People & Population

Drought, loss of water rights, and debt are among the factors causing farmers in India's Maharashtra state to commit suicide.

"At least 800,000 people across the United States live near hundreds of sites that store large amounts of potentially explosive ammonium nitrate, which investigators are blaming as the source of last month's deadly blast at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, a Reuters analysis shows."

"Elders and chiefs of at least 10 sovereign nations walked out of a meeting with U.S. State Department officials in Rapid City, South Dakota, on Thursday May 16 in which the government was attempting to engage in tribal consultation over the Keystone XL pipeline."

"The people of Newtok, on the west coast of Alaska and about 400 miles south of the Bering Strait that separates the state from Russia, are living a slow-motion disaster that will end, very possibly within the next five years, with the entire village being washed away." ... "Climate change has accelerated the normal process of erosion along Alaska's rivers and coasts - especially near the shores of the Bering and Arctic seas."

"While mainstream environmental organizations lick their wounds over the failure of climate-change legislation and their startling lack of diversity, people of color and those living on low incomes continue to bear the brunt of climate-change impacts."

"It's the first environmental health screening tool of its kind in the country. California's Environmental Protection Agency is rolling out 'Cal Enviroscreen' which helps pinpoint communities that may be particularly vulnerable to pollution."

"RONAN, Mont. -- In a place where the lives and histories of Indian tribes and white settlers intertwine like mingling mountain streams, a bitter battle has erupted on this land over the rivers running through it."

"Debra White Plume and Marie Brush Breaker Randall stood in the middle of Highway 44, alongside more than 70 other members of the Oglala Lakota Nation. For hours, they didn't budge -- much to the chagrin of some tractor-trailer drivers bound for the tar sands region of Alberta, Canada."