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Obama loves high-speed rail

“If you think about the Midwest, think about right here, what we’ve got is all kind of towns that we could connect. All of these cities are, they basically take […]

Athletes forgo masks; Beijing skies gray on Olympics eve

Athletes, journalists, and world dignitaries were greeted with a thick white haze yesterday and today as they descended upon Beijing for the start of the Olympic Games. Much to the […]

Snippets from the news

• California OKs giant desalination plant. • Monsanto will sell dairy hormone business. • Mainstream media science coverage declining. • Cause of tropical deforestation has shifted from poverty to industry. […]

IOC and multi-nationals complicit in subjecting world class athletes to world class pollution

You can’t criticize awarding the Olympic Games to China just because their rapacious coal-building policy has now made them the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions. By that standard, […]

Obama softens opposition to offshore drilling, common insecticides causing health problems, and more

Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: Thrills, Drills, and Bills Oil Vey Same Coal Story Doom Where Your Plant Is The Life of Py Read the […]

Snippets from the news

• Wal-Mart lobbies against carbon-offset guidelines. • What’s the climate impact of junk mail? • Household PCs go on an energy diet. • California school buses will get cleaner. • […]

Beijing skies vary days before Olympics

Monday: Taken from a Beijing apartment on Aug. 4:

Tuesday: Proving that the weather and pollution levels are completely unpredictable, the weather of Aug. 5 was sunny and clear:

A silver lining to all this pollution pandemonium? After the Olympic games China will start to monitor two pollutants not currently figured into the Air Pollution Index: ozone and small particulate matter PM2.5.

And James Fallows of the Atlantic reports that at least one of the new four subway lines in Beijing works smoothly.

Snippets from the news

• Pizza Hut will deliver “all-natural” pie with organic tomatoes. • Alaska sues over polar-bear listing. • Exposure to Agent Orange doubles veterans’ risk of prostate cancer. • California public […]

Gorilla census finds 125,000 more western lowland gorillas than expected

A new gorilla census in the Republic of the Congo has found about 125,000 more western lowland gorillas than expected living in the northern part of the Montana-sized country, effectively […]

Snippets from the news

• San Francisco mayor signs nation’s toughest green-building law, proposes fines for unsorted trash. • British energy companies told to reallocate funding from cutting emissions to helping the fuel poor. […]