Desdemona Despair

Blogging the End of the World™

FEMA won’t cut off food, water to Puerto Rico after all

31 January 2018 (Orlando Sentinel) – After a flurry of bipartisan complaints from Florida members of Congress and others, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said its plan to end distributing food and water in Puerto Rico would not take effect on Wednesday after all. “Provision of those commodities will continue,” spokesman William Booher told National […]

FEMA ends food and water shipments to Puerto Rico, official says – “This is the kind of indifference that must be stopped”

By Ray Sanchez, Khushbu Shah, and Leyla Santiago 30 January 2018 (CNN) – More than four months after Hurricane Maria battered Puerto Rico, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is halting new shipments of food and water to the island, an agency official with direct knowledge of the plan told CNN on Tuesday. The island government […]

As Beijing skies clear up, smog descends elsewhere in China

By Nathan Vanderklippe 26 January 2018 (The Globe and Mail) – The sight of sharp horizons and cerulean skies in the Chinese capital was, not so long ago, rare enough that it merited special designation. There was “APEC Blue,” around the time Beijing hosted world leaders in 2014. There was “Parade Blue” for a 2015 […]

Global warming set to breach Paris accord’s toughest limit by mid century

By Alister Doyle; Editing by Toby Chopra 11 January 2018 OSLO (Reuters) – Global warming is on track to breach the toughest limit set in the Paris climate agreement by the middle of this century unless governments make unprecedented economic shifts from fossil fuels, a draft U.N. report said. The draft, of a report due […]

U.S. oil industry set to break record, upend global trade

By Liz Hampton 15 January 2018 HOUSTON (Reuters) – Surging shale production is poised to push U.S. oil output to more than 10 million barrels per day – toppling a record set in 1970 and crossing a threshold few could have imagined even a decade ago.And this new record, expected within days, likely won’t last […]

Eastern U.S. cougar declared extinct 80 years after last sighting

By Laura Zuckerman; Editing by Steve Gorman and Sandra Maler 23 January 2018 (Reuters) – Eastern cougars that once prowled North America from Michigan to South Carolina were officially declared extinct and removed from the U.S. endangered species list on Monday, eight decades after the last confirmed sighting of the wild feline predator. The large […]

Trump administration cancels decades-old protections for migratory birds – 17 former wildlife officials urge Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to suspend the “ill-conceived” opinion

By Elizabeth Shogren 26 January 2018 (High Country News) – The Trump administration’s environmental rollbacks have sparked a lot of outrage. But one recent action by the Interior Department drew unprecedented protest from a bipartisan group of top officials who go all the way back to the Nixon administration: a new legal opinion that attempts […]

Cape Town beyond “point of no return” and will run out of water in April, warns mayor – “A true nightmare scenario is developing before our very eyes”

By Simon Calder 26 January 2018 (The Independent) – The executive mayor of Cape Town has warned citizens and prospective visitors that the city is “very likely” to run out of water in April. After two years of drought which saw rain at about one-third of normal levels, reservoirs supplying the city are running dry. […]

Scientists move Doomsday Clock ahead by 30 seconds, closest to apocalypse since 1953 – “As of today, it is two minutes to midnight”

By Lindsey Bever, Sarah Kaplan, and Abby Ohlheiser 25 January 2018(The Washington Post) – Alexa, what time is the apocalypse?Ulp.The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advanced the symbolic Doomsday Clock a notch closer to the end of humanity Thursday, moving it ahead by 30 seconds after what the organization called a “grim assessment” of the […]

Indigenous Amazon forest defender Sairá Ka’apor murdered

By Jonathan Watts 20 January 2018 Mananhão, Brazil (The Guardian) – Sairá Ka’apor patrolled one of the most murderous frontiers in the world, a remote and largely lawless region of the Brazilian Amazon where his indigenous community has fought for generations to protect their forest land.Armed with clubs, bows and arrows, GPS trackers and crude […]

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