I joined with residents of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom today and fellow environmental colleagues to protect Vermont from the devastation of tar sands oil. We filed a legal action to ensure Vermonters have a say over any proposal to move tar sands through Vermont. See press release here. The request asks that the increasingly imminent proposal to move tar sands through an existing Northeast Kingdom pipeline be subject to state land use (Act 250) review. See request here. Tar sands oil poses unique risks to the many natural treasures of the Northeast Kingdom and also imposes extreme climate change risks. Tar sands oil is a gritty tar-like substance that produces far more emissions than conventional oil. The vastness of the tar sands reserves in Western Canada means that using tar sands oil delays efforts to move towards read more…

Have you ever been at a noisy party and couldn’t hear the guy next to you? Or been on your phone when a fire truck went by and you couldn’t hear the conversation? Or gone to a rock concert and had a “hearing hangover” for hours afterwards? This sort of thing happens in the ocean, too, except marine life can’t just leave the party or put in earplugs (well, most of them can’t, anyway). Sound travels really well in seawater, but light does not, so ocean animals rely on sound for a variety of reasons. For example, New England’s oyster toadfish will signal his mate that he’s got a nest ready for spawning by making a “boat-whistle” call. Lots of other fish make and use noise not only to attract read more…

My son’s third grade class is looking for “juicy” adjectives, and I found one.  Again and again, journalists are describing the Massachusetts Governor’s 21st Century Transportation Plan, which proposes to raise revenue for our chronically underfunded transportation system, as “ambitious.” Not the kind of “ambitious” your mother admired in you when you were a college student, but the “ambitious” that implies hubris. As in asking for a lot. Maybe even too much. Insisting that the Governor’s plan is “ambitious” immediately gets people thinking about how they can cut it down to size. So before the knives come out, having carefully reviewed the plan and understanding the real needs of our transportation system well, let’s take a look at what’s really in there: The plan proposes to increase Chapter 90 funding for local street maintenance and read more…

This week on Talking Fish, a new paper points to the role of environmental factors in determining fish productivity; Fish Talk in the News check's in on the Science and Statistical Committee's setting of allowable biological catch levels for 2013. read more..

When Governor Deval Patrick stood before the Legislature and the people of Massachusetts last week to offer a bold proposal to raise $1 billion per year to fund critical investments in transportation, he struck a skillful balance between the pragmatic and the visionary, appealing to us as both taxpayers and investors in a thriving Commonwealth.  The Governor asked his constituents to “Imagine if you could depend on a bus or subway that came on time, was safe and comfortable… if the Green Line ran to Medford and the commuter rail ran to Springfield,” among other improvements. He made sure to emphasize that everyone would benefit from a 21st century transportation system, whether they drive a car or take public transit, from one end of the state to the other. And read more…

Algae Growth in the Winnicut River, Greenland, NH; photo by Peter W. In early January, the Town of Exeter’s Selectmen voted 5 to 0 not to appeal a permit issued by the EPA – a permit that will require a major upgrade of its sewage treatment plant. Exeter becomes the second Great Bay community to accept stringent reductions in nitrogen pollution from a sewage treatment plant, following in the footsteps of Newmarket which announced in December they would not appeal a similar permit. Together, Exeter and Newmarket have taken an important first step toward tackling the issue of nitrogen pollution – a problem that is contributing to a decline in the health of the estuary. Sewage treatment plants are a major source of nitrogen pollution, especially dissolved inorganic nitrogen – read more…

Vermont is poised to take a big bite out of the high cost and pollution of heating our homes and businesses. Slashing a full one-quarter of both lies within our reach. Over the past decade, the cost Vermonters pay for staying warm has more than doubled. This strains our pocketbooks, our environment, our health and our security. Watching our dollars go up in smoke drains our economy. What can we do? Building on the enormous success of our electric efficiency efforts, we can improve the heating efficiency of our homes and businesses in a similar manner. While some efforts have begun, most of the savings opportunity remains on the table. Throughout Vermont, heating efficiency has saved the average homeowner about $1,000 a year.  (See a recent editorial here). A new report read more…

There is an epidemic of truth telling underway, globally, nationally and in Massachusetts.  And as hard as some of that truth is to hear it is a very healthy and important exercise. On the global level the business and political leadership is finally waking up to the deep and systemic threat of a changing climate.  The 2013 Global Risks Assesment from the World Economic Forum describes how business and political leaders see climate risk as the only thing competing with “risk of financial collapse” as the biggest threat facing the world economy: respondents also identified the failure of climate change adaptation and rising greenhouse gas emissions as among those global risks considered to be the most likely to materialize within a decade. Compared to last year’s survey, the failure to adapt read more…

This past week has shown Vermont first-hand the high cost of nuclear power. Hosting a plant in your state is clearly a high-stakes bargain. Vermont went to Court in Manhattan this week before a three judge panel at the United States Court of Appeals. (Read more here and here). It had fifteen minutes for its lawyer to explain to the judges why the decision of the District Court blocking the actions of the Vermont Legislature should be reversed. A tough task. With clarity and nimbleness, Vermont proved it was up to the task. Its lawyer, Attorney David Frederick, an experienced appellate lawyer who argued a case last week before the United States Supreme Court, explained that Vermont has every right to determine Vermont Yankee’s fate. And doing so does not read more…

As we reported last October, the 2008 Farm Bill was set to expire in September of 2012. September came and went, but no new Farm Bill was passed. This is no small matter for those of us interested in food systems, as the bill covers the food stamps program (known as “SNAP”), subsidies for crop and dairy producers, and dozens of other programs that assist small farmers, rural development, farmland conservation, and ongoing agricultural research. As you can tell from this list, the bill is not just about farms, nor will it affect just farmers; it will affect many, if not most, Americans. Much of the debate in Congress during 2012 centered around the $80 billion food stamp program and the billions in annual subsidies to growers of corn, soy, read more…