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The Drought Is Drying Up All Our Ethanol
Posted by Climate Desk: Tim McDonnell on April 3rd, 2013
Climate Desk: After getting slammed last summer, ethanol producers are hoping to catch a break--but their fate is far from settled.
Bill Pracht has bad memories of last summer. "The drought was so bad here that the corn was just decimated," he recalls of the farm country around Garnett, Kan., where he oversees East Kansas Agri-Energy, an ethanol plant. "Many fields were zero."
In August, corn prices hit their highest level ever, driven mainly by the severe drought that crippled America`s corn belt. By October,...
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How Climate Change Worsened Violence in Syria
Posted by Climate Desk: Tim McDonnell on March 6th, 2013
Climate Desk: In October 2010, just months before a Tunisian street vendor self-immolated and sparked what would become the Arab Spring, a prolonged drought was turning Syria`s verdant farmland into dust. By last month, more than 70,000 Syrians, mostly civilians, had been killed in the brutal and ongoing conflict between President Bashar al-Assad`s dictatorial regime and a coalition of opposition forces; just today, the UN announced that over one million refugees fled the country in the last two years. International...
Maps: The Secrets Drillers Can Hide About the Fracking in Your Backyard
Posted by Climate Desk: Tim McDonnell on July 31st, 2012
Climate Desk: A new analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council shows that the majority of states where fracking occurs have no disclosure laws at all, and that those that do are woefully behind when it comes to revealing behind-the-scenes details of their operations. While the Obama administration has put some new rules in place, many decisions about what drillers are allowed to hide are left to the states; Interior Secretary Ken Salazar complained to Reuters that state-level regulation is "not good enough...