Tag Archives: blue marble

MAP: America’s 21 Most Vulnerable Rivers

by johnsmithwindows Posted on July 1, 2013

Mother Jones

If you’re one of 142 million Americans heading to the outdoors this year, there’s a good chance you’ll run into one of at least 250,000 rivers in the country. Much of the nation’s 3.5 million miles of rivers and streams provide drinking water, electric power, and critical habitat for fish and wildlife throughout. If you were to connect all the rivers in the United States into one long cord, it would wrap around the entire country 175 times. But as a recent assessment by the Environmental Protection Agency points out, we’ve done a pretty bad job of preserving the quality of these waters: In March, the EPA estimated that more than half of the nation’s waterways are in “poor condition for aquatic life.”

Back in the 1960s, after recognizing the toll that decades of damming, developing, and diverting had taken on America’s rivers, Congress passed the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act in 1968 to preserve rivers with “outstanding natural, cultural, and recreational values in a free-flowing condition.” Unfortunately, only a sliver of US rivers—0.25 percent—have earned federal protection since the act passed.

In the interactive map below, we highlight 21 rivers that, based on the conservation group American Rivers’ reports in 2012 and 2013, are under the most duress (or soon will be) from extended droughts, flooding, agriculture, or severe pollution from nearby industrial activity. Find out which rivers are endangered by hovering over them (in orange). Jump down to the list below to read about what’s threatening the rivers. For fun, we also mapped every river and stream recorded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It was too beautiful not to.

Endangered Rivers, 2012-13


Continue Reading »

View the original here: 

MAP: America’s 21 Most Vulnerable Rivers

Posted in FF, GE, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on MAP: America’s 21 Most Vulnerable Rivers

How President Obama’s Climate Speech Could Have Rocked Even More

by Beatriz Kasser Posted on June 27, 2013

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

President Obama’s speech Tuesday on climate change is getting pretty high marks. Or as Al Gore put it, it was “the best address on climate by any president ever.”

At both the beginning and end of the speech the president invoked the historic “Earthrise” image, taken from the Apollo 8 mission on Christmas Eve of 1968 as the craft orbited the moon. That “blue marble” is the namesake of this blog itself, and was a great inspiration to the developing environmental movement in the 1970s.

At the close of the speech, the president put it like this:

…that image in the photograph, that bright blue ball rising over the moon’s surface, containing everything we hold dear—the laughter of children, a quiet sunset, all the hopes and dreams of posterity—that’s what’s at stake. That’s what we’re fighting for. And if we remember that, I’m absolutely sure we’ll succeed.

It looks like Obama here may be channeling the celebrated environmental writer (and longtime Mother Jones contributor) Bill McKibben, who similarly drew upon “Earthrise” to great effect at the opening to his 2010 book Eaarth. Only, McKibben goes considerably further—and arguably achieves a more impressive rhetorical effect—by noting that global warming has literally changed what Earth looks like from space. What this suggests is that the “Earthrise” picture wouldn’t be the same today as it was in 1968 (although to be sure, some of the differences might be hard to notice given the distance of the shot).

Here’s McKibben:

Consider the veins of cloud that streak and mottle the earth in that glorious snapshot from space. So far humans, by burning fossil fuel, have raised the temperature of the planet by nearly a degree Celsius…A NASA study in December 2008 found that warming on that scale was enough to trigger a 45 percent increase in thunder-heads above the ocean, breeding spectacular anvil-headed clouds that can rise five miles above the sea…

And again:

Or consider the white and frozen top of the planet. Arctic ice has been melting slowly for two decades as temperatures have climbed, but in the summer of 2007 that gradual thaw suddenly accelerated. By the time the long Arctic night finally descended in October, there was 22 percent less sea ice than had ever been observed before, and more than 40 percent less than the year that the Apollo capsule took its picture…Within a decade or two, a summertime spacecraft pointing its camera at the North Pole would see nothing but open ocean. There’d be ice left on Greenland—but much less ice.

Barack, Bill—you guys should talk. Between the two of you, you just might move us to save this rock.

