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In the Case of Tar Sands Oil - Oils Well, Will Certainly Not End Well

Canada’s growing interest in exporting some of the dirtiest crude oil in the world is a threat to not only North America’s wildlife but also a rational energy policy and a stable atmosphere. NASA and climate scientist James Hansen called this project a climate game-changer because burning Alberta “tar sands” oil could raise CO2 levels in the atmosphere by 200 parts per million (ppm), pushing us dangerously away from the 350 ppm safety net that he and other scientists have recommend (we are currently at 390 ppm of CO2 and rising at about 1-2 ppm per year).
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Historic Temperate Rainforest Agreement Down to the Fine Print

After 30 years of controversy that tore at the social fabric of Tasmania, the federal and Tasmanian governments of Australia finally signed the Tasmanian Forests Intergovernmental Agreement to provide support and funding that will help the timber industry transition out of native-forest logging and will protect the region’s high-conservation-value rainforests. In sum, the government will provide much-needed financial support for workers and contractors to cease logging native forests while it takes legal steps to protect these forests as formal reserves similar to national parks.
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Why the Earth is Green: Trophic Cascades on Land and Water

We have been discussing the powerful and essential ecological link between apex predators, their prey, and the foods prey eat. Based on the revolutionary ideas of Hairston, Smith, and Slobodkin, who in 1960 ingeniously proposed that the world is green because predators limit their plant-eating prey, trophic cascades science has since then explored the consequences of predator removal from ecosystems worldwide.
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Assessing Emerging Challenges in U.S. Environmental Health

Lynn Goldman, a pediatrician and epidemiologist, has spent her professional life trying to understand and alleviate threats from environmental sources, including the impact of chemical exposures on children. Her interest in the field dates back to her childhood in Galveston, Texas, where she grew up along the Gulf of Mexico surrounded by oil refineries and chemical plants that lit up the night sky with eerie blue, green, and orange hues.
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Hazards of the Harvest: Children in the Fields

While the rest of the country has been experiencing an epic heat wave, in the Pacific Northwest where I live, thus far the summer has been unusually cool. One consequence of the cool weather is a slow-to-appear local tomato crop, made evident to consumers by some remarkably high prices. A pint of organic cherry tomatoes at my neighborhood market recently jumped more than a dollar within a week to $4.99, prompting me to wonder precisely what goes into the price of tomatoes.
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Aldo Leopold and the Mark of the Wolf's Tooth

In the early 1900s, while cruising timber as a young forester, American conservationist Aldo Leopold, founder of the science of wildlife biology, encountered a female wolf with her pups. The common wisdom of that era was that the only good predator was a dead one, so he and his crew opened fire. But as he stood there watching the “fierce green light” fade in the wolf mother’s eyes, he felt a sharp, surprising pang of remorse. It would take him decades to parse out his feelings about her death.
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EPA's Decision Not to Regulate Biomass Carbon Emissions Is Another 'Clean Energy' Smokescreen

Under the guise of what EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson described as "renewable, homegrown power," her agency just gave the green light to yet another destructive, unaccountable industry that unnecessarily threatens our climate, forests and health. Earlier this month, the EPA announced that it will give biomass-burning facilities a three-year reprieve on new federal greenhouse gas regulations . . . read the rest over at HuffingtonPost
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Two Unmentionable Words

I was in Salt Lake City some time ago and was advised sotto voce that it would be unwise to voice a certain term. In Kansas it’s just not done either, a local explained. Bruce Katz, who heads the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institute no less, suggested less offensive words. These unutterable words? Climate change. In large swaths of the country, bullying by climate-change skeptics has made these words unsuitable for use in civil discourse. “They just start arguments,” people have told me. “People can’t get past those terms. You’ll never reach them,” say most others.

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