A budget of $57 trillion is needed to upgrade the world's infrastructure over the next 18 years to keep up with the anticipated growth of the global gross domestic product, write Jimmy Hexter, a director at McKinsey & Company, and Jan Mischke, a senior fellow at McKinsey Global Institute. However, this amount could be reduced if the focus was on increasing the productivity of infrastructure, they ... read more >>

President Barack Obama's budget proposal for 2014 includes $40 billion for high-speed and intercity rail and for upgrading the freight-rail system. It includes $50 billion in spending for highway projects. The funding plan would also extend the MAP-21 transportation bill beyond 2015 ... read more >>

Millions of people could become destitute in Africa and Asia as staple foods more than double in price by 2050 as a result of extreme temperatures, floods and droughts that will transform the way the world farms. As food experts gather at two major conferences to discuss how to feed the nine billion people expected to be alive in 2050, leading scientists have told the Observer that food insecurit ... read more >>

You might have been wondering whether the Obama administration was going to impose the first-ever greenhouse gas limits on new power plants, since the deadline is April 13. We reported nearly a month ago that the Environmental Protection Agency was likely to delay the rule to bolster their legal case for imposing the new carbon restrictions. On Friday, EPA spokeswoman Alisha Johnson confirmed tha ... read more >>

As ice caps melt and sea levels rise, islands around the world could eventually become completely submerged, like real-world cities of Atlantis. Scientists have determined that the tides could consume low-lying islands in the next 50 to 150 years. But they'll become uninhabitable well before they're underwater, and that day might not be in the too distant future. A study by the U.S. Geological Su ... read more >>

After photographing Black Dragon Lake here for eight years, He Jiaxin knows of more places where he can get the lake to mirror the majesty of its surrounding mountains than anyone else. But this year, he has a problem: The lake has disappeared.
Since its springs dried up last year, no water has flowed into Black Dragon Lake for more than 400 days. At the same time, hot weather caused a high evap ... read more >>

With an arid climate, Nevada has always been dependent upon the successful development of water resources. During the early development of the State, settlement locations were restricted to areas with readily available water. Now Nevadans have many more options than these early pioneers. Technological advances have made it possible to deliver water to once remote areas, develop a variety of water ... read more >>

In the global aftershock zone that followed the major April 2012 Indian Ocean earthquake, seismologists noticed an unusual pattern. The magnitude (M) 8.6 earthquake, a strike-slip event at intraoceanic tectonic plates, caused global seismic rates of M≥4.5 to rise for several days, even at distances thousands of kilometers from the mainshock site. However, the rate of M≥6.5 seismic activity subseq ... read more >>

Hundreds of billions of dollars in fossil fuel investments would be stranded, triggering a potential economic crisis, if companies continue to invest in fossil fuels while governments introduce stronger policies to limit global warming, a new report says. The joint study from UK-based Carbon Tracker Initiative and the Grantham Institute finds that $674 billion was spent on exploring and developin ... read more >>

Protesters from around the world attacked mining company Rio Tinto for a string for alleged environmental and human rights breaches during a fiery meeting with shareholders in London on Thursday. Native Mongolian herders claimed that a $5bn (£3.3bn) expansion of the company's Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold mine in the Gobi desert threatened the fresh water supply of hundreds of nomadic people and the ... read more >>