Environment Archive

Wirelessly Charging Electrical Vehicles While Driving

by Mark Swartz, via Stanford University News,

Wirelessly chargingA Stanford University research team has designed a high-efficiency charging system that uses magnetic fields to wirelessly transmit large electric currents between metal coils placed several feet apart. The long-term goal of the research is to develop an all-electric highway that wirelessly charges cars and trucks as they cruise down the road.

The new technology has the potential to dramatically increase the driving range of electric vehicles and eventually transform highway travel, according to the researchers.  Their results are published in the journal Applied Physics Letters (APL). 

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Empowering Minorities to Shape Urban Landscapes

by Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson, via Grist.org,

Seventh grade students transforming a Detroit community garden. (Photo by Michelle White.)When people ask me why I write about architecture, design, and cities — why I focus on these topics instead of all of the others — I like to tell the story of a park bench.

I first read this story many years ago in a book of essays on urbanism. It starts auspiciously enough with the development of a new neighborhood outside of Los Angeles. The developers promoted the neighborhood as one of inclusivity, a place where community would reign supreme. They designed everything from the houses to the garbage cans and the sidewalks.

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GMOs in the Wild: The Great Gene Escape

by Lindsey Konkel, via Environmental Health News,

Feral flowers: Escaped gene-altered canola has some experts concerned that herbicide-resistant “super weeds” could result.Throughout North Dakota, little yellow flowers dot thousands of miles of roadsides. These canola plants, found along most major trucking routes, look harmless. But they are fueling a controversy: They prove that large numbers of genetically modified plants have escaped from farm fields and are now growing wild.

About 80 percent of canola growing along roadsides in North Dakota contains genes that have been modified to make the plants resistant to common weed-killers, according to a team of University of Arkansas researchers.

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Making Greenbacks by Going Green

by David L. Chandler, MIT News Office,

green manufacturingNearly a third of companies now say that the adoption of sustainable practices has added to their profitability, according to a new MIT study — and manufacturing firms are in the vanguard.

Two-thirds of more than 2,800 companies surveyed by MIT Sloan Management Review say they have made sustainability a permanent agenda topic within their companies, up from 55 percent a year ago. And most respondents — based in 113 countries, and spanning a wide variety of sizes and industries — now see sustainability as “necessary to be competitive” in today’s economy. The study was conducted with the help of the Boston Consulting Group.

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The Hidden Risk and Cost of Mercury Pollution

By Robert Lalasz, via Grist.org,

Wood thrush. (Photo by Jeff Whitlock.)Mercury pollution — nothing to worry about if I don’t live in the rural Northeast and don’t eat tons of fish, right?

Guess again, says a new report done by the Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI) in conjunction with The Nature Conservancy. The report, “Hidden Risk,” details the widespread and deep impacts of mercury pollution in terrestrial nature — particularly on animals such as songbirds and bats. Researchers are discovering how mercury is causing big declines in reproductive success among these species, as well as physiological oddities — like developmental asymmetries and an inability of some birds to hit high notes.

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Mexican Farmers Go Local

by Mike Wold, via Yes! Magazine,

San Pedro Coxcaltepec. Many young people here have left because of the difficulty of making a living with farming. Photo by Reid Mukai.Tío Joel rode his small donkey down the dirt road to his greenhouse to show us his solution to keeping small farmers on their land in southern Mexico. At about seventy years old, he could handle a machete or lift a 20-kilo sack of compost as easily as any of us, though the brace he wore around his waist was a sign of problems to come.

Taking a break from chopping green manure for compost for his popular tomatoes, he explained why a campesino like him could benefit from using organic methods:  “In the harvest this year a lot of tomatoes were being harvested and the price went way down to five pesos per kilo, but we sell ours for seven. I go from house to house and sell it small-scale, but we sell out our tomatoes because they’re well-known … on Sunday we ran out of tomatoes, we sell so many.”

