Posted by Rob Perks in Health and the Environment , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
It was the nightmare before Christmas. On Dec. 22, 2008, the stockings were hung by the chimney with care, but homeowners sleeping snugly along the banks of the Emory River received far worse than a lump of coal. Residents of Harriman, Tennessee bore the brunt of...
Posted by Rob Perks in Curbing Pollution , Health and the Environment , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
Now that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has made it clear that mountaintop removal coal mining poses a severe threat to the environment -- most notably to water quality -- in Appalachia, the fate of this abominable practice appears to rest...
Posted by Rob Perks in Curbing Pollution , Health and the Environment , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
Kudos to Congressman Ed Markey (D-MA) for bird-dogging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on the need to regulate pollution from coal-fired power plants. Yesterday, Rep. Markey sent a letter to EPA requesting information on the agency's findings related to the...
Posted by Rob Perks in Curbing Pollution , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , The Media and the Environment , U.S. Law and Policy
Last week the U.S. Supreme Court made a dreadful decision to allow the dumping of toxic gold mine waste into a pristine Alaskan lake. The court deemed this pollution allowable as "fill material" under the Clean Water Act. Well, last night on The Colbert...
Posted by Rob Perks in Curbing Pollution , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
Here we go again: Today the federal appeals court (4th Circuit) in Richmond rejected a request by public interest groups to reconsider its decision last month to overturn a lower court ruling that had curtailed mountaintop removal coal mining in West Virginia. With a...
Posted by Rob Perks in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
Earlier this month -- on Friday the 13th -- a federal appeals court in Richmond, VA dealt a devastating blow to the environment by overturning a 2007 lower court decision curtailing mountaintop removal, the world's most destructive coal mining technique. I blogged this bad news. Clearly, the...
Posted by Rob Perks in Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
On this unluckiest of all days, there is a horror story for those trying to save Appalachia's mountains from senseless destruction in pursuit of the world's dirtiest fossil fuel. A federal appeals court today overturned a lower court ruling curtailing mountaintop removal --...
Posted by Rob Perks in Curbing Pollution , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
When is a stream no longer a stream? In other words, if you fill it, will it still flow? When mountaintop mining occurs the waste rock, rubble, dirt and other debris that results from blasting gets push off the cleared ridge-top...
Posted by Rob Perks in Curbing Pollution , Health and the Environment , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
The moonscape below is a former fully-functioning ecosystem -- now devoid of forests, wildlife, wetlands and waterways that are characteristic of a mountain. This is so-called mountaintop removal coal mining -- the most destructive strip mining practice on earth --...
Posted by Rob Perks in Moving Beyond Oil , U.S. Law and Policy
At midnight on Tuesday, September 30th, the federal moratorium on drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) will be no more. The OCS drilling ban, renewed every year by Congress since its enactment in 1981, will be allowed to lapse. ...
Posted by Rob Perks in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
House Republicans gathered en masse on the steps of the Capitol this week, ready to launch a choreographed full-throated cheer for more drilling before the Washington press corps. But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. The...
Posted by Rob Perks in Curbing Pollution , Green Enterprise , Moving Beyond Oil , Nuclear Weapons, Waste and Energy , Reviving the World's Oceans , Saving Wildlife and Wild Places , Solving Global Warming , U.S. Law and Policy
We expect much from our elected leaders yet rarely do we get the opportunity to engage them on the issues we care about. So many members of Congress, yet so little chance to actually ask them where they stand on...
Posted by Rob Perks in U.S. Law and Policy
According to Robert Frost, fences make good neighbors. But I wonder what good ole Bob would have said if his neighbor had hastily erected a wall along the property line, in the process cutting down the apple trees, bulldozing the...
