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 […]
By Sally Kettle27 February 2016 Isla Espanola (BBC News) – The Pacific Ocean laps just before me and a warm breeze reminds me I’m in the tropics. But this is no beach holiday and there’s not a tourist in sight – just the raucous barking of a sea lion pup intent on making himself heard […]
By Olga R. Rodriguez5 February 2016 SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – The first West Coast waves of a week of powerful storms arrived to provide strong evidence March will not be as parched as the month that preceded it. Steady rain fell in Northern California on Saturday and was expected to go statewide Sunday. Fresh and […]
By Morgan Erickson-Davis4 March 2016 (mongabay.com) – The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has one of the world’s biggest remaining tracts of rainforest (second only to the Amazon in size), home to unique and threatened species like okapis and bonobos. In effort to protect its forests, the DRC implemented a moratorium in 2002 that […]
By Emmanuel Martinez 29 February 2016 (Reveal) – Reveal reported in early January about the water tank program in Tulare County, California. What began as an emergency response measure to the drought was becoming the norm for hundreds of families who no longer had running water. At the crisis’ peak, Tulare County reported about 1,400 […]
