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Archive for March 2nd, 2011
EPA says big budget cut would hurt public health
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 2nd, 2011
Reuters: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ability to protect citizens from premature death and other health problems would be gutted if Congress slashes funding as threatened by Republican lawmakers, its chief said on Wednesday.
Republicans in the House of Representatives have been trying to cut the EPA's budget for this year, saying its regulations on clean air and water hurt businesses.
"Big polluters would flout legal restrictions on dumping contaminants into the air, into rivers and onto...
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Company Concessions Clear Way for Federal Permit at W.Va. Coal Mine
Posted by Greenwire: Manuel Quinones on March 2nd, 2011
Greenwire: The Obama administration has approved a Clean Water Act permit for an underground coal project in Mingo County, W.Va., after the mine owner made several concessions aimed at enhancing water quality protections.
Consol of Kentucky's Spring Branch No. 3 mine was among dozens pulled for enhanced federal environmental reviews of mining projects under a 2009 interagency agreement between U.S. EPA, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Interior Department.
Although Spring Branch No. 3 is an underground...
Indigenous leaders take fight over Amazon dams to Europe
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 2nd, 2011
Mongabay: Three indigenous Amazonian leaders spent this week touring Europe to raise awareness about the threat that a number of proposed monster dams pose to their people and the Amazon forest. Culminating in a press conference and protests in London, the international trip hopes to build pressure to stop three current hydroelectric projects, one in Peru, including six dams, and two in Brazil, the Madeira basin industrial complex and the massive Belo Monte dam. The indigenous leaders made the trip with the...
Texas activists ready to fight over $7bn oil pipeline in the home of black gold
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 2nd, 2011
Guardian: In an earlier life, David Daniel jumped through fire and performed a motorcycle stunt called the Wheel of Death. For his second act, he picked a fight with a $7bn oil pipeline set to run through Texas.
He is not doing badly for a man taking on big oil in the home of black gold. Growing opposition to a Canadian project to pump crude from tar sands in Alberta across six American states to the Gulf coast could force the Obama administration to reconsider – and possibly delay – the project.
The...
Humans on Verge of Causing 6th Great Mass Extinction
Posted by Live Science: Stephanie Pappas on March 2nd, 2011
Live Science: Are humans causing a mass extinction on the magnitude of the one that killed the dinosaurs?
The answer is yes, according to a new analysis — but we still have some time to stop it.
Mass extinctions include events in which 75 percent of the species on Earth disappear within a geologically short time period, usually on the order of a few hundred thousand to a couple million years. It's happened only five times before in the past 540 million years of multicellular life on Earth. (The last great...
Climate change ‘number one issue’
Posted by Al Jazeera: Dahr Jamail on March 2nd, 2011
Al Jazeera: "We have a very clear position," El Salvador's Minister of Environment, Herman Chavez, told Al Jazeera at his office in San Salvador, the capital.
"The President of El Salvador, last year on July 20th, in an extraordinary meeting of presidents that was convened here in San Salvador, launched the intervention process. We put Climate Change as the number one issue for the region."
The government of El Salvador's position, which mirrors that of other Central American countries like Nicaragua,...
Sri Lanka using fines to beat dengue amid rising climate risk
Posted by AlertNet: Amantha Perera on March 2nd, 2011
AlertNet: Dengue fever, a potentially fatal disease that has infected more than 70,000 people and killed over 500 in Sri Lanka since January 2009, has shown the first signs of abating in two years as the government steps up a campaign that includes fines against people and businesses that fail to remove mosquito breeding areas.
The fall in cases comes despite extensive flooding this year, which can encourage dengue-carrying mosquitoes to breed in standing water.
Dengue, a severe, flu-like illness, is...
Sugarcane bioethanol: Environmental implications
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 2nd, 2011
ScienceDaily: An article in the current issue of Global Change Biology Bioenergy assessed the net greenhouse gas savings of bioethanol from sugarcane as compared to the use of fossil fuels. Researchers have long promoted biofuels produced from crop biomass as an environmentally sustainable source of renewable energy. A recent study questions whether the potential climate benefit of sugarcane ethanol is diminished when emissions from land use management are considered. Scientists examined the sugarcane ethanol...
Rare Rhino Makes Public Appearance
Posted by National Public Radio: Jonathan Makiri on March 2nd, 2011
National Public Radio: A motion-sensor image of a Javan rhino feeding in Ujung Kulon National Park, Indonesia.
WWF
A motion-sensor image of a Javan rhino feeding in Ujung Kulon National Park, Indonesia.
A rare glimpse at one of the most endangered animals on the planet "” the Javan rhinoceros "” was recently captured on video at Ujung Kulon National Park, on the island of Java in Indonesia. The World Wildlife Fund and Indonesian park officials installed motion-sensor camera traps that recorded four of the estimated...
Scientists: Global warming to blame for big U.S. snowstorms
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 2nd, 2011
USA Today: Counterintuitive though it may be, "heavy snowstorms are not inconsistent with a warming planet," says Jeff Masters, director of meteorology for the Weather Underground, a private weather service.
The announcement was made at a news conference on Tuesday in Washington, D.C., by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a non-profit environmental group. It was not published in a peer-reviewed study in an academic journal.
"The old adage, 'It's too cold to snow,' has some truth to it," said Masters....