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Welcome aboard MORE new affiliates! Bob Kincaid’s Head-On Radio Network joins the GNR team!
IN TODAY’S AUDIO REPORT: Florida homes stink!; FDA under fire (again); McDonald’s may reduce pesticides in fries; PLUS: The cardboard box that could save the world; And the Utah college student indicted for saving public lands from destruction…All that and more in today’s Green News Report!
Got comments, tips, college student indictments? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.
IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (links below): Alaskan volcano still threatens oil facility; Are America’s suburbs in danger of becoming the new slums?; the Oil Price Shock of 2008 may have triggered the current economic downturn; Robert Redford confronts the NIMBY problem in renewable energy sites….See below for more!
Info/links on stuff we talked about on today’s episode, plus MORE green news, all follows below…
- U.S. Food Safety No Longer Improving
- Consortium rejects FDA claim of BPA’s safety; Scientists say 2 studies used by U.S. agency overlooked dangers
- Babies carry more BPA, scientists group agrees
- SPECIAL INVESTIGATION: Chemical Fallout: A Journal Sentinel Watchdog Report
Warning: Chemicals in the packaging, surfaces or contents of many products may cause long-term health effects, including cancers of the breast, brain and testicles; lowered sperm counts, early puberty and other reproductive system defects; diabetes; attention deficit disorder, asthma and autism. A decade ago, the government promised to test these chemicals. It still hasn’t.
- AP IMPACT: Chinese drywall poses potential risks
- Chinese Drywall and the Cost of Truth-Telling
- McDonald’s aims for a low-pesticide potato for its french fries
- McDonald’s to take steps to cut potato pesticides
- Environmental activist indicted for making false bids
- UT Student Tim DeChristopher Indicted!
- Democracy Now!: Utah Student Who Prevented Bush Administration Sell-Off of Public Land Charged for Disrupting Auction
- Drilling Leases Scrapped in Utah
- Opinion: Oil lays waste to the West:
On election day, the Bureau of Land Management in Utah quietly announced its last round of oil and gas lease sales for the year. On Dec. 19, close to 400,000 acres of America’s redrock wilderness — much of it adjacent to Arches and Canyonlands national parks and Dinosaur National Monument — were to be sold for drilling to the highest bidders.
Public outcry was fierce. The National Park Service had not been consulted, as it usually was, and much of the land listed for auction had long been proposed for wilderness protection. - FOR MORE INFO and to DONATE: Tim DeChristopher Legal Defense fund, via Paypal or snail mail
‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’: More green news not covered in today’s audio report… Alaskan volcano still threatens oil facility; Are America’s suburbs in danger of becoming slums?; States consider making energy efficiency upgrades mandatory on new homes; the Oil Price Shock may have triggered the economic meltdown; Robert Redford has a on the competing needs of endangered species vs. renewable energy development on public lands…
- NASA Photo Reveals Drift River Terminal in Jeopardy
- Suburbs – our new slums? The burbs are in decline as more poor move out from the cities and more suburbanites struggle to stay in the middle class [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]:
Mr. Nelson and others warn that suburbia’s least desirable neighborhoods — aging, middle-class tract-home developments far from city centers and mass transit lines — are America’s emerging slums, characterized by poverty, crime and other social ills. Treating those ills is complicated by the same qualities that once defined suburbia’s appeal — seclusion, homogeneity and low population density. “We built too much of the suburban dream, and now it’s coming back to haunt us,” Mr. Nelson said.
- Renewables Fever Sweeps State Legislatures
- More states want solar power to be option on new homes
- Should We Follow Germany’s Lead On Renewables?
The basic idea is that utilities have to buy renewable power from anyone who produces it. Period. If I install a solar panel on my roof, I can sell that power into the grid, and the utility will offer me a 15- to 20-year contract at a fixed rate that will cover my costs and ensure a tidy profit. (The rate is set by regulators, and the utility spreads the extra cost among all ratepayers; in Germany, this has meant $4 more per household per month.) The result? Private investors stampede in. Germany, which gets less sun than Minnesota, now has half the world’s installed solar capacity.
