Archive for December 12th, 2014

UN: drought in Central America has pushed 2.5m people into food insecurity

Agence France-Presse: A drawn-out drought in Central America has pushed 2.5 million people in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador into food insecurity, the UN warned Friday. The drought in the three countries is “turning into a creeping humanitarian crisis”, Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN’s humanitarian agency, told reporters in Geneva. Subsistence farmers, farm labourers and low-income families were especially at risk, with young children and pregnant women considered the most vulnerable, he said. A full...

EPA methane rules won’t hit gas utilities, industry predicts

Hill: Natural gas utilities aren’t expecting to be affected very much by potential methane leak regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Leaders from the American Gas Association (AGA) said that utilities, also known as the downstream part of the supply chain, account for less than a quarter of a percent of all methane leaks in the country. And the costs of reducing leaks from utilities would outweigh many of the benefits of reducing the potent greenhouse gas. “Down at our end...

Here’s what will happen this century if don’t do anything about climate change

Fast Company: Basically, a lot of death, both human and otherwise. In case you haven't had a chance to read through the UN's huge recent report on climate change--over 2,000 pages long, and based on 9,200 peer-reviewed studies--a new interactive site called Global Weirding helps summarize how the planet may change over the rest of the century. "The IPCC report is the most important report on climate change ever made--but it's also very, very inaccessible," says Tiina Ruohonen from CICERO, a Norway-based...

Vulnerable nations urged to craft climate migration policy

Reuters: Countries vulnerable to extreme weather and rising seas should follow the example of small Pacific island states like Kiribati, and work out how to relocate threatened communities if there is no alternative, experts said at U.N. climate talks in Lima. "We now know that climate change is a driver of migration, and is expected to increase the displacement of populations," said Mary Robinson, U.N. special envoy for climate change. "This is an issue that doesn't get enough discussion," the former Irish...

Peru’s melting glaciers a deadly threat as temperatures rise

Reuters: High in the Peruvian Andes, the glacier-fed lake Laguna 513 brims with meltwater atop a populated valley in a region prone to earthquakes. Scientists warn that if a giant chunk of ice from the Hualcan glacier breaks off it could trigger a tsunami-like wave in Laguna 513 and send a lethal torrent of water cascading down the valley. It has happened before in the Andean nation. In 1970, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake shook ice blocks into highland lakes and unleashed an avalanche that buried the town...

Kerry feels heat Keystone oil pipeline UN climate talk

Reuters: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday urged countries at U.N. climate talks in Lima to move away from using fossil fuels while demonstrators gathered outside the meeting urged him to reject the Keystone oil pipeline. "Coal and oil may be cheap ways to power an economy today... but I urge nations around the world: Look further down the road," he said. As Kerry delivered a 30-minute speech trying to inject momentum into difficult UN climate negotiations, environmentalists stood outside...