Daily Archives: March 3, 2016
Vegan Leather: What It Is and Why It Belongs in Your Closet
There’s nothing faux about how vegan leather benefits animals and the planet.
Source: Vegan Leather: What It Is and Why It Belongs in Your Closet
8 Vegan Ostrich-Leather Purses That Are Elegant and Cruelty-Free
Leave ostriches alone with these vegan ostrich-leather purses.
Source: 8 Vegan Ostrich-Leather Purses That Are Elegant and Cruelty-Free
US-German Exptal Nuclear Reactor Waste Blew Up in Nevada-Germany Trying to Send More Nuclear Waste to USA – Comment to Oppose by 11 March 2016, 1159 pm ET
Oppose America becoming Germany’s Nuclear Waste dump here: http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=DOE_FRDOC_0001-3020 It can be very short and anonymous.
What blew up at the Beatty Nuclear waste site last October? Apparently it included metallic sodium coolant from an old MOX (plutonium) fueled US, German, GE, Euroatom experimental nuclear reactor (SEFOR), located in northwestern Arkansas. Meanwhile, following Germany’s request, the US may import high level nuclear waste from Germany’s failed Pebble Bed nuclear reactors. This isn’t the first radioactive waste that they have burned or dumped in America, either. The Italian mafia dumped German nuclear sludge in Italy, as well. The SEFOR drums at Beatty were 92 oil drums with sodium coolant, which may, or may not, have had contaminants, such as plutonium and americium, which are still radioactive.
SEFOR rusting away in Northwest Arkasas, USA
3 pounds of sodium metal plus water, public domain via Wikimedia
Sodium “May ignite spontaneously in air…
View original post 4,609 more words
Alaska’s Polar Bears Win Their Day in Court | TakePart
Polar bear mother and cub emerge from there den in springtime along the Arctic cost of Alaska
(Photo: Steven Kazlowski/Barcroft Media/Getty Images)
Polar bears, the Obama administration, and conservationists scored a major victory on Monday, when a federal appeals court affirmed the boundaries of a 187,000-square-mile area in the Arctic that wildlife scientists deem crucial to saving the bear from extinction.
The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit struck down a lower court’s ruling that sided with a coalition of petroleum industry groups, the state of Alaska, and several far-northern Alaska Native corporations, which sued the Obama administration over its “critical habitat” designation for polar bears under the Endangered Species Act.
Advertisement
“The court soundly rejected the oil and gas industry’s attempt to shrink critical habitat for the polar bear, and that’s a great thing,” said Rebecca Riley, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, which was not involved in the lawsuit.
The area set aside for polar bears under the law “is enormous, in part because it covers these huge areas of sea ice,” said Holly Doremus, director of the environmental law program at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.
RELATED: Alaska’s Polar Bears Could Be in Big Trouble Within 10 Years
Related
Starving Polar Bear Is the Face of the Future
“But that’s not what’s being argued about here—it’s the denning habitat and the barrier islands, access to the sea,” she said. “The parts of their lives that the polar bears spend off the sea ice and how they get back and forth.”
The court found that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service used the best available science to set the land-based critical habitat boundaries, which include areas polar bears use now as well as places they will need as climate change continues to thaw the Arctic.
“The plaintiffs wanted them to draw a little dot around every known den,” Doremus said, and set critical habitat boundaries based on those locations. But “that hasn’t happened with past critical habitat designations, at least not the way the plaintiffs wanted here.”
“We all know that’s not a practical way to think about this,” said Riley. “We have to look at what habitat is really valuable to polar bears and what they could use or might use, and that’s what the court upheld here.”
Under the Endangered Species Act, any federally regulated activity within critical habitat boundaries, such as oil and gas development on federal lands or waters, needs to account for harm to endangered species in its planning.
The Alaska Oil and Gas Association and the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, an Alaska Native company, did not respond to TakePart’s requests for comment.
The American Petroleum Institute, which was among the lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit, declined an interview request. “We are reviewing the court’s decision and considering all options,” the group said in a statement.
The Alaska Department of Law called the decision “disappointing” in a statement, adding that it “will be reviewing the options for further judicial review.”
"OUR WORLD" 