Future of the Environment

These are some of the world’s worst environmental disasters

People hold up inflatable world globes during World Environment Day celebrations in central Sydney June 5, 2009. REUTERS/Daniel Munoz

Image: REUTERS/Daniel Munoz

Joe Myers
Writer, Forum Agenda
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Future of the Environment

Oil floats on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico around a work boat at the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico June 2, 2010. As the desperate effort to contain the gusher proceeded, the slick stretched farther. Tar balls and other oil debris from the giant, fragmented slick reached Alabama's Dauphin Island, parts of Mississippi and were less than 16 km (10 miles) from Florida's northwest Panhandle coast. REUTERS/Sean Gardner
Image: REUTERS/Sean Gardner
A wolf crosses a road in a forest in the 30 km (19 miles) exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor near the abandoned village of Dronki, Belarus, April 2, 2016. What happens to the environment when humans disappear? Thirty years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, booming populations of wolf, elk and other wildlife in the vast contaminated zone in Belarus and Ukraine provide a clue. On April 26, 1986, a botched test at the nuclear plant in Ukraine, then a Soviet republic, sent clouds of smouldering radioactive material across large swathes of Europe. Over 100,000 people had to abandon the area permanently, leaving native animals the sole occupants of a cross-border
Image: REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko
Members of the clean up crew in Prince William Sound begin work on the daunting task which lies ahead of them, cleaning up the worst oil spill in U.S. history. REUTERS/Mike Blake
Image: REUTERS/Mike Blake
A danger sign stands amid a permanently fenced-off section of the area formerly known as the Love Canal, in Niagara Falls, New York, July 18, 2003. Twenty five years ago, Love Canal was America's most notorious toxic dump, where leaking poisons from waste dumped by the Hooker Chemical Company (now Occidental Chemical) forced thousands to flee their homes and awoke the nation to the dangers of pollution. The U.S. government eventually declared emergency evacuations of the area in 1978 and 1980, and relocated more than 800 families and reimbursed them for their homes, which were destroyed. Picture taken July 18, 2003. REUTERS/Mike Segar
Image: REUTERS/Mike Segar
Kuwaiti Oil Fires
Image: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
The 'Door to Hell', Derweze, Turkmenistan.
Image: Caters News Agency
A view of the destroyed roof of the No.3 reactor building of Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO)'s tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is seen in Fukushima prefecture February 20, 2012. Members of the media were allowed into the plant on Monday ahead of the first year anniversary of the March 11, 2011 tsunami and earthquake for the second time since the disaster, which triggered the world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl. REUTERS/Issei Kato
Image: REUTERS/Issei Kato
A victim of Bhopal gas tragedy attends a demonstration outside a court in the central Indian city of Bhopal June 7, 2010. An Indian court on Monday sentenced seven people to two years each in prison for negligence in failing to prevent one of the world's worst industrial accidents that killed thousands of people in 1984. REUTERS/Raj Patidar
Image: REUTERS/Raj Patidar
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