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IN 1999, as a writer for The American Prospect, I went into a slaughterhouse undercover, with the help of some rebellious employees. The floor was slick with the residue of blood and suet, and the air smelled like iron. A part of my brain spent the whole time trying to remember which of Dante’s circles this scene most resembled. Today, under legislation being pushed by business interests, that bit of journalistic adventure could earn me a criminal conviction and land me on a registry of “animal and ecological terrorists.” So-called ag-gag laws, proposed or enacted in about a dozen states,...

Top Environmental Protection Agency officials used computer instant messages to try to circumvent open-records laws, according to a new lawsuit filed late last week by a researcher who has been demanding the agency comply with the law. Christopher C. Horner, the researcher who earlier uncovered that EPA officials were using private email addresses to conduct official business, said that in going over some of those earlier records he discovered the agency was using instant messages, too. He now is suing to get a look at those records, which he said EPA has refused to release. “It seems we have uncovered...

The relatively small glaciers that drape the planet's mountains will play an important role in future sea level rise, according to a new study that estimated glaciers' collective size. Researchers calculated the ice thickness for 171,000 glaciers worldwide, excluding the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which hold the bulk of Earth's frozen water. Through a combination of direct satellite observations and modeling, they determined the total volume of ice tied up in the glaciers is nearly 41,000 cubic miles (170,000 cubic kilometers), plus or minus 5,000 cubic miles (21,000 cubic km). If all the glaciers were to melt, global sea...

Democratic Rep. Martin Heinrich has built a 9 percentage point lead in New Mexico’s U.S. Senate race over former Republican Rep. Heather Wilson, a Journal Poll found. Heinrich, now in his second term as the 1st Congressional District representative in the U.S. House, drew support from 48 percent of voters in the statewide poll on the Senate race, conducted Oct. 9 -11. Thirty-nine percent of voters said they preferred Wilson, who preceded Heinrich in the 1st Congressional District seat, serving from 1998 to 2009. Nine percent of voters remain undecided in the Senate race. The remaining 4 percent backed Independent...

.... I am a proponent of carbon taxes. One criticism of this policy that you hear, for instance here from Noah Smith, is that they are pointless because you need international cooperation to make a real dent. But among non-tradeable goods this is not really the case. We don’t have to worry about transportation shifting abroad, since you can’t really outsource driving your car or shipping a package. And this matters, as transportation accounts for 70% of U.S. fuel consumption, and 30% of U.S. greenhouse gases. But even if carbon taxes are problematic, surely higher gas taxes are a good...

It was one year ago this month that the solar manufacturer Solyndra filed for bankruptcy, defaulting on a $535 million federal loan. The company’s name has become Republican shorthand for crony capitalism and the left’s green lunacy. But the Solyndra story is not a scandal. It is an inevitable bump on the road to a clean-energy economy. And almost everything Americans think they know about Solyndra is wrong. For starters, this story has bipartisan roots. President George W. Bush signed the bill launching the Energy Department’s loan program in 2005, and his administration selected Solyndra from 143 applicants for the...

It’s a watershed moment for Concord residents as single-serve plastic water bottles will be officially banned in the town, effective Jan. 1....state Attorney General Martha Coakley ruled that the controversial bylaw...does not violate state or constitutional law in any way.

He finally came around to what other climate scientists have been spouting for years. Richard A. Muller, a physics professor at the University of California-Berkeley, announced over the weekend that his much-publicized investigation into climate data has found that humans' production of carbon dioxide is causing the world to slowly warm up. And this process could speed up dramatically in the coming years. Muller's conclusions attract special attention because of his vocal self-styling as a converted climate change skeptic. Muller criticized global warming studies for sloppy and self-serving data selection and a lack of transparency that obscured errors; he then...

Yes, that would be the US Department of Agriculture, which is supposed to promote agriculture. Agriculture includes cattle ranching as well as farming (and dairies!). One of the most significant duties of the USDA is to rate the quality of meat so that consumers can be sure they’re eating healthy food. So why did the USDA send out a message to its employees discouraging the consumption of meat, using United Nations material? Senator Jerry Moran, a Republican who represents cattle-ranch-heavy Kansas, asked that question on the floor of the Senate yesterday:

Is it a dealbreaker if your partner skips the bacon in favor of tofu? For some meat eaters, that’s exactly the case. The recent Love Bites survey of 4,000 singles conducted by TODAY.com and Match.com found that nearly 30 percent of meat eaters say they would not date a vegetarian or vegan. Writer and omnivore J. Federer told TODAY.com that while he agrees couples should have interests outside the relationship, food is one thing that should be shared. “Food is social, and the dinner table is where a couple gets back together after a day of work or play,” he...

