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180 Seconds Of Coal Ash Pollution
Four years ago, a small Tennessee town woke up to a nightmare. A nearby coal ash pond that held back more than a billion gallons of toxic waste collapsed, sending a flood of ash and dirt right through their doors. In the weeks and months that followed, an entire nation began to see the magnitude…
Read MorePatriot Agrees To End Mountaintop Removal Mining
Yesterday, one of the nation’s top coal companies, Patriot Coal, announced that it is getting out of the business of mountaintop removal mining. The decision comes out of a settlement with several Appalachian community groups—West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, Sierra Club, represented by Appalachian Mountain Advocates—requiring Patriot to clean up toxic selenium…
Read MoreFracking's Dirty Air Secret
Last week, supporters of the controversial drilling practice know as fracking held a rally in Denver. According to media reports, one booster drew laughs from the crowd when he said that fracking’s economic benefits would eventually “trickle down to attorneys [and] doctors.” Colorado doctors are probably already seeing increased business because of fracking, but not…
Read MoreUnplugged: Sunstein Likes Standards Blocked By His Office
Either he has finally seen the light, or he just has a lot of nerve. In a Sunday New York Times editorial about the impact of Hurricane Sandy and steps the U.S. should take to address climate change, former White House “regulatory czar” Cass Sunstein argues, quite rightly, that cost-benefit analysis frequently justifies aggressive steps…
Read MoreAs Sandy Victims Shiver, America Must Stay Alert
While for many in the country, thoughts of Hurricane Sandy are being replaced by thoughts of the election, football, or the Thanksgiving holiday, for the tens of thousands of people in New York and New Jersey, survival and their families’ well-being are still the urgent thoughts. Two weeks after the storm, more than 68,000 people…
Read MoreVoters Tell Obama: Get To Work On Clean Energy Future
The American people have reinvested their faith in a President who now has a second chance to put this nation on course to a prosperous future built on clean energy and with a far-reaching goal of ending mankind’s role in climate change. In the wake of superstorm Sandy, voters saw—and many continue to experience—the impacts…
Read MoreSandy Staggers East Coast — And Climate Deniers
Hurricane Sandy delivered a lot of pain when it punched into the East Coast. As I write this, a week later, the sea has retreated but the suffering remains. Half of Manhattan is cold and dark. The New Jersey shore is in bits. Parts of Long Island are knocked out. Having spent most of my…
Read MoreSuper-storm Sandy: Spawn of Climate Change?
Today, in an editorial, the Los Angeles Times took on a question that many of us have been pondering – did climate change cause super-storm Sandy? The newspaper didn’t try to answer the question, but instead made a strong case for how global warming made Sandy more intense: In part, it’s because Sandy involved a…
Read MoreSpeak Up for the “Most Important Fish in the Sea”
Now is the time to speak up for the “Most Important Fish in the Sea.”
Read MoreConservationists Act to Protect Sensitive Bay and Crab Fishery in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest
Southeast Alaska’s Tongass National Forest is as much ocean as land. It includes saltwater bays, fjords, canals, channels, and too many islands to count. At this intersection of land and ocean, life flourishes where forest creeks and streams empty nutrients into shallow saltwater bays. Among other species, dungeness crabs flourish, fed seasonally by the carcasses…
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