Greenpeace Activists Block Chevron Shale Site in Romania

Greenpeace activists chained themselves to the gates of a Chevron shale gas exploration well in eastern Romania on Monday, blocking access to the site and urging the leftist government to ban fracking. Romania could potentially hold 51 trillion cubic feet of shale gas, which would cover domestic demand for more than a century, the U.S. […]

Are We Close to Peak Coal in China?

Last year, renewable energy made up nearly 70 percent of new electric generation capacity additions in China. That figure would be more impressive if coal wasn’t the reigning supreme leader of China’s energy landscape. It currently accounts for about 65 percent of the country’s energy mix. But coal’s tight grip on the country may start […]

Plan needed for human overload

  PSYCHOLOGISTS tell us that we spend 97 per cent of our time thinking about ourselves but on Friday, let’s spare a thought for the world as it is World Population Day. This day, to raise awareness of global population issues, was established by the UN in 1989 and has been celebrated across the world […]

Aggressive Tactic on the Fracking Front

A Pennsylvania gas company offers residents cash to buy protection from any claims of harm. For the last eight years, Pennsylvania has been riding the natural gas boom, with companies drilling and fracking thousands of wells across the state. And in a little corner of Washington County, some 20 miles outside of Pittsburgh, EQT Corporation […]

Data Deleted From UN Climate Report Highlight Controversies

When the United Nations’ last major climate change report was released in April, it omitted some country-specific emissions data for political reasons, a trio of new papers argue, sounding a warning bell about the global politicization of climate science. Written by thousands of science, policy, and economics experts from around the world, the UN International […]

Oklahoma earthquake surge tied to energy industry activity

A dramatic jump in the number of earthquakes in Oklahoma to a rate never seen there by scientists before, appears to be caused by a small number of wells where wastewater associated with oil and gas production is injected into the ground, a study released on Thursday said. Just a few of these so-called disposal […]

Starting a Family? Think Small

As we approach World Population Day 2014 (July 11), it’s well past time we seriously consider the role of human population level in the sustainability of our civilization. Over the last century the scale of the human enterprise has mushroomed, eventually surpassing the capacity of the Earth to sustainably support us. Scientists at the Global […]

It’s all about the soil!

It was an honor to meet Growing Power founder Will Allen last weekend. The urban farming advocate was in town to support the work of his student Linda Proffitt at Peaceful Grounds. (Here’s my earlier post about this inspiring demonstration farm, which is a regional training center for Growing Power.) The former pro basketball player […]

7 Devastating Effects of Oil Depletion

7 Devastating Effects of Oil Depletion

Hierarchical Membrane For Cleaning Up Oil Spills

Tiny droplets of water, colored blue, are suspended in oil on top of a membrane developed by the MIT team. Thanks to the membrane’s tiny pores, with a special coating that attracts water and repels oil, the droplets shrink as they pass through the membrane, ultimately leaving just pure oil behind. A similar membrane with […]

Chinese Oil Pipeline Burns, Thousands Evacuated

A leaking oil pipeline caught fire in the northeastern Chinese port city of Dalian, forcing the evacuation of nearly 20,000 residents, a government oil company said Tuesday. The pipeline was damaged by construction work at about 6:30 p.m. on Monday, allowing oil to flow into a sewage pipe, where it caught fire, China National Petroleum […]

Higher Food Prices Can Help to End Hunger, Malnutrition and Food Waste

In this column, Andrew MacMillan, former director of the Field Operations Division of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and joint author with Ignacio Trueba of ‘How to End Hunger in Times of Crises’, counters conventional wisdom – which holds that low food prices are a “good thing” and can reduce hunger – with […]

Is China Hitting Peak Coal?

After a decade in which coal has been grabbing an ever-larger share of the world’s energy supply, could coal’s boom be about to turn to bust? Both the United States and China are planning to curb coal, and analysts say the repercussions for the global industry could be dramatic. The world may soon breathe a […]

‘Population Bomb’ Author Still Says Government Should Control Human Reproduction

Stanford Professor Paul Ehrlich, whose 1968 book, The Population Bomb, wrongly predicted that overpopulation would lead to the starvation deaths of hundreds of millions of people worldwide during the 1970s and 80s, is still claiming that the government should control human reproduction. Despite the fact that his predictions of widespread famine due to overpopulation never came […]

Are 7 Billion People Too Many?

