Entergy owns a tired old nuclear plant on the banks of the Connecticut River in Vermont – a plant it wants to keep running despite escalating costs, threats to the environment and public health, and a history of false promises.  With old approvals in hand, Entergy continues to operate Vermont Yankee past its scheduled retirement date of March 21, 2012. Entergy’s view of Vermont’s authority seems to be Vermont only has authority to give it a green light.  By Entergy’s warped playbook, any condition of operation or approval would be off limits. Entergy went to Court last year to challenge Vermont’s authority to regulate that plant. The Court partly agreed with Entergy, but clearly recognized and reaffirmed that Entergy still needs approval from the Vermont Public Service Board to continue to operate Vermont read more…

Water is the essential life-giving force on Earth; we literally cannot live without it. Compared to many parts of the nation and the world, New England is blessed with an abundance of clean, fresh water. Yet in overabundance water can also be a powerfully destructive force. Tropical Storm Irene reminded Vermonters of this truism last year when flood waters washed away roads, bridges, homes, and livelihoods. Fortunately, many of the same things New Englanders can do to protect ourselves from flooding also help to keep our water clean and full of healthy aquatic wildlife. Don’t believe it? Well, to quote the John Fogerty song, “I know it’s true, oh so true, ’cause I saw it on TV.” Vermont Public Television to be exact, which is broadcasting documentary films in the Bloom series produced read more…

MIT graduate student Zach Youngerman asks an excellent question in an opinion piece in the Boston Globe: Did bad neighborhood design doom Trayvon Martin? Of course, my lawyerly impulse is to say that clearly urban planning and local culture was not the “proximate cause” of that young man’s death – clearly the man with the gun is the place to look for that. But Mr. Youngerman makes a very good point – a place that lacks the “eyes on the street” (to use the phrase that he quotes from the great urbanist writer Jane Jacobs), sidewalks and where there are few sidewalks transforms the fundamental human activity of walking into suspicious behavior. As Mr. Youngerman says, “. . . behavior is not simply a matter of character; it is also read more…

Federal fishery managers rolled the dice on the New England cod fishery on Monday, once again. It is hard to escape the premonition that they fell well short of their responsibility. We think catch levels were set too high, too little was done to reduce the growing cod catches of recreational fishermen, and nothing was done to balance fishermen’s economic and social pain by directing the small allocation of Gulf of Maine cod toward coastal fishing boats. read more..

The MBTA voted today to approve “Scenario 3,” the proposal put forth last week to close the $159 million budget gap the T is facing this fiscal year. The plan is a lot better than the draconian fare increases and drastic service cuts that it initially proposed and we commend the MBTA for listening to the public and all stakeholders’ concerns to get to a 23% increase with minimal service cuts that is within the range of reasonableness, given the T’s desperate financial straits. read more..

The American developers of the Northern Pass project are misleading the public about the project’s most touted environmental benefit (without which they “wouldn’t be doing this”): reducing New England’s greenhouse gas emissions. Presented with clear, unambiguous evidence that the current proposal would not meaningfully reduce emissions and that their public relations campaign is trading in falsehoods, the developers have done nothing to correct the record or provided any substantive response to the evidence. In mid-February, CLF released a report on the science regarding large-scale hydropower’s emissions of greenhouse gases, the pollutants that are driving climate change. The conclusion: large-scale hydropower projects, especially new facilities, have substantial greenhouse gas emissions that, in their first years of operation, are equivalent to emissions from modern natural gas power plants. This conclusion means that read more…

Last Thursday evening, March 29th, the R.I. House Committee on the Environment and Natural Resources held a hearing on a product-stewardship bill, H-7443. I was present, and I testified on behalf of CLF in favor of the bill (see below for a summary of my testimony). Also present were paid lobbyists for the National Electrical Manufacturer’s Association (NEMA), who testified against the bill. The product-stewardship bill, introduced by Representatives Walsh, Ruggiero, Tanzi, Handy, and Naughton, would provide a safe, easy way to recycle new, energy-efficient light bulbs known as compact fluorescent light bulbs, or CFLs. CFLs are generally good for the environment, because they use much less electricity than conventional bulbs, and therefore they lead to lower carbon emissions (since electricity is a major source of carbon). But CFLs also read more…

A listing of recent posts on TalkingFish.org. This week: an interview with Chef Jeremy Sewall of Lineage, Island Creek Oyster Bar, and Eastern Standard; a post about upcoming river herring runs; and a roundup of this week's fish stories in the news. read more..

The Senate Study Commission on Sustainable Transportation Funding held its second meeting of the year today. I sit on the Commission, having been appointed to the position by Senate President Teresa Paiva-Weed (D-Newport). Other Commission members include three senators, RIDOT Director Michael Lewis, and RIPTA CEO Charles Odimgbe. CLF is interested in public transit because of our concern about climate change. Here in Rhode Island, the transportation sector is the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and the fastest growing sector. Thus, any serious effort to address climate change must include a focus on transportation. I am afraid that the Study Commission members are getting bogged down in the minutiae of how RIPTA runs. There was plenty of discussion at today’s session about small matters, such as whether RIPTA made read more…

Climate Scientist Katherine Hayhoe is an evangelical Christian who sees her work and the need to protect the earth as deeply consistent with her faith. Read all about her at Climate Central.  Buy her book, co-written with her husband who, like Dr. Hayhoe, is a Professor at Texas Tech. He is also the Pastor of their church. Given the latest science showing that the models that predict the exact march of global warming appear to be overly conservative and underestimating the effects of the warming in progress and the strong likelihood that we are about to cross an irrevocable tipping point that commits the planet to deeply damaging warming it is not crazy to suggest that we need science, prayer and action. The need for action and steps to be read more…