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中国与世界，环境危机大家谈 WHERE CHINA AND THE WORLD DISCUSS THE ENVIRONMENT

主页 home > 新闻 news > 世界最新环境资讯 A global environmental update
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March 03, 2010

A global environmental update


The death toll from the 8.8-magnitude earthquake in Chile has reached nearly 800 – a figure likely to rise as search-and-rescue operations continue, CNN said. Meanwhile, a NASA scientist said the quake had shifted the earth’s “figure axis” by about eight centimetres and shortened the length of an earth-day by 1.26 microseconds.

Water levels in the northern Mekong River are at record-low levels, posing a threat to water supply, navigation and irrigation in a region that is home to millions of people, Agence France-Presse reported. Northern Thailand, northern Laos and southern China all have all been affected.

Residents of Newtok, a tiny settlement in western Alaska, are preparing to become the United States’ first climate refugees and flee their homes by 2012 as thawing permafrost washes away, Reuters said. With help from US military personnel, they are building a new, higher village on nearby Nelson Island.

To most climate scientists, accusations about lack of integrity, deceit and bias seem deeply unfair, environmental scientist Alan Thorpe wrote for New Scientist. Mistakes may have been made, he said, but science is about the accumulation of knowledge, not fighting causes.

Writing in The New York Times, US environmentalist Al Gore noted that the reality of climate change has not been altered by the discovery of a few mistakes in 22 years of work by the UN climate panel.

Europe’s plan to lead the green-technology race has a gaping financial hole for the next four years, according to a Reuters analysis. The European Union is seeing its early advantage challenged by strong growth in other markets, notably China, Japan and the United States.

Sweden will build 2,000 new wind turbines over the next decade as part of a bid to dramatically increase its production of renewable energy, Agence France-Presse said, citing energy minister Maud Olofsson.

Although South Africa is trying to “green” the upcoming football World Cup, the tournament is expected to create a massive carbon footprint, due mostly to air travel to the country and internally among host cities. Emissions are estimated to be double those of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, according to Agence France-Presse.

Indonesia’s president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, has signed a decree allowing projects deemed strategically important -- including mining, power generation and transport -- to take place in protected forests, Reuters reported.

Scientists have discovered an area of the North Atlantic Ocean where plastic debris accumulates, comparable to the “great Pacific garbage patch”, the BBC said.

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