CLIMATE CHANGE: Nobel Laureate Calls for Post-Kyoto Treaty By Diego Cevallos MEXICO CITY, Jun 13 (IPS) - Large developing nations like China, India and Mexico should sign a new international treaty to curb climate change which must include economic penalties to clamp down on emissions of greenhouse gases, Nobel chemistry laureate Mario Molina said Wednesday. CLIMATE CHANGE: Nobel Laureate Calls for Post-Kyoto Treaty By Diego Cevallos MEXICO CITY, Jun 13 (IPS) - Large developing nations...

Five years ago this week - on June 18, 2002 - part-time firefighter Leonard Gregg left his home in Cibecue and hiked up into the junipers, where he struck a match in hopes of creating a job. Immediately after the fire, airplanes dropped tons of hay and grass seed over burn areas in hopes of germinating new life, bringing root systems back to save the soil. Experts like to emphasize that wildfires burn in mosaic patterns, sometimes leaving unscathed greenbelts or burning along the ground so...

Hodges that this really isn t progress, because we don t need it, it is not pretty, and it is killing a lot of innocent creatures that used the forests for their home. The soil is no longer fertile in that area and won t be for several hundred years, and plants won t be able to grow there unless something is done to replace the soil fast. For the last two months, they ve been studying ecosystems, air, water and soil quality, as well as the impact humans have on wildlife populations and...

A rare forest fire on the outskirts of Beijing has renewed concerns about the capital's crippling water shortages as an enduring drought deepens and temperatures hit record highs. The fire swept through a stand of pine trees in western Beijing early last month during the hottest May in northern China in decades, torching a forest that was planted to restore green to the city's dry barren mountains. The blaze occurred only several kilometres (miles) from the dry bed of a major tributary to...

Responding to neighbor complaints, a city crew completely re-landscaped the median earlier this spring, installing nearly $1,000 worth of new plantings, he said. When the city put in the black walnut sapling this spring, it also installed a circle of shrubs and grassy plants that have low water needs, Mazzuca said. It particularly annoyed neighbors that they were each paying a special $50-a-year assessment to cover city maintenance costs. Three years ago, determining the tree to be...

There, the group saw the cute yet bizarre aye-aye lemur, with its huge ears and fluffy tail; the slow-moving, slender loris; and the worlds smallest lemur, the mouse lemur. The brown-and-white animals were in constant motion, bounding from platform to rope swing to cage wall while children shrieked with delight and adults snapped photographs with cell phones. The last stop on the tour was the nocturnal house, where lights are kept on at night and off in the day. During the hour-long tour,...

Rassbach said the Forest Service has determined the road is expensive to maintain given the relatively small area of the forest for which it provides access. Cochrane said the road was heavily damaged after the flood of 1996 and that the Forest Service and Weyerhaeuser, which owns much of the timberlands along the road, recently spent more than $600,000 bringing it up to proper standards. Mike Rassbach, Sweet Home district ranger, and Sharon Cochrane, Forest Service real estate specialist,...

Captivated by the delight those showy flowers inspired after planting them on his Roseville property in the 1950s, the young businessman went on to plant acres of flowers and vegetables each year to share with family and friends. He sold his property there to the city of Roseville when the family home was destroyed just before Christmas 1992 by a fire that started in a chimney thick with creosote. McCarty, a smiling, jovial man who became a certified master gardener five years ago, died...

The GM crop has saved Argentina's economy - but now threatens the survival of its forests Rory Carroll in Villa Canas and Oliver Balch in Tres Isletas Sunday June 17, 2007 The Observer The ambition of Manuel Santos Uribelarrea is written in big black letters on the side of machines reaping the plains of South America: MSU. The GM crop has saved Argentina's economy - but now threatens the survival of its forests Rory Carroll in Villa Canas and Oliver Balch in Tres Isletas Sunday June 17,...