Features daily blog posts from Switchboard, the voice of NRDC's environmental experts.
March 19, 2010
Today, the National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council (NRC) publicly released its interim report on the science used in the biological opinions protecting salmon, delta smelt, and other endangered fish in California’s Bay-Delta estuary. The NRC’s report confirms that the agencies used the best available science in developing these biological opinions, finding that these protections are “scientifically justified” and have a “sound conceptual basis,” as...
March 19, 2010
Last month I noted that Pennsylvania had acknowledged its need for better groundwater protections and was proposing new rules to strengthen its standards for gas well construction.
This month, the Wyoming Oil and Gas Conservation Commission has proposed new rules for hydraulic fracturing "to insure the protection of fresh and potable (USDW) waters." Among other things, the Commission has proposed new rules that require operators to do more to identify where water sources are in...
March 19, 2010
For those of you who have been following the growing concerns over the widespread use of the pesticide atrazine in the United States, you probably know that EPA recently announced it was going to conduct a top-to-bottom review of the chemical’s safety (for NRDC’s comments on the EPA review, click here).*
What you may not know, however, is that states can also initiate their own reviews—federal environmental law allows states to set standards that are more restrictive than those...
March 19, 2010
In the ongoing onslaught on the science underlying global warming, one recent criticism has focused on the finding that global warming could cause large-scale dieback of Amazon rainforest as cited in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report (a point spun by the opponents of action on global warming as this post highlights). Leading scientists with years of experience studying the Amazon rainforest have just released a letter that puts into perspective this recent controversy. The...
March 19, 2010
Next week, the International Maritime Organization will be meeting in London to consider a proposal that would drastically cut harmful air pollution from the largest, dirtiest ships at North American ports.
If successful, next week’s meeting will be a major step forward for public health in cities and towns up and down our Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico coasts - and even hundreds of miles inland.
Here's the background:
Only the IMO can set standards for all of the ocean-going vessels at our ports, such...
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March 18, 2010
Image: "Lake Hume at 4%," 2007. Credit: suburbanbloke/flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0Australia is getting hotter, the seas surrounding it are rising, and rainfall patterns are changing. Those are the take-aways from the "State of the Climate" report released on Monday by top scientists in Australia. "There is greater than 90 percent certainty that increases in greenhouse gas emissions" -- carbon dioxide and methane created by human activity -- "have caused most of the global warming...
March 16, 2010
I'll confess right now that I get the warm fuzzies just walking past a library, so the opening of a brand-new branch of the New York Public Library in itself is enough to thrill me. What's even more exciting about NYPL's new Battery Park City library is that, like several other buildings in this quiet development at Manhattan's southwestern tip, it's green. I took my kids to visit on opening day, and even on that overcast Monday morning the library felt naturally bright and airy. Huge windows line the building's...
March 15, 2010
"The Unchained Goddess" (1958), produced by Fritz Capra for the Bell Laboratories. "Even now, Man may be unwittingly changing the world's climate through the waste products of his civilization. Due to our release through factories and automobiles every year of more than six billion tons of carbon dioxide, which helps air absorb heat from the sun, our atmosphere seems to be getting warmer! "----- In early March, The Washington Times published an exchange of e-mails between U.S. environmental...
March 12, 2010
The Alamosa Photovoltaic (PV) Solar Plant, 8.2 MW, ColoradoIf you want a rough estimate of solar power's growth in the United States over the past 35 years, all you really need to look at is the ever-changing solar capacity at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. When President Jimmy Carter installed a solar water heating system on the White House roof in the 1970s, the industry made a quantum leap across the nation. Not by coincidence. Spurred by skyrocketing oil costs, Carter oversaw an unprecedented government investment...
March 12, 2010
Mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic, maybe uranium in the walls around you? Why should that bother you? Have you renovated in the last 10 years? Most brands of sheetrock use coal ash as a component, which is known to contain these byproducts. Somehow the coal industry has managed to keep coal ash designated as non-toxic waste, in spite of those toxins.When I heard that the administration was close to considering the regulations for coal ash, I knew it was time to resume my photo project.The logistics of doing an...
