The debt ceiling deal enacted by the House Monday contains provisions that will profoundly affect federal policy on the environment and energy. Environmentalists are crying foul. The Senate may vote on it Tuesday.
"In remote places like California's Death Valley, over-reliance on GPS navigation systems can be a matter of life and death."
"Despite decades of efforts to restore and protect the Great Lakes, dozens of old power plants still are allowed to kill hundreds of millions of fish each year by sucking in massive amounts of water to cool their equipment."
Kate Sheppard observes that it is very hot outside in much of the eastern U.S. She notes a blog post by Miles Grant citing NOAA records showing "June 2011 was the 316th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century average." Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh says that the Heat Index is a government conspiracy.
"A lengthy, blistering heat wave that is blanketing the eastern half of the United States is putting significant stress on the nation's power grid as homeowners and businesses crank up their air conditioners."
"An oppressive and potentially deadly summertime mix of sizzling temperatures and high humidity baked a large swath of the country again on Sunday, pushing afternoon heat indexes in dozens of cities to dangerous levels."
"COLQUITT, Ga. — The heat and the drought are so bad in this southwest corner of Georgia that hogs can barely eat. Corn, a lucrative crop with a notorious thirst, is burning up in fields. Cotton plants are too weak to punch through soil so dry it might as well be pavement."
"As record-shattering heat cripples Oklahoma, Sen. Jim ('global warming is a hoax') Inhofe (R-OK) failed to show for an fossil-industry-funded climate denial conference. A shrinking band of far-right economists, lawyers, and a few scientists have gathered in Washington, DC, for the Heartland Institute’s Sixth International Conference on Climate Change, funded, like Inhofe himself, by Koch Industries and Exxon Mobil. Inhofe was scheduled to be the denier conference’s keynote speaker, but he bailed out, explaining appropriately that he is 'under the weather'"
"The first six months of 2011 have brought image after image of human misery and ecological upheaval. Droughts, wildfires, twisters, floods, heat waves, extreme blizzards — just about every natural disaster you can imagine has hit just about every place on the planet."
"As the heat wave continues, some civil rights leaders say high temperatures pose a particular threat to poor, minority communities."
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