The Antarctic, one of the last, unspoiled parts of the natural world, will, like the Amazon, face man’s destructive onslaught unless states take action quickly.
Tag: environment
-Editorial- PARIS — The world is witnessing an unprecedented diplomatic event. America is retreating as the world faces one of the most serious issues of our time — climate change. It’s deciding not to exert its leadership. It will be neither model nor guide. This continent-sized country is shrinking and retreating into itself, as it […]
Colombia may have massive shale oil and gas reserves that could cover the decline in its crude output, but environmentalists are raising alarms.
GENEVA — It’s a sight that would have pleased Pantagruel, the 16th-century giant dreamed up by French writer François Rabelais. A horde of mini-vegetables, more numerous and diverse, are taking the world’s kitchens by storm. For many years, we have grown accustomed to baby carrots and cucumbers, not to mention baby corn. But here come […]
Around the world, local water shortages are a very real sign of the effects of climate change. Drought conditions in certain areas of India have recently left some cities reeling, leading to new political tensions. Meanwhile, last weekend, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Washington, D.C. and around the United States to demand […]
As the Rainbow Warrior III traverses the Strait of Magellan, its crew shows what it means to defend the natural world on a daily basis.
A deadly flash flood and landslide in southern Colombia is a brutal reminder that people can’t take the environment for granted.
PARIS — In their quest for a sustainable urban future, city planners can learn a lot from history. And in Paris, that can mean just taking a moment to look around. Georges-Eugène Haussmann, the driving force behind a drastic overhaul of the city beginning in the mid 19th century, made an enormous and lasting mark […]
Wild parakeet populations are expanding in many European cities, where they enjoy the relative warmth of dense urban settings and have easy access to food.
LAUSANNE — A Swiss-based charity, Race For Water Foundation, wants to turn the PlanetSolar catamaran into a floating display of emerging hydrogen technologies. “That’s unprecedented on a boat,” says Alexandre Closset, CEO of Swiss Hydrogen. “For the first time, a full hydrogen chain will be installed on a boat.” The electric vessel, the first to […]
ALBI — During a walk through the heart of the cathedral city of Albi, fruits and vegetables seem to be planted everywhere. And for good reason. A year ago, the city was given the objective of attaining food self-sufficiency by 2020. In concrete terms, the goal is to allow the 52,000 residents to feed themselves […]
-Analysis- WARSAW — For the Polish government, coal is nothing to worry about. Sixteen Polish cities exceeded the annual limit of days with smog in the first two months of this year alone. And still, the government hasn’t taken any steps to restrict poisonous coal dust or remove the fossil fuel from the market. Coal […]
The Thyon tourism office rents innovative ‘tiny houses’ to ski vacationers: 56 square feet, fun and environmentally friendly. But it’s not so simple.
PARIS — Researchers are on the hunt for the perfect bee. Today, pesticides, mites, viruses and other parasites decimate tens of millions of colonies of pollinators on the planet. Researchers are now trying to select genes from bees that would build colonies resistant to external attacks. Doing so would help save natural pollination, which is […]
CAIRO — Strolling through Lisbon’s hilltop alleys in 2008, I came across a shop selling uniquely designed “upcycled” products, things made by reusing material that would otherwise be discarded. The items there included a milk-carton wallet, a liquor-bottle lamp and a cereal-box notebook cover. In my young, hopeful state, I felt right at home. It […]
I live in a small village in the Vosges Mountains in northeastern France with my four brothers and sisters. My father works in industrial maintenance and my mother takes care of the family. I attended kindergarten because I had asked to go there. But I left after a year. My siblings aged 18, 15, 12 […]
BERLIN — The quality of organic food products is no better than non-organic offerings. At least that’s the result of a recent study by the consumer portal Vergleich.org. The study compared 49 test reports by German consumer organization Stiftung Warentest, which, over the course of a decade, analyzed approximately 1,000 food products ranging from meat, […]
Earlier today, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump picked Scott Pruitt, attorney general of Oklahoma, as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt, a New York Times investigation once revealed, has previously sent letters to government agencies that were actually drafted by energy-industry lobbyists. He has also legally challenged the Obama administration’s regulation of fossil fuels. […]
-Analysis- In his half-century as leader of Cuba, Fidel Castro oversaw grand changes on the island. In the wake of his death, new changes may — or may not — be on their way under the helm of the late leader’s brother, President Raul Castro. Nowhere is the future more uncertain on the island nation […]
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Welcome To The Trumpocene
A guiding principle of modern democracy holds that a system of checks and balances helps prevent any single person or faction from making radical changes to the existing order. That the wheels of legislation move slowly, and recourse is available through courts or other branches of government, may be a hair-pulling reality for those trying […]
Lives destroyed, entire towns damaged, widespread health problems. There is no end in sight to the toll on a region in Brazil decimated by a toxic dam break last November.
