4.7 Magnitude Quake in South China Cracks Buildings

A moderate earthquake centered in south-central China's Guizhou province late Sunday caused farmhouses to collapse or crack near the epicenter, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

The earthquake registered a magnitude of 4.7 at an epicenter beneath Weining Yi Hui and Miao Autonomous County at 8:48 p.m. local time, China's seismological network said.

Officials near the epicenter said that there were no deaths or significant injuries resulting from the quake. Some schools were briefly evacuated while inspectors checked for structural damage.

The U.S. Geological Survey reports the epicenter was 1,130 miles (1,830 km) southwest of Beijing.

The agency determined that the seimic event occurred at a very shallow depth of only 6 miles (10 km).

Guizhou is a relatively poor and underdeveloped province in comparison to the more affluent ones along the eastern coast such as Guangdong.

It borders Sichuan Province to the north and Hunan province to the east in a region where seismic activity is common.

The region is still recovering from a devastating earthquake last May 12 that left at least 69,000 people dead less than three months before the start of the Beijing Olympics.

Source

Carbon Footprints Smaller on City Streets

A new report suggests that city dwellers actually leave a smaller carbon footprint than many of their suburban and country cousins do in contributing to global warming.

The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) says it found that per capita emissions in many of the world’s largest cities are often just a fraction of the national average.

"The real climate change culprits are not the cities themselves but the high-consumption lifestyles of people living across these wealthy countries," said report author David Dodman.

He points to well-designed and well-governed cities that can combine high living standards with much lower greenhouse gas emissions.

The report says that New Yorkers register footprints of 7.1 tons each, less than a third of the national average of nearly 24 tons.

Beijing and Shanghai buck the trend and actually produce significantly more than Japanese cities, including Tokyo.

The study says that factories outsourced to China from former industrial leaders, such as the United States, are responsible for the higher per capita emissions in the Chinese cities.

Contradicting the IIED study’s findings, Anna Tibaijuka, executive director of UN-Habitat, said that cities really emit 50 to 60 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. This rises to 80 percent if indirect emissions generated by city-dwellers are included.

She said more than half of the world's population now lives in cities, but they consume 75 percent of global energy.

source