-New Yorker A couple of weeks ago, Munich Re, one of the world’s largest reinsurance firms, issued a study titled “Severe Weather in North America.” According to the press release that accompanied the report, “Nowhere in the world is the rising number of natural catastrophes more evident than in North America.” The number of what Munich Re refers to as “weather-related loss events,” and what the rest of us would probably...

-The Times of India The warning is ominous — climate change and global warming will make vector-borne diseases like dengue and malaria - already causing havoc in the country more lethal. A landmark report on climate change and health, published by the World Health Organization on Monday, said that in the last 100 years, the world has warmed by approximately 0.75 degree Celsius. Over the last 25 years, the rate of global...

-Outlook Could scientists have got the impacts of climate change on food supply wildly wrong? I believe we might have made a mistake: a mistake whose consequences, if I am right, would be hard to overstate. I think the forecasts for world food production could be entirely wrong. Food prices are rising again, partly because of the damage done to crops in the northern hemisphere by ferocious weather. In the US, Russia...

-The Hindu The government may consider tighter environment and safety norms for the Kudankulam nuclear plant, even as it insisted that all current conditions are being strictly complied with. Asked if a safety relook was on the cards, given the Supreme Court’s statement on Thursday that the plant could be shut if the safety aspects were not satisfactorily ensured, Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan said: “I am willing to consider [a relook] in...

-Outlook As threat to the Taj Mahal due to harmful gases emanating from nearby industries continue, green activists are now emphasising the need for implementation of a 'clean air action plan' to save the Mughal-era structure. Though environmentalists have been raising a hue and cry time and again, this time they have rung the alarm bell by flagging concerns over emissions from vehicles due to uninterrupted flow of traffic. Industrial pollution is increasingly...