PLANET IN PERIL

Friends - Just wanted to let you know, my article "Lament for the Honeybee, " has now been published in the online magazine, "OnEarth." "OnEarth" is produced by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a major international environmental organization with more than a million members! ABOUT: "OnEarth, the award-winning environmental magazine, explores politics, nature, wildlife, culture, science, health, the challenges that confront our planet, and the solutions that promise to heal and protect it. Our contributors include (North) America's finest writers and poets whose original works appear on pages filled with prize-winning photography and splendid art. Are you curious about who's cutting down (North) America's great forests... the newest plan to save Congo's last primates...why Detroit is stuck in reverse… the sex life of the poisonous moonflower… how Aboriginal Australians set the land on fire…a journey through Canada's wild nor

PHOTO COURTESY JOHN NAGY, GNWT WINNIPEG FREE PRESS; Caribou herds across Canada’s North have dropped drastically. Some place the blame on increasing development; others blame climate change or say it’s just "*the cycle of life. by Bruce Owen Winnipeg Free Press February 22, 2009 Caribou, the 'heart and soul' of the Far North and its most important food source, have begun disappearing in staggering numbers that have left stunned observers desperately searching for answers.

COMMENT: "The Tennessee coal ash disaster -podcast" entry in Paths Less Travelled made me discover your excellent blog that I look up regularly now. Thanks! Johanne ===== The worst environmental disaster in US history - ever! That's how some are describing the huge spill of coal fly ash at a holding pond before Christmas. Matt Landon, a volunteer with United Mountain Defense, talks with Emily Voigt about the magnitude of the coal ash disaster at the Tennessee Valley Authority power plant in Kingston, Tennessee. Listen here. Running time: 6 minutes, 32 seconds.

Dear Editor, Are our "opinion-leaders" doing their jobs? Or, are they letting us down? I will defend to the death the right of media commentators to speak their minds on any issue. But what if those opinions are based on fairy tales rather than facts? When addressing global warming, for example, are they seeking out the best evidence on which to craft their editorials? Or are they simply being contrary, making their pronouncements based on nothing more than junk science or personal bias? One doesn't have to look very far for media diatribes that label environmentalists as troublemakers or even "wackos." According to these "opinion-leaders," those who drive hybrid cars or buy carbon offsets when they travel are wasting their time. And lawmakers who clamp down on idling vehicles, are Communists! They would have us believe that either global warming isn't happening at all, or is being caused by just about anything other than human activity. So what is

ScienceDaily (Jan. 15, 2009) — Global yields of most biofuels crops, including corn, rapeseed and wheat, have been overestimated by 100 to 150 percent or more, suggesting many countries need to reset their expectations of agricultural biofuels to a more realistic level. Read more here>> (Photos by l.p.)

Posted by Tara Lohan, AlterNet at 4:42 PM on February 2, 2009. From California to the Himalayas, things are looking bad. In case you haven't been following recent headlines around water, they go something like this: Read more here>>

NaturalNews Insider Alert newsletter Dear NaturalNews readers, New research on blueberries is showing they contain remarkable medicine for activating the brain and preventing Alzheimer's disease. Check out the brief on this breaking news:

(AFP photos) Published on Monday, January 26, 2009 by Agence France Presse PARIS - Global warming may create "dead zones" in the ocean that would be devoid of fish and seafood and endure for up to two millennia, according to a study published on Sunday .

It is vanishing glaciers like the ones below that are already inflicting tragedy on Tibetans and others around the world. Please read story, below. 1875 photo courtesy H. Slupetzky/University of Salzburg The Pasterze, Austria's longest glacier (both photos, above), was about 2 kilometers longer in the 19th C. but is now completely out of sight from this overlook on the Grossglockner High Road. By Christina Larson, Christian Science Monitor Less snow in the mountains means less water and less food. It also means more of the same for other Asian nations downstream. Read more here>>

Jan. 13-'08 by Larry Powell http://www.worldwatch.org/ A large, well-respected research organization believes the world will actually have to end carbon dioxide emissions altogether by 2050 if we want to avoid "catastrophic" climate change and a planet which is "hostile to human development and well-being." *The Worldwatch Institute makes the sombre predictions in its 2009 "State-of-the-World" report entitled, "Into a Warming World." Despite all of this, the 47 scientists who wrote the report believe there is still plenty of opportunity for "efficiency improvements" in such fields as renewable energy, farming and forestry; improvements that will "slow and manage" climate change. While disaster can still be averted, "There's not much time left." Only with massive public support, political will to shift toward renewable energy, new ways of living and "a human scale that matches the atmosphere's limit

For the first time, this report, from Environmental Defense , uses industry information to arrive at a conservative estimate of what the overall leakage from the tar sands tailings ponds is today and also what it would likely be if proposed projects go ahead. The results are staggering....