Photo courtesy of Calgary Reviews.

McDonald’s takes pink slime goop out of burgers
It’s official: The next time you have a Big Mac craving, you no longer have to worry about your burger being loaded with pink goo, reports MSNBC. Recently, McDonald’s announced that it is no longer using ammonium hydroxide, an anti-microbrial agent that, when used on inedible scrap meat, turns into a pink slime that’s the basis for your burger. Though the USDA maintains that ammonium hydroxide is “generally recognized as safe,” food safety experts and television celebrity chef Jamie Oliver disagree, arguing that “taking a product that would be sold in the cheapest form for dogs and making it 'fit' for humans” is “shocking.” Not long after Oliver’s show on ammonia-treated beef, McDonald’s announced that it would stop using lean beef trimmings—aka scrap meat—treated with ammonia in its burgers (though McDonald's maintains that the show had nothing to do with its decision). If the idea of pink slime in your burgers doesn’t make you gag, take a look at McDonalds' ridiculous new “farm to fork” video campaign and see if you can hold that burger down.

Check out Jamie Oliver's episode on pink slime: (note: not for the faint of heart)

Pipes for Keystone. Courtesy ecowatch.org

The New York Times describes Joe Nocera as a business columnist, but a quick scan of recent columns is very heavy on pieces about the woes of the NCAA, the National Collegiate Athletic Association. If today’s column is any indication, we’d all be better off if he stuck with sports.

His thesis is that rejecting the Keystone pipeline, which would transport crude oil extracted from Canadian tar sands to refineries on the Gulf shoreline, was foolish, short-sighted, and so on.

Coos Bay, Oregon. (Brian Burger/Creative Commons)

A new battle has emerged in the fight over proposed coal export terminals in the Pacific Northwest.

The Oregon Department of State Lands recently issued a permit allowing the Port of Coos Bay to conduct the largest dredging project in an estuary in state history. The permit allows for dredging of the first 1.75 million cubic yards (mcy) of a 5.6-mcy project.

The reason for the massive dredging effort: Coos Bay—a town of about 16,000 people on the remote southern Oregon coast—has been targeted for construction of a coal export terminal and a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility.

Earthjustice, representing a coalition of local residents, grassroots environmental, and clean-energy groups, in early January filed an appeal of the Oregon Department of State Lands’ decision to green light the $100 million project. While the “multi-purpose” dredging permit was initially sought to develop an LNG import terminal, the Port of Coos Bay recently entered into a confidential agreement with an undisclosed coal export company seeking to send coal overseas to Asia, and LNG backers have changed their plans to now export domestic gas instead.

While much has been made of the $535 million loan guarantee made to the failed Solyndra Corporation in 2009 to encourage alternative energy, you may have missed the court decision this week, halting expansion plans for a Kansas coal plant facing similar problems.

The ruling underscores how deadbeat coal plants can be even more costly for taxpayers.

Back in 1980, Sunflower Generation Corporation in Kansas received $543 million in federal loans and loan guarantees (taxpayer money). Like Solyndra, they were not able to pay that money back. So they arranged deals with the federal government to “restructure” the loans, multiple times. Sunflower was unable to repay taxpayers due to financial strain related to over-built Holcomb I, the existing coal plant Sunflower owns.

Sunflower now charges ahead with plans for an even bigger facility. The proposed multi-billion dollar, 895-megawatt coal-fired power plant expansion is designed to serve the western grid through a deal with Colorado-based Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association. Kansas gets the pollution, Colorado gets most of the power.