Stories written by Stephen Leahy
Stephen Leahy is the lead international science and environment correspondent at IPS, where he writes about climate change, energy, water, biodiversity, development and native peoples. Based in Uxbridge, Canada, near Toronto, Steve has covered environmental issues for nearly two decades for publications around the world. He is a professional member of the International Federation of Journalists, the Society of Environmental Journalists and the International League of Conservation Writers. He also pioneered Community Supported Environmental Journalism to ensure important environmental issues continue to be covered.
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Conflicts with local communities over mining, oil and gas development are costing companies billions of dollars a year. One corporation alone reported a six billion dollar cost over a two-year period according to the first-ever peer-reviewed study on the cost of conflicts in the extractive sector.
The U.S. could create more than 600,000 skilled jobs, cut air pollution and fight climate change while its citizens reap 17 billion dollars in energy savings by doing one simple thing: Boost energy efficiency.
Hopefully, on Earth Day today, high-level ministers from all countries are thinking about what they can bring to the table at a key set of meetings on climate change in early May.
The U.N. climate talks in Warsaw ended in dramatic fashion Saturday evening in what looked like a schoolyard fight with a mob of dark-suited supporters packed around the weary combatants, Todd Stern of the United States and Sai Navoti of Fiji representing G77 nations.
Energy consumption and production are undergoing fundamental shifts but the world is still on course to a 3.6 degree C hotter climate according a report released during the U.N. climate talks in Warsaw.
If global carbon emissions continue to rise at their current rate, humanity will eventually be left with no other option than a costly, world war-like mobilisation, scientists warned this week.
Parts of Indonesia, Argentina and Nigeria are among the top 10 most polluted places on the planet, according to a new report by U.S. and European environmental groups.
Oil, gas and coal are contaminating the world's oceans from top to bottom, threatening the lives of more than 800 million people, a new study warns Tuesday.
A climate plague affecting every living thing will likely start in 2020 in southern Indonesia, scientists warned Wednesday in the journal Nature. A few years later the plague will have spread throughout the world's tropical regions.
One evening in the small village of Ashton Hayes in Cheshire, England, someone started a conversation about climate change and energy at the local pub. It was 2005. Two years later, residents had cut their carbon dioxide emissions and energy costs by 20 percent.
With presidents and prime ministers failing to take meaningful action to avert a planetary-scale climate crisis, the mayors of cities and towns are increasingly stepping up to enact changes at the local level.
Greenland will eventually truly become green as most of its massive ice sheet is destined to melt, the authoritative U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported Friday.
A team of scientists who analysed the richness of plant species around the world concluded that the ecosystems in need of immediate protection in order to meet the 2020 conservation goals set by the Convention on Biological Diversity are largely concentrated in Latin America.
Drought and chronic water shortages played a significant role in sparking Syria's civil war and in unrest throughout much of the Middle East, water experts now believe.
Two reports released Wednesday reveal the dangerous gap between science and politics. New climate research shows that extreme events such as the severe heat wave in the U.S. last year will double in 2020, increase 400 percent by 2040, and then get far worse without significant carbon reductions.
Extreme heat, flooding and water and food shortages will rock South Asia and Africa by 2030 and render large sections of cities inhabitable, if the world continues to burn huge amounts of coal, oil and gas, the World Bank is warning.
Emerging economies such as Mexico and India are shifting energy investments into renewable resources while industrialised countries hesitate, noted two new United Nations reports released Wednesday in Nairobi, Kenya.