EPA Mining Decisions Favor Coal Industry

Despite renewed vows to protect Appalachian waterways from the ravages of mountaintop coal mining, the Environmental Protection Agency has recently authorized a number of pending mountaintop permits that will bury dozens of streams in the nation’s oldest mountain range. The move has left mining supporters cheering the federal endorsement of a popular extraction method, environmentalists wondering if the Obama administration truly intends to prioritize water quality concerns above those of the powerful coal industry, and both sides unsure what to expect of mountaintop permitting in the future.
Washington Independent

2008 U.S. Fossil Fuel CO2 Emissions See Biggest Drop in Nearly 30 Years

Sky-high fuel prices, declining energy use and a slumping economy gave the U.S. its largest annual decline in fossil fuel-based carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions since 1982, when emissions fell 5.3 percent.

Energy-related CO2 emissions in 2008 fell 2.8 percent compared to the year before, according to preliminary data released today by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
GreenBiz

Ethanol lobby could kill climate bill

Ethanol producers, who hold sway with a raft of rural Democrats, are taking umbrage with the recent Environmental Protection Agency finding which said that the “indirect land use” involved in ethanol production must be taken into account when calculating the carbon footprint of the gasoline additive. The EPA finding, when indirect land use is taken into account, calls into question the utility of ethanol as a greenhouse-gas-reducing fuel.
The Raw Story

Surprising New Pathway For North Atlantic Circulation

Oceanographers have long known that the 20-year-old paradigm for describing the global ocean circulation- called the Great Ocean Conveyor – was an oversimplification. It’s a useful depiction, but it’s like describing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as a catchy tune.
Terra Daily

River restoration: Should we bring back Mississippi’s roaring white-water rapids?

For thousands of years, the Twin Cities had a white-water rapids roaring through it, tumbling and roiling over and around enormous limestone chunks that still litter the Mississippi River’s floor for eight miles from the St. Anthony Falls dam all the way down to Ft. Snelling.

If it were restored to its natural state, the “gorge” would be a kayaking and recreational wonder with hundreds of acres of new parkland, a photographer’s delight and a sportsman’s paradise. Scores of eagles would nest there, drawn by all the fish that would mass in oxygen-rich water and spawn in gravel beds under swirling eddies.
MinnPost

Researchers use remote-controlled sensors to track pollutant loads from storms

The next cup of stale coffee you pour down the drain may end up as evidence. Not in a courtroom, but in a study of how well Twin Cities sewers and waterways handle the loads of pollutants washed into them by storms.
MinnPost

Ice shelf about to break away from Antarctica

‘New rifts’ appeared this week along Wilkins; shelf holds back ice on land

MSNBC

Why global warming doesn’t pose a problem

…Because God doesn’t want it to. That’s what Illinois Rep. John Shimkus says:

MN Publius

US: Warming Gases Are Health Threat

Having received White House backing, the Environmental Protection Agency declared Friday that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are a significant threat to human health and thus will be listed as pollutants under the Clean Air Act – a policy the Bush administration rejected.

truthout

Science Chief Discusses Climate Strategy

The Obama administration might agree to auction only a portion of the emissions allowances granted at first under a cap-and-trade system to limit greenhouse gas pollution, White House science adviser John P. Holdren said yesterday, a move that would please electric utilities and manufacturers but could anger environmentalists.

Washington Post

Report: Wind could supply enough power to meet US electricity needs

Wind turbines off US coastlines could potentially supply more than enough electricity to meet the country’s current electricity demand, the US interior department reported today.

Simply harnessing the wind in relatively shallow waters – the most accessible and technically feasible sites for offshore turbines – could produce at least 20% of the power demand for most coastal states, interior secretary Ken Salazar said, unveiling a report by the department’s minerals management service that details the potential for oil, gas and renewable development on the Outer Continental Shelf.

Guardian

Colombia’s desert war

I recently received a disturbing email from southern Colombia warning that the fragile Amazonian soil could “soon be turned to desert”. They were the words of a Catholic priest, so I rang a church worker whose parish lies deep in the Amazonian state of Caquetá. Military planes targeting coca farms, funded by the US, had been spraying mists of herbicides over food crops, grazing animals and even areas where children were playing, she said: locals were complaining of breathing problems and rashes; “strips of skin” have been peeling off cows, and chickens have died; and maize, yucca, plantain and cacao crops have wilted and shrivelled. “We fear there will soon be a very serious food shortage in the region,” she said.

