Photo courtesy of sk8geek

Monsanto’s new broccoli designed to fight company’s own environmental pollution
Perhaps dismayed by the public’s outcry to genetically engineered (GE) crops and their environmental effects, last October America’s favorite biotech company, Monsanto, released a non-GE product that combines two different types of broccoli to create a sort of super broccoli that’s chock-full of nutrients, reports Grist. The problem, of course, is that broccoli is already considered a super food. According to the USDA, one medium stalk provides 200 percent of the daily recommended intake of vitamin C, 16 percent of recommended dietary fiber, and 10 percent of recommended vitamin A in the form of betacarotene. Broccoli also contains folate, potassium and several other minerals, providing 6 percent of daily calcium and 4 percent of daily iron needs. Heck, it can even prevent cancer. Talk about fixing something that ain't broken.

In addition to silly redundancy, Monsanto’s desire to provide a vegetable that helps “maintain your body’s defenses against the damage of environmental pollutants and free radicals,” is just plain ironic, as Grist cleverly points out, considering that the company’s cash cow—herbicides—have been shown to cause some of the very illnesses that eating broccoli can prevent. If selling a product that causes illness and then turning around and selling another product to prevent that illness seems, well, wrong, then it won’t be much of a surprise to find out the rest of Monsanto’s seedy past.

Climate change threatens Yellowstone National Park
Within the next century, Yellowstone National Park may be as hot as the LA suburbs thanks to climate change, reports Reuters. A recent study by Rocky Mountain Climate Organization and Greater Yellowstone Coalition found that warming in Yellowstone, one of the world’s last largely intact ecosystems, is likely to increase wildfires, kill large swaths of trees and damage areas vital to grizzly bears and other threatened species. And, as a vacation hotspot for tourists, failing to reverse the warming trend could put a dent in the region $700 million annual tourism economy. Despite the dismal predictions, the good news is that there’s still time to make choices that will influence how climate change effects Yellowstone, like preserving wildlife corridors and increasing resilience to damaged habitats. Earthjustice is working hard on both of these fronts in the Crown of the Continent, a 10-million-acre expanse of land that encompasses some of the largest blocks of wilderness in the contiguous United States, including Yellowstone. See for yourself what we’re protecting. 
 

Coral reef at Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. Photo courtesy of Jim Maragos/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

UN top scientist predicts coral reefs' demise by end of century
Coral reefs, often called the “rain forests of the oceans” due to their rich biodiversity, have been around for millions of years, but these ecosystems may be experiencing their last century, reports The Independent. Climate change and ocean acidification are the main factors causing coral reefs’ demise, says University of Sydney professor Peter Sale, who studied Australia’s Great Barrier Reef for 20 years. And though humans are no strangers to wiping out species, Sale points out that this will be the first time that we’ve actually eliminated an entire ecosystem, one that is home to 25 percent of the ocean’s marine life. In addition, coral reefs support people, about 275 million in fact, who depend on reef ecosystems for food and livelihood. Even more alarming than losing these beautiful, bio diverse hotspots is the fact that reef disappearance tends to precede wider mass extinctions. Says Sale, "People have been talking about current biodiversity loss as the Holocene mass extinction, meaning that the losses of species that are occurring now are in every way equivalent to the mass extinctions of the past. I think there is every possibility that is what we are seeing."

Report finds BP’s cheapness, greed contributed to oil spill
There are a lot of consequences of being cheap: alienating friends, missing out on amazing experiences, wasting time pilfering through shoddy clothes in bargain bins. But recently, a 16-month investigation found that frugality has a dark side with the conclusion that BP’s efforts to limit costs on its deepwater well in the Gulf of Mexico contributed to a blowout that killed 11 people and tipped off the largest oil spill in U.S. history, reports the Washington Post. The report from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement lists “dozens of mistakes, misapprehensions, risky decisions and failures of communication” that led to the BP disaster. In other words, BP put profits before safety. In a statement released on Wednesday, BP agreed with the report’s conclusions, adding that “the Deepwater Horizon accident was the result of multiple causes, involving multiple parties, including Transocean and Halliburton,” At least BP is generous in sharing the blame. 

Daryl Hannah. Photo courtesy of guano

Daryl Hannah faces off against tar sands pipeline
She may have lost her other eye in a standoff against Uma Thurman (aka “The Bride”) in the movie Kill Bill, but when it comes to facing off against environmental evil-doers, actress Daryl Hannah has chick-kicking staying power, reports Mother Nature Network. Her latest standoff resulted in her arrest outside the White House while protesting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, a controversial network of pipes that would transport tar sands crude oil from Alberta, Canada to U.S. refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. Recently, the State Department gave a green light to the dirty oil pipeline, concluding that it would have “minimal effect on the environment.” Obviously, activists like Hannah disagree. Before her arrest, Hannah told ABC News that “We cannot risk these precious resources and we cannot shackle ourselves to this type of destructive energy future when we have solutions available to us,” adding that “we have American-made, American-grown, clean safe energy.”

Getting inked may give you cancer
Getting an impulsive tattoo may cause you more than just embarrassment when that sub-navel tribal logo starts sagging years later, reports Environmental Health News. New research has found that tattoos contain all kinds of toxic chemicals, some of which have been shown to cause cancer and disrupt your endocrine system. For example, inks can contain phthalates, a commonly used chemical to soften plastics that can mimic estrogen, disrupt testosterone and have even been linked to “feminization of the reproductive tract” and sperm defects. Black tattoo inks can also contain benzo(a)pyrene, a carcinogen so potent that it's often used to grow tumors in animal test subjects. In addition to these new findings, people have known for years that tattoos can cause infections, allergies and scarring, but despite these risks almost half of adults in their late 20s have them. Though the Food and Drug Administration has the ability to regulate tattoo inks, so far it has declined to do so, a decision that may change with this latest tatoo unveiling.

SpongeBob SquarePants is in hot water for talking to kids about climate change. Photo courtesy of gnislew

FOX News attacks climate change believing sponge
A sea sponge is the latest target of the FOX News climate denial-sphere, reports ThinkProgress. In a recent episode of FOX and Friends, the hosts rip into the popular kids’ cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants for its segment on climate change, which points to humans as the source of Earth's carbon woes. Fox personality Gretchen Carlson and others chastise the cartoon for looking at only “one point of view”—that is, humans are the primary cause of global warming by releasing millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the air. Though this view is held by 97 percent of climate scientists, the browbeating does make for a nice segue into FOX’s other favorite past time—criticizing publicly funded agencies like the Department of Education for pushing anti-American agendas like global warming. The DOE’s latest transgression? Handing out Nickelodeon books at an event that pushes “unproven science” about climate change onto children.