Lightweight 'triple-zero' house produces more energy than it uses

Overlooking the city of Stuttgart in southern Germany, a four-story modern glass house stands like a beacon of environmental sustainability. Built in 2000, it was the first in a series of buildings that are "triple-zero," a concept developed by German architect and engineer Werner Sobek, which signifies that the building is energy self-sufficient (zero energy consumed), produces zero emissions, and is made entirely of recyclable materials (zero waste).

Since the construction of the first triple-zero home, Werner Sobek's firm of engineers and architects, based in Stuttgart, has designed and built five more in Germany, with a seventh planned in France. The energy used by these buildings, including the four-story tower where Sobek resides, comes from solar cells and geothermal heating.

The most recent addition to the triple-zero series raises the bar for energy efficiency: It produces more energy than it uses, Sobek said. The one-story glass home, which seems to float in front of a backdrop of pine trees, "is a tiny power plant [which] feeds electricity into the public grid," he said during a lecture on his work on December 2. The lecture took place at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.

Sobek thinks that planners, builders and policy-makers must think about how to reduce the environmental impact of buildings at the same time that they try to reduce the footprint of the automobile and other industries. The building industry is responsible for 35 percent of the world's energy consumption and carbon emissions, and 50 percent of the waste produced in North America and Europe, Sobek said. His engineers and architects are working to reduce the energy required to maintain houses, office buildings, airports and bridges, as well the energy that goes into constructing and disassembling these structures.

Following the 1979 oil crisis, German engineers started to build "Passivhauses," or passive houses. These buildings retain comfortable interior temperatures without the use of active heating and cooling systems. Instead, passive houses receive warmth from sunlight through its south facing windows and underground air ducts in the winter, while the airtight seals prevent warm air from entering in the summer. But with the scant number of windows and 300 millimeters of thermal insulation, "you live like you are in a Styrofoam box," Sobek said.

Sobek strives for just the opposite effect of the Passivhaus, using thinner walls and bigger windows or, in the case of triple zero houses, all-glass walls. "I invented the so-called 'Aktivhaus' [or active house]—buildings which open your soul, which open your mind, which open your heart," said Sobek, who is also head of the Institute for Lightweight Structures and Conceptual Design (ILEK) at the University of Stuttgart and is the Mies van der Rohe professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology. These glass walls still provide insulation, however, because they are triple-glazed, meaning they have three layers of glass with air space in between the layers.

more from Scientific American

California's water delivery outlook is grim

Operators of the sprawling state system that supplies water to 25 million Californians from Butte County to San Diego issued their lowest-ever estimate on the amount of water they will be able to deliver.

Officials predicted Tuesday they will be able to offer only 5 percent of the total volume of water requested by California cities and farms next year. That's the smallest water allocation the agency has released since its creation in 1967.

The estimate, based on current water conditions, is only preliminary and is almost certain to rise as the rainy season wears on. Still, officials expect a multiyear drought, low reservoirs and environmental restrictions on water pumping to keep supplies well below average in 2010.

"We have to assume we're heading into a fourth year of drought and we have to respond accordingly," said Lester Snow, director of the California Department of Water Resources, the state agency that operates the network of reservoirs, pumps and pipelines known as the State Water Project.

more from the SF Chronicle

Healthy, organic and cheap school lunches? Order up

On the combination plate of problems plaguing the USA's public schools, few are as intractable as this: Can you serve fresh, healthful meals each day to millions of kids without breaking the bank, or must you resort to serving up deep-fried, processed, less expensive junk?

For more than a decade, big food thinkers have chewed on this, making it a cause célèbre. But most often they find that feeding kids well requires one simple thing: more money.

The federal government pays, on average, $2.68 per child per meal – and most food advocates say that simply isn't enough. A few insist it can't be done for less than $5.

So it's big news when someone tries, even on a small scale, to feed kids well for under $3 a pop.

