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 […]
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. […]
The largest lease holder in Canada’s oil sands is a subsidiary of Koch Industries, the conglomerate that is the source of the fortune owned by the controversial conservative political donors, Charles and David Koch. The Alberta, Canada, tar sands operations. Photo credit: Occupy.com The Koch’s holdings in the tar sands were disclosed by Koch Cash, an activist […]
On March 13, a handful of local residents blocked a road through the forest in southern Illinois and attempted to prevent a contractor for Peabody Energy, the world’s largest coal company, from bringing in logging equipment to clear the area for a new 1,000-acre mine. Opponents of the Rocky Branch strip mine in Illinois block logging equipment […]
In a bid to increase awareness of the health, environmental and monetary benefits of tap water, Yarra Valley Water launched Be Smart. Choose Tap. To continue in its efforts, the Australian-based utility released a satirical video last October showing why tap is the logical solution over bottled water. The video went viral this week after it […]
It’s no secret that multiple countries within the European Union have a strong track record in onshore and offshore wind energy. However, the latest report from the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) frames the advances of wind energy around an issue that won’t disappear anytime soon—water security. EWEA’s Saving Water With Wind Energy begins with statistics […]
British scientists have identified yet another twist to the threat of global warming. Any further rises in temperature are likely to accelerate the release of methane from rivers, lakes, deltas, bogs, swamps, marshlands and rice paddy fields. Most of the methane in freshwater systems is produced by an important group of microbes called Archaea that live in […]