The California power grid wants to make sure it can keep electricity flowing as residents rely on a greater amount of wind and solar power and strict water rules force the shutdown of power plants along the coast in the next few years, the agency said.
California has the most ambitious plan of any state to [...]
Joe Fassler writes in The Atlantic about Edible Education 101. Joe Fassler, a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa. In 2011, his work for TheAtlantic.com was nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award in Journalism. He hosts The Lit Show on KRUI radio and litshow.com.
This fall [...]
HuffPo reports:
In a study released by the International Journal of Biological Sciences, analyzing the effects of genetically modified foods on mammalian health, researchers found that agricultural giant Monsanto’s GM corn is linked to organ damage in rats.
According to the study, which was summarized by Rady Ananda at Food Freedom, “Three varieties of Monsanto’s GM corn [...]
Carol Brzozowski reports in Turf Magazine:
Plants are blooming and experiencing leaf budding earlier in public gardens throughout the United States and some plant species, including weeds, are growing in areas they never grew before. Ominously, plant pests are also being seen in new areas.
You won’t find details of these phenomena in the National Oceanic and [...]
Earlier this year a bill was introduced in Florida by Senator Jim Norman that would have made it a felony to take photos or video of a farm or agriculture operation.
The “Ag Gag” bill was openly supported by Big Ag and directed at both whistle-blowers who go undercover to document the cruelty that animals on [...]
Chew on this
Locals are finding ways to move away from food created by corporations
BY KATHY JOHNSTON
A quiet revolution is stirring in local kitchens. All over San Luis Obispo County, people are claiming their right to decide what goes in their mouths and their power to choose where it comes from.
CRUNCHY CHOICE
Dan Melton picks out [...]
David Zucchino of the Los Angeles Times reports one of the good stories of 2011:
December 25, 2011
Reporting from Yadkinville, N.C.
Loyd Bryant used to pump manure from his 8,640 hogs into a fetid lagoon, where it raised an unholy stink and released methane and ammonia into the air. The tons of manure excreted daily couldn’t be [...]
I’ve been freelancing since 1992….- tr
The traditional eight-hour workday may soon be the exception rather than the rule. New evidence shows that we’re reaching a tipping point in terms of workplace flexibility, with businesses seeing the wisdom of allowing employees — young ones especially — to work odd hours, telecommute and otherwise tweak the [...]
Green Drinks hosts Gainesville City Commission Candidate Forum January 4th
Green Drinks invites the community to attend a candidate forum for the upcoming Gainesville City Commission election. The forum will take place at Blue Water Bay (http://www.thebluewaterbay.com/), at its new Gainesville location (12 SE 2nd Ave.) on Wednesday, January 4, 2012 from 6-8pm.
Numerous [...]
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 [...]
Think “climate change” and the companies that come to mind are oil giants like Exxon Mobil or BP – not JP Morgan or Bank of America.
But a new study by Urgewald, a German environmental organization, establishes a strong link between large multinational banks and the coal industry, one of the biggest contributors to climate change.
The [...]
For decades, as young people have been leaving farms behind, the average age of the American farmer has been rising. The last time the government counted farmers, in 2002, the average farmer was 55-years-old.
But there’s a new surge of youthful vigor into American agriculture — at least in the corner of it devoted to organic, [...]
Kathy Johnston reports in San Luis Obispo’s New Times on a project that needs some laws to change
Using fish heads and fish carcasses to help crops grow well—an ancient practice that pre-dates the Pilgrims—is an idea that recently caught on in San Luis Obispo County.
People enthusiastically jumped on board this fall to make a fish-composting [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Just three years ago, the manmade fires here were so fierce smoke would blot out the Amazon sky, turning the days dark. Towering rainforest trees exploded in flames, their canopies cleared to let pasture grow for cattle.The ash that snowed down onto this jungle town was shin-deep. Dirty layers hid red-hot timber chunks, glowing coals [...]
A new 1,600-square-foot split-level on Voluntown Road, it is the Builders Association of Eastern Connecticut’s answer to a market in which new construction faces stiff competition from the surplus of houses for resale. The prototype is meant to showcase assets rarely found in older homes: ultra-greenness and affordability.
The problem, said Paul Stone of Lombardi Realty [...]
Renewable energy is surpassing fossil fuels for the first time in new power-plant investments, shaking off setbacks from the financial crisis and an impasse at the United Nations global warming talks. Accelerating installations of solar- and wind-power plants led to lower equipment prices, making clean energy more competitive with coal.”The progress of renewables has been [...]
JOSEPHINE MARCOTTY reports for the Minneapolis Star Tribune
Grain prices are tempting farmers to plow up protected land, even as conservation subsidies shrink.
ZUMBROTA, MIN. — The Indian grass that Larry Thomforde planted 15 years ago is up to his chin now — tall gold spikes that sway in the sun as his dog, Gwynie, crashes [...]
After Scott Ely and his father talked with salesmen from an energy company about signing the lease allowing gas drilling on their land in northeastern Pennsylvania, he said he felt certain it required the company to leave the property as good as new.
So Mr. Ely said he was surprised several years later when the drilling [...]
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