Charges filed in cyclist's death
KALKASKA -- Bicyclist Carl John Ray died nearly four months ago when a truck struck him from behind as he peddled along Rapid City Road in Kalkaska County. The driver who hit him now faces criminal charges for the collision. Area cyclists will be glad to hear it, said Fred Schaafsma, member of the Cherry Capital Cycling Club. "It won't bring Carl Ray back, but it's good to hear they're proceeding," Schaafsma said. "The thing that is upsetting for us is that the cyclist is often blamed with the fault." Kalkaska County Prosecutor Brian Donnelly charged the driver, whom he wouldn't identify pending an arraignment, with operating under the influence causing death and negligent homicide. The driver, 50, is expected to be arrested and arraigned shortly.

Simplify the Holidays
If you were asked to describe the ideal holiday season, what would you say? Perhaps you would include the company of loved ones, good food, fun and relaxation… maybe an inch or two of snow. Aiming higher in our holiday daydreams, we might even envision a feeling of tranquility and peace blanketing our homes, our community, the wide world.

Group Meets to Fix the Great Lakes Compact
Traverse City—The initial goal is to pass a Michigan constitutional amendment, either through the legislature or by popular referendum, that would accomplish two things: No. 1, eliminate what some environmentalists feel is a dangerous loophole in the recently passed legislation designed to protect waters of the Great Lakes basin and No. 2, clearly establish that Michigan citizens own their water and only they have the right to determine whether and who would be able to sell it for private gain. The legislation of concern, the Great Lakes Compact, is now federal law after having been ratified by legislatures in the eight states with land in the Great Lakes basin. The law prevents diversions of water to outside the basin except under some very specific and controlled conditions. But the law allows companies to ship water out of the basin in containers of 5.7 gallons or smaller if the diversion does not cause certain, specified environmental damages. Buried in the fine print, the Compact by definition also excepts "water produced as a product" from the ban on diversions. “This sets up a climate where hungry states, corporations, or nations outside the basin could tap Great Lakes water if it is packaged in any size containers,” says environmental attorney James Olson, an organizer of the November 16 event.

Close loophole in Great Lakes pact
For years environmental attorney Jim Olson has been a voice in the wilderness. Long before the Great Lakes states (including Michigan) and Congress approved the Great Lakes Compact, Olsen was warning that wording included in the final version of the pact created a massive loophole that would allow Great Lakes water to be considered a commercial product and sold as a commodity. His warnings were often met with a shrug. Those writing the compact language disputed his interpretation. For many environmentalists and others, the most important task was simply to get the compact passed by the legislatures of the Great Lakes states, signed by the various governors, passed by Congress and signed by President Bush. So an honest reading of the document that raises concerns even among laymen must be addressed.

Manmade Threats May Croak Amphibians
The northern leopard frogs that inhabit the boreal U.S. have never recovered from some catastrophic population declines in the 1970s. Some blame it on the acidifying lakes and streams caused by coal-burning, others point to the ongoing loss of wetlands to development, and now new evidence shows that the herbicide atrazine—widely sprayed on crop fields throughout the region—is killing the frogs by helping parasitic worms that feast on them. Amphibians are on the decline worldwide. As many as one third of the nearly 6,000 known amphibian species—frogs, toads, salamanders, even wormlike caecilians—are threatened with extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Editorial: Downtown should widen shopping tote program
Downtown should widen shopping tote program At the urging of the Northern Michigan Environmental Action Council, the Traverse City commission last month passed a resolution encouraging retailers to eliminate the use of plastic bags, the flimsy white numbers that are in every way, a pain. While inexpensive and practical, the bags are a pox. They're made with petroleum products, driving up the demand for oil. They're difficult to recycle, one thing Grand Traverse county -- with the highest landfill rates in the state and a faltering recycling program -- doesn't need. They can tangle birds and other critters and they're so light they can end up anywhere the wind blows -- on the beach, in the water or in the woods. And they take forever to decompose. Thankfully, a possible answer is already here. This summer, the Downtown Traverse City Association began offering merchants reusable totes, [as have many local and big box stores in the area]. The totes, which cost $1 each, are flying off the shelves. An initial order of 2,000 bags was followed by an order for another 4,000, Downtown Development Authority marketing director Colleen Paveglio said. One store has already gone through four 100-bag boxes.

Clean Energy Now! It's Our Best Hope for Recovery
The transition to a clean-energy economy is not some luxury that we can only afford in good financial times. In fact, it can easily be argued that investing in domestic production of solar power, wind energy, sustainable biofuels, electric vehicles, smart-grid technologies, and dozens of other clean-tech sectors may be the best way out of this fiscal mess. Clean tech is the "triple threat" that can address the Big Three challenges facing the United States: climate change, national security, and economic recovery.

Slay a Vampire this Halloween
Vampires are among us. When you aren't looking (or, when you are looking but not seeing), when you are sleeping, when you aren't paying attention, Vampires are sucking up vital juices, threatening our very existence. This is one video that merits going viral. A video to educate about the importance of Slaying Vampires.

Federal Bicycle legislation passed to help encourage people to bike to work
After seven long years, the bicycle commuter tax provision has finally passed both the House and Senate. President Bush has said that he is eager to sign the legislation. “We are delighted that the bicycle commuter benefits act has passed after a lengthy and persistent campaign spearheaded by Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-OR),” said League President Andy Clarke. “Bicycle commuters will now be extended similar benefits to people who take transit and drive to work – it’s an equitable and sensible incentive to encourage greater energy independence, improve air quality and health, and even help tackle climate change. Keep checking back at www.bikeleague.org as we work on the implementation process.

US Cities Cozy Up to Cycling
Never mind the banks -- it might be time to start worrying about a run on your local bike shop. That's because commuters are asking, "Why shell out for gas when we can get around on sweat equity?" Although cycling remains uncommon in most of the U.S. relative to Europe, according to the League of American Bicyclists, many cities here are warming up to pedal power.

The New Corporate Threat to Our Water Supplies
In the last few years, the world's largest financial institutions and pension funds, from Goldman Sachs to Australia's Macquarie Bank, have figured out that old, trustworthy utilities and infrastructure could become reliable cash cows -- supporting the financial system's speculative junk derivatives with the real concrete of highways, water utilities, airports, harbors, and transit systems. The spiraling collapse of the financial system may only intensify the quest for private investments in what is now the public sector. This flipping of public assets could be the next big phase of privatization, as local and state governments, starved during Bush's two terms in office, look to bail out on public assets, employees, and responsibilities.

What the Economy Needs Now Are Good, Green Jobs
A national day of action tomorrow for green jobs is showing that clean energy can be our modern day gold rush. If a coalition of clean energy and social justice groups has its way, renewable energy will be something of a modern day gold rush, providing both clean energy and scores of stable living-wage jobs for urban and rural Americans. Climate change and declining fossil fuel deposits are igniting interest in renewable energy, and many see the possibility of an economic boom in the building and installation of wind turbines, solar panels and geothermal energy systems along with a blossoming industry in green buildings and retrofits.

NOTEABLE: We Hold Its Value to Be Self-Evident
Ecuador approved a new constitution this weekend that, among other things, grants inalienable rights to nature, the first such inclusion in a nation's constitution, according to Ecuadorian officials. "Nature ... where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain, and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions, and its processes in evolution. Every person, people, community, or nationality will be able to demand the recognition of rights for nature before the public bodies," the document says. The specific mention of evolution isn't accidental; besides being an activity nature arguably likes to do anyway, evolution as we know it has close ties to Ecuador's territory of the Galapagos Islands, where Charles Darwin formed his famous theory. Ecuador's constitution grants nature the right to "integral restoration" and says that the state "will promote respect toward all the elements that form an ecosystem" and that the state "will apply precaution and restriction measures in all the activities that can lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of the ecosystems, or the permanent alteration of the natural cycles."

