Roughly one-sixth of croplands globally — 14 to 17 percent, or approximately 598 million acres — are contaminated by one or more toxic heavy metals like arsenic, cobalt, cadmium, copper, lead and nickel at levels exceeding human health and agricultural safety thresholds, a new study has found. Heavy metals are elements that come from both […]
More than a third of Africa’s great apes are being put at much greater risk from global mining activities than scientists had previously believed, according to a new study led by the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv). The green energy transition’s increasing demand for critical minerals like copper, nickel, cobalt and lithium has […]
Rick Bass is an American author of more than thirty books, both fiction and non-fiction, on a wide range of topics. An environmental activist, he is also an artist drawn to the beauty of the natural world. The winner of numerous awards, his most recent essay collection, With Every Great Breath, was released this February […]
The United Nations Environment Programme’s Global Resources Outlook — the flagship report of the UN’s International Resource Panel, due to be published later this month — highlights how the consumption of natural resources globally is set to rise by 60 percent by 2060. Raw materials consumption worldwide is already four times higher than it was […]
The Amazon is the largest tropical rainforest in the world. Spanning eight countries, it has been called the “lungs of the planet” for its vital service of converting enormous amounts of carbon dioxide into oxygen. Now, Brazilian lawmakers have approved a bill to allow conservation funds to be used to pave a highway — BR-319 […]
Brazil and Colombia have blown up 19 illegal gold mining operations in the Amazon rainforest. Colombia’s armed forces said the mines were producing about $1.5 million worth of the rare metal every month and polluting the rainforest’s rivers with mercury, reported the BBC and Reuters. The unlawful activity was producing 50.71 pounds of gold a […]
President Joe Biden’s 2022 initiative America the Beautiful has a goal of conserving and restoring 30 percent of lands and waters in the United States by 2030. A new contribution to that goal was announced by The White House today with the establishment of the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand […]
Grand Canyon National Park is one of the most iconic public lands in the U.S., but the surrounding area has long been in the sights of developers, especially uranium miners. That is why the Grand Canyon Tribal Coalition wants President Joe Biden to permanently protect around 1.1 million acres north and south of the park […]
If the Donlin Gold Mine is built as planned in Southwest Alaska, it would be the largest pure gold mine in the world. It would also lead to the filling of thousands of acres of wetlands, harm salmon and rainbow smelt and risk a catastrophic spill of 20 to 40 percent of the up to 568 million tons of toxic waste that could end up stored behind a 471-foot tailings dam.
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