Disasters

"Anxious residents of the Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius stuffed fabric sacks with sugar cane leaves Saturday to create makeshift oil spill barriers as tons of fuel leaking from a grounded ship put endangered wildlife in further peril."

"Following a record number of Atlantic Ocean storms over the past two months, including five that struck the United States, government scientists on Thursday updated their forecast for the remainder of the hurricane season, saying it was likely to be extremely active."

"The federal government isn’t set up to help communities move from one place to another in response to climate change threats, the Government Accountability Office said in a report Wednesday."

"The companies in charge of Midland-area dams that failed in May have filed for bankruptcy in a Michigan federal court."

"New global industry standards for dealing with mine waste are not enforceable, fail to set measurable standards and will not protect communities, workers or the environment from disasters such as the 2014 Mount Polley spill or the deadly 2019 Brumadinho dam failure in Brazil, says an international group of scientists, community organizations and non-profits."

"At least nine people, including a 5-year-old girl with autism, were killed as Tropical Storm Isaias battered the U.S. East Coast with rain and fierce winds after making landfall as a hurricane in North Carolina. Millions of people were without power on Wednesday after felled trees downed power lines."

"The growing but largely unrecognized death toll from rising global temperatures will come close to eclipsing the current number of deaths from all the infectious diseases combined if planet-heating emissions are not constrained, a major new study has found."

"How did it come to this? A virus a thousand times smaller than a dust mote has humbled and humiliated the planet’s most powerful nation. America has failed to protect its people, leaving them with illness and financial ruin. It has lost its status as a global leader. It has careened between inaction and ineptitude. The breadth and magnitude of its errors are difficult, in the moment, to truly fathom."