Archive for December 7th, 2012

Season Has Changed, but the Drought Endures

New York Times: Even as the summer swelter has given way to frost, nearly two-thirds of the country remains in a drought, with forest fires still burning, winter crops choking in parched soil and barges nearly scraping the mucky bottoms of sunken rivers. More than 62 percent of the continental United States is experiencing moderate to exceptional drought, according to the weekly Drought Monitor report released on Thursday, compared with just over 29 percent at this time last year. Save for patches of California,...

Mayor: NYC working on storm, climate prep

Associated Press: The city will work on upgrading building codes and evacuation-zone maps, hardening power and transportation networks and making sure hospitals are better prepared for extreme weather after Superstorm Sandy, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Thursday. As a start, utility Consolidated Edison has agreed to spend $250 million toward getting its electrical, steam and gas systems in shape to withstand a Category 2 hurricane, Bloomberg said. City officials, meanwhile, will work on more comprehensive plans...

RELEASE: Victory as Ecological Internet Applauds Greenpeace’s End to Greenwash of Canadian Old-Growth Logging

After years of greenwashing Canada and the world's "certified" old-growth forest logging as sustainable, and cutting inside deals with industrial loggers, Greenpeace's rejection of their own logging deal in Canada shows they may be poised to start working to protect – rather than log – Earth's last primary forests. Standing old forests are vital for local advancement and the environment – and old-growth forest logging must end to maintain local, regional and global climate, ecosystems, and our one shared biosphere. By Earth's Newsdesk, a project of Ecological Internet (EI) CONTACT: Dr. Glen Barry, glenbarry@ecologicalinternet.org (Canada) – Today Greenpeace Canada announced it is withdrawing from the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement [search] which it secretly negotiated and endorsed in 2010, and which relegates 43 million hectares of Canada’s old growth Boreal forests to industrial logging, for a temporary moratorium and vague promises of future caribou habitat protection elsewhere. Not surprisingly, as Ecological Internet predicted at the time [1], these promises have been violated. Greenpeace itself now alleges the largest destroyer of Canada's boreal forests, Resolute Forest Products (formerly AbitibiBowater) has been cutting new logging roads into caribou habitat in five sites in the northern parts of the Saguenay Lac St-Jean region of Quebec ...

Climate Change Has Cost Ski Industry $1B Already

International Business Times: According to a new economic analysis from nonprofit groups Protect Our Winters, or POW, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, or NRDC, the United States’ $12.2 billion winter tourism industry has experienced an estimated $1 billion loss and up to 27,000 fewer jobs over the last decade due to diminished snowfall patterns and the resulting changes of Americans’ outdoor habits. The report’s authors, University of New Hampshire researchers Elizabeth Burakowski and Matthew Magnusson, warn that...