Biology
Breach
September 18, 2013, from Agence France-Press
Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa called Tuesday for a global boycott of Chevron, as part of a campaign to highlight Amazon pollution that Quito has attributed to the US oil giant.
Chevron has never worked directly in Ecuador but inherited a pollution lawsuit when it acquired Texaco in 2001, and has yet to pay an associated $19 billion fine.
"This is one of the biggest environmental disasters in the world," Correa said as he launched the campaign in the town of Aguarico, in the north Amazonian province of Sucumbios, where Texaco operated between 1964 and 1990.
"The tools that we will use to fight Chevron are the truth and a call for solidarity of citizens of the world to not buy Chevron products," he said.
September 18, 2013, from Reuters
Holy water at religious shrines and churches in Austria is often contaminated with fecal matter and bacteria, researchers have found, advising the faithful not to drink it, especially in hospital chapels.
Scientists at Vienna University medical school's Institute of Hygiene and Applied Immunology came to the conclusion after analyzing the water quality at 21 "holy" springs and 18 fonts at churches and chapels at various times of year.
Only 14 percent of the water samples from holy sources showed no fecal contamination, and none of the springs could be recommended as a source of drinking water, the study presented to a conference in Vienna this week found.
September 18, 2012, from London Guardian
Halliburton has lost a seven-inch radioactive rod somewhere in the Texas desert. The National Guard has been called in to help to find the device, which employees of the controversial US oilfield services company lost a week ago.
The rod, which contains americium-241/beryllium and is stamped with a radiation warning symbol with the words "Danger Radioactive: Do not handle. Notify civil authorities if found", was lost during a 130-mile journey between oil well sites in Pecos and Odessa last Tuesday.
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) warned that the radioactive materials "could cause permanent injury to a person who handled them".
September 18, 2009, from New York Times
...Agricultural runoff is the single largest source of water pollution in the nation's rivers and streams, according to the E.P.A. An estimated 19.5 million Americans fall ill each year from waterborne parasites, viruses or bacteria, including those stemming from human and animal waste, according to a study published last year in the scientific journal Reviews of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology...In Brown County [Wisconsin], part of one of the nation's largest milk-producing regions, agriculture brings in $3 billion a year. But the dairies collectively also create as much as a million gallons of waste each day. Many cows are fed a high-protein diet, which creates a more liquid manure that is easier to spray on fields.
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Climate
Chaos
September 18, 2013, from NewScientist
A truly ferocious and exceptional event. That is how Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, describes the storm that pummelled his state last week.
"This was a once-in-1000-year rainfall," he says, meaning that the storm was of such an intensity and duration that it had a 1-in-1000 chance of occurring in any given year in Colorado.... That huge volume was due in part to a lingering heatwave that for months blocked tropical moisture from the Gulf of Mexico from reaching the Rocky Mountains, he says. When that heatwave began to move east last week, weak winds allowed the growing storm system to sit above the Colorado peaks for days. Once that deluge hit the ground, more trouble awaited. Because of Colorado's mountainous terrain, the region is flood-prone anyway but recent wildfires exacerbated things near Boulder and Fort Collins, two areas hardest hit by floodwaters. The fires had cleared land of vegetation that would normally absorb rainwater, says Trenberth.
September 18, 2013, from Reuters
Mexico's famous beach resort of Acapulco was in chaos on Tuesday as hotels rationed food for thousands of stranded tourists and floodwaters swallowed homes and cars after some of the most damaging storms in decades killed at least 55 people across the country.
Television footage showed Acapulco's international airport terminal waist deep in water and workers wading out to escape floods that have prevented some 40,000 visitors from leaving and blocked one of the main access routes to the city with mud.
A torrential, three-day downpour cut off several roads into the Pacific resort of 750,000 people, which was a magnet for Hollywood stars in its heyday, but had the highest murder rate in Mexico last year amid a surge in drug gang violence.
September 18, 2013, from Politico
Ron Binz, the president's pick to lead the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, charged into his Tuesday confirmation hearing with a central message: I'm no radical tree-hugger.
But critical pieces moved into place that could sink or stall his bid -- for instance, losing the support of the Energy Committee's top Republican, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.... Binz used his hearing at the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to tout his support for natural gas and pointed out that Colorado's largest coal-fired power plant was approved while he chaired the state's public utilities commission.
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Resource
Depletion
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Recovery
September 18, 2013, from Bloomberg
Coal's future is being built in rural Mississippi, and so far this is what it looks like: a $1 billion cost overrun, a stew of legal battles, a revolt by ratepayers and a credit downgrade for the local utility.
With all those challenges, Southern Co. (SO)'s $4.7 billion project in Kemper County may still be coal's best hope to survive President Barack Obama's limits on greenhouse-gas emissions. "It's a transformative project," said John Thompson, a director of the Clean Air Task Force, a Boston-based environmental group. "It will be the largest and cleanest coal plant in the world, but I don't think it will hold that title for long."
September 18, 2012, from CNN Money
America's young people just aren't buying cars like they used to.
The share of new cars purchased by those aged 18-34 dropped 30 percent in the last five years, according to the car shopping web site Edmunds.com. mostly it's the explosion of social media. Car ownership just may not be as socially important as it used to be.
"What we used to do in cars, young people are now doing online," said one analyst at a recent oil conference.
The ability to meet and interact with people on the Internet is largely replacing the need to hop in a car and cruise down the strip.
September 18, 2012, from TakePart
If corporations are people now, why can't rivers be?
Under a landmark agreement, signed in New Zealand earlier this summer, the Whanganui River has become a legal entity with a legal voice.
The agreement is the result of over a hundred years of advocacy by the Whanganui iwi, an indigenous community with a long history of reliance on the river and its bountiful natural resources. The Whanganui, the third longest river in New Zealand, will be recognized as a person under the law "in the same way a company is, which will give it rights and interests," Christopher Finlayson, a spokesperson for the Minister of Treaty Negotiations, told the New Zealand Herald.
September 18, 2009, from London Times
India wrong-footed the United States and other rich nations yesterday by agreeing for the first time to set numerical targets for curbing its greenhouse gas emissions.
The move added to pressure on the Obama Administration to deliver on its own climate change pledges even as senior Democrats warned that US legislation may face severe delays.
Jairam Ramesh, the Indian Environment Minister, told The Times that legislation was being drafted in Delhi to limit India's carbon footprint and in the process repair his country's reputation for intransigence on climate change before the crucial UN conference in Copenhagen in December.
September 18, 2009, from London Independent
Trafigura, the oil-trading company at the centre of the scandal caused by the dumping of tons of toxic waste in one of the world's poorest countries, could be prosecuted for murder after a dossier of evidence was submitted to a court in the Netherlands yesterday, alleging that the sludge caused deaths and serious injuries.
A complaint filed by Greenpeace Netherlands calls for a Dutch prosecution arising from Trafigura's actions in July 2006 — when a chartered tanker carrying the contaminated waste arrived in Amsterdam — to be widened to include events in Ivory Coast a month later which caused thousands of people to fall ill after tons of the foul-smelling slurry was dumped in the port of Abidjan.... A United Nations report this week stated that there seemed to be "prima facie evidence" that up to a dozen deaths in Abidjan were linked to the sludge.
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