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Asbestos legislation watered down, disappointing activists

Public-health advocates who in June praised legislation to ban asbestos now say the version passed by the Senate last month was watered down so significantly that they no longer support it. Thanks in large part to industry lobbying, many products containing cancer-causing asbestos wouldn’t be banned under the new version of the bill. Sen. Patty […]

Drug-addicted philanderer mocks civically engaged young Alaskan

We already knew that right-wing commentator Mark Steyn of the National Review enjoys belittling children's health problems and that right-wing bloggers attacked Graeme Frost's family when he spoke up for children's health insurance. But it seems that being mean to kids is becoming a kind of bizarre hobby of the right-wing media.

This weekend, 5,500 students from across the nation came to the nation's capitol for Powershift 2007, the first national youth summit on climate change -- and the solutions to it. Yesterday, upwards of 3,000 people packed into the offices of members of Congress to press them for action to stop climate change with clean energy development that'll create 5 million new green-collar jobs. More on that in a later post.

Representative Ed Markey invited five young people to testify before the House Select Committee on Global Warming and Energy Independence, one of which was 18-year-old Cheryl Charlee Lockwood, a Yup'ik Eskimo from the community of St. Michaels on the Bering Sea. (Footage available here.)

Here's what she told the committee:

Will climate change become the hottest issue of the presidential race?

This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Bill Becker, Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

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In addition to his Oscar and Nobel Prize, Al Gore may be in line for the title of Prognosticator of the Year. Last January while I was attending his training program in Nashville, Gore predicted that by the time of the 2008 presidential election, climate change would be the hottest issue in the race.

That prediction hasn't come true yet, but things are moving that way. Climate change is emerging like a tropical storm building to Category 5. It may become the issue that most clearly defines the candidates' courage, vision, ability to unify the nation, and willingness to be honest with the American people.

"The most remarkable thing about the environmental debates taking place in this year's presidential campaign is that they're occurring at all," Time magazine reported this week. "Once the stuff of a few hug-the-planet bromides in green states like Vermont and Oregon, the environment is one of the hot topics of the 2008 campaign."

Six farmworkers compensated for pesticide exposure, six cases dismissed

Six farmworkers who became sterile after working on a Nicaraguan banana plantation three decades ago were awarded a total $3.3 million from Dole Food Co. and Dow Chemical, after a judge agreed that the corporations “actively suppressed information about” the “reproductive toxicity” of now-banned pesticide DBCP. Six other plaintiffs with a similar claim had their […]

You can’t begin an argument about coal’s future by assuming coal’s future

I swear, I don’t mean to just rant about stupid coal articles every day. But people keep writing stupid coal articles. I’m like Pavlov’s dog at this point — they say stupid things, I bash them. Good boy! The latest is this interview in Wired’s Planet Earth blog with Jeremy Carl, who researches how to […]

A review of recycled toilet-paper brands

Time for a new roll, but what’s your type? Photo: iStockphoto Deciding what kind of toilet paper to buy is a delicate issue. Perhaps most significantly because you want to protect those delicates — but what about this delicate planet of ours? According to the NRDC, if every household in the U.S. replaced just one […]

U.S. Capitol buys carbon offsets

As part of an ongoing greening plan, the U.S. Capitol is buying $89,000 worth of carbon credits to offset the 30,000 tons of greenhouse gases emitted annually by the antiquated coal plant that provides it with power. The Government Accountability Office plans to publish a review of the carbon-offset industry in April; some members of […]

New report examines the impact of climate change on national security

John Podesta and Peter Ogden of the Center for American Progress have written a chapter titled "Global Warning: The Security Challenges of Climate Change," for a report called "The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change." They describe their work as follows:

Natural-products maker Burt’s Bees bought by Clorox

Looks like even Burt’s Bees have been affected by the recent spike in bee deaths. The much-loved company — known for its lip balms, soaps, and other personal-care products made from natural ingredients — has been bought out by Clorox. As in the bleach. Blech!

Disturbing news is more likely to be ignored

An interesting post on the phenomenon encountered by peak oil "doomers" in trying to explain their dour views to those that are unaware:

But if the purpose of the peak oil movement is to spread awareness and ultimately spur action, then telling uninformed people news which radically challenges their worldview may cause them simply to tune us out. In this regard, the worse the news is, the less likely people are to want to hear what we have to say or to believe it if they do listen.