Extreme rain in Australia’s New South Wales is causing life-threatening flooding that has so far forced the evacuation of at least 18,000 people. About 10 million people over an area the size of Alaska are at risk for excessive rainfall. Nexus Media News The mid-north coast, an area of coastline between Sydney and Byron Bay, […]
A recent series of summer droughts in Europe, which brought devastating ecological, agricultural, and economic impacts, were more severe than any over the past 2,100 years, new research out Monday finds. By Andrea Germanos Common Dreams “Our results show that what we have experienced over the past five summers is extraordinary for central Europe, in terms of how […]
If a full year of pandemic doesn’t yet have you and/or your partner feeling absolutely miserable, might we suggest you take up a painful new hobby: Writing about how bad bitcoin and NFTs are for the climate, and well, just about everything else. By Climate Denier Roundup It starts, as many cursed trends do, with something […]
Ten years ago, on March 11, 2011, the biggest recorded earthquake in Japanese history hit the country’s northeast coast. It was followed by a tsunami that traveled up to 6 miles (10 kilometers) inland, reaching heights of over 140 feet (43.3 meters) in some areas and sweeping entire towns away in seconds. By Kiyoshi Kurokawa, […]
The Kern County Board of Supervisors just voted 5-0 for an ordinance that will greenlight 40,500 oil & gas wells that will likely end up in low-income, monolingual, Hispanic communities with virtually no environmental review. By Dan Bacher As was the case in the planning commission meeting that preceded this meeting 3 weeks ago, the […]
There is a weasel word that politicians use whenever something goes wrong on their watch: “unacceptable.” We just heard it slither out of the mouth of Texas governor Greg Abbott in response to the state’s failure to prepare for a killer winter storm. “What happened this week to our fellow Texans is unacceptable,” he fumed. […]
In February, extreme weather events highlighted the fragility of the Texas electrical grid. A deep freeze left millions without power, and dozens of people died. President Joe Biden declared a state of emergency and ordered that federal assistance be made available. By Michael D. Mehta, Thompson Rivers University The Conversation As Texans’ demand for […]
I’ve been thinking a lot about water. And power. And Texas. You know from the news they’ve been grappling with a crisis there brought on by unexpectedly wicked winter weather. And made worse by an incompetent, ill-prepared Republican state government that, as LBJ used to say, couldn’t pour sand out of a boot, even if […]
Last week, a blast of bitter cold knocked out power across the country, hitting Texas especially hard. It left millions without heat in the coldest temperatures seen in those regions in decades. Grocery store shelves were bare, and water treatment plants went offline. In Texas alone, more than 30 people froze to death, suffered carbon […]
The cornerstone of every social structure is its belief system, and those who control and benefit the most from the system have one primary job: Keep its myths and scapegoats viable. That explains the emergence, in recent weeks, among right-wing politic By Robert C. Koehler Common Dreams In the wake of the winter storm that […]
Texans who made it through February’s extreme cold weather without losing power or natural gas must have felt lucky. But for some, keeping their electricity through the blackout may turn out to be more traumatic than losing it. An undetermined number of homeowners have been shocked to receive bills running into the thousands of dollars […]
On Sunday 7 February, a sudden flood devastated a Himalayan valley in the Indian province of Uttarakhand. It tore through two hydroelectric dams, killing dozens of people and trapping hundreds more in construction tunnels. The risks of development in an area vulnerable to accelerated #climatechange: The Himalayan range, Hindu Kush, Tibetan Plateau and their peaks […]
While millions of Texans on Monday continued living without safe drinking water and many faced storm damage and massive electricity bills, youth leaders with the Sunrise Movement rallied at the state capitol in Austin, using the current conditions across the Lone Star State to bolster their demand for a Green New Deal. .@sunrisemvmt at the Texas Capitol this morning to confront state […]
Even as people are suffering through the harshest winter storm Texas has seen in decades, the reasons for the state’s devastating power grid failure have become a political battleground. While vulnerable people freeze in their homes, pundits snipe about whether wind turbines are to blame. By Jennifer Layke, Karl Hausker and Lori Bird World Resources […]
Texas oil refineries released hundreds of thousands of pounds of pollutants including benzene, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, and sulfur dioxide into the air as they scrambled to shut down during last week’s deadly winter storm, Reuters reported Sunday. By Brett Wilkins Common Dreams Winter storm Uri, which killed dozens of people and cut off power to over four million Texans […]