Biology
Breach
November 23, 2013, from Muncie Star Press
A civil investigation by the state chemist's office last year revealed that Ecolab Pest Elimination had illegally sprayed insect killer inside dozens of restaurants, motels, nursing homes, a hospital, a resort, convenience stores and other buildings throughout the southern half of Indiana... The product is called Termidor, active ingredient fipronil, which is highly effective in controlling ants, termites, cockroaches and other pests.
But the manufacturer, BASF Corp., warns on the label it is a violation of state and federal law to use Termidor indoors, because its use indoors has not been evaluated for human or environmental safety.
November 23, 2009, from Fort Worth Star-Telegram
State environmental regulators want natural gas companies to voluntarily emit less air pollution after tests showed high levels of a cancer-causing chemical near wells in the Barnett Shale gas field....Air samples showed significant levels of benzene in several locations. One sample taken downwind from a tank seven miles west of DISH showed a level of 1,000 parts per billion, which is more than five times the commission's short-term exposure limit of 180 parts per billion.
That level is the equivalent of a person sniffing a can of gasoline, and it shows the need for more tests, including long-term sampling, Honeycutt said. A sample at another site found benzene at 500 parts per billion. Long-term exposure to benzene -- a year or more -- can lead to health problems including anemia, immune disorders and leukemia.
November 23, 2009, from New York Times
A little after 1 a.m., with a harder rain falling, Owls Head reached its capacity and workers started shutting the intake gates.
That caused a rising tide throughout Brooklyn's sewers, and untreated feces and industrial waste started spilling from emergency relief valves into the Upper New York Bay and Gowanus Canal.
"It happens anytime you get a hard rainfall," said Bob Connaughton, one the plant's engineers. "Sometimes all it takes is 20 minutes of rain, and you've got overflows across Brooklyn."... In the last three years alone, more than 9,400 of the nation's 25,000 sewage systems -- including those in major cities -- have reported violating the law by dumping untreated or partly treated human waste, chemicals and other hazardous materials into rivers and lakes and elsewhere, according to data from state environmental agencies and the Environmental Protection Agency.
But fewer than one in five sewage systems that broke the law were ever fined or otherwise sanctioned by state or federal regulators, the Times analysis shows.
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Climate
Chaos
November 23, 2013, from Somerville Journal
The dining hall may be tempting, but 20 Tufts students have avoided it for the past two weeks to call attention to the destruction caused by climate change.
"It's a very small price to pay for us to give up a few meals if that can in some way help more people know what's going on," said junior Evan Bell, who fasted during daylight hours last week and Wednesday and Thursday this week to raise awareness about climate change in the wake of typhoon Haiyan, which slammed into the Philippines two weeks ago and has killed more than 5,000.
Some students fasted for longer. Junior Ben Weilerstein fasted for five days, drinking water and juice. He broke the fast once, to eat a banana in preparation for an exam.
November 23, 2013, from Associated Press
A major U.S. power company has pleaded guilty to killing eagles and other birds at two Wyoming wind farms as part of the first enforcement of environmental laws protecting birds against wind energy facilities.
Under the settlement Friday, North Carolina-based Duke Energy Corp. and its renewable energy arm agreed to pay $1 million. Much of the money will go toward conservation efforts.
The company pleaded guilty to killing 14 eagles and 149 other birds at two wind farms outside Casper, Wyo., from 2009 to 2013.
November 23, 2013, from New Republic
hese days Barry Goldwater, Jr. is on an unlikely crusade. In March, the former California Republican congressman founded Tell Utilities Solar Won't Be Killed, or TUSK, after Arizona's largest electric utility proposed a hefty new fee on solar customers and a plan to lower net metering rates, which dictate how much electric utilities pay solar customers for excess energy sold back to the grid. "Republicans want the freedom to make the best choice," Goldwater said in a statement on TUSK's website. So he cobbled together a ragtag coalition of libertarian-minded conservatives, solar industry advocates, and business groups to wage a colorful guerrilla campaign. In the past few months, TUSK has run ads attacking the electric utility on conservative talk radio and the Drudge Report... "Solar power is philosophically consistent with the Republican Party," [Republican public relations consultant Jason] Rose added. "If you're going to be for healthcare choice and school choice, how can you not be for energy choice? Conservatives, overwhelmingly, get that. If the Republican Party stops standing for the empowerment of the individual, what does it stand for?"
