Larry's Environmental Issues Blog

Air quality during a heat wave not only feels worse, it is worse. The combination of heat and sunlight creates a "chemical soup" that affects air quality and makes life outdoors nearly unbearable for many people. Find out how heat waves affect air quality, and what you can do to protect yourself from poor air quality and heat waves.
_{Photo courtesy of Getty Images}

Also Read:

• Smog: Frequently Asked Questions
• Americans Breathe Dangerous Levels of Smog
• More Than Half of U.S. Population Lives in Counties with Unsafe Air
• Ozone: The Good and Bad of Ozone
• What Causes Global Warming?
• How to Avoid and Treat Heat Exhaustion and Heat Stroke -- Sharon O'Brien, About.com: Senior Living

Hydroelectric dams harnessed U.S. rivers and brought light into the darkness in a cleaner, more sustainable way than most other power plants could claim. But the dams also created an impenetrable barrier that blocked migrating salmon, making it impossible for them to reach the sea or return to their spawning grounds. Over the past century, many wild salmon runs have been decimated or destroyed, but today many dams are being studied for possible removal, which could create a new era of restoration for wild salmon runs. Learn more about the relationship between dams and salmon, and what can be done to restore wild salmon runs without turning out the lights.

_{Photo by Matthew Hull}

Bottled water companies try to make the case that tap water is not safe to drink, urging consumers to use their products instead and arguing that bottled water is safer and healthier than what you get from the tap. Seemingly in support of that idea, various studies have confirmed that tap water in many communities contains hundreds of chemical contaminants. So, how safe is tap water? The next time you get thirsty for a drink of water, should you reach for a bottle or head for the kitchen faucet?
_{Photo courtesy of Getty Images}

While many Olympic athletes were worrying about the smog in Beijing and how it may affect their health and performance, U.S. Olympic swimmer Amanda Beard made time in her busy training schedule to bare her soul—and her body—to help raise awareness for a cause she is passionate about: ending unnecessary cruelty to animals.

Read more...

Is a drought just a long dry spell with too much heat and too little rain, or is the true definition of "drought" more subtle and complex than a glance at the sky can reveal?

Find out what conditions constitute drought, what causes droughts to occur, and why not everyone means the same thing when they talk about drought.
_{Photo by Dean Perry}

As consumers continued paying record-high prices for gasoline this week, major oil companies were celebrating another round of record-high profits, this time for the second quarter of 2008.

ExxonMobil led the way with a record-shattering profit of $11.68 billion—the highest ever posted by any U.S. company in the history of American commerce. Royal Dutch Shell ran a close second with $11.56 billion, BP raked in $9.5 billion, Chevron hit $5.98 billion, and ConocoPhillips posted $5.44 billion in profits.

It’s no surprise that consumers are none too happy about the growing disparity between their own fortunes and those of the oil companies, which are profiting so handsomely at their expense.

Read more...

Imagine looking out the window of a skyscraper and seeing acres of meadow instead of steaming tar spread across the rooftops of your city. That vision is becoming a reality in an increasing number of communities as architects, homeowners and urban planners discover the advantages of green roofs that provide much more than mere shelter.

Traditional roofs deflect rain and send it swirling into gutters and storm sewers where it picks up all sorts of pollutants before running into rivers and streams. Green roofs use soil and living plants to create a shelter that absorbs rainwater, saves energy, filters out pollution, and transforms wasted space into natural habitat for birds.

Learn more about green roofs and how they are being used in cities and towns all across the United States and elsewhere.

_{Photo of the green roof on City Hall in Chicago by Tim Boyle/Getty Images}

Starting in January 2009, Seattle shoppers who forget to bring along reusable bags will be charged 20 cents for every disposable paper or plastic bag they use to carry home their purchases at grocery, drug and convenience stores.

Other U.S. cities have banned the use of plastic bags, but Seattle is believed to be the first to charge a fee to discourage the use of disposable bags and to reduce the amount of paper and plastic that end up as litter or in landfills.

Read more...

Reacting to voter anger over $4-per-gallon gasoline and growing concerns about U.S. dependency on foreign oil, the Bush administration is floating the idea of extracting petroleum from oil-shale deposits in the Western United States that could eventually yield 800 billion barrels of oil, according to government estimates.

At the current consumption rate of roughly 20 million barrels a day, 58 percent of it from outside the United States, 800 billion barrels is enough to satisfy America’s oil addiction for more than 100 years—without importing a single drop. In reality, of course, a new and ready supply of oil would virtually guarantee increased consumption. And any petroleum extracted from domestic oil shale would inevitably be combined with imported oil as well as domestic oil from other sources to meet the growing demand, further extending our dependence on oil.

President Bush has been previewing the notion of squeezing oil from stone in his energy speeches for the past couple of months, and today [July 22, 2008] the U.S. Interior Department is scheduled to propose regulations for a new program to sell leases that would allow oil companies to extract oil from shale on federal lands, primarily in the Green River Basin of Colorado, Wyoming and Utah.

The idea of mining oil shale for petroleum isn’t new, but there are three big problems with using oil shale as a source for petroleum. Namely, oil-shale extraction is: Read more...

Have you ever wanted to give the EPA a piece of your mind, or just tell the agency what you think about some environmental topic? Well, now you have the chance to do just that by adding your comments to the EPA blog: Greenversations. Every week, the EPA posts a new question and invites all comers to share their thoughts, and to read what others have to say on the subject.

This week's question: What do you use: paper, plastic, or reusable bags?

Paper or plastic? We take shopping bags for granted, especially at the grocery store, and it’s easy to fill up several bags per trip. Both paper and plastic bags use resources, multiplied by the billions of bags used annually worldwide. You can reuse and recycle both paper and plastic types, which delays their being thrown away, or you can reduce waste with permanent bags.

For more information on this topic, see:

• Paper, Plastic or Something Better?
• Why Stop Using Plastic Bags?
• Litter Trashes the Environment