Environment

Plastic Bag Manufacturers Edit California Textbooks

by Anne Landman — August 23, 2011 - 1:33pm

The American Chemistry Council (ACC), a lobbying group representing plastic bag manufacturers, successfully convinced the California Department of Education to rewrite its environmental textbooks and teachers' guides to include positive statements about plastic grocery bags. ACC wrote a letter to education department officials that said in part, "To counteract what is perceived as an exclusively negative positioning of plastic bag issues, we recommend adding a section here entitled 'Benefits of Plastic Shopping Bags.'" The state's final document was, in fact, edited to contain a new section titled "Advantages of Plastic Shopping Bags."

Main Source: 
San Jose Mercury News, August 19, 2011
News

Tar Sands Action to Commence Saturday at White House

by Steve Horn — August 18, 2011 - 5:01pm
  • Topics: Activism, Corporations, Energy, Environment

    • Saturday marks the commencement of the Tar Sands Action, which will take place in front of the White House.

    It is a two-week long civil disobedience campaign, planned to last through September 3, demanding that the Obama Administration turn down the proposal to build the Keystone XL Pipeline.

    The 1,980-mile pipeline is slated to transport the dirtiest oil in the world from Alberta's tar sands down to southeast Texas. The pipeline's route overlaps with the Ogallala Aquifer, which supplies 82 percent of the people that live within the aquifer's boundary their drinking water. It would also snake through the Nebraska Sand Hills, which is a vital wetland ecosystem, containing a diverse array of plant and animal life.

    News

    Top Companies Claim To Fight Global Warming, But Sponsor ALEC’s Climate Denial

    by Anonymous — August 9, 2011 - 12:41pm
  • Topics: ALEC Exposed, Corporations, Environment, Ethics

    • (By Brad Johnson, reposted from ThinkProgress, August 8, 2011)

    The fight against global warming pollution requires the investment of everyone, including the world's multinational corporate giants. Many companies have taken official stances on climate pollution, pledging to reduce their greenhouse footprint in order to reduce the threat of a destabilized climate.

    However, a number of these same companies are sponsoring toxic, far-right denial of climate science. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) pushes an extremist denier agenda throughout the United States, funded in secret by corporations. ThinkProgress has acquired a list of the sponsors of ALEC's 2011 annual meeting, held last week in New Orleans, Louisiana.

    Study About Clouds' Effect on Global Warming Debunked

    by Anne Landman — August 5, 2011 - 3:49pm

    A small study by prominent climate change skeptic Roy Spencer is being dismissed by mainstream climate scientists as containing technical and theoretical faults that make it incorrect. The study, published in late July in the online, open-access journal Remote Sensing, examined the effects that cloud cover has on climate change, and concluded that clouds are more of a cause of global warming than an effect of it. Spencer is known for his views that climate change is not human-caused. His recent study concludes that the question of the role clouds play in global warming "remains an unsolved problem."

    Main Source: 
    Associated Press, July 29, 2011
    News

    ALEC Exposed: Warming Up to Climate Change

    by Jill Richardson — July 27, 2011 - 1:01am
  • Topics: ALEC Exposed, Global Warming, Energy, Environment

    • As the U.S. suffers through catastrophic tornadoes, heat waves, and other climate extremes -- no doubt just a small taste of what the climate crisis will bring in the future -- polluting industries and the politicians that serve them want to convince you that excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is actually a good thing.

    News

    Chesapeake "Declaration of Energy Independence": NAT GAS Act Embodied

    by Steve Horn — July 25, 2011 - 11:07pm
  • Topics: Energy, Environment, Propaganda, Public Relations

    • On July 11, Chesapeake Energy, the second largest methane gas corporation in the United States, announced its "bold new plan": a "Declaration of Energy Independence" for America's energy future. ("Natural gas" is the public relations term the industry uses for methane gas, because it sounds so much more appealing than the real name.)

    The plan is double-pronged and will no doubt lead to increased levels of fracking, the process drilling companies use to extract methane gas in areas like the Marcellus Shale and other shale deposits throughout the country. Fracking is a dirty process, as indicated by the Center for Media and Democracy's ongoing look into the state-by-state and federal legislative push for domestic gas drilling.

    Emails Show British Government Trying to Minimize Fukushima Disaster

    by Anne Landman — July 1, 2011 - 4:20pm

    Internal emails obtained by the UK Guardian show that British government officials colluded with nuclear power companies in the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi disaster to develop a PR strategy to downplay the severity of the event. Emails show the British government initiated contact with the nuclear industry about the debacle just two days after the earthquake and tsunami hit, and well before anyone knew the full extent of the disaster. The emails show close collusion between the power companies Westinghouse, EDF Energy, Areva and the UK government's Office of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) to try to ensure that the disaster in Japan wouldn't interrupt plans to build new nuclear power plants in Great Britain. In one email, an official in the BIS department expressed concern that the Fukushima disaster had "the potential to set the nuclear industry back globally," and wrote "We need to ensure the anti-nuclear chaps and chapesses do not gain ground on this. We need to occupy the territory and hold it. We really need to show the safety of nuclear." The business department argued that Fukushima was "not as bad as the 'dramatic' TV pictures made it look." An official, whose name has been blacked out, told Areva "We need to quash any stories trying to compare this to Chernobyl." You can read all 136 pages of the emails here.

    Main Source: 
    UK Guardian, June 30, 2011
    Op-Ed

    New York Governor Andrew Cuomo Opens Fracking Floodgates

    by Steve Horn — June 30, 2011 - 9:47pm
  • Topics: Corporations, Democracy, Energy, Environment

    • Coming on the heels of a neighboring state fracking ban in New Jersey, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, will make a momentous announcement at a press conference this morning: the moratorium on drilling for methane gas in New York's Marcellus Shale play is over, according to the New York Times.

    News

    Largely Symbolic: New Jersey Senate Bans Fracking

    by Steve Horn — June 29, 2011 - 11:00pm
  • Topics: Energy, Environment

    • On June 29, the New Jersey Senate banned fracking within state boundaries in a 33-1 vote. Fracking, also known as hydraulic fracturing, is the environmentally-hazardous process through which methane gas companies extract what the industry touts as "America's Clean Energy Future," methane gas. The drilling industry's public relations term for methane is "natural gas."

    While the ban is cause for celebration for those truly in favor of a "clean energy future," it is largely symbolic because only a tiny sliver of the Marcellus Shale actually touches the state. There is actually some truth to the statement made by Energy in Depth's Chris Tucker, who stated that the ban, by-and-large, is "irrelevant."

    Op-Ed

    What Happened to Media Coverage of Fukushima?

    by Anne Landman — June 23, 2011 - 12:41pm
  • Topics: Nuclear Power, Environment, Media

    • While the U.S. media has been occupied with Anthony Weiner, the Republican presidential candidates and Bristol Palin's memoir, coverage of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster has practically fallen off the map. Poor mainstream media coverage of Japan's now months-long struggle to gain control over the Fukushima disaster has deprived Americans of crucial information about the risks of nuclear power following natural disasters. After a few weeks of covering the early aftermath of Japan's earthquake and tsunami, the U.S. media moved on, leaving behind the crisis at Fukushima which continues to unfold. U.S. politicians, like Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, have made disappointing and misleading statements about the relative safety of nuclear power and have vowed to stick by our nuclear program, while other countries, like Germany and Italy, have taken serious steps to address the obvious risks of nuclear power -- risks that the Fukushima disaster made painfully evident, at least to the rest of the world.

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