"VICTORIA, B.C. -- More than seven billion litres of water were used for fracking in B.C. last year. If the government’s liquefied natural gas sector takes off, the water needed to get shale gas out of the ground in the northeast corner of the province will likely increase by 500 per cent, or more."
"The driest year on record is turning the golden hills of California to dust, drying up wells, pastures and cash reserves in a season that is traditionally lush and generous."
"Unhealthful levels of lead, arsenic and mercury were detected for the first time in several soil samples of the Calavera neighborhood in West El Paso, according to a recent remedial investigation report prepared for the Asarco Custodial Trust."
"WASHINGTON — To stave off climate change, sources of electricity that do not emit carbon will have to replace the ones that do. But at the moment, two of those largest sources, nuclear and wind power, are trying to kill each other off."
"In energy, next year promises to be just as unconventional as the last."
"North America's boom in unconventional oil and gas will continue to expand and the shale success could spread elsewhere. Easy-to-reach conventional oil is dwindling, but 2014 could see a reprieve as production from Iraq, Libya, and other war-torn oil nations seems to be stabilizing. And easing relations with Iran has the potential to bring major amounts of oil back onto global markets.
"One government biologist discovered the best way he could help save polar bears was to quit his job."
"For the first time since records began being kept in Florida in the 1970s, the number of manatee deaths in a single year has topped 800, with two weeks remaining to the end of 2013."
"It’s hard for me to believe that it’s been 25 years since a cattle rancher ordered his son to shoot Chico Mendes, a rubber tapper and unionist who had become an effective international campaigner for sustainable use of the Amazon rain forest."
"SAN DIEGO — In an unmarked greenhouse, leafy bushes carpet an acre of land here tucked into the suburban sprawl of Southern California. The seeds of the inedible, drought-resistant plants, called jatropha, produce a prize: high-quality oil that can be refined into low-carbon jet fuel or diesel fuel."
"CEDAR FALLS, Iowa — Bounding out of a silver Ford pickup into the single-digit wind-flogged flatness that is Iowa in December, Laura Jackson strode to a thicket of desiccated sticks and plucked a paisley-shaped prize."
"It was a pod that, after a gentle squeeze, burst with chocolate brown buttons: seeds of milkweed, the favored — indeed, the only — food of the monarch butterfly caterpillar.
Once wild and common, milkweed has diminished as cropland expansion has drastically cut grasslands and conservation lands. Diminished too is the iconic monarch."
