Tuesday, Dec 30th
Last update11:22:13 AM GMT
Environmental Glance
Global alarm over climate change and its effects has risen manifold after the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate. Since then, many of the 2,500-odd IPCC scientists have found climate change is progressing faster than the worst-case scenario they had predicted.
Their studies will be considered for the next IPCC report, but since that will come out only in 2013, the University of New South Wales in Sydney has just put together the main findings in the last three years.
To better safeguard threatened polar bears, the federal government should expand the size of its proposed critical habitat area in Alaska and curb oil and gas development there, the National Wildlife Federation said Wednesday.
The federation criticized the Department of the Interior for promoting expanded oil and gas exploration in the same areas that it wants to designate as the protected area for polar bears.
Under President George W. Bush, the United States withdrew from its decades-long role as a global leader in supporting family planning, driven by a conservative ideology that favored abstinence and shied away from providing contraceptive devices in developing countries, even to married women.
The Obama administration adopted its climate change plan B today, formally declaring carbon dioxide a public danger so that it can cut greenhouse gas emissions even without the agreement of a reluctant Senate.
The timing of the announcement – in the opening hours of the UN's Copenhagen climate change summit – prevents Barack Obama from arriving at the talks without concrete evidence that America will do its bit to cut the emissions that cause global warming.
The Interior Department today gave the go-ahead for Shell Oil to begin drilling three exploratory wells in the Chukchi Sea, a move that opens the door for production in a new region of the Arctic.
Out of Africa comes the disturbing news of entire regions being toxified and polluted by the industry of recycling used computers. There are millions of discarded computers on this planet, and many of them are ending up in African villages as well as elsewhere, including China, India, Nigeria, the Philippines and Vietnam, replete with highly toxic chemicals and heavy metals.
A group promoting skepticism over widely-accredited climate change science has a web of connections to influential oil giant Exxon-Mobil, Raw Story has found.
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