A group of Colombian farmers has filed a lawsuit against the oil company BP, claiming that construction of a 450-mile pipeline in the mid-1990s has caused landslides, permanently damaging soil and crops and harming livestock.

In the suit filed in a London court, 95 farmers claim that BP Exploration Company ignored evidence that the pipeline would damage the land, and never informed the property owners, many of them illiterate, of the risks.

The pipeline, which delivers as much as 620,000 barrels of crude oil to an export terminal daily, crosses 192 rural villages. Farmers say that during construction, natural vegetation that protected their soil from the elements was removed, leading to significant erosion. (more…)

Large, low-emission buses being introduced in developing cities from Mexico City to Ahmedabad, India are reducing congestion on crowded roadways and cutting pollution and carbon dioxide emissions, all at a much lower cost than constructing subways.

In Bogota, Colombia, city leaders took control of two to four center lanes of major boulevards for the TransMilenio rapid transit system. Small walls isolate the “tracks” of the bus lines from other traffic, and passengers are able to board the long, segmented buses from the center platforms of modern stations.

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