Syndicated from Organic Consumers.org

1. New Neurological Disease Infecting Pig Processing Plant Workers
2. Polar Bears Finally Get Listed as an Endangered Species
3. Video: Interview with Rodale Institute CEO on How Organic Farming Will Combat Climate Change
4. Enter to Win a Grass-Fed Cow!
5. Three Hundred and Sixty 9/11 Rescue and Cleanup Workers Have Died, Including 80 from Cancer
6. OCA and Allies Submit Petition to USDA Demanding Transparency of Talcum Powder and Ovarian Cancer Link
7. Solving World Grain Crisis: Increase Diversity of Grain Supplies
8. Terminator Seeds are "Grossly Immoral" say Theologians
9. The Weekly Spin, May 14, 2008
10. Insecticides in Pet Shampoo May Trigger Autism

Syndicated from Reuters

1. Alaska hunters fret about polar bear ruling - BARROW, Alaska (Reuters) - The U.S. decision to list polar bears as a threatened species has indigenous Alaskans like Aalak Nayakik worried that hunting the animals they rely on for food and warmth could be banned.
   
   
2. Climate change threatens French truffle - PARIS (Reuters) - The black truffle, one of the most exclusive and expensive delicacies on the planet, is under threat from climate change.
   
   
3. Americans leery of bicycles despite gas price jump - PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - It's U.S. National Bike to Work Day on Friday and Americans are facing record high gasoline prices, but most commuters will stick to their cars.
   
   
4. Tokyo to propose cap-and-trade emissions plan - TOKYO (Reuters) - Tokyo aims to take a major step in meeting its pollution-reducing target by revising an emissions cutting bill.
   
   
5. Bush administration bars drilling in Arctic wetland - ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - The Bush administration on Friday proposed keeping potentially oil-rich wetlands in Arctic Alaska off-limits to drilling because of their ecological sensitivity, a reversal of its earlier plan.
   
   

Syndicated from Daily Grist

1. Snippets from the news - • Sea lions died of overheating, not gunshots.
   
   • Accountants see a bubble in renewable energy.
   
   • Juneau is a role model for reducing electricity use.
   
   • Starbucks struggles to go green.
   
   • Detroit builds condos out of shipping containers.
   
   
   
   
2. Climate change messing with ecology worldwide, study says - Climate change is messing with ecology worldwide right now, according to a comprehensive new study in the journal Nature. Researchers examined data on shifts in over 28,000 plant and animal systems and over 800 environmental changes across all the world's continents for the past 30 years. In 90 percent of the cases of change in wildlife behavior or populations, the shifts could only be explained by climate change, the study concluded. Also, 95 percent of the documented environmental changes, such as retreating glaciers and melting permafrost, were found to be consistent with warming temperatures. "When we look at all these impacts together, it is clear they are across continents and endemic. We're getting a sense that climate change is already changing the way the world works," said lead author Cynthia Rosenzweig of NASA. A separate study in Nature concluded that current carbon dioxide and methane levels are at their highest point in at least 800,000 years.
   
   sources: The Guardian, USA Today, Reuters
   
   
   
3. EPA plans to loosen air-quality rules near national parks - Call us crazy, but rewriting the Clean Air Act to ease the way for new coal plants near national parks seems to fly in the face of that whole "clean air" thing. But sure enough, the U.S. EPA plans to make a change allowing the government to calculate the average annual emissions of power plants near parks and wilderness areas, instead of tracking (and potentially punishing) the spikes in pollution spewed during peak energy times. "It's like if you're pulled over by a cop for going 75 miles per hour in a 55 miles-per-hour zone, and you say, 'If you look at how I've driven all year, I've averaged 55 miles per hour,'" explains Mark Wenzler of the National Parks Conservation Association. The NPCA estimates that the rule change will ease construction of 28 new coal plants within 186 miles of 10 national parks. And those parks are hazy enough as it is, laments one National Park Service engineer: "It would really be a setback in trying to make progress."
   
   sources: The Washington Post, Reuters
   straight to the NPCA report: Dark Horizons
   see also, in Grist: An interview with Tom Kiernan of the National Parks Conservation Association
   
   
   
4. Snippets from the news - • Friday is Bike to Work Day!
   
   • T. Boone Pickens buys 667 wind turbines.
   
   • Starbucks sets green goals.
   
   • China earthquake may cut carbon-offset supply.
   
   • Global biodiversity is plummeting.
   
