At the time New Jersey established a ban on fracking, it seemed symbolic, much like the moratorium in Vermont, which has no economically recoverable natural gas; the Marcellus Shale, primarily in New York and Pennsylvania, doesn’t extend into New Jersey. Continue reading
Every year 1,000,000 tons of coal dust blows or washes onto Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. This has gone on for the past decade and is set to almost quadruple in the coming years as Australia accelerates its great coal rip-off. Continue reading
The first prophetic sign to follow CNN’s irrelevant Pandora’s Promise is this: the Dallas-based Luminant Power Company has cancelled two mammoth reactors. Continue reading
For several months now long trains of rail cars full of crude oil can be seen inching along, or stopped altogether, beside I-787 in downtown Albany NY. Other tankers fill the rail yards off I-90 not far from the SUNY campus. Continue reading
Four climate scientists have made a public statement claiming nuclear power is an answer to global warming. Continue reading
In the movie classic “On the Beach,” the end scene shows a banner flapping in the breeze over a radioactive and dead Melbourne, Australia, proclaiming, “THERE IS STILL TIME . . BROTHER.” Continue reading
In the past months, there has been between 90 and 900 Tbq (terabecquerels) of strontium-90 pouring into the Pacific, raising levels by up to two orders of magnitude. Since June 2011, there have been further large discharges of strontium-90 from Fukushima that have not been measured with precision. Continue reading
Last week’s anti-fracking protest has put Canada’s First Nations at the forefront of Canada’s political life, injecting spirit back into our moribund political scene. Canadians watching the evening news were shocked by scenes of burning police cars, and riot squad of 100 police wielding tear gas and tasers on horseback. Continue reading
Japan’s pro-nuclear prime minister has finally asked for global help at Fukushima. Continue reading
Tokelau, an independent territory of New Zealand, is a small three-island archipelago of about 1,400 residents about 300 miles north of American Samoa in the South Pacific. In October 2012, the Polynesian nation turned off the last of its diesel generators and became the first country to use solar power as its only energy source. Continue reading
The explosion of hydraulic fracturing in the last several years, according to a new report, is creating a previously ‘unimaginable’ situation in which hundreds of billions of gallons of the nation’s fresh water supply are being annually transformed into unusable—sometimes radioactive—cancer-causing wastewater. Continue reading
In a huge victory for the grassroots movement for a green-powered earth, Entergy has announced it will shut its Vermont Yankee reactor by the end of next year. Continue reading
The horrifying news from Fukushima worsens daily. It is an unparalleled global catastrophe that cries out for anyone and everyone with nuclear expertise to pitch in. Continue reading
In the most serious action since the nuclear plant was first damaged in 2011, Japan’s Nuclear Regulatory Authority is on the verge of raising the international alarm—and the official threat level—over the spiraling crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Continue reading
On March 11, 2011, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck just off the eastern coast of Japan. The temblor did what quakes always do. It leveled buildings, caused $235 billion in damage and spawned a tsunami that killed more than 15,000 people. In addition to this expected chaos and carnage, the earthquake damaged nuclear reactors located near the city of Fukushima. The Fukushima reactors have been in varying degrees of crisis ever since. The world was assured that the crisis was averted back in 2011, but plant operator Tepco has been lying for the last two years. Continue reading
Royal Dutch Shell, which owns or leases about 900,000 acres in the Marcellus Shale, had a great idea. Continue reading
Just when it seemed things might be under control at Fukushima, we find they are worse than ever. Continue reading
If one picture is worth 1,000 words, then the pile of petroleum coke, petcoke, which sits along the Detroit River tells quite a story. Beginning in November 2012, the Koch Carbon company began dumping the petcoke, which is a byproduct of tar sands oil production and also a cheap fuel. Koch Carbon is owned by those Kochs, Charles and David, the incredibly wealthy right wing industrialists who play a very public role in bringing union busting Right to Work laws, Stand Your Ground, and other horrors to state legislatures across the country. Continue reading
Nine weeks ago, oil near a tar sands extraction site in Cold Lake, Alberta, Canada, began to leak and ooze from the ground. It is currently wending its way through a nearby swampy forest, blackening vegetation and killing wildlife. It shows no signs of stopping. Even worse, scientists have no idea where it’s coming from or what to do about it. Continue reading
Radiation leaks, steam releases, disease and death continue to spew from Fukushima and a disaster which is far from over. Its most profound threat to the global ecology—a spent fuel fire—is still very much with us. Continue reading
A unanimous Los Angeles City Council has demanded the Nuclear Regulatory Commission conduct extended investigations before any restart at the San Onofre atomic power plant. Continue reading
The history of energy exploration, mining, and delivery is best understood in a range from benevolent exploitation to worker and public oppression. A company comes into an area, leases or buys land in rural and agricultural areas for mineral rights, increases employment, usually during a depressed economy, strips the land of its resources, creates health problems for its workers and those in the immediate area, and then leaves. Continue reading
Only in science fiction can humans escape the consequences of destroying their own habitat. In Robert A. Heinlein’s Time Enough For Love, the “Great Diaspora of the Human Race” began “more than two millennia ago” and has spread to more than “two thousand colonized planets.” The once “lovely green planet” Earth is a slum planet barely able to support life where only the poorest live, Earth’s natural capital having been consumed over two thousand years ago. Humans have found the ability to rejuvenate themselves and to live almost endless lives, but they are unable to rejuvenate the planets whose natural capital they devour. Humans have not encountered “one race as mean, as nasty, as deadly as our own.” As homo sapiens use up the environments of colonized planets, “human intergalactic colony ships are already headed out into the Endless Deeps,” leaving their ruins behind them. Continue reading
In Central Asia, the problem of the rational use of transboundary water resources is the key to the welfare of the population and to the possibility for sustainable development of the national economy in the region. Continue reading
Politics continues to threaten the health and welfare of Pennsylvanians. Continue reading
With her 1962 book, Silent Spring, Rachel Carson got DDT and other synthetic pesticides banned and saved bird life. Today it is humans who are directly threatened by technologies designed to extract the maximum profit at the lowest private cost and the maximum social cost from natural resources. Continue reading
Recently, I spent three weeks in a Georgia beach community. Each morning, I’d run to the pier and, sometimes, on the beach. At dusk, I’d walk a street that dead-ended with a view of the majesty and immensity of all that water, thinking, in awe, “cradle of life.” Continue reading
Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow last Thursday. Continue reading
Who intentionally set off fireworks under a blackbird roost in Beebe, Arkansas, on New Year’s Eve killing at least 200 birds in some warped homage to last New Year’s, when at least 5,000 blackbirds perished? Continue reading
Have you heard about the great brown cloud? No, it’s not a new nickname for Donald Trump (his cloud is more an intergalactic nimbus of Aqua Velva and Tang), or the ominous menace in a new Stephen King novel. It’s almost as nasty, though. Continue reading
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Untamed nature: Is the world ready for another tsunami?
Posted on December 2, 2013 by Paul Balles
Since the beginning of recorded history, mankind has struggled with the destructive forces of nature. Continue reading →