An all-natural meal

For the first time, a small, privately held start-up is pushing to do just that: producing what are by all accounts fresh, healthful, all-natural school meals for just under $3 apiece. Starting with just one school in spring 2006, Revolution Foods has quietly grown year by year and now delivers about 45,000 breakfasts, lunches and snacks daily to 235 public and private schools in California, Colorado and the District of Columbia .

Since April, about 14,000 of those meals each day have come from a 22,000-square-foot facility in an Oakland industrial park.

The growth is impressive, but what's perhaps most striking is what the meals look and taste like – and the rogues' gallery of components (fries, canned green beans, cling peaches in heavy syrup) that are missing.

Revolution shuns high-fructose corn syrup, artificial colors and flavors, trans fats and deep-frying. Its meats and milk are hormone- and antibiotic-free, and many of its ingredients are organic and locally sourced.

Company co-founder and chief operating officer Kirsten Saenz Tobey says Revolution's plan is to "take the school lunch problem off the schools' plates" with kid-friendly but healthful food. "A principal doesn't want to manage a restaurant."

more from USA Today

Climate change challenging China's Yangtze: Report

Rising temperatures will expose China's Yangtze River basin to extreme weather such as severe floods, drought and storms that could
threaten cities such as Shanghai, a new report has said.

In the coming decades, global warming will increase glacier melt in the Himalayan reaches of the Yangtze, diminish food production in the basin and lead to rising waters in coastal regions, said the World Wide Fund for Nature, which co-authored the report with Chinese research institutes.

"Extreme climate events such as storms and drought disasters will increase as climate change continues to alter our planet," Xu Ming, lead researcher on the report, said in a statement released Tuesday.

"If we take the right steps now, adaptation measures will pay for themselves." Up to 400 million people live in the Yangtze River basin, which cuts a swathe through the middle of China and includes some of the nation's most productive agricultural lands.
Over the next 50 years, temperatures in the basin will climb by an average of 1.5-2.0 degrees Celsius (2.7-4.0 degrees Fahrenheit), leading to an increased number of natural disasters, the report said.

The basin has already seen a spike in flooding, heat waves and drought over the past two decades as temperatures rose by an average of 1.04 degrees Celsius between 1990 and 2005, it said.

Meanwhile, sea levels at Shanghai rose 11.5 centimetres (4.6 inches) over the last 30 years and will rise by an additional 18 centimetres by 2050, threatening the city's water supply, it said.

"Climate change will make coastal cities like Shanghai more vulnerable to sea level rises, extreme climate events, as well as natural and human-induced disasters," the report warned.

more from the Economic Times (India)

After the Recession, an Energy Crisis Could Loom

Here's the bad news about the global recession's potentially coming to an end: the recovery could spark a massive energy crisis with increased demand for fossil fuels from China and other developing countries, tighter oil supplies and skyrocketing oil prices. And this is just in the near future. The longer-term picture looks even more daunting. If the world continues to guzzle oil and gas at its present pace, global temperatures will rise by an average of 6°C by 2030, causing "irreparable damage to the planet."

The warning from the International Energy Agency (IEA), an intergovernmental energy watchdog based in Paris, could add extra weight to the negotiations leading up to the climate-change summit in Copenhagen next month, when leaders will attempt to come to an agreement on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol's limits on greenhouse-gas emissions. "Saving the planet cannot wait," reads the agency's annual World Economic Outlook report, which was released on Tuesday. "The time to act has arrived."

But the energy crisis may be even more critical than what the IEA is saying. According to a report in the Guardian on Tuesday, the agency, under pressure from the U.S., has in past reports deliberately underestimated just how fast the world is running out of oil. The newspaper quoted an unnamed senior IEA official as saying that the U.S. encouraged the agency to "underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chance of finding new reserves."

