Fright in perspective

A tip for survival in 21st Century America: When someone on television warns of grave threats to human welfare from the environmental consequences of some regular activity, change channels. When someone approaches in person with a similar message, turn and run. These people want to frighten you, and fright is bad for the heart. Fright […]

Apache natural gas well has leak beneath floor of U.S. Gulf

Natural gas from a well being drilled by Apache Corporation in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico has flowed underground, leading U.S. regulators to order the company to prepare to drill a relief well to control the flow if necessary, the U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement said. Apache shut in the well on February […]

Oil in China

FU CHENGYU has global ambitions. In 2005 he led CNOOC, a state-run Chinese energy giant, to make an audacious takeover bid for Unocal, an American oil-and-gas firm. That provoked a protectionist backlash, and CNOOC retreated. (It has since won approval to buy Nexen, a Canadian energy firm.) In 2011 Mr Fu took over as boss […]

Sierra Club Gets Radical on Tar Sands

The term “civil disobedience” takes its roots from an 1849 essay by U.S. poet, philosopher and environmentalist, Henry David Thoreau, originally entitled “Resistance to Civil Government”. Civil disobedience is often used as a non-violent tool of protest against widespread injustices, such as in the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. On the […]

Meteorite hits central Russia, more than 500 people hurt

More than 500 people were injured when a meteorite shot across the sky and exploded over central Russia on Friday, sending fireballs crashing to Earth, shattering windows and damaging buildings. People heading to work in Chelyabinsk heard what sounded like an explosion, saw a bright light and then felt a shockwave according to a Reuters […]

Fukushima disaster panel so far reports on thyroid cancer

A Fukushima Prefectural Government panel said Wednesday that two people who were 18 or younger when the triple-meltdown crisis started at the Fukushima No. 1 atomic complex in March 2011 have been diagnosed with thyroid cancer, bringing the total cases to three. Reporting at a meeting on the health impact from the catastrophe, professor Shinichi […]

Pulsing paradigm or steady state?

Seldom do you come across arguments that truly question the premise of a steady state economy. Sure, growth-obsessed pundits make arguments against it all the time, but these can typically be refuted by reviewing a few facts. After all, the world is finite, and there are real limits to growth. However, when such an argument […]

Plunder The Planet

Professor Ugo Bardi appears on the ‘From Alpha To Omega’ podcast, where he discusses his upcoming book ‘Plundering the Planet’. Our discussion covers the role of volcano’s in regulating the planets atmosphere, Georg Bauer – the ‘Father of Mining’, Gaia and homeostatis, and the terrifying risks of anthroprogenic climate change. Prof. Bardi is the Professor […]

Hurrah for the free market! (Can you leave now, please?)

The free market has served the world well. But its best time is over. Guest post by Graeme Maxton Free marketeers, please take a bow. It is time for those with other ideas to take centre stage. Let’s hear it for the free marketeers! The free market has been a wonder of our age. Its […]

China sets timetable for cleaner fuel standards

China’s cabinet has issued a timetable for oil companies to deliver cleaner fuel nationwide beginning this year, the Xinhua news agency reported, but the new standards won’t become mandatory for four years despite rising public anger over choking air pollution. Thick smog has blanketed many Chinese cities in recent weeks and auto emissions are among […]

Draft Arctic Oil Spill Agreement “Inadequate”

Environmentalists are warning that a meeting of environment ministers that took place Monday in Sweden has agreed on a weak and inadequate response plan in case of an oil spill in the Arctic Ocean. According to Greenpeace, an environment watchdog, a leaked copy of the document suggests that the eight member states that make up […]

New Book: A Child Free America

Despite doom and gloom predictions that never came to pass, overpopulation alarmists continue to make their case that society must restrict the procreation of human beings. In 1968, Paul Ehrlich’s book Population Bomb said that hundreds of millions of people would perish as a result of an overpopulated earth. The Weekly Standard’s Jonathan V. Last’s […]

Fracking vs. beer: Does natural gas exploration threaten America’s breweries?

You can’t make beer without clean water, but now some breweries are afraid that fracking will threaten the very water supplies they depend upon. “It’s all about the quality of the water,” Simon Thorpe, CEO of the Ommegang Brewery  in Cooperstown, N.Y., told NBC’s “Rock Center with Brian Williams” this week. “The technology surrounding fracking is […]

Fish Near Fukushima Shows More than 2,500 Times Legal Radiation Limit for Human Consumption

The two-year anniversary of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster is rapidly approaching, and the waters around the crippled plant are still highly contaminated with radiation, according to new reports. A fish caught as part of an ongoing Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) seafood monitoring program recently tested at levels of 254,000 becquerels per kilogram (Bq/kg) […]

Overfishing Threatens Critical Link in the Food Chain

The fish near the bottom of the aquatic food chain are often overlooked, but they are vital to healthy oceans and estuaries. Collectively known as forage fish, these species—including sardines, anchovies, herrings, and shrimp-like crustaceans called krill—feed on plankton and become food themselves for larger fish, seabirds, and marine mammals. Historically, people have eaten many […]

