Nearly everyone in Europe is breathing polluted air – with deadly consequences

 

Virtually everyone in Europe lives in polluted towns and cities where annual average levels of fine particulate matter are higher than the World Health Organization's (WHO) recommended limit. In practical terms, this means that almost everyone on the continent is breathing bad air that has been shown to be fatal. Air pollution increases the risk of respiratory and heart disease and lowers life expectancy.

China is planting Fields of Stones stuck to Metal Bars - No, Really

 

Does Japan have a plastic problem?

 

Russia's war is poisoning Ukraine's environment for generations

 

Russia's war with Ukraine is releasing untold volumes of toxins and pollutants into the environment that will impact Ukrainians for years to come.

UN warns nature is in dangerous decline

 The United Nations sounds alarm over climate change and offers rescue plan for deteriorating ecosystems.

The foundations of our planet’s health are crumbling from pollution, climate change and loss of nature.

From oceans to forests and farmlands, the world’s ecosystems are being degraded and destroyed.

Coronavirus and the environment: Reduced pollution, increase in plastic waste

The global medical emergency has presented an opportunity to check on the health of the planet. Initially there had been hope that the slowdown in the world economy would be good for the planet. Air traffic almost stopped completely, cruise ships were stranded in port, and industrial pollution was reduced.

 

The Pacific's Nuclear Timebomb

101 East investigates if the legacy of America's nuclear bomb testing is the poisoning of the Pacific Ocean.

The Pacific paradise of Enewetak Atoll harbours a devastating secret - the toxic legacy of American nuclear testing.

Between 1946 and 1958, the US military tested 43 nuclear bombs in the Pacific.

Now a concrete dome - 46cm thick - seals 80,000 cubic meters of radioactive waste on the deserted island of Runit.

But the dome is not working. Rising sea levels threaten to flush a vast stash of highly radioactive plutonium into the Pacific Ocean.

Indonesia's Most Polluted River

101 East investigates the human cost of one of the world's most polluted rivers, the Citarum in Indonesia.

For generations, Indonesia's Citarum River has provided fish to eat, irrigation for rice fields, and fresh water for drinking, washing and cooking for the millions who live along its banks.

But today, it's known as the most polluted river in the world.

The river supplies water to textile factories that make clothes for some of the biggest fashion brands in the world - H&M, Gap, Uniqlo. It also provides an open sewer for the factories to dump toxic chemicals, thousands of litres at a time, creating an ecological disaster.

How do we solve the plastic catastrophe?

Forty companies in the UK have pledged to reduce plastic waste over the next seven years.

If the current trend of pollution continues, scientists predict that by the year 2050 there could be more plastic in our oceans than fish.

That is an extraordinary prediction.

Now, more than 40 large companies in the UK have signed an agreement.

The aim: to eliminate single-use plastic or packaging that cannot be reused.

The goal: to do it in the next seven years. 

The move is a first, and the decision is expected to be followed by companies in other countries.

Now, 1m plastic bottles are purchased every minute in the United States alone.

The Pacific's Nuclear Timebomb

101 East investigates if the legacy of America's nuclear bomb testing is the poisoning of the Pacific Ocean.

The Pacific paradise of Enewetak Atoll harbours a devastating secret - the toxic legacy of American nuclear testing. Between 1946 and 1958, the US military tested 43 nuclear bombs in the Pacific. Now a concrete dome - 46cm thick - seals 80,000 cubic meters of radioactive waste on the deserted island of Runit.

But the dome is not working. Rising sea levels threaten to flush a vast stash of highly radioactive plutonium into the Pacific Ocean. This is not the only fallout - the soldiers who cleaned up the mess and the Marshallese islanders are abandoned by a government refusing any responsibility.

Polluted Paradise (video)

People & Power investigates New Zealand's water pollution problem as regional elections gear up.

New Zealand's pristine and abundant rivers and lakes have long been central to its proud reputation as a land of breath-taking natural beauty - and fundamental to a clean, green, outdoorsy brand that's used to attract millions of foreign visitors every year. 

But are its waterways really as sparkling and bountiful as the tourist ads suggest?

It seems not. 

Although the issue hasn't attracted huge global attention, for some years now campaign groups such as Greenpeace have been ringing alarm bells about the deteriorating quality - and curiously diminishing volume - of New Zealand's fresh water, problems they say are both directly attributable to the country's most profitable industry and in danger of being exacerbated by government-backed projects in support of that industry.

A matter of life or death: China's pollution dilemma

Smog takes its toll on Chinese city dwellers, with researchers saying 1.6 million died this year because of pollution.


Smog levels in Beijing this year were almost seven times the maximum exposure recommended by the World Health Organization. That makes the smog a matter of life and death.

In the first quarter of this year more than 90 percent of Chinese cities failed to meet the government's own air-quality standards.

Air pollution contributes to 17 percent of all deaths in China.

As many as 1.6 million people died this year as a result of air pollution, the Berkeley Research Group estimates. That is about 4,400 people dying every day.

