“Whether you call it biomass or simply chopping down trees, it’s still deforestation,” said Franz A. Matzner, climate legislative director for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Washington, which supports the sensible use of biomass power. “Burning trees for energy is an age-old practice that we know can cause some pretty bad effects if we don’t get our heads around doing it the right way.”

http://nyti.ms/cqWZSP

A month ago, National Incident Commander Thad Allen issued an order granting the media “uninhibited access” to the areas affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It was routinely and often brazenly ignored.

Thirty days later, it should be said that the order essentially has no real-world meaning at all. Here's Daniel Tencer at Raw Story:

via BP Media Clampdown: Journalists Now Face Possibility of Fines, Prison Time.

The six-month study by the Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences in Plymouth comes amid controversy over the proposed construction of two large wood-burning power plants in Western Massachusetts.

“These findings have broad implications for clean energy and the environment in Massachusetts and beyond,” said Ian Bowles, state secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs.

Read the rest at Wood burning power plants may hurt global warming fight – The Green Blog – A Boston Globe blog on living Green in Boston.

“A pilot wanted to take a photographer from The Times-Picayune of New Orleans to snap photographs of the oil slicks blackening the water. The response from a BP contractor who answered the phone late last month at the command center was swift and absolute: Permission denied.”

via BP and Officials Block Some Coverage of Gulf Oil Spill – NYTimes.com.

The Union of Concerned Scientists, among others, has done the math to show that renewable energy and conservation can accomplish the same goals as a financially devastating resurrection of the nuclear age.

via GreenBuilder Magazine – News – GreenBuilder.

“As BP makes its latest attempt to plug its gushing oil well, news photographers are complaining that their efforts to document the slow-motion disaster in the Gulf of Mexico are being thwarted by local and federal officials—working with BP—who are blocking access to the sites where the effects of the spill are most visible…”

via Photographers Say BP Restricts Access to Oil Spill – Newsweek.

Thanks to our correspondent Roger Witherspoon for this revealing article from the Washington Post:

“…the Nature Conservancy lists BP as one of its business partners. The organization also has given BP a seat on its International Leadership Council and has accepted nearly $10 million in cash and land contributions from BP and affiliated corporations over the years…”

via Nature Conservancy faces potential backlash from ties with BP.

For BP, a History of Spills and Safety Lapses

BP continues to lag other oil companies when it comes to safety. The Deepwater Horizon blast, which killed 11 people, is not the company’s first time under scrutiny.

http://nyti.ms/dmubTP

Get The New York Times on your iPhone for free by visiting http://itunes.com/apps/nytimes

Trish Riley
Www.GoGreenNation.org

The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that exploded on April 20, causing the massive oil spill currently unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico, sank two days later, on the fortieth anniversary of Earth Day.

Given that a 1969 spill from an oil platform off the coast of Santa Barbara, California spurred the first Earth Day, the rig’s sinking is tragically ironic. As Lisa Margonelli, who has written extensively about crude, observed in The New York Times on Saturday, “The history of American oil spills is the history of the environmental movement.”

Unfortunately, the coverage of Earth Day’s fortieth anniversary, which focused on the “green economy” and “clean energy” business, showed just how much the environmental movement—and coverage of the environment—has gone corporate. Even more unfortunate is the fact that some journalists’ reluctance to question industry’s influence on environmentalism has remained on display since the oil spill in the Gulf began. Nowhere is this more true perhaps, than in a front-page news analysis in the Times on Tuesday….”

via Crude Coverage at the Times : CJR.

“Just as the heavy use of antibiotics contributed to the rise of drug-resistant supergerms, American farmers’ near-ubiquitous use of the weedkiller Roundup has led to the rapid growth of tenacious new superweeds.

To fight them, Mr. Anderson and farmers throughout the East, Midwest and South are being forced to spray fields with more toxic herbicides, pull weeds by hand and return to more labor-intensive methods like regular plowing.”

via U.S. Farmers Cope With Roundup-Resistant Weeds – NYTimes.com.