With Brad Friedman & Desi Doyen...
By Desi Doyen on 9/11/2012, 2:58pm PT  


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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: A Tale of Two Conventions: wrapping up the DNC vs. RNC; It's official: 2012 shaping up to be hottest year on record; Shell begins Arctic drilling, but the Arctic has other plans; PLUS: 9/11, and the consequences of ignoring warnings ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

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IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Foul smell across Southern Cali; Caribbean coral reefs near collapse; BP unloads millions in Gulf of Mexico leases; Massive wildfires, evacuations in West; NYC unprepared for rising sea levels, storm surge; Looming national security issue at chemical plants; Climate change challenge for power plant operators; China orders renewable energy standard ... PLUS: GM calls report of money-losing Volt sales 'grossly wrong' ... and much, MUCH more! ...

STORIES DISCUSSED IN TODAY'S 'GREEN NEWS REPORT'...

'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (Stuff we didn't have time for in today's audio report)...

  • Foul odor across Southern California (LA Times):
    Southern California awoke Monday morning to a foul odor that wouldn’t go away. Residents clogged 911 lines with calls, prompting health officials from Ventura County to Palm Springs to send out investigators in search of the source. By Monday evening, the leading theory was that the stink was caused by the annual die-off of fish in the Salton Sea. Officials believe Sunday evening’s thunderstorms and strong winds churned up the water and pushed the dead-fish smell to points west overnight.
  • Caribbean coral reefs face collapse (Guardian UK):
    Caribbean coral reefs are in danger of disappearing, depriving the world of one of its most beautiful and productive ecosystems
  • BP sells some Gulf of Mexico assets for $5.6 billion (Washington Post):
    The latest sale leaves BP close to its $38 billion goal for divestments to settle claims linked to the spill, part of a program that will leave the London-based oil giant more streamlined but still in possession of its best prospects for growth and most profitable assets. BP chief executive Bob Dudley said in a statement that the sales were “consistent with our strategy of playing to our strengths.”
  • Massive wildfire drives hundreds from homes in Idaho (Reuters)
  • Republican Meteorologist to Mitt Romney: My Top Ten Reasons for Republicans to Accept Reality on the Climate (Huffington Post Green)
  • US the Only Nation Where Climate Scientists Face Organized Harassment: 'I feel for my American colleagues and what they've had to deal with,' one British climate scientist said. [ed. note: the survey did not include Australia] (Inside Climate)
  • NYC Is Lagging as Seas and Risks Rise, Critics Warn (NY Times):
    [E]ven as city officials earn high marks for environmental awareness, critics say New York is moving too slowly to address the potential for flooding that could paralyze transportation, cripple the low-lying financial district and temporarily drive hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.
  • Climate change challenges power plant operations (Washington Post):
    Drought and rising temperatures are forcing water managers across the country to scramble for ways to produce the same amount of power from the hydroelectric grid with less water, including from behemoths such as the Hoover Dam. Hydropower is not the only part of the nation’s energy system that appears increasingly vulnerable to the impact of climate change, as low water levels affect coal-fired and nuclear power plants’ operations and impede the passage of coal barges along the Mississippi River.
  • OP-ED: The Chemical Threat to America (Former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman, NY Times):
    We considered using existing authority in the Clean Air Act to reduce the vulnerability of chemical facilities to acts of terrorism, primarily by requiring facilities to evaluate the use of safer chemicals and processes. After considerable internal discussion, however, we decided that the best way forward was to enact legislation that would give the E.P.A. additional authority to do so. Unfortunately, and much to my frustration, after a long, multiagency effort, the White House declined to endorse a draft bill, and Congress did not act on its own.

    This has now become a 10-year battle. Today, Congress is hopelessly gridlocked on extending the inadequate homeland security appropriations statute that currently regulates the industry.

  • Caribbean coral reefs face collapse (Guardian UK):
    Caribbean coral reefs are in danger of disappearing, depriving the world of one of its most beautiful and productive ecosystems.
  • China orders Renewable Energy Standard for wind energy (Reuters):
    China will order its dominant electricity distributors to source up to 15 percent of their power from renewable energy including wind, but slow compliance means it may be years before the country's struggling wind power developers benefit, industry executives say.
  • GM calls report of money-losing Volt sales 'grossly wrong' (LA Times) [emphasis added]:
    General Motors disputes a Reuters report that the automaker is losing $49,000 on each plug-in hybrid Volt sold. It accuses the news agency of using bad math.
    ...
    The automaker said the news agency incorrectly "allocated product development costs across the number of Volts sold instead of allocating across the lifetime volume of the program, which is how business operates."
  • Why GM Actually Is Getting Its Money's Worth From The Chevy Volt (International Business Times)
  • 5 Ways the Stanford Study Sells Organics Short (Mother Jones):
    In short, the authors' findings confirm what the Environmental Working Group, crunching USDA data, has been telling us for years: that organic fruits and vegetables harbor significantly fewer pesticide residues than their chemically grown peers.
  • Essential Climate Science Findings:
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