Hurricane Maria’s destruction on Puerto Rico could spawn one of the largest mass migrations in US history. Some 97% of the island’s residents are still without power, and half do not have running water. Thousands now awaiting flights from San Juan’s airport might be permanently displaced and become the planet’s newest “climate refugees.”
San Francisco filed a lawsuit against five fossil fuel companies due to expected expenses the city will incur from global warming. The companies named in the suit are BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell—chosen because they are "the largest investor-owned fossil fuel corporations in the world as measured by their historic production of fossil fuels."
Venezuela, under growing pressure from US sanctions, has told oil traders that it is dropping petro-dollars for petro-euros and petro-yuans. Despite the instinct to cheer the decline of US world domination, will this make any real difference—either to Venezuela, still dependent on oil exports in a world of depressed prices, or to Planet Earth, facing biosphere collapse as a result of burning hydrocarbons?
With stateside media focused on the unprecedented flooding and cascading industrial disasters from Hurricane Harvey in Texas, the far great deluges that have struck three countries in South Asia are going largely unreported. Up to 40 million have been impacted after weeks of unusually strong monsoon rains affecting India, Bangladesh and Nepal—adding to the fast-growing ranks of "climate refugees," now a nearly invisible global crisis.
Colombia released an "Analysis of Vulnerability and Risk" to the country from climate change, warning of devastating territory loss.
Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement comes just as an unprecedentedly huge piece of Antarctica’s ice shelf is on the verge of breaking off from the continent. (Map: Geology.com)
Under diplomatic pressure, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson signed the Fairbanks Declaration on Arctic climate—but with caveats about how the US will not "rush" to change policy.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order to lift restrictions placed on offshore oil drilling by the previous administration, opening vast areas to exploitation.
Colombia is mourning after the tragic landslide in Mocoa, capital of Putumayo region—the latest disaster to hit the Andes as a result of this year's "abnormal" El Niño.
Most of Barack Obama's actions to forestall climate change were wiped out as Trump revoked limits on emissions from power plants and opened federal lands to coal mining.
The high court in India's Uttarakhand state ruled that the Ganges and Yamuna are "living entities," giving a legal voice to these rivers that have seen years of ecological damage.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization warned that the Middle East and North Africa risk becoming uninhabitable in a few decades, with water reserves falling dramatically.