The official questioned the prediction in last year's World Economic Outlook that oil production could be raised from the current level of 83 million bbl. a day to 106 million bbl. a day, saying the estimate was higher than is feasible. This year's report lowers that prediction to 105 million bbl. a day. But critics of the IEA have long said the world has passed its peak in oil production and that such levels are unrealistic.

more from Time

Coping With Climate Change: Which Societies Will Do Best?

Following the disastrous tsunami of December 2004, the government of Bangladesh embraced upgraded storm-alert systems that warn communities in a coordinated way and improved social support networks, resulting in a drastic reduction in typhoon deaths. In neighboring Myanmar, by contrast, deaths from natural disasters have risen in recent years. Indeed, the deaths that occurred there last year in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis cannot be separated from the fact that Myanmar has an authoritarian regime that prevents international assistance from reaching those in need, rendering its citizens unable to cope with extreme weather disasters – events that are expected to become more frequent with climate change.

The stark contrast between Bangladesh and Myanmar, both likely facing serious threats from rising sea levels and more intense typhoons as the world warms, is a striking example of a key measure of how different parts of the world are going to cope with climate change in the coming century: whether societies are “climate-fit” or “climate-weak.” In fact, how different societies fare as temperatures rise will have as much to do with political, social, technological, and economic factors as with a changing climate.

That global warming will exact a human toll is undisputed, but the extent of its predicted impacts is uncertain. So how can we best identify those most at risk? Applying Darwinian principles, climate change, like any other assault on our species, is about survival of the fittest. We need to recognize what makes a community “climate-fit,” and how to improve fitness in “climate-weak” populations.

more from Yale E360

Medina to go green

Speaking at the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC) conference at Windsor Castle, Sheikh Ali Gomaa, said Islam teaches its followers to protect the Earth.

He announced the plans for Medina as part of a seven year plan to make the faith more environmentally friendly by teaching about climate change in Islamic schools, using renewable energy in mosques and encouraging green habits in places of pilgrimage.

Medina, the second holiest city in Islam, will go green by improving public transport, providing clean water from taps so pilgrims do not continue to use plastic bottles and printing leaflets and the Koran on recyled paper.

Faith leaders from all the world's main religions have already declared it is a "moral imperative" for the world to fight climate change. The Archbishop of Canterbury has said going green is "good for the soul" and the Church of England have also announced a range of plans such as putting wind turbines on vicarages and encouraging congregations to recycle more.

But this is the first time that the Islamic faith has made such a strong announcement on places of pilgrimage.

Sheikh Ali Gomaa said it was a "religious duty" to go green.

"It is a religious duty to safeguard our environment and advocate the importance of preserving it," he said. "Pollution and global warming pose an even greater threat than war and the fight to preserve the environment could be the most positive way of bringing humanity together. Environment-related issues ought to be a significant component of educational curricula. It is the duty of all religious scholars to acquaint themselves with the environmental crisis we are facing."

There are 1.4 billion Muslims worldwide and every year at least four million go on pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.

more from the Telegraph (UK)

Money is the key to the success of Copenhagen

You think it's about greenhouse gases. You think it's about carbon emissions. And it is. But the Copenhagen agreement on climate change that the world community will attempt to sign in December is just as much about money – enormous, mind-boggling amounts of money.

In brutally simplistic terms, the essence of any deal will be to pay the developing countries of the world, led by China and India, to cut back on the carbon dioxide pouring out of their now-mushrooming economies, which will come to represent 90 per cent of all future emissions growth, and the inducement for them to do this will have to be substantial.

It has hardly dawned on the general public just how big are the sums of cash that the developing world is seeking, and that the rich world will have to go some way towards providing, if the vital pathway to keeping global temperature rises below C is to be mapped out.

But they are truly colossal, and the gap between the potential donor countries and the recipients may be unbridgeable; it is finance, rather than the setting of emissions targets, which is more likely to be the deal-breaker in Copenhagen.

