NOAA, the USFWS, and the NY State Dept. of Environmental Conservation (representing all state and wildlife agencies) released on Jan. 19, 2012, a draft of the first national strategy for responding to climate change effects on plants, fish and wildlife. The public comment period is open until March 5, 2012, and public meetings and a webinar will occur until Feb. 22, 2012.
Finally, after numerous delays amid allegations of political interference by people who don't want to see documented evidence of climate shifts, the wait is over. The new detailed interactive map is based on data from 1976-2005, and is the first official revision since the 1990 update.
The American Horticultural Society and the National Arbor Day Foundation offer generalized hardiness maps as a starting point, until the US Department of Agriculture gets around to unveiling its own update.
One day, EPA may propose rules for regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and petroleum refineries. But the process continues to drag out, with the consent of the state and local governments and environmental advocacy groups that have been litigating for about five years to make the agency take action.
"UNITED NATIONS -- This summer's sustainable development conference in Brazil, known as Rio+20, is emerging as an overt attempt by U.N. officials to shift away from the divisive politics of climate change to a broader debate on the green economy and how to bring it to developing nations."
"BLACKWELL, Okla. — Blackwell Zinc Co. paid one of the best wages in Kay County before environmental problems and contamination concerns closed it in 1974. Now some residents here are entitled to one last payday — this time for damages caused by the smelter operation."
"House Transportation Chair John Mica introduced Americans to the GOP vision for transportation on Tuesday -- more highways and more toll roads. To pay for it all, there would more offshore drilling. Democrats and environmentalists, predictably, weren't impressed."
"FORT WORTH, Texas — A new Texas Railroad Commission rule requiring oil and natural gas operators to publicly disclose the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing of natural gas and oil wells takes effect Wednesday."
"Canada’s Nunavut Territory is the largest undisturbed wilderness in the Northern Hemisphere. It also contains large deposits of uranium, generating intense interest from mining companies and raising concerns that a mining boom could harm the caribou at the center of Inuit life."
"A drought that a government official called the most severe Mexico had ever faced has left two million people without access to water and, coupled with a cold snap, has devastated cropland in nearly half of the country."
Advertisement 
