Public

"On June 4, 1963, less than a year after the controversial environmental classic 'Silent Spring' was published, its author, Rachel Carson, testified before a Senate subcommittee on pesticides. She was 56 and dying of breast cancer. She told almost no one. She'd already survived a radical mastectomy. Her pelvis was so riddled with fractures that it was nearly impossible for her to walk to her seat at the wooden table before the Congressional panel. To hide her baldness, she wore a dark brown wig."

"The drought of 2012, which continues to spread westward, is making its mark on the national consciousness in many ways. Rising food prices. Interrupted livelihoods. Fields of stunted, desiccated crops. All of this dryness has resonance in our video culture. Just go to YouTube and look at the proliferation of public service announcements on water conservation."

"Organic champagne anyone? Environmental activists were celebrating Thursday as Quebec's new government gave an unambiguous thumbs-down to the shale gas industry in the morning and confirmed its intention to quickly shut down the Gentilly-2 nuclear plant in the afternoon."

"Efforts to clean up one of the largest industrial polluters in Illinois will be delayed until the end of the decade after a state panel voted Thursday to give the owner of a massive downstate power plant more time to slash its lung-damaging emissions."

"SAN FRANCISCO -- Next month, the climate change litigation circus leaves Washington, D.C. First stop: the James R. Browning U.S. Courthouse."

"British scientists have shot down a study on declining honeybee populations that triggered a French ban on a pesticide made by Swiss agrochemicals group Syngenta."

"President Obama plans to bypass Congress and sign an executive order [Friday]designating the ancient Chimney Rock ruins in southwest Colorado as a new national monument, the administration announced late yesterday."

"Three Mile Island plant, scene of the worst nuclear power accident in the US, shut down automatically after failure of a coolant pump. Officials say the Three Mile Island shutdown poses no threat."

"A team of biologists has just announced the first documented case of bird-to-bird malaria transmission in Alaska. Writing in the journal PLOS ONE, they've shown that this frequently fatal avian illness, which is normally associated with the tropics and temperate areas, may be expanding its range. Fortunately, avian malaria doesn't affect humans, co-author Ravinder Sehgal of San Francisco State University said, but the findings are particularly significant from a bird conservation as well as a climate change standpoint."

"Recent action by Koch Oil Sands pulls the curtain back further on the Koch family's deep but quiet involvement in Canada's oil sands industry."