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Cape Argus: 'SA's water could run out by 2025' "The government is now being warned about a looming water crisis for South Africa in the same way that it was warned a decade ago about the present energy crisis, one of the country's top environmental organisations says. The warning from World Wide Fund for Nature - South Africa (WWF-SA) is that 98 percent of available water resources are already fully utilised and the country could run out of water by 2025. "This doesn't mean the taps will run dry, but that water-intensive industries won't be able to continue working as before and there may be water rationing," chief executive of WWF-SA Morne du Plessis told a media briefing at the Waterfront on Wednesday."
2008-02-09 16:52:56
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National Geographic: Human Activities Triggering "Global Soil Change" "Earth's climate and biodiversity aren't the only things being dramatically affected by humans—the world's soils are also shifting beneath our feet, a new report says....This new era will be defined by the pervasiveness of human environmental impacts, including changes to Earth's soils and surface geology...Earth's soils already show a reduced capacity to support biodiversity and agricultural production."
2008-02-06 19:00:23
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India News: Two billion face water famine as Himalayan glaciers melt "New Delhi: Two billion people face acute water shortage this century as Himalayan glaciers melt due to global warming. [Sayed I. Hasnain of the Centre for Policy Research] said the little work that had been done predicted that there would be a 20-30 percent increase in the water flow of the Ganges in the next four decades as the glaciers feeding the river melted, followed by a severe water shortage."
2008-02-02 10:21:58
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Discover: Unsustainable Soil Use Can Cause Civilizations to Collapse "Earth is running out of soil. At least that's the conclusion of a new study supporting the long-held belief that current farming practices are causing soil to erode more quickly than new soil can be produced."
2008-01-29 20:05:02
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Globe and Mail (Canada): Commodities continue to rack up double digit gains "In five of the last six years commodity prices have posted double-digit increases.
And the indications are that the index, which tracks price trends in 32 of Canada's major exports, has started the year with another increase, aided by gold, oil, potash, sulphur and wheat prices, all of which reached record highs so far this month."
2008-01-22 21:29:02
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Guardian (UK): Is this the end of cheap food? "Walton ... forecasts two further years of similar increases, at least. All the indicators, the prices of every food staple, are on the up - wheat doubled in price at one point last year. 'It's something the industry has expected and is thus, hopefully, a manageable cycle,' he says. 'No hunger riots. But we have enjoyed food prosperity for a long time, and we're seeing the end of that.'
Others offer an even more bleak assessment. Jacques Diouf, head of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, spoke recently of a 'very serious crisis' brought about by the rise in food prices and the rise in the oil price. Various global economic bodies are forecasting rises of between 10 per cent and 50 per cent over the next decade."
2008-01-13 16:16:57
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Durango Herald (US): Oil shale rises again in Western Colorado Chevron officials look at the size of tomorrow's market. Six billion people live on Earth, and there might be 9 billion by the middle of the century. "We're probably going to need every molecule of energy going forward that we can get to meet the needs of that growing population," Johnson said.
That's what brings Chevron back to Colorado's notoriously difficult oil-shale deposits. "The easy oil, we pretty much have used up," he said.
2008-01-13 15:53:45
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The Economist (UK): Christophe de Margerie, the boss of Total, thinks that the world's oil production may be nearing its peak "Mr de Margerie is careful to point out that he is not predicting "peak oil" in a geological sense. His definition of peak oil is "when supply cannot meet demand". He believes that the fuel that the world needs to keep its cars and factories running may well be out there, somewhere. It is just getting harder and harder to extract, for technical as well as political reasons. For one thing, he points out, the output of existing fields is declining by 5m-6m b/d every year. That means that oil firms have to find lots of new fields just to keep production at today's levels. Moreover, the sorts of fields that Western oil firms are starting to develop, in very deep water, or of nearly solid, tar-like oil, are ever more technically challenging. There is not enough skilled labour and fancy equipment in the world, he believes, to ramp up production as quickly as people hope."
2008-01-03 14:56:43
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National Post (Canada): Peak Gold? Production from the world's biggest producer, South Africa, has sunk to levels not seen since the 1930s, he said, and despite a long-standing bull run for the price of gold, a finite supply of the precious metal means not enough is being produced to meet demand.
"Demand is driving this inexorably," Mr. Norman said. "People talk about peak oil, but peak gold should also be a feature of discussion in 2008."
2008-01-02 19:53:37
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AP Business News: Oil futures rise to $100 a barrel "Crude oil prices briefly soared to $100 a barrel Wednesday for the first time, reaching that milestone amid an unshakeable view that global demand for oil and petroleum products will outstrip supplies."
2007-12-17 10:39:06
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New York Times (US): LA Reservoirs Closed After Carcinogen Is Found The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power plans to drain 600 million gallons from the reservoirs, the Elysian and the Silver Lake, early next year, said a water department spokesman, Joseph Ramallo. The reservoirs will be out of use for three to four months amid drought conditions.
High levels of the carcinogen bromate were found in early October by a commercial customer who ran a laboratory test, officials said. The utility confirmed the finding, immediately removed the reservoirs from service and notified the Department of Public Health.
Officials emphasized that the chemical is dangerous only after long-term consumption.
2007-12-14 09:59:27
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The Hindu (India), Nov 21, 2007: Urbanisation causing wetland depletion "Experts found that the pollution of wetland ecosystems in the State was considerably high in Vembanad-Kol backwater system following various types of pollution in the upstream areas of the Pampa, Achenkovil and Periyar rivers. Also, salinity intrusion into rivers due to low water level in the summer months makes it unfit for drinking and other uses like irrigation. Heavy metal concentration was observed during the pre-monsoon months. The high metal concentration, observed in Kochi harbour area during the pre-monsoon season, was also attributed to the intrusion of high saline waters and precipitation of particulate matter."
2008-01-09 22:53:36
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TheDay (CT): Cheap Oil is So Yesterday. Time to Start Writing Expensive Oil into Our Plans? "Competition for scarce resources will drive up the future price of raw materials: The building blocks of progress -- fossil fuel energy, metals, land - are more abundant and cheaper now than they will be in the future. Resource nationalism means that certain strategic materials may not be available for import -- at any price -- in the not-too-distant future. We should reconsider the future value of energy, raw materials, farmland and water."
2007-12-08 12:10:28
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Cebu Daily News (Philippines): Manila: Study sees lack of clean water by 2025 "The Philippines' water resources are fast deteriorating with rapid urbanization, with only about 33 percent of river systems still suitable as a supply source and up to 58 percent of groundwater now contaminated, a new Asian Development Bank (ADB) research shows."
