In what environmentalists are deeming “the greatest environmental crime in history,” the British oil company, BP, is investing $1.5 billion in a project to extract oil from tar sands in the Canadian wilderness – a method that is both highly inefficient and ecologically destructive – effectively departing from its eco-friendly image under the “Beyond Petroleum” motto.
Red Sea Mega-Dam Would Be 'Irresponsible'
The proposed construction of a gigantic “heliohydroelectric” dam that would literally part the Red Sea holds the potential to generate large amounts of clean energy for an impoverished region, but could also cause irreversible global ecological damage through the partial draining of the Red Sea.
Forest Loss in Sumatra Becomes a Global Issue
Worldwide demand for palm oil used in cooking, cosmetics, and “earth-friendly” biodiesel is driving logging of Sumatra’s once-dense forests and the establishment of palm plantations, causing concern about the greenhouse gas contributions caused by deforestation – which now accounts for 20% of global emissions – and Indonesia’s potential “carbon bomb.”
Humans Make Atmosphere Wetter
A joint US, UK, German and Japanese study finds human-caused increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels has in turn forced up water-vapor content.
Scientists Warn That Species Extinction Could Reduce Productivity of Plants on Earth by Half
An international team of scientists has published a new analysis showing that as plant species around the world go extinct, natural habitats become less productive and contain fewer total plants — a situation that could ultimately compromise important benefits that humans get from nature.
Grim Outlook for Polar Bears
If emissions of greenhouse gases and resulting global and Arctic warming continue apace, the study said, two-thirds of the 22,000 or so bears will disappear by midcentury. Some bear experts see that prognosis as overly dire.
U.N. Warns of Rapid Decay of Environment
Climage change, the rate of extinction of species, and the challenge of feeding a growing population are putting humanity at risk, the United Nations Environment Program says in its fourth Global Environmental Outlook since 1997.
Environmental Laws Waived to Press Work on Border Fence
The homeland security secretary waived several environmental laws to continue building a border fence through a national conservation area in Arizona.
At the Poles, Melting Occurring at Alarming Rate
For scientists, global warming is a disaster movie, its opening scenes set at the poles of Earth. The epic already has started. And it’s not fiction. The scenes are playing, at the start, in slow motion: