By Kevin Crowley27 November 2012 (Bloomberg) – Flooding in the U.K. over the past week will cost insurers as much as 500 million pounds ($800 million), making this year the most expensive for water damage since 2007, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC. Heavy rains have swept through England and Wales in the past week, causing about […]
BEIJING, 29 November 2012 (EIA) – China, emergent superpower and the world’s second biggest economy, is effectively standing on the sidelines as its exponential growth devastates forests in a trade worth billions of dollars a year. In the new report Appetite for Destruction: China’s Trade in Illegal Timber, launched today in Beijing, the London-based Environmental […]
By Tami Luhby28 November 2012 NEW YORK (CNNMoney) – The number of American households receiving food stamps jumped nearly 10% in 2011. Nearly 15 million households were on food stamps at some point last year, up from 13.6 million in 2010, newly released Census data shows. That’s an increase to 13%, up from 11.9% in […]
By Spencer Hunt 27 November 2012 CARROLLTON, Ohio (The Columbus Dispatch) – A deep, constant hum emanates from John and Elizabeth Neider’s dairy and sheep farm. Depending on whom you ask, it’s either the sound of progress or a harbinger of environmental disaster. The hum is created by a cluster of powerful pumps forcing millions […]
By Grantham Institute, Imperial College London and Duncan Clark 30 November 2012 (guardian.co.uk) – Fresh water is crucial to human society – not just for drinking, but also for farming, washing and many other activities. It is expected to become increasingly scarce in the future, and this is partly due to climate change. Understanding the […]
By Jeremy Hance29 November 2012 (mongabay.com) – Runaway economic growth comes with costs: in the case of China’s economic engine, one of them has been the world’s forests. According to a new report by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), China has become the number one importer of illegal wood products from around the world. Illegal […]
By Christine Dell’Amore29 November 2012 (National Geographic News) – The polar ice sheets are indeed shrinking—and fast, according to a comprehensive new study on climate change. And the effects, according to an international team, are equally clear—sea levels are rising faster than predicted, which could bring about disastrous effects for people and wildlife. Rising seas […]
LONDON, 29 November 2012 (ClimateWire) – More than 1,100 homes across the United Kingdom have had to be evacuated after being flooded over the past week as persistent and at times torrential rains falling on already sodden ground have followed the country’s wettest summer on record. Four wet weather fronts in a row in just […]
By Euan Mearns 28 November 2012 Executive summary OPEC is currently pumping at close to near term and historic highs of 31.2 mmbpd of crude oil. Outside of Saudi Arabia, the majority of spare capacity is deemed to lie in Iran and Nigeria. Iran could certainly pump more if permitted to do so by the […]
By KARL RITTER, with contributions from AP Environment Writer Michael Casey27 November 2012 DOHA, Qatar (AP) – Though it’s tricky to link a single weather event to climate change, Hurricane Sandy was “probably not a coincidence” but an example of the extreme weather events that are likely to strike the U.S. more often as the […]