SANTIAGO CANYON – Local activists jumped to their feet and applauded actress Daryl Hannah's call for a paradigm shift away from the consumption of fossil fuels, putting a stop to mountaintop removal and stopping the Keystone XL pipeline. "We can't live without our water, soil, air and biodiversity," Hannah said. "We need to get off our butts and do it. We need to get together and realize we're on the same team whether we're blue or red, Democrat or Republican. We want to live. It's about loving something and protecting it."The Hollywood actress, known for protesting against mountaintop removal in...

The Sea Shepherds' scout vessel, the Brigitte Bardot, is slammed by a 30-foot wave, and water is entering the vessel through a crack in the pontoon. The terrified crew issues a distress call to the rest of the Sea Shepherd fleet, but help is more than 20 hours away. Fighting swells and brutal cold, the crew hopes to hold the outrigger in place with rope and straps. If the damaged piece is ripped from its slender mount, the crew fears the vulnerable craft may be torn to pieces.

Yesterday, I was pretty excited about today’s scheduled House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing, “EPA Priorities and Practices,” at which the former EPA regional administrator Al Armendariz was supposed to appear to explain his unique philosophy of enforcement. But then, all of my hopes were dashed — dashed! — when Energy & Commerce made this announcement late last night: WASHINGTON, DC – With less than 24 hours until he was scheduled to testify in front of the Energy and Power Subcommittee, former Regional Administrator for EPA Region 6 Al Armendariz has notified the committee that he will not appear at...

If we want to reduce fossil fuel consumption, I say, we should raise the price of gasoline to $7 a gallon. Reason: Today this country burns through 21 million barrels of oil per day, 60 percent of which is imported. Only with some shared economic pain will we ever change our habits. High gas prices will force us to think before we drive. It will encourage mass transit use, car pooling, and the sale of more fuel-efficient cars. The auto industry will not suffer because it has learned that it can charge more for cars that are cheaper to build...

Republican to revive lightbulb warBy Andrew Restuccia - 05/07/12 04:43 PM ET A House Republican is planning in the coming weeks to revive the GOP offensive against federal lightbulb efficiency standards. Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) will offer an amendment to Energy Department spending legislation that would block funding for implementation of the standards, the lawmaker's office told The Hill. The standards have come under fire from conservatives in recent years. Republicans won the inclusion of a similar provision in an omnibus spending compromise that House and Senate lawmakers agreed to in December. The provision blocked funding for implementation of the...

Joint letter from 49 former NASA scientists and astronauts to the current NASA Administrator blasts agency’s policy of ignoring empirical evidence about global warming.

Report says global climate deal hinges on Obama reelectionBy Ben Geman - 01/05/12 11:55 AM ET Prospects for striking a binding global climate deal by 2015 are probably toast if President Obama loses in November. That’s among the conclusions in a wide-ranging, new climate and green energy outlook from banking giant HSBC’s research branch. A major outcome from the United Nations climate talks in December was a plan to craft a deal by 2015 — one that would include big, developing nations such as China — and have it come into force by 2020. But Obama’s main Republican White House...

A California solar-panel manufacturer once touted by President Barack Obama as a beneficiary of his administration's economic policies — as well as a half-billion-dollar federal loan — is laying off 1,100 workers and filing for bankruptcy. Solyndra LLC of Fremont, Calif., had become the poster child for government investment in green technology. The president visited the company in May 2010 and noted that Solyndra expected to hire 1,000 workers to manufacture solar panels. Other state and federal officials such as former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Energy Secretary Steven Chu also visited the company's facilities. But hard times have hit the...

Environmentalists are staging a two-week oil-pipeline protest outside the White House to boost their importance to President Barack Obama’s political calculations in the 2012 election season. But there’s little evidence so far that progressives’ disappointment with Obama’s environmental policies threatens to reduce their turnout on election day, or that it pressures White House officials to make additional concessions to environmentalists during a political season dominated by the public’s demand for additional jobs. Monday’s colorful, TV-ready protests against the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada’s oil fields to U.S consumers took place in Lafayette Park, in front of the White House. The...

It may not rank as the most compelling reason to curb greenhouse gases, but reducing our emissions might just save humanity from a pre-emptive alien attack, scientists claim... This highly speculative scenario...described by scientists at Nasa and Pennsylvania State University...