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Archive for April, 2013
Why It’s Worth Going to Jail to Stop Keystone XL
Posted by EcoWatch: Conor Kennedy on April 25th, 2013
EcoWatch: On Monday, the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) told the State Department that the information in the State Department’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on the Keystone XL pipeline is “insufficient.” Among EPA’s many concerns was the State Department’s failure to adequately address the pipeline’s impacts on climate change. EPA raised a host of other issues. In fact, the State Department’s EIS is not useful for answering some of the most basic questions about Keystone XL.
Ever...
Less Rain in Hawaii
Posted by Environmental News Network: Andy Soos on April 25th, 2013
Environmental News Network: The Hawaiian Islands ecoregion includes one of the world's wettest places, the slopes of Mount Wai?ale?ale, which average 460 in (12,000 mm) of rainfall per year. However, almost imperceptibly, rainfall over the Hawaiian Islands has been declining since 1978, and this trend is likely to continue with global warming through the end of this century, according to a team of scientists at the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM) and the University of Colorado at Boulder. This latest Hawaii rainfall study,...
Chinese airline to start biofuel-powered commerical flights
Posted by BusinessGreen: None Given on April 25th, 2013
BusinessGreen: China Eastern Airlines has said it plans to introduce biofuel-powered commercial flights, after yesterday completing its first successful trial of green aviation fuel.
An Airbus A320 landed at Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport yesterday morning after completing an 85-minute flight using a biofuel made from a blend of palm oil and recycled cooking oil produced by Sinopec.
State media reported that Captain Liu Zhimin, who piloted Wednesday's flight, performed several extreme manoeuvres...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Chinese airline to start biofuel-powered commerical flightsChina: Lu Guang’s The Polluted Landscape
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 25th, 2013
Guardian: Chinese photojournalist Lu Guang goes deep into China's ravaged heartlands and documents the environmental crisis that has been triggered by the nation's dizzyingly rapid economic growth and development. Exposing the droughts caused by open-cast coal mines in Inner Mongolia, documenting under-reported oil spills and sidestepping censorship over chemical pollution of rivers, Guang is a fearless documenter of truth – and his message is starting to gather force among many Chinese who question the benefits...
United Kingdom: How trout are ‘rewilding’ both rivers and children
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 25th, 2013
Guardian: Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road, which I still believe is the greatest environmental work ever written, ends with the shock and beauty that runs through so much of the book:
"Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on United Kingdom: How trout are ‘rewilding’ both rivers and childrenDon’t let America get ‘fracked’
Posted by CNN: Phil Radford and Mark Ruffalo on April 25th, 2013
CNN: Even the heads of fossil fuel companies read the polls. They know the majority of Americans see global warming as an imminent threat and a clear sign that the way we use energy must change. But instead of offering the solar and wind choices America wants, fossil fuel companies like Shell, Exxon and Duke are offering what might be their most disastrous bait and switch yet: natural gas.
The bait? Burning natural gas is "clean" because it produces less carbon pollution than burning oil and coal....
Slow Start on Environment in Obama’s 2nd Term
Posted by New York Times: John Broder on April 24th, 2013
New York Times: SHORTLY after winning re-election in November, President Obama promised assertive leadership on climate change and energy. In his State of the Union address in February, he vowed that if the assembled lawmakers failed to pass broad climate legislation, he would act unilaterally. And yet in the ensuing months, little more has been heard from the president or his cabinet on the matter. Agreement is broad on near-term executive actions to address climate change, including imposing strict caps on greenhouse-gas...
Mountain-Top Removal Mining: Now Threatening Wisconsin!
Posted by on April 24th, 2013
Deep Green Resistance: A proposed iron mining effort would create the largest open pit mine in the world in northern Wisconsin.The 22,000 acres of mountain-top removal-style strip mining would potentially dump millions of tons of waste rock into the headwaters of the Bad River, polluting everything downstream including beautiful Copper Falls State Park, the Bad River Ojibwe Reservation, crucial wetland Kakagon Sloughs, and Lake Superior.
Many local residents fear that the huge mine will eat into nearby sulfide-mineral...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Mountain-Top Removal Mining: Now Threatening Wisconsin!Overcrowding on farms behind mystery of China’s floating pigs
Posted by Reuters: Adam Jourdan on April 24th, 2013
Reuters: Overcrowding on farms around Shanghai was the underlying factor that led to 16,000 dead pigs floating down the Huangpu river into China's affluent financial centre, according to an analysis of official documents and interviews with farmers in the region.
The appearance last month of carcasses of rotting hogs in a river that supplies tap water to the eastern Chinese city was a morbid reminder of the pressures facing China's mostly small-scale farmers as the country grapples with food safety scares,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Overcrowding on farms behind mystery of China’s floating pigsAre People Living Near Fracking Sites Getting Sick?
Posted by EcoWatch: Gary Wockner on April 24th, 2013
EcoWatch: On April 11,Colorado State Rep. Joann Ginal`s (D-Fort Collins) House Bill 1275 was heard, and died, in committee in the Colorado State Legislature. Rep Ginal`s bill asked and proposed to answer a very honest and simple question, "Are people living near oil and gas drilling and fracking getting sicker than people who don`t?" And, the bill would have provided that information to the public in a short timeframe.
Clean Water Action has a door-to-door campaign in the Denver metro area and across the...