Kleenex = Gross Mismanagement of Forest Resources
As these new photos and recent government correspondence reveal, Kimberly-Clark is currently purchasing huge quantities of pulp made primarily from whole, old-growth trees from intact areas of Canada’s Boreal Forest. According to the Ontario Ministry of Environment, the stockpile contained 85,000 cubic metres of wood as of the end of March 2008. That’s equivalent to over 7,000 logging trucks full of wood. Since the closure of an area sawmill in June 2008, this wood has been trucked to the Terrace Bay pulp mill where it is being turned directly into pulp for Kleenex and other disposable products. In total, the logs will have been trucked 6-7 hours from the forest to the mill. What’s worse, even with this massive stockpile of timber already cut and waiting to be pulped, the Ogoki Forest continues to be logged, largely in order to supply Kimberly-Clark. [EDITOR: There is currently a nationwide boycott of Kimberly-Clark products as the result of their logging practices. These products include Kleenex, Cottenelle, Depends, Huggies, GoodNites, Kotex, Scott, Pullups, and Viva.]

This Is Not Your Grandma's Arts & Crafts
To casual observers it may look like adults making toys and keeping them, but embroidery hoops and homemade clothes are officially cool.

Dire Future for Warming's Impact on U.S. Transport
A new study by the National Research Council, in collaboration with the Transportation Research Board, has a clear message for transportation professionals: It's time to stop thinking of climate change as a future problem, and start dealing with its realities now.

Al Gore inches toward Solar
This week he advocated getting to an electric power system that is "carbon free" within ten years. It comes alongside the equally telling move by oil baron T. Boone Pickens to invest $2 billion in wind power. Gore has reportedly raised some $300 million (that's not a typo) to spend on moving pubic opinion to support the transition to a totally "carbon-free" electric supply system. That idea has been around at least thirty years, and is a sub-set of the Solartopian demand that our entire energy economy become free of all fossil and nuclear fuels.

Drilling Ourselves Deep in a Hole
At one point in his masterful People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn reflects upon the unspeakable carnage wrought by the Conquistadors in South and Central America, all in the pursuit of gold, and wonders at how those obscene riches sustained imperial greatness… for barely a hundred years. All that bloodletting, enslavement, massacres — genocide in places — for a temporary wealth that quickly vanished on the stage of history. It reminds me of our current oil craze: in one century we have plundered billions of years of stored hydrocarbons, and what do we have to show for it? Fleeting prosperity — one that is hardly shared by all — a highly volatile Middle East, and awesome ecological devastation that will require centuries of recovery. And now, as the age of oil finally signals its inevitable demise, our president and his allies in Washington announce that their grand response is … to drill for more oil. In his latest book, former World Bank director Joseph Stiglitz claims that the war in Iraq will end up costing three trillion dollars. Imagine if that amount had been dedicated to researching and sustaining the transition to renewable energies. A mere trillion dollars would have gone a long way towards remodeling American suburbia for lifestyle and transportation changes. Instead, we have sacrificed unimaginable funds (from future generations, Stiglitz tells us), and tens of thousands of lives (at least) for a resource that is soon to be economically irrelevant!

Complete the Streets
The League of Michigan Bicyclists, We Are Michigan, We Are Traverse City, and Traverse Alive ask the State of Michigan to:

• Require the State roadway system to accommodate safely all users of the public right-of-way, including pedestrians, people requiring mobility aids, bicyclists, and drivers and passengers of transit vehicles, trucks, automobiles and motorized cycles. • Require all MDOT employees involved in planning, design, construction, maintenance and operation of the State transportation system fully consider the needs of non-motorized travelers.
• Require all recipients of Act 51 Funds to adhere to the state’s “Complete Streets”

Tell your Legislator to Support HB 6299 and HB 6300, make roads safer for cyclists
Representatives Andy Coulouris (D-Saginaw) and David Palsrok (R-Manistee) on June 29 introduced House Bills 6299 and 6300, which enhance penalties for moving violations causing physical injury or death to bicyclists and other vulnerable roadway users. A teen on a bike deserves the same protection as one driving a tractor. These bills will make Michigan roadways safer for bicyclists and all vulnerable users of our taxpayer-funded road system.

When Will the Housing Crash End?
The worst is yet to come. We are not even halfway into this housing price decline. In books published in 2003 and 2006, respectively, my predictions of 25% home price declines nationwide and 50% price declines in many cities on the coasts are rapidly coming true. You can see that we have a long way to go because most ARMS are just now resetting, most foreclosures to date have been 2006 and 2007 mortgages and the banks are not going to lend 10 times your combined income in the future, but rather something more like 5 times. Unless you are willing to put up 50% down payments, homes have to come down further in price.

Putting a Cap on the Bottled Water Industry
For more than a year, Nestlé and its well drillers, technical consultants, and lawyers have been quietly surveying the profit potential in the few remaining unspoiled springs and aquifers in Central and Western Massachusetts. In its attempts to strike blue gold, the firm has aggressively pursued water extraction deals that have many locals seeing red. Two recent efforts by Nestlé to pursue pumping operations in small towns illustrate why withdrawals for commercial water bottling operations in our state pose unacceptable risks, not only to local drinking water supplies, but also to such natural assets as fisheries and conservation land. Last summer, Montague residents halted — at least for now — Nestlé’s pursuit of the spring water beneath Montague Plains, a state wildlife management area that also recharges critical ground water for a state fish hatchery and the local wells on which many homes and farms depend. This spring, after considerable public outcry, Clinton town officials appeared to have finally rejected Nestlé’s bid to extract and export up to a quarter-million gallons of spring water a day — equal to 4 million servings of some of the cleanest drinking water in the state — from the nearly 600-acre Wekepeke Reservation land that Clinton owns in the town of Sterling. The offer posed several legal issues, not least the fact that Clinton’s 19th-century water rights to the Wekepeke are for surface water — not spring water — and only for town public water supply needs.

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Trains to answer traffic, cost, and pollution
Shifting a fourth of U.S. freight from trucks to railroads by 2026 would spare each American an average of 41 hours of travel time, 79 gallons of fuel, and $985 in gas expenses each year, according to the seventh annual Congestion Relief Index. "Railroads last year were able to move a ton of freight an average of 436 miles on a gallon of diesel fuel," said railroad association president and CEO Edward R. Hamberger, speaking before the U.S. Senate last week. "It's like moving a ton from Boston to Baltimore or Eugene, Ore., to San Francisco on a gallon of fuel." He called for the government to support bills that would expand tax credits to help railways expand capacity. His group also backs public-private partnerships to fund railroads.

A Metal Scare to Rival the Oil Scare
Indium, gallium and hafnium are some of the least-known elements on the periodic table, but New Scientist warns that reserves of these low-profile minerals and others like them might soon be exhausted thanks to the demand for flat screens and other high-tech goods. Scientists who have tried to estimate how long the worlds mineral supply can meet global demand have made some gloomy predictions. Armin Reller, a materials chemist at the University of Augsburg in Germany, estimates that in 10 years the world will run out of indium, used for making liquid-crystal displays for flat-screen televisions and computer monitors. He also predicts that the world will run out of zinc by 2037, and hafnium, an increasingly important part of computer chips, by 2017. Recycling of rare metals will be the only way to manufacture some gadgets and machines as demand grows in the developing world.

