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After groundwater is pumped for its many uses, it “doesn’t just seep back into the ground—it also evaporates into the atmosphere, or runs off into rivers and canals, eventually emptying into the world’s oceans,” adding up to 0.8 millimeters per year according to a new study. Besides the melting of glaciers and ice-caps, excessive groundwater extraction is becoming the most important land-based contributor to sea level rise. [Science Daily]
A new report by the UK’s National Trust entitled “What’s Your Beef?” confirms that feeding cattle on grass throughout their life-cycle is the most environmentally sustainable way to rear beef. Add this to the mounting evidence that buying high-quality, pasture-raised meat is the way to go: it’s healthier for you, helps support family farms with the highest welfare standards and helps protect our environment. [Animal Welfare Approved]
Sunrun, a solar leasing company, has come out with three clever commercials touting solar’s money-saving benefits, and poking fun at its presumed audience of “artisanal picklers and baby dolphin lovers.” [New York Times]
Missouri is frighteningly close to passing an ag-gag bill that would make it illegal to take undercover videos and pictures inside animal agriculture facilities and expose animal welfare abuses and sanitation violations. [Food Safety News]
Solar manufacturers in the U.S are hurting, but it’s boom times for installers who are taking advantage of hefty tax breaks, creative financing techniques and a glut of cheap, Chinese-made panels to make solar power accessible to the mass market for the first time. The number of residential and commercial installations more than doubled over the last two years. [New York Times]
Per the U. S. Geological Survey: When you take all the water on the planet – be it salty, fresh or vaporous – and smoosh it into a ball, the total is only “860 miles (1,385 km) in diameter, about as wide edge-to-edge as the distance between Salt Lake City to Topeka, Kansas. That’s it. Take all the water on Earth and you’d have a blue sphere less than a third the size of the Moon. Feeling a little thirsty?” (Check this image.) [Universe Today]
According to a leading financial expert and Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), food processors around the world are facing increasing pressure from investors to improve animal welfare standards. This trend is a wonderful example of how voting with your dollars can change our food system! [Food Navigator]
Agriculture experts warn that “super weeds” are taking over US farmland and threatening food production—a problem that stems from a resistance to herbicides. “Indiscriminate” use of herbicides, predominantly Monsanto’s Roundup which because prevalent with the commercialization of Roundup Ready crops, have caused weeds to develop a resistance to Roundup. Dow Chemical is proposing the use of the new, more powerful herbicide 2, 4-D—which to us seems like a short term solution that will in the long term only exacerbate the problem. [Reuters]
Erin Brockovich might be (somewhat) happier that the EPA’s Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule 3 will start tracking the toxic and unregulated chemical, hexavalent chromium (PDF), along with 27 others and two viruses for public health reasons. If these chemicals are found to be hazardous, standards will hopefully be set limiting their occurrence in drinking water under the Safe Drinking Water Act. [Western Farm Press]
A new map shows which states have the highest concentration of (non-hydro) renewable power, and the wind-rich states of South Dakota, Iowa and Maine are the clear leaders. If you look at total capacity, however, things are a little different with California, Texas and Iowa taking the lead. [EcoGeek]
New York State has been doing shallow, low-volume fracking on conventional natural gas deposits for decades and disposing of polluted wastewater through treatment plants or as a road de-icer. Now facing the prospect of much greater quantities of wastewater with unconventional, high-volume fracking, Environmental Advocates NY and other residents are rightly concerned about how to safely dispose of it. Out of state treatment is the leading candidate. [NY Times]
The “American Tradition Institute” is working to craft a fake grassroots campaign to fight renewable energy projects – specifically wind – in legislatures, zoning boards, and town halls across the country. [Grist]
