By Julie Cart26 February 2015 (Los Angeles Times) – Water officials in Kern County discovered that oil producers have been dumping chemical-laden wastewater into hundreds of unlined pits that are operating without proper permits. Inspections completed this week by the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board revealed the existence of more than 300 previously […]
BEIJING (AP) — China imposed a one-year ban on ivory imports that took immediate effect Thursday amid criticism that its citizens’ huge appetite for ivory has fueled poaching that threatens the existence of African elephants. The State Administration of Forestry declared the ban in a public notice posted on its official site, in which it […]
[This is an interesting situation: A technogenic climate catastrophe that isn’t caused by global warming, but instead by deforestation of the Amazon rainforest. –Des] By Zachary Davies Boren 23 February 2015 (The Independent) – As Brazil continues to battle a historic drought, millions of people in its largest city are about to run out of […]
By JUSTIN GILLIS and JOHN SCHWARTZ21 February 2015 (The New York Times) – For years, politicians wanting to block legislation on climate change have bolstered their arguments by pointing to the work of a handful of scientists who claim that greenhouse gases pose little risk to humanity. One of the names they invoke most often […]
By Rhett A. Butler3 February 2015 (mongabay.com) – A year after it pledged a dramatic shift in how it operates in Indonesia’s fast dwindling native habitats, Asia Pacific Resources International Ltd (APRIL) continues to destroy forests and peatlands in Sumatra, allege environmentalists. On January 28th, 2014 — just days before APRIL’s biggest competitor Asia Pulp […]
By Captain Paul Watson3 February 2015 (SSCS) – Since mid-December, 2014, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has been engaged in shutting down the illegal operations of four Antarctic toothfish poaching ships. The Sea Shepherd ship Bob Barker located the Nigerian-flagged poacher Thunder on December 16th on the Banzare Bank off the coast of Antarctica. The […]
29 January 2015 (Tico Times) – Hundreds of protesters gathered Thursday in front of a court complex in the Costa Rican capital to express outrage over a verdict earlier this week that acquitted seven defendants of the 2013 murder of sea turtle conservationist Jairo Mora, who has quickly become an environmental martyr in this small […]
By Victoria Tang 21 January 2015 (Wired) – United States Senators stood up for what they believed in today—and it wasn’t pretty. During a debate over construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, intended to carry oil from Canada to the United States, the Senate voted on an amendment—just for show, really—on whether climate change “is […]
By Fredreka Schouten27 January 2015 WASHINGTON (USA TODAY) – Top officials in the Koch brothers’ political organization Monday released a staggering $889 million budget to fund the activities of the billionaires’ sprawling network ahead of the 2016 presidential contest. The budget, which pays for everything from advertising and data-gathering technology to grass-roots activism, was released […]
Update, 6:46 p.m., 26 January 2015: Early Monday evening, Broad Front Party lawmaker Edgardo Araya filed a motion in the Legislative Assembly’s Environmental Commission to call Costa Rica’s Chief Public Prosecutor Jorge Chavarría to testify before the commission regarding “the omissions by the Prosecutor’s Office in the Jairo Mora case,” according to a post on […]