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Poor Urban Design and America’s Health

by Scott Carlson, via The Chronicle of Higher Education,

Subdivision housingResearchers can have revelatory moments in remarkable places—the African savannah, an ancient library, or the ruins of a lost civilization. But Richard J. Jackson's epiphany occurred in 1999 in a banal American landscape: a dismal stretch of the car-choked Buford Highway, near the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Dr. Jackson, who was then the head of the National Center for Environmental Health at the CDC, was rushing to a meeting where leading epidemiologists would discuss the major health threats of the 21st century. On the side of the road he saw an elderly woman walking, bent with a load of shopping bags. It was a blisteringly hot day, and there was little hope that she would find public transportation.

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Shale-Shocked: How Fracking Got “Occupied”

by Ellen Cantarow, via The Huffington Post,

Fracking well. (Abrahm Lustgarten/ProPublica)This is a story about water, the land surrounding it, and the lives it sustains. Clean water should be a right: there is no life without it. New York is what you might call a “water state.” Its rivers and their tributaries only start with the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, the Delaware, and the Susquehanna. The best known of its lakes are Great Lakes Erie and Ontario, Lake George, and the Finger Lakes. Its brooks, creeks, and trout streams are fishermen’s lore.

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Geoengineering and Global Food Production

Geoengineering ideas for a cooler planetCarbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal, oil, and gas have been increasing over the past decades, causing the Earth to get hotter and hotter. There are concerns that a continuation of these trends could have catastrophic effects, including crop failures in the heat-stressed tropics. This has led some to explore drastic ideas for combating global warming, including the idea of trying to counteract it by reflecting sunlight away from the Earth. However, it has been suggested that reflecting sunlight away from the Earth might itself threaten the food supply of billions of people.

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Personal Care Chemicals and Childhood Obesity

Childhood obesityResearchers from the Children's Environmental Health Center at The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York have found an association between exposure to the chemical group known as phthalates and obesity in young children – including increased body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference.

Phthalates are man-made, endocrine-disrupting chemicals that can mimic the body's natural hormones. They are commonly used in plastic flooring and wall coverings, food processing materials, medical devices, and personal-care products. While poor nutrition and physical inactivity are known to contribute to obesity, a growing body of research suggests that environmental chemicals – including phthalates – could play a role in rising childhood obesity rates.

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GMO Controversy at Monsanto Shareholder Meeting

Monsanto signOn Tuesday, January 24 at 1:30 PM, Monsanto officers and shareholders will vote on a shareholder proposal to create a study of "material financial risks or operational impacts" associated with its chemical products and genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

The proposal represents one of the strongest signals to date that the biotech food conglomerate is facing growing consumer, legal, and regulatory uncertainties. As of today, however Monsanto has told John Harrington that they will not recognize his proxy who would speak on behalf of the resolution for only three minutes under normal circumstances.

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The Arctic Permafrost Climate Threat

by Jared Sagoff, via PhysOrg.com,

Argonne ecologists Roser Matamala (front) and Mike Miller (right) with University of Alaska Fairbanks collaborator, Gary Michaelson (left), collect samples of permafrost-affected tundra soils in northern Alaska.A significant source of greenhouse gases has started leaking into the Earth's atmosphere from an unlikely place. Above the Arctic Circle, land frozen for tens of thousands of years has begun to thaw for the first time. Current estimates indicate that perennially frozen ground, called permafrost, holds more than twice the amount of carbon present in today's atmosphere. As permafrost thaws, a huge amount of this stored carbon could be released as carbon dioxide or methane gas.

In more temperate environments, most of the in dead plant material cycles relatively quickly back to the atmosphere thanks to the action of that break down organic materials. However, the remains of dead plants have accumulated for millennia in the permafrost soils and sediments in regions like the North Slope of Alaska and .

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EPA Begins Water Delivery to Fracking Contaminated Town

by Abrahm Lustgarten, via ProPublica.org,

Dimock, Pa. resident Craig Sautner shows off his water. Photo: hudsonriverkeeper / via FlickrFirst, the earth around the rural town of Dimock, Pa., was cracked open as gas drillers used fracking to tap the vast energy supplies of the Marcellus Shale.

