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Fisheries Service releases yet another Northwest salmon recovery plan

The third draft of a federal plan for protecting endangered salmon and steelhead in the Northwest’s Columbia and Snake Rivers does not propose breaching the four hydroelectric dams that block […]

The vampire slayer goes green

Buffy is back in Climate Progress. I'll take any excuse!

Turns out former Buffy star Sarah Michelle Gellar is green, or at least green-tinged, like those monsters she used to fight.

She brings her own reusable bag to Whole Foods. Why? "So I get a discount." Okay so the millionaire actress is cheap frugal. You got a problem with that?

She also rides a bike, to the annoyance of her neighbors:

Not only is it bright pink with the bell and streamers and the whole thing, but it has Hello Kitty tires. Every time I leave my apartment, my doorman just shakes his head.

Interestingly, some of the demons on Buffy spin-off Angel were also green, figuratively speaking. For the sake of its vampire employees, the Los Angeles offices of Wolfram & Hart employ "necro-tempered" tinted glass, which "filters out the constituents of sunlight that are dangerous to vampires while leaving the brightness intact. Plus it's thirty percent more energy efficient!"

And you thought TV was a vast wasteland.

Researchers quantify U.S. wildfire carbon emissions

The estimations are in on the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere from Southern California’s recent wildfires. And the winner is … somewhere between about 6 million tons […]

Oxfam warns Europe’s biofuel boom likely to worsen plight of world’s poor

The anti-poverty charity Oxfam said this week that the European Union’s rush to biofuels could hit the world’s poor quite hard. The group released a report about the issue suggesting […]

U.S. recalls 440,000 more leaded toys, including novelty teeth

If Halloween itself wasn’t the fright-fest you’d hoped for, maybe the most recent round of leaded-toy recalls will do the trick. This week’s list includes 1,500 Ribbit board games, 16,000 […]

Mercury pollution is driving loons crazy

This year I spent some lazy late-summer days watching loons patrol a wilderness area lake I'd backpacked to. I should have been totally relaxed and enjoying this gorgeous and remote spot in the Adirondacks, but I couldn't help wondering if these birds had succeeded in hatching a brood, with no sign of little ones about. A friend at the Biodiversity Research Institute had told me of a paper they were soon publishing, which demonstrated the negative impacts of methyl mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants in the Midwest on loon behavior, physiology, survival, and reproductive success in the Northeast. The most impacted pairs David et al studied showed signs of lethargy and aberrant behavior (crazy loons), and they also "fledged" 41 percent fewer young. The birds' body burden of mercury increased 8.4 percent each year during the study. Sobering and awful.

So I cheered this month when I heard that New Source Review rules had been used by my state and seven others to successfully sue an Ohio company for acid rain impacts on wildlife, ecosystems, and structures in the Northeast. While acid rain is only peripherally related to the mercury problem we have from those same plants, it's a step in the right direction, and as this article points out, it's really good news for two reasons.

Progressive pundits don’t seem to be fully grappling with the oil problem

Earlier this week, Joe Romm said he doesn’t see peak oil radically changing U.S. culture, since hybrids and plug-in hybrids will reduce the fuel necessary to get around. Matt Yglesias, […]

Today’s Dilbert

Groups will sue over protections for giant spitting worm

No Halloween would be complete without an update on the Palouse earthworm, which can grow up to three feet long, spits on predators, and smells like flowers — even when […]

Sierra magazine names top 10 green colleges

Perhaps inspired by yours truly, Sierra magazine has named America’s top 10 “coolest” green schools — from 850-student Warren Wilson College in North Carolina to the University of California, which […]