Link: 

How President Obama’s Climate Speech Could Have Rocked Even More

Posted in FF, GE, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How President Obama’s Climate Speech Could Have Rocked Even More

21 Percent of Homes Emit 50 Percent of CO2

by pfmufle Posted on June 27, 2013

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Not all homes pollute equally—even in the relatively homogeneous world of a mid-sized town in Switzerland. A study of a village of 3,000 finds that 21 percent of households belched half the town’s greenhouse gases. The biggest factors running up the carbon tabs of the disproportionate polluters: the size of their houses and the length of their commutes. Airline travel wasn’t factored into this research.

The energy people use to power their homes and drive their lives accounts for more than 70 percent of CO2 emissions, write the authors in Environmental Science & Technology. But in addressing that problem policymakers and environmentalists mostly point their fingers at the supply side: power plants, heating and cooling systems, and the fuel efficiency of cars. The Swiss researchers chose to parse it differently and developed a lifecycle assessment model of how energy consumption for housing and car travel, per household and per capita, impacts greenhouse gas emissions.

Their conclusion: â&#128;&#139;energy conservation in a small number of households could go a long way to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. If the super polluting homes cut their emissions in half, the authors write, “the total emissions of the community would be reduced by 25 percent.”

Be interesting to see the model these researchers developed used to compare the larger income and lifestyle gaps typical in US towns and cities.

I wrote more about the power of individual choices in combating emissions in Diet for a Warm Planet.

Link: 

21 Percent of Homes Emit 50 Percent of CO2

Posted in FF, GE, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 21 Percent of Homes Emit 50 Percent of CO2

VIDEO: Ag Gag in Action at Utah Slaughterhouse

by Shicsshaw Posted on June 26, 2013

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Animal rights activist Amy Meyer was the first person to be prosecuted under an ag gag law for a disturbing scene she caught on tape in February at the Dale T. Smith and Sons Meat Packing Co. in Draper, Utah.

Meyer was standing on a public easement outside the barbed wire fence that encloses the slaughterhouse and recorded a tractor carrying away a downer cow and flesh coming out of a chute on the side of a building. She was approached by the manager of the company who told her she had to leave, citing Utah’s ag gag law: “If you read the rights here and the laws in Utah, you can’t film an agricultural property without my consent.”

Check out Meyer’s footage, first published this week by environmental blogger Will Potter:

Utah’s law, enacted in March 2012, makes it illegal to record, “an image of, or sound from, an agricultural operation while the person is committing criminal trespass.” Like many other states’ ag gag laws, Utah also forbids obtaining, “access to an agricultural operation under false pretenses.” As Ted Genoways’ reveals in a recent investigation for Mother Jones, laws criminalizing whistleblowing on Big Ag have been sweeping the country in the past few years. Ag gag laws were introduced in 12 states just this year, and are currently pending in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Check out MoJo’s map to see where these bills have passed and failed.


Gagged by Big Ag


You Won’t Believe What Pork Producers Do to Pregnant Pigs


Has Your State Outlawed Blowing the Whistle on Factory Farm Abuses?


Timeline: Big Ag’s Campaign to Shut Up Its Critics


The Cruelest Show on Earth

Meyer used to pass by the slaughterhouse on her way to volunteer at a local animal sanctuary in Draper, where the mayor is a co-owner of the meat-packing plant, and felt compelled to, “do more to fight what’s happening to cows inside factory farms and slaughterhouses,” she told Mother Jones. After she filmed the downer cow incident and then a confrontation with Smith and Sons’s manager, police arrived to question Meyer, but did not detain her. She was later charged with “agricultural operation interference.” As shown by the video, Meyer was standing on public property while recording, which was why the prosecutor ultimately dropped the charges on April 30, after Potter publicized the case.

On May 18, hundreds of local activists gathered outside the slaughterhouse to protest the state’s ag gag law. A spokesperson for the plant told ABC News, “the meat processing facility is inspected daily and has a good record for animal care,” and the company maintained in a written statement that their “animal handling and treatment practices are humane and responsible.”

However, as Meyer points out to the plant’s manager in the video, more transparency is in order: “Why are you concerned about being filmed, if you think this is a legitimate business?”

