9 March 2016 (UN) – Thirty-four countries, including 27 in Africa, are currently in need of external assistance for food due to drought, flooding and civil conflicts, according to a new United Nations report released today. The figure has grown from 33 last December, after the addition of Swaziland, says the Food and Agriculture Organization […]
By Andrea Thompson8 March 2016 (Climate Central) – On the heels of a record warm autumn for the contiguous U.S., winter has also topped the temperature charts. The news, announced Tuesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), may come as no surprise for those who experienced summer-like heat waves in Southern California or […]
By Aaron Sheldrick and Minami Funakoshi; Editing by Bill Tarrant10 March 2016 (Reuters) – The robots sent in to find highly radioactive fuel at Fukushima’s nuclear reactors have “died”; a subterranean “ice wall” around the crippled plant meant to stop groundwater from becoming contaminated has yet to be finished. And authorities still don’t how to […]
By Melissa Cronin4 March 2016 (Grist) – The death of Honduran environmental and human rights activist Berta Cáceres this week is an unspeakable tragedy — but it’s not unique. In fact, environmentalists have historically been targeted for their actions, and for speaking out about environmental injustice. Last April, a report found that in 2014, at […]
By Matthew Green24 February 2016 (The Guardian) – On 2 August 2015, a flotilla of white-hulled fishing boats assembled in Sant’Agata di Militello, a port in northern Sicily, in the late afternoon sun. As a brass band played, a holiday crowd gathered along the quay. A float bearing a statue of the Virgin Mary, crowned […]
7 March 2016 (UN) – The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) today announced that timely agricultural assistance for the upcoming rainy season is essential to help the drought-affected people of Ethiopia, as one of the strongest El Niño events on record continues to have devastating effects on the lives and livelihoods of farmers […]
By Kim Willsher8 March 2016 SLAVUTYCH (The Guardian) – In a biting winter wind, Alexander Petrovich Zabirchenko walks slowly along a memorial to firefighters and workers who died in the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, touching each of the portraits engraved in granite. He does not shiver or complain of the cold. He is a big man […]
By Morgan Erickson-Davis29 February 2016 (mongabay.com) – The northeastern Australian state of Queensland is home to lush tropical forests, unique wildlife, and rivers that feed into the largest reef system in the world. But researchers write that Queensland’s wilderness is under increasing strain, with data showing a big ramp-up in deforestation over the last two […]
By Bill McKibben 5 March 2016 (Boston Globe) – Thursday, while the nation debated the relative size of Republican genitalia, something truly awful happened. Across the northern hemisphere, the temperature, if only for a few hours, apparently crossed a line: it was more than two degrees Celsius above “normal” for the first time in recorded […]
By Don Dahler4 March 2016 (CBS News) – The Arctic Ocean is six million square miles, most of it covered in ice. But last month the top of the world was up to 14 degrees above normal, and broke the record for the lowest amount of ice in February — more than 400,000 square miles […]
