Environment | Allianz Knowledge

Environment
Record CO2 highs: back to the climate future

The last time there was this much CO2 in the air was three million years ago. ...
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Environment
Extreme food

See some of the most extraordinary ways in which people around the world feed ...
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Environment
Renewable energies: investing against climate change

Manageable risks and broad diversification opportunities characterize renewable ...
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Environment
Ecocide: a crime against peace

Only by prosecuting mass environmental destruction alongside genocide and war ...
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Environment
Sustainable development: the crisis is an opportunity

Michael Diekmann, CEO Allianz SE, discusses the prospects for pursuing ...
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Environment
Sustainable development in action

Success stories from around the world, selected by the UN, which inspire and ...
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$A gas flare burns at a fracking site in rural Bradford County, Pennsylvania January 9, 2012. ... / Credits: Reuters$

Environment Shale revolution part 3: ecological impacts The third in a three-part series on the US ‘shale revolution’ considers the ... more

A Chinese woman boils water in a kettle using solar energy panels. The world economy continues to ... / Credits: Reuters

Environment Sustainable development in action Success stories from around the world, selected by the UN, which inspire and ... more

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Corn plants struggle to survive in drought-stricken farm fields in Ferdinand, Indiana, July 24, ... / Credits: Reuters

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Laser beams are projected on Dom Tower in Utrecht in the Netherlands. Could we one day send similar ... / Credits: Reuters

Environment: Interview Free power: The alternative nanoenergy network Justin Hall-Tipping’s vision of the nanoenergy future stunned the TEDGlobal ... more

Computer waste are left along a river bank at Yaocuowei village, China. Electonic waste contains ... / Credits: Reuters

Environment E-waste haunts the digital age Now that computers, TVs, and mobile phones are outdated after only a couple of ... more

In 2008, scientists from the University of Texas calculated that livestock manure could produce 100 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year.

Dutch company Ooms has developed a ‘road energy system’ that is able to harvest energy using water pipes embedded in the asphalt

Stockholm Central Station

Subways in a subway depot.

Lemon tree

A woman runs on a treadmill.

Dancers in a nightclub

A heavy rain storm.

A golf player swinging his club.

Californian Redwood trees.

Environment Weird ways to produce electricity Growing demands and shrinking conventional energy sources call for creative ideas to ... more

Geothermal: Hot Dry Rock / Credits: Allianz

Environment Exploring geothermal energy Explore a new way to tap the enormous potential of geothermal energy, the hot ... more

The power beneath us: People marvel at Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park. / Credits: Shutterstock

Environment Geothermal energy: The power beneath us Could we harness volcano power? Geothermal energy systems tap the Earth’s inner ... more

Traditional and alternative sources of engergy side by side. / Credits: Reuters

Environment: Video What is Europe's energy future? Europe needs a trillion Euros of energy investment. Philip Lowe, head of the ... more

A man takes a bite from a hot dog in Hollywood, California / Credits: Reuters

Environment: Interview Sustainable food - Meat once a week The world food system is catastrophically broken, says Tim Lang, Professor of ... more

Environment Water solutions: Farming the fog Many people in water-stressed regions get fresh water only once a week if at ... more

Futtsu Thermal Power Station, east of Tokyo: Generating power by burning fossil fuels like natural gas, oil, and coal produces more greenhouse gas emissions than any other human activity.

Virgin Amazon rainforest borders an area of jungle destroyed to make way for farms in Brazil. Deforestation and forest degradation are responsible for at least 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.

Gridlock on the road into Beijing. Between 600 and 700 million cars, trucks, and buses worldwide produce about about 13 percent of global man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

An oil platform stands in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea. Extracting and refining oil and natural gas requires huge amounts of energy while it also releases climate-warming methane gas from underground into the air.

Bags containing ammonium nitrate fertilizer are stored in a warehouse in Sydney. Modern agriculture relies heavily on fertilizers and pesticides, which are manufactured from crude oil and natural gas and which release nitrous oxide into the air, contributing to global warming.

A cow in Argentina has its methane emissions collected in a plastic tank. Argentine scientists say cows could be generating thirty percent of Argentina’s greenhouse gas emissions.

A laborer walks over newly made pipes at a cement plant in Yingtan, China. There is huge demand for cement thanks to a global construction boom. Cement production is very energy intensive, requiring first the quarrying of limestone and then processing of that limestone at very high temperatures.

A jet airliner leaves condensation trails. Estimations say that aircraft emissions of water vapor, nitrous oxides, aerosols and CO2 could be 2 to 4 times stronger than emissions of CO2 alone.

Picture of a steel factory. The iron and steel industry has one of the largest carbon footprints of any single industrial sector.

A man scavenges for waste to recycle at a garbage dump in Linfen, China. Landfill sites like this produce greenhouse gases because rotting organic waste emits methane.

Environment Ten sources of greenhouse gases Discover ten of the most important sources of man-made greenhouses gases. more

Allianz Knowledge on natural disasters: A police car is submerged in New Orleans East

Indonesian engineers unload a buoy, a tsunami early warning system

An aerial view shows a flooded village in Rajanpur district of Pakistan's Punjab province

A worker removes debris from the January 2010 earthquake in Port-au-Prince

Taming the Water Wolf

An aerial view of a neighborhood partially destroyed by a landslide caused by heavy rains in Nova Friburgo.

Steel against Avalanches.

A woman walks with her bicycle on a seawall

Glacial Lake Tsunami

Shouting saves lives.

