‘We’re going to be okay’: Humans not destined for extinction

Between melting ice caps, water scarcity. and a warming climate, the future of humanity can sometimes look grim. Scientists have long warned of a mass human extinction event and many believe that things have taken a turn for the worst. The iconic doomsday clock currently sits at  2½ minutes to midnight (the closest its been since the beginning of the Cold […]

Pesticides: debunking the myths

New UN report at odds with agribusiness propaganda The idea that pesticides are essential to feed a rapidly-growing world population is a myth, according to UN experts: a new report presented by the Human Rights Council has heavily criticized the multinationals that produce pesticides, accusing them of “systematic denial of the magnitude of the damage”, […]

Radioactive wild boars worry Fukushima

Hundreds of aggressive, and potentially radioactive, wild boars have prompted public safety concerns in Japan, according to news reports, as homeowners prepare to return to towns near Fukushima, where a 2011 earthquake and tsunami triggered a meltdown at a nuclear power plant in the region. Six years after the magnitude-9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami crippled the Fukushima […]

Fukushima nuclear crisis still unfolding 6 years on

While Japan yesterday marked the sixth anniversary of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami and the subsequent Fukushima nuclear disaster, how the aftermath has been dealt with has drawn much attention and concern from all over the world. Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc (TEPCO), operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, has said it […]

The Refugee Crisis Is a Sign of a Planet in Trouble

The plight of immigrant families in the United States facing threat of deportation has provoked a massive compassionate response, with cities, churches, and colleges offering sanctuary and legal assistance to those under threat. It is an inspiring expression of our human response to others in need that evokes hope for the human future. At the […]

The Most Dangerous Bill You’ve Never Heard Of Just Passed The House

Last, week, under the cover of a media bliss-out except among Koch funded right-wing channels, the House of Representatives passed a bill which would effectively repeal future standard setting under every important environmental, public health, consumer protection, labor standards, occupational safety and civil rights law on the books. The bill, called the REINS Act, requires […]

37 MILLION BEES FOUND DEAD In Ontario, Canada After Large GMO Corn Field Planted

Local Ontario farmer, Nathan Carey, reported that this spring there were not enough bees on his farm. He believes, as do many others, that there is a strong correlation between the disappearance of bees and the use of insecticides. For the last seven consecutive years, honeybees have been in decline, something scientists have coined, “colony collapse […]

Climate Ecoforestry

“Want to leap the social barrier to cool living? Behold: a stargate.” In 2008 we asked Frank Michael a tough question. Frank is a physicist, formerly with the Ames Research Center group that created the first Flying Solar Laboratory to study the sun and its “weather” and prevent astronauts from being fried by solar storms. […]

The Robots Sent Into Fukushima Just Keep Dying

The robots sent in to investigate the nuclear fallout at Fukushima just aren’t good enough. Tokyo Electric Power Company’s (TEPCO) head of decommissioning admitted on Thursday that more creativity was needed in developing its robots sent to the reactive zone. The Fukushima nuclear power plant was massively damaged in 2011, when three of the six […]

Pope Francis ‘urges parents to have fewer children to stop over-population of the world’

The Pope wants couples to have fewer children in order to lessen the environmental damage being done to the planet, a Vatican panel has been told. Environmentalist Peter Raven made the comment at a workshop on biodiversity, which discussed Catholic Church attitudes toward environmental issues. Pope Francis has previously said avoiding pregnancy is not an […]

Water Crisis Looming – Surviving the 21st Century

“Surviving the 21st Century” is a powerful new book exploring the main risks facing humanity: ecological collapse, resource depletion, weapons of mass destruction, climate change, global poisoning, food crises, population and urban overexpansion, pandemic disease, dangerous new technologies and self-delusion – and what can and should be done to limit them. The world faces an […]

The legacy of Deepwater Horizon: What researchers learned about oil spills

The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in 2010 caused an environmental disaster. But an oil spill like that could happen again, scientists say. Will they be able to prevent worse in the future? 21 April 2010: Fireboats battling the blazing remnants of the oil rig The search for crude oil has become increasingly […]

Donald Trump versus the Club of Rome

With Trump’s threats to dismantle the EPA and trash the Endangered Species Act, Norm Sanders reminds us of the Club of Rome’s warning that Planet Earth was finite. JUST ABOUT everybody on earth knows who Donald Trump is, but many have never heard of the Club of Rome and its forecasts for the future of life on […]

Coal Is Just Too Damn Expensive

President Trump is ready to start signing executive orders that roll back Obama-era regulations on climate and water pollution: While both directives will take time to implement, they will send an unmistakable signal that the new administration is determined to promote fossil-fuel production….One executive order — which the Trump administration will couch as reducing U.S. […]

Concerns Grow About A Nuclear “Incident” In Europe After Spike In Radioactive Iodine Levels

Concerns about a potential, and so far unsubstantiated, nuclear “incident”, reportedly in the vicinity of the Arctic circle, spread in the past week after trace amounts of radioactive Iodine-131 of unknown origin were detected in January over large areas in Europe according to a report by the Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety, the […]

