How did Florida go from an uncrowded home of pine forests, wetlands and ranches to today’s sprawling subdivisions spawning environmental disaster? A new volume gains praise from BookShelf reviewer Nano Riley for its well-researched look at the unscrupulous developers who in a matter of decades carved the state’s ecosystems into lots for sale, trading its pristine beauty for an easy buck.
"World leaders attending the COP26 U.N. climate summit should focus not only on abandoning fossil fuels but also on setting ambitious goals to end deforestation - and expand funding and rules to drive forest protection, environmentalists are urging."
"The United Nations’ top human rights body voted Friday to adopt a resolution recognizing the human right to a safe, clean, healthy and sustainable environment."
"Global Witness, an environmental and human rights organization, sent undercover investigators to get the scoop"
"The police drove into the village of Watwat in SUVs during a rainstorm. It was late on a July night in 2019, and they’d come through the rainforest, armed with guns and metal bars.
Men and teenage boys were dragged out of bed, beaten and thrown into the mud. Some were arrested, held for weeks and interrogated about vandalizing palm trees, according to an investigative report by the advocacy group Global Witness.
"The Department of Energy on Friday announced a target of the equivalent of five million homes powered by community solar energy by 2025."
"Firefighters and numerous studies credit intensive forest thinning projects with helping save communities like those recently threatened near Lake Tahoe in California and Nevada, but dissent from some environmental advocacy groups is roiling the scientific community."
"The EPA will begin crafting rules to transition certain sectors way from using hydrofluorocarbons, a move authorized by legislation to phasedown the use of the potent greenhouse gas."
"Debra Shore, who has served as an elected commissioner of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District since 2006, will head the six-state Midwest headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency in Chicago, the Sun-Times has learned."
"Allies of the oil and coal industry have seized on energy crises overseas and rising gasoline prices in the U.S. to counter President Joe Biden’s plans to combat climate change and force a rapid shift to renewable power."
"The global community must invest much more and raise the scale and speed of its pledges to protect nature and prevent species loss, a senior U.N. official said on Sunday on the eve of a new round of global biodiversity talks."