Ever since the first UN global warming treaty was signed in 1992, the rich nations have accepted that they have a special responsibility over climate, as we caused the problem in the first place – most of the CO2 that has gone into atmosphere has been put there by 200 years of western industrialisation.

Now we are asking China and its colleagues in the G77 group of poorer nations to grow – and so bring their people out of poverty – in a different low-carbon way from the way in which we grew, which is difficult and expensive; do as we say, not do as we did. And it is accepted on all sides that if they are to do this, we must help them.

They need help for two essential tasks, which in the jargon are mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation means cutting back on carbon emissions, by substituting renewable energy projects, say, for coal-burning power stations; adaptation means coping with climate change which is now unavoidable, such as building enhanced flood relief schemes to deal with the threat of climate-change-induced sea-level rise. It is obvious that all of this will be costly.

Just how costly the developing world thought it would be became clear at the end of August, when the G77-plus-China, as the nations are collectively known, put forward a formal proposal for financing a new climate agreement. Their "enhanced financial mechanism" suggested that the rich countries should pay between 0.5 and 1 per cent of their gross national product every year. For the European Union, this would be between $90bn (£55bn) and $180bn annually; for the US, between $70bn and $140bn; for Britain alone, between $13bn and $26bn. The full total would be between $200bn and $400bn, a range from nearly double to nearly four times the amount of all current overseas aid flows. Moreover, it would have to be on top of existing aid, the developing countries said – it must be "new and additional", above all current overseas development assistance.

more from the Independent (UK)

America's Most Toxic Cities

In Atlanta, Ga., you'll find southern gentility, a world-class music scene--and 21,000 pounds of environmental waste. In spite of its charms, the city's combination of air pollution, contaminated land and atmospheric chemicals makes it the most toxic city in the country.

An urban skyline dotted with puffing smokestacks isn't the only measure of a city's cleanliness (or lack thereof). Most major cities suffer from a range of unseen hazards. Contaminants can seep into the ground from bygone chemical spills or shuttered steel mills. Invisible leaks at industrial complexes discharge harmful substances into the air, or the normal course of business requires factories to expel toxins that eventually find their way to the water supply.

While it may be the U.S. metro in the worst environmental shape, Atlanta isn't the only place whose residents contend with contamination. Top spots for toxicity are distributed throughout the country, with Detroit, Houston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Los Angeles right behind it.

Behind the Numbers
To determine which cities are most toxic, Forbes looked at the country's 40 largest metropolitan statistical areas--geographic entities that the U.S. Office of Management and Budget defines and uses in collecting statistics--in the country, based on data provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. We counted the number of facilities that reported releasing toxins into the environment, the total pounds of certain toxic chemicals released into the air, water and earth, the days per year that air pollution was above healthy levels, and the total number of Superfund sites--contaminated areas that the federal government has designated for cleanup efforts--in each metro area's principal city.

more from Forbes

Green spaces 'improve health'

Research in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health says the impact is particularly noticeable in reducing rates of mental ill health.

The annual rates of 15 out of 24 major physical diseases were also significantly lower among those living closer to green spaces.

One environmental expert said the study confirmed that green spaces create 'oases' of improved health around them.

The researchers from the VU University Medical Centre in Amsterdam looked at the health records of 350,000 people registered with 195 family doctors across the Netherlands.

Only people who had been registered with their GP for longer than 12 months were included because the study assumed this was the minimum amount of time people would have to live in an environment before any effect of it would be noticeable.

The percentages of green space within a one and three kilometre (0.62 and 1.86 miles) radius of their home were calculated using their postcode.

On average, green space accounted for 42% of the residential area within one kilometre (0.62 miles) radius and almost 61% within a three kilometre (1.86 miles) radius of people's homes.

And the annual rates for 24 diseases in 7 different categories were calculated.

The health benefits for most of the diseases were only seen when the greenery was within a one kilometre ( 0.62 miles ) radius of the home.

The exceptions to this were anxiety disorders, infectious diseases of the digestive system and medically unexplained physical symptoms which were seen to benefit even when the green spaces were within three kilometres of the home.

The biggest impact was on anxiety disorders and depression.

more from the BBC

Agriculture critic's appearance angers university alumni

When officials at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo scheduled a free lecture by bestselling author Michael Pollan, they envisioned a lively talk about sustainable food, along with Pollan's customary critiques of agribusiness.

What they didn't expect was a wave of denunciations from angry farming and ranching alumni who rank Pollan as a force only slightly less damaging to agriculture than the Mediterranean fruit fly.

Threatening to pull his donations, the head of one of California's biggest ranching operations succeeded in turning today's planned lecture into a panel discussion involving Pollan, a meat-science expert, and a major grower of organic lettuce.

Pollan assented but said in an interview that the incident raised troubling questions about academic freedom.

"It's an open threat to the university," he said. "The issue is really about whether the school is free to explore diverse ideas about farms and farming."

Pollan was the star attraction at a fundraising dinner for Cal Poly's sustainability programs Wednesday night.

For David E. Wood, chairman of Harris Ranch Beef Co., Pollan's solo lecture would have provided the author of such books as "The Omnivore's Dilemma" a soapbox for "anti- agricultural views."

"While I understand the need to expose students to alternative views, I find it unacceptable that the university would provide Michael Pollan an unchallenged forum to promote his stand against conventional agricultural practices," Wood wrote in a Sept. 23 letter to Cal Poly President Warren Baker.

Wood has pledged $150,000 toward a new meat processing plant for the campus cattle herd. In his letter, he said Pollan's scheduled appearance had prompted him to "rethink my continued financial support of the university." He also criticized an animal-sciences professor who said that conventional feedlots like the one run by Harris Ranch were not a form of sustainable agriculture.

more from the LA Times

Obama May Be Met By Frustration in New Orleans Visit

Even before Air Force One touches down in New Orleans on Thursday afternoon, President Obama is discovering the burdens of rebuilding a city that feels abandoned by the federal government.

Four years after Hurricane Katrina, swaths of New Orleans remain devastated by the winds and floods that tore through. More than 65,000 homes remain abandoned. There is no public hospital. The levees that keep back the Gulf of Mexico are still vulnerable.

The responsibility for getting more federal help to New Orleans has now passed from President George W. Bush to Obama, and with it the impatience of the city's residents.

"The people that I talk to are frustrated with the setbacks that they have had to endure, are frustrated with the nature of the bureaucracy that allows decisions to be unmade for long periods of time," said Sheila Crowley, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

The frustration, she said, is a reflection of "the pent-up need . . . for a sense of serious attention from the federal government."

Obama has repeatedly sent Cabinet secretaries into New Orleans, often with money to jump-start stalled projects. White House officials say they have cut red tape and loosened $1.5 billion in assistance that was stuck in the federal pipeline. They say more than 3,500 people have been moved to permanent housing.

more from the Washington Post

Current CO2 Levels May Be Highest in 15 Million Years

A new study suggests that concentrations of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere are higher now than they have been in 15 million years. Reporting in the journal Science, U.S. researchers said that by studying the shells of ancient marine algae, they were able to determine that the last time CO2 levels were this high occurred 15 to 20 million years ago when the earth was 5 to 10 degrees hotter, sea levels were 75 to 120 feet higher, and there was no permanent ice cap in the Arctic. Until now, the best available climate record — obtained by examining ice bubbles in Antarctic ice cores — showed that concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are higher today than at any time in the past 800,000 years. If the research by Arhadhna Tripati of the University of California at Los Angeles proves correct, that would mean that science has been able to extend the climate record much farther into the past. Tripati and her colleagues determined CO2 levels in the algae shells by studying the ratio of the chemical element boron to calcium, and Tripati reported that her findings matched the overall CO2 trends seen in Antarctic ice cores. She called her findings “slightly shocking” and said that if CO2 levels, now at 387 parts per million, keep going up, the earth could be in store for the high temperatures and major sea level rises of the Middle Miocene period 15 million years ago.

from Yale Environment 360

original article in Science

New research aims to create accurate account of a city’s carbon burden

With more than half the world’s population now living in cities, it is becoming crucial to determine how curbing greenhouse gas emissions from cities can help mitigate global warming. Densely populated areas are capable of impressive energy efficiencies per person, but cities on the whole are major contributors to the human-propelled greenhouse gases that cause global climate change.

