Image of the Day: Mother turtle nesting amid trash on Christmas Island

By Aleksandra Pajda 4 January 2018 (One Green Planet) – On Greta Beach, Christmas Island, a staggering sight was caught by an environmental scholar and shared by PTS Our Island. A mother turtle who returned to her place of birth to lay eggs found herself amongst a sea of garbage. Surrounded by the plastic trash […]

Trump administration plan would widely expand drilling in U.S. continental waters

By Darryl Fears 4 January 2018 (The Washington Post) – The Trump administration unveiled a controversial proposal Thursday to permit drilling in most U.S. continental-shelf waters, including protected areas of the Arctic and the Atlantic, where oil and gas exploration is opposed by governors from New Jersey to Florida, nearly a dozen attorneys general, more […]

The Republican tax bill could forever alter Alaska’s indigenous tribes: By authorizing oil drilling in Alaska’s vast Arctic wilderness, the bill could enrich Native tribes, or destroy their way of life

By Robinson Meyer 2 December 2017 (The Atlantic) – When Bernadette Demientieff was in high school, she gave up her heritage. Demientieff is a member of the Gwich’in, an indigenous tribe of roughly 9,000 people that spans north-central Alaska and northern Canada. “The ways of living in this world that are being pushed on our […]

Lobster found with Pepsi logo “tattoo” fuels fears over ocean litter

By Ashifa Kassam 29 November 2017 TORONTO (The Guardian) – Concerns over debris littering the world’s oceans are back in the spotlight after a Canadian fishing crew found a lobster with the blue and red Pepsi logo imprinted on its claw. Trapped in the waters off Grand Manan, New Brunswick, the lobster had been loaded […]

Everything must go: our relentless consumption is trashing the planet

By George Monbiot 22 November 2017(The Guardian) – Everyone wants everything – how is that going to work? The promise of economic growth is that the poor can live like the rich and the rich can live like the oligarchs. But already we are bursting through the physical limits of the planet that sustains us. […]

The switch to outdoor LED lighting has increased light pollution and power consumption – “The migration to LED isn’t having the anticipated benefit in terms of global reductions in energy usage”

By George Dvorsky 22 November 2017 (Gizmodo) – To reduce energy consumption, many jurisdictions around the world are transitioning to outdoor LED lighting. But as new research shows, this solid-state solution hasn’t yielded the expected energy savings, and potentially worse, it’s resulted in more light pollution than ever before.Using satellite-based sensors, an international team of […]

Number of natural World Heritage sites affected by climate change nearly doubles in three years

Bonn, Germany, 13 November 2017 (IUCN) – The number of natural World Heritage sites threatened by climate change has grown from 35 to 62 in just three years, with climate change being the fastest growing threat they face, according to a report released today by IUCN, International Union for Conservation of Nature, at the UN […]

Large river systems are main culprits for plastic pollution in the oceans – “It is still impossible to foresee the ecological consequences of this. One thing is certain, however: this situation cannot continue.”

17 October 2017 (UFZ) – Every year, millions of tonnes of plastic debris ends up in the sea – a global environmental problem with unforeseeable ecological consequences. The path taken by plastic to reach the sea must be elucidated before it will be possible to reduce the volume of plastic input. To date, there was […]

Just 10 rivers may be to blame for millions of tons of ocean plastic

By Tim Wallace 12 October 2017 (Cosmos) – Just 10 rivers – eight of them in Asia – may be responsible for dumping almost four million tonnes of plastic into the seas every year.Calculating with precision the source and amount of plastic trash in the oceans is difficult; estimates tend to cover wide ranges. Previous […]

Study reveals scale of “nitrate timebomb”

By Roger Harrabin 10 November 2017 (BBC News) – Huge quantities of nitrate chemicals from farm fertilisers are polluting the rocks beneath our feet, a study says.Researchers at the British Geological Survey say it could have severe global-scale consequences for rivers, water supplies, human health and the economy.They say the nitrate will be released from […]

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