From: 

VIDEO: Ag Gag in Action at Utah Slaughterhouse

Posted in FF, GE, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on VIDEO: Ag Gag in Action at Utah Slaughterhouse

Flooded Calgary Warned The Worst Is Yet To Come

by tobedzieto123 Posted on June 21, 2013

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Twitter user @ShaneKeller posts a photo of the Calgary Zoo almost completely underwater. @ShaneKeller/Twitter

Flood waters from two rivers that converge on the Canadian city of Calgary have paralyzed mass transit, shuttered downtown, and closed schools, as thousands received emergency evacuation notices yesterday and this morning. And locals are being told the worst floods in decades are not over yet. “We are still expecting that the worst has not yet come in terms of the flow,” Mayor Naheed Nenshi told CBC News on Friday.

You can find a helpful map of the most affected areas here. There have been no reports of fatalities.

In the last 48 hours, more than six inches of rain have fallen in the Calgary area alone, and CBC is reporting that more is on its way, with the highest amounts expected west of Calgary. The city reports that the Elbow River crested this morning and water levels in Bow River are expected to remain extremely high for several days. That has prompted nearly a dozen emergency warnings of flash flooding, burst banks, and overflowed dams in the province. All Calgarians have been asked by local authorities to refrain from non-essential travel. Locals are also being encouraged to boil their water in seven Calgary communities to stop the spread of infection. According to the officials, 1500 people have sought out emergency shelters across the city.

Fast-moving debris from the flood also ruptured a pipeline carrying “sour gas”—a stinky, toxic gas comprised of one percent hydrogen sulfide that can be deadly if inhaled—in Alberta’s Turner Valley, prompting further evacuations. Crews have reportedly contained the leak.

Flooded Calgary streets after torrential rainfall caused two rivers to overrun their banks, forcing the evacuation of thousands. Bandit Queen/Flickr

Flooding has also forced the closure of the last two days of the Sled Island music festival, which featured more than 250 bands plus comedy, film and art events at 30 local venues, and stranded its organizers in a generator-powered Calgary hotel. “It is a huge disappointment for all of us for sure, because we’ve been working so hard to put this together,” said Maud Salvi, the event director, by phone. “I think we’re just all trying to accept the fact that there’s nothing we can do.” Logistics are being complicated by wide-spread power outages at venues across the city,

Twitter user Connor Deering seemed to sum up some of the Canadian spirit in the face of adversity: “Since the city is shut down, may as well just start drinking”. You can see the power of the flood waters from Thursday in this supercut:

Continue reading:  

Flooded Calgary Warned The Worst Is Yet To Come

Posted in alo, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Flooded Calgary Warned The Worst Is Yet To Come

Step Inside the World’s Largest Solar Boat

by AnnaBest Posted on June 21, 2013

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The solar plane will land in New York City soon, but its water-borne counterpart is already here: Early this week the world’s largest solar-powered boat steamed into lower Manhattan and docked in small marina, usually reserved for multimillion dollar yachts, in the shadow of the new World Trade Center tower. The three-year-old ship, dubbed “Turanor” after a term for solar power in The Lord of the Rings, is on a tour of the Atlantic from its home base in southern France, documenting how the warming sea is shifting the Gulf Stream, a powerful cross-ocean current that drives the weather of Europe and West Africa.

View original post here: 

Step Inside the World’s Largest Solar Boat

Posted in FF, GE, ONA, solar, solar power, The Atlantic, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Step Inside the World’s Largest Solar Boat

House Sinks the Latest Version of the Farm Bill

by wjtydf3g Posted on June 20, 2013

Mother Jones

Earlier today the House defeated the most recent version of the Farm Bill, a $940 billion piece of legislation that regulates both food stamps and farm subsidies in the US, by a vote of 195-234.

Both Republicans and Democrats voted against the bill: Republicans complained that it didn’t create enough savings while Democrats took issue with the bill’s deep cuts to food stamps. “What is happening on the floor today was major amateur hour,” Nancy Pelosi (who was speaker when the last Farm Bill passed, in 2007) told Politico. “They didn’t get results and they put the blame on somebody else.”

The House bill would have saved an estimated $33 billion over ten years, with the majority of that savings ($21 billion) coming from cuts to food stamps, which account for almost 80 percent of farm bill spending. Part of those savings would come from requiring “asset tests” that ensure the 48 million Americans who participate in the food stamp program don’t have more than $2,000 in the bank, or own a car worth more than $5,000. Democrats including Pelosi have been saying for days that they wouldn’t vote for the bill if it included the cuts to food stamps.

