Planetsave

Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and stay up to date.

The Bureau of Land Management has reversed it’s 22  month moratorium on new applications for solar power development on public lands.

In a statement issued today, the BLM said it will continue to process the applications while, “continuing to identify issues during public scoping underway for the programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS).

In the statement, BLM Director James Caswell said:

“We heard the concerns expressed during the scoping period about waiting to consider new applications, and we are taking action. By continuing to accept and process new applications for solar energy projects, we will aggressively help meet growing interest in renewable energy sources, while ensuring environmental protections.”

Read the rest of this entry »

I want to thank everyone who entered the contest to win ROTHBURY Music Festival tickets. There were so many smart, thoughtful, and creative answers that choosing a winner was no easy task. I wish I could give everyone a pair of tickets, but alas I cannot not. There were several answers vying for the top spot, therefore, spelling, syntax, and grammar all ended up playing a tie-breaking role.

The winning submission was sent to us by Mary Lemmer, a student at the University of Michigan, who, like many of the entrants emphasized the gains made by the environmental movement while also pointing to the insufficiency of those gains in terms of actual substantive achievement. Mary wrote:

“Youth across the nation are energized about issues concerning global warming, alternative fuels, and other environmental topics. Young adults are driving the sustainability movement, studying related topics, encouraging people to recycle, and proclaiming the green word!

Read the rest of this entry »

I am still waiting to hear back from a spokeswoman at the USDA to find out the answer to the question I posed last week: who is in charge of protecting us from crops affected by flood water? In the meantime, I got an alert from the Centers for Disease Control about contaminated water in Iowa.  I can tell you, dear reader, that while you may not want to eat food grown along flooded riverbeds, you most definitely do not want to walk in that water, particularly if you have open sores or cuts on your feet and legs.  Exposing a sore on your skin to contaminated water puts you at risk for a nasty infection.

Read the rest of this entry »

Few places on Earth are as untouched as the “Crown of the Continent” — a 10-million-acre expanse of mountains, valleys and prairies in Montana and Canada. The area has sustained all the same species — including grizzlies, lynx, moose and bull trout — for at least 200 years.

Now — in one of the most significant conservation sales in history — The Nature Conservancy and The Trust for Public Land have preserved 320,000 acres of forestlands in western Montana that provide valuable habitat for species in the Crown of the Continent.

“There hasn’t been an animal extinction here since Lewis and Clark encountered it in the early 19th century,” explains Kat Imhoff, the Conservancy’s state director in Montana. “It’s the only such ecosystem in the Lower 48 states.”

The deal is part of the Conservancy’s large-scale efforts to protect forestlands around the world — the majority of which are working forests supplying sustainably harvested timber.

Over the past five years, the Conservancy has protected 3.5 million acres of forestlands — at a time when nearly one-half of Earth’s original forest cover is gone and global deforestation rates continue to rise. Read the rest of this entry »

A Superior Court Judge in Fulton County, Georgia has ruled that construction of Dynegy’s Longleaf plant be halted until it is assured the plant will limit the amount of carbon dioxide it releases.

The original permit would have allowed the plant to emit 9 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, something the court said was unreasonable.

The court cited the Supreme Court’s 2007 ruling recognizing that carbon dioxide is a pollutant under the federal Clean Air Act.  It’s the first time any court has applied the ruling to an industrial source.

Commenting on the ruling, Bruce Nilles, director of the Sierra Club’s National Coal Campaign said:

“Coal-fired power plants emit more than 30% of our nation’s global warming pollution.  Thanks to this decision, coal plants across the country will be forced to live up to their clean coal rhetoric.”

Read the rest of this entry »

The four-day ROTHBURY music and camping festival is being promoted as a “cultural assembly; one where music fans, artists and progressive thinkers gather to celebrate much more than music.” It is ROTHBURY’s goal to harness the unique energy of the live music community into a durable social movement toward an important cause: Climate Change and Clean Energy Alternatives.

Featuring a diverse musical line-up including Widespread Panic, Modest Mouse, Trey Anastasio, Dave Mathews Band, Primus, and many, many more - the festival is certain to be one of the best gatherings of the summer.

Well, would you like to go to ROTHBURY: The Music Festival With A Purpose at the Double JJ Ranch in Michigan this weekend, July 3rd - 6th?

I figured as much. And because I’ll be covering the event for the Green Options Media Network, and reporting back all week, I was able to score a few extras that I’d like to share with our readers. But I can’t just give them away, so in 100 words or less, answer the following question:

What is right, and what is wrong, with the environmental movement today?

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve covered the fate of the Arctic sea-ice for almost a year now, watching as report after report came out spelling doom for our northern pole. At the beginning of September last year I wrote a post called “Summer Ice to Disappear by 2030,” in which I quoted Dr. Mark Serreze, an Arctic specialist at the Boulder University of Colorado National Snow and Ice Data Center, saying that “It’s amazing. It’s simply fallen off a cliff and we’re still losing ice.”

Some near 10 months later, Dr. Serreze has predicted that, unless weather and ocean conditions change, it does not look like there will be any summer ice in the Arctic this year.

Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this week, several media outlets chose to dip their hands into the sensationalist journalism cookie jar a second time, and for all of the wrong reasons. About a month ago, an exciting story broke about how photographs of an uncontacted tribe living near the Brazil-Peru border had been taken for the first time. Now some media outlets, following the lead of the British newspaper The Observer, are calling the story a hoax.

Read the rest of this entry »

It All Depends On Who You Ask

Las Vegas Water Offical Warns Radioactive Levels Rising

Sunday’s news was a bit disconcerting, when I read a small story at Tri-State Online.  Pat Mulroy, head of the Southern Nevada Water Authority was quoted as saying measurable quantities of uranium are showing up in Colorado River water, something difficult and expensive to remove before passing it on to consumers in Las Vegas.

She blames upstream uranium mining, especially in the Moab, Utah area, so I decided to take a look and see what’s happening up there.

To the best of my knowledge, there are no operating uranium mines in or near Moab, UT, or anywhere in the state of Utah.  So, I felt Ms. Mulroy was referring to the uranium mill tailings just outside Moab, where they’ve been for decades after the failure of the Atlas Minerals Corporation mill. Read the rest of this entry »

For the 5th time in history, the House Natural Resources committee invoked its authority and ordered the Bush administration to stop mining claims in the Grand Canyon.  The measure was urged by Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva of Tucson, chair of the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forest and Public Lands.

The withdrawal halts thousands of mining claims in national forest areas surrounding the Grand Canyon amid fears that resumption of uranium mining presents a danger to drinking water for some 25 million people in the southwest.

Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano had requested that Interior Secretary Kempthorne withdraw the Grand Canyon area from mining.  The request was denied on the grounds that Congress must make the request.

The four previous emergency withdrawal authority requests were authored by Rep. Morris Udall, who was Chairman of the House Interior Committee.

Will the Bush administration abide by this authority, or is Bush still “the decider”?

Source:  Press Release from The Sierra Club

Image Credit:  www.inetours.com/…/ Tours/Grand_Canyon_7739.jpg