Desert Rock Power Plant to Be Reassessed in Light of Threat to Fish

David Cassuto

From the Things that Never Would Have Happened Under W Desk:
The Bureau of Indian Affairs has withdrawn its Biological Assessment and the  EPA has also withdrawn the air quality permit they respectively issued last summer for the Desert Rock coal-fired power plant sited for the Navajo Nation in the Four Corners region of New [...]

Meat, Copenhagen and Climate Change

David Cassuto
Concerned citizens the world over have gathered in Copenhagen to hammer out a plan to arrest climate change and prevent a planetary apocalypse.  Many have written much about the talks (check out, for example, Andy Revkin’s blog) but at least as interesting is what’s being neither talked about in Copenhagen nor much covered elsewhere.  [...]

Factory Farms, Mark Bittman and TSCA — An Unlikely Trio

David Cassuto
Intriguing blog post by Mark Bittman, of all people, wondering whether industrial meat could be illegal under TSCA , the Toxic Substances Control Act (not to be confused with Tosca, the Puccini opera).  The argument would be that TSCA gives the EPA authority to regulate substances that pose “an unreasonable risk of injury to [...]

Interior Proposes Polar Bear Habitat

David Cassuto
A while back, the Bush Administration reluctantly declared the polar bear threatened (under the Endangered Species Act) due to global warming and shrinking habitat.  It determined, however, that it would not use the ESA as the basis to require steps to curtail climate change.  Indeed, the Bushies had no intention of curtailing climate change [...]

Livestock Emissions Account for 51% of Greenhouse Gases

Katie Hance

In 2006, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) reported that livestock accounted for 18% of greenhouse gases, making livestock emissions “one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems.”  However recently, Worldwatch Institute, a Washington D.C. environmental think-tank, reported that livestock emissions actually account for 51% of greenhouse gases.

SALDF Conference at Lewis & Clark

The Center for Animal Law Studies at Lewis & Clark
in collaboration with the
Animal Legal Defense Fund
and
The Lewis & Clark Law School Student Animal Legal Defense Fund
present…
Animal Law: The Links
The Animal Law Conference
at Lewis & Clark

October 16-18, 2009
Registration Open!
Please join us this fall at Animal Law: The Links, The Animal Law Conference at Lewis & [...]

More on the Meat/Climate Change Nexus

The link between livestock agriculture (particularly but not exclusively industrial agriculture) and climate change is getting some serious discussion, albeit not by those who actually pass laws about such things.  I’ve blogged about the issue here and am finishing up an essay for the Animals & Society Institute on CAFOs and climate change.
Legal Planet has [...]

On Dumb Animals and Climate Change

Today, Krugman uses the metaphor of boiled frogs to bring home the reality of collective inaction on climate change.  He is referencing the widely held belief that if you put a frog in cold water and then heat the water, the frog won’t know that it’s being cooked (until it’s too late).  The comparison is [...]

Food and Environment

I spend a lot of time talking about the ethics of industrial farming as it relates to the treatment of animals.  Now, I want to say a few words about diet, environment and the law.  On average, Americans consume forty-five more pounds of meat per year than they did fifty years ago.  According to the [...]

Antibiotics in Your Organic Lettuce and Other Tales from the Factory Farm

I’m writing a piece about CAFOs and climate change for the Animals & Society Institute, which, as you might imagine, is not a cheerful pursuit.  Still, even with all my carping about antibiotics in animal feed, I had not realized that vegetables like corn, potatoes and lettuce absorb antibiotics when fertilized with livestock manure.  Usually, [...]

Agriculture Exempt from Carbon Caps Under Waxman-Markey

Anyone who was hoping that the climate change bill currently making its way through Congress would have any significant impact on global warming should read this post at Grist.  As the bill currently reads, agriculture is exempt from any carbon caps (despite a carbon footprint exceeding that of the transportation sector).  Yet, Big Ag and [...]

More on Cows and Climate

Following up on the post below, this article in the NYT bears a look.  Some in the dairy industry (e.g. Stonyfield Farms) are experimenting with feeding dairy cows green plants instead of corn to see if it lowers their methane output.  Guess what?  It does.
Cattle fed alfalfa and flax emit less methane than those fed [...]

Agriculture, Climate Change and the UNFCC

The International Federation of Agricultural Producers has produced a declaration addressing the role of agriculture in both causing and potentially mitigating climate change.  The document bears reading in its entirety both for what it says and for what it does not.  It advocates creating a framework for carbon sequestration and for increased access to and [...]

Polar Bears, Secretary Salazar and Climate Change

Polar bears cannot catch a break.  The Bush Administration reluctantly declared the bear a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) a year or so ago.  The threat arose because of shrinking habitat caused by polar ice melting.  That ice melt is, of course, a result of climate change.
Once a species is classified as [...]

Diet & Climate Change

This post over at Prettier than Napoleon (cool name for a blog, no?) about the carbon footprint of various dietary regimes bears noting.  Commendably, it cites the high carbon footprint of meat-based diets.  It then claims, however, that since the carbon footprint of eating chicken is lower than that of eating beef, the data put [...]

Factory Farm Emissions: No Solution = No Problem

AP reports that EPA has exempted the nations “farms”  from having to “report to authorities the toxic, smelly fumes released from manure.”  I have complained elsewhere about the use of term “farm” to refer to industrial confinement facilities so I’ll not belabor that issue.  Instead, let me just note that the Bush administration has reached [...]