A US Forest Service report indicates 4,600+ threatened species live in more than 90% of the country’s watersheds, discusses problems as well as a number of plausible solutions, and includes several maps that allow you to quickly determine if at-risk species are in your audience area.
The federal government has released its draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for identifying and evaluating the best areas on public lands for building utility-scale solar plants. A 90-day public comment period ends March 17, 2011, preceded by 14 meetings in 6 Western states and Washington, D.C.
Much of your audience likely considers food a minor issue since they see it as generally available, affordable, healthy, environmentally benign, and unrelated to issues such as national security. You can help paint a more realistic picture for them, from the global to the local.
"Federal investigators' findings in the San Bruno pipeline explosion probe suggest that thousands of miles of long-buried and untested natural gas pipelines across the United States are at far greater risk of failure than the industry and government regulators have long maintained, experts say."
"U.S. EPA has signaled that it won't reverse a George W. Bush-era policy that lets refineries burn some byproducts without treating them as toxic waste, drawing scorn from environmentalists, who had asked the incoming Obama administration to rethink the rule."
"Drilling service companies have injected at least 32 million gallons of diesel fuel underground as part of a controversial drilling technique, a Democratic congressional investigation has found."
"California Gov. Jerry Brown's decisions regarding environmental and energy issues will affect public and private spending and public health for the foreseeable future."
New sulfur dioxide standards set by Alberta in December 2010 are far weaker than some members of an advisory panel hoped for, environmentalists say. They suspect the oil industry has gotten to Alberta Environment.
Environmentalists say mercury emissions from the TransAlta coal-burning electric power plant in Washington state are dangerous.
"The current air quality standards for carbon monoxide (CO) are strong enough to protect public health, U.S. EPA said today as the agency issued a proposal to keep the existing limits."
