April 5th, 2012

Natural gas is portrayed as the “bridge fuel” that will save the US from uneven electricity supply and prices as we transition off coal and oil on our way toward using renewable biofuels, solar and wind power.

A drilling rig in Fort Worth, Texas. (Photo: Green Right Now)

[Read more →]

December 9th, 2011

In a first, federal environment officials Thursday scientifically linked underground water pollution with hydraulic fracturing, concluding that contaminants found in central Wyoming were likely caused by the gas drilling process.

The findings by the Environmental Protection Agency come partway through a separate national study by the agency to determine whether fracking presents a risk to water resources.

[Read more →]

November 29th, 2011

by Abrahm Lustgarten
ProPublica, Nov. 29, 2011, 11:14 a.m.

A deal to sell a controversial central Wyoming natural gas field has fallen apart amidst allegations that drilling there has caused water pollution.

Texas-based Legacy Resources backed out of a $45 million deal to buy the field near Pavillion, Wyom., from EnCana last week, soon after the Environmental Protection Agency said it had detected cancer-causing benzene at 50 times the level safe for humans and other carcinogenic pollutants during its latest round of sampling.

[Read more →]

August 4th, 2011

Climate change is expected to lead to worsening drought conditions and greater heat extremes, along with myriad health problems. And a new web tool created by the Natural Resources Defense Council lets you see read just how badly your state could be impacted by climate change.

[Read more →]

January 5th, 2010

Howlsnow (Photo: Wikimedia)

(The following was originally posted Dec. 30, 2009 in the NRDC Switchboard blog, under Saving Wildlife and Wild Places)

By Matt Skoglund

[Read more →]

September 3rd, 2009

From Green Right Now Reports

At least three of Idaho’s wolves have been killed as hunting commenced this week under the first authorized sport wolf hunt in the lower 48 states.

But while the hunt has attracted sportspeople, it has repelled others. A Lewiston-area man who killed the first wolf on opening day told the local media that he has received numerous calls of protest.

Robert Millage, a real estate agent, says he’s been called a “wolf murderer, a fat redneck and other names” in some 50 phone calls and hundreds of e-mails, according to the Lewiston Tribune. (To see a picture of the young wolf Millage killed view the story on Lewiston’s KLEW-TV.)

[Read more →]

August 25th, 2009

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

It would almost be easier to spot a Rocky Mountain Gray Wolf than to follow the legal wrangling around these once-endangered, recently delisted and soon-to-be-hunted predators.

A quick recap: After a few years of back and forth with environmentalists who argued that the wolves needed continued federal protection, the Bush Administration delisted the animals – took them off the Endangered Species List – in 2008. Enviros sued and a federal court agreed that delisting was premature and that the 1,500 or so wolves in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming were not at sustainable levels. The wolves were restored to endangered status.

[Read more →]

August 14th, 2009

From Green Right Now Reports

Exxon-Mobil Corporation, the world’s largest publicly traded oil and gas company, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Denver to violating the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act (MBTA) in five states during the past five years, the Justice Department announced.

The company has agreed to pay fines and community service payments totaling $600,000 and will implement an environmental compliance plan over the next three years aimed at preventing bird deaths on the company’s facilities in the affected states. According to papers filed in court, the company has already spent over $2.5 million to begin implementation of the plan.

[Read more →]

March 12th, 2009

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

Seeking to show that proposed new U.S. coal plants would exact a high environmental toll even beyond their carbon air pollution, the Natural Resources Defense Council issued a list today of the states that would bear the greatest burden from coal waste.

Texas, with eight proposed plants, topped the NRDC’s “Filthy 15″ list. It was followed by South Dakota, Florida, Nevada and Montana, Illinois, South Carolina, Ohio, Wyoming, Michigan, Kentucky, Missouri , Wisconsin, Georgia and West Virginia.

Those states have 54 proposed coal plants awaiting permitting. Across the nation, there are 80 proposed plants that would dump an estimated 18 million tons of dangerous coal combustion waste annually into various dump sites, largely unmonitored by the federal government.

[Read more →]

March 12th, 2009

Here is the Natural Resources Defense Council’s list of the 15 states that would be the biggest polluters — the “Filthy 15” — based on their total of 54 planned coal plants that create nearly 14 million tons of dangerous waste (state; number of proposed plants; estimated coal ash waste in tons):

[Read more →]

January 20th, 2009

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

Audubon has announced that its ongoing Pennies for the Planet project will support three specific conservation efforts in 2009.

The projects are:

• Project Puffin and the Seabird Restoration Program off the Maine coast. The Puffins have been restored to the island after once being driven off by hunters, but they must be protected as scientists learn more about how to save seabirds.

• Four Holes Swamp, an ancient swamp that supports otters, owls and rare plants in South Carolina as well as cypress trees that are hundreds of years old. Alligators and rare bats live in this soggy setting. Parts of the swamp are protected, but more land could be preserved.

• Wyoming’s “sagebrush sea,” an endangered habitat for pygmy rabbits, sage-grouse and pronghorns. Scientists are working to reclaim some of this area, to help save the native species, like the pronghorns, from being pushed aside by development and agriculture.

[Read more →]

September 18th, 2008

By Barbara Kessler

Gray wolves, all but de-listed from the Endangered Species Act protections through a series of government steps this year, have won a reprieve. According to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service official, the government will be withdrawing its declaration that the animals are fully recovered.

The move, reported by the Associated Press and various conservation groups, follows a federal court decision this summer that sided with environmentalists arguing that the wolves need continued protections.

[Read more →]