"Climate change will make wildfires in the West, like those now raging in parts of Colorado and New Mexico, more frequent over the next 30 years, researchers reported on Tuesday."
"Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will lead a delegation of officials to the United Nation's sustainability conference in Rio de Janeiro from June 20-22, the State Department said Tuesday, signaling a stronger U.S. commitment to the summit. The announcement comes after U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in April called on U.S. President Barack Obama to attend the conference and to take a more active role in global efforts to curb climate change."
Brandon Loomis, The Salt Lake Tribune public lands reporter, has just won the 2012 Grantham Prize for Excellence in Reporting on the Environment for "Our Dying Forests." Brandon and his colleagues will receive the US$75,000 award for this "measured and exhaustive series about the causes of the decline of ancient conifer forests stretching from New Mexico northward to the Canadian border."
"Federal health and environmental agencies are investigating whether Range Resources Inc.'s Yeager Marcellus Shale gas drilling site in Washington County caused toxic air and groundwater pollution that damaged the health of nearby residents."
"A new US-led study, featuring research by Tasmanian scientists, has concluded that warming ocean temperatures over the past 50 years are largely a man-made phenomenon."
"Twenty-one state legislators from 10 states are urging the American Chemistry Council, a chemical industry trade association, to expel three member companies for unethical behavior. As ACC members, the companies -- Albemarle, Chemtura, and ICL Industrial Products--must conform to ACC’s Responsible Care program, which, according to a June 4 letter to ACC from the legislators, the companies do not."
"Whether or not fishermen should be permitted to throw away healthy fish at sea instead of selling them to consumers will come to a head at a crunch meeting of Europe's fisheries ministers on Tuesday."
"BENTON HARBOR, Mich. -- In this predominantly black town with the lowest per-capita income anywhere in this hard-hit Rust Belt state, municipal leaders allowed a development group to take over the heart of a city park that fronts onto Lake Michigan -- land originally bequeathed to the people of Benton Harbor forever."
"Head in any direction on Michigan’s remote Upper Peninsula and you will reach gushing rivers, placid ponds and lakes -- both Great and small. An abundant resource, this water has nourished a small Native American community for hundreds of years. So 10 years ago, when an international mining company arrived near the shores of Lake Superior to burrow a mile under the Earth and pull metals out of ore, the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community of the Lake Superior Band of Chippewa had to stand for its rights and its water."
"WASHINGTON, DC -- A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must formally re-evaluate the environmental risks of storing spent nuclear fuel onsite at the nation's more than 100 nuclear reactors."
