Uncategorized Archives

Friday Finds: Deforestation Barbie

Greenpeace battles Barbie for bulldozing trees Mattel, the world’s biggest toy company by revenue, is under fire this week for using Barbie doll packaging that allegedly comes from Indonesian rainforests, reports the Christian Science Monitor. According to forensic testing commissioned by Greenpeace, Mattel and other toy companies used packaging made by Asia Pulp and Paper,…

Polluting Our Kids' Report Cards

The report card was a jumble of Cs and Ds. As my coworker gazed over his kid’s latest performance in school, a mixture of anger, disappointment, frustration, guilt and uncertainty flooded him. “Where did I go wrong?” he mumbled. No doubt his kid felt a mixture of emotion, too. Report cards can be grueling for…

Can I Get a Witness Who Cares About Kids' Health?

The hearing room on the 4th floor of the Dirksen Senate Office building was packed—so packed that some onlookers stood in the back of the room to see the action unfold. All had gathered earlier today for “Air Quality and Children’s Health,” a hearing before members of two subcommittees of the Senate Committee on Environment…

Babbitt Calls Out Obama on Wilderness

Bruce Babbitt, Bill Clinton’s Interior Secretary for eight years, gave a speech attacking the current GOP Congress for its anti-environmental jihad. That’s not news. But he also told the Obama administration it wasn’t doing enough to protect western wildlands, and laid out a blueprint for positive steps the president could take to be an environmental champion. That’s news. …

A Domino Falls

The Fresno, California, Board of Supervisors has decided not to endorse a proposal by the Fresno Nuclear Energy Group to build a “Clean Energy Park,” outside town. The park would boast two big, 1,600-megawatt, French-made reactors, a solar-thermal plant, and a water desalination facility. The account in the Fresno Business Journal doesn’t mention Japan or Fukushima explicitly, but…

Tr-Ash Talk: In the Back Pocket of Polluters

Okay, so we’ve established the hazards of coal ash. There is no doubt that arsenic, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, lead, selenium and other toxic metals have no business in our drinking water. So why are 44 of our elected leaders calling on the Obama administration to treat coal ash as a NON-hazardous waste? Let’s back up…

The March Toward Justice Begins

This week more than 600 concerned citizens will participate in the largest mass mobilization against mountaintop removal mining that this country has ever seen, Appalachia Rising: The March on Blair Mountain. Led by many of our dedicated friends and partners in Appalachia, hundreds of people from all across the country, from all stripes and walks…

Notes From Under The Bus

Since the GOP won a majority in the House in 2010, the Obama administration has gone into “go-slow” mode – or even has taken a U-turn on presidential initiatives on air pollution and climate change. The Los Angeles Times took aim at this in a tough May 20 editorial headlined: “In the 2012 campaign, environmentalists don’t matter.” …

Tr-Ash Talk: The Whole Enchilada

Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency hosted hearings in Philadelphia, Chicago and Atlanta to hear public comments about their proposal to reduce mercury and other toxic air pollution from power plants. If finalized, these health protections will reduce mercury and acid gas emissions by 91 percent, reduce sulfur dioxide emissions by 55 percent, and capture…