How Black Is the Japanese Nuclear Swan?

The Japanese earthquake is a tragedy of epic proportions in so many ways. The situation continues to evolve, and the full scope of the disaster will not be understood for a long time. One critical aspect is the effect on Japan’s nuclear industry, which provides over 30% of the country’s electricity from 54 reactors. Some […]

Japan Volcano Erupts, Sends Columns of Ash in Air

A volcano in southwestern Japan erupted Sunday after nearly two weeks of relative silence, sending ash and rocks up to four kilometers into the air, a local official said. It was not immediately clear if the eruption was a direct result of the massive 8.9-magnitude earthquake that rocked northern areas Friday, unleashing a fierce tsunami […]

What’s going on with the Japanese nuclear reactors: a primer

Tokyo Electric Power began injecting sea water into a reactor at its Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant Saturday in an effort to maintain cooling of the unit, which lost power following an earthquake and tsunami Friday. Tepco reported higher-than-normal levels of radioactivity at the site but did not provide numbers. Tepco said one worker in […]

Japan Quake Moved Coast 8 Feet, Shifted Earth’s Axis

The powerful earthquake that unleashed a devastating tsunami Friday appears to have moved the main island of Japan by 8 feet (2.4 meters) and shifted the Earth on its axis. “At this point, we know that one GPS station moved (8 feet), and we have seen a map from GSI (Geospatial Information Authority) in Japan […]

Japan’s quake could have irradiated the entire US

In an earthquake, or other disaster, will nuclear reactors remain as “safe” and “clean” as is claimed? Photo: Cplbasilisk via Flickr. Had the massive 8.9 earthquake that has just savaged Japan hit instead off of the California coast, it could have ripped apart at least four coastal reactors and sent a lethal cloud of radiation […]

Extinction event?

The Arctic is defrosting as warm Atlantic waters rush through the Fram Strait instead of skirting the southern coast of Greenland. This is an important event, regardless of the deafening silence exhibited by the mainstream media. How important? First consider the background, from the perspective of long-time climate scientist James Hansen and colleague Makiko Sato, who report […]

Gulf spill sickness wrecking lives

Nearly a year after the oil disaster began, Gulf Coast residents are sick, and dying from BP’s toxic chemicals. “I have critically high levels of chemicals in my body,” 33-year-old Steven Aguinaga of Hazlehurst, Mississippi told Al Jazeera. “Yesterday I went to see another doctor to get my blood test results and the nurse said […]

World’s sixth mass extinction may be underway

Mankind may have unleashed the sixth known mass extinction in Earth’s history, according to a paper released by the science journal Nature. Over the past 540 million years, five mega-wipeouts of species have occurred through naturally-induced events. But the new threat is man-made, inflicted by habitation loss, over-hunting, over-fishing, the spread of germs and viruses […]

ProPublica’s Guide to Fracking

It’s been a busy couple of weeks in the fracking and natural gas drilling debate, with the documentary film Gasland nominated for an Academy Award and a front-page story in Sunday’s New York Times on the dangers posed by the technology. The Times story underscored the findings of dozens of reports that ProPublica has published […]

The World Population and the Global Economy

AEI scholar Nick Eberstadt warns that an aging population will have a drastic effects on the world economy in just a short 20 years from now.

Lurching toward the peak

One of the side notes to the struggles over climate change are minor but persistent claims that we are reaching or have already reached “peak oil.” Others have taken up the chorus, speculating about peak water, peak land, even peak everything (the title of a book by Richard Heinberg). Some predict a century of declining […]

China has 1.34 bn people

Wondering how many people does the world’s most populous country have? Well, China has a mind-boggling 1.34 billion people, latest official statistics show. Neighbour India stands second in the global population tally with an estimated figure of 1.2 billion. China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Monday said that preliminary data showed the country had 1.341 […]

U.S: Environment Agency Moves to Regulate Carbon Dioxide

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has begun the initial stages of a process that may lead to the federal agency’s first regulations to limit emissions of carbon dioxide from power plants and oil refineries. The agency has held four of five “listening sessions”, including one attended by IPS in Atlanta, Georgia, on Feb. 15. […]

NOAA: Climate change could hurt in 30 years

It’s time to take this climate change thing seriously, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says in so many words. The federal agency posted a story on its online site this past week saying that scientists have found that a heated Earth could result in a number of human afflictions – in 30 years. Among them: […]

Full devastating effects of Gulf oil disaster could take a decade to emerge, says scientist

The full extent of the damage caused by the BP oil disaster last April may not become apparent for at least another decade, says Samantha Joye, a professor in the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of Georgia. Contrary to claims made by BP’s compensation fund that the Gulf will fully recover by 2012, […]

