Must Read

Climate Change Comes to your Garden

The USDA has been revising its Plant Hardiness Zone Map--used by "anyone involved with gardening, especially with perennials...to pick the right plants for their location”--and it will "make very clear how much rising temperatures have shifted planting zones northward."   [The Daily Climate]

Should Read

Don't Blame Cities

City-dwellers don't deserve disproportionate blame for their impact on climate change.  A new British report found that "urban residents generate substantially lower greenhouse gas emissions, which scientists blame for global warming, than people elsewhere in the country." It continues: "Although the concentration of people, enterprises, vehicles and waste in cities is often seen as a 'problem', high densities and large population concentrations can also bring a variety of advantages for ... environmental management." [Reuters]

Fires Underground

For 94 years abandoned coal mines have been burning underneath Central Pennsylvania.  Nobody will pay to extinguish them, and they've become a fact of life for generations in the Lackawanna river valley.   [The Economist]

NOAA's Role

Jane Lubchenco (who talked with OnEarth in 2007 about how to save the oceans) has been confirmed as head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and is promising to use her scientists to inform policymakers, just as Obama promises that the agency will play a larger role in the administration's attempts to combat climate change.  [Washington Post] 

Opinion

Lessons of the Exxon Valdez [New York Times]