New round of lawsuits could crack Meijer's facade
A ruling that allows more Acme Township officials to sue Meijer Inc. for alleged harassment and intimidation may help finally reveal just how high in the Meijer organization the decision to make war on Acme really went. New revelations could also set the stage for an array of criminal charges against Meijer officials and/or its attorneys, its public relations firm and local citizens who aligned themselves with the big-box and recall efforts. What Acme residents must demand this time around is a full and final accounting of who at Meijer decided it was time to intimidate instead of negotiate, who decided to knowingly break the law, who decided to essentially try to overthrow an elected local government. Who put profit ahead of the law? (As the result of Meijer SLAPP lawsuits agains community and commission members, a growing chorus of consumers in Michigan have begun a personal boycott against shopping at Meijer)

All aboard a sinking ship
If Meijer Inc. thinks it has new headaches now that seven Acme Township officials have been given the green light to sue the retail giant, wait till its former allies weigh in. Representatives of The Village, a proposed Acme mega-development, appear ready to place the blame for alleged wrongdoing against Acme officials on Meijer and its former attorneys, including Timothy Stoepker, law firm Dickinson Wright PLLC, and the Traverse City firm of Smith & Johnson Attorneys PC. It is a classic cop out. Next to "The dog ate my homework," "He made me do it!" may be the most popular alibi of all time.

Leelanau winery is 'off the grid'
John Wyman's Victoria Creek Vineyards in Leelanau County is the lone winery in the state that's "off the grid," meaning he doesn't use utility-generated power. All Wyman's energy is self-manufactured and comes from geothermal, wind and solar power.

Bicycle Politics
General public opinion holds that bicycling is a good activity. While general public opinion holds that it knows all that is necessary to know about traffic cycling, a scope that excepts the special skills used by those daredevils who do it, it has no accurate knowledge of the subject. General public opinion has an exaggerated fear of same-direction motor traffic, which it holds is the major danger to cyclists. While general public opinion is very strongly attached to the views described above, general public opinion cares very little about bicycle transportation and does not think about it. While the general public will vote for bikeways as the means of reducing motorist congestion on the roadways, its members do so in the expectation, even the hope, that the actual bicycling will be done by other people.

Some put away keys, turn to buses, scooters
Jan Nickerson doesn't mind walking to the Kingsley post office each day to make her public transit bus connection.She's among many northern Michigan residents who are turning to alternative forms of transportation as a way to combat rising gas prices. The money she saves by riding instead of driving steered her to the bus nearly two years ago.
"I save about $300 to $500 a month," Nickerson said.

Midwest Floods and Global Warming: There's a Connection
Extreme weather. It's one of the primary symptoms of global warming. Yet in the mainstream media, you'll find nary a mention of global warming in connection with the floods ravaging the Midwest. That's why you have to read Joe Romm to understand what the connection is. Understandable that he chides the media for not doing their homework and informing the public properly. There's publicly available data produced by the US government that spells out the connection. It's called the US Climate Extremes Index.

City shouldn't sell TCL&P
Traverse City's forefathers showed some long-range wisdom when they established a city-owned electric company more than 90 years ago, and also were bright enough to insulate it from day-to-day city politics. But a city public advisory body that's set up to review city finances and operations raised questions about Light & Power that from this vantage point indicates they may be overstepping their original charge. No one has come close to making a strong case for getting rid of Light & Power. Any financial advantage that may be derived from selling the utility or returning its property to the tax rolls could pale in comparison to higher costs city residents and businesses would incur through long-term rate increases.

Strategies for change
WWF's Strategies for Change Project is a new work stream which contributes to the growing debate about how best to effect environmentally-friendly behavioural change. In particular, the project examines the importance of our collective social values in driving behavioural change, and the ways in which such values are shaped.

Still Waters Run Deep
The British and the Chinese understand global warming has driven their record flooding. The United States? Not so much. Although you wouldn't know it from most U.S. media coverage, the record "once-in-a-hundred-year flooding" the Midwest now seems to be getting every decade or so is precisely what scientists have been expecting from the warming.

Green Fuel
This is one biofuel that lives up to its green billing in more ways than one. It's an emerald-green crude oil, produced by photosynthesis in algae, which could fuel cars, trucks and aircraft - without consuming crops that can be used as food. "This product can go right into today's oil pipeline," claims Jason Pyle of Sapphire Energy in San Diego, California, which developed the fuel. He says the "green crude" is similar in quality to naturally occurring crude oil. It is produced as a by-product of photosynthesis by a genetically engineered strain of algae, housed in tanks of treated waste-water and exposed to sunlight.

Tantrums of An Angry Planet
From the standpoint of global climate change, nature’s incredible assault on the American heartland this year can be interpreted in one of two ways. Both offer lessons about the challenges of adapting to the climate we have created. The first is that the tornadoes and floods battering the country with almost unimaginable severity are the early tantrums of an angry planet. The second is that this season’s extreme weather is an aberration that will return to “normal”. So either climate change has arrived ahead of schedule, or this year’s disasters are a preview of the predicted consequences of global warming, a taste of things to come. Take your pick, either way, there’s urgent need for action.

Blanchard, Milliken: Protect the water
TRAVERSE CITY -- Two former governors -- Republican William Milliken and Democrat James Blanchard -- prodded legislators Thursday to prevent large-scale uses of Michigan water that would not be in the public interest.

Meijer gets judge to hide papers
Meijer Inc. convinced a state appellate judge to hide from public view documents related to Grand Traverse County's efforts to investigate the retailer's campaign finance violations. A motion to seal the appellate case was filed by John Pirich, a Lansing attorney hired by Meijer.

No to Coal
One-hundred -plus coal-fired power plants are currently proposed to be built. If even a small portion of these plants are constructed the global warming pollution pumped into our air will make all our other efforts to reverse climate change irrelevant. Coal plants are the dirtiest, most regressive source of energy possible - poisoning our communities and environment. The Environmental Law Program is working with activists around the country to champion clean energy in the face of this unprecedented rush to build new coal plants.

Give Bottled Water the Boot
You already know tap water is better than bottled water in terms of your health, your pocketbook and the environment, and now restaurants across the country stop serving bottled water!

Global Warming could worsen Great Lakes problems
TRAVERSE CITY -- Climate change could worsen a litany of problems plaguing the Great Lakes, pushing water levels even lower, depleting fish populations and causing more storms that result in sewer overflows, advocates said.

What To Do When There Are Too Many of Us
All historical eras are shaped by the material and environmental realities of their time. Our own reflects the adjustments society and nature have made to accommodate the unprecedented 6.7 billion human beings now alive. And those changes are dramatic. The planet is warming dangerously as a result of the heat-trapping byproducts of our daily lives. Half of the primeval forests that existed at the end of the last ice age are gone. A mist of mercury and other toxic metals from coal combustion falls continuously on land and ocean, and to eat fish is to absorb these metals yourself. Half of us are now urban, rarely if ever meeting up with creatures wilder than crows, cockroaches, and, in some cities, packs of feral dogs. And this is just where we are today, while the beat of growth goes on.

