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Obama softens opposition to offshore drilling, common insecticides causing health problems, and more

Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: Thrills, Drills, and Bills Oil Vey Same Coal Story Doom Where Your Plant Is The Life of Py Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: Route of All Evil

Snippets from the news

• Wal-Mart lobbies against carbon-offset guidelines. • What’s the climate impact of junk mail? • Household PCs go on an energy diet. • California school buses will get cleaner. • Map shows how climate change affects biodiversity. • Cuba scales back ethanol plans.

Beijing skies vary days before Olympics

Monday: Taken from a Beijing apartment on Aug. 4:

Tuesday: Proving that the weather and pollution levels are completely unpredictable, the weather of Aug. 5 was sunny and clear:

A silver lining to all this pollution pandemonium? After the Olympic games China will start to monitor two pollutants not currently figured into the Air Pollution Index: ozone and small particulate matter PM2.5.

And James Fallows of the Atlantic reports that at least one of the new four subway lines in Beijing works smoothly.

Snippets from the news

• Pizza Hut will deliver “all-natural” pie with organic tomatoes. • Alaska sues over polar-bear listing. • Exposure to Agent Orange doubles veterans’ risk of prostate cancer. • California public utilities unlikely to make renewable-energy goal. • Affordable housing goes green. • Clean-tech investment still going strong.

Gorilla census finds 125,000 more western lowland gorillas than expected

A new gorilla census in the Republic of the Congo has found about 125,000 more western lowland gorillas than expected living in the northern part of the Montana-sized country, effectively doubling the known population of the species. Western lowland gorillas are one of four gorilla subspecies, all of which are in danger of extinction. “These […]

Snippets from the news

• San Francisco mayor signs nation’s toughest green-building law, proposes fines for unsorted trash. • British energy companies told to reallocate funding from cutting emissions to helping the fuel poor. • Green groups drop opposition to Texas coal plant. • Most of new U.S. drilling wells are for natural gas. • Almost half the world’s […]

House, car of animal researchers bombed; animal-rights groups suspected

This weekend, two University of California-Santa Cruz scientists who use animals in their experiments were the target of two separate bombings. One scientist who uses mice in his research on brain development had a firebomb ignited on his front porch while he and his family were home early Saturday morning. The other researcher’s unoccupied car […]

Notable quotable

"Listen, I'm skinny but I'm tough."

-- Barack Obama as quoted in a Wall Street Journal article that questions if he is too fit to be president.

Snippets from the news

• U.K. is delusional that it’s cutting emissions. • Canada releases climate change report, denies playing it down. • Lawsuit brought in Everglades, sugar deal. • Brazil launches fund to preserve Amazon. • Aral Sea restoration a “partial success.” • Lakota radio station installs wind turbine.

Gray skies loom over Beijing as Chinese officials announce emergency air-pollution measures

A haze descended on Beijing for four consecutive days earlier this week and made a fitting backdrop for state environmental regulators to announce emergency measures that they'll put in place if air pollution remains a problem. More power plants and manufacturing facilities could be shut down, and more cars pulled from the roads, according to a news release from the Ministry of Environmental Protection.

This second wave of shut-downs would affect small solvent factories that had previously been overlooked because of their relatively low pollutant emissions as compared to iron factories or coal plants. As The New York Times reports: