Environmental Glance
Climate change may have reached the point of no return last month.
CO2 levels in the atmosphere topped 400 parts per million on May 19, for the first time since the Pleistocene era, over 2.5 million years ago. President Barack Obama’s historic speech on climate change today highlights his growing focus on this issue for his second term.
Climate scientists have long regarded that 400 number as the symbolic threshold. One step beyond, and it would be virtually impossible to put the brake on human-generated climate change. The bad news escalated last week when the International Energy Agency reported that global emissions of carbon dioxide rose 1.4 percent in 2012, the largest annual increase on record.
The Tokyo Electric Power Co. said it has noted a rise in radioactive tritium in sea water within the port at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.
Elevated levels of methane and other stray gases have been found in drinking water near natural gas wells in Pennsylvania's gas-rich Marcellus shale region, according to new research. In the case of methane, concentrations were six times higher in some drinking water found within one kilometer of drilling operations.
An anti-fracking demonstration attracted more than 2,000 activists to the eastern side of the Capitol at midday Monday. Pop singer Natalie Merchant led members of the crowd in a rewritten rendition of Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land."
