President Obama's preoccupation with Shell's proposal to drill for oil in the offshore Arctic -- even after the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico -- appears to signal that it will be inevitable, barring a major legal challenge.
"Tropical Storm Beryl threatened to snarl traffic on Memorial Day as it brought drenching rain, winds and the possibility of flooding to the southeastern U.S. coast.
The storm made landfall in Florida early Monday near Jacksonville Beach around 12:10 a.m. ET with near-hurricane-strength winds of 70 mph, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.
"Canada is dismantling the nation's entire ocean contaminants program as part of massive layoffs at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans."
"ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A decades-old jet fuel spill threatening Albuquerque's water supply could be as large as 24 million gallons, or twice the size of the oil spill from the Exxon Valdez, New Mexico environment officials acknowledged Tuesday."
"One of Canada's top experts on Arctic issues is warning of the 'near-inevitability' of an Exxon Valdez-scale oil spill at a fragile choke point in Alaskan waters if Canada ends up shipping oilsands fuel to China via pipeline terminals on the British Columbia coast."
"Climate change, with its associated melting ice caps and shrinking glaciers, is the usual suspect when it comes to explaining rising sea levels. But a recent study now shows that human water use has a major impact on sea-level change that has been overlooked."
Houston-based freelance writer and photographer Wendee Holtcamp has covered conservation, adventure travel, environmental issues and science for magazines and websites since 1997. She offers an online writing class, teaching aspiring and established writers everything from improving one's writing through observation journaling to crafting killer queries to the business end of building a successful and lucrative freelance career. Next class starts June 2.
After backroom lobbying by gas and oil industry groups, the Obama White House watered down the promised fracking-fluid disclosure requirement promised earlier this year — imposing it only after completion of the fracking operation, when the information may have little effect (such as public pressure on BLM to deny a drilling permit).
"A new report named the Potomac the nation’s most endangered river, saying it is threatened by nutrient and sediment pollution that lowers the quality of drinking water and kills marine life and will only get worse if Congress rolls back regulations in the Clean Water Act."
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