It was 25 years ago today that the Number 4 reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic exploded. The first the world learned of it was the following day when radiation detectors in Sweden went berserk. The heroics of the “liquidators,” many of whom died from radiation sickness in […]
There is an important series well underway at the Vancouver Observer: “The Big Grab.” It’s about how the tar sands industry is forcing choices on Canadians that they would not otherwise have to make in the absence of all the activity in Alberta. What’s particularly important about this series, it seems to me, is that […]
As Easter weekend arrives, the World Food Programme (WFP) reminded the public of the effect of hunger on children. Citing how 20 million children worldwide could be fed for two years by the $2.3 billion spent on the annual Easter candy sales in the U.S. and UK, WFP urged people to donate the amount of […]
President Yoweri Museveni’s government in Uganda has cracked down on the latest “Walk to Work” day organized by his political rivals. This campaign is designed to protest rising fuel and food prices, putting food purchases out of reach of many of Uganda’s urban poor. Drought conditions in eastern Africa have driven up food prices and […]
The state-owned Myanmar Oil and Gas Company [MOGC] is going to sign deals with firms from China, Singapore and South Korea to explore three new areas for energy, according to the state-run media. Reuters reported that a deal is in the works with “North Petro-Chem Corporation Limited of China for exploration and production of oil […]
To ameliorate the coordination of food security during humanitarian crises, food security organizations and humanitarian aid NGOs have created the global Food Security Cluster (gFSC). Led by the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), World Food Program (WFP) and the International Committee for the Red Cross, gFSC is intended to be “‘…a powerful tool to […]
“The radicals are the people who are fundamentally altering the composition of the atmosphere.” That’s the voice of Bill McKibben at this year’s annual Power Shift conference in Washington. Power Shift brought ten thousand young leaders to hear about how to transition from the fuel-based energy economy – and the money-driven politics of the special […]
In the post below, I wrote about the recent and instantly controversial study from Cornell that calls into question the greenhouse gas advantage that natural gas was assumed to have over coal and oil. This BBC article, for instance, points out what may seem like the obvious: As one very involved British geologist says “By […]
Tokyo Electric Power [TEPCO], the company that operates the nuclear reactors that have partially melted down at Fukushima, has announced a plan to get the reactors to cold shutdown within 9 months. Cold shutdown is defined by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission as “The term used to define a reactor coolant system at atmospheric pressure and at […]
You may be entirely aware by now that the controversy over shale gas resources and their extraction by hydraulic fracturing heated up last week with the publication of an important paper in Climatic Change, a well-respected scientific journal. (Here is a great little video on what exactly the heck hydraulic fracturing is – aka hydrofracking […]
Someone broke the embargo (shame on whomever it was) on a Congressional report detailing the substances used in hydraulic fracking to produce natural gas. So, we get the news a bit early. The press release on the report starts: “Today Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Henry A. Waxman, Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Edward […]
I wrote here recently that the Germans, in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, are seeking the right path: phasing out nuclear power. What is astonishing to me, and gratifying beyond my fondest wishes, is that the whole country is embracing it. That means the public, and the Chancellor and her ministers, including the environment […]
Just a quick update on the situation in Japan relative to the nuclear facility at Fukushima: The rating for the accident has risen to the International Atomic Energy Agency’s highest level. As people have been at pains to point out, it is not – as yet – as bad as Chernobyl. It is, nevertheless, now […]
Cassava is the newest addition to the biofuel line-up, joining others such as corn, palm oil, and sugar, and has doubled in price because of its new role, according to The New York Times. Most of this increase was caused by increase in export of cassava to China from Thailand, the world’s largest cassava exporter. […]
Minoru Oogoda of Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said this morning in Japan, “We have upgraded the severity level to 7 as the impact of radiation leaks has been widespread from the air, vegetables, tap water and the ocean.” The only other nuclear accident to reach level 7 (the highest on the IAEA’s scale) […]