Blogging the End of the World™
By Charlotte McDonald-Gibson 29 April 2013 Brussels (Independent) – Environmentalists hailed a “victory for bees” today after the European Union voted for a ban on the nerve-agent pesticides blamed for the dramatic decline global bee populations. Despite fierce lobbying by the chemicals industry and opposition by countries including Britain, 15 of the 27 member states […]
24 April 2013 (mongabay.com) – Rainforests that have been affected by even low-intensity fires are far more vulnerable to invasion by grasses, finds a new study published in special issue of the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. The findings are significant because they suggest that burned forests may be more susceptible to […]
(Media Matters) – Twelve. That’s the combined number of segments that ABC, CBS, and NBC’s nightly news programs devoted to climate change throughout all of 2012. This is woefully inadequate. We need coverage that’s consistent with the importance of dealing with this issue. That’s why we and the Sierra Club are joining the League of […]
28 April 2013 (Sapa-AFP) – Several dozen Humboldt penguins sun themselves along the coast of an islet in central Chile where the majestic birds coming here to nest once numbered in the thousands. Humboldt penguins – which nest only in parts of Chile and Peru – over the years have become decimated by human encroachment, […]
25 April 2013 (mongabay.com) – Mobile device giant Samsung has admitted to using tin sourced from a controversial mining operation on the Indonesian island of Bangka, where unregulated mining kills 150 miners a year and causes substantial environmental damage, reports the Guardian and Mongabay-Indonesia. Samsung’s admission came after a campaign by Friends of the Earth, […]
25 April 2013 (mongabay.com) – Poachers have likely killed off the last rhinos in Mozambique’s Limpopo National Park, according to a park official who spoke with Portugal News. Park director António Abacar said that no rhinos have been sighted in Limpopo National Park since January, “which means that the ones that lived in the park […]
By Sonya Auer, University of Massachusetts, Amherst26 April 2013 (LiveScience) – Plants and animals in a given area form an ecological system of interacting species. Impacts on one, or just a few, species can ripple throughout the system and have indirect effects on other species within a larger community. Many plants and animals are sensitive […]
By Wayne Parry 27 April 2013 MANTOLOKING, N.J. (AP) – The 9-year-old girl who got New Jersey’s tough-guy governor to shed a tear as he comforted her after her home was destroyed is bummed because she now lives far from her best friend and has nowhere to hang her One Direction posters. A New Jersey […]
[It’s interesting how a much larger event than the Boston Marathon bombings – by every conceivable measure – gets so much less press coverage. Charitably, it’s because the chain of responsibility is diffuse in corporate malfeasance, and this makes for a much less exciting story than a couple of insane kids blowing shit up. Uncharitably, […]
28 February 2013 (EPA) – The proportion of rivers and streams in poor biological condition, based on the Macroinvertebrate MMI, ranges from 26% in the Western Mountains ecoregion to 71% in the Coastal Plains ecoregion. The three most widespread stressors to rivers and streams — phosphorus, nitrogen, and riparian vegetative cover are depicted by ecoregion. […]