Many cities are developing plans and policies to cut their carbon emissions. But their efforts have been hampered by the lack of a reliably accurate, standardized methodology for inventorying their total emissions, as well as reliable data on energy use.

New research led by Christopher Kennedy, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Toronto, takes steps toward establishing that methodology by examining why and how emissions differ between cities. In a recent ES&T paper (2009, DOI 10.1021/es900213p), Kennedy and his colleagues argue that a combination of geophysical factors, including local climate and technical factors, play a major role in assessing a particular city’s total emissions.

The paper investigates greenhouse gas emissions across seven components central to the “urban metabolism”: electricity, heating and industrial fuels, industrial processes, ground transportation, aviation, marine activity, and waste management. The ten urban areas Kennedy and his team have examined—ranging in population from 432,000 to 9,519,000—are: Los Angeles County, Greater Toronto, Canton of Geneva, Greater Prague, Cape Town, Denver City and County, New York City, Greater London, Barcelona, and Bangkok. Both emissions occurring within a city and the upstream life-cycle emissions for fuels used within the cities were calculated.

“This paper is certainly an advancement in knowledge in the area” of assessing greenhouse gas emissions from cities, says Peter Marcotullio, a specialist in urban environments and development at Hunter College of the City University of New York. “The big takeaway messages that are really interesting for me are that it’s not the absolute amount of energy that’s consumed that describes heterogeneity between cities, but what they call the fuel mix,” he says. “In terms of greenhouse gas emissions and the effect on the planet, it’s really the type of fuel you’re using. I think that’s significant, although intuitive.”

Another significant finding, says Marcotullio, is that a city’s relative level of prosperity plays a much smaller role than the city’s climate in total greenhouse gas emissions. “There is a major theory out there that uses income, or GDP, to distinguish between the environmental burdens of cities,” he says. By comparing the number of “heating degree days”—days on which the temperature falls at or below 18.0 °C—across different cities, the researchers found more similarities in energy use than the average income of its residents.

“That this study says [income] just isn’t that important is interesting, and potentially very controversial,” Marcotullio says.

Lily Parshall, a Ph.D. candidate in sustainable development at Columbia University, says that a major challenge for assessing emissions in cities is the lack of comparable data. The biggest contribution of this study “is trying to develop consistent comparisons across a number of cities in different parts of the world, using the best available data,” she says.

more from EST News

Sicily mudslides highlight how negligence and nature conspire to make Italy a disaster zone

Accidents and natural disasters happen everywhere. Italy has had its share of them this year, with last week's Sicilian mudslides capping a deadly six months that have included an earthquake and a horrific train wreck.

What has many Italians particularly worried, however, is the unusually high death tolls and destruction the disasters have wreaked in a nation that takes pride in being one of the world's most advanced democracies.

While the tragedies are unrelated, experts see a common thread: corruption, chronic negligence, and uncontrolled development conspiring with a disaster-prone terrain to inflict maximum damage.

As the death toll from last week's massive landslides rises to 26 with rescuers still digging for bodies, the nation is once again waking up to the reality of how unprepared it is to cope with nature's fury.

"When all the ills come together a small emergency becomes a tragedy," said Maria D'Amico, 52, a travel agent from the stricken area near Messina.

