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Protection Of Oceans A Bright Spot At Rio+20
The news out of the Rio+20 Earth Summit has been bleak. World leaders, yet again caught in the headlights of financial crises and electoral cycles, fundamentally failed us and the planet. However, there is a bright spot—and it is blue. Both the formal Rio text and the voluntary, on-the-ground and on the water commitments nations…
Read MoreVictories For East Coast Forage Fish
A special thank you goes out to the thousands of Earthjustice supporters who took action over the last few months by writing to the fishery management councils. Your voices made a huge difference.
Read MoreFriday Finds: An Oceanic-Sized Miracle
Mexican government saves miracle reef Cabo Pulmo, an ecological treasure and the jewel of California, recently received a stay of execution after the Mexican government announced its decision to cancel a mega-resort development project near the reef in Baja California Sur, reports the LA Times. The cancelled Cabo Cortes resort development was by far the…
Read MoreTr-Ash Talk: Two Years is Too Long
Although the EPA’s proposed coal ash rule was published two years ago, a final rule is nowhere in sight. Two years is more than enough time for the EPA to decide on a set of reasonable, health-protective standards for the country’s second largest industrial waste. The EPA blames the delay on 450,000 public comments. However,…
Read MoreA Community Being Poisoned from Within
Last year, the EPA proposed an air rule that would finally limit the amount of cancer-causing chemicals residents in Mossville, Louisiana would have to breathe from the polyvinyl chloride plant nearby. So it came as a blow when the EPA released a final rule that imposes weaker limits at the CertainTeed plant in Mossville—a facility…
Read MoreSoot Gets Editorial Ink
The historical significance of the Environmental Protection Agency’s recently proposed new limits on fine particle pollution, colloquially called soot, wasn’t lost on a number of editorial pages.
Read MoreDeadly Air Bill Voted Down in Senate
There are some straight spines left in the U.S. Senate, which today voted down a resolution from Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) that would have effectively exempted coal-fired power plants—the nation’s worst air polluters—from Clean Air Act controls that limit mercury and other toxic emissions. This is a critical victory in the decades-long effort to protect…
Read MoreTr-Ash Talk: We’re Watching Your Vote
It’s Groundhog Day in the House of Representatives. Once again, coal company allies are leading a charge to pass a symbolic vote that would reinforce their disdain for any plans to clean up coal ash ponds and landfills with federal minimum safeguards. But the symbolism has real-world impacts: nearly 200 coal ash sites have already…
Read MoreTipping Toward Point of No Return
An increasing number of experts are reaching consensus on the devastating and possibly irreversible effects of climate change linked to human activity, according to the Nature journal. The “tipping point” – that moment when the planet’s capacity to support all of its systems collapses – could be near, scientists say. Environmental conditions on Earth that…
Read MoreBill Will Protect Communities, Families From Mountaintop Removal
Big news today in our fight to end destructive mountaintop removal mining: 13 congressional leaders joined to introduce legislation to protect communities and families from the dangerous health effects of our nation’s most extreme form of coal mining—mountaintop removal mining. The Appalachian Community Health Emergency Act is the first federal legislation to address the human…
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