PLANET IN PERIL

UPDATE: This company has now withdrawn its application for the mine. The Pembina Institute Canada is facing a decision on the biggest oil sands mine proposal in almost a decade. Alberta’s Frontier oil sands mine, proposed by Teck Resources, has gone through a lengthy regulatory process culminating in a recommended approval from a joint federal-provincial review panel and is now under consideration by the federal cabinet. A casual observer might assume that given the potent environmental and economic impacts, this process would have been comprehensive. Yet, the panel's report, which shares the reasoning behind the decision, is remarkably weak on its consideration of climate impacts .   More here.

PHYS ORG High Alpine Tundra in Noatak National Preserve, Alaska.  U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. In a warming world, Canada's north may become our breadbasket of the future - but this new "farming frontier" also poses environmental threats from increased carbon emissions to degraded water quality, according to the first-ever study involving University of Guelph researchers.   Story here.

The New York Times The Alberta tar sands. Source: "Beautiful Destruction." Some of the world's biggest financial institutions have stopped putting money behind oil production in the Canadian province of Alberta, home to one of the world's most extensive and dirtiest, oil reserves.    Story here.  

PHYS ORG Tricoloured Bumble bees - Bombus ternarius - forage on chives in an organic garden in Manitoba. Circa 2000. A PinP photo. When you were young, were you the type of child who would scour open fields looking for bumble bees? Today, it is much harder for kids to spot them, since bumble bees are drastically declining in North America and in Europe.    More here. RELATED: Plight of the Humble Bee -  Canadian regulators refuse to protect a priceless pollinator from a known toxin. Recent research contradicts a claim by the chemical giant, Bayer, that its newest bug-killer is safe for bees.

Tim Flannery  for the Guardian Bushfires spire from Yuraygir National Park, Australia. Photo by European Space Agency. In the face of the climate disaster it helped create, the Australian government has given us only lies and denial.   Story here.

PHYS ORG High Alpine Tundra in Noatak National Preserve, Alaska.  U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service New research techniques are being adopted by scientists tackling the most visible impact of climate change—the so-called greening of Arctic regions. STORY HERE.