Water Scarcity: The Real Food Crisis
June 9, 2008. In the discussion of the global food emergency, one underlying factor is barely mentioned: The world is running out of freshwater. Climate change, overconsumption and the alarmingly inefficient use of this most basic raw material are all to blame. I wrote a book three years ago titled When The Rivers and lakes run dry. It probed why the Yellow River in China, the Rio Grande and Colorado in the United States, the Nile in Egypt, the Indus in Pakistan, the Amu Darya in Central Asia, and many others are all running on empty. The confident blue lines in a million atlases simply do not tell the truth about rivers sucked dry, for the most part, to irrigate food crops.

Women on Wheels : The Bicycle and the Women’s Movement of the 1890s
The 1890s was the peak of the American bicycle craze and consumers were buying bicycles in large numbers. In 1897 alone, more than two million bicycles were sold in the United States , about one for every 30 inhabitants. Bicycles, or “wheels,” were everywhere in the gay 90s as were “wheelmen’s clubs,” well organized association with newsletters, receptions, weekly outings, uniforms and special meeting rooms. Bicycle paths were clogged with traffic on weekends and newspapers were filled with cycling news and special columns. Cycling in the 1890s was nothing less than “a general intoxication, an eruption of exuberance like a seismic tremor that shook the economic and social foundations of society and rattled the windows of its moral outlook.” 2 Nowhere was this more evident than in the role of the bicycle in the changing lives of American women. Indeed, the woman’s movement of the 1890s and the cycling craze became so inextricably intertwined that in 1896 Susan B. Anthony told the New YorkWorld’s Nellie Bly that bicycling had “done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.”

Complete Streets Bicycle Bill in House and Senate
Representative Doris Matsui (D-CA) took an important step last Thursday, May 1, for safer, better designed streets by introducing the Safe and Complete Streets Act of 2008 into the U.S. House (HR 5951). The bill would make sure that roads built and improved with federal funds safely serve everyone using the roadway,including pedestrians, bicyclists, bus riders, as well as those with disabilities. On the Senate side, Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) signed on this week as first Republican co-sponsor of the Senate version of the bill, S2686, the Complete Streets Act of 2008, introduced a few weeks ago by Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Thomas Carper (D-DE). This is the first time that comprehensive complete streets bills have been introduced in the House and Senate.

Hotel owner charged in wetlands dredging
TRAVERSE CITY A hotel owner charged with wetlands tampering surrendered to face criminal charges. Eighty-Sixth District Court Judge John D. Foresman on Friday arraigned Joseph Moffa on two misdemeanors for violation of state wetlands and submerged bottomlands law. Both offenses are punishable by up to one year in jail.

Beach grooming laws have been given teeth
It is a concept we don't see much of any more. Grand Traverse County Prosecutor Alan Schneider said he decided to charge Joseph Moffa, an officer in the company that owned the Cherry Tree Inn, with two criminal misdemeanors connected to a beach grooming incident in 2007 because "People make decisions ... and individuals are responsible for their conduct." Over the Thanksgiving weekend in 2006 (perhaps in hopes the powers that be would be too sedated by turkey to notice), and without benefit of a permit, Omni Hotels sent a bulldozer more than 120 feet into the water, dredged the lakebottom and filled other areas. Land below the normal waterline has long been recognized as taxpayer-owned property and under state juristiction -- not the whims of property owners.

Cherry Tree Inn owner facing charges
An owner of a local hotel faces criminal charges for sending a bulldozer into Grand Traverse bay to reshape his beach. Authorities charged Joseph Moffa, 42, president of Ohio-based Omni Hospitality and vice president of Pride One Cherry Tree LLC, with two criminal misdemeanors for violation of state wetlands and submerged bottomlands law. Both offenses are punishable by up to one year in jail. State and federal authorities who investigated the inn and its owner determined a bulldozer drove as far as 122 feet into East Bay over Thanksgiving weekend in 2006. Moffa's attorney told Grand Traverse County Prosecutor Alan Schneider's office that Moffa would turn himself in Thursday, but he failed to show.

Paying for War at the Pump
What’s it got to do with the price of gas? Would some reporter with access to the Republican presidential candidate please ask John McCain why he wants to continue President Bush’s Mideast policy when it has proved so ruinous for American taxpayers? Because McCain is determined to ignore our economic meltdown and shift the debate to foreign policy, shouldn’t he have to explain why an open-ended military presence in the Mideast will make us economically and militarily more secure when the opposite is clearly the case? Let’s not waste too much time on the military side of the equation. The argument that troops on the ground have made us militarily more secure is absurd on its face. American resources and lives have been squandered in an inane effort that McCain aptly criticized before becoming a presidential candidate.

GM Foods the Problem, Not The Solution
BONN - The food crisis has prompted some looks towards genetically modified food production as a solution. That in turn has led to stronger warnings over the consequences of such food for health and the environment. These concerns have been raised again as more than 3,000 delegates from 147 countries met for the UN conference on biosafety. The conference has sought to ensure safe use of modern biotechnology. Feeding the debate, scientists, farmers and environmental activists in many countries continue to warn that genetically modified agriculture presents a risk, and not a contribution, to food production.

How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It
The outrageous success of bottled water, in a country where more than 89 percent of tap water meets or exceeds federal health and safety regulations, regularly wins in blind taste tests against name-brand waters, and costs 240 to 10,000 times less than bottled water, is an unparalleled social phenomenon, one of the greatest marketing coups of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. But why did the marketing work? Today, kids like having their hands on a personal water bottle, but they have no interest in washing that bottle out, to be reused another day, or otherwise taking responsibility for their waste.

Beyond Recycling
Recycling newspaper and plastic can only go so far toward achieving a "zero-waste" world - the next step is getting industry and government to work together to make going greener more profitable. Getting us close to zero waste means that we need to work with industry to start designing their products and packaging for recovery rather than for the dump.

The time to stand up for Michigan's waters is now.
The State Senate just narrowly passed legislation that would allow up to 25% of some of our precious lakes and rivers to be open for withdrawal! Yes, you heard me right, up to 25% of some of our best waterways. If that wasn't bad enough, the Senate allowed provisions that undermine public control over our water. Without strong laws that support public control of the Great Lakes, our state is vulnerable to corporations and special interests that seek to export and misuse our water. The State House can fix this, but they need to hear from you, not just corporate special interests. Take action now - http://michiganwaternotforsale.com Tell your State Representative to reject the Senate proposal (SB 860). Instead they should pass tough new laws that protect our Great Lakes and inland waters for generations to come by strengthening public control. Tell them to reject a special interest driven proposal that would allow up to 25% of some of Michigan's water to be open for withdrawal.

Billionaire oilman backs wind power
Billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens is sinking billions of dollars into a new wind farm in Texas. It is likely to become the biggest in the world, producing enough power for the equivalent of 1.3 million homes. CNN's Ali Velshi asked the oil legend why he thinks wind could be the answer to this country's energy problems. But we are going to have to do something different in America. You can't keep paying out $600 billion a year for oil. [Editor: NW Michigan is wind rich. The sooner we tap into wind power, the sooner we will be energy self reliant.]

Want Cheaper Gas and Oil? End the Damned Wars!
A professor of economics at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, has a different explanation for the price rise, and American motorists and homeowners should pay close attention. "Oil prices have gone from the mid $20 range in the fall of 2002 to $127 yesterday -- a rise of $100/barrel in just over five years," he says. "And the bulk of that increase can be attributed to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to the threats of war against Iran." "Neoconservative forces in and around the Bush administration and beneficiaries of war dividends -- wishing to deflect attention away from war as the main culprit for the skyrocketing energy prices -- tend to blame secondary or marginally relevant factors: OPEC, China and India for their increased demand for energy, or supply-demand imbalances in global markets. Whatever the contributory role of these factors, the fact remains that the current oil price hikes started with the beginning of the Bush administration's wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. Furthermore, a closer examination of these factors reveals that their roles in the current price inflation of oil have been negligible." If you want to see gasoline drop back below $3.89/gal, get Congress to end the war! It's that simple.

