Dira Dawa, Northern Ethiopia, January 2007

Inside emergency shelter camp, following massive flooding which left thousands of villagers homeless.

24 September 2013

Stanford Scientists: Climate Change Occurring 10 times Faster Than Any Time in Past 65 Million Years (via Desmogblog)

With scant media attention, climate scientists from Stanford University have concluded that climate change is occurring 10 times faster than at any time in the past 65 million years, and the current pace of change will lead to a 5-6 degree (Celsius)…

25 July 2013

Peru To Power 2 Million Of Its Poorest — By Solar Energy (via Planetsave)

Peru last week initiated a new program that will provide electricity to more than two million of its poorest residents using solar panels. Energy and Mining Minister Jorge Merino said that the program will allow 95% of Peru to have access to electricity…

01 July 2013

My latest - from DeSmog Blog

Obama’s Climate Pledge: The Keystone XL Fracking Double Standard (via Desmogblog)
President Obama, during his climate speech last week, surprised many observers by his unexpected remarks about the Keystone XL pipeline.   The President, for the first time, placed a clear condition on the pipeline’s approval – its impact on the…

17 June 2013

Tar Sands Giant Suncor Announces Fewer Safety Checks To Avoid “Foregone Revenue” (via Desmogblog)

This is a guest post by Don Lieber, originally published on PlanetSave. Suncor Energy, the largest producer in Canada’s tar sands oil operations, has announced it will require fewer major safety maintenance “shut-down” checks at its Alberta production sites, decreasing the required checks to…

30 May 2013

US Coal Exports: “The Worst Of The Worst” (via Planetsave)

First, a historical parallel: The US tobacco industry, during the late 1990s, targeted children in underdeveloped parts of the world — South America, Asia, and the middle-East — with a particularly abhorrent marketing program: they gave away free cigarettes to children in order to introduce them…

30 April 2013

Fracking Waste: Too Toxic, Even For A Hazardous Waste Site (via Planetsave)

On April 19, a truck delivering waste from a fracking operation in Greene County, Pennsylvania, was quarantined after being rejected by a hazardous waste landfill as too dangerous. The truck was carrying highly radioactive radium-226 in concentrations 86 times higher than allowed per EPA limits. After…

27 April 2013

The Great Green Wall Of Africa — A 4,000 Mile Defense Against Climate Change (via Planetsave)

One of the most unique large-scale international climate change projects is underway in Africa. A 4,000 mile “wall of trees” is being constructed across the east-west axis of the continent as a defense against rapid, expanding desertification of the Sahara. 11 nations — Mauritania, Senegal,…

02 April 2013

Opposition To Keystone Pipeline, Stigmatization Of Tar Sands Increasing (Pictures) (via Planetsave)

Public opposition to the Keystone “Tar Sands” Pipeline continues to increase, with protests against ‘the dirtiest fuel on the planet‘ taking new and increasingly organized public forms of civil disobedience in the United States and around the world. Last week, the “National Week of Action…

23 March 2013




Largest German Research Center Cuts Ties to Alberta Tar Sands (via Planetsave)
Germany’s largest research institution — one of the world’s most prestigious — has withdrawn from a multi-million dollar Canadian-funded “tar sands” research project, citing the tar sands’ significant environmental concerns as posing a ”risk to our reputation”. “It’s a clear signal…