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Companies liable for annoying pollution even if it’s legal, says Canadian court

Polluters in Canada can be sued for spewing excessively annoying smells, noise, or dust — even if their pollution is within legal limits, Canada’s Supreme Court ruled Thursday. The ruling, specific to a class-action lawsuit brought by 2,000 Quebec City citizens fed up with a nearby cement plant, may have far-reaching implications. (We personally find […]

This year’s Greenbuild is buzzing

In her column this week, Lisa Selin Davis wrote about the optimism of those in the green building movement. Today I saw it in the flesh. It was astonishing, the sight of more than 800 companies and organizations packed into Boston’s Convention & Exhibition Center for this year’s Greenbuild. Big guys like Honda and DuPont […]

Bay Area is now a Better Place ™

Thursday, Better Place announced a commitment to build a network of electric car charging stations throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. I counted 18 TV cameras. People are hungry for change.

New research demonstrates that higher infant mortality rates surround CAFOs

Thanks to Proposition 2, Californians will soon phase out some of the most egregious confining animal conditions. However the rest of the country continues to utilize concentrated animal feeding operations for the production of meat, poultry and dairy products. CAFOs are industrial facilities that are designed to produce the most amount of meat in the […]

From Nation to Urination

Obama mamas Can we contribute to overpopulation with post-election celebration? Yes we can — literally. Photo: tjroberts79 What’s shakin’, bacon? James Bond likes to pig out on a breakfast that’s bacon, not stirred. While filming, the sizzling star would have no solace until he brought home the bacon. But he went from the frying pan […]

Advocates launch the Price Carbon Campaign

What do the defeat of the Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade bill, the burst of the oil-price bubble, the Wall Street meltdown, the promise of a new political landscape in the wake of the fall elections, and the exigencies of the climate crisis have in common? To the Carbon Tax Center and CTC’s partners at the Climate Crisis […]

Alberta’s tar sands pose messy challenge for investors and ducks alike

  Photo: Stop the Tar Sands What could beat Amazonian deforestation, massive coal plants next to elementary schools, factory farming, mountaintop removal, and giant trash heaps in the middle of the ocean for the title of “the most destructive project on Earth“? [PDF] Cue the tar sands, a vast expanse of the Albertan province opened […]

Competing offer for U.S. Sugar complicates Everglades restoration plan

Florida’s intent buy out a giant sugar operation in a move to restore the Everglades is being complicated by a competing offer from the Lawrence Group, a Tennessee farming company. sources:

Straight-talk on coal from Brian Williams

“Coal. While you might have heard the phrase ‘clean coal’ during the presidential campaign, it’s actually an oxymoron. Wishful thinking. Coal does not burn cleanly and it’s hugely expensive to make it burn that way.” — NBC anchor Brian Williams, leading into a segment on coal as part of the network’s “Green Week” Here’s the […]

Notes from the conservative stagnation, Part 10

My occasional series on the conservative movement stagnation continues with Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Government Elimination Tax Reform. On Monday, the New York Times ran a long story, “Among Republicans, a Debate Over the Party’s Road Map Back to Power,” about the response of leading right-wing thinkers to the question “how can […]