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Archive for March 9th, 2016
US, Canada reveal new climate change goals
Posted by Climate Home: Ed King on March 9th, 2016
Climate Home: US president Barack Obama and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau will sign off on a series of climate measures when they meet on Thursday say officials.
“There are a number of areas of potential co-operation,” lead US climate envoy Todd Stern told reporters in a briefing call this week.
These include a commitment to “reduce methane emissions by 40 to 45% below 2012 levels by 2025 in the oil and gas sector,” he said.
Further carbon slashing measures including boosting clean electricity...
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Honduras: Anti-dam Activists Call for Justice in Cáceres Killing
Posted by Environment News Service: None Given on March 9th, 2016
Environment News Service: Indigenous leaders fighting against dams worldwide have issued a joint call for a prompt, thorough and independent investigation into the death of indigenous leader Berta Cáceres of Honduras. In a statement today, anti-dam activists expressed their grief and anger over the killing of Cáceres, 45, defender of the rights of the Lenca people. She was murdered in her home in La Esperanza, Honduras, last week. The coordinator and co-founder of the Council of Indigenous Peoples of Honduras, Cáceres was...
The miracle of Kolkata’s wetlands – and one man’s struggle save them
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 9th, 2016
Guardian: The trees on the streets of Kolkata in January are dusty, like neglected pot plants. At traffic lights, salesmen offer feather dusters for drivers to wipe their grimy cars. Shrubs are planted on the central reservation of the city’s new flyovers, surrounded by the implausible boasts on signs proclaiming a “clean and green” city. But the most frequently recurring poster, above almost every street corner, appeals for investors to “Come to Bengal – Ride the Growth”.
Kolkata, a famously cultured city...
Indian guru’s festival on Delhi floodplain riles greens, worries police
Posted by Reuters: Tommy Wilkes on March 9th, 2016
Reuters: Environmentalists are aghast at the hosting of a huge cultural festival on the floodplain of Delhi's main river that begins on Friday, warning that the event and its 3.5 million visitors will devastate the area's biodiversity.
The "World Culture Festival", organised by one of India's best-known spiritual gurus, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, spreads across 1,000 acres (400 hectares) on the banks of the Yamuna. It features a 7-acre stage for 35,000 musicians and dancers, newly built dirt tracks and 650...
Locals eating radioactive food 30 years after Chernobyl: Greenpeace tests
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 9th, 2016
Reuters: Economic crises convulsing Russia, Ukraine and Belarus mean testing in areas contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster has been cut or restricted, Greenpeace said, and people continue to eat and drink foods with dangerously high radiation levels.
According to scientific tests conducted on behalf of the environmental campaigning group, overall contamination from key isotopes such as caesium-137 and strontium-90 has fallen somewhat, but lingers, especially in places such as forests.
People...
Climate scientists step up search ‘holy grail’ million-year-old ice
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 9th, 2016
Guardian: The time capsule is ice that froze 1.5m years ago, capturing tiny bubbles of air, bringing a sample of the ancient atmosphere through time to the present day.
There are already dozens of ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland. They are tubes of ice, sometimes several kilometres long, drilled from the ice sheet, which reveal a timeline of what the atmosphere was like over hundreds of millennia.
Together those cores paint a detailed picture of the history of our atmosphere and climate. They’ve...