Climate Health

Republican anti-EPA jihad, explained

National Journal's Ronald Brownstein has an excellent column on the unusual party discipline of House Republicans have displayed in recent votes against EPA regulations.

Critical List: DOE’s loan guarantee head out; some beluga whales are toxic

Jonathan Silver, DOE's loan guarantee czar, is the first government employee to lose his job over Solyndra. leaving the government because the loan guarantee program doesn't have any money left, anyway.

Solyndra's also screwing the rest of the cleantech industry.

The BP spill is still affecting Louisiana, where the oyster season could be delayed and shrimp harvests dropped 99 percent.

A judge ruled that the EPA was a little too excited about regulating West Virginia coal mines and should have gone through more formal rulemaking on guidelines to dump coal waste into streams. Another part of their work, on water quality, is still at issue, which means coal companies could lose in the long run.

Now we have two giant holes in the ozone layer

I hear New Zealand is beautiful, but I'm never going there, because the ozone is thin and I'll die of skin cancer. I hear Norway is beautiful, too, but it looks like I can't go there either, because now there's an unprecedentedly big ozone hole over the Arctic.

Winter often thins the ozone layer over the Arctic, but this year, for the first time, scientists are saying the hole is comparable to the one of over Antarctica. It's twice as bad as the two biggest holes scientists had previously observed over the Arctic, and in some sections, 80 percent of the ozone is gone.

Russia decides there’s no problem with Chernobyl-style reactors

Soviet-era, Chernobyl-style RMYK nuclear reactors were only designed to be used for 30 years, but now Russia has decided to extend the life of 11 of them to 45 years. Great idea or GREATEST idea?

Nuclear plant’s pollution will never, ever be cleaned up

If you got all warm and fuzzy reading our previous post about the revitalization of the Howe Sound, and if you want to keep that feeling, don't read this post. Because it is the exact opposite story, one in which humans mess up the environment and can never, ever take it back.

In Scotland, from 1963 to 1984, a nuclear plant leaked lethal-if-ingested radioactive waste. That waste got all over beaches and other lovely sea-side resources. A while back, the Scottish version of the EPA recommended that someone make this right and return the area to a "pristine condition."

But now, they're giving up.

Once a wasteland, Howe Sound comes back to life

Humans can royally muck up the environment, but sometimes we can put things right again. Seven years ago, Vancouver's Howe Sound was a lifeless chemical stew, poisoned by contamination from a copper mine. And now, according to the Globe and Mail, there's this:

Sightings of grey whales, killer whales and schools of hundreds of white-sided dolphins are now being made regularly in the Sound, where massive herring spawns are once again occurring. “We are seeing the revitalization of an entire ecosystem. It is really uplifting,” said John Buchanan, a Squamish conservationist who voluntarily walks streams in the area to help count spawning salmon.

And this:

Campus revolts over bottled-water bans

Two Minnesota college campus have banned bottled water, and students are, like, totally flipping out. As one College Republican, who apparently is also enrolled in the Sarah Palin School of Political Oratory, put it:

“A little bit goes along the line of free choice. For us, that’s a big principle, in College Republicans is that you can’t really delegate to students what they can and cannot do in their own free will,” said Caitlyn Spence, chair of the St. Benedict Republicans.

(What?) 

How is Obama's overall record on the environment?

Is Obama's record on climate change and air pollution better than Bush's? How is it relative to the ideal, and relative to what seems politically realistic? Good questions ...

Return of the Monster Tar Balls!!

The scariest horror movies end with a hint that the killer or monster, though defeated, isn't dead and will rise again. With tropical storms sweeping through the Gulf, coastal residents are finding that zombie residues of the BP oil spill are coming out of their lairs to re-terrorize beach-goers, boaters, and the fishing industry. Tides hustled up by tropical storms are bringing oily residues, tar mats, and tar balls onto the beach. It's as bad as it sounds. Check out these pictures that NRDC collected — if you want to brave the sight of oozy, giant, black tar creatures.

The stupid politics behind Obama’s ozone cave

Obama's cave on ozone regulations was a) a crass political move, b) driven by new Chief of Staff Bill Daley, and c) based on daft political logic.