Water

The Once and Future Southwestern Mega-Drought

Lately, I’ve stopped worrying about climate change. Wait, that’s not quite right. But I only have so much worry bandwidth, and what is keeping me up at night lately is scarcenomoics, the idea that in a finite world, we may be hitting limits on some natural resources. Climate change doesn’t even have to play a major role in these fears, …

What If Yemen Is the First Country to Run Out of Water?

Experts cited by CNN say Yemen could be the first nation to completely run out of water in a few years, a prospect that does not bode well for its young population of 24 million that is expected to double in 20 years, or anyone worried about the rising influence (and ability to get bombs on planes) of an al Qaeda branch in one of the …

Planet of the Apes…and Monkeys and Humans

There are a lot of perks that come with being a primate. You get to be smart. You get to be social. You get to have opposable thumbs — which are very handy things to have. Most of all, you get to keep living even during hard times. If the history of humans indicates anything, it’s that we’re survivors, and a new study is showing just …

Is the Caribbean Heading for Another Record Year in Coral Loss?

Anybody who has been visiting coral reefs for the past 20 years or so will tell you that the scene underwater pales – quite literally – in comparison to what it used to be.

New research published in PLoS ONE yesterday shows that coral bleaching in the Atlantic and the Caribbean in 2005 was the worst bleaching event ever …

Oil Spill Report Hits White House. Is it Fair?

Sometimes a President can’t catch a break—a lesson the current, beleaguered resident of the Oval Office keeps learning. The latest bit of bad news came from a commission the President himself appointed back in the spring to study the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. President Obama announced the creation of the study group on May …

Can the World Meet its Promise to Halve Hunger by 2015?

A new report released by Oxfam this week has some good news and some bad news for the state of world hunger. The good news: last year, the FAO recorded the first significant dent in world hunger in 15 years, with a decrease from a record 1.02 billion people going hungry in 2009 after the global food crisis down to 925 million this …

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