   
   
   
5. Prius sales top 1 million - Worldwide sales of Toyota's Prius hybrid have passed the 1 million mark, the auto company announced Thursday. The world's first mass-produced hybrid was introduced in Japan in 1997 and in other markets in 2000. While it was at the time a risky business venture, it didn't take long for the word Prius -- Latin for "to go before" -- to become synonymous with popular hybrid technology (and yuppie environmentalism). Nearly 60 percent of the 1.028 million Priuses/Prii/Priora sold have been to customers in North America. Inspired to join the crowd? "This is a special vehicle, and as fuel prices keep rising, it gets more special,'' says a Toyota spokesperson. "Right now, U.S. customers can get a Prius. Next month or the month after that, it's tough to say.''
   
   sources: Wired, BusinessWeek, Associated Press
   
   
   
6. Congress finally passes veto-proof farm bill - Defying President Bush's veto threat, the Senate joined the House Thursday in voting "yay" on the $289 billion omnibus legislation that covers everything from farm subsidies to food stamps. In both chambers, support for the bill tallied strong enough to override Bush's threatened veto. The legislation has bitterly divided the sustainable-agriculture world. Supporters acknowledge the bill is deeply flawed, but argue it contains important gains in conservation, nutrition, and school lunch programs that would be lost if the bill failed -- at least until a new and comprehensively better farm bill could be passed. Critics counter that the small victories for sustainable-ag in the current bill are paltry compared to those won by wealthy farmland owners, who managed to escape stringent subsidy caps.
   
   sources: Bloomberg, McClatchy News
   in Gristmill: How should sustainable-food advocates respond to the latest farm bill proposal?
   
   
   
7. Greens celebrate two holidays today - If you saw a tiger riding a two-wheeler to the office this morning, that's because it's Endangered Species Bike to Work Day. Wait, wait, we're getting a memo -- oh, actually, it's both Endangered Species Day and Bike to Work Day. (Then what the hell was that tiger doing?) In honor of Bike to Work Day, bicyclists in many cities picked up free swag along their commute routes this morning. In honor of Endangered Species Day, nearly one-third of the world's species went extinct between 1970 and 2007. That's 25 percent of land-based wildlife, 28 percent of salt-water animals, and 29 percent of freshwater fauna, according to WWF's Living Planet Index. But hey, look at it this way: the less animals there are, the less endangered animals there are! Let it never be said that we aren't optimists.
   
   sources: BBC News, Reuters, League of American Bicyclists
   
   
   
8. U. of Washington to create big eco-college - The University of Washington is planning to create the largest environmental college evah. The proposed College of the Environment would become the 5th-largest of U-Dub's 17 colleges, combining its current schools of forestry, fishery sciences, atmospheric sciences, earth and space sciences, marine affairs, and oceanography. "Certainly, higher education in general has a responsibility to tackle challenges that threaten the well-being of the planet," says the proposal. "The UW is strongly positioned to truly advance the contributions of academia to the very concrete problems of the world around us." The college is scheduled to open in fall 2009, and its graduates will no doubt solve the world's environmental problems shortly thereafter.
   
   source: The Seattle Times
   
   
   
9. Bush admin debuts final recovery plan for spotted owl - The Bush administration has released a final plan for helping out the northern spotted owl, after a prior plan was deemed to have been watered down by political interference. Critics admit the plan is an improvement over last year's draft -- which relied heavily on, ahem, taking out predator barred owls with shotguns -- but still wish more emphasis had been put on restricting logging in the threatened bird's old-growth forest habitat. "We are definitely concerned this is not going to be sufficient to recover the owl," says Steve Holmer of the American Bird Conservancy. "It does appear to have some pretty significant loopholes." U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials say the spotted owl could be recovered within three decades if all goes well; the recovery plan will be reviewed in 10 years to see whether it's working.
   
   sources: Associated Press, The Columbian, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
   straight to the plan: 2008 Final Recovery Plan for the Northern Spotted Owl
   
   
   
10. Recycling sewer water into drinking water growing more popular - Cities and counties across the United States have increasingly been turning to recycled sewer water as one way to meet growing drinking-water demand. Recycling sewer water, or turning toilet water into drinking water via purification, has often repulsed opponents due to the high costs of treatment and the drinking-former-toilet-water gag factor. However, despite sometimes vocal opposition from the public, communities with huge projected increases in water demand have been pursuing the option anyway in the face of stagnating supplies. Earlier this year, Orange County, Calif., completed the largest and most high-tech water-recycling system in the world that churns out 70 million drinkable gallons of water a day from effluent. Los Angeles just announced plans to recycle 4.9 billion gallons of wastewater by 2019, and Miami-Dade County, Fla., is planning to convert 23 million gallons of wastewater a day into drinking water. So far, environmentalists have offered measured praise for water recycling; some have said that if the practice is adopted on a large enough scale, it might eventually make up for people crapping in drinkable water in the first place.
    
    source: The Wall Street Journal
    
    
    

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