Droughts, demographics, industrialization, pollution, climate change … The need for more clean and accessible water is growing urgent in many places around the world. But beyond praying to the rain gods, what real-life responses are out there? Innovation is key both to help preserve clean water sources, as well as finding new ways to purify […]
Steak or avocado, which is worse for the environment? And other pressing questions for an omnivore flirting with a flip to the vegan life.
Global warming, population booms, rising urbanization, industrialization — an explosive mixture that may make water supplies the world’s new spark for armed conflict.
For anyone truly concerned with climate change, trends like rooftop gardens and sustainable badges for office buildings are a distraction, at best.
Climate change is drying up the Earth and making Bolivians search for new livelihoods in Latin America’s poorest country.
Small-scale miners on the island of Lombok and elsewhere in Indonesia are playing a dangerous game by using mercury, a toxic heavy metal, to extract gold.
Countries and industries around the globe must make the painful choice between lucrative fossil fuel exploitation and efforts to prevent climate change.
BALI — In the Indonesian resort island of Bali, music hasn’t always been political. But news of a Dubai-style development has galvanized local musicians and artists. The development involves reclaiming 700 hectares of Benoa Bay in southern Bali to make way for a string of artificial islands complete with resorts, shopping centers, theme parks and high-end apartments. A consequent tolak reklamasi or “reject reclamation” movement has inspired protest songs like one by the folk band Nosstress. Copok, a singer and guitarist for the local band The Bullhead, explains why residents are against the development. “They will put culture on the […]
COLÓN ISLAND — As the world continues to bury itself in plastic bottles, a few pioneers are coming up with clever ways to put all that refuse to good use. One of those people is Canadian innovator Robert Bezeau, who decided after a visit to Panama to build an entire plastic-bottle village — presumably the […]
Panamanian holding a drone — Photo: UN Food and Agriculture Organization Members of Panama’s 12 indigenous nations are embracing a cutting-edge technology — drones — in an effort to protect their ancestral lands. Roughly 7.4 million hectares of rainforest cover more than half of Panamanian territory, but it is rapidly disappearing, some estimate by as […]
SPOTLIGHT: MIXED GREEN FEELINGS Even as we’ve been consumed by a news cycle that includes wars, elections and the biggest European reorder after World War II, our planet is quietly waiting for some attention. Nature reveals that pledges taken by countries during the Paris COP21 climate summit may need a big boost “to maintain a […]
LIMA — The Peruvian capital has no shortage of vultures flying overhead. For the past year they have also been enlisted to help find, and perhaps eventually clear, some of Lima’s worst illegal trash heaps. How is it done? The city and scientists have been using 10 vultures strapped with GPS and GoPro cameras to […]
The psychology of global warming helps explain why we can’t solve it. “It triggers nothing in our brain,” says one psychologist. “It lets us sleep calmly in a burning bed.”
FUWWAH — Stepping off a small boat as it docks along the Nile, Ahmed Khaled, a 22-year-old fisherman, looks dissatisfied. For the fifth time in just three weeks, he had carefully prepared the lures and rigs of his fishing equipment and set out in his sick father’s sailboat — only to come back empty-handed. “The […]
France has long been an innovator in building materials, from the steel splendor of the Eiffel Tower to concrete to surprisingly resistant wood. Environmental factors hold sway.
The legacy of our time will not be our literary or architectural monuments, but all the plastic trash we leave to poison the seas and choke our future. Fortunately, change is in the air.
Airline passenger traffic is not slowing down, registering worldwide growth of 6.8% in 2015. The growing demand means more opportunity but also more competition, and airports need to be innovative to attract both business and pleasure air travelers. Long layovers can be tiresome, but not necessarily in Changi, Singapore. With free video games, film screenings, […]
Saving rainwater and increasing green spaces are two small steps shown to help fight the ravages of climate change in cities.
MUMBAI — In the western state of Maharashtra, dozens of men, women and children surround a water tanker on the main road. They hold pitchers, buckets and other containers, and are trying to fill as many as they can. Renuka, 35, pushes her way to the top of the tanker and is able to fill her five pitchers. “I waited 15 days to get this much water. But how long will it last?” she says. “We haven’t had tap water for the last two years. Our ponds and wells have dried up. There’s no water at all.” Manohar was less […]