During his speech at West Point Military Academy earlier this week, President Barack Obama described climate change as a "creeping national security crisis" that will require the armed forces to "respond to refugee flows, natural disasters, and conflicts over water and food."
The speech emphasised that US foreign policy in the 21st century is increasingly being honed in recognition of heightened risks of social, political and economic upheaval around the world due the impacts of global warming.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officially unveiled the Obama administration’s plan Monday to cut greenhouse gases 30 per cent by 2030, stressing what it says will be the economic benefits of its "clean-air revolution."
Under the plan, carbon emissions would be reduced 30 per cent by 2030, compared to 2005 levels, one of the most significant actions to address global warming in U.S. history.
A Japanese oil tanker has exploded off the country's south-west coast near Himeji port, leaving one of the eight people aboard missing, the country's coast guard has said. Four others were severely injured in the accident on Thursday.
Fire gutted the middle of the Shoko Maru – the 998-tonne tanker, based in the western city of Hiroshima, was left leaning over in the water after the accident and was being doused by firefighting ships.
The trajectory of compound growth shows that the scouring of the planet has only just begun. As the volume of the global economy expands, everywhere that contains something concentrated, unusual, precious, will be sought out and exploited, its resources extracted and dispersed, the world's diverse and differentiated marvels reduced to the same grey stubble.
That didn’t take long. The public interest in the state of the natural world stimulated by the winter floods receded almost as quickly as the waters did. A YouGov poll showed that the number of respondents placing the environment among their top three issues of concern rose from 6% in mid-January to 23% in mid-February. By early April – though the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had just published two massive and horrifying reports – the proportion had fallen back to 11%.
. . .
Following protests that resulted in clashes between demonstrators and police, officials in a city in southern China have said plans for a controversial petrochemical plant will not go ahead if the majority of the city's residents object.
The way to beat Vladimir Putin is to flood the European market with fracked-in-the-USA natural gas, or so the industry would have us believe. As part of escalating anti-Russian hysteria, two bills have been introduced into the US Congress – one in the House of Representatives (H.R. 6), one in the Senate (S.
Mr. Putin’s apparent assumption is that China will take as much oil, gas and coal as Russia can pump or dig out of the ground. He may be right in the short term, even the medium term. But pinning Russia’s long-term prosperity on ever rising energy exports to China looks risky. It’s not just that China’s growth rates are slowing; it’s that China is embracing the green revolution a lot faster than the oil and coal barons realize.
Air pollution kills about 7 million people a year and is linked to 1 in 8 deaths worldwide, according to a report released Tuesday by the World Health Organization. The finding more than doubles previous estimates “and confirms that air pollution is now the world’s largest single environmental health risk,” the agency said.
