Friday Finds: (Corporate) Welfare Queens

Dirty energy industry takes handouts despite record profits Last week, oil and gas companies announced billion-dollar profits in their second quarter, reports the New York Times, even as they continue to receive government subsidies. BP, the infamous oil company that wrecked the Gulf’s economy and environment last year with an unprecedented oil spill, reported about $5.6 billion…

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America's Gut Feeling About Climate Change

When it comes to climate change, the fact is that most Americans don’t know the facts. A study by Yale professors revealed that while a majority (63 percent) of Americans believe in global warming, only half understand that it is anthropogenic (caused by human activity). And when the study tested the public on the science…

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OMG, GMOs: Food Safety Attorney George Kimbrell

This is the final part in a series of Q & A's on genetically engineered food, which harm the environment by increasing pesticide use, creating pesticide resistant superweeds and contaminating conventional and organic crops.

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Protecting Polluters, Not People, One Rider at a Time

The Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, FY 2012 (H.R. 2584) is chock-full of riders that protect polluters, not people. This bill makes excessive budget cuts and policy decisions that compromise public health, especially the health of environmental justice communities already disproportionately impacted by pollution. The outrageous cuts have brought together more than 70…

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Friday Finds: Tequila Transformation

Tequila takes a shot at decreasing gasoline use A new study that looks at the life-cycle analysis of agave-derived ethanol has found that the desert plant produces relatively few carbon emissions, positioning itself as a possible biofuel and substitute for gasoline, reports the Guardian. Though agave is best known for its use in distilling tequila,…

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America's Wildlife Win Congressional Showdown

The current leaders in the House think that saving America’s wildlife is asking too much so they introduced legislation to remove all funds used by the government to add new species to those receiving ESA protections, never mind there’s a list 260 species long waiting to get on the ark. The legislation also would have similarly…

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The Great Promise of Clean Air

Meet Tommy Allred. He lives in Midlothian, TX, a town of fewer than 10,000 roughly 18,000 residents that also hosts three of the nation’s most polluting cement plants. Like millions of kids across the U.S., Tommy has asthma. He developed the condition after his family moved to Midlothian, when he was two years old. First…

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Playing Hide-And-Seek With Energy Efficiency Information

Today, we begin with a quiz: Which of the following should online consumers have to do to be able to evaluate the operating costs of an appliance? Scroll to the very bottom of a long page of text, then visit other websites and do the same until they have enough data points to make their…

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Congress Puts Polluters in the Rider's Seat

If you’ve ever suspected that Congress thinks of corporate polluters first and the polluted public last, the debacle unfolding in Washington, D.C. this week should leave you with little doubt—and a bitter taste. Many of our elected leaders have hijacked the process by which we fund government agencies to sack the environment like Odysseus did…

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