Our second member spotlight goes on independent producer and reporter Patricia Sagastume, whose blog covers South Florida issues. Her recent radio piece, which aired on the independent WLRN Miami Herald News, offers a unique perspective on the potential of wind farms to stimulate jobs and tourism in economically depressed communities. Have a listen!
"Polar bears are capable of swimming vast distances, a potential survival skill needed in an Arctic environment where summer sea ice is vanishing, a study led by the U.S. Geological Survey showed on Tuesday."
"HOUSTON -- Aubrey K. McClendon built Chesapeake Energy into the nation’s second-largest producer of natural gas through a combination of debt, foresight, luck and sheer bravado. Now both he and the company have been forced to add humility to the mix."
The resignation of EPA Region 6 Administrator Al Armendariz has not resolved much. Conflicts over oil-industry pollution and whether laws against it should be enforced remain intense in parts of Texas where people are making money from the pollution while others fear they are being made sick by it.
Gabriel Nelson reports for Greenwire May 1, 2012.
"Despite investigations by four special committees, key questions remain about the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the world's worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl."
"WASHINGTON — The heavy fuel that oceangoing vessels burn adds so much to air pollution hundreds of miles inland that the United States joined with Canada during the George W. Bush administration to ask the International Maritime Organization to create an emissions-control area along the coasts. Large ships would be required to reduce pollution dramatically in a zone 200 miles out to sea along all the coasts of North America, mainly by using cleaner fuel."
"U.S. EPA is writing rules that would require pollution-discharge permits for the muddy runoff from logging roads -- regulations mandated by a court ruling that sparked bipartisan political backlash."
"Some of the main proposals in a draft text for negotiation at a U.N. sustainable development conference next month are being watered down at informal talks in New York, observers said on Tuesday, heightening fears the summit will fail to deliver."
"In a year of wild weather so far, hardly anyone would use the word 'normal' in predicting what to expect in the future – except for long-range forecasters talking about the coming hurricane season.
Early headlines in some "news" media about a study discussing the effect of wind turbines on local microclimates drastically misstated the findings and implications of the study, various debunkers point out.
