WThe 2010 Great Barrier Reef oil spill occurred on 3 April 2010, when the Chinese bulk coal carrier, MV Shen Neng 1 ran aground east of Rockhampton in Central Queensland, Australia. The vessel is owned by Shenzhen Energy Transport Co. Ltd.
WThe 2010 Port Arthur oil spill was the result of a collision between two vessels in the Sabine-Neches Waterway at Port Arthur, Texas on January 23, 2010. The two vessels were the oil tanker Eagle Otome and a barge being pushed by the towboat Dixie Vengeance.
WAn industrial accident at a caustic waste reservoir chain took place at the Ajkai Timföldgyár alumina plant in Ajka, Veszprém County, in western Hungary. On 4 October 2010, at 12:25 CEST (10:25 UTC), the northwestern corner of the dam of reservoir number 10 collapsed, freeing approximately one million cubic metres of liquid waste from red mud lakes. The mud was released as a 1–2 m (3–7 ft) wave, flooding several nearby localities, including the village of Kolontár and the town of Devecser. Ten people died, and 150 people were injured. About 40 square kilometres (15 sq mi) of land were initially affected. The spill reached the Danube on 7 October 2010.
WThe Blue Economy: 10 years – 100 innovations – 100 million jobs is a book by Gunter Pauli. The book expresses the ultimate aim that a "Blue Economy business model" will shift society from scarcity to abundance "with what is locally available", by tackling issues that cause environmental and related problems in new ways.
WCarbon Shift: How Peak Oil and the Climate Crisis Will Change Canada is a 2009 non-fiction book edited by Thomas Homer-Dixon and Nick Garrison that collects six essays that discusses the issues of peak oil and climate change. The book was first published in hardcover by Random House of Canada in 2009 under the title Carbon Shift: How the Twin Crises of Oil Depletion and Climate Change Will Define the Future, and became a national bestseller. In 2010, the paperback was published by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House Canada, the sub-title then changing to How Peak Oil and the Climate Crisis Will Change Canada .
WThe Climate Monologues is an episodic one-woman play, created and performed by Sharon Abreu. Inspired by The Vagina Monologues, The Climate Monologues consists of a series of monologues and original songs from the point of view of people affected by and working to prevent climate change.
WThe Deepwater Horizon oil spill was an industrial disaster that began on 20 April 2010, in the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect, considered to be the largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry and estimated to be 8 to 31 percent larger in volume than the previous largest, the Ixtoc I oil spill, also in the Gulf of Mexico. The U.S. federal government estimated the total discharge at 4.9 Mbbl. After several failed efforts to contain the flow, the well was declared sealed on 19 September 2010. Reports in early 2012 indicated that the well site was still leaking. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is regarded as one of the largest environmental disasters in American history.
WEaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet is a book written by Bill McKibben, published by Henry Holt and Company in 2010.
WThe Energy Act 2010 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom pertaining to the regulation of energy usage and markets, with amendments to similar pieces of previous legislation. The Act was granted Royal Assent on 8 April 2010 along with a series of other bills during the wash-up period prior to the 2010 general election.
WThe 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been described as the worst environmental disaster in the United States, releasing about 4.9 million barrels of crude oil making it the largest marine oil spill. Both the spill and the cleanup efforts had effects on the environment.
WEthical Oil: The Case for Canada's Oil Sands is a book written by Canadian lawyer, talk-show host and political activist Ezra Levant, which makes a case for exploiting the Athabasca oil sands and its sister projects in Alberta. Published in 2010 by McClelland & Stewart in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the book became a non-fiction best seller and won the National Business Book Award for 2011.
WThe 4th Revolution: Energy Autonomy, also known as Die 4. Revolution – Energy Autonomy, is a German documentary film about renewable energy by Carl-A. Fechner, released in 2010. It depicts a vision for a global society that obtains 100% of its energy from renewable sources and the complete reconstruction of the economy that this will require.
WPublic protesting and demonstrations began one week ahead of the 2010 G20 Toronto summit, which took place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on 26−27 June. The protests were for various causes, including poverty and anti-capitalism.
WHarmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World is 2010 book written by Charles, Prince of Wales, with Tony Juniper and Ian Skelly. The book focuses on the world's environment which includes climate change, architecture and agriculture which the Prince of Wales usually addresses. The book has been translated into many different languages. There is also a children's edition of Harmony.
WThe Hockey Stick Illusion: Climategate and the Corruption of Science is a book written by Andrew Montford and published by Stacey International in 2010, which promotes climate change denial.
WThe Indian Ocean garbage patch, discovered in 2010, is a marine garbage patch, a gyre of marine litter, suspended in the upper water column of the central Indian Ocean, specifically the Indian Ocean Gyre, one of the five major oceanic gyres. The patch does not appear as a continuous debris field. As with other patches in each of the five oceanic gyres, the plastics in it break down to ever smaller particles, and to constituent polymers. As with the other patches, the field constitutes an elevated level of pelagic plastics, chemical sludge, and other debris; primarily particles that are invisible to the naked eye. The concentration of particle debris has been estimated to be approximately 10,000 particles per square kilometer.
