Environmental Glance
Across the Dakotas and Nebraska, more than 1 million acres of the Great Plains are giving way to cornfields as farmers transform the wild expanse that once served as the backdrop for American pioneers.
This expansion of the Corn Belt is fueled in part by America's green energy policy, which requires oil companies to blend billions of gallons of corn ethanol into their gasoline. In 2010, fuel became the No. 1 use for corn in America, a title it held in 2011 and 2012 and narrowly lost this year. That helps keep prices high.
Vital prairies vanish in the US push for green energy
Colorado cities’ fracking bans could be canary in a coalmine
Three Colorado cities voted Tuesday to ban fracking, the kind of test that might be coming to states from California to North Carolina as oil and gas drilling surges from coast to coast.
The Colorado vote, happening in a state with a long history of energy development, was a trial of whether the oil and gas industry could overcome passionate opposition to the drilling practice that’s helped create an American energy boom.
Tsunami debris to wash onto US shores over next few years
Debris from the deadly tsunami that struck Japan in 2011 has been floating in the Pacific Ocean and will likely wash onto North American shores over the next few years, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
"A significant amount of debris has already arrived on U.S. and Canadian shores, and it will likely continue arriving in the same scattered way over the next several years," NOAA officials said in a statement.
Moratorium on fracking announced by Newfoundland government
Dalley started off the fall sitting in the House of Assembly by announcing that the government will not approve fracking onshore and onshore-to-offshore hydraulic fracturing pending further review.
Dalley said the government will be doing public consultation before it develops any policy for fracking. Both the Liberals and the NDP are supporting the move.
Dalley said this moratorium will allow an opportunity to review regulations, rules and guidelines in other jurisdictions, to complete the technical work necessary to fully assess the geological impact in western Newfoundland and, following this process, to undertake public consultation to ensure residents have an opportunity to comment and are fully informed before any decision is made.
Climate Change Report Sees Violent, Sicker, Poorer Future
WASHINGTON -- WASHINGTON (AP) — A leaked draft of an international scientific report forecasts that man-made global warming likely will worsen already existing human tragedies of war, starvation, poverty, flooding, extreme weather and disease.
The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will issue a report next March on how global warming is already affecting the way people live and what will happen in the future, including a worldwide drop in income. A leaked copy of a draft of the report's summary appeared online Friday.
Pacific Ocean warming 15 times faster than before
In a study out today in the journal Science, researchers say that the middle depths of a part of the Pacific Ocean have warmed 15 times faster in the past 60 years than they did during the previous 10,000 years.
Most of the heat that humanity has put into the atmosphere since the 1970s from greenhouse gas emissions has likely been absorbed by the oceans, according to the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations-sponsored group of scientists that issues reports every few years about the effects of global warming.
More Than 15 Million Americans Now Live Within One Mile Of A Fracking Well
The natural gas boom has led to an “unprecedented industrialization” of many Americans’ backyards, an analysis from the Wall Street Journal has found.
The WSJ looked at census and natural gas well data from more than 700 counties in 11 major natural-gas producing states, and found that at least 15.3 million Americans have a natural gas well within one mile of their home that has been drilled since 2000. That’s more than the population of Michigan or New York.
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