Saturday, May 18th
Last update04:38:31 PM GMT
Environmental Glance
Sandra Steingraber PhD., biologist, author and Trumansburg, NY resident, was arrested alongside residents of Seneca Lake and local college students to oppose Kansas City, MO based Inergy, natural gas and liquid petroleum gas storage facility, which would lock in natural gas development in the Marcellus Shale region.
Protesters have linked arms and deployed a banner reading “Our Future is Unfractured, We Are Greater Than Dirty Inergy” across the entrance to the facility on NY State Route 14.
In establishing natural gas and fracking as the clean alternative to coal and the “bridge” to a low-carbon future, the natural gas industry has relied on PR to smooth its way. While the most visible anti-fracking campaigns remain regional and local, tied to the politics of exploding water and poisoned wells, gas companies and lobbyists are moving to globalize the debate. Their message: rational environmentalists should embrace gas, because gas will save us from climate change.
That message was stimulated by 99 words in a 492-word press release from the International Energy Agency (IEA). Though it was contradicted in the same week by an IEA spokesperson and a much longer IEA report, the message spread — from the conservative press and gas lobbyists to the halls of government. Now, it’s simply taken as fact.
Trouble at a natural gas drilling site in Wyoming County has forced seven families from their homes and crews are worried about a possible explosion.
Gas workers are trying to fix a drill on a well pad of Keiserville Road in Washington Towhship after thousands of gallons of fracking fluid spilled out onto the pad.
The Department of Environmental Protection tells us a malfunction on the drill going into the well caused the spill.
When Uranium Energy Corp. sought permission to launch a large-scale mining project in Goliad County, Texas, it seemed as if the Environmental Protection Agency would stand in its way.
To get the ore out of the ground, the company needed a permit to pollute a pristine supply of underground drinking water in an area already parched by drought.
Further, EPA scientists feared that radioactive contaminants would flow from the mining site into water wells used by nearby homes. Uranium Energy said the pollution would remain contained, but resisted doing the advanced scientific testing and modeling the government asked for to prove it.
At noon on March 21, religiously and spiritually rooted Americans of all traditions will gather at the White House for a moral act of loving nonviolent civil disobedience.
This action, organized by the Interfaith Moral Action on Climate (IMAC) and strongly supported by The Shalom Center, will make clear to President Obama that his inspired pledge to halt the destruction of the Earth from climate change requires that he take bold and courageous actions, including rejecting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.
Peter “Pete” Seeger is a 93-year old U.S. folk legend who resides near Wappingers Falls in southern New York. He can be spotted occasionally on the traffic-heavy Route 9, flanked by world peace signs and armed with a banjo.
Seeger is famous for his protest songs – which tackle topics ranging from U.S. wars abroad to environmental degradation at home.
The chances of the world holding temperature rises to 2C – the level of global warming considered "safe" by scientists – appear to be fading fast with US scientists reporting the second-greatest annual rise in CO2 emissions in 2012.
Carbon dioxide levels measured at at Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii jumped by 2.67 parts per million (ppm) in 2012 to 395ppm, said Pieter Tans, who leads the greenhouse gas measurement team for the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The record was an increase of 2.93ppm in 1998.
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