Efforts to tacle accelerating drought and desertification take shape this year an Namibia

Worldwide Efforts to Combat Drought, Desertification to Take Shape in Namibia This Year

High-level representatives from 195 nations party to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification,, along with civic and environmental groups, will meet in Windhoek to assess progress and plan for future actions to address desertification, land degradation and drought, issues that now affect 168 nations at a cost of some $490 billion, not to mention the loss of lives, health, livelihoods, biodiversity and ecosystems.

New resiliency index announced with C40 Cities at the Clinton Global Initiative

Resiliency Index Will Assess Climate Risks for Cities

Working under the umbrella of C40 Cities, an international collaborative of cities working to assess and reduce their climate risk impacts, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg
Read More

Global community risks catastrophic sea level rise if current fossil fuel and c02 emissions stay on track

Rising Temperature, Sea Level On Track to Wipe Out Major World Cities Former Shell Exec Tells UN

The global community of nations is headed for catastrophes on an unprecedented scope and scale if fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions continue on trend, according to the latest scientific evidence and research. Global average temperature is on a path toward a warming of 4 degrees Celsius, which could result in sea level rises of 70 meters (230 feet), wiping out major cities, including London, New York, Shanghai and Tokyo.

Climate change education is an essential part of a sustainable future for our children

Enviro News Wrap: Environmental Election Wins; Geo-Engineering; Innovators to Watch, and more…

By Anders Hellum-Alexander · Comments (2) · Monday, November 8th, 2010

The latest environmental news headlines GlobalWarmingisReal contributor Anders Hellum-Alexander wraps-up the climate and environmental news headlines for the past week:

These are two of the most important environmental victories of 2010 (in my opinion):
1. California just adopted a new Green Building Code that applies to the construction of all new buildings. This code will be the precedent for other states and maybe someday, the federal government.
2. Proposition 23 in California would have overridden a current California State mandate of reducing carbon emissions 25% by 2020. It was funded by out-of-state Oil interests and was defeated by the Californian electorate on November 2nd.

Geo-engineering (the intentional manipulation of the natural environment) was recently just an idea, it is now a growing science concerned with our response to climate change. If we cannot prevent Earth from heating, can we throw chemicals in the sky and oceans to compensate for our other pollutants?
The Economist ponders the complete mixing of our physical and internet life. By going digital could we make our way of life sustainable?
Technology Review presents their list of The Top 50 Most Innovate Companies, The Top 35 Innovators Under the Age of 35 and The Top 10 Emerging Technologies.
The New York Times presents a scare piece on urban drinking water contamination. It’s a good reminder though, that even in the USA we all don’t have safe drinking water.
More on water contamination from the New York Times; there is a coral reef in the Gulf of Mexico that could have been killed by the BP oil spill, but research is incomplete.
Newly unveiled documents show that Halliburton knew that their work on the oil platform that caused the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill was shoddy. Time is showing that this oil spill was caused by all parties involved.

PDF

Categories : Environmental News, Global Warming News

Comments

Lara Alexander says:

November 8, 2010 at 9:36 pm

California, because of its big population, is always in a unique position to shape national environmental policy – glad to see that some good things are happening!

Reply
- Tom says:
  
  November 9, 2010 at 10:41 am
  
  Thanks for the comment Lara. I hope that California can help lead the way in climate and energy policy. The way things are going with the state of Federal leadership and international negotiations, I think change is going to come from the bottom up – from states, regions, and cities.
  
  Reply