By Matthew Power2 January 2014 (Outside Magazine) – It was only eight o’clock on the evening of 30 May 2013, but the beach was completely dark. The moon hadn’t yet risen above Playa Moín, a 15-mile-long strand of mangrove and palm on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast. A two-door Suzuki 4×4 bumped along a rough track […]
By Rhett A. Butler26 December 2013 (mongabay.com) – 2013 was full of developments in efforts to understand and protect the world’s tropical rainforests. The following is a review of some of the major tropical forest-related news stories for the year. As a review, this post will not cover everything that transpired during 2013 in the […]
By Mari Saito and Antoni Slodkowski30 December 2013 SENDAI, Japan (Reuters) – Seiji Sasa hits the train station in this northern Japanese city before dawn most mornings to prowl for homeless men. He isn’t a social worker. He’s a recruiter. The men in Sendai Station are potential laborers that Sasa can dispatch to contractors in […]
By Mike De Souza27 December 2013 OTTAWA (Postmedia News) – More than $100 million in cuts are underway at the federal department in charge of protecting Canada’s water and oceans, despite recommendations from top bureaucrats that it needs to increase spending for both environmental and economic reasons. According to internal federal briefing notes obtained by […]
[cf. Graph of the Day: Total foundation funding distribution to U.S. climate change countermovement organizations, 2003-2010] By George Zornick 27 December 2013 (Washington Post) – In his speech at Georgetown University this year, President Obama made it clear that tackling climate change will be one of the key priorities for the remainder of his term. […]
20 December 2013 (PhysOrg) – A new study conducted by Drexel University’s environmental sociologist Robert J. Brulle, PhD, exposes the organizational underpinnings and funding behind the powerful climate change countermovement. This study marks the first peer-reviewed, comprehensive analysis ever conducted of the sources of funding that maintain the denial effort. Through an analysis of the […]
By Tamasin Ford, with additional reporting by Iloniaina Alain Rakotondravony23 December 2013 CAP EST, Madagascar (The Guardian) – Blood-red sawdust coats every surface in the small carpentry workshop, where Primo Jean Besy is at the lathe fashioning vases out of ruby-coloured logs. Besy and his father are small-scale carpenters in Antalaha in north-east Madagascar, and […]
By Nicholas Watt, chief political correspondent 17 December 2013 (The Guardian) – The government has been accused of putting “anti-European ideology” before the needs of the most deprived people in society after Britain rejected help from a European Union fund to help subsidise the costs of food banks. David Cameron, who was heavily criticised […]
By Nikolas Kozloff23 November 2013 (Huffington Post) – Despite mounting evidence that global warming is leading to devastating environmental disasters in the Pacific region, the U.S. and its partners are suspicious of climate change advocates. Rather brazenly, Washington and its Pacific allies spy on those who are intent on reining in global warming. Indeed, […]
By Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent 20 December 2013 (theguardian.com) – Conservative groups have spent $1bn a year on the effort to deny science and oppose action on climate change, according to the first extensive study into the anatomy of the anti-climate effort. The anti-climate effort has been largely underwritten by conservative billionaires, often working […]
