Associated Press: A judge ruled Thursday that Chevron can proceed with an international arbitration claim against Ecuador related to a 17-year-old court battle over rain forest contamination in that South American nation. U.S. District Judge Leonard Sand in Manhattan rejected an attempt by Ecuador to block the arbitration but also said his decision was limited in scope and left the arbitration panel to decide what, if anything, it will hear and when. His ruling does not directly affect the ...

Guardian: Companies across Europe are hoarding permits to produce greenhouse gas emissions worth hundreds of millions of pounds, the Guardian can reveal. The surplus credits have been amassed from over-allocation of permits to pollute from the European emissions trading scheme, and by buying cheap credits from carbon-cutting projects in developing countries and holding on to their more expensive official EU allowances. The saved permits can be used to meet future targets to cut the ...

Mongabay: Birds may see pleasanter skies in the US soon, if Congressman Mike Quigley has his way. Quigley, a democrat from Illinois, has introduced legislation that would require all federal buildings to become bird-friendly, potentially saving the lives of millions of birds every year. "Building collisions are arguably the single greatest man-made killer of birds. From three hundred million to one billion birds or more die each year from collisions with glass on buildings--from skyscrapers to ...

Guardian: More than two animals and plants a year are becoming extinct in England and hundreds more are severely threatened, a report published today reveals. Natural England, the government's agency responsible for the countryside, said the biggest national study of threats to biodiversity found nearly 500 species that had died out in England, all but a dozen in the last two centuries. The losses recorded compare with a natural rate of about one extinction every 20 years before humans ...

Associated Press: Wildlife officials lauded Washington's "holistic approach" to conservation in Hawaii after the Obama administration declared 48 species as endangered and announced plans to set aside more than 40 square miles on Kauai as critical habitat to allow the plants and animals to flourish. Two Honeycreeper birds, a fly and 45 ferns, trees and shrubs found only on the island of Kauai were among the species named Wednesday, boosting the number of such classifications by the Obama administration ...

Reuters: Big business is now free to blitz the airwaves to attack politicians who support action against climate change, which could smother messages from environmentalists. But it is not yet clear whether corporations have the will or the budgets to use the advertising weapon the climate change wars that emerged in January when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that corporations have the same right as individuals to free political speech, including spending on advertising. The decision ...

Associated Press: The Cove Production year: 2009 Country: USA Cert (UK): 12A Runtime: 90 mins Directors: Louie Psihoyos More on this film Federal prosecutors filed charges yesterday against a sushi chef and a Santa Monica restaurant following allegations that they served illegal and endangered whale meat. Typhoon Restaurant Inc, which owns The Hump restaurant, and sushi chef Kiyoshiro Yamamoto, 45, were charged with illegally selling an endangered ...

Business Green: The two steps forward, one step back nature of international climate change negotiations was again underlined yesterday after it emerged that China and India's support for the Copenhagen Accord remains highly conditional. The two countries this week wrote to the UN confirming they could be "listed " in the agreement, which they helped to broker at the Copenhagen climate change summit last year. All large emitters barring Russia have now signalled formal support for the ...

Inter Press Service: Battling the pain from a boil on his left thigh, 45-year-old Inggit Tukino pulled his two-wheeled cart through the overcrowded alleys of a slum in Rawabebek, Penjaringan hamlet in here North Jakarta. "Garbage, garbage!" he shouted, announcing his arrival at every house. Upon hearing his voice, the residents, mostly women and children, rushed out and placed solid household waste into Tukino's wooden cart. He also collected garbage bags hanging outside a number of other ...

Guardian: For those who made the conscious decision to spend more on free range or organic eggs, it was worth paying a premium to know the hens that laid them had been kept in ethical conditions. But those people who ended up paying over the odds for Keith Owen's eggs may feel a little less warm inside after it emerged the 44-year-old egg wholesaler had scammed all the major supermarkets and numerous small shops by passing off about 100m battery farmed eggs as free range or ...

