Friday Finds: The FDA’s Drug Addiction

FDA gives “okay” to continue drugging livestock Farmers can continue giving healthy cows, pigs and other livestock routine doses of penicillin and tetracyclines—two commonly used antibiotics—even though the practice threatens public health, reports Forbes. The Food and Drug Administration’s decision to no longer consider withdrawing approval of the common practice comes after years of meat and produce…

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Six Environmental Imperatives for Obama in 2012

President Obama won the White House on a platform of hope and change – promising an end to dirty corporate influence over our political system and a beginning to an era in which our energy choices lead us to a clean, sustainable future, or at least don’t kill us or make us sick. So far,…

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Pikas Can Run But Not Hide From Climate Change

You’re adorable but you will die if the temperature rises much above 80°F. So climate change is a big deal in your world, which just happens to be high mountain peaks. Who are you? You are the American pika, a small member of the rabbit family that the California Dept. of Fish and Game has…

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U.S. Lags As Europe Adopts Airline Pollution Rule

Emissions from aircraft are a substantial contributor to global warming. Taking into account greenhouse gas emissions, the warming effect of contrails and aviation-induced cirrus clouds, and anticipated growth in air traffic, scientists estimate that aircraft could be responsible for as much as 10 percent of human-caused global warming by 2050. So, of course the airlines…

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VIDEO: In the Shadow of the Stacks

The historic victory for clean air announced a few days ago—limits on the mercury, arsenic and other toxic emissions from coal plants—has been a long time coming. Congress called for these limits in 1990, but the coal power industry got to work undermining them straight away. As a result, instead of getting the breath of…

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Tr-Ash Talk: Not a Day to Celebrate

So much has happened since that terrible day three years ago when more than 1 billion gallons of toxic coal ash sludge burst through a dam at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant in Harriman, about 150 miles from Nashville. For starters, the Environmental Protection Agency, which had promised to move swiftly to protect…

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Friday Finds: Monsanto’s Ministry of Truth

Pesticide-resistant bugs eat Monsanto’s crops, lies & profits Monsanto is taking a page from George Orwell’s 1984 with the recent release of an EPA report that chides the biotech company for not adequately monitoring its pesticide-resistant crops, reports Mother Jones. According to the agency’s report, a pesky bug known as corn rootworm is rising up…

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Major Win in Twenty-Year Fight to Cut Mercury

Marti Blake lives near the Cheswick coal-fired power plant in Pennsylvania and has suffered serious health complications.

Earthjustice’s litigation and advocacy helped to finally bring coal-fired power plants—the juggernauts of toxic air pollution—under EPA scrutiny. New rules released in December 2012 will slash mercury emissions by 90 percent and save thousands of lives.

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