Climate Health

Critical List: Oil industry says it has jobs to offer; Senate could cut clean energy funding

Need a job? Alberta's tar sands industry wants YOU.

But if you want to stay in this country, never fear, the oil and gas industry wants to create jobs here. On the one hand: Yay jobs! On the other hand: Boo oil and gas industry!

A European court put the kibosh on honey that contains even a tiny bit of pollen from GMO crops. If we know Monsanto, they’re now working on a genetically modified bee that neutralizes evidence of genetic modification from the genetically modified pollen it collects.

Obama pulls a Bush on clean air

A deeper look at the politics and maneuvering leading up to the most outrageous environmental offense of the Obama administration.

Light pollution is stealing our night sky — here's how to get it back

This (left) is your sky. And this (right) is your sky on ONE MAJOR LIGHT SOURCE. So it's no surprise that suburban starscapes have been totally desaturated by the lights on buildings, roads, and parking lots. Less than half the U.S. -- and almost none of Europe -- has dark enough night skies to see the Milky Way.

By giving in to Big Oil, Obama seals his political fate

Obama is directing the EPA to withdraw standards that would have cut smog and asthma attacks, saved lives, and created jobs -- not a smart strategy for reelection.

Obama blows smog in everyone's face

President Obama has yanked back the EPA's proposed new restrictions on ground-level ozone (i.e. smog). That's a huge win for Big Business, which had claimed it couldn't weather an economic downturn AND keep from suffocating people at the same time. But it's an equally huge loss for everyone else -- especially since the reason the EPA was revising the smog standards in the first place was because the allowable limit was well above safe levels, according to the agency's science advisors.

GOP's dirty air hit list sacrifices Americans' health

House Republicans want to block "job-killing" clean air safeguards that every year prevent thousands of deaths, heart attacks, and asthma attacks, and millions of missed work and school days.

Critical List: Federally backed solar company closes; London drops carbon offset plan for Olympics

Solyndra, a solar company that had received more than $500 million in federally backed loan guarantees, is shutting down.

Vermont's still reeling from Irene.

Oklahoma lawmakers are looking for ways to block the Keystone XL pipeline locally.

The organizers of the 2012 London Olympics are dropping their plan to offset the Games' carbon emissions. Weak.

Koch Industries fights anti-terrorism regulations

Here's another bit of info to include in your "man, the Koch brothers are eeeevil" file. In environmental circles, the Koch family is best known for its funding of climate deniers, but Koch Industries also owns 56 facilities that use petrochemicals. The government is a teensy bit worried about the attraction these facilities could hold for terrorists, but the company has spent its time and money lobbying against stricter safeguards for chemical facilities. Hey, regulations are regulations, whether they protect against pollution or terrorism, and all regulations are for liberal weenies!

iWatch News found that 4.8 million people live within risky distance of these plants, and that:

Up close and personal with blight fungus and bugs

2011 is the International Year of Forests, and as part of their efforts to promote the sustainable forestry, the National Association of State Foresters, which represents state forestry agencies, and the National Network of Forest Practitioners, granted a fellowship to photographer Josh Birnbaum to document the state of the nation's forests.

Birnbaum's first stop was in West Virginia, where he hung out with young foresters (pictured above), visited with the wood industry, traveled with researchers to a post-mining reclamation area, and documented blight fungus.

Critical List: Keystone XL protests begin; Fukushima area could be uninhabitable for decades

In DC, protests against the Keystone XL pipeline began this weekend. The first round of protesters that cops arrested sat in jail through the weekend, longer than police had said they'd be detained.

The area around Fukushima has levels of radioactivity so high, it could be uninhabitable for decades.

The U.K. cycling industry contributes more than $4.7 billion to the country's economy each year.