Environment

Fracking and the Government: 1969-Present

Staff / Truthdig Feb 8, 2012 The U.S. government and energy companies have been fiddling with ways to get at gas trapped inside rock underground for decades. Now, using highly pressurized toxic liquid to extract the petro-bubbly is becoming standard practice, even as evidence mounts that it poisons drinking water. ProPublica charts government and industry's decades-long regulatory dance. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

The Great Carbon Bubble

By Bill McKibben, TomDispatch Feb 8, 2012 If we could see the world with a particularly illuminating set of spectacles, one of its most prominent features at the moment would be a giant carbon bubble, whose bursting someday will make the housing bubble of 2007 look like a lark.At the moment, one of the world's most prominent features is a giant carbon bubble, whose bursting someday will make the housing bubble of 2007 look like a lark. Dig deeper ( 6 Min. Read )

This Utopia Brought to You by the United Nations

Staff / Truthdig Jan 30, 2012 In preparation for the Rio+20 conference on sustainable development, the United Nations has released a report titled "Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing," complete with 56 recommendations that sound great but will probably never be implemented. (more) Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Why Climate Change Will Make You Love Big Government

By Christian Parenti, TomDispatch Jan 28, 2012 Don’t expect the present anti-government “consensus” to last. Global warming and the freaky, increasingly extreme weather that will accompany it is going to change all that. Dig deeper ( 11 Min. Read )

Freedom of the Press Roughed Up in U.S.

Staff / Truthdig Jan 26, 2012 Thanks to the deplorable treatment of journalists during OWS, the U.S. drops in the Press Freedom Index; turns out, it's more environmentally friendly to reuse an old building than to build a new one in its place; and a peaceful Occupy L.A. protester is charged with lynching. These discoveries and more after the jump. Dig deeper ( 2 Min. Read )

Fracking Gets Its Own Occupy Movement

By Ellen Cantarow, TomDispatch Jan 26, 2012 While most anti-fracking activists have been responding to harms already done, New York state’s resistance movement has been waging a battle to keep harm at bay. Dig deeper ( 12 Min. Read )

Scientists Create Magnetic Soap to Cope With Oil Spills

Staff / Truthdig Jan 24, 2012 Researchers have invented a kind of soap that can be magnetically corralled to help clean up toxic spills. The feat is accomplished by infusing more mundane suds with tiny iron particles that join together and react to magnets. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Robert Redford: We Can’t Afford To Be at the Mercy of Big Oil

Staff / Truthdig Jan 24, 2012 Remember when Sundance was known as the scrappy little flick-fest that could, ushering many an indie darling to theaters of mass consumption from its unlikely setting, nestled in a tony resort town in the Utah mountains, somehow stoking lefty sensibilities all the while? Yeah, that was a long time ago. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Utah Doctors Take On Giant Mining Operation

Staff / Truthdig Jan 22, 2012 A group of doctors and environmentalists in Salt Lake City have joined the Occupy movement to sue the third-largest mining corporation in the world for allegedly violating the Clean Air Act with practices that contribute to thousands of pollution-related deaths in Utah each year. The company, Rio Tinto/Kennecott, pulled in a record $15 billion in profits last year. Dig deeper ( 2 Min. Read )

Danger Waters

By Michael T. Klare, TomDispatch Jan 12, 2012 In 2012 and beyond, energy and conflict will be bound ever more tightly together, lending increasing importance to the key geographical flashpoints in our resource-constrained world. Dig deeper ( 11 Min. Read )

Armed With Naiveté

By Bill McKibben, TomDispatch Jan 7, 2012 The usual recipe for political effectiveness is to be cynical, calculating, an insider. But if you think that we need deep change in this country, then cynicism is a sucker’s bet. Dig deeper ( 7 Min. Read )

How Brazil Is Saving the Amazon

Staff / Truthdig Jan 2, 2012 Readers of Jared Diamond's "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" know that deforestation comes right before people eating each other to survive, so it is some relief that Brazil is sending armed officers into the Amazon to stop illegal logging. It's a war, says the BBC, and the environmentalists are winning. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )