Mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic, maybe uranium in the walls around you? Why should that bother you? Have you renovated in the last 10 years? Most brands of sheetrock use coal ash as a component, which is known to contain these byproducts. Somehow the coal industry has managed to keep coal ash designated as non-toxic waste, in spite of those toxins.

When I heard that the administration was close to considering the regulations for coal ash, I knew it was time to resume my photo project.

The logistics of doing an aerial shoot, especially in the winter, are tricky. The weather changes so fast, with so few windows of clear sunny days, that to plan a trip to a distant locale and book a private plane for the photo flight is a real crap shoot.

In this case, I made the decision from New York on Sunday to fly Monday in North Carolina. How can we thank the heroes at Southwings who mobilized a pilot for the project with just 24 hours notice? The ...read full post

Yesterday India and China notified the United Nations that they would join the climate deal created at December's climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.

(Relive the fun with OnEarth's Copenhagen Climate Talks coverage.)

The Associated Press reports that "[A] one-sentence note from China's top climate change negotiator, Su Wei, authorized the addition of China to the list attached to the nonbinding accord brokered by President Barack Obama in the final hours of the December climate change summit in the Danish capital.

"India sent a note on Monday that it 'stands by the contents of the accord.'"

Among the world's top greenhouse gas polluters, with fast-growing industrial and consumer economies, it was crucial that China and India accept the Copenhagen pact. 
They're the last of the world's major ...read full post

Forgive us for indulging in a little self-promotion here, but OnEarth has just been nominated for TreeHugger's Best of Green Awards in the category of best political website.

That seemed a little odd to us at first -- we're journalists here, not politicians -- but considering who else is in the category, we're in very good company: Andy Revkin's Dot Earth, Mother Jones' Blue Marble, and Joe Romm's Climate Progress. Those are some of the must-reads for environmental news and commentary online, so we're quite happy to be included in that group.

Over the past six months or so, we've worked hard to make onearth.org a worthy online companion for NRDC's award-winning print magazine. We're digging up fascinating stories, hiring great writers to tell them, and providing perspective and commentary from bloggers and correspondents. We've also expanded our reviews section and produced more videos, slideshows, and interactive features. We're working ...read full post

Yes, the resurgence of the "climate-deniers" -- like weeds, or zombies -- is discouraging. But this resistance to scientific knowledge has a long history in the United States. Consider the enduring revolt by many conservative fundamentalists against Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

Quick recap: Darwin's Origin of Species was published in 1859. The landmark Scopes trial (the basis for the play and the film, Inherit the Wind) took place in 1925 in the state of Tennessee, which sought to bar the teaching of evolution in its public schools. Fast forward 80 years: the dispute over the validity of evolutionary theory has infamously (embarrassingly) been carried into the 21st century by, among others, the Kansas State Board of Education, the Dover, Pennsylvania, school board, and now, according to The New York Times, state capitols in Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Texas.

It appears that these two strains of deniers -- those questioning climate change ...read full post

A Katrina-like winter storm tore through parts of Western Europe early Sunday morning, killing over 60 people. Most of the dead are from Atlantic coastal France, where ( Per Agence France-Presse) winter storm Xynthia's 93-mile-an-hour winds and 26-foot waves hit the coast so ferociously that they breached many of the region's aging sea levees.

Between around 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. local time on Sunday, the sea surged at least 1,600 feet inland. Streets were flooded so fast that many people didn't have time to escape before their homes were inundated.

So no more lonely hearts for us: France joins the USA in being an industrialized nation where some combination of factors -- politics, money, inertia, carelessness? -- has left a coastal population fatally vulnerable to extreme weather.

Carolyn Bucley of Persac, France wrote in to the BBC News on Sunday that she had "spent the whole evening from 2100 (9:00 pm) right through to 0800 ...read full post

You probably don't give too much thought to coal ash.

You might want to change that.

The USA gets half its electricity from coal, produced by about 600 power plants , each of which produces about 325,000 tons of coal combustion waste (CCW), composed of fly ash, bottom ash, and scrubber slurry. This is nasty stuff. Industry tells us that it's not very harmful, but then you read the articles about the horrible birth defects and environmental consequences to the third world locations, unlucky enough to have a couple of shiploads dumped on them.

CCW contains a slew of nasties like arsenic, mercury, chromium, and cadmium, which tend to blow around and leach out into the water table (oops, don't drink that!)

Thank God the EPA hasn't recognized it for the toxic waste that it is, because the coal burners would have to treat it as such, which would be expensive {shudders.}

Did I mention that since the stuff is so ubiquitous, and after all, non-toxic, that ...read full post

If you're one of the hundreds of thousands of American birders, The American Bird Conservancy (ABC) has a suggestion for your summer vacation: spend your time and money investing in "conservation birding." You can see some of the most spectactular birds in the Americas (like the Yellow-scarfed Tanager, above) while helping to prevent their extinction.

ABC has partnered with bird conservation organizations in a dozen countries to set up thirty-six preserves covering a quarter-million acres of unique and critical bird habitat for more than 2,000 species. Eighteen of the preserves offer on-site lodging.

"Visiting birders can provide a source of direct financial support to the reserves," said Mike Parr, VP of ABC, at the project's recent unveiling, "helping them become self-sufficient and sustainable in the long-term."

A Birding Portal

Part of the project includes a resource-rich website, www.conservationbirding.org. From that site, you can read ...read full post

Judging from some of the backchannel chitchat I'm encountering, we environmental journalists are hitting our collective head against a wall over the near-deafening yawp from global warming deniers.

The ratio of science-literate to science-challenged responses in our blog comments, email, and in-baskets is so unbalanced, the scale is broken. And mainstream reporting on climate change remains stuck in a time warp, where a few big snowstorms during one winter on one small part of a big continent, undercut the veracity of years upon years of recorded temperature increases across the globe.

It's tempting to become dispirited about reporting on climate change. What's driving this hostility and inattention to facts?

To answer that question, journalists -- at least the ones who care about being effective on the job -- often look for clues in the psychology or intellect of the reader. Not surprising, since our goal is to present well-sourced ...read full post

Make Your Voice Heard for Climate Action: Call Your Senators This Week

The news out of Washington has grown discouraging lately. Lawmakers are bickering and Congress is in gridlock. Corporations, meanwhile, have been given license by the Supreme Court to purchase more political influence than ever before.
 
Many Americans are tempted to turn their backs on the DC infighting, but that would be a mistake. We still possess a powerful ability to influence our lawmakers. When we raise our voices loudly and fully enough, we can hit the core sensitivity of politicians: the desire for votes. They are still our representatives, after all, and they have to respond to public outcry.  
 
From Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to Wyoming's oil and gas fields, I've seen concerned activists demand the best of our lawmakers.
 
That citizen force is about to be unleashed again, and this time, it will be in support of the most critical ...read full post

Something to consider - many of us are still knee-deep in snow, but winter's not going to last forever, and with the prospect of rain in our future, it's never too early to start thinking ahead.

If you have any sort of garden, and you live where there's any sort of rain, it would be widely to your advantage to consider getting a rain barrel.

Rain barrels are big units that collect water run-off from the roof of your house. There are myriad obvious advantages. Many towns impose rules or bans on watering your plants, but if using natural rain water evades those regulations. Using rain water is, of course, free except for the price of the barrel and the labor involved in using it - both of which soon become negligible when the price of lawn and gardening, in summertime especially, is considered. Forty percent of the household water usually goes to the lawn in the summer - and in this economy, that adds up.

And, of course, using natural rain ...read full post