Climate Health

Critical List: Federally backed solar company closes; London drops carbon offset plan for Olympics

Solyndra, a solar company that had received more than $500 million in federally backed loan guarantees, is shutting down.

Vermont's still reeling from Irene.

Oklahoma lawmakers are looking for ways to block the Keystone XL pipeline locally.

The organizers of the 2012 London Olympics are dropping their plan to offset the Games' carbon emissions. Weak.

Koch Industries fights anti-terrorism regulations

Here's another bit of info to include in your "man, the Koch brothers are eeeevil" file. In environmental circles, the Koch family is best known for its funding of climate deniers, but Koch Industries also owns 56 facilities that use petrochemicals. The government is a teensy bit worried about the attraction these facilities could hold for terrorists, but the company has spent its time and money lobbying against stricter safeguards for chemical facilities. Hey, regulations are regulations, whether they protect against pollution or terrorism, and all regulations are for liberal weenies!

iWatch News found that 4.8 million people live within risky distance of these plants, and that:

Up close and personal with blight fungus and bugs

2011 is the International Year of Forests, and as part of their efforts to promote the sustainable forestry, the National Association of State Foresters, which represents state forestry agencies, and the National Network of Forest Practitioners, granted a fellowship to photographer Josh Birnbaum to document the state of the nation's forests.

Birnbaum's first stop was in West Virginia, where he hung out with young foresters (pictured above), visited with the wood industry, traveled with researchers to a post-mining reclamation area, and documented blight fungus.

Critical List: Keystone XL protests begin; Fukushima area could be uninhabitable for decades

In DC, protests against the Keystone XL pipeline began this weekend. The first round of protesters that cops arrested sat in jail through the weekend, longer than police had said they'd be detained.

The area around Fukushima has levels of radioactivity so high, it could be uninhabitable for decades.

The U.K. cycling industry contributes more than $4.7 billion to the country's economy each year.

70 arrested on first day of tar-sands-pipeline protest

Seventy people from across the U.S. and Canada were arrested in front of the White House Saturday morning on the first day of a two-week sit-in aimed at pressuring President Obama to deny a permit for the massive new Keystone XL oil pipeline.

How to turn raw sewage into profit

For most people, having a open stream of sewage running past your backyard is a problem, not an asset. That how Keshav Tavre, who lives in Bhiwandi, India, saw it, until he decided to set up a homemade filtration system. With a series of walls and layers of soil, he was able to filter the sewage until it was clean enough to use to grow crops. Later, he sold water commercially do local dye industries.

Human excrement is killing all your coral

You know how when you go snorkeling, the guide tells you not to touch, breathe on, or even think about getting anywhere near the coral because it's really sensitive and also a great marine resource? Well, it's all true, but on a macro level, humans haven't been paying attention to those instructions and instead have been spraying the coral down with water contaminated with our waste. So basically we have been POOPING ON THE CORAL, which is kind of the opposite of not touching it. And human waste infects coral with something called white pox disease, which causes lesions and has led to a 90 percent decline in elkhorn coral, a key player in reef building.

Stop the giant fish blenders!

Antiquated cooling systems of power plants throughout the nation grind all manner of aquatic life into a fine paste.

Critical List: A second leak in Shell's North Sea rig spurting oil; Chinese protest chemical factory

A second leak at the Shell oil platform in the North Sea is proving harder to stop than the first.

A Chinese protest against a chemical factory was one of the largest in three years -- at least 12,000 people -- and may herald a shift towards more public action in the country.

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter is exchanging ideas with leaders in Rio about greening their cities.

Industry exaggerates pressure to meet Clean Air Act standards

Polluters whine about the economic burden of reducing emissions during tough times, but the Clean Air Act gives them more than enough time to comply.