36 Percent Of Fukushima Children Have Abnormal Growths From Radiation Exposure

Of more than 38,000 children tested from the Fukushima Prefecture in Japan, 36 percent have abnormal growths – cysts or nodules – on their thyroids a year after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, as reported by ENENews. The shocking numbers come from the thyroid examination section of the “Sixth Report of Fukushima Prefecture Health Management Survey,” published by Fukushima […]

Climate change and peak oil: two sides of the same coin?

This talk was given on July 4th at an event organised by Winchester Action on Climate Change (WinACC). The views in the talk are my own; they should not be interpreted as the official view of WinACC. Download the Powerpoint presentation (1.1 MB). The slides from this presentation are reproduced below. Global Peak oil can […]

Nine Strategies to Stop Short of Nine Billion

Although most analysts assume that the world’s population will rise from today’s seven billion to nine billion by 2050, it is quite possible that humanity will never reach this population size. My chapter in this year’s State of the World 2012: Moving Toward Sustainable Prosperity, “Nine Population Strategies to Stop Short of 9 Billion,” outlines […]

In Canada’s Tar Sands, a Dante’s Hell Threatens People Nearby and Across the Globe

In Canada’s western province of Alberta, Melina Laboucan-Massimo’s community—the Lubicon Lake Nation—has endured a withering toxic tar sands oil assault, an Armageddon against nature few Americans are fully aware of. Here in the once pristine sub-Arctic, tar sands mining operations level vast swaths of boreal forests near native lands, as pipelines burst and spew corrosive chemical-laced tar sands […]

Enough Oil to Fry the Planet? – R-Squared Energy TV

Robert Rapier shares his thoughts on Maugeri’s study predicting immense oil production growth and Monbiot’s subsequent reversal of his positions on peak oil.

Population Growth: Six Hours to Fill Yankee Stadium

It’s World Population Day! Why does that matter? Unlike Slurpee Day (also July 11) or National Hot Dog Day (July 21), population growth has a direct effect on you, your children, your future and the health of our planet. Let’s put population growth into terms any baseball fan can understand. Every hour, the world population […]

Nine population strategies to stop short of 9 billion

Population experts have been saying for many years that we can anticipate nine billion humans on Earth by the year 2050. This morning (July 10, 2012), the Worldwatch Institute in Washington D.C. released the following nine strategies for stopping short of that number. These ideas agree with what nearly every other population expert has told […]

Marcellus Shale Study Shows Fluids Seeping Into Pennsylvania Drinking Water Supplies

New research has concluded that salty, mineral-rich fluids deep beneath Pennsylvania’s natural gas fields are likely seeping upward thousands of feet into drinking water supplies. Though the fluids were natural and not the byproduct of drilling or hydraulic fracturing, the finding further stokes the red-hot controversy over fracking in the Marcellus Shale, suggesting that drilling […]

World Population Day Notes Problems of Population Growth

July 11 is World Population Day, an annual observance to educate the public about the problems of overpopulation and continuing population growth. It grew out of the public interest in Five Billion Day in 1987 when the global population reached five billion people. A quarter century later, world population now exceeds 7 billion and is […]

Population: An issue that has been long neglected

When Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb in 1968, the world population, then 3bn, was growing at an unprecedented rate due to spectacular declines in mortality levels. Unless countries decided also to “talk fertility down”, as Australian demographer John Caldwell put it, rapid population growth was poised to undermine development. Many countries, particularly in Asia […]

GrowthBusters: World Population Day

World Population Day is observed every year on July 11. We at GrowthBusters have created a new website, www.worldpopulationday.org, in order to bring more attention to the fact the world is overpopulated. As I explain on the About page, too many leaders and organizations if they take note of the day at all tapdance around […]

No Future We Want Without the Ocean

When South Korea, one of Asia’s rising economic powerhouses, decided to host the international exhibition Expo 2012 in the coastal town of Yeosu, it picked a theme high on the agenda of the just-concluded Rio+20 summit on sustainable development: the living ocean. The entire focus of Expo 2012, which completes its three month run Aug. […]

Fukushima nuclear disaster report blames ‘collusion’ ‎: Flaws in US General Electric Reactors

The particular model used at Fukushima had inherent design flaws in the containment structure from the outset and engineers predicted the exact scenario that happened at Fukushima. The General Electric Corporation began constructing the Mark-1 BWR reactors in the 1960s, claiming that they were cheaper and easier to build in part because they used a […]

Investigation reveals true hazards of piping tar sands across America

America has a new word to learn: Dilbit. Dilbit, short for diluted bitumen, is a combination of tar sands crude (bitumen) and dangerous liquid chemicals like benzene (the dilutant) used to thin crude so it can be piped to refineries. And there is a lot of it being piped into America — in some cases […]

Demography is Destiny

The human population of planet Earth is expected to approach 10 billion sometime between 2050 and 2100. The number itself is not nearly so disturbing as the places where the greatest population growth is expected to occur.   As seen on the graphic above, most of the growth within the 10 most populous nations, is […]

