Network News Launch - Earth Day Week // Current

Brazilian invents luminescent water-bottle lightbulbs

A man invented a lightbulb that uses no electricity or batteries which is made from empty plastic bottles filled with water and... more

cubbingabout
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Climate in crisis: massive cracks found in Arctic by Canadian military

The Canadian military has released evidence showing massive cracks in the Arctic Ice. The expedition found cracks that stretched... more

current89
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Who are the Polluters in San Francisco?

Being under an "Acoustic Attack Regime," is not a pleasant situation, at least for me. The reason is, I have an Acoustic... more

stopnoise
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Teen finds way to decompose plastic bags in just 3 months!

"If ordinary plastic bags would rot away like banana peels there’s no doubt a host of environmental problems would be... more

sapere_aude
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Obama, Clinton don't dare challenge King Coal's unspeakable environmental violence

It's the one environmental crime that no US politician will confront – the destruction of Kentucky's mountains. Leonard Doyle visits the Appalachian peaks being blasted by Big Coal.
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The road slicing through the thickly forested hills of eastern Kentucky used to be called the Daniel Boone Parkway. It was named for the controversial American folk hero who fought his way across Indian country to settle a state where many of his descendants still live.

That was before the coal industry began blowing up the Appalachian Mountains as a cheap way of getting at the black stuff below, behaviour decried by the environmental group Appalachian Voices as "one of the greatest human rights and environmental tragedies in America's recent history".

Daniel Boone's road is now the Hal Rogers Parkway, named after one of the Kentucky coal industry's closest friends in Washington, a Republican Congressman of 34 years. It passes through a mountain range older than the Himalayas and is blanketed in broadleaf forests rivalled only by the Amazon basin in its biodiversity.

But the canopy of trees which lines the parkway as it rises from the bluegrass horse country to the mountains is a trompe l'oeil. The lush forest gives way to scraggly trees along the ridge-line, and behind those trees is evidence of unspeakable ecological violence. In a process known as mountaintop removal an upland moonscape is being created, which is incapable of regenerating trees. As far as the eye can see, the land is grey and pockmarked with huge black lakes, filled with toxic coal slurry.

This has come about because of America's insatiable appetite for cheap coal to generate electricity, a process enthusiastically backed by the Bush administration as it tries to displace the consumption of imported oil. And the Democrats are little better. They control Kentucky and neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton have dared to challenge "King Coal" while campaigning.

The devastation being wrought on Appalachia is best appreciated from the air. An organisation called Southwinds offers people an eagle-eye view of the carnage, not readily appreciated from the road. Another way to see what's going on behind the ridge-line is to take a Google Earth virtual tour of an online memorial to the 470 mountains blown up and levelled in recent years.
It's the one environmental crime that no US politician will confront – the destruction of Kentucky's mountains.... more

JanforGore
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6 months ago

California air is three times more deadly than previously thought

According to information just released by the California Environmental Protection Agency's Air Resources Board (ARB) up to 24,000 deaths a year may be attributed to particulate pollution. The figure is triple that of previous official estimates.

The new data was compiled by USC, who tracked 23,000 people in greater Los Angeles, and the American Cancer Society, who tracked 300,000 people nationwide.

One the reasons that the new estimated death toll is so much higher, is that experts had previously underestimated the dangers of particulate matter, which is too small to be caught by the body's own nose and throat, hair and mucous filtration system, and lodges deep in lungs, causing all manner of health problems such as asthma, cancer and cardiovascular disease.

"Our report concludes these particles are 70% more dangerous than previously thought, based on several major studies that have occurred in the last five years," said the ARB's chief researcher, Bart Croes, in a statement to the Los Angeles Times. "There's no death certificate that says specifically someone died of air pollution, but cities with higher rates of air pollution have much greater rates of death from cardiovascular diseases."

As shown on the California Environmental Protection Agency maps above, California has more counties designated for nonattainment of PM-10 (particulate matter less than 10 microns in size) safety levels in the "serious" classification than the rest of the U.S. put together. A similar map also shows widespread non-compliance for PM-2.5 safety levels (a classification for smaller particles) in California.

Not un-coincidentally, according to data compiled by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in 1996, the top 5 metropolitan areas in the nation ranked by mortality rates attributable to particulate matter are all in California. The worst offender was Visalia-Tulare-Porterville, followed by Riverside-San Bernardino, Bakersfield, Fresno, and Stockton.

With such toxic air effectively fatally poisoning 24,000 people per year in the Golden State, drastic measures, such as the Bay Area's new pollution tax, are sorely needed.

"Particle pollution is a silent killer," said ARB Chairman Mary D. Nichols. "We must work even harder to cut these life-shortening emissions by further addressing pollution sources head-on."According to information just released by the California Environmental Protection Agency's Air Resources Board (ARB) up to... more