Why are colder countries more developed than the warmer ones?
Other than the 19-20th century CE, cold weather regions were not really ahead of the economies of warmer regions. Historically, the civilization was centered around warm, tropics & subtropics. The first 5 civilizations - Sumer, Nile valley, Indus Valley, Yellow river valley, Norte Chico - were all in subtropics. The ones that followed - in Greece, Persia, Rome were in the same zone too. [Subtropics often were better than tropics because the latter was often next to dense rainforests with wildlife & epidemic dangers.] Still the warmer regions performed better throughout history. Colonialism changed this dynamic for the first time. I will explain this how. The cold weather regions have very low population density as not many people preferred cold winters. This allowed the farmers to have much larger lands and more potential mines & mineral resources. Until the modern era, these were hard to tap though.When industrial revolution came, the technology drastically helped those in cold climates. Mechanised farming - tractors and other machines - allowed industrial scale farming over those lands. This allowed the farmers to get rich because they had now huge lands that could be fully tapped. Factories also could now get minerals resources and infrastructure as large parts of their countries were sparsely occupied. In contrast, industrial revolution could not do much to densely populated tropics that already had high farming productivity - but shared by a large number of farmers. Tropics were too densely populated - meaning lesser resources & lesser room or infrastructure.Other aspect colonialism did was to open up huge markets. England had a small domestic market - population was small. But, through its colonies it got a huge market for its textile mills and industries. In earlier times there was not much international trade and thus those in sparsely populated regions could not benefit from their innovations.In 21st century CE, we are entering a post-industrial era and the pendulum might be shifting again. Mines and lands are not as important as they were in say 20th century. It is about the number of minds networked. In this, the subtropics/tropics such as California, Singapore, Shanghai or Bangalore are getting back in the game. The size of the domestic market matters big once again - as Californian startups could attest and density helps in various other ways too for an information economy.
What biomes are affected by oil spills?
There are serious dangers to the waters of the world and these come from oil spills and water pollution. Off the coast of Alaska, in the Persian Gulf and in the Gulf of Mexico are the worst places for oil spills, which have caused major destruction of wildlife and plants in the marine biome. Dumping of trash and toxic wastes in the ocean by companies is another major issue affecting the world's water sources. Even the laziness of everyday citizens who dump their trash in the ocean is affecting the marine biome.