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 — [...]
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 [...]
Let’s get the New Year off to a fresh start by tackling this sickening situation. In public spaces across the country, including offices, stores, restaurants, airports, and schools, air "freshener" is being forced upon us. Daily we are subjected to known carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, and other toxic substances. Sounds like a horror film, but it [...]
Bruce Ritchie reports:
A bill filed by a Senate budget subcommittee chairman would prohibit the Public Service Commission from allowing private utilities to charge customers higher rates for using large amounts of water.
SB 1244 appears aimed at Aqua Utilities Florida, the largest private water utility in Florida. But the bill is raising broader concerns among some [...]
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 [...]
A resurgent green
movement is launching a multi-pronged counter-attack against the
shale oil and gas boom in the United States that could slow,
though ultimately not stop, development.
Building upon their unexpected success in the battle against
the Keystone XL pipeline, a renewed onslaught from
environmentalists is putting the shale industry on the defensive
while adding to costs, limiting expansion and potentially
scuttling [...]
Large numbers of infants and toddlers have died from lead poisoning in Nigerian villages where their parents process gold ore inside their family compounds, according to a report published Tuesday by an international team of researchers.
In two Nigerian communities, 118 children under the age of 5 died in a single year – 25 percent [...]
Catherine Ryan Hyde summarizes the struggle Cambria has had with its own governing body, the Community Services District, to protect the local environment. The area is legally protected by state and federal law, but the CSD board of directors has pursued invading it to build a desalination plant. The full text of her summary includes [...]
Did you see the award winning film Wild Horses in Winds of Change at Cinema Verde 2011? http://wildhorsesinwindsofchange.com/
“As thousands of wild horses and burros are rounded up from their free roaming life on the range, tensions run high for their future…”
Federal land managers have agreed to postpone a precedent-setting plan to castrate hundreds of wild [...]
Japan’s response to the nuclear crisis that followed the March 11 tsunami was confused and riddled with problems, including an erroneous assumption an emergency cooling system was working and a delay in disclosing dangerous radiation leaks, a report revealed Monday.
The disturbing picture of harried and bumbling workers and government officials scrambling to respond to the [...]
The world’s largest reindeer population has plummeted up to 92 percent in the last few decades. Once standing at 900,000, the George River herd now stands at 74,000, according to Survival International.
Important to the Innu and Cree people of Quebec and Labrador in eastern Canada, iron-ore mining, hydro-power flooding and road building are reportedly to [...]
If terrorists ever target Fargo, N.D., the local police will be ready.Atlanta Police S.W.A.T. members searched a building for a shooting suspect in July of 2010. More than ever before, police rely on quasi-military tactics and equipment, the Center for Investigative Reporting has found. John Bazemore In recent years, they have bought bomb-detection robots, digital [...]
March 2011 marked the beginning of a preemptive lawsuit, with 83 plaintiffs joining forces against corporate giant Monsanto. Florida Organic Growers, a nonprofit organic certification and sustainable farming outreach group based in Gainesville, joined the fight in July. The 83 plaintiffs, representing a coalition of more than 270,000 farmers, are filing this lawsuit against Monsanto out of fear.
For years, biotech agriculture opponents have accused regulators of working too closely with big biotech firms when deregulating genetically engineered (GE) crops. Now, their worst fears could be coming true: under a new two-year pilot program at the USDA, regulators are training the world’s biggest biotech firms, including Monsanto, BASF and Syngenta, to conduct environmental [...]
Though some Chinese media is still reporting the smog blanket currently engulfing Beijing as nothing more than a serious fog, the U.S. Embassy pollution monitoring index registered the city’s air as Beyond Index at 7pm Sunday night, with the level remaining at Hazardous since then.
Average visibility in the city has been between 1 to 3 [...]
Progress Energy’s disastrous do-it-yourself upgrade to the Crystal River nuclear plant was such a risky idea that the company’s own internal report warned against it.
The company’s lack of expertise and experience “outweigh strengths and opportunities,” the report said. “Those weaknesses cannot be changed to strengths in sufficient time to plan and implement” the project.
The report’s [...]
I think it’s fair to say that most of the Washington, D.C., politicians attacking clean-air safeguards don’t have the same view out their front windows as the families in my small community of 300 people.
We look out on four polluting smokestacks, a small mountain of coal ash and seeping wastewater ponds. All are part of [...]
Tohoku Electric Power Company's Onagawa nuclear plant experienced a fire and the earlier story of a malfunction at the Tokyo Electric Power nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture, seems to be causing concern.
The movement of the bedrock under the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power plant during the Great East Japan Earthquake was larger than pre-quake estimates [...]
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