Uncategorized
On the Job Training: Earthjustice-Style
(Kari Birdseye is the new National Press Secretary for Earthjustice. An 11-year veteran with CNN, she was comforted by the familiar, hectic pace she experienced in her first week with Earthjustice communications.) What a week. What a first week at work for Earthjustice. Even before I entered the doors, I knew the Gulf Oil Spill anniversary…
Read MoreFlorida's Governor Turns Greed-Green
Coming from an Irish family and working for Earthjustice, I have an affection for green that is DNA-deep. But, I know the difference between the green of nature and the green of greed — and nowhere is that difference so starkly obvious as in Florida. An explosion of green algae slime, fed by uncontrolled agricultural…
Read More41 Years Ago, The Sun Set Three Hours Early
Today—Earth Day—I was trying to figure out what kind of angle to write about, when I remembered a column I wrote last year, reflecting on the first Earth Day in 1970. What struck me about that column is how it revealed that recycling, which we now take for granted as a cultural and financial institution,…
Read MoreFighting Fracking: A Love Story
The Slotterback's journey began with a day hike on their favorite trail, and now, as Jim told me, "We're prepared to spend the rest of our lives working on this issue."
Read MoreEerie symmetry: Well Blowout on Anniversary of BP Spill
The symmetry is just eerie. Exactly one year after the BP disaster in the Gulf, natural gas drilling company Chesapeake admitted that a well it was hydraulically fracturing (or “fracking”) for natural gas went out of control in LeRoy, Pennsylvania late Tuesday, spilling thousands and thousands of gallons of frack fluid over containment walls, through fields,…
Read MoreCracking The Code On Spill of Fracking Fluids in Pennsylvania
As Chesapeake Energy Corp. struggles to contain a massive spill of toxic, hydraulic fluids yesterday at a natural gas fracking site in Pennsylvania, it also is struggling to explain how this dangerous event happened and how they are handling it. I mean, how do you explain away the poisoning of water supplies, waterways and farmers’ fields? Of…
Read MoreSaving Our Wild Places: Protecting the Wolverine
(This is the fourth in a series of Q & A’s on the Crown of the Continent, a 10-million-acre expanse of land in northern Montana and southern Canada. Earthjustice is currently working to protect several wild creatures in the Crown like the wolverine. To learn more about this wild place and how Earthjustice is working…
Read MoreBakersfield Paper Goes After McCarthy
Last week we wrote about an effort by three Republican members of the House of Representatives to repeal the Roadless Area Conservation Rule that protects nearly 60 million acres of unspoiled lands on the national forests and to deny the Bureau of Land Management’s authority to declare its unspoiled areas “wilderness study areas” and protect…
Read MoreTr-Ash Talk: Mercury In the Showerhead
Coal ash strikes again. In this video by Sam Despeaux and Carly Calhoun titled “TVA At the Crossroads” (also check out “American Nightmare”), Lynn and Jean Gibson speak about living near a coal ash dump in Benton County, Tennessee. The area is some four hours from the site of the December 2008 TVA spill/disaster in…
Read MoreJohn Muir's World: To Climb and See for Ourselves
Today is the 173rd birthday of John Muir. If the legacy of wildland preservation in this country were a river long with oxbows, falls and many notable tributaries, Muir’s contributions would certainly be the headwaters. Muir was the co-founder and first president of the Sierra Club and a steadfast advocate for the protection of wilderness.…
Read More