[Interestingly, the Australian Government’s Reef 2050 Plan for restoring the Great Barrier Reef doesn’t once mention the Carmichael coal mine. –Des] 15 October 2015 (BBC News) – Australia’s government has given its approval for one of the world’s biggest coal mines to be built by India’s Adani Mining in Queensland. In August, a court temporarily […]
By Thomas Fuller2 October 2016 WEED, California (The New York Times) – The water that gurgles from a spring on the edge of this Northern California logging town is so pristine that for more than a century it has been piped directly to the wooden homes spread across hills and gullies. To the residents of […]
TUNIS, 25 September 2016 (Associated Press) – Struggling with extremism and economic woes, Tunisia now faces another menace: persistent drought across several regions that is creating new social tensions and threatening farming, a pillar of the economy. Farmland is too parched to cultivate crops and rural protesters have tried disrupting water supplies to the capital, […]
By Shreya Dasgupta2 September 2016 (mongabay.com) – Around 80 percent of India’s annual rainfall comes from the Indian summer monsoon, spanning from June to September. But deforestation over the past few decades has caused summer monsoon to weaken, resulting in a considerable decline in rainfall, concludes the study published in Scientific Reports. “Monsoon is believed […]
By Aaron Sidder22 July 2016 (National Geographic) – Vultures rest in the tree’s upper branches, their black bodies in stark contrast to the blanched wood beneath their feet. Below them, caimans and capybaras crawl in sucking mud through the Agropil lagoon, seeking water that is unlikely to arrive for many months. The river has dried […]
By David Dayen12 August 2016 (Los Angeles Magazine) – To reach Well Complex 7, you must wind along Highway 18 as it rises 5,642 feet above sea level through the San Bernardino National Forest, the green mountains framing the sprawl of the Inland Empire. Near the burg of Rimforest, you park on the shoulder and […]
By Christopher Ingraham 4 August 2015 (Washington Post) – A recent essay by an Ohio woman who refuses to mow her lawn has struck a nerve. Thirteen hundred people have weighed in with a comment on Sarah Baker’s tale of flouting a neighborhood mowing ordinance in the face of a $1,000 fine. As Baker notes […]
By Andrew Mambondiyani28 July 2016 (mongabay.com) – Lyben Minyizeya’s homestead in Chisumbanje in eastern Zimbabwe resembles a dumpsite for disused tractors and other agricultural equipment. The broken and rusty machinery reminds him of the good old farming days. In this farming community near the border with Mozambique, it is sizzling hot in summer. Baobab, acacia, […]
By Rebecca Morelle2 August 2016 (BBC News) – One of the last known groups of woolly mammoths died out because of a lack of drinking water, scientists believe. The Ice Age beasts were living on a remote island off the coast of Alaska, and scientists have dated their demise to about 5,600 years ago. They […]
By Deborah Netburn2 August 2016 (Los Angeles Times) – Last summer, a revolution occurred in Los Angeles landscaping: Across the city, tens of thousands of homeowners tore up their water-thirsty lawns and replaced them with gravel, turf, decomposed granite and a wide range of drought-tolerant plants at a rate never seen before. The water-saving benefits […]