During boom in crop prices, lawmakers harvest subsidies
05/18/2008 01:35:33 AM PDT With food prices soaring, it takes some gall to force Americans to pay billions of dollars to millionaire agribusinesses. Yet that's what the latest farm bill would do. Since the last farm bill was enacted in 2002, the five crops that receive the lion's share of farm subsidies have also enjoyed massive price increases: cotton (105 percent price increase), soybeans (164 percent), corn (169 percent), wheat (256 percent) and rice (281 percent). For consumers, these price increases have caused financial pain domestically and near-riots abroad. For farmers, it's a sunnier story: Total net farm income has leaped 56 percent in just two years, and helped bring the average farm household's income to a record $89,434, and its net worth to $838,875. During this crop-price boom, continuing to subsidize farmers makes as much sense as paying Apple to make another generation of iPods. Farm subsidies have long been America's largest corporate Advertisement welfare program. Rather than help small, struggling family farmers, the majority of subsidies go to commercial farmers, who report an average income of $200,000 and a net worth of nearly $2 million.

Biofuels are increasingly lumped into a single category of environmentally apocalyptic dead-end solutions. As the food vs. fuel debate rages on, it’s no wonder that the general public believes this.

Flying Wind Turbines More Efficient
The higher up in the air you go, the faster wind travels - so naturally the further from the ground a wind-turbines gets, the more efficient it can be. Thats why the idea of a flying wind-turbine is a such a win-win (or win-wind) proposition.

Traffic Calming
Traffic calming has swept the world over the past 15 years. It's based on the simple idea that cars and trucks don't have exclusive ownership of our streets. Streets are shared public space that also belongs to people on foot and bicycles, in baby strollers and wheelchairs. Traffic calming uses design features such as narrowed roads or elevated crosswalks to slow traffic and to assert pedestrians' inalienable right to cross the street. The origins of this ingenious idea can be traced to Delft, Netherlands, where residents of one neighborhood were fed up with cars racing along their streets, endangering children, pets, and peace of mind. One evening they decided to do something about it by dragging old couches and other furniture out into the roadway. They positioned these objects in such a way that cars could pass, but only if they slowed down. [Editor: Slow down, or this may happen here]

Dusk on planet Earth?
There's a number -- a new number -- that makes this point most powerfully. It may now be the most important number on Earth: 350. As in parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It's like the doctor telling you that your cholesterol is way too high and, if you don't bring it down right away, you're going to have a stroke. So you take the pill, you swear off the cheese, and, if you're lucky, you get back into the safety zone before the coronary. It's like watching the tachometer edge into the red zone and knowing that you need to take your foot off the gas before you hear that clunk up front. In this case, though, it's worse than that because we're not taking the pill and we are stomping on the gas -- hard. Instead of slowing down, we're pouring on the coal, quite literally. Two weeks ago came the news that atmospheric carbon dioxide had jumped 2.4 parts per million last year -- two decades ago, it was going up barely half that fast. And suddenly, the news arrives that the amount of methane, another potent greenhouse gas, accumulating in the atmosphere, has unexpectedly begun to soar as well. Apparently, we've managed to warm the far north enough to start melting huge patches of permafrost and massive quantities of methane trapped beneath it have begun to bubble forth. And don't forget: China is building more power plants; India is pioneering the $2,500 car, and Americans are converting to TVs the size of windshields which suck juice ever faster.

Troubled Waters
The greatest natural resource in a four-state area, Lake Michigan's safe keeping has increasingly become the center of concern and controversy. Many are asking questions. Is the lake safe for recreation? Is drinking water drawn by numerous communities pure? Is pollution lessening? Who are the polluters? And most of all, what is being done to safeguard the lake?

2008 Great Lakes Bioneers Award
The Great Lakes BIONEERS Award goes to a person whose life-work embodies the bioneer principles of interconnectedness, development of healthy relationships, and respect for the inherent intelligence of all life and ecological systems. This Award is for those who go beyond sustaining their home communities, but heal and regenerate them as well. For being an avenue toward hope. Stephanie Mills has been engaged in the ecology movement for more than thirty years, and in 1996 was named by Utne Reader as one of the world’s leadingsmills.jpg visionaries. Stephanie Mills is an author, editor, lecturer and ecological activist who has concerned herself with the fate of the earth and humanity since 1969, when her commencement address at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., drew the attention of a nation. Her speech, which the New York Times called “perhaps the most anguished statement” of the year’s crop of valedictory speeches, predicted a bleak future.

It's National Drinking Water Week
From May 4-10—Communities across North America will celebrate all those things that "Only Tap Water Delivers" during Drinking Water 2008. Drinking Water Week provides a natural opportunity for all of us to pause and consider the immeasurable value that a safe, reliable water supply plays in our daily lives. We have some of the highest quality water in the world and this week we can all celebrate that achievement and also remind ourselves not to take it for granted.

Meijer hadn't counted on Acme's Bill Boltres
Every uprising begins with one man or woman standing up and saying "enough." In Acme Township, that was Bill Boltres. The 72-year-old township treasurer lit a fuse back in 2006 when, after suffering two heart attacks and numerous sleepless nights over lawsuits filed against him by Meijer, Inc., he fought back. During depositions related to his counter-suit it was revealed that a law firm hired by Meijer had paid a public relations agency more than $30,000 to secretly orchestrate a failed recall election against the Acme board in 2007. A report done for Meijer also indicated the company made illegal contributions to a 2005 referendum on halting big-box development. The findings from the Boltres depositions prompted a blistering attack on Meijer's goonish tactics from across the state, Boltres not only didn't back down, he filed his own suit and Meijer was sent reeling. Boltres has since sued the Village at Grand Traverse LLC, the corporation behind the Village at Grand Traverse, claiming Meijer-like illegal harassment. Now other Acme officials are contemplating their own lawsuits. Bill Boltres didn't go looking for a fight. All he wanted was to serve his township, help guide development and keep the books balanced. Meijer, though, decided to declare war.

Will Meijer get its own checkout lane for justice?
Meijer spent years and tens of thousands of dollars bullying local officials, suing them and generally making their lives hell because they dared to exercise local control in a zoning decision. In this case, justice demands more than a wrist-slap and a token fine. In an April 11 ruling, Circuit Court Judge Philip Rodgers in Traverse City said that retailer Meijer does not have to respond to subpoenas issued by Grand Traverse Prosecutor Alan Schneider. Schneider was seeking communications regarding Meijer's corporate-funded efforts to recall elected officials in Acme Township over a zoning issue for a store. Judge Rodgers said that the Michigan Campaign Finance Act gives exclusive jurisdiction of campaign finance violations to the Michigan Department of State, which administers elections.

Scam Artists Prepared to Fleece Green Industries
Earlier this year, entrepreneur Eric Janszen declared in Harper's magazine that the next bubble -- alternative energy -- had already been "branded". His projection: the eventual creation of $20 trillion in fictitious, speculative wealth, "money that inevitably will be employed to increase share prices rather than to deliver 'energy security.'" and that "when the bubble finally bursts, we will be left to mop up after yet another devastated industry." After that next big bust, not only alternative energy but a host of other "green" industries will be left in ruin. As long as an investing class is allowed to make all major environmental decisions, no new sources of energy will actually replace even one barrel or ton of fossil fuel; rather, they will go to further parasitizing the planet in the cause of growth. The boosters of "green" capitalism have never even bothered to argue otherwise in any effective way.

