by Beth Holmes | Feb 21, 2022 | Climate Change, Conservation, Environmental hazards, Sustainability
The megadrought in the American West is the worst in at least 1200 years, according to a recent study by UCLA researchers, and human-led climate change is a key part of it. Park Williams, a climate hydrologist at UCLA, has been studying the history of soil hydration...
by Beth Holmes | Feb 14, 2022 | Conservation, Environmental hazards, Sustainability
San Javier de Cachaví, a small village in Ecuador, is being choked by oil palm trees, and now the courts want them to pay the plantation owners thousands for protesting the damage. San Javier de Cachaví is small, only about 120 families in a little community along a...
by Beth Holmes | Jan 31, 2022 | Business, Conservation, Environmental hazards, Sustainability
The Gulf of Thailand is the site of the world’s latest significant oil spill, with as much as 128 tons of crude oil leaking from a seabed pipeline. The leak came from the pipeline of a mooring station in the Gulf of Thailand, not far south of Bangkok. Pipeline...
by Beth Holmes | Jan 17, 2022 | Conservation, Environmental hazards
Turkmenistan may extinguish the “Gates of Hell,” a 50-year fire ignited in a collapsed gas-drilling well. In 1971, an oil survey discovered a natural gas pocket in the middle of the Karakum Desert, near the village of Darvaza in Turkmenistan. Part of the Soviet Union...
by Beth Holmes | Dec 27, 2021 | Environmental hazards, Sustainability
Microplastics in the soil may be becoming a worldwide food chain problem, according to the United Nations. On Tuesday, the United Nations agricultural agency the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) released a report assessing plastic pollution in agricultural...
by Beth Holmes | Dec 20, 2021 | Environmental hazards, Resources, Sustainability
Contaminated groundwater puts thousands at risk as the U.S. Navy refuses to cease operations at a perpetually leaking fuel storage facility on water-poor Oahu. The Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility was built in the middle of WW2, inside the ridge of a dead volcano...