Great Lakes Echo (https://greatlakesecho.org/tag/echo/page/188/)
Oct. 24, 2009
Listen to Echo contributor Steven Davy interview Matt Dunstone, the maker of Kalamazoo River: US, which explores that troubled west Michigan river. Davy hosts the Nonchalant Café. A film trailer appears below the interview. The movie’s Web site has showtimes and locations.
By Haley Walker
October 23, 2009
U.S. drivers as a whole spent the equivalent of 175 million days in traffic jams in 2007, according to a recent report. That’s enough time to listen to War and Peace on your car stereo 160 million times, said the Texas Transportation Institute researchers who published the 2009 Urban Mobility Report. It is a slight drop from 2006. “Congestion went down because of high gas prices in 2007,” said Tim Lomax, research engineer with the transportation institute. While the economy and gas prices slowed congestion in 2007, the 25-year trend shows continual growth.
(OH) Cleveland Plain-Dealer – Consumers who have been looking for the Energy Star label on appliances, light bulbs and building materials such as windows, doors and skylights since 1996 may be saving money on their energy bills. Or, it turns out, they may not be. That they cannot know for sure is a real disappointment. The federal Department of Energy and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency aren’t certain which Energy Star products live up to the label. Although those agencies are responsible for administering the program, loopholes, poor management and bureaucratic overlap let manufacturers certify products as deserving of the high-efficiency designation that actually aren’t.
(MI) Traverse City Record-Eagle – For more than 30 years I have studied weather and climate, and I believe human activity is upsetting our planet’s well-balanced, natural systems. This is not a blind belief in some quasi-religious or ideological position. It is a matter of the preponderance of evidence. Consider that for 200 years humans have mined massive amounts of carbon in the form of oil and coal from the Earth, and released it into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. That’s not part of the planet’s natural cycle of carbon. This carbon has been stored away, out of the natural cycle, for eons before being released by humans and their machines into the atmosphere.
By Jeff Gillies
Oct. 20, 2009
While Great Lakes officials beat back the voracious Asian carp at the gates of Lake Michigan, they still wrangle with another nasty fish that snuck in at least 90 years ago. Sea lampreys, eel-like parasitic fish native to the Atlantic Ocean, use a mouthful of teeth and a bony tongue to latch onto and scrape through fish flesh. Scientists debate whether the lamprey is native to Lake Ontario, where it was discovered in 1835. But it invaded Lake Erie by 1921 and the rest of the Great Lakes by 1946.
(NY) The New York Times – Columbia University’s dual masters program in environmental journalism has been suspended, according to the school’s Web site, which now includes the following “important note”. Due to the current weakness in the job market for environmental journalists, Columbia’s dual degree program in Earth & Environmental Science Journalism will not be accepting new students for the fall of 2010. Check back here for further developments. More
(IL) Chicago Tribune – The Obama administration is cracking down on BP as the oil company overhauls its massive refinery in northwest Indiana, one of the largest sources of air pollution in the Chicago area. In response to a petition from environmental groups, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Monday ordered Indiana regulators to revamp a new operating permit for the Midwest’s biggest refinery. The groups, along with elected officials in Illinois, contend Indiana had allowed the oil giant to avoid stringent requirements under the federal Clean Air Act. More
(MI) Detroit Free Press – During a speech today in Detroit, retired U.S. Army General and former presidential candidate Wesley Clark cast the effort to develop electric vehicles as a critical national security need that is essential to help the United States reduce its dependence on foreign oil. The issue “is absolutely dead center in the bull’s-eye for national security,” Clark said during a three-day conference called “The Business of Plugging In,” which is being held at Motor City Casino in Detroit. More
(IN) The Post-Tribune – BP could be forced to halt construction on its Whiting refinery if the company and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management lowballed air pollution as much as environmentalists allege. Environmentalists say IDEM allowed BP to increase air pollution without the pollution control equipment required by the Clean Air Act. They vowed Tuesday to do what they can to stop construction while BP puts in the best available pollution controls. More
(MI) Kalamazoo Gazette – Helen Taylor couldn’t have said it any better. Taylor, The Nature Conservancy’s state director, described the recent agreement to acquire 171 acres of dunes at Saugatuck as “a huge step forward in the marathon effort to protect this property in perpetuity for the people of Michigan.”
The area includes the south portion of the McClendon property (formerly the Denison property) adjacent to Saugatuck’s Oval Beach City Park. Announcement of the deal was made by the city of Saugatuck, the Land Conservancy of West Michigan and The Nature Conservancy. More