|
|
While the White House, Congress and the oil industry fight over the controversial deepwater drilling moratorium, a federal judge quietly made a significant decision on the next frontier of offshore oil and gas exploration: the Arctic seas. Yesterday U.S. District judge Ralph Beistline blocked energy companies from developing oil and gas leases worth billions of [...]
While the rest of us wait to see whether a brewing storm will bring oil spill containment and cleanup on BP’s spill to a halt—just when the endgame had begun—the oil industry is moving on. Yesterday four of the biggest oil companies announced they were committing $1 billion to build a rapid-response system to cleanup [...]
Shortly after taking office in May, Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron said that he wanted his new administration to “be the greenest government ever.” He’s not off to a good start. On Thursday, Cameron’s Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman announced that the government will stop funding the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC), its independent environmental watchdog and [...]
I had the chance to go on the Leonard Lopate show on WNYC yesterday afternoon to talk about the renewed push to regulate antibiotics used for growth promotion in farm animals. With the Food and Drug Administration now urging meat producers to limit the amount of drugs they give their animals—over concern about the rise [...]
Time to play good news/bad news on the Gulf spill once again. Good news: retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad W. Allen told reporters today that he was all but ready to authorize BP’s static kill procedure, which would involve pumping mud in through the containment cap, and that it could begin within 48 hours. If [...]
Let’s put this out there first: I do not know much about cosmetics. I have deodorant and shaving cream and—because I burn in the sun faster than Robert Pattinson in Twilight—lots and lots of sunblock. The average American uses 10 personal care products a day, and I am sub-average. But I do know that government [...]
Burn carbon—it’s good for the marmots. Not a slogan you’re likely to see at the next climate change rally, but according to a new study published in the July 21 Nature, it might just be true—at least for a little while. Scientists led by Arpat Ozgul, an ecologist at University Imperial College London, examined more than three [...]
It has long been said of renewable energy sources that they cannot survive without subsides. But the dirty secret of fossil fuels is that they, too, receive tax payer support—even in environmentally friendly Europe. On Wednesday, the European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, announced that state subsidies for loss-making coal mines should [...]
Like recovering alcoholics who’ve just come out of an AA meeting, the joint BP-government team overseeing the well containment efforts is taking it one day at a time. At his afternoon briefing, retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad W. Allen announced that he had authorized BP to keep the containment cap shut and the well integrity [...]
Over in the Wellness blog, TIME’s Alice Park asks how safe Gulf seafood is? And the answer is: pretty safe, although oysters might take a while longer to bounce back. Read her post here.
