart as Kuwait and Maryland. In a few parts of Japan, you're also not supposed to eat the broccoli or the...
In Tennessee, heat waves diminish nuclear power output
Posted by Climate Central: Alyson Kenward on April 10th, 2011
Climate Central: On July 8, 2010, as the temperature in downtown Decatur, Alabama climbed to a sweltering 98°F, operators at the Browns Ferry nuclear power plant a few miles outside of town realized they had only one option to avoid violating their environmental permit: turn down the reactors. For days, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), which owns the nuclear plant, had kept a watchful eye on the rising mercury, knowing that more heat outside could spell trouble inside the facility. When the Tennessee River,...