Trump nominates climate-denying conservative talk radio host as USDA’s top scientist

By Natasha GeilingFollow 20 July 2017 (ThinkProgress) — Sam Clovis, a former Trump campaign adviser and one-time conservative talk radio host, has no background in the hard sciences, nor any policy experience with food or agriculture. Still, that did not stop President Donald Trump from officially nominating Clovis to the position of the United States […]

UN warns of worsening hunger in East Africa amid third consecutive failed rainy season

14 July 2017 (United Nations) – The third consecutive failed rainy season in East Africa has seriously eroded families’ resilience, and urgent and effective livelihood support is required, the United Nations agricultural agency has warned. According to an alert released today by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), poor rains have worsened hunger and left […]

The Uninhabitable Earth, Annotated Edition

By David Wallace-Wells14 July 2017(New York Magazine) – We published “The Uninhabitable Earth” on Sunday night, and the response since has been extraordinary — both in volume (it is already the most-read article in New York Magazine’s history) and in kind. Within hours, the article spawned a fleet of commentary across newspapers, magazines, blogs, and […]

2016 saw a record 200 killings of people defending their land, forests, and rivers against destructive industries

13 July 2017 (Global Witness) – It has never been deadlier to take a stand against companies that steal land and destroy the environment. Our new report Defenders of the Earth found that nearly four people were murdered every week in 2016 protecting their land and the natural world from industries like mining, logging and […]

Grapes shrivel as Spanish farmers lament a relentless drought

By Sam Jones 8 July 2017 Malpartida de Plasencia, Extremadura (The Guardian) – […] This is not a good year in Extremadura or elsewhere on the Iberian peninsula. Once again, drought has struck, devastating cereal crops, threatening the olive and grape harvest and leaving livestock short of food and water. “This is an awful year […]

Industrial farming disrupts burn-regrowth cycle in grasslands, study finds – “Humans are interrupting the ancient, natural cycle of burning and recovery”

Irvine, California, 29 June 2017 (UCI) – The world’s open grasslands and the beneficial fires that sustain them have shrunk rapidly over the past two decades, thanks to a massive increase in agriculture, according to a new study led by University of California, Irvine and NASA researchers published today in Science.Analyzing 1998 to 2015 data […]

Climate change-induced migration from Central America

By Stephanie Leutert 21 June 2017 (Lawfare) – Last Thursday and Friday, the United States and Mexico co-hosted top officials from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and other countries for the “Conference on Prosperity and Security in Central America.” As the name suggests, the gathering aimed to spur a wide-ranging conversation for improving the region’s economic […]

State of emergency declared in parts of Italy due to drought – Ten cities on highest heat risk level

By Maria Elena Spagnolo 23 June 2017 (La Stampa) – Many areas of Italy are facing drought due to a shortage of rainfall and high temperatures. The government has declared a state of emergency in the areas around the cities of Parma and Piacenza, in the Emilia-Romagna region. The measure has been taken “as a […]

Global warming may cause bees to mistime Spring emergence, missing their food supply

6 July 2017 (Yale Environment 360) –  If it’s all in the timing, then climate change may spell problems for bees. Scientists have found that global warming may cause temporal mismatches between bees and the plant species on which they depend for food.German researchers from the University of Würzburg, reporting in the Journal of Animal […]

Study maps out dramatic costs of unmitigated global warming in the U.S. – “Climate change is going to be like a huge transfer of wealth from some people to others”

By Kathleen Maclay 29 June 2017 (Berkeley News) – The poorest third of U.S. counties will likely lose up to 20 percent of their incomes, and regions such as the Pacific Northwest and New England will gain economically over the Gulf and Southern states, if climate change continues unmitigated through the end of the century, […]

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