Giant piles of debris from Japan’s earthquake and tsunami scar the country’s once picturesque northeast coast — and the clear-up is hamstrung by fears the rubbish may be contaminated by radiation.
Decades-worth of waste was left behind when the waters receded in March last year after claiming more than 19,000 lives.
The survivors are desperate to rebuild, [...]
The Inuit are split on the wisdom of large-scale uranium mining in their territory, with some saying their communities desperately need the economic development, while others are concerned about the environmental fallout from the industry. With a population of just 30,000 mostly Inuit people living in a territory the size of Western Europe, Nunavut — [...]
Geologist Susie Beiersdorfer has discussed the connection between Youngstown earthquakes and the nearby injection well. She has said the brine toxic waste injected into the well reactivated an ancient fault by acting as a lubricant and reducing friction between layers of the shale, thereby causing earthquakes, meeting organizers said.
The situation in the Youngstown area has [...]
Elevated levels of metals have been found in groundwater near ash basins at all 14 N.C. coal-fired power plants, state regulators say after intensified monitoring.
Coal ash holds metals that can be toxic in high doses. But the elements most widely detected at the power plants, iron and manganese, also occur naturally and aren’t considered health [...]
Lighting coal and wood fires will lead to hefty fines under a town hall’s plans to avoid a return to the “pea-souper” smogs of yesteryear.
Tory-run Wandsworth council plans to introduce a borough-wide “smoke control area” to stop residents lighting fires in homes. A town hall report said the move was based on the “growing contribution [...]
The East Bay Express figures out the jobs picture:
During a Republican presidential primary debate last June, Michele Bachmann lit into the Environmental Protection Agency, recommending it be renamed the “job-killing organization of America.” Her fellow contenders nodded in agreement, each explaining how shutting down the EPA, or at least instituting a moratorium on regulations, would [...]
The Yasuni National Park, known as "the lungs of the world" and one of the most bio-diverse places on earth, is under threat from oil drilling. The race is on to find the funds required to develop new sustainable energy programmes that would leave the oil – and the forest – untouched.
In the early light [...]
JASON DEAREN reports for the Associated Press
Auto dealers say California’s proposed rules to require carmakers to build more electric and other less-polluting hybrid cars and trucks by 2025 will cost consumers more money and will stifle the industry’s growth.
Consumer groups say customers might pay more for the vehicles but will save in lower fuel and [...]
On November 6, 2011, Bill McKibben arrived at Washington, D.C.’s, Lafayette Park to protest the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, designed to carry oil 1,700 miles from Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. McKibben, a Vermont writer and environmentalist, had been one of 1,252 people arrested in front of the White House in [...]
Sharon Wilson in Texas reports:
Huge thanks go to Brett Shipp for staying on this story. To recap:
A chemical plant blew up and I knew right away that fracking was involved.
Chemical fire spawns fish kill, criminal investigation
Waxahachie chemical firm cited for environmental violations
Chemical plant relocation upsetting Ellis County residents
Ellis County Commissioners catch heat from chemical plant [...]
The strict new federal standards limiting pollution from power plants are meant to safeguard human health. But they should have an important side benefit, according to a study being released on Tuesday: protecting a broad array of wildlife that has been harmed by mercury emissions. Songbirds and bats suffer some of the same types of [...]
The San Jose Mercury News editorial:
President — finally — stands up to GOP, Big Oil
President Barack Obama finally seems to be standing his ground in the philosophical fight with Republicans over the direction of the country.
The decision to not approve the Keystone oil pipeline was the right one. Obama clearly signaled to Republicans, Big Oil [...]
The San Francisco Chronicle reports:
Federal regulators designated nearly 42,000 square miles of ocean along the West Coast as critical habitat for the Pacific leatherback turtle Friday, far less than originally proposed but still the largest protected area ever established in American waters.
The protected area is the first permanent safe haven in the waters of the [...]
Grist reports:
Anyone who’s been stung by a bee knows they can inflict an outsized pain for such tiny insects. It makes a strange kind of sense, then, that their demise would create an outsized problem for the food system by placing the more than 70 cropsthey pollinate — from almonds to apples to blueberries — [...]
Bob Cuddy reports in the SLO Tribune:
After a four-hour hearing that capped months of debate, the county’s little-known waste management board voted Wednesday evening to ban plastic shopping bags at most stores in San Luis Obispo County.
Unless blocked by litigation, which has already been threatened, or a referendum, retailers will not be permitted to distribute [...]
By Peggy Heinkel-Wolfe and Lowell Brown / Staff Writers, Denton Record-Chronicle
FLOWER MOUND — In the months before, it was just Tammi Vajda and several others who came to Town Council meetings.
They were outnumbered by other Flower Mound residents who favored natural gas drilling in town. They called Vajda names.
“My husband asked me why I did [...]
From the Alaska Dispatch:
Debris from the Japanese tsunami has apparently reached Kodiak, with several large oyster farm floats discovered by local beachcombers and fishermen Dave Kubiak and Alexus Kwatchka, according to a story by KMXT radio.
Washington-based oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an expert in tracking ocean flotsam, sent photographs of the floats to the national media in [...]
HuffPo reports:
TORONTO — PetroChina, Asia’s largest oil and gas company, is buying the 40 percent interest it didn’t own in the MacKay River oil sands project in Canada for US$673 million.
The deal with Athabasca Oil Sands Corp., announced Tuesday, gives PetroChina full ownership in one of the newest of northern Alberta’s oil sands developments. Athabasca [...]
The Obama administration did the nation — and Florida in particular — a great service by putting forth an ambitious plan to restore the Gulf of Mexico. The blueprint unveiled this month could, over time, begin to reverse decades of man-made damage that hammered the gulf long before last year’s historic oil spill. The federal [...]
Speaking to voters in Iowa Monday, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania ripped the Environmental Protection Agency’s new rule placing first-ever limits on the amount of mercury that coal-fired power plants can emit into the air.
The GOP presidential contender claimed the new regulations would shut down 60 coal fired power plants in America, and he [...]
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