• Land

PG&E Enters Guilty Plea For Starting 2018 CA Fires, Will Pay Out $13.5 B to Victims

• California wildfires
• coronavirus
• COVID-19
• Drought
• Firefighters
• PG&E
• quarantine
• wildfire

Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) has agreed to plead guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter and one count of unlawfully starting the Camp Fire, according to court documents filed in California on Monday, CNN reported and the company has said it will not appeal. 

Why This Matters:  California and the company agreed to financial terms last Friday under which PG&E agreed to overhaul their board of directors, and now the legal settlement is done as well.

• Water

World Water Day Focuses on Climate Change

• clean water
• drinking water
• Drought
• Flooding
• groundwater
• UN
• World Water Day

Yesterday was World Water Day and the focus this year was on the interconnectedness of water and climate change. As 2020 was set to be a critical year for climate action (though the coronavirus outbreak could change that), it’s timely to bring attention to how a warming planet affects the world’s water supplies and exacerbates […]

• Water

Texas Drought Forcing Ranchers to Cull Herds

• climate change
• Drought
• farming
• Land use
• Texas

Texas ranchers are having to ask the tough question of whether they will have to cull their herds as much of the state continues to experience ongoing drought. As the grass dries out and ranchers face rising costs, it’s becoming less viable to maintain large herds of cattle and sheep in Texas Hill Country.

• Water

North Darfur Sees Peace Through Water Management

• Darfur
• Drought
• Sahara
• Sudan
• water

Darfur has seen more than its fair share of turmoil. Millions were forced to flee a decade of violence that killed as many as 400,000 and many people remain in refugee camps today. On top of this, the climate crisis is playing out in a very real way in the Sahel as the Sahara desert […]

• Water

Agricultural Irrigation and Growing Cities Now Causing Water Shortages In Eastern U.S.

• agriculture
• Drought
• groundwater

Farmers in the Eastern U.S. are increasingly turning to irrigation systems to ensure the predictability of their harvests — in Georgia irrigated farmland has increased fifteen-fold from 1960 to 2015, according to government records, and crop yields have soared.  But so have water disputes in the once water-rich states of the Southeast.

Why This Matters:  Eastern states are not ready for the coming water shortages — their laws and policies were written with water abundance in mind.

• Water

Climate-Fueled Drought Fuels Uncertainty Around the World

• Australia
• California
• Drought

While California’s 7-year drought was declared over, a rain-less October along with a NOAA report warning of a dry winter are fueling fears that the state’s water woes will be back once again.

As If Drought Wasn’t Enough: A new study from the journal Nature Geoscience predicts that as a result of climate change, at the end of the century plants could consume substantially more water, leaving less for people.

• Water

Army Study Says Climate Change Threatens Mission Failure Due to Expanded Need for Water

• bottled water
• Drought
• heat stroke
• water

A new study from the Army War College found that the “Army is precipitously close to mission failure concerning hydration of the force in a contested arid environment” and needs to “reinvest aggressively in technologies both in-house and commercial off the shelf in the next 5-10 years to keep pace with rising global temperatures, especially those arid areas in or poised for conflict.” 

Why This Matters:  This is not just a problem for years in the future — the military is already experiencing it today.  As we reported earlier this month, at a U.S. Air Force Base in Qatar, on hot days, servicemembers can only work for 10 minutes of each hour and they must drink 2 bottles of water during the same hour.   And NBC News and Inside Climate News reported last summer that an increasing number of service members are suffering from heat-related illnesses.

• Politics
• Weather

Southern States Face Drought and Risks of Wildfires

• Drought
• extreme weather
• Georgia
• Texas
• wildfires

Although the hottest story in the media right now is impeachment it’s important not to forget that a worsening drought is affecting Southern states from Texas to Georgia. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has extended a drought disaster declaration to numerous counties in the state due to significantly low rainfall and prolonged dry conditions that continue […]

• Water

Water Crisis Deepens in Zimbabwe – 2 Million People’s Supply Cut Off

• #safedrinkingwater
• climate change
• Drought
• United Nations
• water
• Zimbabwe

CBS News and CNN are reporting that because of a major drought in Zimbabwe that occurred for months, more than 2 million residents of Zimbabwe’s capital and surrounding towns were without tap water on Tuesday because city officials had to shut down the city’s main treatment plant — they do not have the money to […]

• Water

A Fourth of the World’s Population Faces Severe Water Shortages

• climate change
• Drought
• groundwater

According to a newly released report from the World Resources Institute’s Aqueduct Water Risk Atlas, a quarter of the world’s population across 17 countries are living in regions of extremely high water stress. The reasons behind the water crises go deeper than previously thought as new WRI hydrological models found that water withdrawals globally have more […]

• Land

Despite wet winter, 2019 wildfire season still a threat in the West

• California
• Drought
• wildfire

Ask just about any Californian and they will tell you that 2018’s massive wildfires are still fresh in their memory just as the 2019 fire season has officially arrived. Last week the National Interagency Fire Center put Californians on notice that they should expect another active fire season this year. The center said a heavy […]

• Water

Bipartisan Agreement On Colorado River Drought Plan

• colorado river
• contingency plan
• Drought
• water

A bipartisan group of lawmakers worked quickly yesterday to provide Congressional approval for a drought plan to address the shrinking supply of water from the Colorado River, which provides 40 million people in the West with drinking water, power and irrigation for crops.