Amid the debate, energy gets cleaner
Forget the arguments over whether global warming is real. Many American businesses and researchers are well past all that and are scrambling to find ways to make money in a world that must slash its use of fossil fuels. Energy entrepreneurs have sparked an energy revolution that's just starting in the United States but already producing new ideas, more jobs and growing exports. "You have a cavalcade of human intellect springing forth just when we need it," said Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., a co-author of "Apollo's Fire: Igniting America's Clean Energy Economy." "The ice is melting in the North Pole, but the ice also is melting to resistance to progress here in this country," he said. "It's a race to figure out who will win, and I'm betting on our grandkids." But for renewable energy to really take off, the federal government will have to end subsidies for fossil fuels, put a limit on greenhouse-gas emissions and charge for putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The Story of Stuff
Have you ever wondered where the stuff comes from that we buy and where it goes when we throw it out? Must watch.

Is Organic Food Really Healthier?
The U.S. government's food policy suggests an apple is an apple, regardless of how it was grown. Scientific data suggests otherwise.

Grains Gone Wild
Over the past few years the prices of wheat, corn, rice and other basic foodstuffs have doubled or tripled, with much of the increase taking place just in the last few months. High food prices dismay even relatively well-off Americans — but they’re truly devastating in poor countries, where food often accounts for more than half a family’s spending.

The Battle to Control Our Food Supply
The rise in global food prices has sparked a number of protests in recent weeks, highlighting the worsening epidemic of global hunger. The World Bank estimates world food prices have risen 80 percent over the last three years and that at least thirty-three countries face social unrest as a result. Several causes factor into the global food price hike, many linked to human activity. These include human-driven climate change, the soaring cost of oil and a Western-led focus on biofuels that critics say turns food into fuel.

Beach Cleanup Tally: 6 Million Pounds of Trash
Last September, the Ocean Conservancy sponsored a worldwide beach cleanup effort. This week it released its findings: 6 million pounds of garbage was cleared from beaches in a single day. The biggest single source of debris was from smoking materials.

Chemical in Plastic Poses Risk to Humans and Other Living Things
The National Toxicology Program, part of the National Institutes of Health, concluded that there was "concern" that fetuses, babies and children were in danger because bisphenol A, or BPA, harmed animals at low levels found in nearly all human bodies. An ingredient of polycarbonate plastic, BPA is one of the most widely used synthetic chemicals in industry today. It can seep from hard plastic beverage containers such as baby bottles, as well as from liners in cans containing food and infant formula. Some scientists suspect that exposure early in life disrupts hormones and alters genes, programming a fetus or child for breast or prostate cancer, premature female puberty, attention deficit disorders and other reproductive or neurological disorders.

Oil Rules!
It's strange that the business and geopolitics of energy takes up so little space on American front pages -- or that we could conduct an oil war in Iraq with hardly a mention of the words "oil" and "war" in the same paragraph in those same papers over the years. Strange indeed. And yet, oil rules our world and energy lies behind so many of the headlines that might seem to be about other matters entirely. Take the food riots now spreading across the planet because the prices of staples are soaring, while stocks of basics are falling. In the last year, wheat (think flour) has risen by 130%, rice by 74%, soya by 87%, and corn by 31%, while there are now only eight to 12 weeks of cereal stocks left globally. Governments across the planetary map are shuddering.

Intern/ Field Producer Wanted to produce environmental film
Part-time and Internship positions for Environmental Documentary. A documentary feature film production is seeking a part time researcher/field-producer and research and editing interns for a documentary about the state of the planet. No film experience necessary but must be a quick study and willing to question everything. This is a rare opportunity to get in on the ground floor with a feature film being produced primarily in Michigan.Work from home and/or at our office. Please email jeffgibbstc@gmail.com for more information or call 231-668-1130.

A message to our grandchildren by Steward and Lee Udall
Arizona native Stewart Udall was perhaps the most influential secretary of Interior ever. He served in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations from 1961 to 1969, and played a part in some of the nation’s landmark environmental laws, including the Clean Air Act, the Wilderness Act and the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act. Americans must finally cast aside our notion that we can continue the wasteful consumption patterns of our past. We must promote a consciousness attuned to a frugal, highly efficient mode of living. In closing, I leave you with these thoughts, and hope you will hold to these ideals throughout your lives: Foster a consciousness that puts a premium on the common good and the protection of the environment. Give your unstinting support to all lasting, fruitful technological innovations. Be steadfast enemies of waste. The lifetime crusade of your days must be to develop a new energy ethic to sustain life on earth.

Are We Doomed? Why Civilizations Like Ours Fall (audio)
The Bryant Park Project via National Public Radio (NPR) Are we doomed? Debora MacKenzie, the author of a recent New Scientist cover story, says our survival depends on how connected we are to each other. "A civilization is a system whereby people get what they need. They get the basics of life - food, water, shelter, civil order, and some kind of satisfaction," she argues. "When they fall is when they can no longer meet their people's basic needs using the mechanisms that have evolved.

Ecological Collapse: Failing Ecosystems the Mother of All Bubbles
The converging mortgage, financial, food, fuel and climate crises are all symptoms of a massive global ecological bubble --- Ecological overshoot whereby humanity exceeds the Earth's carrying capacity is the mother of all "bubbles". Within the current sub-prime mortgage and financial bubbles, and food and energy price increases, we are witnessing the logical and inevitable economic consequences of over-population, resource scarcity, inequitable and unreasonable consumption, and unsustainable economic growth. Growth and livelihoods based upon unreasonable presumptions of continued resource outputs from dwindling ecosystems are a dangerous, unprecedented "ecological bubble" that threatens civilization and mass apocalyptic death.

Busted
Michigan doesn’t have a shortage of money, as Democrats argue. The state’s budget is $43 billion annually. Nor are its taxes too high, as Republicans assert. Michigan has a shortage of ideas, vision, and willingness to collaborate. So long as the state’s budget is devoted to building more roads not regional rapid transit, promoting farm products in the farm-killing global commodity markets, subsidizing sprawl in rural areas, selling state forests and other assets at bargain prices, and cutting funding to higher education in the knowledge economy, we all lose.

Great Lakes advocates not pleased with Bush's spending plan
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (Map, News) - President Bush's proposed budget would shortchange efforts to clean up the Great Lakes and to keep problems such as sewage overflows and exotic species invasions from getting worse, critics said Wednesday. Federal spending for Great Lakes water quality programs would be slashed 16 percent from this year's total under the president's fiscal 2009 spending plan released this week, advocacy groups said.

Court Says EPA Rule Allowing More Power Plant Mercury Is Illegal
EPA violated the law by evading required power plant mercury reductions WASHINGTON, DC - February 8 - A federal appeals court ruled this morning that a rulemaking by the Environmental Protection Agency violates the Clean Air Act by evading mandatory cuts in toxic mercury pollution from coal- and oil-fired power plants. The decision invalidates the agency's so-called "Clean Air Mercury Rule," which would have allowed dangerously high levels of mercury pollution to persist under a weak cap-and-trade program that would not have taken full effect until well beyond 2020.

