Lower levels of air pollutants in four Texas cities prompted the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to remove these chemicals from the state’s Air Pollutant Watch Lists, the agency said today. In the case of Corpus Christi, levels of benzene, the sole remaining air pollutant, are now low enough to warrant lifting the entire watch list.
WASHINGTON, DC, January 22, 2010 (ENS) – The last known wild jaguar in the United States captured and killed last year in Arizona, was intentionally caught by employees of the Arizona Game and Fish Department in a snare, the Interior Department’s Office of Inspector General said in a report issued Wednesday that implicates the state…
One year after he was inaugurated with promises of “hope” and “change,” President Barack Obama has earned only a grade of “C” for his handling of endangered species, climate, energy, public lands, and oceans from one conservation group but an overall grade of “B+” on climate and energy from another.
Once it was known as an eco-paradise, a resort island of peace, but today hundreds of police clashed with villagers protesting construction of a Korean naval base on Jeju Island.
The U.S. EPA is planning to impose limits on phosphorus and nitrogen in Florida waters that will be the first federal standards for nutrient pollution in the waters of a state.
There has been a commercial “fishery failure” for Alaska’s Yukon River Chinook salmon due to low salmon returns, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke has formally determined.
To create green aviation fuels, diesel, and gasoline that can be transported and sold using existing fueling infrastructure, the Obama administration is investing up to $78 million of economic stimulus money in biomass technologies, including algae, says Energy Secretary Steven Chu.
The International Fund for Animal Welfare and the World Society for the Protection of Animals have agreed to head up a coalition of groups to address the needs of the millions of animals in Haiti following the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake on Tuesday.
The world’s largest investors today issued a statement calling on the United States and other governments to “act now to catalyze development of a low-carbon economy and to attract the vast amount of private capital necessary for such a transformation.”
President Barack Obama today announced the award of $2.3 billion in Recovery Act Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credits for 183 clean energy manufacturing projects across the United States.
The development of European offshore wind power accelerated today as the British government announced approval for offshore wind farm development areas with a capacity 10 times greater than Europe’s entire existing offshore wind energy capacity.
“America’s century-old love affair with the automobile may be coming to an end,” says Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, a nonprofit environmental research organization.
To help states develop strategies that will improve the energy efficiency of existing buildings and reduce costs and emissions, the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices today announced that six states have been selected to participate in the Policy Academy on State Building Efficiency Retrofit Programs.
Due to human activities, the world’s animal and plant species are disappearing at a rate some experts put at 1,000 times the natural progression, the United Nations said January 1, marking 2010 as the International Year of Biodiversity – the variety of life on Earth.
Attacks on humanitarian operations and a string of threats and unacceptable demands from armed groups have made it impossible for the world’s largest food aid agency to continue feeding up to one million hungry people in southern Somalia.
Research conducted during 2009 shows that first responders to the 9/11 World Trade Center terrorist attacks suffer from asthma at more than twice the rate of the general U.S. population. They also suffer other ongoing lung problems and may have a higher risk of cancer.
A pesticide approved just 18 months ago must be taken off the market because it could be toxic to America’s honey bees, already in steep decline.
To mark 2010 as Year of the Tiger, the government of Nepal has announced the expansion of Bardia National Park in the Terai Arc landscape by 900 square kilometers (347 square miles), which will increase critical habitat for wild tigers.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Ottawa River Group and the state of Ohio began construction on phase one of a $49 million cleanup of the Ottawa River and Sibley Creek in Toledo on December 19. The work was supposed to begin this past summer, but was held up by delays in government bidding procedures.
MANILA, Philippines, December 24, 2009 (ENS) – Mount Mayon, the Philippines’ most active volcano, is shooting columns of ash more than a kilometer above the summit and red hot lava is “fountaining” to a height of 500 meters – signs that an eruption is imminent, national volcano officials said today. Phivolcs, the Philippine Institute of…
A $93 million court settlement requiring Duke Energy, one of the America’s largest electric power companies, to eliminate sulfur dioxide emissions from a coal-fired plant in Indiana, was reached Tuesday, state and federal officials said.
To address the water crisis in California, the Obama administration today released a coordinated interim action plan that involves six federal agencies.
When it premiered in January 2009 at the Sundance Film Festival, Joe Berlinger’s documentary CRUDE opened many filmgoers’ eyes to the plight of 30,000 people from five indigenous tribes in Ecuador. These residents of what had been a beautiful, biodiverse rain forest were suffering the effects of what has become known as the “Amazon Chernobyl,” in which, they and others contend, 18 billion gallons of toxic oil waste had been dumped in their rivers and on their land. The water they drank, bathed and played in had been poisoned, and their children, siblings and parents were sick and dying in alarming numbers.
Just before 01.00 on Saturday morning, a number of heads of state and government agreed on a draft climate agreement at the UN conference in Copenhagen. The draft includes agreement on the target of limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius and on money for climate financing.
After a marathon all night session at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen, talks aimed at reaching a deal to limit greenhouse gases warming the planet ended with what UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon called an “essential beginning” that contains progress on all key fronts.