Dutch astronomers and ecologists are working with Leiden University on a project, MONOCLE, that allows people to measure the quality of their water, simply by taking a photo with their smartphones.
US regulators are proposing to weaken air quality laws, which would allow new coal-fired power plants to pollute US parks from Shenandoah in Virginia to the Great Basin in Nevada, a new report said on Thursday. Amid rising power demand and flat US natural gas output, electricity generators are seeking to build power plants fired by abundant coal. The fuel is cheap compared with other fossil fuels, but emits more pollutants, such as mercury and smog components sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, as well as the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.
Nearly 200 governments will say next week they are unlikely to meet a target of slowing the rate of extinctions of living species by 2010, a failure which could threaten future food supplies. Up to 5,000 delegates and some heads of state, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, will try to agree at the Convention of Biological Diversity in the German city of Bonn on ways to save plant and animal species.
Pollution levels rose sharply in Beijing on Tuesday, just 2- months before the Olympic Games in the city, prompting authorities to warn residents with respiratory problems to stay inside. Air quality in the capital was rated as "heavily polluted" due to a sandstorm from Mongolia, the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau said. The bureau advised people susceptible to particles in the air to avoid outdoor activities. Such sandstorms usually hit the city in March and April.
China will become the latest country to outlaw ultra-thin plastic bags, when a ban takes effect on Sunday, in a bid to cut pollution and save resources. The ban, announced by the State Council in January, halts the production of bags that are thinner than 0.025 mm and forbids their use in supermarkets and shops. It also requires retailers to charge customers for thicker plastic bags not covered by the ban. Environmentalists say plastic bags can take up to 1,000 years to disintegrate and pose threats to marine life, birds and other animals.
Nine of the 10 US urban areas that release the most greenhouse gases per person lie east of the Mississippi River, a study showed on Thursday. "A north-south divide is also apparent," said the report issued by two think tanks, the New York-based Regional Plan Association and the Washington-based Brookings Institution. Seven of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases are in the south, including two cities each in Tennessee, Ohio and Kentucky, it said.
- Global warming will likely drain more water from the Great Lakes and pose added pollution threats to the region's vulnerable ecosystem, environmental groups said in a report issued on Wednesday. Climate change could further reduce scant ice cover observed in recent winters, increasing evaporation rates and dropping water levels in the five lakes that collectively make up 20 percent of the world's surface fresh water.
The European Union is entitled to set tougher standards and criminal penalties on sea pollution than measures included in international conventions, the EU's highest court said on Tuesday. The European Court of Justice dismissed a challenge to the 27-nation bloc's marine pollution laws by an international coalition of ship operators. Shipping interests, including tanker owners group Intertanko, had argued that the EU directive on ship-source pollution contravened two sets of international maritime laws.
The Australian government would be open to negotiations with big business over plans for carbon trading, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said on Wednesday, after industry complaints about government proposals. But Rudd warned business that carbon trading, needed to help Australia cut its greenhouse gas emissions, could not be done without some cost on industry. "It will never happen cost free. It is not a cost-free business," Rudd told the National Press Club on Wednesday.
A small Arctic gull has set a record as the bird most contaminated by two banned industrial pollutants, scientists said on Thursday. Eggs of the ivory gull, which has a population of about 14,000 from Siberia to Canada, were found to have the highest known concentrations of PCBs, long used in products such as paints or plastics, and the pesticide DDT. "Environmental poisons are threatening ivory gulls," the Norwegian Polar Institute said in a statement of eggs collected off northern Norway and Russia. "Levels of PCB and DDT are higher in ivory gulls than in other Arctic seabirds."
California's landmark legislation to cut carbon dioxide emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 will help the state's economy in the long run, according to a report issued Wednesday by the state agency charg
