Two Months, One Page

By Paul Rauber

Illustrations by Peter Arkle

May 28, 2014

 

Illustration of a graph with a train going up

Public transit ridership in the United States is at a 57-year high. 

California's drought-stricken Sacramento River is too low to carry salmon smolts to the sea, so the state trucks 30 million to the Pacific. 

Three-fourths of the U.S. corn crop is bioengineered to include a gene from the natural toxin Bt to make the plant resistant to corn rootworms. Corn rootworms are now becoming resistant to Bt. 

Spring is arriving three days earlier than in the decades from 1960 to 1980.

Water levels at Arizona's Lake Mead, the water source for Las Vegas, continue to decline, leaving an enormous bathtub ring. Engineers are hurrying to finish a lower intake pipe, because the highest pipe may soon be high and dry. 

illustration of a space ship that can see flares on the earth

 

One-third of the natural gas produced in North Dakota's Bakken shale formation is burned off and wasted. The flares, which produce the greenhouse gas equivalent of 1 million cars, can be seen from space.

The average fuel economy of new vehicles sold in the United States hits an all-time high of 25.4 mpg

Wyoming rejects national science-education standards that assume the reality of climate change

Climate change is causing salamanders to shrink

Overall, annual U.S. greenhouse gas emissions are at their lowest point in 20 years. 

Atmospheric carbon dioxide hits 402 parts per million--the highest level in at least 800,000 years.

Solar power in Italy and Germany is now as cheap as power from fossil fuels. 

Bags of air from Laojun Mountain in Henan Province, China, are shipped to Zhengzhou for citizens of the polluted provincial capital to breathe from. 

Italian judge Florence Giorgi rules that a large coal plant in Savona is responsible for hundreds of deaths and thousands of cases of heart and lung disease. He orders it to be shut down.

Japan cancels its 2014 whale hunt after the International Court of Justice in the Hague, Netherlands, rules it illegal, but plans to resume whaling next year.

Illustration of meat in a safe

Because of extreme weather, beef prices in the United States hit record highs.

A major new analysis finds that the EPA has underestimated the amount of climate-warming methane emitted during fracking by two to three orders of magnitude.

Illustration of a poacher stealing a burl from a Redwood tree.

Rangers close roads through Northern California parks at night to deter poachers with chainsaws from devastating ancient redwood trees for their valuable burls. 

Confronted by 1,000 armed supporters of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, federal agents give up on impounding the cattle he has grazed illegally on federal land for more than 20 years, saying they will settle the matter in court.