A vendor selling used remote controls for various home appliances takes a nap in Nhat Tao market, the largest informal recycling market in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Sunday, 28 January 2024. Photo: Jae C. Hong / AP Photo

E-waste is overflowing landfills, rising five times faster than formal recycling – At one sprawling Vietnam market, workers recycle some of it – “We are currently generating e-waste at an unprecedented rate”

By Aniruddha Ghosal and Jae C. Hong 2 May 2024 HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam (AP) – Dam Chan Nguyen saves dead and dying computers. When he first started working two decades ago in Nhat Tao market, Ho Chi Minh City’s biggest informal recycling market, he usually salvaged computers with bulky monitors and heavy processors. […]

Residents wade through flood waters after a seasonal river burst its banks following heavy rainfall in Kitengela municipality of Kajiado County, near Nairobi, Kenya, 1 May 2024. Photo: Thomas Mukoya / REUTERS

Kenya flood toll rises to 181 as houses and roads are destroyed – More than 190,000 people forced from their homes – “We have lost nearly all our family members. This is the darkest moment for us.”

NAIROBI, 1 May 2024 (Reuters) – Floods and landslides across Kenya have killed 181 people since March, with hundreds of thousands forced to leave their homes, the government and Red Cross said on Wednesday, as dozens more were killed in neighbouring Tanzania and Burundi. Torrential rain and floods have destroyed homes, roads, bridges, and other […]

Hectares of primary forest lost each year in Indonesia, 2001-2023. For a second year, Indonesia saw an uptick in forest losses. Between 2002 and 2023, the country lost 11 percent of its primary forest — that is, mature natural forests that have not been touched in recent years. Data: Global Forest Watch. Graphic: M.K. Wildeman / AP

Deforestation in Indonesia spiked in 2023, but resources analyst sees better overall trend

By Victoria Milko 28 April 2024 JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) – From trees felled in protected national parks to massive swaths of jungle razed for palm oil and paper plantations, Indonesia had a 27% uptick in primary forest loss in 2023 from the previous year, according to a World Resources Institute analysis of deforestation data. But […]

Counts (S) of anadromous adults in eight populations of the Santa Monica Mountains BPG. Counts are adjusted by +1 so that zero counts show up on the log scale Graphic: Boughton, 2022 in SWFSC 2022

Steelhead trout, once thriving in Southern California, are declared endangered – “The negative trend toward extinction has not reversed”

By Ian James 23 April 2024 (Los Angeles Times) – Southern California’s rivers and creeks once teemed with large, silvery fish that arrived from the ocean and swam upstream to spawn. But today, these fish are seldom seen. Southern California steelhead trout have been pushed to the brink of extinction as their river habitats have […]

A diver examines bleached coral off the Keppel Islands, Australia, at the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef, 5 March 2024. Photo: Renata Ferrari / AIMS / Reuters

The widest-ever global coral crisis will hit within weeks, scientists say – “Now we’re at the point where we’re in the disaster movie”

By Catrin Einhorn 15 April 2024 (The New York Times) – The world’s coral reefs are in the throes of a global bleaching event caused by extraordinary ocean temperatures, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and international partners announced Monday. It is the fourth such global event on record and is expected to affect more […]

Moths attracted to a light trap in the Area de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG) in Costa Rica in May 1984, May 2007, and May 2019. Photo: Daniel Janzen and Winnie Hallwachs

They turned cattle ranches into tropical forest — then climate change hit

By Justine Calma 27 April 2024 (The Verge) – Ecologist Daniel Janzen wades into the field, clutching a walking stick in one hand and a fist full of towering green blades of grass in the other to steady himself. Winnie Hallwachs, also an ecologist and Janzen’s wife, watches him closely, carrying a hat that she […]

Mike England, who owns England Farms and Cattle Company located 29 miles east of McAllen, walks across one of the fields on his farm near Mercedes, Texas on 18 April 2024. England had to destroy 500 acres worth of sugar cane he’d grown because of the ongoing drought in the Rio Grande Valley. Credit: Photo: Ben Lowy / The Texas Tribune

South Texas farmers are in peril as the Rio Grande Valley runs dry, again – “Without water, what are we using to grow our crops? What are we able to pay back those loans with?”

By Berenice Garcia 18 April 2024 MERCEDES, TEXAS (The Texas Tribune) – Across the street from a red barn, a 40-acre field once covered by a sea of green sugar cane leaves now sits dry and thirsty. Irrigation water is dangerously elusive for the fields of the Rio Grande Valley. Mike England, who owns England […]

Electric vehicles charging in Victorville, California, 11 March 2024. In California, electric vehicles could soon account for 10 percent of peak power demand. Photo: Lauren Justice / The New York Times

A new surge in power use is threatening U.S. climate goals – “I can’t recall the last time I was so alarmed about the country’s energy trajectory”

By Brad Plumer 17 March 2024 (The New York Times) – Something unusual is happening in America. Demand for electricity, which has stayed largely flat for two decades, has begun to surge. Over the past year, electric utilities have nearly doubled their forecasts of how much additional power they’ll need by 2028 as they confront […]

A wildfire rages in Texas on 27 February 2024. Photo: Greenville Fire-Rescue / Reuters

Historic Texas wildfire consumes more than 500,000 acres as blaze rages on

By Gloria Oladipo 28 February 2024 (The Guardian) – A historic wildfire in Texas continued to rage on Wednesday morning as firefighters work to contain the flames and survey damage. The Smokehouse Creek fire, the second largest wildfire in Texas to date, has consumed more than 500,000 acres in Texas’s Panhandle area since it ignited on Monday. […]

Smoke rises from a warehouse fire, owned by French recycling group SNAM, which houses lithium batteries in Viviez, north of Toulouse, France, 17 February 2024 in this image obtained from social media. Photo: Adeba / REUTERS

Fire at French lithium battery recycling plant under control after two days – 900 metric tons of lithium batteries may have burned

By Geert De Clercq and Ingrid Melander 19 February 2024 PARIS (Reuters) – A fire at a battery recycling plant in southern France is under control, though burning, the local firefighters service said on Monday, two days after the blaze began. The fire broke out in a warehouse containing 900 metric tons of lithium batteries […]

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