Earth may be ‘unrecognizable’ by 2050, experts say

A growing, more affluent population competing for ever scarcer resources could make for an “unrecognizable” world by 2050, researchers warned at a major U.S. science conference Sunday. The UN has predicted the global population will reach 7 billion this year, and climb to 9 billion by 2050, “with almost all of the growth occurring in […]

Scientist finds Gulf bottom still oily, dead

Oil from the BP spill remains stuck on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, according to a scientist’s video and slides that she says demonstrate the oil isn’t degrading as hoped and has decimated life on parts of the sea floor. At a science conference in Washington, marine scientist Samantha Joye of the University […]

Human Fertilization Starts at the Bottom

In the Middle East and other regions with increasing water stress, using clean water to whisk excreta out of sight is increasingly wasteful. For the more than 40% of the world’s population that don’t have private toilets with running water, it is not even a choice. For the rest of us, who are the heirs […]

It’s time to rethink call to ‘go forth and multiply’

At current growth rates, nine million babies will be born this year, and four million people will die. It doesn’t take Charles Darwin to conclude that we can’t keep doing this forever. What Darwin, and others of his ilk, did teach us is that we are not “above” nature; we are part of it. One […]

The Weather Isn’t Getting Weirder

Last week a severe storm froze Dallas under a sheet of ice, just in time to disrupt the plans of the tens of thousands of (American) football fans descending on the city for the Super Bowl. On the other side of the globe, Cyclone Yasi slammed northeastern Australia, destroying homes and crops and displacing hundreds […]

Man, Stop Producing! How Promoting Reproductive Freedom Will Solve Earth’s Environmental Problems

United Nations calculations show that if global fertility settles at 1.4 children per women within a few decades, down from today’s average of 2.6, our planet’s rapid population growth could completely halt by 2045, at just over 8 billion. That is only 34 years away. Yes, those are cries of joy you hear. They come […]

Noam Chomsky: How Climate Change Became a ‘Liberal Hoax’

In this sixth video in the series “Peak Oil and a Changing Climate” from The Nation and On The Earth Productions, linguist, philosopher and political activist Noam Chomsky talks about the Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute and other business lobbies enthusiastically carrying out campaigns “to try and convince the population that global warming […]

As world population heads toward a peak, Malthusian worries reemerge

Food and people. Thomas Malthus posed them as two forces rarely in balance. Plentiful food encourages population growth. A booming population devours more food than can be produced. Famine and other ugliness follow. Population crashes. Students who learn of Malthus’s grim prediction usually take away two lessons. The first is the sharp contrast between arithmetic […]

Is 2010 Really The Warmest Year Ever?

Both NOAA and NASA this month announced that 2010 was tied for the warmest year. The UK Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University proclaimed 2010 the second warmest year since 1850. But after the incredibly cold and snowy winters in 2008/09 and 2009/10 and so far in 2010/11, those claims are falling on increasingly […]

Starvation: The last thing our hungry world needs is more food

Government chief scientist Sir John Beddington calls it ‘the perfect storm’. Soaring world population, coupled with climate change, is set to create a world food crisis and leave billions starving. ‘We are at a unique moment in history,’ he said recently, while launching a report from his Government think-tank, Foresight. The Foresight project, Global Food […]

Technological Innovation for Human Development

The time of reckoning is coming when we must face the consequences of technological innovation geared to maximization of short-term profits regardless of social and ecological impacts. There is increasingly increasing objective evidence that we are systematically destroying the human habitat. Some (usually the most vulnerable) people are already experiencing the consequences. Technological innovation is […]

Cue the doomsayers

When I was a student at York University in the early 1970s, there was one must-read book on first-year course lists: The Population Bomb, by Paul Ehrlich. It was full of prognostications about devastating overpopulation that would cause the world to run out of land and resources. The book became a best-seller at a time […]

UN: Population growth must slow

The world population growth rate must slow down significantly to avoid reaching unsustainable levels, says a new UN report. To have a reasonable chance of stabilising world population, fertility must drop to below “replacement level”. It must then be maintained at that level for an extended period, says the report. This replacement level is the […]

Oil Decline Rate And Population

The rapid increase in the world’s population over the last hundred years is not merely coincident with the rapid increase in oil production. It is the latter that has actually allowed (the word “caused” might be too strong) the former: that is to say, oil has been the main source of energy within industrial society. […]

Oil Spill Dispersants Lingered in Deep Ocean

A crucial component of the chemical dispersant applied to oil gushing from BP’s blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico last year did not break down as fast as scientists initially expected and probably remains at detectable levels in the deep ocean, scientists said on Wednesday. Traces of the dispersant compound were found in September […]

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