Environment

For 30 years the 1,000 square miles surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia have lay largely inhabited and remains one of the most radioactively contaminated areas in the world.  But that's all about to change if a group of German and Chinese investors have their way about it.  According to Ukraine's Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources, Ostap Semerak, 39 separate entities have applied for permission to install 2 gigawatts worth solar panels on the land that would otherwise lie unutilized for centuries to come.  Per Bloomberg:

According to a report from The Hill this morning, President-elect Trump's transition team is already working with career staff at the White House on plans to slash federal spending.  The Hill reports that significant cuts are expected to the budgets of the Department of Commerce, Energy, Transportation, Justice and State, among others, and would total $10.5 trillion over 10 years.

President Barack Obama made a payment of $500 million to a UN program to help poor countries in the fight against climate change just days before he was due to leave the White House. The US State Department said on Tuesday that the Obama administration had made its second $500 million payment into the Green Climate Fund (GCF)  The payment was transferred three days before the inauguration of Donald Trump who pledged before his election victory to “cancel billions in global warming payments to the United Nations” and devote funds instead to “environmental infrastructure” at home.

The deadly North Korean super volcano, Mount Paektu, is set to erupt and cause a global catastrophe, the likes of which would not have been seen for a thousand years. The 9,000 feet giant volcano located on the border between North Korea and China is the highest peak of the Korean Peninsula. Mount Paekdu is not far from a North Korean nuclear test facility where the government is conducting nuclear bomb tests. The active volcano is responsible for one of the deadliest eruptions in human history and experts believe history is about to repeat itself.

Nearly three years into a "war on pollution", in which large swathes of northern China are periodically engulfed in thick, toxic smog, with dangerous air quality readings in major cities like Beijing, Tianjin and Xian forcing many people to stay in doors and shutting down industries, causing ship traffic jams in local ports, and even adversely impacting the local economy, China has realizing that it needs to take more "innovative" measure to make sure it does not lose this particular war.