Then, in April 2009, residents there lost their access to fresh drinking water. Wells turned fetid. Some blew up. Tap water caught fire.

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The Tar Sands Battle Continues in California Courts

By Maria Gallucci, InsideClimate News,

Valero's Benicia refinery in Solano County, Calif. Credit: Craig MillerA high-stakes legal battle is underway in California over whether the state's clean air agency can enforce a first-ever rule to slash carbon emissions in transportation fuels. The fight is being closely watched because the rule could choke global market demand for Alberta's carbon-intensive oil sands at a very precarious time for the industry.

On Wednesday, January 18, 2012, the Obama administration rejected a permit for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which could have increased imports of the fuel into the U.S. by up to 830,000 barrels a day. It was a major setback for the oil industry and its allies and an unexpected victory for environmentalists and their allies. The two sides are now facing each other down in this court case.

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Hypersolar: Making Fracking Obsolete

Hypersolar reactor complexHyperSolar, Inc., the developer of a breakthrough technology to make renewable natural gas using solar power, announced that its technology can help reduce the need for hydraulic fracturing (fracking) used to access underground natural gas resources. The company’s renewable natural gas is a clean, carbon neutral methane gas that can be produced above ground and used as a direct replacement for traditional natural gas to power the needs of the world.

“Even though the United States has vast natural gas resources, a majority of these reserves are only accessible through fracking, a potentially environmentally-hazardous process that many environmentalists claim could contaminate our water supplies and the air we breathe,” said Tim Young, CEO of HyperSolar. “Rather than extracting difficult-to-reach fossil fuel reserves, we think that the focus should be on alternative technologies that can provide the world with affordable and clean sources of energy. We believe it is far better to consider sources of energy that are renewable instead of limited depleting resources such as coal, oil or natural gas.”

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Ding Dong the Pipeline’s Dead—Or at Least Corked for Now

by Lucia Graves and Joshua Hersh, via The Huffington Post,

A protestor against the construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline climbs on a Keith Haring sculpture as he demonstrates outside of the W Hotel where U.S. President Barack Obama was holding a fundraiser on October 25, 2011 in San Francisco, California. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)Acting on a recommendation from the State Department on January 18, 2012, President Barack Obama denied a permit for the contentious Keystone XL pipeline proposal, which would have linked a vast oil deposit in Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast.

In rejecting the permit, Obama laid blame on Republicans in Congress, who forced passage of a measure late last month requiring the administration to render a decision on the pipeline by Feb. 21.

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Earthquakes: Is Fracking on Shaky Ground?

by Scott Thill, via AlterNet.org,

A house damaged in a pair of earthquakes that struck Sparks, Okla., Nov. 6, 2011. Photo: Sue Ogrocki / APTo what should be the surprise of no one, earthquakes caused by the junkie gas sector's hydraulic fracturing process, known as fracking, have been cropping up like Freud's repressed. The latest ominously arrived in Republican-dominated Ohio on New Year's Eve, quickly prompting Youngstown's mayor to buy earthquake insurance and lament, "You lose your whole house, that's your life savings, and if you have no money or no insurance to replace it, then what do you do?"

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Are Pesticides Pushing Honeybee Die-offs Past the Tipping Point

by Claire Thompson, via Grist.org,

Worker with Full Pollen Baskets. Photo: Pesticide Action Network North AmericaAnyone who's been stung by a bee knows they can inflict an outsized pain for such tiny insects. It makes a strange kind of sense, then, that their demise would create an outsized problem for the food system by placing the more than 70 crops they pollinate -- from almonds to apples to blueberries -- in peril.

Although news about Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has died down, commercial beekeepers have seen average population losses of about 30 percent each year since 2006, said Paul Towers, of the Pesticide Action Network. Towers was one of the organizers of a conference that brought together beekeepers and environmental groups this week to tackle the challenges facing the beekeeping industry and the agricultural economy by proxy.