Sea Ice In Both Arctic, Antarctic Hits Record Low

Sea ice in both the Arctic and Antarctic last month hit the lowest levels on record for January, the United Nations World Meteorological Organization says. Concentrations in the atmosphere of carbon dioxide, the chief gas said to cause global warming, also hit a January record. “It is a quite strange situation,” said David Carlson, director […]

Another robot just broke down investigating Fukushima

Another robot has died in the depths of one of Fukushima’s nuclear reactors, as attempts to locate and remove melted radioactive fuel continue. This is the second robot in two weeks to meet its end in the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, the site of a major nuclear accident caused by the devastating […]

EU Coal Plants ‘Should all Close by 2030’

EU countries should close all of their coal plants by around 2030 if they want to stick to the Paris Agreement on climate change. This is the conclusion of a new report by research non-profit Climate Analytics. The cheapest way to meet Paris targets is to replace EU coal power with renewables and energy efficiency, […]

The Global Water Crisis

I just finished a wonderful recent book by Seth Siegel on the global water crisis. The book, Let There Be Water, should be a wake-up call for world leaders to take the water crisis more seriously. Let me summarize some of its most important findings. In recent years, 600 million people have begun experiencing water […]

There’s been an explosion at a major nuclear plant in the English channel

An explosion occurred at the Flamanville nuclear plant in Normandy on Thursday morning, newspaper France Ouest reports. State-owned Eléctricité de France (EDF) said in a statement that a fire in a machine room caused the explosion in a “non-nuclear” part of the power station and added that there were no casualties and no environmental or safety concerns. The […]

Why the world population won’t exceed 11 billion

In part 5 of a 6-part lecture, Hans Rosling uses statistics to give an overview of population growth and an explanation of why the total human population will never reach 11 billion, as others predict and fear.

Do we have a population crisis or a consumption crisis?

Screen capture The dangers of overconsumption, population growth and a toxic environment We love comments, really we do! But sometimes it seems that every post ends up with a discussion of the population crisis, like a rerun of a Star Trek episode. If we cover a tree-covered tower: Cities aren’t the problem, too many people […]

New Radiation Level at Fukushima Dwarfs the Highest Peak at Chernobyl

The Fukushima Disaster We noted a few days after the Japanese earthquake that the amount of radioactive fuel at Fukushima dwarfs that at Chernobyl … and that the cesium fallout from Fukushima already rivaled Chernobyl (we also noted that Fukushima radiation could end up on the West Coast of North America. And see this.). The […]

TEPCO Admits Fukushima Radiation Levels Reach Record Highs As Hole In Reactor Discovered

With just 3 years left until the 2020 Olympics, Japan is likely desperate to reassure the world’s athletes that all is well, but an admission from TEPCO – the Fukushima nuclear plant operator – that they discovered a hole at least one square meter in size beneath the reactor’s pressure vessel, and lethal record-high radiation […]

Population will soon hit 8 billion. Here’s why that scares people

Any day now, global population will hit 7.5 billion. Experts predict that we humans will reach 8 billion in number sometime around the year 2024. Does that fact fill you with trepidation? Chances are that it does, even though it’s only a number, after all. “8 billion” says nothing about innovations in agriculture or renewable […]

‘Biggest Oil Find’ of 2016 Puts Crown Jewel Texas Oasis in Crosshairs for Fracking

Travelers crossing the long stretch of arid desert spanning West Texas might stumble across an extraordinarily improbable sight — a tiny teeming wetlands, a sliver of marsh that seems like it should sit by the ocean but actually lays over 450 miles from the nearest coast. This cienega, or desert-wetlands (an ecosystem so unusual that its […]

Albert Bates: A Power Zone Manifesto

” The physical requirements are not negotiable. They cannot be bargained down, discounted, or put on a layaway plan.” Fire in the New Valley, Egypt – PlanetLab 2016 was a year for revolutions. Really it was only a continuation of the Tunisian Spring that began in 2010 or, even before that, the Arab labor strikes […]

Why The World Economy Is Likely To Collapse

No difficult economic terms, no tough charts, just simple math. 1 – The worlds population of under 40 year olds (excluding Africa) has essentially peaked (chart below…bars represent 0-40yr/old population, dashed lines UN future estimates).  What is interesting about the under 40 year old population is that they are responsible for about 97% of all […]

I Am So Tired of Malthus

Daily we are deluged with gloom about how we are overwhelming the Earth’s ability to sustain and support our growing numbers. Increasing population is again being hailed as the catastrophe of the century. In addition, floods and droughts are said to be leading to widespread crop loss. The erosion of topsoil is claimed to be […]

World’s primates facing extinction crisis

Gorillas, monkeys, lemurs and other primates are in danger of becoming extinct, and scientists say it’s our fault that our closest living relatives are in trouble, a new international study warns. About 60 percent of the more than 500 primate species are “now threatened with extinction” and 3 out of 4 primate species have shrinking […]

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