By Peggy Hollinger in Paris, Chris Bryant in Vienna, and Gerrit Wiesmann in BerlinJune 8 2011 Europe is in the grip of a new north-south divide. Yet this time the gap is not about economic competitiveness but rainfall, and it is the north, not the south, that is lagging behind. While southern Europe experienced a […]
By Gerard Wynn; Editing by Jonathan Lynn8 Jun 2011 BONN, Germany (Reuters) – Canada confirmed on Wednesday that it would not support an extended Kyoto Protocol after 2012, joining Japan and Russia in rejecting a new round of the climate emissions pact. The current Kyoto Protocol binds only the emissions of industrialized countries from 2008-2012. […]
Feeding the world by 2050 will require increasing agricultural output by 70 percent. To achieve this, agricultural productivity will need to grow at an annual average rate of at least 1.75 percent from a relatively fixed bundle of agricultural resources given growing regional scarcities of water and arable land. As noted earlier, over the past […]
By Carey Gillam; Editing by John Picinich7 Jun 2011 KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) – High-tech seeds and innovations in chemicals and farming will not be enough to solve looming food shortages for the world, according to a report issued Tuesday by a committee formed by food and chemicals conglomerate DuPont. Billions of dollars in private […]
An op-ed by Bill McKibben, author and founder of 350.org, narrated and illustrated by Stephen Thomson of Plomomedia.com Caution: It is vitally important not to make connections. When you see pictures of rubble like this week’s shots from Joplin, Mo., you should not wonder: Is this somehow related to the tornado outbreak three weeks ago […]
By Julia Scott8 June 2011 Bay Area cities and counties whose jurisdictions contain the San Francisco and Oakland airports and the ports of Oakland and Redwood City would be required to prepare action plans to deal with rising sea levels under a trailblazing bill passed by the state Assembly last week. The bill would require […]
By Nina Chestney; Editing by James Jukwey8 Jun 2011 LONDON (Reuters) – China’s carbon dioxide emissions rose 10.4 percent in 2010 compared to the previous year as it surpassed the United States as the world’s biggest energy consumer, data released by BP on Wednesday showed. China’s emissions from energy use totaled 8.33 billion tonnes last […]
June 5 (ABC) – A new report on the risk of climate change to Australia’s coasts predicts sea level rises could claim thousands of buildings and significant infrastructure by the end of the century. The report, titled Risk to Coastal Settlements and Communities [pdf], was commissioned by the Federal Government and assesses the potential damage […]
Contact: Andrea Elyse Messer, 814-865-9481, http://live.psu.edu6 June 2011 University Park, Pennsylvania – The rate of release of carbon into the atmosphere today is nearly 10 times as fast as during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), 55.9 million years ago, the best analog we have for current global warming, according to an international team of geologists. […]
By JUSTIN GILLIS4 June 2011 On a warming planet, humanity faces a great challenge in feeding itself at reasonable cost in the coming century, as I explain in Sunday’s paper. An issue I raise only in passing in the article is that agriculture itself is one of the earth’s greatest environmental threats. To put a […]
