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Archive for September 14th, 2011
Green Groups Add Muscle in Texas, Gird for Uphill Battles
Posted by Greenwire: Nathanial Gronewold on September 14th, 2011
Greenwire: This famously "weird" city long has been seen as the Lone Star State's greenest. But in April, Dallas briefly stole that title when it played host to the nation's second-largest Earth Day celebration. Organizers attracted 48,000 people to their inaugural event, just shy of the 50,000 people who turned out for the celebration in New York City, according to the Earth Day Network. "Everybody said: 'Dallas? Texas? Earth Day? You've got to be kidding me,'" recalled Earth Day Dallas director Susan Brosin....
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Brazil: Beating Drought in Semiarid Northeast
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 14th, 2011
Inter Press Service: Violent clashes looked inevitable when some 1,500 desperately hungry peasants poured into this small Brazilian town. Riot police were staked out to prevent looting. It was the year 1993, and millions of people in Brazil's impoverished semiarid Northeast had been forced to the brink of starvation by three years of drought.
The rising death toll from the famine was pushing large numbers of rural people into towns and cities, where crowds of starving people were raiding warehouses and stores.
The...
West Bank villagers’ daily battle with Israel over water
Posted by Guardian: David Hearst on September 14th, 2011
Guardian: The South Hebron Hills, sweltering in 34C heat and in its second consecutive year of drought, is a landscape of brutal contrasts. There is enough water here to support lush greenhouses, big cattle sheds, even ornamental plants. It arrives in large, high-pressure lines. And there appears to be no limit to the bounty it can bring.
Cheek by jowl with the water towers and red roofs of the Israeli settlers in this area of the West Bank is a landscape of stone boulders, tents and caves. The Palestinian...
Peru: Environmental Innovators Create Virtuous Circles
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 14th, 2011
Inter Press Service: A method to revolutionise gold mining; biofuel from used cooking oil; a container where garbage and wastewater go in and four useful products and zero waste come out: Latin American science applied to the environment. Clean gold is possible Peruvian metallurgical engineer Carlos Villachica has devoted his life to seeking a balance between his country’s two greatest riches: the mineral deposits concentrated in the Andes mountains and Amazon basin, and its huge wealth of flora and fauna. Villachica...
Shift from Coal to Gas Will Not Appreciably Slow Warming, Study Says
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 14th, 2011
Yale Environment 360: While a greater reliance on burning natural gas instead of coal would reduce carbon emissions worldwide, it would have a negligible effect on slowing the effects of climate change, according to a U.S. study. Using a series of computer simulations, scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) calculated that a partial shift from coal to natural gas worldwide would in fact slightly accelerate climate change through at least 2050. That’s because natural gas contains methane, a potent...
G20 focus on small farmers could improve world food security – experts
Posted by AlertNet: Megan Rowling on September 14th, 2011
AlertNet: A commitment by G20 nations to strengthen agricultural research in developing countries will help reduce food insecurity as long as it focuses on small farmers and their needs, officials and experts said at a G20-backed conference this week.
After many years out in the cold in terms of funding, agriculture is firmly back on the political map as a result of fast-rising food prices, including the 2008 crisis that led to unrest around the world, and a further push to record highs this year as a result...
Dallas breaks much-awaited heat record, with mixed emotions
Posted by Reuters: Marice Richter on September 14th, 2011
Reuters: Record watchers in Dallas had something to cheer about on Tuesday, or lament, depending on their point of view after this summer officially logged more triple-digit days in north Texas than any other on record.
"We made it," said Jesse Moore, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Fort Worth. "We tied the record on Monday and beat it on Tuesday."
Home to such championship teams as the Mavericks, the Cowboys and the Stars, Dallasites are used to winning and have learned to savor...
Calmer winds slow growth of Minnesota wildfire
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 14th, 2011
Associated Press: Calmer winds, cooler temperatures and a few moments of sleet and light snow brought encouragement Wednesday as firefighters continued efforts to contain a blaze that was in a "pause mode" -- days after it moved at breakneck speeds, swallowing nearly 160 square miles of forest along the Minnesota-Canada border.
The fire in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is one of the largest on record in the state, and just under half of the access points into the wilderness were closed to campers by...
Somali refugees in drought-hit Kenya brace for floods
Posted by AlertNet: Katy Migiro on September 14th, 2011
AlertNet: After running from drought and famine, some 200,000 Somalis living in the world's largest refugee camp in Kenya are likely to be hit by floods, the Kenya Red Cross said on Tuesday, warning that climate change is making it increasingly difficult to know where disaster will strike next.
The Kenya Red Cross predicts that 700,000 people in Kenya will need emergency aid, such as food and medical care, due to flooding between October and December. About 30,000 are likely to be displaced.
Most of...
Greenpeace and WWF anniversaries highlight wildly differing tactics
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 14th, 2011
Guardian: This week marks two anniversaries of global green campaigning groups that could scarcely be more different, while holding almost identical aims.
On Thursday, Greenpeace turns 40 – an unlikely candidate for middle age, given its activists' reputation for eye-catching and sometimes dangerous stunts. Last Sunday, WWF celebrated 50 years since the opening of its first office in Switzerland – a much more staid affair, as befits an organisation that boasts the support of the Prince of Wales and the...