Photo gallery: Historic water crisis in São Paulo ‘has come to stay. You have to look at it as permanent.’

By Philip Ross 7 May 2015 (IBT) – Instead of rain, São Paulo has cracked earth and chaos as a devastating drought is making enemies out of neighbors in Brazil’s largest city, the site of a historic water shortage the likes of which hasn’t been seen in decades. Many residents have gone to drastic measures […]

Rising sea levels threaten Florida cities, but state has few plans – Saltwater intrusion forcing cities to abandon water wells

By Jason Dearen11 May 2015 ST. AUGUSTINE, Florida (Associated Press) – America’s oldest city is slowly drowning. St. Augustine’s centuries-old Spanish fortress is feet from the encroaching Atlantic, whose waters already flood the city’s narrow streets about 10 times a year — a problem worsening as sea levels rise. The city relies on tourism, but […]

UN looks to religions for ‘moral leadership’ on global warming – ‘Let the world know that there is no divide whatsoever between religion and science on the issue of climate change’

By Carol Glatz29 April 2015 (Catholic Herald) – Dealing with climate change will take more than just global policies and agreements, it will also take a unified stance from the world’s religions, the secretary-general of the United Nations (UN) said at the Vatican. To have development without destruction and “to transform our economies, however, we […]

Biologist: Dead zones in the ocean threaten our most important food fish – Oxygen minimum zone ‘to start in North Africa and go all the way down to the tip of South Africa’

By Lynne Rossetto Kasper9 May 2015 (Splendid Table) – Three years ago, I interviewed Eric Prince, a research fisheries biologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Southeast Fisheries Science Center. He and his colleagues had found that a huge dead zone, an area of the ocean with very little oxygen, had developed in the […]

Toxic plastic found in the world’s favorite fish

By John R. Platt 7 May 2015  (Takepart) – For the first time, plastic particles have been found in the stomachs of tuna and other fish that are a staple of the human diet. More than 18 percent of sampled bluefin, albacore, and swordfish caught in the Mediterranean Sea and tested in 2012 and 2013 […]

Lawsuit seeks to halt California wastewater injections

By Richard Nemec 8 May 2015 (NGI) – A trio of environmental groups in California on Thursday filed a complaint in state Superior Court seeking to have declared illegal new state interim rules governing oil/gas operators’ use of wastewater injection wells (see Daily GPI, April 24). The lawsuit by Earthjustice on behalf of the Center […]

Dengue cases soar in Brazil, as death toll climbs – City of Piracicaba releases transgenic mosquitos

São Paulo, 5 May 2015 (AFP) – Cases of dengue have soared in Brazil where the disease has caused 229 fatalities this year, the health ministry has said, as authorities try to combat its spread using transgenic mosquitos. The health ministry said it had logged 745,900 cases nationwide in the first 15 weeks of the […]

Why more than 15,000 dolphins have been killed in Solomon Islands drive hunts – ‘The numbers are sufficient to raise concerns about the likelihood of local depletion of the populations’

By Elahe Izadi9 May 2015 (Washington Post) – Drive hunting – when groups of hunters on canoes fan out far off-shore and clap stones together as they round up dolphins – has been taking place off the Solomon Islands for many years. Now, researchers who examined detailed hunting records and interviewed locals say more than […]

(No) more fish in the sea

By Holly Moeller 22 Aprl 2015 (Stanford Daily) – Last week, a 20-million-dollar industry hit the brakes when the Pacific Fishery Management Council voted to close the West Coast sardine fishery, effective immediately. It’s unusual for a fishery to be shuttered so abruptly (the current season would normally have run another two months until the […]

Iran drought: The empty river of life – ‘We live in the dust’

By Thomas Erdbrink5 May 2015 TEHRAN (The New York Times) – Every day, when I walk to our supermarket in the western part of Tehran to buy the groceries my wife tells me to get, I pass a long row of plane trees, neatly planted decades ago according to the design of ambitious city planners. […]

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