huffingtonpost.com - August 29th, 2014 - Yasmine Hafiz

The World Council of Churches, which represents over 500 million Christians in more than 110 countries, has decided to divest from fossil fuels, reports The Guardian.

The WCC Central Committee, which includes religious leaders from around the world, voted to include fossil fuel companies in the sectors that WCC will not invest in on ethical grounds, according to a statement from 350.org, an international enviromental campaign.

A report from the WCC's finance policy committee simply states, "The committee discussed the ethical investment criteria, and considered that the list of sectors in which the WCC does not invest should be extended to include fossil fuels."

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Image: A woman in Monrovia, Liberia, passed a man believed to be infected with Ebola. Researchers say it could take 12 to 18 months to bring the epidemic under control. Credit Abbas Dulleh/Associated Press

nytimes.com - September 12th, 2014 - Denise Grady

The deadly Ebola outbreak sweeping across three countries in West Africa is likely to last 12 to 18 months more, much longer than anticipated, and could infect hundreds of thousands of people before it is brought under control, say scientists mapping its spread for the federal government.

“We hope we’re wrong,” said Bryan Lewis, an epidemiologist at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech.

The Obama administration’s decision to enlist the Defense Department in responding to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa is raising concerns that the task is pulling the already-stretched military away from other missions, including vital counter-terrorism operations.

According to a senior military official, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said at a recent meeting: "The Department of Defense's number one priority is combating Ebola."

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/09/14/it-doesnt-make-sense-concerns-over-tasking-dod-with-ebola-mission-amid/

Sep 13 2014 - 6:10am by Charles Omedo - thewestsidestory.net

Come next week, the United States president, Barack Obama will get personal briefing on the Ebola virus situation in West Africa from medical experts working on the epidemic, and he will also use the opportunity to lay out his government’s response plan for combating the deadly epidemic.

Four American doctors and nurses have contracted the fatal disease but were lucky to have survived after being flown back to the US for treatments with experimental drugs and blood serums. The disease has however killed over 2,550 victims according to the World Health Organization (WHO) and over 4,300 currently infected with the epidemic in West Africa.

http://thewestsidestory.net/2014/09/13/16496/president-barack-obama-discuss-us-response-ebola-epidemic/

Steven Reinberg HealthDay Reporter - THURSDAY, Sept. 11, 2014 (HealthDay News)

theguardian.com - Monday 8 September 2014 21.24 BST

Suspected virus, enterovirus 68, typically causes illness lasting a week and most children recover with no lasting problems.

Hundreds of children in more than 10 states have been sickened by a severe respiratory illness that public health officials say may be caused by an uncommon virus similar to the germ that causes the common cold.

Nearly 500 children have been treated at one hospital alone – Children’s Mercy in Kansas City, Missouri – and some required intensive care, according to authorities.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/08/children-respiratory-virus-illinois-missouri

August 20, 2014 - environmentalleader.com

The US could see about a 27 percent reduction in its carbon footprint if just half of the unanticipated economic benefits of shale gas and oil production were used in the efforts, according to agricultural economists at Purdue University.

The researchers estimate that shale technologies annually provide an extra $302 billion to various sectors within the US economy, relative to 2007.

http://www.environmentalleader.com/2014/08/20/shale-oil-benefits-could-pay-for-smaller-carbon-footprint/

August 19, 2014 - environmentalleader.com

If all of the municipal solid waste (MSW) that is currently put into landfills each year in the US were diverted to waste-to-energy (WTE) power plants, it could generate enough electricity to supply 12 percent of the US total, according to a study conducted by the Earth Engineering Center (EEC) of Columbia University.

According to the study, this shift also could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 123 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalents per year.

August 19, 2014 By Carl Zichella

It seems everyone involved with renewable energy and climate change is asking the same question these days.  What will the 21st century grid look like?  This is one of the key questions the Department of Energy is asking as part of the first “Quadrennial Energy Review (QER)” seeking to understand how much modernizing the nation’s energy infrastructure will need in the coming years.

13 August 2014 - By Mara Certic

Just weeks after blue-green algal blooms were detected in Georgica Pond, extremely high levels of the toxic rust alga Cochlodinium have emerged in Sag Harbor and East Hampton waters.

Cochlodinium first appeared on Long Island in 2004 and has been detected in local waters every summer since. According to Professor Christopher Gobler, who conducts water quality testing and is a professor at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, densities above 500 cells per milliliter can be lethal to both finfish and shellfish. The Gobler Laboratory recorded Cochlodinium at densities exceeding 30,000 cells per milliliter in Sag Harbor Cove, and over 1,000 in Accabonac and Three Mile Harbors.

http://sagharborexpress.com/toxic-tide-shows-up-early-in-sag-harbor/

http://sagharboronline.com/sagharborexpress/page-1/toxic-tide-shows-up-early-in-sag-harbor-32598

In writing about the importance of promoting private enterprise, as well as in many other sections of my work, I suggested an almost near certainty that the risk management industry eventually will facilitate resilience and structural adaptivity in our built environment.  In my larger draft, I included a short section about this, which I am posting below (somewhat revised).  I believe it is beneficial to share this section now in order to explain my optimism for resilience. (I also wrote short sections on Time, Rapid Change, Optimism, A Futurist Perspective, and The Human Factor but do not necessarily intend to post them here.)

The future will be all about risk and trying to find protection from the rapidly increasing threats to our world as we advance in population size, social/cultural/economic complexity, and cutting-edge science and technology.  Risk underwriting will play a big role in how well or how poorly we adapt to accelerating change. 

submitted by Albert Gomez     

Image: North Dakota is in the midst of an oil boom. Farmers are coping with the environmental and financial costs of wastewater spills from the drilling.Dermot Tatlow / LAIF / Redux

america.aljazeera.com - September 6th, 2014 - Laura Gottesdiener

Last summer, in a wet, remote section of farm country in Bottineau County, landowner Mike Artz and his two neighbors discovered that a ruptured pipeline was spewing contaminated wastewater into his crop fields.

“We saw all this oil on the low area, and all this salt water spread out beyond it,” said his neighbor Larry Peterson, who works as a farmer and an oil-shale contractor. “The water ran out into the wetland.”

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huffingtonpost.com - September 2nd, 2014 - Ban Ki-moon

Climate change has been one of my top priorities since the day I took office in 2007. I said then that if we care about our legacy for succeeding generations, this is the time for decisive global action. I have been pleased to see climate change rise on the political agenda and in the consciousness of people worldwide.

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