CA Governor Pushes Statewide Drinking Water Tax To Clean Up Farm Pollution
"California governor Jerry Brown wants to impose the state’s first-ever tax on drinking water, tacked onto monthly bills."
The Unbearable Truth About Infrastructure and Urban Sprawl
"The first step is for Americans to learn from the successfully affordable and accessible cities of the world. Ironically, these successful cities are typically more market-based in their planning decisions than the supposedly hyper-capitalist US."
Russian nuclear weapons engineers used supercomputer to mine cryptocurrency
"Reports indicate that the group was caught trying to harness the lab's supercomputer to mine cryptocurrency."
The secret lives of students who mine cryptocurrency in their dorm rooms
"Exploiting a crucial competitive advantage and motivated by profit and a desire to learn the technology, students around the world are launching cryptocurrency mining operations right from their dorm rooms."
Massive Kenya water discovery will transform drought-prone ‘cradle of mankind’
"UNESCO and the Kenya Government today announce the discovery of one of the worlds largest underground water aquifers in the desert north of Turkana, an area best known for fossils, famine and poverty. The finding by Radar Technologies International (RTI) was made using space based exploration technology called WATEX system. The largest aquifer at 250 billion cubic meters of water which is equivalent in volume to Lake Turkana one of the largest lakes in the Great Rift Valley, and 25 times greater than Loch Ness. More importantly the annual recharge rate, the amount of water that can be sustainably exploited per year, is estimated to 3.4 billion cubic meters." Continue reading →
Seized shark fins dumped in Marshall Islands ceremony
"The gesture underscored the progress made towards protecting the marine predators since the Marshalls declared a two million square kilometre (770,000 square mile) shark sanctuary in 2011. Villagomez said some commercial tuna fishermen still illegally cut the fins from sharks, even though they earned very little from the practice. 'Fishermen only receive a few dollars (per fin),' he said. 'But once they are processed in China and sold in Hong Kong restaurants, the price can be as high as US$1,500 per kilo.' The fins that were dumped off the capital Majuro were confiscated from a Chinese longline fishing vessel earlier this year that was fined $125,000." Continue reading →
Turning Off The Spigot In Western Kansas Farmland
"Big irrigated fields of corn in this part of the country are taking water out of underground aquifers much faster than rain or snow can fill those natural reservoirs back up. If Kansas farmers keep pumping water out of the High Plains aquifer as they have in the past, the amount of water they're able to extract will start to fall in just 10 years or so. They'll still be able to continue harvesting more corn for another generation, though, because technology will let them use that water more efficiently. But after that, even the latest technology won't save the corn fields. Irrigated fields will start to disappear, followed by cattle feedlots. The long expansion of agricultural production in western Kansas will end." Continue reading →
The cost of being the world’s No.1 uranium producer
"Kazakhstan has steadily risen to become the world's No. 1 uranium producer, surpassing such nations as the United States, Canada, and Australia, which require more cleanup. Rather than employing miners to haul rock up to the surface, mine operators in Kazakhstan have embraced a newer – and generally cleaner – process by which a chemical solution is injected down a pipe to dissolve the underground uranium deposits and then is sucked back up to the surface. This in situ leach (ISL) method avoids making a mess above ground, but leaves toxic levels of heavy metals in the ground water." Continue reading →
Life in a Toxic Country
"I recently found myself hauling a bag filled with 12 boxes of milk powder and a cardboard container with two sets of air filters through San Francisco International Airport. I was heading to my home in Beijing at the end of a work trip, bringing back what have become two of the most sought-after items among parents here, and which were desperately needed in my own household. China is the world’s second largest economy, but the enormous costs of its growth are becoming apparent. Residents of its boom cities and a growing number of rural regions question the safety of the air they breathe, the water they drink and the food they eat." Continue reading →
Nepal’s tourism bureau promises to keep ‘tighter control’ of Mount Everest climbs
"Nepal’s tourism ministry said Friday it plans to exercise tighter control of climbers scaling Mount Everest to make sure they keep the world’s highest peak clean and to prevent rows. The ministry will set up a 10-member team made up of government officials, veteran Nepalese climbers and security officers that will start work when the next climbing season opens in the spring. The team will ensure that climbers do not leave trash on the mountain, Purna Chandra Bhattarai, of the tourism ministry told AFP. Nepal has already made it mandatory for each expedition team to hire liaison officers from the ministry to ensure better relations with locals." Continue reading →