This month, Edward Reilly, 35, finally let go of the television he had owned since his college days. Although the Mitsubishi set was technologically outdated, it had sat for years in Mr. Reilly’s home in Portland, Me., because he did not know what else to do with it, given the environmental hazards involved in discarding it. “It’s pretty well known that if it gets into the landfill, it gets into the groundwater,” he said. “Its chemicals pollute.”

By Leslie Kaufman - The New York Times , June 30, 2009

President Obama speaks of "a planet in peril." The president and the brilliant people he appointed in energy and science know that we must move rapidly to carbon-free energy to avoid handing our children a planet that has passed climate tipping points. The science is clear. Burning all fossil fuels will destroy the future of young people and the unborn. And the fossil fuel that we must stop burning is coal. Coal is the critical issue. Coal is the main cause of climate change. It is also the dirtiest fossil fuel — air pollution, arsenic, and mercury from coal have devastating effects on human health and cause birth defects.

By Dr. James Hansen | Yale Environment 360 - The Guardian | UK , June 26, 2009

The Peruvian media which is mostly biased and controlled by the government and corporate interests, is reporting that Police officers were kidnapped and massacred by the Indigenous peoples, but is not reporting about the abusive attack on civilians, and snipers and helicopters shooting at civilians including children. Witnesses have said that dead bodies were burned down and thrown to the rivers, and that police prevented civilians from rescuing injured protesters. Silence by the world should not be tolerated. We are the world.

by Arthur Brice - CNN , June 8, 2009

The Government’s car scrappage scheme should itself be scrapped, TV presenter Kevin McCloud told the Hay Festival. During a talk on sustainability, he said society needs to turn away from the rampant consumerism of the past and embrace preservation in order to save resources. “Forget the scrappage scheme – just buy less and use what you have got more,” Mr McCloud, presenter of Channel 4’s Grand Designs, told a near-packed pavilion yesterday.

WalesOnline.com | UK , May 31, 2009

For decades, the big oil companies and the farm lobby have been fighting about ethanol, with the farmers pushing to produce more of it and the refiners arguing it was a boondoggle that would do little to solve the country’s energy problems. So why are technicians for BP, the giant oil company, now working at an experimental ethanol plant in this old Louisiana oil town, helping to make it more efficient? The erstwhile enemies, it turns out, are gradually learning to get along, as refiners increasingly see a need to get involved in ethanol production.

By Clifford Krauss | Jennings, LA - The New York Times , May 27, 2009

Times are tough, jobs are scarce. New graduates are putting themselves to work on behalf of the good earth. Farms across the country area drawing a new batch of interns as farmhands. But do they know how to work?

By Kim Severson - The New York Times , May 23, 2009

De Rothschild has built a team he calls the Smart Collective to combat inefficient design. He brought together a group of intelligent folks who had never built a boat before to design the Plastiki. And it hasn’t been easy. He related that slick plans did not translate into a slick boat so easily, hence they’ve had some delays getting the ship to launch. They were initially inspired by a pomegranate - the design of Plastiki attempts to recreate the way a compilation of pomegranate seeds can constitute something as solid but buoyant as a pomegranate. One major difficulty was achieving a solid structure for the boat, until they found a material called SRPET (Self reinforcing polyethylene terephthalate) which is a clean, recyclable plastic that is half the weight of fiberglass and three quarters the strength.

By Amie Vaccaro - Reuters , May 19, 2009

President Obama and the other leaders at the Group of 20 meeting last month vowed to both pursue a “green” economic recovery, and not turn inward. They can fight protectionism and climate change at the same time by unilaterally eliminating tariffs on clean technology products. The United States should call on each of the major economies to choose any of the products from the World Bank’s list of 43 climate-friendly technologies — for example, solar and wind energy equipment — and end tariffs on them. The only requirement would be that each country reduce the tariffs collected on these 43 products in total by at least 20 percent.

By Daniel M. Price - The New York Times | Op-Ed Contributor , May 06, 2009

On the way out the White House door, the Bush administration laid a spoiler of a rule change on the mountains of Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia. The January regulation made it more convenient for "mountaintop removal" coal-mining operations to dump their debris, referred to as spoil, on nearby streams. The rule did nothing to protect the Appalachians, or enhance the long-term future of the hard-pressed people who live in coal country. It was all about cheap coal, and making mountaintop removal easier. So what if the cost includes spoiled streams, and ancient coves and hollows filled in with the bulldozed overburden of ridge tops? Cheap coal was king.

Editorial Board - The News & Observer | Raleigh, N.C. , May 06, 2009

Russia is planning a fleet of floating and submersible nuclear power stations to exploit Arctic oil and gas reserves, causing widespread alarm among environmentalists. A prototype floating nuclear power station being constructed at the SevMash shipyard in Severodvinsk is due to be completed next year. Agreement to build a further four was reached between the Russian state nuclear corporation, Rosatom, and the northern Siberian republic of Yakutiya in February. The 70-megawatt plants, each of which would consist of two reactors on board giant steel platforms, would provide power to Gazprom, the oil firm which is also Russia's biggest company.

By John Vidal | Tromsø, Norway - The Guardian Observer | UK , May 03, 2009