Enough fossil fuels to fry us all

George Monbiot said in a recent article that “We were wrong about peak oil. There is enough to fry us all”. He is wrong on peak oil, but right with his general conclusion. There are enough fossil fuels to fry us all. Will peak oil save us from global warming? Can it be that the […]

More Views on the Gas Rush and Hydraulic Fracturing

Here are a couple of reactions to my exchange with “Gasland” filmmaker Josh Fox after signals emerged that New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is poised to end a state moratorium on gas drilling using hydraulic fracturing. (In a related development, North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue, a Democrat who does not flatly oppose hydraulic fracturing, […]

Smoke From Fukushima Reactor 6 Turbine Bldg

Another minor incident at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant, this time in the basement of the turbine building for Reactor 6, one of the only two reactors at Fukushima that remain in cold shutdown in the true sense (not the definition by the Noda administration) after the accident. (Reactor 4 did not have the fuel […]

UN Asks: How Many People Could Live on Planet Earth?

The Tellus Institute , a non-profit sustainability research organization, created “sophisticated human population models” with their PoleStar project (PSP). Using data provided to them by the United Nations (UN) and the World Bank (WB), they analyzed parameters such as energy consumption, land use and pollution. The PSP predicts simulated outcomes that are being used to […]

Pincushion America: The irretrievable legacy of drilling everywhere on drinking water

Since 1949 the United States has had more than 2.6 million oil and natural gas wells drilled into its surface. Many more wells have gone uncounted since they were drilled before comprehensive records were kept. Add to that some 680,000 waste injection wells of which more than 150,000 inject industrial wastes, some of it considered […]

Keystone Accident: A Geyser of Tar Sands Oil

On an early morning in May 2011, North Dakota farmer Bob Banderet was walking out of his farm house with his daughter to check on some calves when off in the distance they noticed something billowing into the air “like a geyser.” It didn’t take long for him to figure out what it was, since the plume of […]

Thirst for power: How coal, nuclear and gas waste our water

“Capitalism,” wrote the environmental economist K. William Kapp, “must be regarded as an economy of unpaid costs, ‘unpaid’ in so far as a substantial portion of the actual costs of production remain unaccounted for in entrepreneurial outlays; instead they are shifted to, and ultimately borne by, third persons or by the community as a whole.” […]

Japan to burn drums of unprocessed radioactive waste from nuclear accident

Nuclear fuel processing firm JCO Co. plans to build an incinerator for disposing of low-level radioactive waste stored at its plant in Tokaimura, Ibaraki Prefecture, where a fatal criticality accident occurred in 1999, company officials said Tuesday. JCO will submit necessary documents to the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry with the aim of […]

Can we avoid the perfect storm?

It is quite possible that by the year 2100 human life will have become extinct or will be confined to a few residential areas that have escaped the devastating effects of nuclear holocaust or global warming. —Brian Barry1 Evolution equipped us to deal with threats from dependably loathsome enemies and fearsome creatures, but not with […]

Population Control or Population Justice?

Shrinking the world’s population is one way to curb global warming, according to some environmentalists. To make that happen, women need to be in control of their own fertility. But those perspectives are very controversial. On this edition: how environmentalism can lead down a slippery slope to population control, and even anti-immigrant policies. Can an […]

Due to International Pressure (Or Typhoon Damage?), Tepco Agrees to Start Removing Radioactive Fuel from Fukushima a Year Early

Tepco was going to wait until late 2013 to even begin to start addressing the greatest threat to humanity. There is some good news. Specifically – due to international pressure – Tepco has agreed to speed up the timetable.  As Reuters notes: Workers at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant will begin removing fuel rods from […]

UN chief unveils clean energy pledges, investments

Addis Ababa, June 22 (WIC) – U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday over 50 governments have began new energy strategies, while private investors have pledged over 50 billion US dollars to help carry out his goal to double the share of global renewable energy and the rate of energy efficiency improvement by 2030. The […]

Fracking doesn’t cause quakes, except when it does

(CNN) — The use of hydraulic fracturing to open underground natural gas formations has a low risk of triggering earthquakes, experts reported Friday, but some scientists say the debate is far from over. “Fracking,” as the process is commonly known, involves injecting a mixture of water and chemicals deep into the Earth. The pressure causes shale […]

Keystone XL pipeline won’t benefit American families or the environment

By Emilie Winn  As a 16-year-old high school student, I am deeply concerned about the long-term effects of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline on my and subsequent generations. This pipeline would transport tar sands 2,000 miles from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Producing synthetic oil from tar sands generates around three times the amount of greenhouse gases as […]

Scientists Urge Earth Summit to Act on Population Growth

Joint report by 105 institutions urges negotiators to drop political inhibitions and confront rising global population and consumption The Rio+20 Earth summit must take decisive action on population and consumption regardless of political taboos or it will struggle to tackle the alarming decline of the global environment, the world’s leading scientific academies warned on Thursday. […]

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