TV News LIES

The world is not just watching the unfolding fracking bill debacle at the Illinois state capitol.

As the Illinois General Assembly votes this week on the state's increasingly suspect fracking bill, residents affected by similar operations in Pennsylvania and frac sand mining in Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota took the extraordinary step today of releasing unprecedented letters warning of a "public health disaster" in the making, and called on Illinois lawmakers to set aside the flawed bill and "swiftly enact a moratorium."

The townspeople in Fort Collins were greeted with some unfortunate news earlier this week, as their city council decided to overturn a ban on hydraulic fracturing that had been in place for only a few short months. The decision to overturn the ban was based solely on the threat of a lawsuit from the oil and gas industry.

The mere threat of a lawsuit from the only fracking company in town – Prospect Energy – was enough to send the city council cowering in submission, placing the entire town at risk of the negative health impacts associated with fracking.

The Ohio River valley is lush in the spring. The eastern Ohio River, one of America's most economically vital waterways, winds through the rolling green foothills of Appalachia as it ambles past small towns and cities in Ohio and West Virginia.

The valley has been heavily industrialized for decades. Coal-burning power plants, chemical processing facilities and mills dot the riverside. In 2012, the Ohio River was ranked the nation's most polluted waterway, according to government data compiled by Environment America. Elisa Young is determined to keep the river from getting worse.

As rural deposits of fossil fuel grow fewer and farther between, extractive industries are increasingly siting their operations over the next best location: suburban neighborhoods.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency, the Marcellus shale formation beneath parts of the Midwest and Appalachia contains literally trillions of cubic feet of natural gas—the most accessible of which often lies beneath residential neighborhoods.

At a public forum last night, leading voices in politics, public health, the environment and workers’ rights analyzed the threat to New York City residents from increased radon levels that would be found in natural gas from new regional sources being promoted by Mayor Bloomberg. Radon, a dangerous substance found in natural gas that most New Yorkers cook with, is the leading cause of lung cancer in non-smokers.

At the forum, Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal presented legislation sponsored by she and State Senator Diane Savino that would protect the public from the risks of radon in natural gas.

Fish and other sea life have been moving toward Earth’s poles in search of cooler waters, part of a worldwide, decades-long migration documented for the first time by a study released Wednesday.

The research, published in the journal Nature, provides more evidence of a rapidly warming planet and has broad repercussions for fish harvests around the globe.