Greenwire/NYTimes.com: Food Insecurity Looms in Parched Horn of Africa
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — A drought in the Horn of Africa, triggered by the same La Niña episode that caused massive flooding in Australia last year, is plunging millions of pastoralists closer to food insecurity.
Parts of Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and eastern Uganda are most affected. The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that 8.4 million people are in need of food aid in the region, according to spokesman David Orr. Thousands of livestock have already died in Kenya and Ethiopia from animal diseases associated with the drought. The severity this year will depend on the rainy season between March and May. [...]
Read MoreGreenwire/NYTimes.com: Study: Human Exposure to BPA ‘Grossly Underestimated’
Americans are likely to be exposed at higher levels than previously thought to bisphenol A, a compound that mimics hormones important to human development and is found in more than 90 percent of people in the United States, according to new research. U.S. EPA says it is OK for humans to take in up to [...]
Read MoreEPA Developing Tool to Assist in Enviro Justice Initiative
July 30 — U.S. EPA is working on a coarse screening tool as part of its “environmental justice” initiative to help its employees spot pockets of people whose health has suffered disproportionally over the years. The Environmental Justice Strategic Enforcement Assessment Tool uses a complex combination of census data, a respiratory hazard index, poverty levels, [...]
Read MoreGreenwire/NYTimes.com: Dengue Re-emerges in U.S., Spurring Race for Vaccine
June 28 — For the first time in more than 65 years, dengue has returned the continental United States, according to an advisory the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued in late May. While a few cases were reported earlier, they were primarily in Americans who had caught the virus abroad or at the [...]
Read MoreGreenwire/NYTimes.com: High-Speed Rail Will Spur Growth in Hub Cities, Says Mayors Report
June 14 – Billions of dollars of new business and tens of thousands of jobs will flow to four hub cities — Los Angeles, Chicago, Orlando and Albany, N.Y. — where plans for major high-speed rail networks are located, according to the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Their report, released in Oklahoma City today, is the [...]
Read MoreScientists Weigh Use of Bacteria for Cleaner Fossil Fuel Production
May 18 — Much of the world’s oil reserves lies in giant tar sand stretches in places like Alberta and Venezuela. While the oil industry uses an energy-intensive and fairly dirty process to make steam to cook the oil out of the tar sands, underground bacteria simply eat the crude oil and break it down [...]
Read MoreA Road Map to Deliver GM Crops to Third World Farmers
March 31 — In Burkina Faso, a school for the future regulators of Africa’s genetically modified (GM) crops is opening up next month. The school, called the African Biosafety Network of Expertise (ABNE), has been set up by the African Union and is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The operators are careful [...]
Read MoreSearching for the Wildest Strawberries to Save Crop Diversity
ClimateWire/ New York Times, Mar ’10– It has been a long journey for the latest shipment of seeds to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The vault, built into a Norwegian mountain near the North Pole, is the final defense for agriculture in the face of growing populations, a changing climate and rising threats to food [...]
Read MoreCompanies Work to Harness the Power of Waves
Harnessing the ocean waves for emission-free power seems like a tidy concept, but the ocean is anything but tidy. Waves crash from multiple directions on a seemingly random basis, and converting the kinetic energy into electricity is a frontier of alternative energy research that requires grappling with large unknowns. But with several utility companies and [...]
Read MoreIndia’s Future Energy Business Plan — Shop the World for More Coal
BOKARO, India — The men who work at Bokaro Steel City (there are few women) behave as though they are in the Wild West. Some are slick and charming with their words. They stand in air filled with fine coal dust that gets into every crevice of the skin and upper respiratory system, while saying [...]
Read MoreInjecting Tiny Proteins Into the Hunt for ‘Clean Coal’
As big engineering fixes go, “clean coal” has proved an elusive concept. Carbon capture projects remain experimental, expensive and energy intensive. But working with some of the tiniest things in nature, scientists are engineering proteins found in living things to trap carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plants. “Biomimetic design” is the idea of using nature [...]
Read MoreDoes the Huge China-Australia Coal Deal Square With the Copenhagen Accord?
Environmental activists are attacking a $60 billion deal that will keep Chinese power stations supplied with Australian coal for at least the next two decades. Under the agreement announced last week, the Australian coal and iron ore mining company Resourcehouse will build a new mining complex to give China Power International Development 30 million tonnes [...]
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