Features daily blog posts from Switchboard, the voice of NRDC's environmental experts.
March 18, 2010
Another sign of growing support among businesses that want meaningful climate legislation: The United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) is announcing that Weyerhauser, one of the world’s largest forest products companies, is joining the business-enviro coalition pushing for clean energy and climate legislation.
The addition comes at a time when climate legislation is once again on the political radar screens. As Shell Oil Chairman Marvin Odum recently wrote in the Houston Chronicle,
"We are closer...
March 18, 2010
Monday, March 22nd 2010 is recognized by the United Nations as World Water Day, a time to raise awareness of the global water crisis and focus on the solutions. The challenge is tremendous, almost 900 million people lack safe drinking water and 2.6 billion people lack adequate sanitation (or safe toilets). NRDC has fought for clean water for decades and I am happy to report that my colleagues are writing this week about water’s intersection with so many environmental and health issues....
March 18, 2010
Here’s an insight from relating human behavioral science to transportation: people who use a particular form of transportation such as driving or taking transit sometimes misunderstand the motives of those that use a different mode. We generally have a basic understanding of why we may take the bus, for example, but we make the assumption that the guy who drives is doing so because, well, he’s the kind of guy who drives.
In fact, it’s not that simple. Except for...
March 18, 2010
While the nation waits with baited breath for the details of forthcoming clean energy and climate legislation in the Senate, it was welcome news today to learn that President Obama’s Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force is making steady progress to deal with the impacts of climate change with the release of their interim report. Comprised of over 20 federal agencies, the Task Force has been charged with delivering federal recommendations on how the U.S. should adapt to climate change...
March 17, 2010
UPDATE: EPA has released the results of its assessment and announced it will increase restrictions on flea & tick products – urging consumers to use them with extra care. Among those changes – it will immediately start looking at labels to see which need “stronger and clearer” warnings, and it will “develop more stringent testing and evaluation requirements for both existing and new products.”
Ever spent any time in the flea control aisle of a pet store? There are...
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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...
March 10, 2010
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Unusually Large Snowstormwww.thedailyshow.comDaily Show Full EpisodesPolitical HumorHealth Care Reform Yesterday India and China notified the United Nations that they would join the climate deal created at December's climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. (Relive the fun with OnEarth's Copenhagen Climate Talks coverage.) The Associated Press reports that "[A] one-sentence note from China's top climate change negotiator, Su Wei, authorized the addition of China to the...
