In a sobering reminder of the impact of climate change on marine biodiversity, a survey by the Japanese government found that barely more than one percent of the coral in the country’s largest coral reef is healthy, AFP reported Friday. The reef, located in the Sekisei Lagoon near Okinawa, has suffered mass coral bleaching events […]
Japan’s failure to prevent illegal ivory exports could weaken China’s coming ban on domestic ivory trade, conservationists said Wednesday. The warning—made by Traffic, a wildlife trade monitoring group—comes just more than a week before the Chinese government will ban ivory retail sales and follows the closure of ivory factories in the country last March. “Our […]
By Dahr Jamail Former nuclear industry senior vice president Arnie Gundersen, who managed and coordinated projects at 70 U.S. atomic power plants, is appalled at how the Japanese government is handling the Fukushima nuclear crisis. “The inhumanity of the Japanese government toward the Fukushima disaster refugees is appalling,” Gundersen, a licensed reactor operator with 45 […]
By Tony Long Japan, one of the world’s largest fish importers, has joined 47 other governments in ratifying the Port State Measures Agreement (PSMA)—an international treaty designed to stop illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. Adopted by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in 2009, the PSMA helps governments strengthen their port controls to better […]
Japan and China have successfully extracted methane hydrate—ice crystals with natural methane gas locked inside—from the ocean floor near their coastlines. Commercial development of this frozen fossil fuel is considered by many countries as a key to energy security. However, releasing this massive methane monster is a potential environmental disaster. According to the Associated Press, […]
Japan’s whaling vessels returned to port with 333 minke whales on Friday after its months-long Antarctic hunt. The Fisheries Ministry said the whales were killed in the name of science. “The purpose of this research is to carry out a detailed calculation of the catch limit of minke whales and study the structure and dynamics […]
The Takagoyama Nature Zoo in the city of Futtsu, Japan euthanized 57 snow monkeys who were found to have hybrid genetic make-ups. The zoo mistakenly believed all 164 of its resident primates were pure Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata), which are endemic to Japan. When the zoo discovered through DNA testing that 57 of them were […]
Radioactive contamination in the seabed off the Fukushima coast is hundreds of times above pre-2011 levels, while contamination in local rivers is up to 200 times higher than ocean sediment, according to results from Greenpeace Japan survey work released Thursday. “The extremely high levels of radioactivity we found along the river systems highlights the enormity […]
TomDispatch By Michael T. Klare When it comes to energy and economics in the climate-change era, nothing is what it seems. Most of us believe (or want to believe) that the second carbon era, the Age of Oil, will soon be superseded by the Age of Renewables, just as oil had long since superseded the […]
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