Latest Articles
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Why plowing up Conservation Reserve Program land won’t solve the food crisis
Uh oh. The New York Times reports that “thousands of farmers are taking their fields out of the government’s biggest conservation program, which pays them not to cultivate.” Rather then let the ground lie fallow, they’re planting it with corn, soy, and wheat — the price of each of which stands near or above all-time […]
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Salmon fishing season canceled in California, heavily restricted elsewhere
Photo: Josh Larios For the first time ever, the Pacific Fisheries Management Council has voted to cancel the salmon fishing season off the coast of California and much of Oregon due to exceedingly low populations of chinook salmon in the Sacramento River area. The restrictions apply to commercial as well as recreational fishers; only a […]
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Early-spring images from the headwaters of the Mississippi River
The phrase “Mississippi River” conjures a swirl of images in our collective imagination: wide, turbulent, muddy waters; chugging steamships and heavily laden barges; violent, life-altering floods; maybe even Mark Twain chomping on a pipe. Everything outsized, legendary. But at the headwaters of the river, in a quiet corner of northern Minnesota, the scene is a […]
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Maryland House committee kills climate bill
This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Kari Manlove, fellows assistant at the Center for American Progress.-----
After reporting last week on the climate policy progression carving its way through the Maryland Senate, the same measures were defeated in a Maryland House committee this week. Supposedly, the bill was killed by pressure from industry and labor lobbyists, ironically accompanied by steelworkers draped with "Save Our Jobs" t-shirts.
First of all, the United Steelworkers of America Union endorses the Apollo Alliance -- a coalition of labor, business, and environmental groups that collaborate to advocate a clean economy revolution.
Additionally, just last Thursday, a handful of labor unions -- SEIU, UFCW, LIUNA -- declared their support for the legislation in question.
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A roundup of news snippets
• Marathoner Paula Radcliffe shrugs off fears about Beijing pollution. • Green activist Majora Carter whips out a Tibetan flag while running with the Olympic torch. • Pesticides may be harming Rhode Island’s lobsters. • Maryland may impose restrictions on crabbers.
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New York governor puts the kibosh on proposed LNG terminal
Newbie New York Governor David Paterson has put the kibosh on a proposal for a liquefied natural gas terminal in Long Island Sound. Paterson and other outspoken opponents say the Broadwater project would damage the sound and be a floating terrorist target. Oil companies TransCanada and Shell, which are pushing the project, point to LNG […]
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Global food riots edition
A couple of months ago, I raised the question, can industrial agriculture feed the world? I was being intentionally provocative. For decades, policymakers have treated low-input, diversified agriculture — “organic” in the sense described by the great British agriculture scholar Sir Albert Howard — as a kind of hippy indulgence. Sure, it’s nice to grow […]
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A toxic tour, coming to a city near you
The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act -- better known as the Superfund -- was born in 1980, largely in response to the Love Canal disaster. At the time, experts thought the allocated $1.6 billion would more than cover the costs of cleaning up the sites. But today, the fund is exhausted (it officially went broke in 2003), and as of September 2007, there are 1,315 final and proposed sites with thousands more awaiting approval. So it is taxpayers, instead of the polluting companies, that are footing the bill. Still, few people -- except, perhaps, those who live near a Superfund site -- know about this toxic legacy.
Artist Brooke Singer has decided to make it relevant again. Last year, she and her team began visiting one toxic site per day, starting at a chemical plant in New Jersey, then jumping over to some zinc piles in Pennsylvania, then some landfills in Connecticut. They have cataloged all the toxics data, plus photos and histories, all on a cool visualization application called Superfund365. Visitors to the website are encouraged to contribute their own stories and images as well.
The tour will wrap up next year at the Pearl Harbor Naval Complex in Hawaii. Hopefully by that time, thanks to Singer and co., Americans will be more aware of the problem ... and of the people who live with it daily.
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Washington wilderness bill finally moving ahead
The U.S. Senate passed a long-languishing wilderness-protection bill Thursday. (Apparently it’s land conservation week in Congress. Yay!) The Wild Sky Wilderness bill would protect 106,000 acres of national forest in Washington State, creating the first wilderness in the state since 1984. Similar legislation has passed the Senate three times since 2002, but was consistently stalled […]
