Why One Child Is Enough for Me—and Might Be for You

Dahlia is home sick from school. She’s dancing in a tutu from my second grade recital, its orange, green, and pink ruffles now rediscovered and tugged over her monkey pajamas. At her insistence (and my pleasure), I too am wearing a tutu—a can-can skirt I saved from junior high, pulled up over my jeans. She […]

Towards a Post-Oil Civilization: Yasunization and other initiatives to leave fossil fuels in the soil

Abstract This Report traces the birth and growth of the idea of leaving oil in the ground. This arose after many decades of cruel conflicts caused by major oil companies, Shell and Chevron (Texaco) in the Niger Delta (involving the Ogoni and Ijaw peoples) and in the Amazon of Ecuador. Environmental justice organisations and networks […]

Peak soil: industrial civilisation is on the verge of eating itself

A new report says that the world will need to more than double food production over the next 40 years to feed an expanding global population. But as the world’s food needs are rapidly increasing, the planet’s capacity to produce food confronts increasing constraints from overlapping crises that, if left unchecked, could lead to billions […]

Abandoned Oil Wells Raise Fears of Pollution

Amid the dry weeds on a 470-acre ranch here, a rusted head of steel pokes up, a vestige of an oil well abandoned decades ago. Across the field stand two huge, old wooden oil tanks, one of them tilting like a smokestack on the Titanic. “Basically I get 61 acres here I can’t do anything […]

Ecuador Oil Spill Pollutes Amazon Tributary

Ecuador’s state oil company resumed pumping through the country’s main pipeline on Tuesday, four days after it was damaged by a landslide. But crude spilled by the accident reached tributaries of the Amazon River and polluted drinking water for a regional capital far downstream. Petroecuador issued a statement saying pumping resumed at 9:15 a.m. (1415 […]

More radioactive leaks reported at Japan’s Fukushima plant

The operator of Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant on Wednesday admitted it had found another leak of radioactive water, the latest episode in a growing catalogue of mishaps. Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), said one of its workers spotted drips coming from a tank used to store radioactive water at the site on Japan’s tsunami-wrecked […]

Fracking Creates Water Scarcity Issues in Michigan

Concerns about the impact to local groundwater by massive water use—on a scale never before seen in Michigan fracking operations—are coming to a head, as the plan for Encana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc. to use 8.4 million gallons of water to fracture a single well has been stymied by a lack of water on […]

Peter Singer: Women Should Sacrifice Having Kids to Protect Environment

Bioethicist Peter Singer compared women and children to cows overgrazing a field and said — at the global Women Deliver Conference last week, hailed as the most important meeting to focus on women and girls’ human rights in a decade — that women’s reproductive rights may one day have to be sacrificed for the environment. […]

World Bank Looks at Global Carbon Pricing Systems

It’s ironic considering all the attention on the struggles of the EU Emissions Trading System, but today over 40 national and 20 sub-national government jurisdictions have either implemented or are considering carbon pricing mechanisms. Global emissions trading schemes map via World Bank This wide-ranging assessment comes from no less an authority than the World Bank, […]

A new report to the Club of Rome: “Plundering the Planet”

From the site of the Club of Rome. Launch of the new Report to the Club of Rome by Ugo Bardi in Berlin on June 6th The Club of Rome, in partnership with WWF Germany, the Worldwatch Institute and the German Association of the Club of Rome invites to the launch of    PLUNDERING THE […]

Experts Foresee No Detectable Health Impact from Fukushima Radiation

The levels of exposure to radiation following the leaks and explosions at the earthquake-damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in 2011 were so low that they led today to this important conclusion from experts convened in Vienna by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effect of Atomic Radiation: It is unlikely to be able […]

Peak Water, Peak Oil??Now, Peak Soil?

Soil is becoming endangered.This reality needs to be part of our collective awareness in order to feed nine billion people by 2050, say experts meeting here in Reykjavík. And a big part of reversing soil decline is carbon, the same element that is overheating the planet.3 “Keeping and putting carbon in its rightful place” needs […]

The Russians Prove Small Scale Organic Farming CAN Feed the World

If you’ve already been through an economic collapse, you might know a thing or two about how to feed your family with little money. More importantly, you might know how to do it without pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and GMO seed. On a total of about 20 million acres managed by over 35 million Russian families, […]

World will feel crunch of fewer marriages and children

Demographics » Speaker at Utah trade event says shift threatens global economy. A dangerous mixture of increasing urbanization, longer work hours and the waning influence of religion has set off a demographic time bomb that is leading to a slow-motion population collapse in most of the world’s industrialized nations. Joel Kotkin, a prominent authority on […]

Peak water?

Two words that fill many economists with dread are ‘peak oil’. The phrase is meant to signify that moment when oil production peaks, and falls into decline. What will happen when that day occurs? Will we see the end of economic growth, or will we barely notice it, so rich will we be in renewable […]

Gail Tverberg: Oil Limits and Climate Change

They say that every cloud has a silver lining. If future energy consumption (which is mostly fossil fuel) drops because of a financial collapse brought on by high oil prices and other limits, then, at least in theory, climate change should be less of a problem.  One of the important variables in climate change models is […]

Accelerating loss of biodiversity poses serious threat to human survival

A decline in the diversity of farmed plants and livestock breeds is gathering pace, threatening future food supplies for the world’s growing population, the head of a new United Nations panel on biodiversity said on Monday. The new head of a global organization, dedicated to strengthening communication between policymakers and biodiversity scientists, has issued a […]

Fracking could ruin German beer industry, brewers tell Angela Merkel

German brewers have warned Chancellor Angela Merkel that any law allowing the controversial drilling technique known as fracking could damage the country’s cherished beer industry. The Brauer-Bund beer association is worried that fracking for shale gas, which involves pumping water and chemicals at high pressure into the ground, could pollute water used for brewing and […]

Protecting Communities from Fracking’s Impacts

With fracking already underway in 30 states and advancing at a breakneck speed, safeguards have not been adequate to protect communities, public health or the environment. I’ve seen the damage from the oil and gas industry’s unfettered advance firsthand. My conversations with people whose lives have been dramatically impacted were heartbreaking and continue to inform […]

2-child limit for Muslims in parts of Myanmar

Authorities in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state have imposed a two-child limit for Muslim Rohingya families, a policy that does not apply to Buddhists in the area and comes amid accusations of ethnic cleansing in the aftermath of sectarian violence. Local officials said Saturday that the new measure would be applied to two Rakhine townships that […]

Lack of fresh water could hit half the world’s population by 2050

Severe water shortages will affect more than half the world’s future population of nine billion people by 2050 if governments fail to collaborate on international efforts to protect and conserve life’s most vital ingredient, experts have warned. One of the first indications of a future water crisis will be mass migrations of people away from […]

The Colorado River, The High Plains Aquifer And The Entire Western Half Of The U.S. Are Rapidly Drying Up

What is life going to look like as our precious water resources become increasingly strained and the western half of the United States becomes bone dry?  Scientists tell us that the 20th century was the wettest century in the western half of the country in 1000 years, and now things appear to be reverting to […]

Oil Limits and Climate Change

They say that every cloud has a silver lining. If future energy consumption (which is mostly fossil fuel) drops because of a financial collapse brought on by high oil prices and other limits, then, at least in theory, climate change should be less of a problem.  One of the important variables in climate change models is […]

Study: Fukushima Radiation Has Already Killed 14,000 Americans

Already 14,000 U.S. Deaths From Fukushima ? A new study published in the peer-reviewed journal International Journal of Health Services alleges that 14,000 people have already died in the United States due to Fukushima. Specifically, the authors of the study claim: An estimated 14,000 excess deaths in the United States are linked to the radioactive […]

Peak Oil: Ignoring Evidence

An observation worth noting … and pondering, from Al Gore: Have we gone completely nuts? We haven’t gone nuts — but the ‘conversation of democracy’ has become so deeply dysfunctional that our ability to make intelligent collective decisions has been seriously impaired. Throughout American history, we relied on the vibrancy of our public square — […]

People-Powered Politics at the City Level: Searching for True Citizenship

For the first time in human history, over half of the world’s population live in urban areas. By 2050, that number is projected to reach 70 percent. And yet, cities face huge problems. They are responsible for almost 80 percent of the world’s energy consumption and 67 percent of its greenhouse emissions. In 2005, one […]

Forget peak oil—start worrying about peak water

A report released today by the US Geological Survey (USGS) today shows that Americans are sucking dry the aquifers that irrigate their crops and supply their drinking water. Between 1900 and 2008, the US lost 1,000 cubic kilometers (240 cubic miles) of groundwater. That’s twice the volume of the water in Lake Erie. It gets […]

Arctic oil boom sparks the next great political and environmental battle

Things are heating up fast in the far north. The lands and sea of the Arctic — which have been ice-filled, inhospitable and treacherous for most of human history — are experiencing the effects of climate change more rapidly than anywhere else on Earth. All of the Arctic’s sea ice is expected to melt completely, […]

How Fukushima Contamination May Have Spread via Waterways

A new study offers fresh insights into how radioactive contamination from the Fukushima nuclear disaster may have spread through Japan’s interconnected waterways, reaching some freshwater fish hundreds of kilometers away. More In Fukushima Watch At Tepco, A Woman Takes the Levers of Power Fukushima Watch: Dead Rodents Cause Another Cooling System Halt at Stricken Plant Megaquake […]

Population growth and climate change explained by Hans Rosling

Let me show you the world, says Swedish academic Han Rosling as he demonstrates the dynamics of population growth, child mortality and carbon dioxide emissions. The challenge for the world is to get everyone out of extreme poverty and get the richest people to use less fossil fuels so that everyone can share their energy […]

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