The Guardian

India’s climate refugees forced to fight – here and now

The rising sea has drowned two of Jalaluddin Saha’s small homes and threatens a third. Last monsoon surging water ruined his crops and he and his family ran for their lives. His livestock drank the brine and died.

In eastern India, this 62-year-old retired schoolteacher is experiencing climate change first hand. So are the other 8,000-odd residents of Baliwara and other villages in the little island called Mousuni, facing the Bay of Bengal at one of the numerous mouths of the Ganga river that Indians consider sacred.

Thaindian News

1,500 farmers commit mass suicide in India

Over 1,500 farmers in an Indian state committed suicide after being driven to debt by crop failure, it was reported today.

The agricultural state of Chattisgarh was hit by falling water levels.

“The water level has gone down below 250 feet here. It used to be at 40 feet a few years ago,” Shatrughan Sahu, a villager in one of the districts, told Down To Earth magazine. “Most of the farmers here are indebted and only God can save the ones who do not have a bore well.”

The Independent

Concerns Raised About Coastal Levels of Flame-Retardant Chemicals

Flame-retardant chemicals that have been linked to reproductive and neurological problems in animals have seeped into coastal environments even in remote regions and have been found in high concentrations off populated areas such as Chicago and Southern California, a federal study revealed Tuesday.

“This is a wake-up call for Americans concerned about the health of our coastal waters and their personal health,” said John H. Dunnigan, assistant administrator of the National Ocean Service, a branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which released the report.

truthout

10-Year Study Uncovers Toxic Aspects of DBPs

University of Illinois geneticist Michael Plewa said that disinfection byproducts (DBPs) in water are the unintended consequence of water purification.

“The process of disinfecting water with chlorine and chloramines and other types of disinfectants generates a class of compounds in the water that are called disinfection byproducts. The disinfectant reacts with the organic material in the water and generates hundreds of different compounds. Some of these are toxic, some can cause birth defects, some are genotoxic, which damage DNA, and some we know are also carcinogenic.”

Environmental News Network

Leatherback Turtles Consuming Plastic

A new study looked at necropsy reports of more than 400 leatherbacks that have died since 1885 and found plastic in the digestive systems of more than a third of the animals. Besides plastic bags, the turtles had swallowed fishing lines, balloon fragments, spoons, candy wrappers and more.

Discovery Channel

Travel Unplugged: 15 Off-the-Grid Destinations

Visiting tourist sites “off-the-grid” usually means trekking to a geographically remote area with your bug spray, anti-malaria meds, and pith helmet in tow. In these secluded spots, going green is a necessity; there is simply no power supply to plug into. But even some of tourism’s urban sites are getting into the green game by creating cutting edge constructions or, sometimes, by simply changing the source of their electricity.

WebEcoist

A Paradise of Birds in Belize

Flamboyant feathered residents like emerald toucanets, scarlet macaws, pale-billed woodpeckers and hundreds of others can be spotted in the rain forests of western Belize in the Cayo District.

NY Times

Saving Madagascar

Current’s Adam Yamaguchi goes to otherworldly Madagascar, an island struggling to flourish after bouts with environmental suicide.

Current

Prize for ‘Sun in the box’ cooker

A cheap solar cooker has won first prize in a contest for green ideas. The Kyoto Box is made from cardboard and can be used for sterilising water or boiling or baking food. The Kenyan-based inventor hopes it can make solar cooking widespread in the developing world, supplanting the use of wood which is driving deforestation.

BBC News

Concrete Is Remixed With Environment in Mind

The bridge, built to replace one that collapsed in 2007, killing 13 people, is constructed almost entirely of concrete embedded with steel reinforcing bars, or rebar. But it is hardly a monolithic structure: the components are made from different concrete mixes, the recipes tweaked, as a chef would, for specific strength and durability requirements and to reduce the impact on the environment. One mix, incorporated in wavy sculptures at both ends of the bridge, is designed to stay gleaming white by scrubbing stain-causing pollutants from the air.

NY Times

Personal Care and Cleaning Products Safety Guide

Make a difference by avoiding 1,4-dioxane and supporting the companies who do!

The Organic Consumers Association (pdf)

15 Awesome Ways to Reuse Shipping Containers

Steel shipping containers outlive their usefulness as cargo carriers within 5 years, and they used to sit abandoned at shipyards for years. Now, they’re gaining increasing recognition for their durability, adaptability, light weight, low cost and ease of stacking, spurring a recycling trend that has resulted in shipping container sculpture, homes, hotels, museums and more. The possibilities are seemingly endless, as illustrated by these 15 amazing examples of cargo container reuse.

