Planetary Ruin

Reuters: One of two reactors at the San Onofre nuclear power station in Southern California was shut down on Tuesday after a small leak was detected in a steam generator tube, but the incident posed no risk to the public or plant workers, the facility operator said. The reactor unit, which normally provides 1,100 megawatts of electricity, was shut down at about 5:30 p.m. local time as a precaution and will remain off line for a least a couple of days, said Gil Alexander, a spokesman for Southern California...

Reuters: There is a bright side to the plunge in solar panel prices that has brought down some U.S. and German manufacturers which relied too heavily on subsidies for green energy - solar power costs have fallen faster than anyone thought possible. The falls in prices for photovoltaic components, pushed down by economies of scale and fierce competition from China, have made solar nearly as cheap as conventional sources in Germany's electricity grid. The boom in Germany, the world's biggest photovoltaic...

Guardian: A commission of influential London business leaders has denounced the coalition as "negligent" for ruling out a third runway at Heathrow, and called on them to reconsider all the options for greater airport capacity in the south-east. London First, a lobbying group representing many of the capital's biggest employers in the City and beyond, has launched a report describing an expanded at Heathrow as the "only credible option" for the capital. It accuses the government of being unwilling to consider...

ClimateWire: Mitt Romney's crushing victory in Florida spoiled Newt Gingrich's southern momentum with a barrage of personal attacks, including one about the former speaker's views on climate change that the son of Ronald Reagan said gives conservatives "cardiac arrest." The strong finish by the former Massachusetts governor, who gained 46.4 percent of the vote to Gingrich's 31.9 percent, rode a wave of aggressive jabs criticizing Gingrich's ethics as speaker, his connections to Freddie Mac and his conviction...

GlobalPost: This article is the last in a three-part series that explores the issue of deforestation and climate change. In part one, GlobalPost considered how a proposed international carbon-credit market could slash greenhouse-gas emissions and save the world's surviving forests. Part two highlighted how forest people can benefit from carbon credits, while part three looks at "carbon cowboys" accused of abusing the system. For many impoverished rainforest communities in Latin America, Africa and Asia,...

While Republican Party candidates face a political drilling in the Florida primaries, Florida prepares for the offshore drilling by a Spanish company just miles away from its coastline, courtesy of our embargoed neighbor to the South.  Cuba has signed lease agreements for offshore drilling blocks with six nations in the North Cuba Basin, a body of water within the Cuban Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) that is believed to harbor at least 4.6 billion barrels of crude oil.  Five of the six companies are owned by foreign countries: India, Venezuela, Malaysia, Vietnam and Angola.  Spanish-based Repsol, the single private company, will drill one exploratory well in the North Cuba Basin, called the Jaguey Prospect, lying about 55 to 60 miles south of Key West, FL.  It owns a 40% share in the newest exploratory well, while India’s Oil and Natural Gas Corp. and Norway’s Statoil each hold a 30% stake.  Repsol has contracted the Italian-owned Scarabeo-9, a mobile offshore drilling unit (MODU), to drill the Jaguey well.

In March 2010, President Obama introduced a plan for drilling to take place 125 miles from Florida’s Gulf coastline. Only weeks later, the President’s offshore drilling proposal was shelved due to the Deepwater Horizon spill. Since then, the administration has been largely hostile to existing deep water drilling offshore in American waters—first, it imposed a de jure moratorium, and, after that, it imposed a de facto moratorium via bureaucratic foot dragging.

In a surprise move, the President seemed to pivot on offshore drilling policy in last Tuesday’s State of the Union Address. Specifically, he announced a plan to open 75 % of potential offshore oil and gas reserves. Details of the plan are still scarce, so we still don’t know what it entails exactly. One must wonder if the President’s wind of change was prompted by the fact that companies from five nations are drilling for oil and gas in such close proximity to Florida.

Canada was the world's largest uranium producer for many years, accounting for about 22% of world output, but in 2009 was overtaken by Kazakhstan. Production is expected to increase significantly from 2013 as the new Cigar Lake mine comes into operation. Canada is also a large producer of many other mineral products. The problem is that many mining operations produce significant amounts of waste in an environment with a fragile ecosystem and limited resources to deal with environmental issues. While the government of Canada has introduced legislation to ensure that at least some of the costs associated with reclamation are accounted for in future developments, critics believe there are still serious risks.

Climate Central: While Alaska continues to to suffer from record cold and snow, much of the rest of the country continues to experience a year without winter. This week, it's likely that warm temperature records will be broken throughout the eastern U.S., with forecast highs in New York City approaching 60°F on Tuesday and Wednesday, and reaching the mid-60s in Washington, D.C. According to the National Weather Service (NWS), record highs may also be set today in Islip, N.Y., and Bridgeport, CT. Satellite image...

Massive, varied, and intricately woven into the fabric of modern industrial society, the global chemical industry was valued at over $4 trillion in 2011, according to Pike Research’s Green Chemistry report. The non-pharmaceutical chemicals industry in the United States is valued at around $700 billion per year. The rise of bio-chemicals promises to transform that industry. Bio-based chemicals and plastics – often referred to as bio-based products – are commercial or industrial products (other than food or feed) that are derived from biological products or biomass. They serve as direct replacements for the building blocks used in petrochemical production.

Guardian: So, late last year, I said – to some controversy here – that the violent crackdown against the Occupy movement in the United States represented the first salvos of a civil war initiated by political and allied economic elites against protesters in a nascent movement whose still-not-fully articulated agenda would represent a threat to their unmediated and untransparent hold on profits. And a civil war it has indeed turned out to be. Over the weekend, 2,000 citizens marched in support of Occupy...