By Maxim Tkachenko, CNNSeptember 3, 2010 11:36 a.m. EDT Moscow, Russia (CNN) — Fires left at least eight people dead and hundreds homeless in three regions of central Russia, government officials said Friday. The regions of Volgograd, Saratov and Samara — all along the Volga River in central Russia — have been hit by forest […]
By RAVI NESSMAN (AP)4 September 2010 DAIRA DINPANAH, Pakistan — Abdul Rehman and his family live under a tree next to a pile of rubble on a newly created island where his house used to be. In the month since his home was destroyed in the raging floodwaters that inundated Pakistan, he has gotten no […]
ScienceDaily (Sep. 4, 2010) — Global agricultural expansion cut a wide swath through tropical forests during the 1980s and 1990s. More than half a million square miles of new farmland — an area roughly the size of Alaska — was created in the developing world between 1980 and 2000, of which over 80 percent was […]
Lima (AFP) Sept 1, 2010 – The Amazon, the world’s biggest river, is at its lowest level in over 40 years near its source in northeastern Peru, causing havoc in a region where it is used as the only form of travel, authorities said. According to officials in Loreto province, the Amazon on Tuesday in […]
During the past 50 years, sea level has risen up to 8 inches or more along some coastal areas of the United States, and has fallen in other locations. The amount of relative sea-level rise experienced along different parts of the U.S. coast depends on the changes in elevation of the land that occur as […]
Failure to act on threats to global sustainability brings the world closer to disaster By Jeffrey D. SachsSeptember 2010 Scientific American Magazine With this final column I will transition Sustainable Developments from Scientific American to the home page of the Earth Institute (ww.earth.columbia.edu). Although I will continue to contribute occasional essays to the magazine, I […]
IANS2010-09-01 16:10:00 Islamabad: Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said on Wednesday that his country has suffered losses of around $43 billion due to the floods that have displaced over 17 million people and killed over 1,600. The floods, which started with heavy monsoon rains in July, have affected 30 percent of agricultural land and […]
By Alister Doyle, ReutersWednesday, 1 September 2010 Tiny marine creatures found on the seabed on opposite sides of West Antarctic give a strong hint of the effects of sea level rise, say scientists. The discovery of very similar colonies of bryozoans, animals that anchor themselves to the seabed, in both the Ross and Weddell Seas […]
UPISept. 1, 2010 at 9:58 AM LONDON, Sept. 1 (UPI) — Only 20 percent of Pakistan’s flood victims have been rescued due to the enormity of the crisis, an international relief official said Wednesday. Gareth Owen, emergencies director of Save the Children in Britain, said the logistical challenges of reaching tens of thousands of people […]
By David BielloSep 1, 2010 06:00 AM For decades, apocalyptic environmentalists (and others) have warned of humanity’s imminent doom, largely as a result of our unsustainable use of and impact upon the natural systems of the planet. After all, the most recent comprehensive assessment of so-called ecosystem services—benefits provided for free by the natural world, […]