Carbon cuts a must to halt warming-US scientists
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec 13 (Reuters) - There is already enough carbon in Earth's atmosphere to ensure that sea levels will rise several feet (meters) in coming decades and summertime ice will vanish from the North Pole, scientists warned on Thursday. To mitigate global warming's worst effects, including severe drought and flooding, people must not only cut current carbon emissions but also remove some carbon that has collected in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, they said. "We're a lot closer to climate tipping points than we thought we were," said James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "If we are to have any chance in avoiding the points of no return, we're going to have to make some changes."

Sedatives and Sex Hormones in Our Water Supply
Saturday was World Water Day, and the United Nations estimates close to 1.5 billion people around the world do not have access to clean drinking water. What about here in the United States? The Associated Press has conducted an extensive investigation into the drinking water in at least twenty-four major American cities across the country, which contain trace amounts of a wide array of pharmaceuticals. The amounts might be small, but scientists are worried about the long-term health and environmental consequences of their presence in the water supplies of some forty-one million Americans.

The peak oil crisis: revolt of the teapots
In the last 25 years, China has come a long ways from its old soviet-style command economy to a rather bizarre mixture of traditional Communist centralism and free-wheeling capitalism. This bifurcated system has brought China undreamed of economic success in recent decades, but from time to time, problems turn up. Someday, the unprecedented environmental mess they are busily creating will do them in, but currently Beijing’s major concern is a nationwide fuel shortage. In other times, Chinese waiting in gas lines would be of minimal concern to most Americans so long as enough stuff was still getting through to the WalMart. These are not “other times,” however, and shortages in China may be only weeks or months away from becoming shortages in other places— perhaps even at your favorite gas station. Thus it may be more important than you realize to keep track of gas lines in China for we are living in a globalized world.

Opponents vow to fight DEQ approval of UP sulfide mining permit
Community and environmental leaders united today in their opposition to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality’s issuance of a permit for a dangerous sulfide mine on the Upper Peninsula’s Yellow Dog Plains. Some opponents are now poised to legally challenge the flawed decision that would allow the mine to operate beneath a critical Lake Superior tributary. The nickel mine would generate hundreds of thousands of tons of acid-leaching waste rock from underneath the Salmon Trout River near Marquette, putting the region’s water at risk, including Lake Superior. "We are extremely disappointed that after all the work which went into crafting the law governing non-ferrous mining in Michigan that the DEQ has chosen to simply ignore key components of that law. They’ve granted Kennecott a permit which clearly doesn’t even meet the intent, let alone the letter of the law," stated Anne Woiwode, state director of the Sierra Club Michigan Chapter.

What the Government Doesn't Want You to Know About Global Climate Change
Famed NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen tells the depressing story of government censorship of years of impeccable research. Dr. James Hansen is widely regarded as the leading climate scientist in the country. It was his testimony to a Senate committee in 1988 that first brought the threat of global warming to the world's attention. For the past quarter of a century he has headed the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, NASA's premiere climate research center. Just over a year ago, Dr. Hansen went public with a charge that made headlines around the world, that the Bush administration had been trying to silence his warnings about the urgent need to address climate change.

State Law Slows Farm-to-School Progress
TRAVERSE CITY—Earlier this week, the Michigan Land Use Institute hosted a sold-out conference called Farm to School: Healthy Kids, Thriving Farms in our community. More than 300 school administrators, cooks, teachers, parents, and farmers from Northwest Michigan attended. The fact that the Institute had to turn away still more folks who wanted to be there is a testament to intense community interest in bringing our local farmers’ products into our schools’ dining rooms.

Department of Energy shines $14 million on solar energy projects
03/12/2008 - 10:43pm. Eleven university solar research projects aimed at developing advanced solar photovoltaic (PV) technology manufacturing processes and products got a $14 million boost today from the Dept. of Energy. Photovoltaic-based solar cells convert sunlight directly into electricity, and are made of semiconductor materials similar to those used in computer chips.

Transportation By The Numbers
Transportation is one of the biggest causes of global warming pollution in the U.S. Our inefficient use of roadways and public transportation are only part of the problem. Check out our list of startling facts and figures.

Don't Eat Anything That Doesn't Rot
Consumers are getting duped by the food industry, paying the price with their health. Acclaimed author and journalist Michael Pollan argues that what most Americans are consuming today is not food but "edible foodlike substances.

Solar Collecting Roads
Solar is a highly efficient for heating water. Combine it with underground storage, and a year-round system can be created where the system can cover heating requirements in the winter and cooling in the summer. The Dutch company Ooms Avenhorn Holding BV has taken this concept and moved it a step forward with the Road Energy System® (RES).

Great Lakes : Danger Zone
For more than seven months, the nation’s top public health agency has blocked the publication of an exhaustive federal study of environmental hazards in the eight Great Lakes states, reportedly because it contains such potentially “alarming information” as evidence of elevated infant mortality and cancer rates. Researchers found low birth weights, elevated rates of infant mortality and premature births, and elevated death rates from breast cancer, colon cancer, and lung cancer. The 400-plus-page study, Public Health Implications of Hazardous Substances in the Twenty-Six U.S. Great Lakes Areas of Concern, was undertaken by a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at the request of the International Joint Commission, an independent bilateral organization that advises the U.S. and Canadian governments on the use and quality of boundary waters between the two countries.

Combating Climate Change: Farming Out Global Warming Solutions
Forest depletion ultimately contributes more GHG emissions than all the cars and trucks in use worldwide, says Werner Kurz, a forest ecologist with Natural Resources Canada, who was not involved with the study. "What we are doing in these tropical forests is really a massive problem."

Are your products safe? You can't tell.
Labels often fail to list compounds that can disrupt biological development. Scientists first suspected that endocrine disruptors were wreaking havoc decades ago when they began observing freakish abnormalities in wild animals, particularly along the Great Lakes with its legacy of industrial pollution. They were seeing female gulls nesting together, birds with twisted bills and frogs with severe deformities, including one with an eye growing inside its mouth. Frustrated at the lack of action, a consortium of environmental, patient advocacy and labor groups filed a federal lawsuit, prompting the EPA to promise that screening would begin by the end of 2003. But the agency repeatedly has missed its self-imposed deadlines as well as those set by law.

Retailer Bans Some Plastic Bottles
December 8, 2007 OTTAWA, Dec. 7 — A line of water bottles that had become a symbol of environmental responsibility has been removed from the shelves of Canada’s leading outdoor gear retailer over concerns about a chemical used in its manufacture. Skip to next paragraph Polycarbonate plastic bottles are transparent and almost as hard as glass. The Mountain Equipment Co-op, which is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, removed the bottles, sold under the brand name Nalgene, and other polycarbonate containers from its 11 large-scale stores on Wednesday. The retailer said that it would not restock the bottles, which are made by Nalge Nunc International in Rochester, a unit of Thermo Fisher Scientific, until Health Canada completed a review of bisphenol-a, or B.P.A., a chemical used to make hard, transparent plastics as well as liners for food cans.

WARNING: The chemical bisphenol A has been known to pose severe health risks to laboratory animals.
It's in baby bottles, soda cans and 93% of us. It causes breast cancer, testicular cancer, diabetes and hyperactivity in lab animals, according to 80% of studies analyzed by the Journal Sentinel. But U.S. regulators side with the chemical-makers and say it's safe. PART 2

Election can be stolen in “under a minute” with Diebold machines
Researchers at Princeton University announced Wednesday that common electronic voting machines can be subverted by installing software which undetectably alters vote totals and, as a computer virus, spreads itself from one voting machine to the next. Computer science professor Edward Felten, along with graduate students Ariel Feldman and J. Alex Halderman, published a paper in which they demonstrated the ease of installing malicious software onto a Diebold AccuVote-TS touchscreen voting machine which would alter vote totals in a real election, but be undetectable to election officials by allowing the logic and accuracy tests to pass, and by deleting itself from the voting machines at the end of the election. “This report should finally put to rest the myth that the current generation of e-voting machines adequately protects the integrity of the electoral process,” said Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Matt Zimmerman.

