IN TODAY'S AUDIO REPORT: Rounding up the biggest green news stories of the Year ... and the Decade! ... PLUS: Who won the poll for the World's Biggest Eco-Villain of the "Aughts"? (or the "Naughts"...or the "Naughties"... or the '00's....or the "Zeroes"...whatever) ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? 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': Jesse Ventura Body-Slams the Climate Change "Conspiracy"; Uh-oh: China's near-monopoly on rare earth elements crucial to renewable energy technologies; Demanding accountability for the CERN Supercollider!!!!!; Quebec Adopts California's Auto Emissions Standards; Campbell's Soup? Really?: New Faces Among the Climate Lobby; Majority Of [Climate Change Denier] Tea Party Group's Spending Went To GOP Firm That Created It; How American oil money is pumping up climate change skeptics abroad; GOP Protest Builds Against EPA Regulating Greenhouse Gases.... PLUS: Reality bites: The coming climate panic?....

Info/links on those stories and all the ones we talked about on today's episode follow below...

• The Top Environmental Stories of the Year and the Decade:
• The top green stories of the ‘00s (Grist)
• Slideshow-Palooza: Best and Worst of 2009: The Year (and Decade) in Review (Treehugger)
• Best and Worst of 2009: The Good, the Bad, and the Crazy Lobbying Efforts (Treehugger)
• Top 20 Headlines of 2009 (Earth 911)
• The top 9 eco-stories of 2009: Only a handful of 2009 environmental stories had nothing to do with global warming --- sort of. Our media columnist rounds them up. (Mother Nature Network)
• Top 10 environmental moments of the decade (CNN)
• The Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2009: A few ways the world changed while you weren’t looking. (Foreign Policy)
• The Top 9 Stories in Environmental Politics of 2009 (Ecopolitology)
• Top Environmental Stories of the Decade: A Subjective List and Poll (Celsias):
  
  !. The environmental movement goes mainstream. This was the decade in which global warming became a household word and environmentalists were no longer viewed as tree-hugging-tofu-eaters. Major corporations now have "going green" programs in place, while terms like "greenwashing" and "carbon footprint" are commonly used.
• Top 10 Environmental Stories of the Decade — That You Might Have Missed (Environmental Working Group):
  
  2. Intersex Fish Turn Up All Over
  Are you a boy or are you a girl? That’s the question that scientists are asking as they study the organs of supposedly male fish from coast to coast and find eggs in many of them. The chief suspects: endocrine-disrupting pollutants that even in tiny amounts can mimic hormones and affect sexual development.

  3. Prescription Drugs in Your Drinking Water
  Take a swallow and call me in the morning. Antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones – they’ve all turned up in tests of drinking water around the country. Could there be health risks from decades of drinking water laced with combinations of potent drugs?

  4. And Rocket Fuel, Too....

• The Decade in the Environment (GOOD Magazine):
  
  2001: The Toyota Prius hits global markets, ushering in a new era of smug automotive fuel efficiency.
  ...
  Seven days after the twin towers fall, the EPA tells New Yorkers that downtown air is "safe." It is not. Official reports downplayed the danger of the dust's pH-levels, worsening still the impacts of the terror attacks.

  2002: The Bush administration opens a stunning direct assault on laws that protect America's water, air, and natural treasures. Decades worth of hard-fought environmental legislation is lost: clean air protections are relaxed, toxic waste clean-ups are abandoned, oil and gas is drilled for in National Parks, and protections on roadless areas in national forests are revoked.

  Ten years after the first Earth Summit in Rio, another convenes in Johannesburg, focused on sustainable development. The United States doesn't send a delegation.

  2003: The modern world's first "water war" is sparked in Darfur....

'GREEN NEWS EXTRA': More green news not covered in today's audio report...

• Jesse Ventura Body-Slams the Climate Change "Conspiracy": In his new TV show, the former governor and professional wrestler exposes the sinister plots behind global warming and 9/11. (Kate Sheppard, Mother Jones)
• Earth-Friendly Elements, Mined Destructively (NY Times)
• FUNNY: The Hole I Dig Is Bottomless (Whiskey Fire):
  
  I firmly support Science. Science has brought the world many wonderful things, like penicillin, Tang, light bulbs, and spyware. So I stand foursquare behind Science, as long as it is done openly and honestly and with all due respect for the opinions of intelligent, interested citizens such as myself. Remember --- we are the taxpayers who fund projects like this, and so the scientists are, really, our employees. When they discharge their duties correctly they are entitled to respect and fair treatment, just like, say, a competent butler or footman.

  Thus, I say this only reluctantly: I am very, very deeply disturbed about the creation and operation of the Large Hardon Collider, and I believe I am entitled to Answers.
  ...
  I've browsed through many of the media stories and even some of the scientific literature about the Large Hardon Collider: I have done many Google searches. But nowhere do I see any discussion of how the project coordinators went about obtaining the necessary permissions and releases regarding the owner/operators of the Large Hardons in question.

• Quebec Adopts California's Auto Emissions Standards (Reuters)
• New Faces Among the Climate Lobby: Campbell's Soup (Green Inc.)
• The Climate Lobby from Soup to Nuts: An Array of New Interests Joins Washington's Climate Change Debate (Climate Progress)
• Majority Of Tea Party Group's Spending Went To GOP Firm That Created It (Talking Points Memo)
• Climate Change Deniers Without Borders: How American oil money is pumping up climate change skeptics abroad—and how they could derail any progress made in Copenhagen. (Mother Jones)
• GOP Protest Builds Against EPA Regulating Greenhouse Gases (Solve Climate)
• Reality bites: The coming climate panic? (Grist)

                 

Article Categories: Green News