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Archive for September 10th, 2011
United Kingdom: Apathy over planning law changes could put countryside in danger
Posted by Guardian: Jamie Doward on September 10th, 2011
Guardian: Fears that the coalition's relaxation of the planning system will result in urban sprawl have been reignited after it emerged that the vast majority of people are unlikely to participate in the government's newly created local forums that allow communities to block housing developments.
A YouGov poll, commissioned by the National Trust, found that few people were aware of the government's proposals to alter the planning laws dramatically, and even fewer had the inclination to address planning...
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United States: Local Climate Change Activists Draw a Line in the (Tar) Sand
Posted by Jamaica Plain Patch: James Morgan on September 10th, 2011
Jamaica Plain Patch: This season’s JP Forum was kicked off at the First Church in Jamaica Plain Unitarian Universalist on Friday evening with a program called “Tar Sands Action: A Report Back.” A mixture of both the political and the personal, speakers at the event showed slides, discussed the controversial energy project, and described their participation at the recent protests in Washington, D.C., where they all were arrested.
Ellen Cantarow, a Boston journalist who has written on Israel, Palestine, and women’s...
Bill McKibben on protesting pipeline expansion
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 10th, 2011
Living on Earth: The Keystone XL pipeline expansion would pipe carbon-rich crude from Alberta all the way to Texas. Environmentalists are protesting the proposal in record numbers. Author, activist and professor Bill McKibben is leading the charge all the way to the White House. He tells host Bruce Gellerman that the pipeline project is a horror that will generate an enormous amount of carbon pollution.
Transcript
GELLERMAN: In recent weeks more than 12 hundred protesters have been arrested in front of the...
Australia: Sunrise industry fuelled by tequila
Posted by Australian: Bernard Lane on September 10th, 2011
Australian: AUSTRALIA may be one step closer to a tequila-fuelled economy.
Ethanol made from the tequila plant agave looks like a good candidate to rehabilitate the bad reputation of biofuels, according to a pioneering study by academics from the universities of Oxford and Sydney.
Attempts to reduce our dependence on petrol have established sugarcane and corn as popular sources of biofuel, but not without considerable cost.
"The existing renewable fuel standards and biofuel mandates are criticised for...
CU to study impact of climate change on Boulder prairie dogs
Posted by Daily Camera: Heath Urie on September 10th, 2011
Daily Camera: Researchers from the University of Colorado and Kansas State University have been awarded a grant for more than $850,000 to study the impacts of climate change on prairie dogs in the Boulder area.
The massive grant -- from the Division of Environmental Biology at the National Science Foundation -- is designed to give the researchers three years in the field to try and figure out how climate change is altering prairie dog habitat and how the rodents are responding to those changes.
The study...
Agency Struggles to Safeguard Pipeline System
Posted by New York Times: Dan Frosch and Janet Roberts on September 10th, 2011
New York Times: This summer, an Exxon Mobil pipeline carrying oil across Montana burst suddenly, soiling the swollen Yellowstone River with an estimated 42,000 gallons of crude just weeks after a company inspection and federal review had found nothing seriously wrong. And in the Midwest, a 35-mile stretch of the Kalamazoo River near Marshall, Mich., once teeming with swimmers and boaters, remains closed nearly 14 months after an Enbridge Energy pipeline hemorrhaged 843,000 gallons of oil that will cost more than...
Judge approves key endangered species deal
Posted by Reuters: Laura Zuckerman on September 10th, 2011
Reuters: The U.S. government has until 2018 to decide whether to set aside critical habitat or provide other protections for hundreds of imperiled species, under an agreement approved on Friday by a federal judge.
The deal struck in July settles lawsuits by the Center for Biological Diversity accusing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service of being too slow in assigning safeguards under the Endangered Species Act to various plants and animals faced with extinction.
"With approval of this agreement, species...