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Frances Beinecke's Blog

Issues: Curbing Pollution

Growing Green: Honoring Leaders Who Are Changing the Way We Farm and Eat

May 8, 2009

Posted by Frances Beinecke in Curbing Pollution , Health and the Environment , Living Sustainably , Moving Beyond Oil

Tags:
agriculture, eatlocal, localfood, michaelpollan, simplesteps, sustainablefarming

Tomorrow night NRDC will do something it has never done before: give out the inaugural Growing Green Awards to leaders in the sustainable food movement. Selected by a panel chaired by Michael Pollan, the best-selling author of the Omnivore's Dilemma,...

America Leads on Major Human Health Victory: Curbing Mercury Pollution

February 26, 2009

Posted by Frances Beinecke in Curbing Pollution , Health and the Environment

Tags:
coalfiredpowerplants, mercury, mercuryinfish, obama, powerplants, tuna

Over the past year, I have noticed a disturbing trend. More and more people approach me to say that they or someone they love has dangerously high levels of mercury in their system. When actor Jeremy Piven recently bowed out...

President Obama: Don’t Give Canadian Tar Sands a Free Climate Pass

February 18, 2009

Posted by Frances Beinecke in Curbing Pollution , Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming

Tags:
alberta, borealforest, canada, cleanenergy, dirtyfuels, globalwarming, globalwarmingpollution, tarsands

Tomorrow President Obama is traveling to Canada. Most American presidents head to Ottawa on their first state visits, using the trip to our northern neighbor as an easy transition to the world stage. But this time, in addition to the...

President Obama: Continue to Lead on Restricting Mercury

January 30, 2009

Posted by Frances Beinecke in Curbing Pollution , Health and the Environment

Tags:
coalfiredpowerplants, mercury, mercuryinfish, obama, tuna

President Obama has deftly used his time in office to make bold statements on everything from Guantanamo to global warming. In two weeks, he will have another opportunity to send a message to the world that the United States is...

Household Trash Is Managed Better than the TVA’s Coal Ash

January 8, 2009

Posted by Frances Beinecke in Curbing Pollution , Health and the Environment , Solving Global Warming

Tags:
arsenic, cancer, coalash, coalfiredpowerplants, coalindustry, dirtycoal, EPA, kingstonfossilplant, toxins, TVA

Americans have been assaulted on the airwaves with ads about so-called "clean coal." What happened in East Tennessee, where a breach of a coal ash pond at a power plant send a billion gallons of toxic sludge into nearby communities,...

Honeybees, NRDC's Lawsuit, and EPA's Discontent

September 4, 2008

Posted by Frances Beinecke in Curbing Pollution , Health and the Environment , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places

Tags:
clothianidin, colonycollapsedisorder, EPA, honeybees, NRDClawsuit, officeofpesticideprograms, pesticides, pollination

Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency registered its discontent with NRDC. Why? Because it claims we are overstepping by asking a public agency to share more public information. Maybe you don’t view the behavior of honeybees as a matter of...

Why Endocrine Disruptors Should Be a Household Word

April 25, 2008

Posted by Frances Beinecke in Curbing Pollution , Health and the Environment , Living Sustainably

Tags:
babybottles, bisphenol-a, BPA, breastcancer, endocrinedisruptors, hardplastic, phthalates, plasticbottles, pregnancy, simplesteps

In the past week, there have been a lot of news reports and blog chatter about BPA, also known as bisphenol-A. Finally, government agencies, consumers, and manufacturers are starting to take this toxin seriously. But BPA is only one member...

The Twilight of Dirty Coal

February 11, 2008

Posted by Frances Beinecke in Curbing Pollution , Solving Global Warming

Tags:
californiautilities, citigroup, coalfiredpowerplants, dirtycoal, globalwarmingpollution, investmentbanks, jpmorganchase, morganstanley, wallstreet

Many of the issues we work on take decades to get the results we want. But at other times, things begin to fall into place with surprising speed. That’s happening now with dirty coal.Over the past year, one after another...

The Bipartisan Air You Breathe

November 15, 2007

Posted by Frances Beinecke in Curbing Pollution , Green Enterprise , Solving Global Warming

Tags:
apolloalliance, cleanair, cleantech, E2, globalwarming, markettransformation, newyorktimes, powershift, schwarzenegger, tomfriedman

I am in Washington today for meetings. The weather is alright--it’s raining, but warm, probably in the mid-fifties. The air is harder to read, however. As I walked along the sidewalk, I couldn’t tell if I was breathing Republican air...