"Indoor marijuana cultivation consumes enough electricity to power 2 million average-sized U.S. homes, which corresponds to about 1 percent of national power consumption, according to a study by a staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory."
"Two areas of Alaska's Cook Inlet will be designated as critical habitat for the endangered Cook Inlet beluga whale, NOAA's Fisheries Service, Alaska Regional Office announced [April 8]."
"This country’s battle to curb oil imports is being plotted in high-tech laboratories and elite universities hunting for breakthroughs in alternative fuels. But the frontlines in the effort to bring such fuels to market can be found in places like a working-class neighborhood in this river town, not far from where Pony Express riders saddled up to journey west."
"The Goldman Environmental Foundation today announced the six recipients of the 2011 Goldman Environmental Prize - a group of grassroots leaders who are taking on tough challenges to protect the environment and their communities, often at great personal risk."
"A federal judge on Saturday rejected a plan negotiated between the government and wildlife advocates to remove most wolves in the Northern Rockies from the Endangered Species List."
"Extracting natural gas from shale formations using hydraulic fracturing generates more greenhouse-gas emissions than burning coal, according to a new study that drew immediate attacks from oil and gas interests already facing pressure from lawmakers and regulators worried about the environmental effects of shale-gas development."
"Japan has raised its assessment of the accident at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to the worst rating on an international scale, putting the disaster on par with the 1986 Chernobyl explosion, the Japanese nuclear regulatory agency said on Tuesday."
"Dozens of large-scale clean energy projects could be derailed if a measure to defund a federal loan guarantee program becomes part of a final Congressional budget deal."
Bill Dawson gets the "Inside Story" from Alanna Mitchell (pictured at left) about her Grantham Prize-winning book Seasick: Ocean Change and the Extinction of Life on Earth, her career and her next project.
By BILL FREUDENBURG
[Note: Published posthumously in the Spring 2011 SEJournal, this is Bill's preface to Atrophy of Vigilance as he wrote it.]
May 14, 2009. Yesterday, my doctors told me that I have a rare and usually fatal cancer, meaning that I don’t know how much time I have left on this earth. By about 2:00 this morning, I had decided that one of the things I want to do with that time is to finish this book about the earth, and about what we humans are doing to it.
