Environment & Climate
Today, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) released their much-anticipated Green New Deal with the goal of creating millions of jobs by expanding renewable energy and de-carbonizing the economy over the next 10 years. It’s a sweeping attempt to reorient energy production and shift public resources in an urgent bid to make the U.S. carbon-neutral by 2030. And it comes at a crucial moment, as dire scientific evidence shows the world needs to act fast over the next 12 years to avert the worst impacts of climate change.
Can the Blue Wave Deliver a Green New Deal?
The Nation
Amid raging California wildfires, rising sea levels, and a sudden wave of Democratic power in Congress, the idea of a Green New Deal to create millions of new jobs combating the climate crisis is surging.
Beauty and Plunder in Wyoming
The Progressive
Each night, during four viciously cold, wind-throttled months in Cheyenne, Wyoming, this past winter, I gazed out my window at a hideous beauty: a hissing tongue
of oil fire erupting from a refinery, flaring like a devil’s flame, licking eastern Wyoming’s towering high plains sky. Above the gaseous bursts, the night subsumed everything beneath it with an all-consuming hugeness, pockmarked by cold-shined moon and stars.
New Rules to Stem Pollution from Factory Farms Draw Fire
The Christian Science Monitor
Living a half-mile downwind from 12,000 hogs has been hard on Sharlene Merk, of Audubon, Iowa. It's beyond smelly; it's a health hazard, says Mrs. Merk, a longtime farmer who, with her husband, once raised hogs. Ammonia and hydrogen sulfide fumes are a natural byproduct of the animal farms that supply America's meat. But as farms expand - some housing close to 100,000 livestock - so have concerns about air quality and the impact on people nearby. Studies near bigger farms, for example, have documented high rates of respiratory illness in the human population.
Drilling for Water in the Mojave
The Progressive
The sun-seared Movaje Desert serves up some of the Earth’s hottest summer days, firing the mercury above 120 degrees; just four inches of rain trickle from these unforgiving skies each year. In this parches beige moonscape there’s not much room for error. A troll in the wrong direction without enough water can spell death.
High-Tech's Toxic Toll
SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN (award winner)
On April 16, in Building Three of MMC Technology’s CD-ROM plant in San Jose, the lid exploded off a 55-gallon drum, sending up a cloud of toxic chemicals and a splash of nitric acid. The San Jose Fire Department’s Hazardous Incident Team evacuated the building and cordoned off the area. Workers, dressed like surgeons in head-to-toe sterile suits, filed out of the plant as the ambulances arrived.