Thursday, 16 Feb 2006

Most folks know coal mining is a dirty and dangerous business, triggering everything from miner's lung to deadly accidents. But the mountaintop-removal mining increasingly common in Appalachia poses dangers not just to miners but to whole communities already struggling to get by. In recent years, this hugely destructive process -- whereby the tops of mountains are sliced off to get at coal within, and the resulting rubble dumped in nearby streams and valleys -- has triggered lethal flooding, spurred a rash of illnesses in school kids, and even unloosed a massive boulder that tumbled down a hillside into a home and crushed a 3-year-old while he slept. Powerful coal companies resist any reforms, but fed-up locals are fighting back.

Rocky Amountin' High

Landowners awarded $554 million for nuke contamination from Rocky Flats

Thousands of Colorado downwinders got some vindication on Tuesday, when a jury ordered Dow Chemical and the former Rockwell International to pay $554 million in damages for plutonium contamination from Rocky Flats, a former nuclear weapons plant. It's the largest civil verdict ever awarded in Colorado -- likely to be reduced to around $353 million, as the jury's award exceeds legal limits. The trial pitted more than 10,000 Denver-area property owners against the corporations, which contracted with the U.S. Department of Energy for decades to make plutonium triggers for nuclear warheads at Rocky Flats (closed in 1989, now being made into a wildlife refuge). The corporations claim the feds are responsible for paying the damages. Some observers think this massive award could crack typical DOE denials of responsibility for illness and pollution caused by its nuclear-weapons facilities -- but others, more familiar with, you know, the real world, aren't hopeful.


Exactly 365 days ago, the Kyoto Protocol went into force, and with that (some of) the world's most powerful nations sprang into (limited) action, leading a (vaguely) unified international community to (modestly) slash greenhouse-gas emissions, (reasonably) determined to stop climate change in its tracks (or at least slow it down a wee bit). Sigh. Still, if you're itching to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the world's leading climate-change pact, you're not alone! Revelers across the country have asked Grist for party-planning tips, and Katharine Wroth has graciously obliged.

What the Bleep Do They Know!?

NOAA scientists join NASA's with accounts of global-warming censorship

Government censorship: It's what's for dinner. Some climate scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration whose views on global warming contradict Bush administration policy say they're being prevented from giving particular interviews or being closely monitored by press handlers. A recent NOAA press release claiming "consensus" around the fact that global warming had nothing to do with the intensity of 2005's hurricanes was recently changed after outraged protest from agency scientists who don't share that view. Meanwhile, over at NASA, which has been plagued for weeks by censorship charges, some press officers are giving new accounts of interference from political appointees, including pressure to cut the flow of climate-related news during and after the 2004 presidential campaign. And the U.S. doesn't have a monopoly on censorship: Australian climate scientists say their government is muzzling them too.

Oh My Gnarly Clemenceau

French prez orders asbestos-laden ship returned to France

You thought disposing of your old computer was a hassle? Just wait 'til you try to get rid of your old warship. French President Jacques Chirac was lauded by green groups yesterday when he ordered the 50-year-old warship Clemenceau to return to France from India, where it had been sent to be dismantled. Having initially agreed to the transfer, an Indian court then banned the aircraft carrier from Indian waters upon hearing that it possibly contained up to 500 tons of asbestos. The fate of the Clemenceau remained in limbo until yesterday, when Chirac gave in to pressure from Greenpeace and other enviro groups and ordered it returned to France. French courts agreed with Greenpeace in deeming the ship not military hardware but hazardous waste; French law doesn't allow export of hazardous waste to developing countries. Ninety percent of the world's ship-breaking is done in India, Bangladesh, China, and Pakistan, which have low environmental and safety standards.