The Senate’s version of the farm bill, passed last month, cut food stamps but only to the tune of $4 billion dollars. This chart from the congressional research service shows where the cuts would come from in each bill (“Nutrition” is the food stamps program):

When it comes to farm subsidies, the farm bill’s other main set of policies, the bills in the House and the Senate are roughly the same. USA Today explains:

The Senate and House farm bills are largely similar when it comes to farm policy issues, with both measures streamlining conservation programs, expanding the federally subsidized crop insurance program and slashing subsidy payments—including the elimination of the $5 billion a year in direct payments doled out to farmers regardless of whether they grow crops. In a bid to help Southern growers who depend on direct payments, each bill would set higher support prices for rice and peanut farmers, meaning growers would see subsidy payments kick in sooner.

But a significant divide exists between the two chambers in the scope of proposed cuts to the country’s food stamp program, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, that will likely continue to be a sticking point in determining whether the farm bill passes.

Congress now has until January 1st to pass a new Farm Bill, though it’s unclear when the House will bring the bill back up for a vote again. “If it doesn’t pass, I don’t know if it’s going to come up again in this Congress,” Congressman Frank Lucas (R-Okl.), chair of the House agriculture committee who had steered the bill to a vote today, told the New York Times before today’s vote.

See the original post: 

House Sinks the Latest Version of the Farm Bill

Posted in FF, G & F, GE, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on House Sinks the Latest Version of the Farm Bill

CHARTS: You Won’t Believe How Much Disasters Cost Last Year

by dgod36 Posted on June 20, 2013

Mother Jones

2012 was the second-worst year on record for extreme weather events, both in number and in cost, according to a tally released this morning by NOAA. Eleven major events—including tornadoes, wildfire, drought, and hurricanes—racked up a collective bill of over $110 billion, with cropland damage from drought in the Midwest ($17.36 billion in crop insurance payments alone) and Hurricane Sandy, with a $60 billion pricetag, as the most expensive items.

NOAA

As for this summer, the costs are still piling on: Feed and water scarcity have shrunk the nation’s cattle supply to its lowest point since 1952, pushing beef prices to an all-time high, and NOAA scientists predict that pasture conditions will likely be worse this summer than last.

According to the latest forecast, although drought conditions have dropped 21 percent from their peak last September, nearly half of the country is still in some kind of drought, with the worst conditions moving west through the summer into California and Oregon.

“The drought has definitely been pushing westward,” Mark Svoboda of the National Drought Mitigation Center in Nebraska told reporters, adding that the devastating wildfires that have recently hit states like Colorado and New Mexico are “just the start.”

NOAA

Svoboda added that lightning from the upcoming monsoon season in the southwest created a particular wildfire risk in this still tinder-dry region, although Arizona and the central plains are expected to see some improvement of drought conditions, the result of a relatively wet spring:

NOAA

Original post:  

CHARTS: You Won’t Believe How Much Disasters Cost Last Year

Posted in alo, FF, GE, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on CHARTS: You Won’t Believe How Much Disasters Cost Last Year

Illinois’ New Fracking Regulations Might Not Be So Tough After All

by czwcqtpj Posted on June 18, 2013

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Monday afternoon Illinois governor Pat Quinn signed what the Associated Press touted as the “nation’s toughest fracking regulations,” creating a framework to manage hydraulic fracturing, in which chemicals are piped into rock at high pressure to release stored-up natural gas. But the new regulatory effort, which sharply divided the state’s environmental community and inspired fervor in the southern counties where drilling is most likely to take place, looks more like a tactical concession than an environmental victory.

The law, which was crafted through six months of stakeholder negotiations between the state, select environmental groups, and representatives from the oil and gas industry, includes stringent rules meant to increase public transparency, more closely monitor environmental impact, and provide avenues for recourse in case something goes wrong. But amid biting criticism from activists and advocacy groups that were excluded from the negotiations, environmental organizations involved in the process have argued that although they believe the law was a necessary foothold in the effort to control what seemed to be an inevitable boom in fracking in Illinois, this is by no means the end of the fight.