China’s environment: An economic death sentence

The hazardous conditions in Beijing and northern China is merely of one many wake-up calls for the Chinese government. Will it be enough to spark change? For a long time, environmental activists, economists, and China scholars have warned about the coming environmental disaster in China. Such a catastrophe finally appeared in the most dramatic form […]

Minor oil spills are often bigger than reported

By analysing satellite images, oceanographers have found that small oil spills in the heavily drilled northern Gulf of Mexico are often much larger than reported. The researchers presented their results last week at the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and Ecosystem Science Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana. Small oil spills — ranging from oil-drilling mishaps […]

Life after Chernobyl: Sergei Gaschak’s photography from inside ‘the zone’

VIEW GALLERY Sergei Gaschak’s photography offers an unparalleled glimpse at animal life inside “the zone”, the area of Ukraine and Belarus that has been officially closed off to human habitation since the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe of 1986. Using camera traps to take photographs mechanically, as well as taking photographs personally, Gaschak has captured what few […]

Can we avoid a collapse?

“Population Bomb” author & Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich on his Royal Society Paper “Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided?” From Tasmania, forest expert Dr. David Bowman: wild fires drive more global warming. Economist John Talberth suing the U.S. Government over risky ocean oil leases in the Arctic. Three interviews from a world […]

Is Fracking a ‘Happy Solution’ to our Energy Needs?

A few weeks ago, John Mauldin called fracking a “happy solution” that will produce jobs, potentially solve our trade deficit and generate new tax revenue, though energy prices may rise in the process. But how excited should we be about the “shale revolution”? Over the last few years, we have seen increasing enthusiasm – bordering […]

Are human populations increasing or decreasing?

With 7 billion people living on Earth, the global demographics experts are considering the planet’s future in space along with the Earth’s human population. However, the global population count could begin dropping in the next few years. Actress Alexandra Paul thinks couples should either produce one child or have no children. She desires a planet […]

Davos Shell Station Shut Down By Arctic Oil Drilling Protestors

Activists with a big fake polar bear have occupied a Shell service station in the Swiss resort of Davos to protest Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s oil drilling in the Arctic. About 25 activists from around Europe chained gas pumps together Friday at the station near where the World Economic Forum was being held and hung […]

Chesapeake Energy to Host EPA in Study of Fracking Risk to Water

Natural gas producer Chesapeake Energy Corp. (CHK) has agreed to let the Environmental Protection Agency conduct extensive tests at one of its drilling sites as part of an investigation into the safety of hydraulic fracturing, an administration official said. The testing, which will involve water sampling before and after drilling takes place, will serve as […]

Filmmaker Sir David Attenborough Calls Humans a Plague

Sir David Attenborough, the famed British naturalist and television presenter, has some harsh words for humanity. “We are a plague on the Earth,” Attenborough told the Radio Times, as reported by the Telegraph. “It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so.” Attenborough went on to say that both climate change and […]

Air Pollution: The Price of Coal in China

Last Saturday an air pollution monitor atop the U.S. Embassy in Beijing rated the pollution index at a shocking 755–on a scale of 0 to 500. (The EPA categorizes pollution levels over 300 as “hazardous.”) A Time reporter wrote that the view from her 16th floor Beijing apartment was “akin to a sandstorm in Afghanistan.” […]

Meet Mike, The Most Radioactive Fish Ever From Fukushima

Almost two years after the awful nuclear disaster occurred, a fish caught near Fukushima on Friday January 18th had a record-breaking level of radioactive contamination over 2500x the legal limit. TEPCO measured ‘Mike the Murasoi’ at 254,000 becquerels per kilogram (with the limit for edible seafood at 100 becquerels). As Le Monde reports, the previous […]

Exxon Mobil and the precautionary principle

A recent poll conducted by the Civil Society Institute (CSI) and the Environmental Working Group found that the vast majority of Americans favor more political leadership when balancing domestic energy production with protecting people and the environment. This poll is interesting on many levels, primarily because of the overwhelming percentages of constituents who want more […]

2 Reports on Oil Sands Paint a Dire Picture

Opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline and the heavy Canadian crude oil that it would carry released two reports on Thursday asserting that the environmental impacts of the project are worse than previously estimated, and urged the Obama administration to veto it. One report, from the anti-petroleum group Oil Change International, finds that existing studies […]

Experts Fear Collapse of Global Civilisation

Experts on the health of our planet are terrified of the future. They can clearly see the coming collapse of global civilisation from an array of interconnected environmental problems. Poor communities are hit hardest by extreme weather events. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS “We’re all scared,” said Paul Ehrlich, president of the Center for Conservation Biology at […]

Digging for Water, But Striking Oil

The volatile politics of the Middle East have long been dominated by the fluctuating fortunes of a single commodity: oil. But when the oil-blessed region runs out of water, there could be a change in the political landscape, triggering potential conflicts. The world’s future wars, experts predict, will be over water, not oil. U.N. Secretary-General […]

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