Sunday, Nov 30th
Last update07:44:21 AM GMT
Environmental Glance
Brussels bureaucrats have ruled that gardeners who sprinkle coffee grounds around their cabbages to kill slugs are breaking the law.
Many coffee shops let customers take the grounds home for free, which can then be used as a mulch or to improve compost.
But the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) has warned that any gardener using coffee granules to deter slugs falls foul of EU regulations.
The extent of Arctic sea ice reached a record low Monday, according to the University of Colorado National Snow and Ice Data Center, and is on track to decline further in the next two weeks.
The news that the Arctic sea ice cover had shrunk to 1.58 million square miles (4.1 million square kilometers) on Sunday came two days after Royal Dutch Shell’s drill ship, the Noble Discoverer, took advantage of reduced sea ice and started sailing from Alaska’s Dutch Harbor to the Chukchi Sea, in anticipation of final federal approval for oil exploration activities there.
Leading water scientists have issued one of the sternest warnings yet about global food supplies, saying that the world's population may have to switch almost completely to a vegetarian diet over the next 40 years to avoid catastrophic shortages.
Humans derive about 20% of their protein from animal-based products now, but this may need to drop to just 5% to feed the extra 2 billion people expected to be alive by 2050, according to research by some of the world's leading water scientists.
The Tennessee Valley Authority was responsible for a coal ash spill outside Knoxville that federal officials say is one of the worst environmental disasters of its kind, according to a U.S. District Court order issued Thursday.
Had the federal agency acted appropriately, the underlying failure of the north dike "would have been investigated, addressed, and potentially remedied before the catastrophic failure," said U.S. District Judge Thomas Varlan of the Eastern District of Tennessee.
The authority repeatedly sought to have the case dismissed.
On the heels of Monday's report revealing New York state is set to allow hydraulic fracturing, over 350 people gathered outside a policy summit hosted by Governor Cuomo on Wednesday to protest the controversial plan.
The rally, a joint effort organized by CREDO Action and New Yorkers Against Fracking, hopes to sway the governor from going forward with the practice (better known as fracking) because of the irreparable environmental damages drilling may cause.
But this oil is no ordinary crude oil, and it carries with it risks that we’re only beginning to understand. Its core ingredient — bitumen — is not pumped from wells but is strip-mined or boiled loose underground.
Sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is likely to shrink to a record small size sometime next week, and then keep on melting, a scientist at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center said on Monday.
"A new daily record ... would be likely by the end of August," said Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the data center, which monitors ice in the Arctic and elsewhere. "Chances are it will cross the previous record while we're still in sea ice retreat."
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