
Flooding and heavy rains associated with India's monsoon season have killed 537 people so far, The Times of India reported Saturday.
The number of deaths was reported by the country's National Emergency Response Center, which recorded 139 deaths in Maharashtra, where Mumbai is located, 126 in the southwestern state of Kerala, 116 in West Bengal in the northeast, 70 in Uttar Pradesh, 52 in Gujarat and 34 in Assam.
The total number of deaths for the country are likely higher, since deaths in other states are yet to be tallied and some deaths, especially in rural areas, are not reported, according to Sky News.
At least 58 people died this weekend, as heavy rains Thursday and Friday in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh flooded land and caused houses to collapse, The Associated Press reported Saturday.
India's monsoon season started more than two weeks ahead of schedule on June 29, Reuters reported at the time.
The monsoon season typically lasts until October, according to The Associated Press.
So far, the 2018 season has also displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
In Kerala, 11,750 homes have been damaged and 143,000 people have sought shelter in 1,770 relief camps, The Times of India reported.
In West Bengal, 162,000 people have been impacted and 7,256 houses damaged, while, in Assam, 217,000 displaced people have sought shelter in 270 camps.
The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) has deployed 43 teams to help regional emergency workers in the affected areas.
In the country's capital of Delhi, more than 3,000 people living in the Yamuna River's floodplain were evacuated after the river rose passed a danger mark, Sky News reported.
In once incident, flooding brought both water and fish into the intensive care unit of the Nalanda Medical College Hospital in the city of Patna in Bihar, The Times of India reported Sunday.
#WATCH: Fish seen in the water logged inside the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of Nalanda Medical College Hospital (NMC… https://t.co/sR5mBnwdkE— ANI (@ANI)1532852439.0
Heavy rains in Bihar began Friday and are expected to continue through August 1.
More than one hundred thousand people have died in floods in India between 1953 and 2017, Sky News reported, and the problem is only expected to get worse with climate change.
Last August, unusually heavy monsoon flooding in India, Bangladesh and Nepal killed at least 1,200.
Despite the heavy rains, India is also suffering the worst water crisis in its history, partly because of pollution, waste and mismanagement, but partly also because of changing rainfall patterns linked to climate change.
The two, flooding and drought, are not as contradictory as they initially sound.
"This is the new, turbulent nature of our monsoon," journalist Raghu Karnad wrote for The Guardian after 2017's catastrophic floods, "that we are receiving more and more of our rainfall in extreme doses (which causes floods), and less in between the major deluges, which is when fields are fed and water tables recharged. For India, more flooding and more drought are not two possible futures. Both are here together, already."
By Jessica Corbett
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday was the lone progressive to vote against Tom Vilsack reprising his role as secretary of agriculture, citing concerns that progressive advocacy groups have been raising since even before President Joe Biden officially nominated the former Obama administration appointee.
Â
<div id="a420d" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="5369c498a5855fe2143b86fa07e23dff"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1364300806988652548" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">🚨🚨🚨 Bernie Sanders voted against Tom Vilsack's nomination. It's great to see the Senator stick to his principles a… https://t.co/u4XNU4viNC</div> — RootsAction (@RootsAction)<a href="https://twitter.com/Roots_Action/statuses/1364300806988652548">1614109634.0</a></blockquote></div>EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
By Beverly Law and William Moomaw
Protecting forests is an essential strategy in the fight against climate change that has not received the attention it deserves. Trees capture and store massive amounts of carbon. And unlike some strategies for cooling the climate, they don't require costly and complicated technology.
