Climate Health
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How close are you to the country's dirtiest coal plants?
If you live west of D.C. and east of Omaha, there's a good chance you're pretty close to one of the 25 dirtiest coal plants in the U.S. Twenty of them are 50 to 100 miles away from major urban areas, according to Climate Progress.
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Warren Buffett's utility, MidAmerican, wants to keep polluting
Today, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works convenes a hearing to discuss the EPA's proposal to reduce mercury, lead, and other toxic air pollution from power plants. One of the witnesses will be Cathy S. Woollums, senior vice president of MidAmerican Energy. She will threaten rate hikes and job losses if the proposed safeguards become final. MidAmerican is owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
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Utilities and Joe Barton: 'Ignore the science: Pollution isn't bad for you!'
Do you believe doctors, EPA scientists, and peer-reviewed studies when it comes to the danger of pollution? Or heavily polluting utilities and Joe Barton?
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Eliminating soot would save 2.5 million lives a year, slow climate change
“Black carbon," the product of incomplete combustion of everything from wood to diesel fuel, isn’t just something you put on Mary Poppins chimney sweeps to make them look picturesque. It also contributes to climate change, and it will turn your lungs into something from an anti-smoking PSA faster than you can ask for just one more spoonful of sugar. The flip side is that we could save a lot of lives with just a little cleanup.
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Defending EPA: Sen. Ben Cardin, Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, and me at Netroots Nation
Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), defender of the EPA.Photo: Edward KimmelThe EPA is under full-scale assault. Republicans are working furiously to defund the agency and block or weaken its upcoming regulations on greenhouse gases, toxic hazardous emissions, sulfur dioxide, coal ash, and mountaintop-removal mining. (For more on those rules, see my series “Power Struggle.”) And they […]
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Mark Ruffalo wants you to stand up to hydrofracking
Actor Mark Ruffalo, who lives in a rural New York town on the Delaware River with his family, is not one of those celebrities who parachutes into a random political cause and starts ignorantly pontificating about solutions. He has been actively involved with efforts to keep potentially disastrous hydrofracking practices out of New York State […]
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Critical List: Arizona wildfire spreads; Roundup causes birth defects
The wildfire in Arizona is now the second-largest in the state's history and is growing. Enviros are turning on Obama. Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said yesterday the president hadn't parried Republican attacks and lacked vision on the conservation. And this was in advance of a speech he's giving today that fleshes out this argument. […]
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California could ban Styrofoam
Takeout in California will never be the same. The state's legislature is halfway to forbidding restaurants and vendors from packing their products in Styrofoam containers: the California Senate's on board, and the House is supposed to vote on the measure by the end of the summer. The problem (besides that Styrofoam is an evil, atmosphere-killing […]
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Perilous pipeline: Will Hillary Clinton give the OK to a massive tar-sands pipeline?
Oil refineries outside Channelview. Do we really need to add a tar-sands pipeline to the mix?Photo: KM&G-MorrisWill Hillary Clinton put the desires of a giant oil corporation ahead of the needs and health of low-income communities and communities of color? Will anyone else in the Obama administration stand up and stop her? With the State […]
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Haley Barbour pins the BP oil spill on a sad bird
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour thinks the disastrous economic effects of the Gulf oil spill were the fault of BP, where “BP” stands for “brown pelican”: So people saw on TV the same brown pelican coated with looked like 3 inches of oil, I mean, looked like a chocolate pelican. And they showed it every hour, […]
