Green Options

Is the U.S. Interior Department wrongly withholding information that will reveal whether taxpayers are being ripped off in a controversial oil and gas royalty program? Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) see to think so, according to a lawsuit they filed today. Interior claims that disclosure of bidding and contracting information about its Royalty-In-Kind (RIK) sales would reveal oil company trade secrets.

Ontario is planning on updating its 136 year old mining law to reflect current values and conditions. Preventing wildcat staking of personal and aboriginal property is one of its highest priorities.

The Canadian government has made good on a promise to protect 15.8 million acres of unique British Columbia rainforest–an area more than twice the size of the entire country of Belgium.

In two vague bills introduced both in the House and Senate of the US Congress, a vast reorganization of America’s agriculture system aimed at tracking and regulating foods for public safety could endanger organic farms and gardens.

The bills, S.425 and H.R.875, attempt to modernize food safety and regulate and standardize agriculture by creating an agency called the Food Safety Administration, but in the process they could threaten organic farming.

Fishing nets often inadvertantly become entangled around whales, and while that is a crime under the Endangered Species Act, hardly anyone ever faces charges. But one unlucky fisherman has been caught in the act.

Robert J. Eldridge Jr. faces up to a year in prison and a $100,000 fine if convicted of three felony charges.

The district attorney says he “did knowingly and unlawfully take a marine mammal, to wit, a humpback whale in waters under the jurisdiction of the United States by acts of pursuit, torment, and annoyance which had the potential to injure said marine mammal in the wild.”

Six Greenpeace climate change activists have been cleared of causing £30,000 of criminal damage at a coal-fired power station in a verdict that is expected to embarrass the government and lead to more direct action protests against energy companies. Article by John Vidal of the Guardian.

The jury of nine men and three women at Maidstone crown court cleared the six by a majority verdict. Five of the protesters had scaled a 200-metre chimney at Kingsnorth power station, Hoo, Kent, in October last year.

In a ruling that could impact thousands of similar cases, a Florida jury has ordered Philip Morris, the largest tobacco company in the US, to pay the family of a lung cancer victim $8 million in damages.

Elaine Hess presented evidence to the jury showing that her husband Stuart had smoked three packs of cigarettes every day before dying of lung cancer at only 55. Philip Morris’ attorney argued that Hess had the free will to quit at any time, but the jury didn’t buy it.

Fifteen-year-old Bostonian Jordan Star has emerged as the surprise driving force behind a bill to ban the cruel practice of ’surgically silencing’ cats and dogs by removing their vocal cords.

Star, a freshman at Needham High, decided to take action after coming across a dog that had been debarked and abandoned. “It was just horrible,” he said of the dog’s struggle to get his attention. “It was just like a hoarse, wheezy cough. In a shelter, all they are is a mutilated animal, which makes them harder to adopt.”

From gently used clothing to handmade toys, we’ve raised our concerns about how the new Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) will negatively affect green families and businesses.

This law designed to protect our children is so poorly written, it will actually benefit big business and harm resale shops and natural toymakers.  As Stephen Lamar, executive vice president of the American Apparel and Footwear Association explained to the Redding Record Searchlight, “The law introduces an extraordinarily large number of testing requirements for products for which everyone knows there’s no lead.“  An exemption has been proposed for clothing and toys made from natural materials such as wood and wool, but what about library books? Yes, LIBRARY BOOKS!

Taking effect on February 10, 2009, the CPSIA will require all products for children under 12 be tested for lead, including books.  That means in order for a library to admit children under 12, they must test all of their children’s books or ban children from the library.

Starting New Year’s Day, Beijing will ban high-emission vehicles from the city.

Beijing will ban some 353,800 vehicles with high emissions from anywhere within the fifth ring road, which circles the city center at a radius of 10-15 km. One in ten cars and trucks in Beijing will be subject to the ban. But, say city officials, those vehicles account for 50 percent of the city’s notoriously bad auto pollution.

The vehicles on the banned list are those that do not meet the Euro I emissions standards set in Europe in the early 90’s. According to Ren Lihong of the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Science, these cars are a big part of Beijing’s pollution problem.

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is today expected to adopt the most radical global warming plan in the U.S., and possibly the world. If passed, it will force individuals, as well as the state’s utilities, refineries and large factories to fundamentally change the way they do business, and slash greenhouse gas emissions.