WIndian Seed Vault is a secure seed bank lies in a high-altitude mountain pass on the Chang La seed vault in Ladakh, India. It was built in 2010 jointly by the Defence Institute of High Altitude Research and the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, this seed bank is the second largest in the world.
WThe International Year of Biodiversity (IYB) was a year-long celebration of biological diversity and its importance, taking place internationally in 2010. Coinciding with the date of the 2010 Biodiversity Target, the year was declared by the 61st session of the United Nations General Assembly in 2006.
WThe Kalamazoo River oil spill occurred in July 2010 when a pipeline operated by Enbridge burst and flowed into Talmadge Creek, a tributary of the Kalamazoo River. A 6-foot (1.8 m) break in the pipeline resulted in one of the largest inland oil spills in U.S. history. The pipeline carries diluted bitumen (dilbit), a heavy crude oil from Canada's Athabasca oil sands to the United States. Cleanup took five years. Following the spill, the volatile hydrocarbon diluents evaporated, leaving the heavier bitumen to sink in the water column. Thirty-five miles (56 km) of the Kalamazoo River were closed for clean-up until June 2012, when portions of the river were re-opened. On March 14, 2013, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ordered Enbridge to return to dredge portions of the river to remove submerged oil and oil-contaminated sediment.
WThe Memorandum of Understanding on the Conservation of Migratory Sharks is an international instrument for the conservation of migratory species of sharks. It was founded under the auspices of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals.
WMerchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming is a 2010 non-fiction book by American historians of science Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. It identifies parallels between the global warming controversy and earlier controversies over tobacco smoking, acid rain, DDT, and the hole in the ozone layer. Oreskes and Conway write that in each case "keeping the controversy alive" by spreading doubt and confusion after a scientific consensus had been reached was the basic strategy of those opposing action. In particular, they show that Fred Seitz, Fred Singer, and a few other contrarian scientists joined forces with conservative think tanks and private corporations to challenge the scientific consensus on many contemporary issues.
WThe National Green Tribunal Act, 2010 is an Act of the Parliament of India which enables the creation of a special tribunal to handle the expeditious disposal of the cases pertaining to environmental issues. It draws inspiration from India's constitutional provision of Article 21 Protection of life and personal liberty, which assures the citizens of India the right to a healthy environment.
WPower Hungry: The Myths of "Green" Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future is a book by Robert Bryce about energy, mainly from a United States perspective. It was published in 2010 by PublicAffairs. A short essay based on the book was released as an op-ed by the author in The Washington Post.
WRio Grande Silvery Minnow v. Bureau of Reclamation, called Rio Grande Silvery Minnow v. Keys in its earlier phases, was a case launched in 1999 by a group of environmentalists against the United States Bureau of Reclamation and the United States Army Corps of Engineers alleging violations of the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. The case resulted in significant changes to water and river management in the Middle Rio Grande Basin of New Mexico in an effort to reverse the damage that had been done to the habitat of two endangered species.
WThe South Pacific garbage patch is an area of ocean with increased levels of marine debris and plastic particle pollution, within the ocean's pelagic zone. This area is in the South Pacific Gyre, which itself spans from waters east of Australia to the South American continent, as far north as the Equator, and south until reaching the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. The degradation of plastics in the ocean also leads to a rise in the level of toxics in the area. The garbage patch was confirmed in mid-2017, and has been compared to the Great Pacific garbage patch's state in 2007, making the former ten years younger. The South Pacific garbage patch is impossible to detect using satellites, or other visual means as most particles are smaller than a grain of rice.
WThe 2010 Southeast Asian haze was an air pollution crisis which affected many Southeast Asia countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore during the month of October in 2010.
WStraight Up: America's Fiercest Climate Blogger Takes on the Status Quo Media, Politicians, and Clean Energy Solutions is a book by author, blogger, physicist and climate expert Joseph J. Romm. A Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and former Acting Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, Romm writes about methods of reducing global warming and increasing energy security through energy efficiency, green energy technologies and green transportation technologies.
WTrash Inc: The Secret Life of Garbage is a one-hour television documentary film that aired on CNBC on September 29, 2010 about trash/garbage, what happens to it when it's "thrown away", and its impact on the world. The film is hosted by CNBC Squawk Box co-anchor Carl Quintanilla as he reports from various landfills, business, and other locations in the United States and China.
WThe 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference was held in Cancún, Mexico, from 29 November to 10 December 2010. The conference is officially referred to as the 16th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 16) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 6th session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties (CMP 6) to the Kyoto Protocol. In addition, the two permanent subsidiary bodies of the UNFCCC — the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) and the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI) — held their 33rd sessions. The 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference extended the mandates of the two temporary subsidiary bodies, the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP) and the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA), and they met as well.
WThe World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth was a global gathering of civil society and governments hosted by the government of Bolivia in Tiquipaya, just outside the city of Cochabamba on 19-22 April 2010.