- Did the Oil Price Boom of 2008 Cause Crisis?
[T]here’s the uncomfortable fact previous oil shocks, like the ones that came with the 1973 oil embargo, the 1979 Iranian revolution and the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, were also associated with recessions. And the 2001 recession, too, came on the heels of a run-up in oil prices.
In a paper presented at the Brookings Panel on Economic Activity Thursday, University of Calif.-San Diego economist James Hamilton crunched some numbers on how consumer spending responds to rising energy prices and came to a surprising result: Nearly all of last year’s economic downturn could be attributed to the oil price shock. - Robert Redford on Huffington Post Green: Balancing Renewable Energy Projects & Public Lands Stewardship
[I]f we don’t handle this boom carefully, unspoiled wildlands will get trammeled in its wake.
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That’s why my friends at NRDC got together with Google Earth and started mapping out public lands where renewable development is not appropriate.
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The state of California recently did a similar mapping process and found that when it removed all the environmentally sensitive lands, California still has renewable potential of about 500,000 MW–that’s greater than the state’s peak demand.But we can’t begin the new energy future by only saying where we can’t build renewable projects. We also have to agree on where we can…
Your “green News Reports” just get better and better!
Re: the solar sell back option in Germany: Many States now do the same thing more or less. My State does along with a nominal rebate for the installation of solar panels. I think that this is the way to truly liberate us from energy dependence and needs a lot more rebates as % of cost for the hardware on existing housing and business and State and Federal mandates to install the panels (and rebate the cost) on all new housing and business.
http://informationclearinghouse.info/
Great site here kids.
Hmmm… fox’s “Teabag Terrorists” could use some GNR . . .
Nice work B & D! I’ve not had a chance to look closely at yo enviro work till today, but it has the same high standards I expected it would. Keeping talking truth to power, y’all!
shw
I musta bin thinkin bout The Touch Tone Terrorists . . .
… Thom Hartmann, Thom Hartmann Where are you . . .
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I’ve been saying this for almost a decade now . . .
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE FUCKING RA “D” “I” “O” ! ! !
The gop control an unquestionable 90% the real number may actually be 99%.
There is NO changing the fucking channel for US rational people … There’s only OFF !
… and reid, pelosi and the USELESS dems continue to do SHIT … Huh nancy
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Thank you for the kind comments, and for listening!
LottaKatz, and anyone else who owns their home or commercial real estate — click through the links in Green News Extra to get more info on tax credits, subsidies, and other incentives offered by state and federal governments.
For example, the federal government offers a tax credit for 30% of energy efficiency purchases made in 2009 and 2010…and that’s on top of and separate from state and local incentives. Contact your federal, state and local representatives to push them to help you and your neighbors defray the upfront costs of moving to energy efficiency.
Thanks for covering the Tim DeChristopher story. He’s a big hero out here in Utah!
Larry Bergan, “Tim DeChristopher… He’s a big hero….”
With me too. Brilliant! I’d think he’d have a pretty good “But for” rationale for a motion to dismiss the charges against him: but for the irrational and ill founded actions of placing the parcels up for auction, which was later nullified in major part, he would not have had to resort to the actions he took. That’s not to say that the charges against him have much basis to begin with.
Maybe Holder can do something about the charges- though considering the disparity in justice being shown between Stevens and Siegelman/Minor I’m not holding my breath.
Desi, Thanks for reinterating the link in Green News Extra, it’s helpful.
Lottakatz:
Without DeChristopher’s brave action, the precious parcels would have been sold for a song and opened to the whims of the oil companies. If we can’t save the most precious lands we have from exploitation for a nominal amount of oil to satisfy our present gluttony, we are doomed.
Other then to block further auctions without the proper review, which was ignored by the Bush people, the Obama people have told DeChristoper they will not participate in his defense.
No matter what happens, DeChristopher has earned a place in history, and in the hearts of the environmental movement forever. To tell you the truth, I’m jealous.