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IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: The Green News Report’s 2010 Year in Review: Around the world and back again, the top green news stories of the year — from politics to the planet, a quick look back over where we’ve been … PLUS: Make the next year the greenest ever! …. All that and more in today’s Green News Report!
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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): Few mining sites restored after mining ends; Lower-carbon replacement for oil?: Pollutants, PCBs, retard boys’ growth: study; GE to pay $500 million fine for PCBs in Hudson River; Road salt bad for environment, health, water supplies; OPEC keeps oil above $91/barrel — heading to $200 oil?; China defends cuts in rare earth export quotas; EPA overstates coal waste’s value … PLUS: Antarctica: Unraveling the History Beneath the Ice ….
STORIES DISCUSSED IN TODAY’S ‘GREEN NEWS REPORT’…
- The Top Green News Stories of 2010:
- How Will We Know if 2010 Was the Warmest Year on Record? (Climate Central)
- Expect more extreme winters thanks to global warming, say scientists (Independent UK)
- 2010’s world gone wild: Quakes, floods, blizzards (AP)
- SLIDESHOW: Biggest Green News Stories Of 2010 (Huffington Post Green)
- The BEAST’s Most Heinous Climate Villians of 2010 (Buffalo Beast)
- Jan. 12th: Haiti Earthquake (CNN Special Coverage)
- Asia records its hottest temperature in history (Weather Underground)
- 2010 Pakistan Floods (NY Times Special Coverage)
- Russian heatwave kills 5,000 as fires rage out of control (UK Telelgraph)
- The climate change wake-up call: (Guardian UK):
The year 2010 started inauspiciously with the spectacular failure of the climate talks in Copenhagen in December 2009. The recriminations continued well into 2010 and the failure was compounded by the mid-term elections in the US, where the victory of the more conservative Republicans who were against any action on climate change meant the loss of any domestic legislation from Washington. With the global recession adding to economic problems, for most of 2010 the tide of policy and public opinion in much of the rich world was against taking any actions on climate change.
In much of the developing world, however, the picture was quite different. For many of the heads of state who had attended a climate change summit for the first time in Copenhagen, it was a wake-up call to the importance of the problem, which most of them had hitherto not fully appreciated. Thus, with greater public awareness of the climate change issue, together with increasing climatic events, such as the devastating floods in Pakistan, the issue has taken on an importance it did not have before Copenhagen. Many countries in the developing world have been implementing significant initiatives.
- 2010: Man-Made Disasters in the US: BP, Upper Big Branch Mine, and more…
- 2010 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill (New Orleans Times-Picayune Special Coverage)
- Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico (Mobile Press-Register Special Coverage)
- The Upper Big Branch Mine Explosion: Remembering 29 Miners Lost in West Virginia (Coal Tattoo, Charleston Gazette)
- 48 Coal Mine Deaths in 2010 Is Worst Since 1992 (ABC News)
- Make 2011 Your Greenest Year Ever!:
- 10 Green New Year’s Resolutions (Mother Jones)
- 10 Easy, Green New Year’s Resolutions for the Eco-Slacker (Treehugger)
- 25 New Year’s Resolutions for Going Green: Make a change in your life for the planet. (Planet Green)
‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (Stuff we didn’t have time for in today’s audio report)…
- AP Enterprise: Few sites redeveloped after mining (AP):
[D]ata obtained by The Associated Press indicates that just a small percentage of the leveled Appalachian mountain landscape has been transformed into new developments such as businesses, prisons, golf courses and subdivisions.
- A Lower-Carbon Route to Replacing Oil (NYT Green):
An emerging surfeit of natural gas has chemists and engineers studying how to turn it into pricier commodities, like diesel fuel or other oil substitutes.
- Pollutants in boys’ blood tied to lower growth (Reuters):
After following nearly 500 boys for three years, an international group of researchers found that those with the highest levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in their blood were nearly three centimeters (more than an inch) shorter than boys from the same region with the lowest amount of PCBs in their bodies.
..
Boys with the highest exposures also averaged two points lower in body mass index (BMI), a measure of weight relative to height.The authors found a similar pattern in boys with the highest exposure to the pollutant dioxin.
- GE expects $500 million charge for NY river cleanup (Reuters) [emphasis added]:
General Electric Co plans to put aside another $500 million to dredge toxic chemicals it dumped into New York’s Hudson River more than 30 years ago, bringing the clean-up bill to $1.33 billion over two decades.
…
GE dumped the chemicals, which it had used as an insulator in electric components, into a 40-mile stretch of the river north of the state capital Albany, some 150 miles north of New York City, for three decades prior to discontinuing their use in 1977. - Salt on the roads: Good for safety, bad for environment (Philadlephia Inquirer) [emphasis added]:
Over the last 60 years – pretty much since regular use of sodium chloride on roads began – the annual average sodium concentration in the Delaware River has nearly tripled and chloride has increased fivefold, researchers have found.
..
If current trends continue in the coming decades, however, experts say that aquatic life will suffer and water supplies could be threatened. Sodium is a concern for people with medical conditions such as hypertension. - Oil stays above $91 as OPEC signals no output hike (AP):
Oil prices hovered above $91 a barrel Monday in Asia as some OPEC ministers signaled the group doesn’t plan to boost output to cool the recent jump in crude.
- OPEC Caught Lying, $200 Oil is Imminent (Energy & Capital):
So your friendly neighborhood fuel gang has been breaking its output limit by 1.934 million barrels — everyday, all year long.
With crude at its highest price in two years, overproduction allows OPEC members to boost profits without formally changing output targets.
- China defends cuts in rare earth export quotas (Globae & Mail):
China defended its export controls on rare earth minerals on Thursday, saying that they were in line with World Trade Organization rules, after a government move to slash export quotas on rare earths sparked trade concerns.
China, which produces about 97 per cent of the global supply of the metals used in the production of numerous high-tech products, cut its export quota by 35 per cent for the first half of 2011 compared with a year earlier, saying it wanted to conserve reserves.
- Environmentalists claim EPA overstates coal waste’s value (Louisville Courier Journal):
Inflated values “could end up stacking the deck” in favor of weaker rules for managing the nation’s massive volume of ash and scrubber wastes from coal-fired power plants, said Eric Schaeffer, director of the Environmental Integrity Project, one of three groups participating in a telephone press conference on Wednesday.
- Antarctica: Unraveling the History Beneath the Ice: Melting ice offers scientists unprecedented opportunity to study newly uncovered geologic formations (NY Times)
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