"In less than 40 years from now the cost to the world's biggest coastal cities from flooding is expected to have risen to $1tn – 0.7% of the value of the entire world economy in 2012."
The first event in the UC Davis California Environmental Law & Policy Center (CELPC) Fall 2013 Speakers' Series features a panel on Environmental Journalism with four journalists who offer their perspectives and insights on reporting in this fascinating area within the overall landscape of journalism and public discourse on the environment. Moderator: Chris Bowman (pictured), communications director at the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences.
"Working in top secret over a period of 17 years, Russian and American scientists collaborated to remove hundreds of pounds of plutonium and highly enriched uranium — enough to construct at least a dozen nuclear weapons — from a remote Soviet-era nuclear test site in Kazakhstan that had been overrun by impoverished metal scavengers, according to a report released last week by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard."
"WASHINGTON, DC -- To protect bees and other pollinators, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has developed new pesticide labels that prohibit use of some neonicotinoid pesticide products where bees are present. Environmentalists want the agency to take these pesticides off the market."
"Building the Keystone XL pipeline would lead to more manmade light and noise in sparsely populated regions, which may harm natural resources, wildlife and visitors to national parks, the U.S. Interior Department said."
"WASHINGTON — A troubled new computer system used by inspectors at the nation’s 6,500 meatpacking and processing plants shut down for two days this month, putting at risk millions of pounds of beef, poultry, pork and lamb that had left the plants before workers could collect samples to check for E. coli bacteria and other contaminants."
"ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Alaska residents have been enjoying an unusually warm, sunny summer, but the pleasant weather has come at a cost: choking smoke from an extended wildfire season, flooding rivers due to fast-melting snow and glacial ice, and fish covered in algae."
"TRENTON, N.J. -- Recent warmer-than-usual winters that may be attributable to climate change have brought a troublesome and potentially dangerous new effect, according to a Mercer County scientist: expanding swarms of Asian tiger mosquitoes."
"The US Bureau of Reclamation announced the cut Friday, from Lake Powell, because of drought conditions. While the move involving the Colorado River will be hard for people to detect at the faucet, it carries symbolic importance."
"A study on the fetuses of pregnant rhesus macaque monkeys has shown that exposure to the chemical bisphenol A, or BPA, led to changes in their lungs that increased the potential for developing asthma."