The Earth, in case you haven’t noticed, is a big mess right now. All living things, humans included, are suffering the effects of a planet stressed to the breaking point. (At the time of Jesus, there were about 200 million people on Earth.) Consider the problems we face: GLOBAL WARMING. Carbon dioxide and other global-warming […]

Iraq and Ukraine; this might be the artificial Peak Oil scenario

The ruling powers decide to do an “artificial peak oil” scenario in order to kill off billions of people and save the economy. What they don’t understand, even though they rule the world, is that destroying the oil infrastructure means it will take centuries to rebuild modern civilization. So they go too far. The real […]

A billion planets, One Earth…

How will our continuously growing population affect our way of life, our planet, our environment? No matter how you look at it, we have a big problem At the rate we’re going, we are already using up the available resources of 1 ½ Earths, even though this planet is all we have at the moment. […]

What the hell does “sustainable” even mean?

How many of these terms can you define? Sustainable, organic, natural. Food miles, carbon footprint, food desert, direct trade. And not just define, but really define — explain not just what they mean, but how they’re implemented, and why they’re important to reforming our food system? It’s harder than most people realize, says artist and […]

Earthweek: A Diary of the Planet

Longer Longevity The human population is now living longer in both rich and poor countries but a new United Nations report says there is a major rich-poor divide. Based on global averages, a girl who was born in 2012 can expect to live about 73 years while a boy should reach the age of 68. […]

Why polar bears are doing better than you think

Last year Greenpeace campaigners in the UK paraded a giant polar bear puppet the size of a double-decker bus through the streets of Westminster to protest against planned drilling in the Arctic. This year the polar bears made it into the Houses of Parliament, as a Canadian professor told a meeting there Wednesday night that […]

Officials fear melted reactor fuel is now exposed at Fukushima

Tepco: We don’t know at this point if fuel is uncovered — Large drop in water level — Experts ‘struggling’ to find condition of nuclear cores, nothing is known for all 3 reactors TEPCO: Water in reactor half expected level — Officials with the operator of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant say the water […]

There are not enough resources to support the world’s population

The world’s population is now well over seven billion and growing. We have reached a stage where the amount of resources needed to sustain our population exceeds what is available, argues Professor John Guillebaud from University College London.   Many years ago, as a second year medical student, I attended a lecture on human population […]

Geology and Markets, not EPA, Waging War on Coal

This post written in collaboration with Leslie Glustrom, founder and former Director of Research and Policy at CEA. With the release of the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rules limiting carbon pollution from the nation’s electricity sector, you’ve no doubt been hearing a lot of industry outrage about “Obama’s War on Coal.” Don’t believe it. Despite […]

Integrating Ecology and Economics

Attempts to integrate economics and ecology have been based on one of three strategies: (1) economic imperialism; (2) ecological reductionism; (3) steady-state subsystem. Each strategy begins with the picture of the economy as a subsystem of the finite ecosystem. Thus all three recognize limits to growth. The differences concern the way they each treat the […]

Flawed drilling gear still in use after BP oil spill

Design problems with a blowout prevention system contributed to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster, and the same equipment is still commonly used in drilling four years after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, according to a report issued by the federal Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board. This results in potential safety gaps […]

Series On Overpopulation In America—fishing our oceans to death

Oceanographer Callum Roberts said, “The oceans of today are filled with ghost habitats, stripped of their larger inhabitants.  Our dismantling of marine ecosystems is having destructive and unpredictable consequences.  With species loss and food web collapse comes dangerous instability. The seas are undergoing ecological meltdown. “Fishing is undermining itself by purging the oceans of species on which it depends. […]

The Danger of Natural Gas

Natural gas continues to grow in popularity, but could be a lethal energy resource Natural gas is currently one of the most aggressively supported forms of fuel in the United States. The government has been investing heavily in support of natural gas over the past few years, claiming that this fuel can be used to […]

Human Population Growth, Consumption Has Increased Species Extinctions by More Than 1,000 Times Natural Rate

A new study published in the internationally recognized journal Science has determined that the current rate of species extinctions is more than 1,000 times greater than the background rate calculated from the fossil record and genetic data, spanning millions of years. The primary cause of this dramatic rise in the loss of species is human […]

(Don’t) Drill, Baby, Drill: Economic, Environmental, and Military Conflicts Associated with Offshore Drilling

In 2008, a 25-year congressional prohibition on offshore drilling off the Atlantic coast ended, opening it up to energy exploration and poising it to be the next energy frontier. The intersection of increased energy prices and rising demand made drilling in this area an appealing endeavor, and in 2010 the Obama administration announced their intent […]

Doomsday can wait a little longer

When it comes to predictions nowadays, there are no shortages about our way of life meeting an ignominious end. Take Jim Leape, the director of the World Wide Fund for Nature International, for example, He recently said that “we are using 50 percent more resources than the Earth can sustainably produce and unless we change […]

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