impacts

Climate change: English country floods

Flash floods have killed at least 150 people in Pakistan in the last 48 hours. The floods have buried homes built of corrugated iron and wood, sent mountains of mud crashing into villages and turned dried canals into roaring rivers.

Torrential rains that began before dawn on Monday wreaked havoc in Pakistan's mountainous north-west, where rivers of mud slammed into villages burying homes and killing more than 120 people. Many more people are still missing and authorities fear they are buried beneath the mud.

Standing 24 feet above the high-tide line, Greenpeace volunteers and sunbathers at Smathers Beach Wednesday marked the loss the beach could face if global warming continues at its current pace.

"The Keys are going to go under," said Kitsy McMullen, Greenpeace climate impacts campaigner, as the group opened its Take Back the Earth Tour in Key West.

Rising sea levels threaten shorelines and coral reefs everywhere, and Greenpeace activists say President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney's energy plan is likely to speed up the effects.

wave energy: a green and sustainable energy resource

A tiny South Pacific nation is planning to evacuate the islands because of rising sea levels. Tuvalu has asked Australia and New Zealand for help in resettling its 11,000 people. The government says the islands may be engulfed in 50 years.

A Tuvaluan government spokesman says New Zealand has agreed to help but there have been no guarantees from Australia.

Whale tail

Melting polar ice is threatening the main food source for Antarctic blue whales and could lead to their extinction, an international environmental group said yesterday. The whales feed on small sea creatures known as krill, which in turn eat microscopic marine algae. These live in sea ice and are released in the summer when the ice melts.