PLANET IN PERIL

climate progress Burning through over 9.8 million acres — an area roughly the size of Massachusetts and Connecticut combined — the 2015 wildfire season was the most expensive on record. More here.

Manitoba Co-Operator Hoarfrost buildup on power lines has become all-too-common in Manitoba. This was the scene in Dec. 2012. PinP photo. A seminar Jan. 14 in Portage la Prairie will look at how the risk environment is changing in rural Manitoba. Details here.

CommonDreams 'Biblical' flooding in the UK has forced hundreds of evacuations, while fatal storms in U.S. have killed at least 43 people. More here.

Common Dreams PinP blogger, Larry Powell,  plants a cover crop on his organic  acreage in Manitoba. (Circa 2000)  PinP photo. Transitioning to organic regenerative agriculture practices 'offers the best, and perhaps our only, hope for averting a global warming disaster.' More here.

CBC News 'The last thing she did was smile,' Thundersky's daughter Raven-Dominique Gobeil says. Story here.

CBC News Clear Lk. MB.  PinP  photo. Canadian lakes and those that are ice-covered in winter are warming twice as fast as others. Story here.

George Monbiot - the Guardian The remarkable decline in violence between humans suggests that we could also restrain our violence against the planet. More here.

New Internationalist ‘If the dam had collapsed at night, everyone would have died.’ These chilling words came from…. More here.

CIEL Center for International Environmental Law This summer, we celebrated a big win for the climate.  In a lawsuit brought by Urgenda and nearly 900 co-plaintiffs against the Dutch government ( Urgenda Foundation et al. v. The Netherlands ), the District Court of The Hague found that the government “acted negligently” when it adopted an unambitious climate policy that poses a threat to human rights in the Netherlands. More here.

CLIMATEPROGRESS Organic squash in Manitoba.   PinP  photo. With all that’s going on in the world — from record-breaking warm spells to rapidly melting ice sheets — it’s easy to ignore something so seemingly mundane as dirt. But scientists at the University of Sheffield’s Grantham Center for Sustainable Futures suggest that we ignore dirt at our own peril. Details here.

Reuters British lawmakers have voted in favour of the use of fracking to extract shale gas under national parks, weakening a decision against fracking in national parks made earlier this year and giving shale gas explorers access to more resources. More here.