TOP STORY

E.P.A. Halts Three More Mountaintop Removal Permits

In what's becoming a recurring headine, the E.P.A. is " is objecting to three more federal permits for mountaintop-removal coal mining," expressing "concern that the permits would threaten water quality," and "saying they failed to adequately account for the effects of dumping rock from blasted mountaintops into valley streams and rivers."  [Greenwire-NY Times]

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Solar-Powered City in the Sunshine State

An old NFL lineman (turned developer) yesterday unveiled a "startlingly ambitious plans for a solar-powered city of tomorrow in southwest Florida's outback, featuring the world's largest photovoltaic solar plant, a truly smart power grid, recharging stations for electric vehicles and a variety of other green innovations."   [Time]

What Will Global Warming Look Like?  Australia

Many climate scientists are looking to Australia as global warming's "harbinger of change." The nation is "beset by prolonged drought and deadly bush fires in the south, monsoon flooding and mosquito-borne fevers in the north, widespread wildlife decline, economic collapse in agriculture and killer heat waves."   [LA Times]

LAMBASTINGS

George Monbiot rails on the plastic bag--not as an environmental ill, but as a dangerous distraction.  [The Guardian]

Dave Roberts rails on Tom Friedman's "train wreck" of a column, calling it "head-slappingly wrong on the merits,  politically naive and tone deaf, and timed so poorly as to be malicious."  [Grist]

Everyone rails on Mark Morano--original Swift Boater, longtime anthropogenic global warming denier, and former spinmeister for Senator James "climate change is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people" Inhofe--and his new ClimateDepot misinformation portal (link intentionally excluded), but Chris Mooney sums it up best.  [The Intersection]