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Converting a Volcano into a Geothermal Power Plant

by Jeff Barnard, AP, via The Huffington Post,

In this May 16, 2008, file photo, a drilling tower stands under clear skies at the Newberry Crater geothermal project near LaPine, Ore. Geothermal energy developers plan to pump 24 million gallons of water into the side of a dormant volcano in Central Oregon this summer to demonstrate new technology they hope will give a boost to a green energy sector that has yet to live up to its promise.

They hope the water comes back to the surface fast enough and hot enough to create cheap, clean electricity that isn't dependent on sunny skies or stiff breezes – without shaking the earth and rattling the nerves of nearby residents.

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Investing in Organics

organic farmingOrganic farmers in Oregon will be growing sweeter corn, while their counterparts in North Carolina will be testing new varieties of broccoli best suited for their farms, thanks to grants awarded by the Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF) Board of Directors. Additional grants will fund projects designed to help organic growers increase their yields while decreasing their expenses and impacts on surrounding waterways, and to prevent organic seed-producing crops from being contaminated by non-organic varieties. The OFRF Board approved four grants totally $50,640 to help grow the industry's organic knowledge.

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Trout Gulch: A Homemade Sustainable Hobbit Village

by Maria Grusauskas, via Wastonville Patch,

The handmade cob oven serves perfect for baking bread. Credit: Kirra HellfritschOn a secret hillside in Aptos, a small group of young people imagined their own version of a “21st-century Hobbit village.” Then, they built it.

A network of tree houses, huts, domes, a goat paddy, an orchard, and most recently, an organic farm, the small neighborhood named Trout Gulch is really only just beginning to sprout.

Built on the wilderness that surrounds animation filmmaker Isaiah Saxon’s mother's house, Trout Gulch is the creative sanctuary of Encyclopedia Pictura, a three-man animation company made up of Saxon, Sean Hellfritsch, and Daren Rabinovitch.

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Food Lobby Says EPA’s Dioxin Limits Will “Scare the Crap Out of People”

by Michele Simon, cross posted from Appetite for Profit,

DioxinIt doesn’t take much for the food industry to freak-out over potential government action, but this latest corporate outcry is especially galling and self-serving. After more than 20 years of “assessment” the Environmental Protection Agency is finally expected this month to release limits for safe exposure to dioxins, nasty industrial pollutants that cause cancer, among other health harms. You may have heard of dioxin as the military herbicide Agent Orange used in Vietnam, where it earned its distinction as “the most toxic compound synthesized by man.”

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How Human Waste Becomes Energy and then Money

Last year we noted the existence of a unique company, Sanergy, founded by a group of MIT students and grads. Sanergy originated a plan to furnish basic sanitation facilities to rural, impoverished communities and turn the waste accumulated into bio-gas and then revenue and jobs for these same communities.

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Naïvete and Political “Reality”

by Bill McKibben via, The Huffington Post,

Capitol HillMy resolution for 2012 is to be naïve -- dangerously naïve.

I’m aware that the usual recipe for political effectiveness is just the opposite: to be cynical, calculating, an insider. But if you think, as I do, that we need deep change in this country, then cynicism is a sucker’s bet. Try as hard as you can, you’re never going to be as cynical as the corporations and the harem of politicians they pay for.  It’s like trying to outchant a Buddhist monastery.

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Coffee Roasters to Brew Up Renewable Energy

via University of South Dakota,

coffee roastingThe Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) at the University of North Dakota announced it is leading a project to develop an efficient renewable electricity technology for coffee-processing plants. The EERC is working with Wynntryst, LLC, an energy solutions company based in South Burlington, Vermont, to develop a gasification power system to utilize the waste from a coffee-processing plant to produce energy.

The project specifically focuses on the waste from the Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc. (GMCR) plant. GMCR is a Wynntryst client based in Waterbury, Vermont, and is best known for its Keurig brand of individual coffee cups.

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