Environment Disaster protection: Lessons from nature We can’t prevent natural disasters but we can mitigate their impacts. What lessons have ... more

AquaDams protect a highway from flooding in Manitoba, Canada, in spring 2011. / Credits: AquaDam

Environment: Interview Fighting floods with water In a flood situation, how can adding more water help? David Dooleage, inventor ... more

Flood water surrounding Tewkesbury Abbey, in central England.

A radar image of the San Andreas fault in the San Francisco Bay.

Slums in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, one month after an earthquake killed over 200,000 people.

Flames burn along a ridge behind a home in the Big Tujunga Canyon area of Los Angeles.

City workers inspect houses teetering on a cliff top in Pacifica, California.

The snow stream of an avalanche in Switzerland.

Smoke rises from Mount Merapi volcano, Indonesia.

People look out from their tarpaulin and bamboo hut on the Irrawaddy River delta in Myanmar.

A tornado bears down on houses in the American Midwest.

A resort island at the Male Atoll in the Maldives.

A Kenyan woman walks to a food distribution centre in Burmayo.

A Chinese farmer walks amid a heavy sand storm in Gansu Province.

Environment Major disaster risks worldwide Beware building a home in these risk-prone areas. See where people are most exposed to ... more

"In the future, when we list the fundamental properties of ocean water, we will have to include ... / Credits: Matt Cramer for Algalita Marine Research Foundation

Environment: Interview How oil skimmers clean up disaster spills A revolutionary oil skimmer could fight oil spills more effectively, but does ... more

An Iberian lynx runs after being released in Villafranca de Cordoba, southern Spain.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton takes a walking tour of the Trail of 100 Giants in the Sequoia National Forest.

A man holds a four year old crocodile at a breeding center at "La Boca" in the Zapata Swamp Biosphere Reserve Park south of the Matanzas province in central Cuba.

An Ornate horned frog, native to Uruguay, Brazil and Northern Argentina, buries himself in grass and soil.

A Coquerel's Sifaka lemur leaps between trees inside the Lemurs Park.

Australian scientist studies specimens in a lighted aquarium on Lizard Island Reef in far north Queensland.

A Mekong dolphin swims in a river in Kratie province in Cambodia.

A field officer with the Whangarei Native Bird Recovery Centre, holds a five-day-old Brown Kiwi chick.

An aerial view of islands in Palau.

Environment Biodiversity hotspots Many of Earth’s species face extinction, ecosystems are on the verge of collapse, and ... more

Trees are reflected on a raindrop on a leaf near the venue of the 10th Conference of the Parties to ... / Credits: Reuters

Can you be a climate leader? Try your green management skills. / Credits: Allianz/WWF

Environment: Animation Could you be the CEO of a green business? Climate change is serious but it doesn't have to be boring. Play our climate ... more

A worker checks a gas pipeline in an Indonesian landfill site

Farm manager Hugo Garcia takes water samples near a bio-digester

A woman winnows grain near a gas flare in Nigeria.

A long distance pipeline in Alaska

A Russian coal miner walks towards the entrance of a mine.

A worker at a Thai wastewater treatment plant

A rice farmer and her child in a paddy field

A woman covers her mouth while walking behind a bus belching exhaust fumes

A man on a bicycle protests against off-road vehicles

An Afghan worker patches up a smoking brick kiln

Modern and traditional coking ovens

A Chinese farmer burns agricultural waste

An Eritrean woman uses her new fuel efficient mogogo stove

A prison warden watches prisoners work on biogas stoves in Rwanda

Environment Easy ways to protect climate, health and crops Scientists have identified 14 simple, inexpensive ways to reduce global warming, slash ... more

Animation / Credits: Allianz

Environment Climate tipping points See the 12 regions of earth that will be most affected by climate change.
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Image of a space shade.

Wind-powered yachts that could spray seawater droplets into the air to produce more clouds.

he photo shows a research team aboard the Australian research vessel, Aurora Australis, examining the effects of iron on phytoplankton growth in the Southern Ocean in 2001.

The picture shows the eruption of a volcano, belching out sulfur dioxide.

Illustration of plastic tubes in the ocean, which would use wave motion and a one-way valve to push deep water through the tubes to the surface, bringing up essential nutrients to stimulate blooms of tiny marine plants.

The "air capture" devices illustrated here were conceived by Columbia University researcher Klaus Lackner and Global Research Technologies LLC.

Three hands with earth, the hand on the left is holding "biochar," a biomass-derived black carbon, which is seen as a promising option to enrich agricultural soils (right) and capture carbon dioxide.

Cull the Camels

White Roofing

Vertical Farming

Environment Ten weird and wacky solutions to global warming Does the Earth need sunglasses? Take a look at some amazing solutions proposed to halt ... more

Limestone whitewashed houses on the island of Santorini in the Mediterranean.

Sheikh Zayed mosque in Abu Dhabi.

An Inuit igloo in the Arctic.

A traditional 'gassho-zukuri' (clasped-hands) home in Japan.

A Mongolian boy stands against a ger or yurt.

A house with a traditional grass roof in the Faroe Islands.

Children from Indonesia's Bajo tribe near their pole house.

Muslims wash in the fountain waters inside Kashmir's Jamia Masjid mosque.

Screens and lattices reduce glare from the sun, provide shade, and help ventilate buildings.

An adobe pueblo building in New Mexico.

A girl runs along a walled street in the Fez medina.

A traditional Japanese tatami room with shoji screen doors.

A five story pagoda in Miyajima, Japan.

Environment Traditional architecture adapts to climate See some classic examples of how traditional architecture has been adapted to climate and ... more