Environmental Glance
We are blowing up mountains to get at coal, felling boreal forests to get at tar, and siphoning oil from the ocean deep. Most ominously, through the process called fracking, we are shattering the very bedrock of our nation to get at the petrified bubbles of methane trapped inside.
Fracking turns fresh water into poison. It fills our air with smog, our roadways with eighteen-wheelers hauling hazardous materials, and our fields and pastures with pipelines and toxic pits.
I am therefore announcing my intent to devote my Heinz Award to the fight against hydrofracking in upstate New York, where I live with my husband and our two children.
Ecologist to devote $100k Heinz award to fight fracking in NY State
US court rules against Chevron in Ecuador oil case
A US court has overturned a block on Ecuadoreans collecting damages totalling $18.2bn (£11.5bn) from Chevron over Amazon oil pollution. The order reversed a previous judge's ruling that froze enforcement of the fine outside Ecuador.
But it is not the end of the legal saga, which is also going through the courts in Ecuador.
Texaco, which merged with Chevron in 2001, was accused of dumping toxic materials in the Ecuadorean Amazon.
$43-million settlement approved for asbestos victims in Libby, Mont.
For decades, the residents of Libby, Montana have lived a double life.
On the outside, the town of 3,000 people along the Kootenai River is a picture postcard of why western Montana is one of the most gorgeous places in the country.
Unseen, though, is how asbestos pollution from a former W.R. Grace & Co. mine has sickened more than 1,300 residents with a deadly lung disease, killing many of them and turning Libby into the deadliest Superfund site in the nation's history.
Japan’s Fukushima ‘worst in history’
At least one billion becquerels a day of radiation continue to leak from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant after the March earthquake and tsunami.
Experts say that the total amount of radiation leaked will exceed amounts released from Chernobyl, making Fukushima the worst nuclear disaster in history.
Fracking Disposal Wells Linked to Earthquakes, Banned in Arkansas
The Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission has banned fracking disposal wells for unconventional gas drilling wastes due to earthquakes. The Commission voted unanimously to ban them, and the decision requires the immediate closure of one disposal well and prohibits the construction of new wells within a 1,150 square mile radius.
Arkansas residents insisted that there was a correlation between the increase in earthquake activity in the state and wastewater disposal wells. Imagine being on your way out one afternoon, opening your garage door, and experiencing an earthquake that you knew was being caused by gas drills.
Arctic sea ice shrinks to second lowest level
Arctic sea ice melted this summer to the second lowest level since record-keeping began more than 50 years ago, scientists reported Thursday, mostly blaming global warming.
"This is not a random event," said oceanographer James Overland of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "It's a long-term change in Arctic climate."
Coral reefs 'will be gone by end of the century'
Coral reefs are on course to become the first ecosystem that human activity will eliminate entirely from the Earth, a leading United Nations scientist claims. He says this event will occur before the end of the present century, which means that there are children already born who will live to see a world without coral.
The claim is made in a book published tomorrow, which says coral reef ecosystems are very likely to disappear this century in what would be "a new first for mankind – the 'extinction' of an entire ecosystem". Its author, Professor Peter Sale, studied the Great Barrier Reef for 20 years at the University of Sydney. He currently leads a team at the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health.
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