This article first appeared on The Strait Times.  From Texas to Japan, the records keep tumbling. Scorching heat across swathes of the Northern Hemisphere has killed dozens of people, triggered wildfires and turned parts of normally green Britain a desert brown. In Greece, a wildfire east of the capital Athens killed at least 74 people, […]

HANOI (Reuters) – Famed for ancient pagodas, colonial architecture and delicious pho noodle soup, Vietnam’s capital of Hanoi has another, albeit dubious, distinction: air pollution. The city of 7.7 million, where pollution last year was four times higher than the World Health Organisation (WHO) considers acceptable, is one of several Asian cities battling emissions from […]

This article first appeared on Thomson Reuters Foundation News. Five years ago, tour guide Wayan Aksara noticed that more and more visitors he showed around the Indonesian island of Bali were complaining about garbage on its once-pristine beaches. Bali’s mounting rubbish problem was also becoming personal for Aksara, who lives near Saba beach—an undeveloped area […]

This article first appeared on Inquirer.net. SASMUAN, Pampanga — Three measures to mitigate climate change have been taking shape right where Pampanga’s ancient civilization had begun, and these included the awakening of Mt. Pinatubo, the volcano that cooled the earth following its 1991 eruptions after centuries of slumber. At Batang Dos village in Sasmuan town, […]