[Posted by Joan Martinez-Alier on The Ecologist, January 31, 2018] Protects against the extraction of fossil fuels and other natural resources – ecological distribution conflicts – cannot simply be resolved by payments of compensation. That is because for most people outside of the corporate boardroom, money is not the primary concern. The Environmental Justice Atlas or EJAtlas of the Autonomous University of Barcelona...

[posted by Valerie Volcovici on Reuters, January 19, 2018] President Donald Trump’s effort to put coal miners back to work stumbled in most coal producing states last year, even as overall employment in the downtrodden sector grew modestly, according to preliminary government data obtained by Reuters. Trump made reviving the coal industry, and the declining communities that depend upon its jobs, a central tenet in his presidential...

[posted by Shashank Bengali and Ramin Mostaghin on Los Angeles Times, January 17, 2018] In the mountains of western Iran, the province of Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari is known for mile-high lagoons, flowing rivers and wetlands that attract thousands of species of migratory birds. But years of diminishing rainfall have shriveled water sources. Conditions worsened, residents say, after Iranian authorities began funneling water 60 miles away to...

[posted by Benjamin Haas on The Guardian, January 16, 2018] The Iranian oil tanker Sanchi sank off the coast of Shanghai on Sunday, after a week of burning and sending plumes of smoke hundreds of metres into the air. Only three bodies of the 32 sailors were recovered. The ship was carrying 136,000 tons, or about 1 million barrels, of oil, that now threatens to pollute some of China’s most important fishing waters. What was Sanchi...

[posted on The Conversation, January 9, 2018] The Vietnamese Mekong Delta is one of Earth’s most agriculturally productive regions and is of global importance for its exports of rice, shrimp, and fruit. The 18m inhabitants of this low-lying river delta are also some of the world’s most vulnerable to climate change. Over the last ten years around 1.7m people have migrated out of its vast expanse of fields, rivers and canals while...

[posted by Alister Doyle on Reuters, January 11, 2018] Global warming is on track to breach the toughest limit set in the Paris climate agreement by the middle of this century unless governments make unprecedented economic shifts from fossil fuels, a draft U.N. report said. The draft, of a report due for publication in October, said governments will also have to start sucking carbon dioxide from the air to achieve the ambition of...