IN TODAY’S AUDIO REPORT: Obama to ban antibiotics? (in farm animals, that is); Mining the Grand Canyon; Chevron refuses to pay for environmental damage; The bulb is back…. PLUS: Wal-Mart going green… All that and more in today’s Green News Report!
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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (links below): Missouri withheld E. coli contamination data in popular lake; China announces huge solar subsidies; Talk about power — Jet turbine could power hybrid electric car; No solutions for toxic Dallas River; Tougher home building rules to save energy for decades… PLUS: Are the world’s fish shrinking due to global warming?…
Info/links on those stories and all the ones we talked about on today’s episode follow below…
- Administration Seeks to Restrict Antibiotics in Livestock (NY Times)
- As MRSA gets worse, the FDA discovers antibiotic abuse on factory farms (Grist.org)
Let’s think about this for a minute. We’ve got a bacterial brew at the hatchery: thousands of birds in close proximity swapping bacteria while feces piles mount beneath them. At the slaughterhouse, we’ve got workers working rapidly to disembowel and dismember those very birds along fast-moving conveyor belts. The latter conditions seem perfect for infecting workers with MRSA.
- Pew Calls FDA Testimony on Use of Antibiotics on Industrial Farms a Key First Step, More Is Needed (Pew Charitable Trusts)
- Do Our Chickens Have A Drug Problem? (The New Republic)
- The Superbug in Your Supermarket: A potentially deadly new strain of anti-biotic-resistant microbes may be widespread in our food supply (Prevention Magazine)
- CAFOs Uncovered: The Untold Costs of Confined Animal Feeding Operations (Union of Concerned Scientists)
- Kansas Rep. Moran Comes Out For Antibiotics and Against Food Safety (LaVidaLocavore.org)
- Interior calls for 2-year hold on mining claims near Grand Canyon: The freeze reverses a Bush-era ruling that opened the land to uranium mining. The Interior Department plans to study the environmental impact (LA Times)
- Interior to Place 2-Year Hold on New Hardrock Mining Near Grand Canyon (Greenwire.com)
- Interior halting uranium mining at Grand Canyon (AP)
- Chevron: ‘We’re not paying’ $27B fine for Ecuador rain forest contamination (RawStory.com)
- Wal-Mart To Become Green Umpire: The retailer is about to unveil a “sustainability index†on every product it sells (TheBigMoney.com)
- Wal-Mart Responds To My Sustainability Questions (The Atlantic)
- At Wal-Mart, Labeling to Reflect Green Intent (NY Times)
Wal-Mart’s sheer size has long enabled it to create ripple effects throughout corporate America whenever it adopts new ways of doing business.
For instance, Len Sauers, the vice president for global sustainability at Procter & Gamble, recalls that a few years ago, when his company and a few others began selling concentrated laundry detergent that uses 50 percent less water — and allows for a smaller container using less plastic — that version was slow to catch on.
In 2007, Wal-Mart decided it would sell only the concentrated detergents.
“Because of Wal-Mart’s leadership in that area, they were able to set a standard for the entire industry,†Mr. Sauers said. “That opened the door to allow it to progress very, very quickly.â€
- Two Steps Forward: Walmart’s Sustainability Index: The Hype and the Reality (WorldChanging.com)
- The Incandescent Bulb: Not Dead Yet (NY Times)
‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’: More green news not covered in today’s audio report… See below!
- Missouri to investigate why lake contamination data were kept secret (Kansas City Star)
- China offers big solar subsidy, shares up (Reuters)
- Jet turbine could power hybrid electric car (Reuters)
- Officials fish for solution for Trinity River, poisoned with PCBs (Dallas Morning News)
- A New Enforcer in Buildings, the Energy Inspector (NY Times)
- Fish are shrinking in response to global warming: study (AFP)