November 23, 2009, from AP, via Raw Story
Since the 1997 international accord to fight global warming, climate change has worsened and accelerated -- beyond some of the grimmest of warnings made back then.
As the world has talked for a dozen years about what to do next, new ship passages opened through the once frozen summer sea ice of the Arctic. In Greenland and Antarctica, ice sheets have lost trillions of tons of ice. Mountain glaciers in Europe, South America, Asia and Africa are shrinking faster than before.... "The latest science is telling us we are in more trouble than we thought," Janos Pasztor, climate adviser to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.... "The message on the science is that we know a lot more than we did in 1997 and it's all negative," said Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "Things are much worse than the models predicted."
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Resource
Depletion
November 23, 2009, from Washington Post
In recent months, the Ethiopian government began marketing abroad one of the hottest commodities in an increasingly crowded and hungry world: farmland...This impoverished and chronically food-insecure Horn of Africa nation is rapidly becoming one of the world's leading destinations for the booming business of land leasing, by which relatively rich countries and investment firms are securing 40-to-99-year contracts to farm vast tracts of land.... The harshest critics of the practice conjure images of poor Africans starving as food is hauled off to rich countries.
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Recovery
November 23, 2013, from BBC
Forests in Peru Countries with forests will have to provide information on safeguards for local communities.
Nations meeting in Warsaw at UN talks have agreed [to] a significant step forward towards curbing emissions from deforestation.
A package of measures has been agreed here that will give "results-based" payments to developing nations that cut carbon by leaving trees standing.
One observer told the BBC that this was the "signature achievement" of these talks.
Deforestation accounts for about 20 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide.
Earlier this week the UK, US, Norway and Germany agreed a $280m package of finance that will be managed by the World Bank's BioCarbon fund to promote more sustainable use of land.
November 23, 2013, from Denver Post
Wind and solar were the fastest growing technologies for electricity generation in 2012, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Wind capacity grew 28 percent to 60 Gigawatts in 2012 and photovoltaic panels were up 83 percent to 7.3 GWs compared to 2011.... Between 2008 and 2012, the United States doubled renewable electricity generation from a combination of wind, solar and geothermal technologies.
November 23, 2013, from New York Times
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who is slowly bringing New Yorkers around to the idea of recycling their food scraps, is trying to expand his composting campaign by bringing it to large restaurants. The mayor said on Friday that he was proposing a bill to require restaurants that generate more than a ton of food waste a week -- about 1,200 establishments -- to separate their food waste from the rest of their garbage so it could be sent to a composting plant. There, the food scraps would be converted to fertilizer or energy, part of the mayor's long effort to divert more of the city's trash from landfills... The city already collects food scraps in a pilot program from roughly 31,000 homes in about a dozen neighborhoods in the Bronx, in Brooklyn and on Staten Island. By 2015, the city plans to expand the program to 100,000 single-family homes and 70 high-rise buildings across the city.
November 23, 2011, from Yale360
A majority of Americans across the political spectrum support policies that reduce carbon emissions, including a revenue-neutral carbon tax, according to a new survey by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. In a survey conducted between Oct. 20 and Nov. 6, 65 percent of respondents said they would support a revenue-neutral carbon tax to help "create jobs and decrease pollution" -- including 51 percent of those identifying themselves as Republicans, 69 percent of independents, and 77 percent of Democrats. Sixty percent said they would support a $10-per-ton carbon tax if the money was spent reducing federal income taxes. That support continued even when respondents were told the carbon tax would "slightly increase the cost of many things you buy, including food, clothing, and electricity." Support for the tax dipped to 49 percent if the revenue was instead returned to each family as an annual check, and to just 44 percent if it was spent paying down the national debt. Sixty-nine percent said they oppose federal subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, while 54 percent opposed ethanol subsidies. Since May, there has been a 9 percent decline among those expressing "strong support" for renewable energy research.
November 23, 2009, from Fast Company
When I first learned about GoodGuide last March, I was excited at the prospect of a Web site that lets consumers get detailed environmental, health, and social info on more than 50,000 products and companies. Then came the obligatory iPhone app to let people quickly get the scoop on orange juice brands and cleaning supplies while standing in the supermarket. And now GoodGuide has announced its most exciting innovation yet: an updated iPhone app that scans barcodes for health and environmental ratings.
The process is simple. You just hit the scan tab on the app, point the phone at a product's barcode, and voila, instant product ratings on baby shampoo, yogurt, and everything in between. So even the laziest among us have no excuse to slack on social responsibility. And did I mention that the app is free?
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