NewsTrust - Environment - Most Recent Stories

US-Mexico Border Wall Slicing through Fragile Ecosystems

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Sean Sullivan, Amy Goodman - Apr. 27 (Special Report) - The wall went up and continues to be built in violation of 36 environmental laws including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the Clean Water Act. That’s because of Section 102 of the REAL ID Act, passed by Congress in 2005, that gives unprecedented power to the Homeland Security Secretary to waive all local, state, and federal laws in order to build walls and roads along all U.S. borders.

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Can Japanese scientists save a species, and that tasty sashimi on your plate?

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

GlobalPost - By Justin McCurry - Apr. 27 (News Report) - TOKYO — The next time you dine at a Japanese restaurant, try to steer clear of the tuna sashimi. If you're unable to resist the temptation — and, let's face it how many of us can? — make sure you savor every last slice. In just a few years, it may have disappeared from the menu for good. While Japan is often cast as the villain of the piece for its voracious consumption of bluefin, it may also offer the key to the species’ survival, thanks to a team of researchers working out of a laboratory in Tokyo.

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Group Sounds Alarm on European Bee Industry - NYTimes.com

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - Apr. 27 (News Report) - Last year, about 30 percent of Europe’s 13.6 million hives died, according to Apimondia figures. Losses reached 50 percent in Slovenia and as high as 80 percent in southwest Germany.

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Gone: Mass Extinction and the Hazards of Earth's Vanishing Biodiversity

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - Apr. 26 (Special Report) - Beyond a critical point, the collective body of a unique kind of mammal or bird or amphibian or tree cannot be salvaged, no matter the first aid rendered. Too few individuals spread too far apart or too genetically weakened are susceptible to even small natural disasters. A passing thunderstorm. An unexpected freeze. Drought. At fewer than 50 members, populations experience increasingly random fluctuations until a kind of fatal arrhythmia takes hold. Eventually, an entire genetic legacy, born in the beginnings of life on Earth, is smote from the future.

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Loon festival canceled - lake is drying up

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

San Francisco Chronicle - By Sandra Chereb - Apr. 26 (Special Report) - the reason is Walker Lake itself. Its water quality and levels have declined and along with them the rich bounty of small fish that attracted the loons. The result: Hawthorne's Loon Festival, held each year in late April, was canceled, replaced by a day to bring awareness to Walker Lake's teetering ecosystem and ongoing, multimillion-dollar and multifaceted efforts to save it from a salty demise.

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Plastic. Fantastic?

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Jennifer Kahn - Apr. 26 (Special Report) - As the most visible evidence of a disposable, trash-addled society, plastic has become the emblem of a world swimming in waste. Reportedly, plastic shopping bags are used an average of just 12 minutes before being thrown away. Every year, more than 500 billion plastic bags are discarded worldwide; they wave from tree branches so abundantly that South Africans have dubbed them their "national flower," and no fewer than six countries have enacted bans. Shredded packaging fouls shorelines and turns up in the stomachs of trout, albatross, and sea turtles (which mistake plastic bags for jellyfish). In the Pacific Ocean, currents feed scraps into a thousand-mile-wide gyre of synthetic jetsam.

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Western Slope officials split on promise of a nuclear-powered oil-shale industry

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Colorado Independent - By David O. Williams - Apr. 26 (News Report) - “Quite frankly, and this is a throwback to the Bush administration, but if we’re going to spend all of this money on this technology for extraction of these natural resources, why don’t we put an equal amount into renewables and an equal amount into new technology for transportation that would allow us to get away from this natural resource or at least augment this natural resource to the point where we’re not so dependent on it?” Lambert said.

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Cancer-Causing Toxins Detected in Fluoride Chemicals

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Reuters - Apr. 26 (Investigative Report) - Traces of arsenic, copper, lead and other impurities were found in samples of chemicals used to fluoridate public water supplies between the years 2000 and 2006, reports the Centers for Disease Control.

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How Carbon Caps Could Help Detroit

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Forbes - By Andy Stone - Apr. 25 (News Report) - The auto industry that emerges from the current crisis will face tough new environmental standards, and that's not all bad.

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Moore’s Law and the Law of More

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Thomas L. Friedman - Apr. 25 (Opinion) - “Right now we’re paying a huge price — a tax — for everyone trying to achieve more in an unsustainable way. But the ‘More Tax’ is not imposed by the U.S. government. It is a tax imposed by the market and will continue rising indefinitely as more and more people want more and more stuff. It will steadily drive up gasoline prices, home heating prices and factory electricity prices. But because this ‘More Tax’ is set by the market and not the government, many opponents contend that there’s nothing to be done: ‘Oh, $4.50 a gallon gasoline — that’s just the market at work. We can’t do anything about that.’ And then all that tax money out of your pocket goes to enrich oil companies and petro-dictators.

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An Inconvenient Truth for the GOP