Associated Press: AUSTIN, Texas -- An Interior Department report says global climate change poses a significant threat to migratory bird populations already stressed by the loss of habitat and environmental pollution. U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar joined scientists and conservation organizers at an Austin news conference Thursday to release a study entitled "The State of the Birds: 2010 Report on Climate Change." The report says oceanic birds, such as petrels and albatrosses, are at ...

Reuters: Chevron Corp may pursue an international arbitration claim over environmental pollution allegations in Ecuador, a judge ruled on Thursday, part of a long-running case that carries a potential $27 billion liability for the second-largest U.S. oil company. The government of Ecuador had asked Manhattan federal court Judge Leonard Sand to prevent Chevron from taking the 17-year-old case to arbitration under the U.S.-Ecuador Bilateral Investment Treaty. U.S. courts had previously ...

Yale Environment 360: In light of the strong evidence that growing corn, soybeans, and other food crops to produce ethanol takes a heavy toll on the environment and is hurting the world's poor through higher food prices, consider this astonishing fact: This year, more than a third of the U.S.'s record corn harvest of 335 million metric tons will be used to produce corn ethanol. What's more, within five years fully 50 percent of the U.S. corn crop is expected to wind up as biofuels. Here's another sobering ...

New York Times: A group of top scientists from around the world will review the research and management practices of the United Nations climate change panel so that it can try to avoid the kinds of errors that have brought its work into question in recent months, officials said Wednesday. Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general of the United Nations, said that the InterAcademy Council, a consortium of the world's most prestigious scientific societies, would name scientists to take a thorough look at the ...

Associated Press: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says it will consider ways the states can address rising levels of carbon dioxide in oceans. The agency on Thursday settled a lawsuit filed last year by the Center for Biological Diversity in San Francisco. The problem stems from oceans absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and results in the rising acidity of the water. It seriously threatens shellfish and other marine life. The lawsuit accused the EPA of acting improperly ...

Agence France-Presse: Europe's most powerful solar power plant is set to start operations in Italy later this year, the US company building the installation on an area as large as 120 football pitches said on Thursday. The plant in Rovigo near Venice in northeast Italy will take up 850,000 square metres (9.15 million square feet) and produce 72 megawatts, SunEdison said in a statement announcing the start of construction. The current biggest plant in Europe, located in Spain, produces 60 megawatts ...

Physorg: The increased frequency and intensity of oxygen-deprived "dead zones" along the world's coasts can negatively impact environmental conditions in far more than just local waters. In the March 12 edition of the journal Science, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science oceanographer Dr. Lou Codispoti explains that the increased amount of nitrous oxide (N2O) produced in low-oxygen (hypoxic) waters can elevate concentrations in the atmosphere, further exacerbating the impacts of ...

New York Times: Federal prosecutors have filed a criminal complaint accusing a Japanese restaurant in Santa Monica and its chef of serving whale meat, a violation of the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act. In an unusual operation that was sparked by the team behind the Oscar-winning documentary film about dolphin hunting, "The Cove' the restaurant, the Hump, was investigated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, the California ...

Bloomberg: Americans are less concerned about the threat of climate change than they were two years ago and almost half say the seriousness of global warming is overblown, a Gallup Organization Inc. poll shows. Thirty-two percent of people questioned said they believe climate change will affect them or their way of life, down from a high of 40 percent in 2008, according to the survey by Gallup, a Washington-based polling company. Two-thirds say global warming won't affect them in their ...

Culture Change: What was required for a growing economy, that was supposed to uplift all of modern humanity, is at root a false notion for the manipulated public: the overwhelming majority must work for others to enrich the few so that all of society benefits through unlimited expansion. This problematic profit-scheme is failing to hold up, what with general economic uncertainty on the rise (apart from "Hope") and the advanced depletion of easily extracted, cheap oil. To put even greater pressure on ...