Why walk when you can drive?

Here’s a good answer, thanks to a New York City resident’s essay in in today’s NY Times.

Money appropriated for bat research

And one too soon, as Sen. Patrick Leahy notes in this newspaper article from Burlington, Vt.

EPA vows to step up Clean Water Act enforcement

About time. Goodbye Dick and Dubya.

Fossil fuels’ hidden cost is in billions, study finds

Read about it here, and then think about it the next time you crank up your car or fill it up at a gasoline station.

A legacy of society’s addiction to coal

This is the Jeddo Mine Tunnel, dug a century ago to dewater deep underground mine shafts in the middle anthracite region of northeastern Pennsylvania. This is the same region of the Keystone State which chambers of commerce and related bidness interests have taken to calling “upstate” Pennsylvania. The Jeddo drains about 35 square miles of anthracite coal shafts in the Hazleton area and discharges an average of 40,000 gallons a minute of acid mine drainage (AMD) into the Nescopeck Creek watershed, a tributary of the Susquehanna River, the largest single source of freshwater for Chesapeake Bay. This is just one of many such AMD sources in “upstate” Pennsylvania. AMD, of course, is lethal to aquatic life.

Costly carbon

That’s the headline over this well-written Salt Lake Tribune editorial.

Quote of the week

“That’s how developers work,” she said. “If people are protesting something, they just go bulldoze it and that stops the problem.” — A student, in speaking out about the cutting down of mature cottonwood trees to make way for building construction at the El Rito campus of Northern New Mexico College.

Budget cuts hamper environmental protection in Pa.

The Marcellus Shale natural-gas companies, many of them out-of-state, are making out like bandits in an old Western movie. This Philly Inquirer article spells out the damage.

Nuclear energy becomes pivotal in climate debate

That’s a newspaper’s hedline, not mine. The debate is long over with. It is happening and human activity is to blame. Check out this newspaper article regarding the newfound interest in nuclear energy.

Oil shale inqiry opens

The L.A. Times offers this article.