"A day after delivering a State of the Union address aimed at showing recession-weary Americans he understands their struggles, President Barack Obama intends to award $8 billion in stimulus funds to develop high-speed rail corridors and sell the program as a jobs creator."
By BILL DAWSON
The Beat usually examines recent coverage of environmental issues. This time around, though, The Beat looks at the environmental beat itself — specifically, at a couple of recent developments related to the training of journalists to cover environmental issues.
The first event was the October announcement that Columbia University was suspending for review its two-year, dual-degree graduate program leading to one master's degree in journalism and another in environmental science.
The digital age of environmental journalism has brought with it an ugly underbelly characterized by increasingly bitter personal exchanges and accusations and a sucking-up of countless hours of productive reporting time and effort. How reporters handle these distractions may shape how well the American public understands, or doesn't understand, the climate challenge they and future generations will face.
"The tourism industry could fund payments for ecosystem services to underwrite and insure its investments. And by harnessing private-sector investment, billions of dollars worth of vulnerable yet valuable marine and coastal ecosystems could avoid Cancun’s fate, says a growing group of governmental organizations, environmental groups and non-governmental organizations."
A new peer-reviewed analysis by scientists at the National Climatic Data Center concludes that skeptic Anthony Watts' 2009 critique of the U.S. temperature record is itself contrary to the actual data.
"Somewhere just after 12:30 p.m. on a cold Wednesday this month, the image of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar as a Western pragmatist and wily political deal-maker evaporated in a cloud of heated rhetoric."
A move is afoot in California to put on the ballot an initiative that would cripple the state's effort to slash its greenhouse emissions.
"Environmentalists, fishermen and others in the Copper River region are spearheading a new effort to boost citizen monitoring of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline."
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