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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed yesterday to review the status of the Whitebark Pine for possible inclusion on the endangered species list.
Whitebark Pine is found in the mountains of the Pacific Coast, from Washington State south to central California and in the Rocky Mountains from Idaho to Nevada. As we wrote in a previous post on the Whitebark Pine, the trees are under increased attacked by mountain pine beetles now often able to survive the slowly declining chill of winter and migrate to higher elevations due to warming temperatures (read our previous post for more on ecosystem shift and species migration). The trees have no natural defense against the beetle, depending instead on elevation and frigid winter temperature to protect it from the growing onslaught. The Whitebarks are also suffering from blister rust, an invasive fungus that has been weakening white pine species for the past century.
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GlobalWarmingisReal contributor Anders Hellum-Alexander wraps-up the climate and environmental news headlines for the past week:
Article of the Week:
Scientific American reports that half of the new electricity generation in the US and Europe in the last year has come from green energy. This is very important because the decisions we make today about new energy generation will be the realities we face 20, 50 and 100 years from now.
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Michael Brune, the new executive director for the Sierra Club, spoke yesterday at an international gathering of renewable energy entrepreneurs, policy experts, and advocates. In his remarks, Brune spoke of his most moving image yet of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf. It’s a moving and heartbreaking story, but from disaster comes opportunity. Brune message yesterday was not only of tragedy but also of solutions: sustainable development, electrifying transportation, and the the “three R’s”: retiring coal (and eventually all fossil energy), replacing coal generation with renewable sources of energy and rejuvenating the beleaguered economy in the process. The following podcast is edited from his remarks:
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GlobalWarmingisReal contributor Anders Hellum-Alexander wraps-up the climate and environmental news headlines for the past week:
Picks of the Week:
Natural Gas has been touted as a green way to shift our economy off of petroleum, but the public is slowly realizing that things like shale gas are not such a great new revelation. Natural Gas still involves an extraction and refinement process that is comparable to petroleum.
Continue Reading Environmental News Wrap: July 6-12
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By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
(reposted with permission)
Washington has a blind spot when it comes to the environment. BP and the oil spill brought the government’s failures into the spotlight, but the same problems crop up across industries: Corporations pollute water, blast through mountains, and pour carbon into the atmosphere with insufficient oversight. But no one—Congress, the environmental community, or the president—seems to have the power to address these issues.
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Once again, the money and power yielded by Big Oil has trumped any concern for the environment, our nation’s natural resources and precious eco systems, countless numbers of plants and animals, as well as the safety and even lives of our fellow human beings. For just last night, the 5th District Court of Appeals has terminated any hope of the Obama administration’s 6-month moratorium of new permits and the exploratory drilling of 33 deepwater wells to allow for time to review safety protocols, discover why the Deepwater Horizon blowout happened and to develop measures to ensure this never ever happens again.
Continue Reading Playing it “Safe” With Big Oil: Deepwater Offshore Drilling Moratorium Upheld
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GlobalWarmingisReal contributor Anders Hellum-Alexander wraps-up the climate and environmental news headlines for the past week:
- An important question for environmentalists to ask is; what should be our stance on how to respond to the recession? A reporter at Grist asks, “Feed the economy, or starve it?”
Continue Reading Environmental News Wrap: June 29-July 5
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By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
(reposted with permission)
On July 4th, Americans are supposed to celebrate their independence. We may no longer have to worry about a greedy, distant monarch. But our country is still held in thrall to powerful interests that prize profit over individuals and their freedom—the energy industry comes to mind. As Jason Mark puts it at AlterNet:
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GlobalWarmingisReal contributor Anders Hellum-Alexander wraps-up the climate and environmental news headlines for the past week:
Environmental News Pick of the Week:
- Paying industrializing countries to not destroy their own environment has been talked about for a long time, now Ecuador is stepping up to ask for billions of dollars simply to not extract all the oil under their land.
Ecuador is also in the middle of a 20 year old dispute with Texaco, now Chevron, over a large oil spill. Ecuador is suing Chevron for about $20 billion.
Continue Reading Environmental News Wrap: June 22-27
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By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger
(reposted with permission)
BP oil has been spilling into the Gulf of Mexico for more than two months, and while attention has focused there, deepwater oil drilling is just one of many risky methods of energy extraction that industry is pursuing. Gasland, Josh Fox’s documentary about the effects of hydrofracking, a new technique for extracting natural gas, was broadcast this week on HBO. In the film, Fox travels across the country visiting families whose water has turned toxic since gas companies began drilling in their area.
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