The Poor Get Diabetes; The Rich Get Local and Organic
As a class, lower income people have been well represented in some of the best-covered food stories of our day, particularly hunger, obesity, and diabetes. As these issues have faded in and out of the public's eye over the last 25 years, another food trend was rapidly becoming a national obsession -- namely, local and organic. At about the same time that Berkeley diva Alice Waters was first showing us how to bestow style and grace on something as ordinary as a local tomato, the Reagan administration's anti-poor policies were driving an unprecedented number of people into soup kitchens and food banks. And as organic food advocates were putting the finishing touches on what was to become the first national standard for organic food, supermarket chains were nailing plywood across their city store windows bidding farewell to lower income America.

The Nuclear Power Danger
Nuclear Power Hinders Progress on Climate Change Nuclear power cannot address climate change. Greenhouse gases are emitted throughout the nuclear fuel chain, from the mining of the necessary fuel - uranium - to its enrichment, transportation and the construction of nuclear plants. Nuclear plants take too long to build - up to a dozen years or more. The planet is already in crisis with experts pointing to rapid climate change already underway and less than ten years left to pre-empt disaster. There is no time to wait for nuclear plant construction. Nuclear plants are too expensive - at least $6 billion or more apiece. The planet and its inhabitants need faster, cheaper and safer energy sources without the risks presented by nuclear power: daily exposure to routine releases of radiation; the risk of radiological catastrophe from a serious accident or attack; piles of lethal radioactive waste stored unsafely at reactor sites; and the proliferation dangers and ties to nuclear weapons development. Expansion of nuclear power invites war. This has been most ominously demonstrated by the September 6, 2007 bombing by Israel of a suspected nuclear site in Syria, and the sabre-rattling around Iran's nuclear power program.

The genius doctor who diagnosed Nuke Power's deadly disease
The nuke power industry now wants $50 billion and more in loan guarantees to build new atomic reactors. As it strong-arms Congress, the warnings of the great Dr. John Gofman, who passed away last week at 88, loom ever larger. One of history's most respected and revered medical and nuclear pioneers, Gofman's research showed as early as 1969 that "normal" radioactive reactor emissions could kill 32,000 Americans per year. At the time, Gofman was the chief medical researcher for the Atomic Energy Commission. He told the AEC that reactor emissions must be radically reduced. The AEC demanded he change his findings, then forced him out when he refused.

Stop $50 Billion Handout to Nuclear Power!
Act now to stop the nuclear power industry scooping up $50 billion in taxpayer money for new nuclear reactors. That's $25 billion a year for an industry that puts our lives at risk every day.

Michigan Glow Job
The way the big-money boys see it, nuclear is just too huge an investment risk without the guarantee taxpayers will be there to bail them out if something goes wrong. As environmentalist and author Chip Ward was recently quoted saying, "Wall Street won't invest in nuclear power because it's too risky. ... The partial meltdown at Three Mile Island taught investment bankers how a $2 billion investment can turn into a billion-dollar clean-up in under two hours." Ever since the TMI incident and the 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl plant in what was then the Soviet Union, neither the public nor the financiers are all that hot on nukes. But with the support of George "Nukular" Bush, a technology the president can't even pronounce correctly is gaining new traction. Ironically, a power source that could kill millions if there's a serious mishap and that produces lethal radioactive waste for which there is still no safe disposal is being hailed as a green technology that will supposedly help curb the production of greenhouse gasses that are causing the Earth to heat up.

Michigan House Committee Passes Great Lakes Compact
(Lansing)—The Michigan House of Representatives Great Lakes and Environment Committee today approved legislation ratifying the Great Lakes Compact, taking a crucial first step toward protecting Michigan's water resources from abusive withdrawals and diversions. The multi-state, and a companion multi-nation agreement establishes basic guidelines to prevent Great Lakes water diversions and ensure resource sustainability; the Compact requires each state to pass implementing legislation.

EXECUTIVE DIRECTIVE No. 2007 - 23 PROMOTING ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
WHEREAS, Section 1 of Article V of the Michigan Constitution of 1963 vests the executive power of the State of Michigan in the Governor;

Governor Granholm takes on Alternative Energy
W hile the re-election campaign ended over a year ago, Governor Jennifer Granholm finds herself still out on the campaign trail. Term limits will keep her from running again, at least for Governor - and being born in Canada, she is not eligible for the U.S. Presidency - so Granholm finds herself on a different type of campaign trail. Some may view it as a campaign for her gubernatorial legacy while others see it as a Governor who is committed to seeing Michigan get back on the right track. Granholm is campaigning for Michigan to become a leader in the alternative energy industry. She believes that the same ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit that led Michigan to become the one time automotive manufacturing capital of the world exists for it to become a leader in the rapidly growing field of alternative energy.

Everything is Killing you!
Do you or someone you know live in a house, apartment or indoor shelter of some sort? house If so, you may already be dying; poisoned slowly by the mass of toxic chemicals present in your carpet, bathroom, and even your precious baby’s bottle. According to several leading scientists, including top former officials at the Environmental Protection Agency, you are exposed to more severe pollution just by walking around your house in the morning than you are from toxic waste sites, smokestacks, and garbage dumps. THINGS THAT GIVE YOU CANCER: CLICK HERE

Radiation Free Fusion Reactor
Dr. Bussard and his team at Energy/Matter Conversion Corporation, after close to 20 years of hard work, have developed a revolutionary radiation-free fusion process that could change the world as we know it today. Fusion is the energy that powers everything in the universe. The sun's energy comes from fusion. Alternatively, fission is the process whereby heavy atoms, which are nearly unstable, are split into two radioactive atoms. Fusion, on the other hand, is when two light atoms merge. The ultimate fuels for fusion include hydrogen and other light atoms such as lithium, boron, and helium isotopes. Some of these reactions are radiation free, others are not. The fusion process recommended by Dr. Bussard takes boron-11 and fuses a proton to it, producing, in its excited state, a carbon-12 atom. This excited carbon-12 atom decays to beryllium-8 and helium-4. Beryllium-8 very quickly (in 10-13 s) decays into two more helium-4 atoms. This is the only nuclear-energy releasing process in the whole world that releases fusion energy and three helium atoms -- and no neutrons. This reaction is completely radiation free.

Spray-On Solar-Power Cells Are True Breakthrough
Scientists have invented a plastic solar cell that can turn the sun's power into electrical energy, even on a cloudy day. The plastic material uses nanotechnology and contains the first solar cells able to harness the sun's invisible, infrared rays. The breakthrough has led theorists to predict that plastic solar cells could one day become five times more efficient than current solar cell technology. Like paint, the composite can be sprayed onto other materials and used as portable electricity. A sweater coated in the material could power a cell phone or other wireless devices. A hydrogen-powered car painted with the film could potentially convert enough energy into electricity to continually recharge the car's battery.

Humanity as your enemy -- or is it "the economy, stupid"?
We look around to see arguably lethal behavior by the average person. Most people drive cars unnecessarily, consume foods from great distance, and engage in other activities that serve to enrich powerful corporations that are a menace to the planet. We still do not see much attempt to restructure lifestyles ecologically and thus challenge the socioeconomic sys