By Timothy Cama12 May 2015 (The Hill) – Pope Francis’ closest adviser castigated conservative climate change skeptics in the United States Tuesday, blaming capitalism for their views. Speaking with journalists, Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga criticized certain “movements” in the United States that have preemptively come out in opposition to Francis’s planned encyclical on climate change. […]
By Ben Dreyfuss10 May 2015 (Mother Jones) – As you may know, there is a drought in California. The water? It’s gone! The state? It’s dry! The consequences? Very bad, indeed. Where did the water go? I have no idea. I’m not a private detective who specializes in missing water. Why did the water leave? […]
By Chris Nichols9 May 2015 SACRAMENTO (UT San Diego) – Severe dry spells aren’t unique to California. Just ask Australia, where the Millennium Drought stretched from 1997 to 2009, devastating the southeastern portion of the country and forever changing how it uses water. For months now, water experts in California have asked their counterparts Down […]
By Justin Pidot 11 May 2015 (Slate) – Imagine visiting Yellowstone this summer. You wake up before dawn to take a picture of the sunrise over the mists emanating from Yellowstone hot springs. A thunderhead towers above the rising sun, and the picture turns out beautifully. You submit the photo to a contest sponsored by […]
By Nathanael Johnson11 May 2015 (Grist) – Like lots of people in drought-desiccated California, I have been hustling to educate myself about the power dynamics of water in the state. And so I read this appreciation of California water historian, Norris Hundley Jr., with great interest. It portrays Hundley as the historian whose picture is […]
By Jason Dearen11 May 2015 ST. AUGUSTINE, Florida (Associated Press) – America’s oldest city is slowly drowning. St. Augustine’s centuries-old Spanish fortress is feet from the encroaching Atlantic, whose waters already flood the city’s narrow streets about 10 times a year — a problem worsening as sea levels rise. The city relies on tourism, but […]
By Richard Nemec 8 May 2015 (NGI) – A trio of environmental groups in California on Thursday filed a complaint in state Superior Court seeking to have declared illegal new state interim rules governing oil/gas operators’ use of wastewater injection wells (see Daily GPI, April 24). The lawsuit by Earthjustice on behalf of the Center […]
By Holly Moeller 22 Aprl 2015 (Stanford Daily) – Last week, a 20-million-dollar industry hit the brakes when the Pacific Fishery Management Council voted to close the West Coast sardine fishery, effective immediately. It’s unusual for a fishery to be shuttered so abruptly (the current season would normally have run another two months until the […]
By Darryl Fears 6 May 2015 (Washington Post) – For the giant kangaroo rat, death by nature is normally swift and dramatic: a hopeless dash for safety followed by a blood-curdling squeak as their bellies are torn open by eagles, foxes, bobcats and owls. They’re not supposed to die the way they are today — […]
20 March 2015 (UNESCO) – Any consideration of the quality and quantity of available water supplies in the region must examine groundwater, which is critical to several economic sectors. Experts estimate that groundwater irrigation contributes US$10 to US$12 billion per year to the Asian economy. When also including earnings from groundwater sales for irrigation, that […]