The U.S. has more than 800 million acres of natural and planted forests and woodlands, of which nearly 60% are privately owned. USDA / USFS
- Bipartisan Climate Bill Highlights Forest Restoration, Conservation ... ›
- New Forests Planted Near Rivers Could Use up All the Water, Study ... ›
- Restoring Tropical Forests Isn't Meaningful if Those Forests Only ... ›
- Family Forests Are Key to Fighting Climate Change. - EcoWatch ›
- Earth's Intact Forests Are Invaluable, and in Danger - EcoWatch ›
Trending
By Matt Casale
There were many lessons to be learned from Texas' prolonged periods of lost power during its cold snap, which saw temperatures drop into the single digits. But one many people may not recognize is that electric vehicles, or EVs, can be part of a smart resiliency plan — not only in the case of outages triggered by the cold but in other scenarios caused by extreme weather events, from fire-related blackouts in California to hurricane-hit power losses in Puerto Rico.
A car driving in the snow in Dallas, Feb. 2021. Matthew Rader / CC BY-SA 4.0
<p>Experts recognize that electric vehicles are a central climate solution for their role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But EVs are also essentially batteries on wheels. You can store energy in those batteries, and if EVs are equipped with something called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-grid" target="_blank">vehicle-to-grid</a> or vehicle-to-building technology, they can also be used to keep the lights on in emergencies. The technology allows the energy being stored in an EV battery to be pushed back into the grid or into buildings to provide power.</p><p>There are hurdles: The technology is still <a href="https://www.greenbiz.com/article/vehicle-grid-technology-revving" target="_blank">developing</a>, the vast majority of EVs currently on the road do not have this capability, and utilities would need regulatory approval before bringing it to scale. But done right it could be a great opportunity.</p><p>Electric car batteries can hold approximately <a href="https://www.wri.org/blog/2019/11/how-california-can-use-electric-vehicles-keep-lights" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">60 kilowatt hours (kWh)</a> of energy, enough to provide back-up power to an average U.S. household for two days. Larger electric vehicles like buses and trucks have even bigger batteries and can provide more power. The American company Proterra produces electric buses that can store <a href="https://www.proterra.com/press-release/proterra-launches-zx5-electric-bus/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">up to 660 kWh of energy</a>. Electric <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/electric-trash-trucks-are-coming-quietly-to-your-town-11602098620#:~:text=Electric%20trash%20truck%20love%20is%20in%20the%20air.&text=A's%20program%20to%20reduce%20carbon,being%20primarily%20electric%20by%202023." target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">garbage trucks</a> and even <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/business/electric-semi-trucks-big-rigs.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">big-rigs</a>, with bigger batteries, are becoming a reality too.</p>MTA New York City Transit / Marc A. Hermann / CC BY 2.0
<p>If equipped with vehicle-to-grid or vehicle-to-building technology, those cars, buses and trucks could prove invaluable during future blackouts. People could rely on their cars to power their houses. Municipalities, transit agencies and school districts could send out their fleets to the areas most in need. We could power homes, shelters and emergency response centers — and could keep people warm, healthy and comfortable until power could be restored.</p><p>But to add this great resiliency tool to our arsenal in times of extreme weather, we must significantly increase the number of EVs on the road. In 2019 electric cars accounted for only about <a href="https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/fotw-1136-june-1-2020-plug-vehicle-sales-accounted-about-2-all-light-duty" target="_blank">2%</a> of all light-duty vehicle sales in the country. Electric buses and trucks are becoming more common in the United States, but still only represent a tiny fraction of the fleet. As it stands now, the EVs currently on the road, even if equipped with vehicle-to-grid technology, would do little to help a broad swath of the population in need of power.</p>A line of electric cars at charging stations. Andrew Bone / CC BY 2.0
With lockdowns in place and budgets slashed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many environmental protections vanished this past year, leaving some of the world's most vulnerable species and habitats at risk. But conservationists at the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation were faced with an entirely different threat.
Annapolis, Maryland, is suing 26 oil and gas companies for deceiving the public about their products' role in causing climate change. The city is among two dozen state and local governments to file such a lawsuit.
- Charleston, SC Becomes First City in U.S. South to Sue Big Oil for ... ›
- 'Fossil Fuel Companies Knew': Honolulu Files Lawsuit Over Climate ... ›