The Stream, December 6: Canada to Pull Out of Kyoto Protocol

Canada won’t renew its commitments to the Kyoto Protocol after it expires in 2012, The Globe and Mail reported, citing Canada’s environment minister.

Peru’s president gave the military and police extraordinary powers to put an end to 11 days of environmental protests against a $4.8 billion gold mine project in the country, Reuters reported. While protesters say that the project would hurt local water supplies, the government considers the mining investment a source of jobs and big tax revenue.

Amid a record-breaking Texas drought, state water regulators, petrochemical plants and environmentalists are facing off in a Texas courtroom over who has first rights to the dwindling water from a river system that stretches from near San Antonio to the coast, Bloomberg reported.

Japan’s damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant leaked about 45 tons of highly radioactive water from a purification device over the past weekend, and some may have reached the ocean, AP reported.

U.K. energy company Cuadrilla Resources Ltd. plans to start hydraulic fracturing again next year after temporarily suspending its operations in northwestern England following two minor earthquakes that studies showed were caused by shale gas drilling and fracking, according to Bloomberg.

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