A new report released today by the Sierra Club and a coalition of 13 other organizations, including the Indigenous Environmental Network, examines the proposed expansion of the Alberta Clipper tar sands pipeline and concludes that there are significant threats to water, health and climate. The report, All Risk, No Reward: The Alberta Clipper Tar Sands […]
While Peabody Energy may have hired a notorious public relations firm to hawk its international ad campaign, a village trustee and her rural farming community have exposed the devastating legacy of the world’s largest coal company near its historic Illinois beginnings. Meet Judy Kellen and the courageous community of Rocky Branch in Saline County, IL, whose battle to save their […]
Why are so many people convinced that dairy is the best source of calcium? A strategic marketing campaign from the dairy industry would have us believe that by drinking milk, we will be protected from bone crippling osteoporosis, but the opposite may be true. Drinking milk leaches calcium from our bones and thereby creates a deficiency […]
At first glance, you might mistake the potential future of wind energy as a blimp—the type of added effect perfect for flying over a carnival or football game. Instead, the BAT—Buoyant Airborne Turbine—is a wind turbine inside of an inflatable, helium shell capable rising 1,000 feet above ground. Altaeros Energies, a firm housed at small business […]
Springtime is the time of year where we start to see the first signs of growth; the green shoots of what will turn into a verdant garden or a bountiful harvest. As the first quarter of 2014 comes to a close, we are seeing some encouraging signs that both electric vehicle sales and their benefits […]
When it comes to oil spills, there’s no substitute for prevention. The trouble is, 25 years after the Exxon Valdez spill fouled Alaska’s Prince William Sound and four years after the horrific events in the Gulf brought on by the Deepwater Horizon blowout, we can’t seem to stop spewing oil into our waterways. This NPR […]
Today the U.S. Supreme Court denied the coal mining industry’s request to hear a case against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for vetoing part of a permit for one of the largest and most harmful mountaintop removal coal mines in West Virginia’s history, the Spruce No. 1 mine. By declining to take the case the […]
Laura Mistretta is a senior Environmental Science and Policy major at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment. As a student of environmental science I have made it a priority to understand the root causes of climate change in the hopes of contributing to a solution. My classes have highlighted numerous possible points of intervention: […]
There are 80,000 people in the U.S. who are employed in the wind energy industry—an industry that has secured $105 billion in investments since 2005. At the same time, the cost to deploy the energy has dropped by 43 percent in four years and wind has risen to become the fifth-largest power source in the U.S. […]