WebEcoist

Race and Toxic Release Facilities

Environmental sociologists have noted that environmental toxicity is most concentrated in communities that include a disproportionate proportion of poor, working class, and non-white people. The map below compares the locations of toxic release facilities (green) with the percentage of people of color in neighborhoods in and near Los Angeles (yellow = 0-40 percent people of color; red = 80-100 percent of color). The overlap is striking.

Sociological Images

Interactive Map of U.S. Factory Farms

Food & Water Watch has an interesting interactive map that allows you to click on states and see how many factory farms it has per county, broken down into cattle (meaning beef, I assume), hogs, dairy, broilers, and layers (the last two are both chickens). You can look at number of facilities or number of animals.

Sociological Images

Germany Bans Cultivation of GM Corn

Germany has banned the cultivation of GM corn, claiming that MON 810 is dangerous for the environment. But that argument might not stand up in court and Berlin could face fines totalling millions of euros if American multinational Monsanto decides to challenge the prohibition on its seed.

Spiegel Online

A cure for honey bee colony collapse?

For the first time, scientists have isolated the parasite Nosema ceranae (Microsporidia) from professional apiaries suffering from honey bee colony depopulation syndrome. They then went on to treat the infection with complete success.

Environmental News Network

10 Air Purifying Plants For Homes & Offices

Even in huge, busy cities, outdoor air is cleaner and preferable to indoor air. Why is that? One reason is that trees and plants are constantly cleaning the air outside. This suggests that the eco-minded homeowner or office dweller should go out and buy some plants – but which ones? With all the hype of “going green”, every plant on the market is being promoted as an air purifier! But not to worry – NASA has conducted an official study on the top 10 air purifying plants, assigning each one a score based on how well they remove chemical vapors, resist insects, and how easy they are to maintain.

WebEcoist

Solar Powered Revas Trek Across India

Trekking around India sounds like a great way to have an adventure. Trekking across India in three solar powered Reva vehicles is an incredible way to have an adventure while raising awareness for climate change. That was the goal of the Indian Youth Climate Network as they took three electric Reva vehicles and plowed through 3,500 kilometers of Indian landscape to show the world that the solution to global warming can be found even in the most remote of places.

Inhabitat

Oceanic Seesaw Links Northern And Southern Hemisphere During Abrupt Climate Change During Last Ice Age

Very large and abrupt changes in temperature recorded over Greenland and across the North Atlantic during the last Ice Age were actually global in extent, according to an international team of researchers led by Cardiff University.

New research, published in the journal Nature, supports the idea that changes in ocean circulation within the Atlantic played a central role in abrupt climate change on a global scale.

Environmental News Network

Analysis: Russia and Central Asian water

An integral element of the new Eurasian “great game” between Russia and the United States is a tussle for control of the Caspian’s hydrocarbon riches and those of former Soviet republics farther east. But Russia is making a diplomatic play on another key resource — water.

Terra Daily

Jordan’s Fossil Water Source Has High Radiation Levels

Ancient groundwater being tapped by Jordan, one of the 10 most water-deprived nations in the world, has been found to contain twenty times the radiation considered safe for drinking water in a new study by an international team of researchers.

Terra Daily

Study critiques corn-for-ethanol’s carbon footprint

To avoid creating greenhouse gases, it makes more sense using today’s technology to leave land unfarmed in conservation reserves than to plow it up for corn to make biofuel, according to a comprehensive Duke University-led study.

“Converting set-asides to corn-ethanol production is an inefficient and expensive greenhouse gas mitigation policy that should not be encouraged until ethanol-production technologies improve,” the study’s authors reported in the March edition of the research journal Ecological Applications.

Environmental News Network

Feds buying up land in south metro for refuge

A federal agency is quietly spending tens of millions of dollars to lengthen a swath of publicly owned natural areas up and down the Minnesota River.

Star Tribune

Beyond Green Roofs: 15 Vertically Vegetated Buildings

Vertical gardens bring lush, verdant life to even the coldest and barest of surfaces, both indoors and out. These ‘living walls’ increase interior humidity, purify the air and provide a much-needed touch of nature in spare, angular urban spaces like airports, museums and shopping centers. Here are 15 buildings with stunning vertical greenery, from 6-story elevator shafts to subterranean restaurants.

WebEcoist

A 12-Step Guide to Subversive Guerrilla Gardening

Guerilla gardeners scope out their communities, make a plan and then head out on covert operations to vandalize the cities with nature. There are a million different ways to guerilla garden, but whether you choose to do it solo or with a group, in a public space or in a neighboring junkyard, these 12 steps can help make sure your beautification efforts are a success.

WebEcoist