Features daily blog posts from Switchboard, the voice of NRDC's environmental experts.
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...
March 19, 2010
As many NRDC specialists are posting blogs on critical water issues, you may be itching to get your fingers in the mix. Now is the time!
The Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting is partnering with Helium to get your voice heard on the most pressing issues of the day. We want to know your thoughts on questions raised by Pulitzer Center-sponsored reporting projects around the globe – and the winning essays will be showcased on the Pulitzer Center’s website and on Helium....
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
Reuters AlertNet carried a blog by Frances Beinecke in which she explained that a White House Task Force’s findings about widespread climate change impacts on every aspect of our society should be seen as credible and significant… Peter Lehner spoke with TIME.com about the recent NRDC analysis of simple changes individuals can make to reduce U.S. global warming pollution by 15 percent; USA Today’s Green House blog also highlighted the report by NRDC and the Garrison Institute… Reuters...
March 19, 2010
Distressed city neighborhoods, more than others, are deficient in environmental amenities, particularly those that are typically provided by nature. That is almost a tautology, but they especially need trees, pocket parks, rain gardens, vegetated swales, permeable pavements, roof gardens and other urban green infrastructure to provide multiple environmental and quality-of-life benefits. So says Pace University law professor Alexandra Dapolito Dunn in a terrific new article published in the Boston...
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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...
