In The News

A Nuclear Hand of Friendship

Vinod Khosla July 4, 2006
India is not a signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; its first nuclear tests were conducted after the treaty’s 1967 deadline, and it is not formally recognized as a nuclear power. Because India will unlikely submit its reactors to the NPT guidelines without such recognition, Vinod Khosla sees the agreement between that country and the US as a positive way to draw India into the...

Panama Hopes to Sail into “First World” by Enlarging Its Waterway

Duncan Campbell June 21, 2006
Completed in 1914, the Panama Canal connected the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and is regarded as one of the greatest engineering feats of all time. A proposal by the Panama Canal Authority to create two new “lanes” along the 50-mile canal is touted by Panamanian president Martín Torrijos. The plan will go to referendum in the fall. Average ship size has been increasing and analysts suggest that...

Pollution From Chinese Coal Casts a Global Shadow

Keith Bradsher June 16, 2006
Currently, China uses more coal than the US, the European Union and Japan combined. China’s global-warming gases such as carbon dioxide will “probably exceed that for all industrialized countries over the next 25 years,” note journalists Keith Bradsher and David Barboza in “The New York Times.” These emissions have widespread impact, increasing global temperatures and releasing harmful sulfur...

Report: Biofuels Poised to Displace Oil

June 12, 2006
As governments slowly come to realize that oil is a finite commodity, biofuels attract more attention worldwide. Brazil is the foremost producer of biofuels with the US gaining. The German Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection released an in-depth analysis of the potential risks and benefits of biofuels. Among the risks posed are potential competition between food and...

Desert Cities Are Living on Borrowed Time, UN Warns

John Vidal June 9, 2006
Desert cities all over the globe move closer to becoming completely unlivable. Rising temperatures and lack of rain in such areas from Phoenix in the US to Riyadh in Saudi Arabia are affecting as many as 500 million people worldwide with rising water tables beneath irrigated soils, leading to increased salinization. This phenomenon affects large tracts of land all over central and south Asia,...

Cooking the Climate With Coal

Jeff Goodell June 7, 2006
Recognizing limited energy supplies, the world turns to coal for fuel. Coal meets about half of US energy needs, about 70 percent for China. Anticipating strict regulatory limits, countries like the US have stepped up coal mining and construction of coal-burning power plants. But Author Jeff Goodell suggests that relying on coal is dangerous, from mining accidents to air and ground pollution....

Pollution Killing River They Said Was Too Big to Poison

Jonathan Watts June 6, 2006
The Yangtze River cuts a horizontal swath across the middle of China, supporting 400 million people, or one out of every fifteen on earth. Long thought to be immune to acute pollution because of its size, a report by the state-sponsored Xinhua news agency has shown that poisonous water threatens marine life and drinking supplies. Despite regulations, sewage from factories, cities and ships has...