environmental disaster

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Australia's Environment Is in Grim Condition

19 ecosystems are on the brink of collapse

(Newser) - Shocking, grim, dire, depressing … that’s what readers are saying about all 2,000 pages of Australia’s latest State of the Environment survey. Things weren’t great five years ago—the last time they conducted the survey—but conditions have deteriorated rapidly. Per the BBC, Environment Minister Tanya...

Abandoned Red Sea Tanker Is Disaster Waiting to Happen

It's on the verge of dumping out four times as much oil as the Exxon Valdez

(Newser) - A ghost ship holding more than a million barrels of crude oil is rotting in the Red Sea. It could just sink. Or it could explode. And if either of those things happens, millions of people will be without water, on top of the environmental devastation, the Guardian reports. It...

After Ship Sinks, Dead Turtles With Throat Damage Wash Up

A dozen dolphins have been found dead as well

(Newser) - Nearly a hundred carcasses of turtles with throat and shell damage, as well as a dozen dead dolphins and a blue whale, have washed ashore in Sri Lanka since a container ship burned and sank , raising fears of a severe marine disaster. Ecologists believe the deaths were directly caused by...

Sunken Ship Will 'Basically Destroy the Bottom of the Sea'

Chemical leak believed to have triggered fires prior to sinking off Sri Lanka

(Newser) - A chemical-laden cargo ship that burned for 13 days off the coast of Sri Lanka has now sunk, along with hundreds of tons of oil in fuel tanks, in what CNN calls "one of the worst ecological disasters in the country's history." Crews managed to put out...

Barriers Aren't Stopping the Oil. Now, Arctic Ocean Is in Peril

Booms put in place to contain spill in northern Siberia last month haven't been working well

(Newser) - Fuel is flowing toward the Arctic Ocean in Russia's far north following a major diesel spill last month. Some 150,000 barrels of diesel—nearly half as much fuel as leaked in the Exxon Valdez tanker spill in Alaska in 1989—were released near the mining city of Norilsk...

One of America's Most Toxic Places: a Town Called Picher

Only 3 residents remain

(Newser) - The former lead and zinc mining boomtown of Picher, Okla., has seen better days. It swelled to some 14,000 residents when bullet demand rose during both World War I and II, with Wired reporting previously that "most" of the lead found in bullets used by America during those...

BP May Have to Pony Up $14B for Oil Spill

New Orleans judge assessing fine for Deepwater Horizon disaster

(Newser) - The $4.5 billion criminal penalty that BP had to pay for the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill was pretty hefty, but a New Orleans judge may be about to triple that fine. Nearly five years after the disaster that dumped hundreds of millions of gallons of oil into the...

Industrial Society Pretty Much Doomed
 Modern Society 
 Pretty Much Doomed 
study says

Modern Society Pretty Much Doomed

NASA-funded study says the end is nigh

(Newser) - Don't look now, but industrial society is going the way of the Dodo bird. According to a NASA-funded study , modern societies will self-destruct in the vein of past empires (think Roman, Han, Mesopotamian) because the 1% are consuming too much and we're bound to run out of resources....

How Drought Is Killing This Texas Town

Plainview may not survive the loss of its residents: NYT

(Newser) - Texas is experiencing its third-worst drought since 1895, and the New York Times humanizes the environmental disaster today with the story of Plainview. The drought, which has gone on for two years now, is affecting cattle, and finally forced the town's largest employer, a Cargill beef-processing plant, to close...

Hungary Arrests Toxic Sludge Boss

PM wants state to take over the firm

(Newser) - The head of the company behind Hungary's toxic sludge spill has been arrested, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has asked parliament to take over. "The company should be put under state control and its assets under state closure," he said. Zoltan Bakonyi, of aluminum firm MAL Co,...

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