Air quality is a major challenge globally and is the single greatest environmental risk to human health. More than 90 per cent of the world’s population lives in areas that exceed the World Health Organization
The Canadian government is being urged not to sell huge volumes of water to the parched USA as NGOs warn that, despite appearances to the contrary, the northern neighbour is not a 'great green sponge'. The USA faces severe water shortages in three distinct regions - the South west, Midwest and South East. Canada, on the other hand, has a water resource comparable to that of the USA but only 10% of the population.
NAFTA, US Drought Endanger Canada's Water -Study CANADA: April 4, 2008 OTTAWA - Increasing droughts in the United States and American unhappiness over NAFTA mean Canada could one day be forced to allow bulk shipments of water to its giant neighbour, a left-leaning think tank said on Thursday. The Polaris Institute demanded that Canada pass a law banning the bulk export of water to the United States. Ottawa says such exports are already blocked under the North American Free Trade Agreement, which the two leading US Democratic presidential candidates want to rewrite.
Canadian Researchers Warn Of New Arctic Worries CANADA: April 4, 2008 VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Canada's massive Mackenzie Delta is feeling the impact of climate change faster than expected and could foretell of problems elsewhere in the Arctic, a Canadian researcher said on Thursday. Melting ocean ice is apparently allowing larger storm surges to flood into the delta in Canada's far north, a change that could have an impact on energy development plans for the region, said Lance Lesack, who has been tracking environmental changes in the region for more than a decade.
The irreconcilable differences between David S. Reay's Book Review of The Hot Topic (Nature 452, 31; 2008) and mine, expressed in Nature Reports Climate Change (see http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0804/full/climate.2008.23.html), go to the heart of why there is now a crisis in climate policy. Reay seems to believe that agreement with a normative agenda precludes the need for rigorous evaluation of evidence or of proposed policy actions, and so falls into the same traps as Gabrielle Walker and David King, the authors whom he praises. (Correspondence)
Greener building practices could cut North America's greenhouse gas emissions more effectively than any other available measure. Canada, Mexico and the US are being urged to embrace greener construction methods That is the conclusion of a new report from the Commission for Environmental Co-operation (CEC). Green Building in North America: Opportunities and Challenges says buildings release about 35% of the continent's total CO2 emissions and this could be the quickest and cheapest way to reduce North America's impact on climate change.
One of the most bitter transatlantic trade disputes of the past decade inched towards resolution on Wednesday, when the European Union announced it had complied with a 1999 World Trade Organisation ruling against its ban on beef hormones. Though Brussels refused to lift the ban, trade officials insisted that the original legislation banning the use of six growth-promoting hormones had been amended in a way that should satisfy both the complainants - the US and Canada - and the WTO.
A controversial nuclear club is taking shape.
Philippines recently ordered Novartis to pull out its anti-arthritis painkiller from the country. It is feared that the drug lumiracoxib, also sold as prexige, causes liver damage. The Bureau of Food
A Vast Lake Trapped Under Ice Sheet Drained Into The Sea, Bringing Down Temperatures Paris: Canadian geologists say they can shed light on how a vast lake, trapped under the ice sheet that once smothered much of North America, drained into the sea, an event that cooled Earth's climate for hundreds of years. During the last ice age, the Laurentide Ice Sheet once covered most of Canada and parts of the northern United States with a frozen crust that in some places was three kilometres thick. As the temperature gradually rose some 10,000 years ago, the ice receded, gouging out the hollows that would be called the Great Lakes. Beneath the ice's thinning surface, an extraordinary mass of water built up
The Arctic reflects what ails a world gripped by global warming. As the ice melts and nations vie for rich mineral resources once hidden under the snow, the writing on the wall is often ignored, says Fatima Chowdhury Thousands of miles away in the Arctic region, fate stands delicately balanced at the edge of time. Located at the North Pole, the region includes the Arctic Ocean surrounded by the five Arctic states
