The president of Brazil kicked off the three-day global environmental summit in Rio on Wednesday, amid plenty of complaints that the United Nations conference is on course to end with a weak slate of accomplishment, Reuters reports.
A report by the human rights group Global Witness concludes that one person is killed each week in the increasingly violent worldwide battles over conservation vs. exploitation of forests and other natural resources, Reuters reports.
Bloomberg reports that officials from Rio de Janeiro and China are affirming that they won't try to use emission credits that they sell for their own domestic greenhouse targets, potentially erasing stumbling block in United Nations talks on climate change.
Petrobras, Brazil’s state-controlled crude producer, lowered its 2020 output target by 11 percent, from 6.4 million barrels to 5.7 million, and will spend $236.5 billion through 2016 on offshore oil field investments, FuelFix reports.
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — The list of Amazon bird species facing danger of extinction has risen sharply because their rainforest habitat is being slashed to make room for cattle ranching and agriculture, a conservationist group said Thursday.
BirdLife International said that globally, 1,331 types of birds, or 13 percent of the world's 10,064 total bird species, were listed as at risk on this year's Red List of Threatened Species issued by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. That's up from the 1,253 species classified as threatened on last year's list.
Ahead of this month's Rio+20 Earth Summit in Brazil, scientists and environmentalists are warning the planet is facing unprecedented, dire straits, The Washington Post reports.
BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — For generations, the Awa lived far from the rest of humanity, picking fruit, hunting pigs and monkeys and following the seasons' rhythms in their patch of the lush Brazilian Amazon rainforest.
Then the rest of the world found the Awa. Loggers and ranchers came, cutting into the tribe's ancestral lands in search of profits. So did a rail line where trains shuttle tons of iron ore through the forest, from mines in the heart of the Amazon to Atlantic Ocean ports, with much of it headed for Chinese steel mills.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has created two new nature reserves, as well as seven indigenous territories in the Amazon.
The reserves are among a raft of environmental measures Rousseff signed into law on Tuesday, just weeks before the United Nations' mega-conference on sustainable development. The Rio+20 conference is to be held in Rio de Janeiro from June 20-22.
Regulators in Brazil said they will decide likely by July on the amount of fines they will make Chevron pay for an offshore oil spill in November, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked the Justice Department to join the European Union's probe of possible oil price manipulation, Reuters reports.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairman Allison Macfarlane said the NRC can't consider a public hearing on the San Onofre nuclear plant until June, when an appeal period of an Atomic Safety and Licensing Board ruling ends.
Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Joe Manchin, D-W.V., introduced a bill that would ensure that only domestically-made biofuels can be used to meet the Renewable Fuel Standard, The Chattanoogan reports.
A federal judge refused to reconsider a ruling that upheld the Interior Department's power to ban new hard rock mining projects on federal land, The Associated Press reports.
Tesla Motors increased the value of its stock and debt offerings 30 percent to $1.08 billion to gather reserves and pay back its Energy Department loans, Bloomberg reports.
Poland called on the European Union to end energy subsidies for fossil fuels and renewable sources and cut oil imports to better combat climate change, Bloomberg reports.
The first well reports from the Utica shale in Ohio show a significant supply of natural gas but not as much oil as some energy companies were expecting, Reuters reports.
