Take a look at this satellite image of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. Haiti’s on the western side, the Dominican Republic is on the east. Now look at the border dividing those counties and you notice a troubling detail. In many places, the forests on the Haitian side disappear:
View Larger Map
“Ninety-five percent of Haiti’s virgin forests, which used to be 100 percent forested and was one of the richest, most verdant forests in the face of the earth, is gone,” Lewis Lucke, former U.S. ambassador to Haiti, told StateImpact Texas. “And the reason it’s gone is because of the manufacture of charcoal.”
Continue Reading →
A few years back, Lance Armstrong was caught. He apologized, admitted the error of his ways, and promised to do better in the future. His offense? Using too much water.
Armstrong had used 330,000 gallons of water in July 2008. He hadn’t even been home at his three acre, 14,475 square foot estate. “I’m a little shocked,” he told The New York Times at the time. “There’s no justification for that much water. I need to fix this.”
Well, it’s been several summers since then, this last one being notable for being the hottest and driest on record. And the city is in stage two watering restrictions because of the historic drought.  But it would appear Armstrong has not learned how to conserve. According to data from Austin Water Utility, he used around 1.3 million gallons of water in the last year, putting him among the top ten residential users of water in town.
Continue Reading →