August 22, 2013
PORT CARLING - Human activity has impacted our planet in a lot of negative ways, but according to Dr. Norman D. Yan, people have made positive changes to fix past mistakes.
"We have had enormous problems in the past that we’ve repaired," he said in his lecture Environmental Good News Stories last Thursday evening in Port Carling.
He said good news stories have to be told because they give people hope about some of the problems we still face.
August 22, 2013
A new report published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology by marine science professor at the University of South Florida Dr. John Paul suggests that Tampa Bay’s sea life is still in danger due to BP’s 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the chemicals used to disperse oil.
August 14, 2013
State government enforcers increasingly are letting oil and gas companies that break rules do public service projects instead of imposing formal penalties.
The shift reflects evolving efforts by the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission to cope with expanding industrial operations in a way that demonstrably helps harmed communities.
The COGCC "continually seeks to put into practice a robust enforcement program," COGCC director Matt Lepore wrote in response to Denver Post queries.
But Colorado's ability to minimize environmental harm is strained as the number of active wells statewide now exceeds 51,000 and the state has only 15 inspectors to keep track of them, as well as monitor cleanup at closed wells.
MOUNTAIN VIEW, California, August 15, 2013 (ENS) – Google’s self-confessed obsession with building energy efficient data centers and buying renewable energy has paid off. The search engine giant announced Tuesday that it reduced its carbon footprint by nine percent in 2012. But its recent funding of right-wing climate deniers has undermined its reputation as a green corporation.
Jolanka Nickerman, Google’s “Carbon Czarina,” blogs that in 2012 Google emitted 1.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, before purchasing high-quality carbon offsets to reduce that footprint to zero.
August 12, 2013
(Reuters) - A 27-year-old U.S. program intended to warn the public of the presence of hazardous chemicals is flawed in many states due to scant oversight and lax reporting by plant owners, a Reuters examination finds.
Under the federal Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, private and public facilities must issue an inventory listing potentially hazardous chemicals stored on their properties. The inventory, known as a Tier II report, is filed with state, county and local emergency-management officials. The information is then supposed to be made publicly available, to help first responders and nearby residents plan for emergencies.
But facilities across the country often misidentify these chemicals or their location, and sometimes fail to report the existence of the substances altogether.