By Tom Spears13 April 2013 OTTAWA (The Ottawa Citizen) – Claims that Alberta’s oilsands are environmentally harmless are “lies” and won’t convince anyone in Washington, one of this country’s most famous ecologists said Friday. Political leaders in Alberta and Ottawa “seem to think that Americans believe in magic fairies — just shut your eyes and […]
By Juliet Eilperin 12 April 2013 (Washington Post) – You might have been wondering whether the Obama administration was going to impose the first-ever greenhouse gas limits on new power plants, since the deadline is April 13. We reported nearly a month ago that the Environmental Protection Agency was likely to delay the rule to […]
PATILLAS, Puerto Rico, 10 April 2013 (Associated Press) – A curtain of sound envelops the two researchers as they make their way along the side of a mountain in darkness, occasionally hacking their way with a machete to reach the mouth of a small cave. Peeps, tweets and staccato whistles fill the air, a pulsing […]
Andrew Brandler, the CEO of CLP Group, Hong Kong’s biggest utility, talks about how Asia plans to balance its soaring energy demands with the planet’s need to wean itself from fossil fuels. By David Whitford, editor-at-large8 April 2013 (Fortune) – China Light and Power’s roots are more than a hundred years deep in Hong Kong. […]
7 April 2013 (Kyodo) – Around 120 tons of contaminated water with an estimated 710 billion becquerels of radioactivity has probably leaked into the ground under the Fukushima No. 1 power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co. revealed Saturday. “It is the largest amount of radioactive substances that has been leaked” since the crippled facility’s cold […]
By Ray Pierrehumbert 2 April 2013 (RealClimate) – This year, the Geological Society of America is rolling out their Switch Energy Awareness campaign. The centerpiece of the campaign is a documentary film, Switch, which purports to be about the need for a transformation in the world’s energy systems. Recently, I attended the Chicago premier of […]
[Hopefully, the market will decide against further expansion of this disaster.] By Jen Alic, OilPrice.com31 March 2013 France’s Total SA (NYSE: TOT) will sell its 49% stake in its Canadian oil sands project to Suncor Energy Inc. for $500 million, netting the French oil giant a $1.65 billion loss on the beleaguered project. Total would […]
By John Mangels1 April 2013 (The Plain Dealer) – The record-shattering glut of toxic algae that fouled much of Lake Erie in 2011 wasn’t a fluke, but a sign of what’s likely ahead for the troubled lake, researchers say. A combination of weather extremes and long-standing farming practices that unwittingly aid algae growth spawned the […]
By EDWARD WONG1 April 2013 BEIJING (The New York Times) – Outdoor air pollution contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths in China in 2010, nearly 40 percent of the global total, according to a new summary of data from a scientific study on leading causes of death worldwide. Figured another way, the researchers said, China’s […]
By Kate Sheppard29 March 2013 (Mother Jones) – The EPA announced this week that it will study the health and environmental risks of 23 chemicals, with an emphasis on chemical flame retardants that are found in many common products. [cf. Blood levels of flame-retardant chemicals doubling every few years in North Americans] Even though they […]