In April, the towns of central Italy crumbled, killing some 300 people, in a 6.3-magnitude earthquake that would have caused only limited damage in most Western nations. Experts blamed the high death toll on shoddy construction, and prosecutors have begun an investigation.

Two months later, more than 30 died in a Tuscan seaside resort when a broken wheel caused a gas train to derail in an overcrowded area, setting an entire neighbourhood on fire.

Last week's rainstorm released rivers of mud and debris that rushed down mountainsides and submerged parts of the Sicilian city of Messina, a tragedy that might have been averted if homes were not built on hillsides and the trees cut down.

"Although Italy is beautiful, the land is considered something that must be exploited as much as possible," said Enzo Boschi, president of the National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology.

The long and narrow Italian peninsula has mountains running through its backbone, leaving little room for cities and infrastructure.

That is one of the reasons why there are few rail lines in Italy, and why dangerous cargo like the Viareggio gas train too often travels through densely populated areas, Boschi told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

more from the Canadian Press

Behind Asia-Pacific's Unnatural Disasters

In the shadow of a volcano, under a nightfall that cannot hide the rising stench of death, Pariaman official Yuen Karnova recounts his district's toll from the earthquake that struck the Indonesian island of Sumatra on Sept. 30: at least 400 people believed dead, just some of what will probably be thousands of casualties from the quake; more than 10,000 buildings collapsed or condemned; a dozen or so villages wiped off the map by landslides. Pariaman, Karnova notes, is hardly a stranger to calamity. "Every natural disaster you can think of, it has happened here," he tells me. "Landslides, floods, volcano eruptions, earthquakes, even a tsunami. Some people ask me, Why don't you leave?" Karnova's mouth forms a smile that is not the least bit amused. "We are people of faith," he says, "and we must face up to these challenges."

But what a multitude of challenges has been unleashed upon the Asia-Pacific region in just a week's time. In late September, tropical storm Ketsana killed more than 160 people in Vietnam and nearly 300 in the Philippines, submerging 80% of Manila. Just hours before Sumatra was jolted, another earthquake triggered a tsunami that inundated the Samoan islands and Tonga, extinguishing some 180 lives. In the latest catastrophe, southern India was ravaged by some of the worst torrential rains in decades, killing around 300 people and leaving some 2 million others homeless. (See pictures of tsunami striking South Pacific.)

The unrelenting drumbeat of bad news confirms what many have sensed for some time. First, the globe is being cursed with more natural calamities than before. Second, the distribution of disaster is unequal. A U.N. report released in May studied natural disasters between 1975 and 2007 and found not only that the frequency of catastrophe is increasing because of climate change, unsafe cities and environmental degradation, but also that the brunt of tragedy is borne by poor countries least equipped to deal with such misfortune. In 2008, 98% of natural disaster – related fatalities occurred in Asia, according to the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington-based research group. At a World Health Organization summit last month, health ministers from Southeast Asia announced that from 1998 to 2009, 750,000 people had perished from natural disasters in their region alone.

Some countries, such as Indonesia and the Philippines, are blighted by geography. But other disaster-prone nations like Japan manage to surmount these disadvantages. In some ways, natural disasters give these developed economies an excuse for technological improvement. So while Japan invests in high-tech skyscrapers designed to withstand the inevitable next earthquake, the West Sumatran capital of Padang — which scientists long predicted would be shaken by a killer quake because it sits astride one of the world's most active fault lines — was crowded with poorly built buildings that crumbled when the earth shuddered on Sept. 30. Similarly, in the Philippines, the vast flooding triggered by Ketsana was largely the result of insufficient drainage. In fact, the U.N. estimates that when equivalent populations in the Philippines and Japan endure the same number of tropical cyclones each year, 17 times more people perish in the Philippines than in Japan. The higher death tolls feed a vicious cycle: constantly struggling to recover from the latest storm or quake, developing countries have a harder time affording the disaster-prevention measures needed to mitigate nature's wrath.

more from Time