A giant mechanical digger gouges out a chunk of topsoil, grass and
tree stumps, extending a neat furrow that stretches into the distance.
Dozens of similar furrows run parallel with the regularity of a
ploughed field.
Yet no crop could grow in the pitch-black surface exposed by the
machine working 1,000ft below our helicopter. This is the edge of a
fast-expanding open-cast mine in the Canadian tar sands, one of the
world's most polluting sources of oil.
No one was injured in the blaze and all non-essential staff have been airlifted from the West Atlas rig, operators PTTEP said.
The fire, which started during an attempt to plug the leak, comes as environmental campaigners criticised PTTEP and the Australian government over their handling of the crisis.
An estimated 400 barrels of oil a day have escaped from the rig since Aug. 21.
Officials now plan to pour mud into the leak hoping to remove the source of fuel from the fire, which was sending huge plumes of smoke into the sky.
SYDNEY - As the world focuses on the impact of climate change, little attention is being paid to yet another environmental bane: increasing contamination of air, water and soil.
The combined effects of this environmental scourge have contributed to global epidemics of cancers, lung and other degenerative diseases, and costing health systems across the world millions of dollars, experts say.
Forty-two years after she was exposed to asbestos in the Pambula beach hamlet, 470 kilometres south of Sydney, Jeanette Hennessy Wright, 51, was diagnosed with mesothelioma in July 2008.
Some of the most toxic communities in the country
confronted the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday, hoping for a sign that the new administration is more willing than its predecessor to deal with the legacy of environmental racism in the south.
EPA Region 4 includes Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.
We’re driving down Highway One in deep south USA, alongside Bayou Layforche in Louisiana - the old course of the Mississippi river. We’ve nearly finished filming our story about the disappearing communities of the wetlands alongside the Gulf of Mexico. They’re being forced out by a rising sea and by man’s destruction of this precious environment.
There’s one more element we need - some people speaking Cajun French. It’s proven harder than we thought - it’s a disappearing culture. Only the older folk still talk the old way.
Living on the doorstep of Acadia National Park, my family hardly needs to be reminded that national parks are a good idea. But are they America’s best idea, as Ken Burns’ PBS documentary suggests?
Scott Klinger and Rebecca Adamson of the First People’s Alliance challenge Burns’ unequivocal enthusiasm. They credit Burns for acknowledging the violence against first peoples that stains the history of our parks. But for them the problem with the parks endures.
In 1992, I attended an event that filled me with hope.
Canada and the rest of the world had just signed a climate change treaty at the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
I remember being optimistic that the world could come together to fight the greatest threat to our planet and our own survival. We had done it before in overcoming other threats, like defeating Nazism in Europe and beating back horrific diseases like polio.
It's an interesting phenomenon to live in a town where the level of
public vitriol over nearly every political question runs incredibly
high. Here in "high Sonoran" Arizona, we enjoy an amazingly diverse and
oftentimes starkly polarized topography -- you can go from snow-capped
peaks to wind-blown deserts in very short order -- and the cultural
landscape seems to follow suit when issues such as immigration, health
care, education, or warfare are raised in the public dialogue.
We can join Bill McKibben on Oct. 24 in nationwide protests over rising carbon emissions. We can cut our consumption of fossil fuels. We can use less water. We can banish plastic bags. We can install compact fluorescent light bulbs. We can compost in our backyard.
Tomorrow is World Food Day and since I can't invite you all over
for dinner, I thought I'd serve up a smorgasbord of facts and figures about the
way the US
and the world eat or don't eat, as the case may be.
