Browsing environmental news sources so you don't have to. Contact Laura Barnes (lbarnes@istc.illinois.edu) with questions, comments, and suggestions.
Follow ENB on TwitterThe 16th annual Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital runs March 11-22, and will feature a screening of “Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai,” about the Nobel Prize-winning Kenyan environmentalist, as well as the world premiere of “Scarred Lands and Wounded Lives: The Environmental Footprint of War.” The web site also includes archives of festival programs from 2004-2007.
Read the full story in the Grand Rapids Press.
For the past 4 1/2 years, city officials proudly have handed out bottles of water at city-sponsored meetings and events. The half-liter bottles, with their “Grand Rapids Water System” label, now appear doomed as city commissioners become aware of the environmental footprint those plastic bottles carry.
Read the full story from Minnesota Public Radio.
Thirty-two Minnesota cities have signed the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. More than two years since the agreement launched, cities are having a hard time figuring out the size of their carbon footprint.
Read the full story in the Journal of Commerce.
Lifting Ontario’s offshore wind farm moratorium is just what the wind-farm industry needs to help promote further construction in this field, a West Coast-based offshore wind development firm says.
Read the full story in the Northwest Indiana Times.
The much-anticipated draft air permits for BP’s Whiting Refinery’s $3.8 billion project to process Canadian heavy crude was released to the public Tuesday after months of agency review.
Read the full story in the New York Times.
The oil shocks of the 1970s produced a flurry of attention to alternative sources of energy, but it faded once prices dropped in the mid-1980s. Now, with oil prices again high and climate change moving up the list of public concerns, interest in alternative energy is once again at fever pitch.
Is history about to repeat itself?
Not likely, according to a leading energy consulting firm. In a report scheduled for release Tuesday, the firm, Cambridge Energy Research Associates, concludes that multiple factors will continue pushing the world toward greater use of alternative energy sources like sun and wind power, regardless of what happens to oil prices.
The latest issue of Renewable Energy Weekly is now available. Highlights include:
Read the full story in Environmental Protection.
U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein joined with Sen. Barbara Boxer (both D-Calif.) on Jan. 24 to introduce a measure to overturn the U.S. EPA’s denial of California’s Clean Air Act waiver. The Boxer-Feinstein bill would legislatively grant the state of California (and any other state) the authority to adopt and enforce tailpipe emissions reductions.
Read the full story in Environmental Protection.
Citi, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley formed The Carbon Principles, which are climate change guidelines for advisers and lenders to power companies. The principles are the result of a nine-month effort to create an approach to evaluating and addressing carbon risks in the financing of electric power projects.
Read the full story in Environmental Protection.
While Democrats were almost twice as likely as Republicans to believe that global warming is a serious problem and a threat to all life on the planet, on average, they perform only about 15 percent more “green” actions than Republicans. For example, 65 percent of those surveyed who always vote Republican and 71 percent of those who always vote Democrat said they are actively reducing energy use in their homes.
Regardless of political persuasion, people who believed that climate change is a danger, and who believed that we can combat it, were engaging in more activities to protect the environment. According to the survey, adults who held these beliefs strongly engaged in 60 percent more environmental actions than adults who did not.
Read the full story in Environmental Protection.
Cambridge scientists are advocating additional research into the little understood links between environmental pollution and type 2 diabetes.
In the most recent edition of the Lancet, Drs. Oliver Jones and Julian Griffin highlight the need to research the possible link between persistent organic pollutants (POPs, a group which includes many pesticides) and insulin resistance, which can lead to adult-onset diabetes.
Read the full story at SustainableBusiness.com.
An Airbus A380 aircraft has successfully completed the world’s first ever flight by a commercial aircraft using a liquid fuel processed from gas (Gas to Liquids – GTL) in the first stage of a test flight program to evaluate the environmental impact of alternative fuels in the airline market. The flight from Filton, UK to Toulouse, France, lasted three hours.
February 8, 2008
1:00 eastern, 12:00 central, 11:00 mountain and 10:00 pacific and will last for 90 minutes.
Note: A subscription is required to access H2E webinars. Visit http://cms.h2e-online.org/teleconferences/ for more information.
Topic
AIArchitect describes “Sustainable Healthcare Architecture,” the newly released monograph on green building in health care authored by Robin Guenther, FAIA, LEED AP, and Gail Vittori, LEED AP as “a very important book.” Join us for an hour’s overview of the best current examples of green building in health care and the authors’ vision for the future.
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Please note, this webinar will take advantage of updated technology. Your confirmation email will list the phone number and web address required to access the call. No visual presentation will be available for download on the site.
The call is at 1:00 eastern, Noon central, 11:00 mountain and 10:00 pacific time. The call will last approximately 90 minutes. A subscription is required to access H2E webinars. Visit http://cms.h2e-online.org/teleconferences/ for more information.
The College of Architecture and Design at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has committed to make its own building — as well as all its studio projects — more environmentally friendly. The college is one of only four design institutions in the nation to make such a commitment.
By a unanimous vote of the faculty, the college has adopted a plan to achieve a carbon-neutral design community and include the elimination or reduction of the need for fossil fuel as a central tenet in its design education.
Northern Arizona University is home to the greenest building in Arizona and one of the three greenest in the world after receiving a “Platinum” rating for its Applied Research and Development building.
California Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi joins Ohlone College in celebrating the opening of a new environmentally conscious campus, the Ohlone College Newark Center for Health Sciences and Technology, Thursday, January 31. Constructed to achieve the highest levels of environmentally sustainable construction and operations practices available, the campus is on track to receive LEED Platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. The Ohlone College Newark Center will join a prestigious group of only 50 buildings in the world* to achieve this status.
