power plants
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Map shows the worst air in America
The EPA is issuing new regulations for emissions from power plants, and the American Lung Association knows why. This map shows U.S. deaths caused by toxic power plant emissions. If you live in a state with a big red circle, you should be very very glad about the new rule — Texas in particular should […]
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Critical List: Midwest tornadoes kill 12; Shell sues environmental groups over Alaska drilling
Tornadoes tore through the Midwest, killing 12 people. North Korea will stop testing nuclear weapons in exchange for food aid. The Sierra Club’s ripping it up. One of two Chicago coal-fired power plants that are now slated to close marks “the 100th coal plant retirement announced since January 2010.” That’s about four every month!
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Adorable video will make you feel bad for power plants
This video of collapsing power plant cooling towers is supposed to make you want to celebrate the victory of renewable energy over large power companies that run on fossil fuels. And it does! Sort of. But the cooling towers are so adorable that you feel kind of bad for rooting against them. Couldn’t they have […]
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Curbing Power Plant Carbon Pollution
This item cross-posted from NRDC’s Switchboard. Willie Sutton is famously supposed to have said that he robbed banks because that’s where the money is (apparently this quote is apocryphal but it’s just too good to not keep using it). I have focused a number of recent posts on power plants because that’s where the carbon […]
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America’s energy future: iPads vs. typewriters with guns
This post originally appeared on Energy Self-Reliant States, a resource of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance’s New Rules Project. As Americans transition their electricity system to the 21st century, they should ask this question: Does it make sense to pursue strategies such as accelerating the development of new high-voltage power lines that reinforce an outdated […]
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Stop the giant fish blenders!
Antiquated cooling systems of power plants throughout the nation grind all manner of aquatic life into a fine paste.
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A body of evidence for bodily harm from air pollution
An op-ed writer for the Washington Times demands the EPA "show him the bodies" of victims of power plant emissions. Sadly, that is all too easy to do.
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Mercury? Arsenic? We’ll deal with those problems later, says EPA
Does this story sound familiar? A court orders the EPA to take action under the Clean Air Act. The EPA comes out with a set of rules. Business interests complain. The EPA relents, delaying and then relaxing rules that have compliance deadlines years down the line. That's about the tack the EPA has taken on […]
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Hexavalent chromium pollution linked to coal ash disposal
The landmark $333 million court settlement that propelled legal researcher Erin Brockovich to environmental stardom involved the contamination of a California town’s groundwater with hexavalent chromium, a toxic compound known to cause cancer. Now the same dangerous heavy metal, usually associated with steel manufacturing and metal plating, has been discovered seeping from coal ash disposal […]