“It bothers me that the bill is being presented as a model for other states,” says Ann Alexander, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council who was part of the negotiations. “It represents a floor. Yes it’s strong; no, it’s not adequate.” What new law does provide is a baseline for measuring the actual impact of fracking and a mechanism for pushing back if something does go wrong, explains Jenny Cassel, a lawyer with the Environmental Law & Policy Center, another group that was involved in the negotiations.

Critics have attacked the law as regulatory window dressing. “These rules are arbitrary compromises based on negotiations with industry,” says Dr. Sandra Steingraber, a professor at Ithaca College and a vocal anti-fracking activist who led the charge against the bill. “They guarantee neither public health nor environmental integrity.”

Fracking was already legal in Illinois, although there was no fracking-specific regulation on the books, and industry interest has been growing, creating a sense that fracking was unavoidable. Illinois sits atop the New Albany shale play, an area projected to hold 3.79 trillion cubic feet of shale gas. Drilling leases have funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars into the coffers of counties and residents by way of fees and leases, and according to an AP investigation of state records, high-volume fracking had already begun. After it became clear the regulatory bill would become law, major drilling operations were started in Wayne County, some four and a half hours south of Chicago.

A full moratorium on fracking failed in the Illinois legislature last year, and representatives from the coalition of environmental groups that negotiated the new law have argued that compromise was better than nothing. But Steingraber believes that the lack of regulation wasn’t a reason to give ground. “The industry was waiting for the rules of the road before it came in,” she says. “This bill is a green light. It’s a starting gun.”

Continued here: 

Illinois’ New Fracking Regulations Might Not Be So Tough After All

Posted in FF, G & F, GE, Green Light, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Illinois’ New Fracking Regulations Might Not Be So Tough After All

Is This Conservative Think Tank Astroturfing the EPA To Approve Pebble Mine?

by Guadalupe Scharff Posted on June 17, 2013

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Are pro-mining forces trying to sway the Environmental Protection Agency on Pebble Mine?

Last month, I reported on the potential environmental threats posed by the massive proposed gold and copper mine in Alaska. The EPA conducted a watershed analysis, released in April, that showed that the mine would endanger rivers and the Bristol Bay, as well as the region’s salmon fishery. The EPA extended the comment period through the end of June, allowing more time for the public to weigh in.

A number of organizations, both pro- and anti-Pebble, had circulated mass mailings asking supporters to comment. You’ve seen the type; they’re form letters that people can sign onto via email. As of Friday, pro-mining groups had generated 118,294 comments from those mass mailings. But 117,401 of those comments—or 99.25 percent—came from a single group called Resourceful Earth. Here’s a sample of one of its letters:

I am writing to voice my strong opposition to the EPA’s draft watershed assessment for the vast Bristol Bay region of Alaska because it sets a dangerous precedent, is wholly unnecessary, and relies on dubious source material from biased anti-mining organizations and scientists that recently admitted to falsifying reports submitted in legal proceedings.

Resourceful Earth is a project of the conservative think-tank Competitive Enterprise Institute. Started in 2011, the project’s mission is to “promote access to natural resources and oppose special interests that abuse the regulatory process to lock up the raw materials of prosperity.” CEI is generally opposed to environmental regulations, and has taken millions of dollars over the years from industry like ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, and groups associated with the Koch brothers. CEI was critical of the EPA the last time the agency used the Clean Water Act to block a permit for a coal mine in West Virginia (which is what activists in Alaska are asking it to do on Pebble).

CEI President Fred Smith also signed onto a letter from conservative groups opposing the assessment of Pebble sent to the EPA on June 4. Other groups signing onto that letter include Americans for Limited Government, Americans for Prosperity, and Americans for Tax Reform.

The Save Bristol Bay coalition—which is working to block Pebble Mine—tallied all the comments from the EPA’s docket. As of Friday, the agency had received 424,492 comments. The vast majority—306,198—were against the mine and in support of the EPA’s evaluation of the risks. Many of those came from major environmental groups as well, including Trout Unlimited, Earthworks, and the Sierra Club.

See the original post:  

Is This Conservative Think Tank Astroturfing the EPA To Approve Pebble Mine?

Posted in FF, GE, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments Off on Is This Conservative Think Tank Astroturfing the EPA To Approve Pebble Mine?