For 140 years, the Rockefellers were the oil industry's first family, scions of a business empire that spawned companies called Exxon, Mobil, Amoco and Chevron. So it was no trivial matter when a group of Rockefeller heirs decided recently to begin severing financial ties to fossil fuels.
A small group of demonstrators, mostly from the United States, gathered in front of the U.S. Embassy in San José on Sunday afternoon to join a global rally to promote action on climate change. See our video report and photo gallery of the event here.
NEW YORK – Celebrities, political leaders, environmentalists, professionals and everyday citizens rallied in New York and across the globe Sunday demanding urgent action on climate change, with organizers saying 600,000 turned out globally for the event.
According to a new study published in the magazine Science Friday, forest-dwelling birds in Costa Rica, like the Trogon or Resplendent Quetzal, are especially struggling to adapt to areas converted into intense monocultures, like sugarcane or pineapple plantations.
In a ruling Thursday lauded by Costa Rica's anti-GMO activists, the country's Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court, or Sala IV, struck down the government's regulatory framework on genetically modified organisms, declaring the process of approval for GMO projects unconstitutional.
LONDON — Humans risk causing irreversible and widespread damage to the planet unless there's faster action to limit the fossil fuel emissions that cause climate change, according to a leaked draft United Nations report.
In a press conference Monday afternoon, National Liberation Party lawmaker Juan Rafael Marín threatened to trash the front lawn of the Casa Presidencial – literally. Marín, along with five other lawmakers, called the press conference to draw attention to the closure of 22 municipal solid waste dumps across the country. They say the closures have left municipal governments with few options to manage their citizens' garbage.
As many as 40,000 illegal miners — mostly poor, Quechua-speaking laborers from Peru's Andean highlands — have invaded some of the most pristine and biologically rich sections of ancient forest in the Amazon basin. In just a few years, they have laid waste to more than 120,000 acres, leaving behind Amazonian deserts of pestilent orange craters that bleed into the rivers when it rains.
Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solís attended the signing ceremony, saying the planned geothermal projects “will not interfere with territory in national parks.” Instead, he said they involve “new technologies that permit the exploration and utilization of wells without damaging conservation areas.”
