ISLAMABAD: Demand in the country for electricity, natural gas and petroleum products has dropped dramatically as a result of the coronavirus epidemic, creating serious operational and financial challenges in the supply chain. Senior government officials told Dawn that electricity consumption had plummeted by almost 30 per cent and authorities had been compelled to provide uninterrupted power supply to even high-loss…
Read MoreMonth: April 2020
Self-sustaining eco-communities aimed at regenerating the world one village at a time
If humanity is to tackle the problems of a growing global population, increased urbanization, scarcity of resources and climate change, we have to rethink the way we live. The ReGen Village is aimed at doing this, by being built to be self-sustaining from the ground up There are newly conceived community concepts around the world that are designed to help…
Read MoreOil Majors Are Preparing For $10 Oil
The wave of oil industry spending cuts continues, with the majors now announcing significant reductions to spending as oil remains stuck in the $20s. Royal Dutch Shell said on Monday that it would cut spending by 20 percent, or about $5 billion, and also suspend its share buyback plan. French oil giant Total SA and Norway’s Equinor announced similar moves. ExxonMobil and Chevron have suggested they…
Read MoreApplying the hard lessons of coronavirus to the biodiversity crisis
I attended one of three major biodiversity planning meetings this February, originally scheduled for China, but relocated to Rome. The day I arrived, there were three cases of the coronavirus COVID-19 in northern Italy. Two days later there were 21, and five days later there were 229. I left the fifth day, without even attending the primary workshop. A colleague…
Read MoreHalting waste disposal efforts is a recipe for disaster: NFEH
As the municipal waste disposal system came to a virtual halt in several areas of the city during the ongoing lockdown, environmental experts voiced concern, calling it a ‘recipe for disaster’ amid the coronavirus health crisis.“We are simply inviting a disaster if we stop municipal waste disposal in Karachi during an epidemic, as resultantly, issues related to public health will…
Read MoreKarachi, a Clean City Once, Is Now a Trough of Urban Squalor
This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them.Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. KARACHI, Pakistan, July…
Read MoreCoronavirus leaves China with mountains of medical waste
More than 20 cities across mainland China have been overloaded with medical waste, with Wuhan, the centre of the Covid-19 outbreak, producing up to six times more medical waste than usual, authorities said. Medical waste treatment facilities in 28 other cities are working at full load, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment told a press conference on Wednesday, without specifying…
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