But what is the government doing to tackle the issue? And why has it failed to strike a balance between economic growth and public health?

Earthrise: In Your Backyard

From Canada's tar sands to Chinese advertising billboards, we explore the psychology behind dealing with climate change.

Climate change is no mystery. We know what we have to do to limit emissions and we know we need to change our behaviour and yet we fail to take the kind of action necessary. Why? In this earthrise film we delve into the complex psychology of human behaviour around climate change and how we can turn apathy into action.

Regular earthrise presenter Gelareh Darabi travels back to her roots in British Columbia, Canada, where she meets Robert Gifford, an environmental psychologist. Professor Gifford has written extensively about the relationship between the human brain, psychology and climate change. "We are still very much focused on survival and the 'now'," he says. "We get comfortable in our lifestyles and interpret any sign of uncertainty as sufficient reason not to act." But there is a ray of hope in his research. "Humans display an unwavering attachment to their place of dwelling," he adds.

Melina Laboucan Massimo is a prominent activist who comes from the Laboucan Cree nation tribe in Canada. Their community's backyard is the famous Alberta tar sands; the size of Greece, it is the largest industrial project on earth. Massimo has been actively fighting exploitation of the tar sands for nearly a decade and her motivation is her close connection to her ancestral land.

Crowdsourcing Data to Tackle Pollution

Kite-balloons and spectrometers - how community activists use DIY technology to investigate environmental polluters.

Exactly five years ago this month, an oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico leaking an estimated 134 million gallons of crude oil and four million pounds of natural gas into surrounding marine habitat. The Deepwater Horizon oil disaster as it was later known, was the largest oil spill of its kind, killing and injuring countless marine animals, shorebirds, sea turtles and other wildlife.
At the time of the oil spill, locals accused BP of 'information blackout' and were concerned that they were not able to document the true impact of the incident on their environment.
"People would come across residues on the beach or dead fish and animals," explains Jeff Warren who witnessed the aftermath of the oil spill. "So we were literally googling 'how do you identify (polluting) oil'," he adds.
In response, a small group of mapping enthusiasts got together and started using low-cost balloon and kites to take aerial images of the spill and also to test samples using DIY spectrometers. And so Public Lab was born.

Kazakhstan: Poisoned Legacy

Shymkent is a drab and largely unremarkable town, except for one thing – its highly polluted environment. The dust blowing through its streets and the soil beneath the feet of its inhabitants contain such high concentrations of lead and other toxic elements - cadmium, antimony and arsenic - that they would surely generate a major scare if detected anywhere else.

Here they just cause endemic health problems that the local people are forced to live with. Take lead poisoning, for example, the most obvious ill effect. It is simply rife here – particularly among young children.

The culprit: a decrepit lead smelting plant right in the heart of the city. Built in the 1930s at the height of Soviet industrialisation, it went on to play a crucial role in the USSR’s fight against Nazi Germany – making most of the tens of millions of bullets fired by the Red Army during World War II. But while the factory was celebrated in propaganda films during and after the war as a paradigm of socialist achievement, little was ever said about its truly appalling environmental record, not even when Kazakhstan achieved independence in 1991.

The Chinese Government Censors Pollution

China's government has decided that censoring pollution is the only way to prevent its citizens from experiencing some of the worst pollution on the planet.  Under The Dome an anti pollution documentary has been removed even though its a difficult to miss all that pollution spewing into the air and water right in front of your face.

The authorities in China have a removed from websites a popular documentary which highlights the country's severe pollution problem. 

Under the Dome explains the social and health costs of pollution, and was watched by more than 100 million people online, sparking debates.

It was removed just two days after Premier Li Keqiang called pollution a blight on people's lives.
Mr Li had promised to fight it with all the government's might.

The environmental issue has dominated the current session of the Chinese parliament, the National People's Congress, in Beijing.

The newly appointed environmental protection minister, Chen Jining, had praised Under The Dome, telling reporters it should "encourage efforts by individuals to improve air quality".

But the huge popularity of an impassioned, independent film on the issue appears to have made the communist authorities nervous, correspondents say. 

When the government of the country is more afraid of its citizens than external threats that speaks volumes about the Chinese Communist government and its inability to deal with critical appraisals of government policies.


  

India's coal rush

India is hungry for energy. Over 173 power plants, all of them coal-fired, will be built to power the nation's high-tech industries and booming cities.

This is accelerating an ongoing “coal rush” which has put our dirtiest fossil fuel at the heart of India’s breakneck growth, and could soon make a single state, Andhra Pradesh, one of the world’s top 20 carbon emitters.

But not everyone is convinced that this boom is a blessing. Physicist and businessman, Asoke Agarwal believes that India is heading for disaster:

"It is time that we think of a more austere way of living. That was what India was famous for earlier. Today we have just aped the West. The West has gone at a speed at which they are destroying themselves, and we are following them. So it is high time that we realise that there is something drastically wrong with our economy."