Tuesday, Dec 24th
Last update09:30:35 AM GMT
Environmental Glance
Environmental and community groups have sued Utah officials over failures to save its iconic Great Salt Lake from irreversible collapse.
The largest saltwater lake in the western hemisphere has been steadily shrinking, as more and more water has been diverted away from the lake to irrigate farmland, feed industry and water lawns. A megadrought across the US south-west, accelerated by global heating, has hastened the lake’s demise.
It’s been a strange, cruel summer in the United States. From the dystopian orange skies above New York to the deadly immolation of a historic coastal town in Hawaii, the waning summer has been a stark demonstration of the escalating climate crisis – with experts warning that worse is to come.
A relentless barrage of extreme weather events, fueled by human-caused global heating, has swept the North American continent this summer, routinely placing a third of the US population under warnings of severe heat and unleashing floods, fire and smoke upon communities, with a record 15 separate disasters causing at least $1bn in damages so far this year.
The heat has been particularly withering in places like Phoenix, Arizona, which had a record 31 consecutive days at temperatures above 110F (43C), while an enormous heatwave across the central swath of the US this week caused schools to be closed in states such as Wisconsin, Colorado and Iowa and food banks to be shut in Nebraska.
A record heat wave in the Pacific Northwest has prompted fire managers to bump the national preparedness level up a notch, from three to four on a five point scale. More than two dozen large fires are now burning in the region, many sparked by dry thunderstorms.
At the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, federal fire managers monitor giant screens in a NASA like control room, as they deploy air tankers, hot shot crews and other resources around the West right now.
Meagan Conry, the federal Bureau of Land Management's assistant deputy director for fire and aviation, tracks fires on live cameras in the Northwest. She says the area has become vulnerable to increased fire activity because of, "above average temperatures, dry conditions, and some expectations for gusty winds over the next few days."
South Korean opposition lawmakers sharply criticized the head of the United Nations' nuclear watchdog on Sunday for its approval of Japanese plans to release treated wastewater from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant.
They met with Rafael Grossi in a tense meeting in Seoul that took place while protesters screamed outside the door.
Grossi, the International Atomic Energy Agency's director general, arrived in South Korea over the weekend to engage with government officials and critics and help reduce public concerns about food safety.
The IAEA last week approved the Japanese discharge plans, saying the process would meet international safety standards and pose negligible environmental and health impacts. South Korea's government has also endorsed the safety of the Japanese plans.
Ask Britain’s foreign secretary which part of the world poses his biggest foreign policy challenge, and the chances are he will say either Russia or China. He probably will not say the Arctic. Yet the implications of what is happening in the Arctic will change patterns of international trade, drive food insecurity, deepen global poverty, increase refugee crises, reorient military alliances, and turbocharge military expenditures and the risk of war.
The eight Arctic states – Canada, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the US and Russia – have long collaborated on scientific research through the Arctic Council, a non-military body. Until now. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Arctic Council meetings ceased. So did cooperation with Russia. This has hampered progress on climate and environmental research and turbocharged the militarisation of the Arctic.
The success of the Arctic Council depended on its geopolitical balance. It is not a security alliance and has always tried to remain independent from politics. Five of the eight countries were part of Nato; the other three were not. That has now changed. Finland joined Nato in April. Sweden is in the process of joining. Soon, Nato will literally be surrounding Russia in the Arctic.
The company 3M, which has been a major manufacturer of what are known as “forever chemicals,” is staring down what could be a test case for whether it faces liability for water contamination caused by the toxic substances.
This upcoming week, claims from the city of Stuart, Fla., against 3M will go to trial.
This case is just one of hundreds that have been grouped together. They each pertain to claims about the use of a group of toxic chemicals, also called “PFAS,” that are found in firefighting foam.
The case for the city of Stuart, which has about 18,000 residents, was selected last year as the first “bellwether” case of the group to go to trial.
Bellwether cases are often viewed as test cases in which both the accusers and the accused can see how legal issues will play out and make decisions about future litigation in accordance.
In a changing climate, more rain is coming, but it’s falling on fewer days in less useful and more dangerous downpours.
The hard-hit Emilia-Romagna region was particularly vulnerable. Its location between the Apennine mountains and the Adriatic Sea trapped the weather system this week that dumped half the average annual amount of rain in 36 hours.
“These are events that developed with persistence and are classified as rare,″ Fabrizio Curcio, the head of Italy’s Civil Protection Agency, told reporters.
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