SAN FRANCISCOâ Friends of the Earth, Pacific Environment, and the Center for Biological Diversity, national and international conservation organizations with a combined membership of more than 120,000 people, today joined a notice of intent to sue the National Marine Fisheries Service (submitted by the Environmental Defense Center in August) for the agency's failure to implement the 1998 Blue Whale Recovery Plan. Among other actions, the recovery plan mandates that the Fisheries Service identify and implement methods to eliminate or reduce blue whale mortalities from ship strikes. The agency has failed to take this required action for more than a decade, despite the ship-strike deaths of at least five blue whales in Southern California in 2007, and two additional ship-strike mortalities along the California coast in October 2009.
San Franciscoâ The Center for Biological Diversity, Northern California River Watch, and Coast Action Group today sent notice of intent to sue California's State Water Resources Control Board for authorizing water diversions that harm federally protected salmon and steelhead trout in the Russian River and Gualala River watersheds.
Flagstaff, Ariz.â Monday the Center for Biological Diversity, Grand Canyon Trust, and Sierra Club filed suit in an Arizona federal court challenging the Bureau of Land Management's approval of the restart of a defunct uranium mine just north of Grand Canyon National Park.
GRAND FORKS, North Dakota â 100% renewable jet fuel developed by the Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) at the University of North Dakota and the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has won the Best of What's New Award from Popular Science Magazine in the aviation and space category. The awards are announced in the December issue of Popular Science, which is on stands now.
LONDON - In Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet, published by Earthscan this week, Professor Tim Jackson raises fundamental questions about the economics needed to tackle climate change. Jackson argues that, faced with the limits imposed by carbon sinks and the scale of âde-carbonization' of the world's economy required to stay within them, continued economic growth in the already affluent world does not offer the solution; it represents the problem.
San Jose, Costa Rica - "Imagine a 21st century green revolution for agriculture that, unlike its 20th century forerunner, does not depend on petrochemicals, deforestation and enormous inputs of water to fuel its growth, but instead focuses on something that has largely disappeared from the worldâextensionâor training farmers in good practices," said Tensie Whelan, president of the Rainforest Alliance, during her remarks at the Sintercafe annual coffee conference in Costa Rica today.
For the past eight years, the prestigious GLOBE Awards for Environmental Excellence have recognized extraordinary Canadian companies and industry groups who have managed to balance competitive business strategies with outstanding leadership in environmentally sustainable practices.
WASHINGTON- A coalition of conservation groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of Blackwater, Southern Appalachian Forest Coalition, The Wilderness Society, and Wild South, filed suit Thursday in federal court in Washington, D.C., seeking to overturn a Bush-administration decision stripping the West Virginia northern flying squirrel of protection under the Endangered Species Act.
San Francisco- The National Marine Fisheries Service announced that it will develop a recovery plan for threatened green sturgeon. The notice appears in today's Federal Register.
November 1, 2009 - At the Coastal and Estuarine Research Foundation (CERF) Conference in Portland, OR, The University of West Florida (UWF) received a $25,000 grant from the YSI Foundation to synthesize water quality data and address issues of climate change.
SACRAMENTO, Calif.- The Center for Biological Diversity filed a formal letter Tuesday with the California Air Resources Board demanding that the board revoke its illegally adopted "Forest Project Protocol," which gives carbon credits to forest projects involving clearcutting and other destructive practices and thus contribute to greenhouse gas emissions instead of helping reduce them.
CHICAGO, Nov. 10-- Modern culture's gift-giving often comes at the expense of our environment (during the month of December, it's been estimated that households generate and extra 1 million tons of garbage per week). The holidays are the perfect opportunity to make a significant, long-lasting difference for the environment - by giving gifts that actually help people consume less, preserve natural resources and save money.
"We pioneered the concept of gifting reusables five years ago," stated Vincent Cobb, founder of Reuseit.com. "With each reusable you gift, you effectively empower the recipient to reduce thousands and thousands of disposables.
10 November 2009, Port Ghalib, Egypt. On Sunday, 8 November, two small islands fighting rising seas and growing storm surges driven by climate change were joined by a growing army of nations in their battle to phase down super greenhouse gases.
"For the 193 national delegations gathering in Copenhagen for the U.N. Climate Change Conference in December, the reasons for concern about climate change vary widely," says Lester R. Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute, in a recent release, "The Copenhagen Conference on Food Security." "For delegations from low-lying island countries, the principal concern is rising sea level. For countries in southern Europe, climate change means less rainfall and more drought. For countries of East Asia and the Caribbean, more powerful storms and storm surges are a growing worry."
Saltworks Technologies, a Vancouver, BC cleantech company, is positioned to revolutionize the desalination industry with a breakthrough technology that uses far less energy than current commercial processes.Â
GLOBE-Net (November 7, 2009) - Saltworks' proof-tested process employs an innovative thermo-ionic energy conversion system. The energy reduction is achieved by harnessing low temperature heat and atmospheric dryness to overcome the desalination energy barrier.
WASHINGTON- The Obama administration Friday issued its first review of species that are candidates for protection as endangered species, identifying a total of 249 species in need of protection. The review also describes the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's progress in listing these species, showing that the administration has, to date, only listed one species - a Hawaiian plant reduced to a handful of individuals.
New York - Experts warn that any international climate treaty or national climate legislation that fails to address forest and land use issues thoroughly and without delay will not be effective. To drive that point home, representatives of the nonprofit sustainability group the Rainforest Alliance will attend the Copenhagen climate treaty conference December 7-18.
Governments at the federal, provincial and municipal levels are increasingly adopting green building initiatives in an effort to meet several challenges, including the fluctuating cost of energy as well as the looming prospect of climate change.
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz.- A subsidiary of Massey Energy has begun mountaintop-removal coal-mining operations on Coal River Mountain in West Virginia, the only peak in Coal River Valley that hasn't been blasted away for mining. Blasting for the mine is taking place 200 yards from the Brushy Fork coal slurry impoundment, which holds 8 billion gallons of toxic coal sludge above the Coal River community.
Baltimore, November 2, 2009. Over 200 leaders from Maryland government, business, and academia are expected to gather on the evening of December 3 at the Miller Senate Office Building in Annapolis to pay tribute to The Maryland-Asia Environmental Partnership's (MD-AEP) 2009 Environmental Leadership Series hosts. The evening program will showcase Battelle; Coca-Cola Enterprises; I.M. Systems Group; Spiralcat of Maryland; University of Maryland College of Agriculture and Natural Resources; University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES); University of Maryland's ESSIC (Climate Change Center); and Zephyr Environmental Corporation.
"Can we change fast enough? When thinking about the enormous need for social change as we attempt to move the world economy onto a sustainable path, I find it useful to look at various models of change.," says Lester R. Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute, in a recent release, "Three Models of Social Change" "Three stand out. One is the catastrophic event model, which I call the Pearl Harbor model, where a dramatic event fundamentally changes how we think and behave.
PORTLAND, Ore.- A new study published in the international journal Conservation Biology, and authored by the Center for Biological Diversity's endangered species director Noah Greenwald, found that a policy issued by the Bush administration in 2007 wrongfully limited protections under the Endangered Species Act for five species: the northern Rocky Mountains gray wolf, Colorado River cutthroat trout, Preble's meadow jumping mouse, Gunnison's prairie dog, and southern rockhopper penguin.
Speaking today at a high-level debate in central London to mark the publication of his controversial new book Prosperity without Growth, Tim Jackson argues that building a new economic model fit for a low carbon world is 'the most urgent task of our times'.