Chernobyl Disaster Still Endangers Animals

The Chernobyl disaster, in which a nuclear reactor exploded in 1986, still harmsanimals in the Ukraine. A British study has showed that the number of birds, insectsand other animals has gone down over the past two decades. It appears that animals are dying because they are still exposed to a small amount of radiation, which the research team found at the Chernobyl site. Especially the bird population is diminishing because the number of grasshoppers and other insects, […]

Polar Bears Are Becoming Smaller Because of Global Warming

Global warming is starting to have a big impact on some of the world’s animals.Scientists have found out that polar bears are becoming smaller because they do not get enough to eat. A polar bear weighs only two thirds of what it used to weigh 30 years ago. It is harder for them to hunt their main source of food – seals. In open water polar […]

Parks Instead of Cars for the World’s Cities

More than half of the world’s population lives in urban areas. Traffic and pollutionare becoming a big problem in big cities all over the world. In megacities like Mexico City, Shanghai or Cairo the quality of the air is getting worse every day. In the United States commuters spend more time sitting in traffic jams. Some of the world’s cities have already reacted to the crisis. In Bogota, the […]

The Delta Works -The Netherlands Fight Against the Sea

With over a third of its land below sea level, the Netherlands have been fighting against the sea for hundreds of years. Over the centuries they have built dykes, dams and windmills to stop sea water from getting into the country. The last big disaster occurred in 1953. A storm that swept across the North Sea killed over 2000 people and flooded thousands of square kilometers of land. […]

East Africa Hit By Severest Drought in 60 Years

East Africa has been hit by the worst drought in over 60 years. More than 10 million people are in danger of starving in Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya and Djibouti. The last ten years in the Horn of Africa have been extremely dry with droughtscoming more often than usual. The rainy season in eastern Africa is normally between November and December […]

The Copenhagen Climate Summit and Global Warming

The Copenhagen Summit was a United Nations conference that continued the series of global talks on our climate. The first such conference about the future of our climate took place in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. In 1997 the Kyoto Protocol set standards to reduce greenhouse gases, but these standards were only for some countries. In December 2009 governments and heads of state from 192 countries got together in Copenhagen, […]

Green Resolutions for a New Year

From buying local to saving water, here are a few ways to make our world greener. Persuade your boss to take action When you’re at home, you probably already turn off the lights when you leave the room. But what about at work? Companies have huge bills, and waste resources, by leaving lights on. Lighting makes […]

Mountain Gorillas – Endangered Primates in Eastern Africa

Mountain gorillas are one of the most endangered animals in the world. Scientists think that there are only about 600 mountain gorillas left. They live in the higher regions of the rain forests in Rwanda, Uganda and Congo. Mountain gorillas are strong, with long muscular arms and a big chest. They have thick black hair that protects them from the cold in high […]

Endangered Tigers

It is a desperate time for the world’s tigers. There were once a lot of thesemajestic creatures throughout eastern and southern Asia. Now, wild tigers live only in small areas of India, China, eastern Russia, and a few other countries.Conservationists have been working for decades to save the big cats but the number of wild tigers continues to drop. There were an estimated 100,000 tigers […]

Global Warming

Scientists made an alarming discovery in the 1980s. They found out that theaverage temperature of the Earth’s surface was slowly rising. This trend is called global warming. Today we know that global warming is increasing because more and more gases get into the atmosphere. Greenhouse effect A greenhouse is a glass house in which plants grow. The glass lets light in and at the same time […]

Environment