Environmental Issues and Protection

State Senate Deputy Majority Leader With Fracking Connections is Taking Heat

A Bloomberg story blew the lid on one state senator's ties to the fracking industry yesterday. Turns out state Senator Tom Libous (R-Binghamton), who said in March that he'd "make sure no [fracking moratorium] bill passes the Senate," has deep ties to a real-estate company leasing underground natura ... More >>

Upper East Siders Try to Make Waste Transfer Plan Into Mayoral Issue

One neighborhood in the contentious battle over the location of the city's temporary garbage dumps is looking to up the stakes. This week, an Upper East Side community organization, Residents for Sane Trash Solutions, released a study highlighting the adverse impacts of putting a waste transfer stat ... More >>

DEC Hired Fracking Lobby for $50 Million to Assess...Fracking?

Update: See statement from the DEC, and a letter from E&E explaining its relationship to IOGANY, at the bottom. New York State might just have to scrap the latest draft of its environmental impact study on hydraulic fracturing. The New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) and state lawmake ... More >>

The Energy Industry Gets Needled In Greedy Lying Bastards

Promised Land's Hard Sell

For Matt Damon and company, the message is the message

New Yorkers Still Slightly in Favor of Fracking Even as More Shady "Studies" Emerge

New Yorkers believe that the economic benefits of drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale outweigh the risk of potentially harmful environmental repercussions, according to today's Quinnipiac University Poll. The poll finds that 44 percent of New Yorkers think the economic pros of hydrauli ... More >>

ManBearPig Resurrected: Is Global Warming To Blame For Sandy's Destruction?

As you know, weather happened in New York City this week, leaving dozens dead, millions without power, and pundits arguing about whether "Global Warming" is an actual thing.Mayor Mike Bloomberg appears to be on the side of Al Gore and the Inconvenient Truth-ers -- yesterday, the mayor endorsed Presi ... More >>

Here's Some Old-Timey Video of New York's 1938 Hurricane -- Which Was Not Caused By "Global Warming"

The Global Warming crowd is claiming that climate change is part of the reason that a hurricane is about absolutely crush New York City."Substantial evidence indicates that global warming may be responsible for the recent increasing intensity of Atlantic hurricanes, including increasing their size a ... More >>

Gasland

Fracking: Boom or Doom

America's hydraulic fracturing gold rush portends the greatest environmental disaster of a generation

Mayor Bloomberg, Fracker-in-Chief?

In the late 1980s, George Mitchell, owner of Mitchell Energy & Development Corporation with a degree in petroleum engineering from Texas A&M, wanted a method that could find and extract formerly unseen deposits of natural gas. With a combination of horizontal drilling and something ... More >>

Hydraulic Fracturing: Is There Bad Science in The Fracking Debate?

Does fracking make people sick? The jury is largely still out on that one. However, new info indicates that some claims about hydraulic fracturing's reportedly significant health risks appear to have been based on bad science.

Hydraulic Fracturing: Can Environmental Regulators Handle a Fracking Boom? (UPDATE)

Can New York's environmental regulators keep up with fracking? This is the question raised in a report recently published by Earthworks, a group that monitors the petroleum and mining industries. Earthworks' new accountability project charges that New York's Department of Environmental Conservati ... More >>

Is Your Definition of Organic the Same as the USDA's? Cornucopia Institute Declares an Organic Watergate

The Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute is one of the country's leading preservers of the organic flame - a think-tank and advocacy group that benefits the small, family-owned farms that were once in the vanguard of the organic movement. Of course, big agribusiness has long since infiltrated (some ... More >>

Fracking Rules: Obama Administration Guidelines Don't Affect Most U.S. Land

As the fracking debate rages on in New York, Barack Obama's administration hasn't hidden the fact that it's pro-fracking, and widely publicized its decision to release environmental guidelines for the practice. Indeed, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's announcement Tuesday that his department had OK ... More >>

Utah Will Get Fracked!

There's so much fracking news across the country, it's hard to keep up with! As the debate over hydraulic fracturing in New York continues, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar just OKd a major gas drilling project in Utah, The Associated Press reports. Though some fracking is already taking plac ... More >>

Will Fracking Spread Across America?

The Prez has hardly made it a secret that he supports fracking as part of his push for domestic oil and natural gas development, with the Obama administration announcing last week that it plans on setting environmental standards for hydraulic fracturing. And what happens in D.C. does not stay in D ... More >>

NY Post Goes Fracking Crazy in Pro-Hydraulic Fracturing Editorial

The Post is a bit beside itself this morning, unable to process the position of fracking opponents. It's not simply that the editorial board disagrees with them and published an opinion piece explaining why -- the board can't wrap its head around the fact that dissenting opinion should have weight ... More >>

Fracking Secrets: Hydraulic Fracturing Still Shrouded in Mystery

As Albany pols weigh the pros and cons of hydraulic fracturing, it seems like full disclosure of fracking practices remains iffy. Shortly after reports surfaced that physicians in Pennsylvania couldn't publicly discuss info about fracking chemicals, some New Yorkers have started to begging Departm ... More >>

Are Fracking Chemicals a Secret? (UPDATE)

The health risks of hydraulic fracturing have been key in policymaking debates, with health advocates calling on legislators to assess fracking chemicals before allowing the polemic practice to take place. Friends of fracking, however, have pushed back against full disclosure: in Pennsylvania, for ... More >>

HYDROFRACK OFF

The pros and cons of the practice

Water Wars: What's Up With The Upstate-Downstate Debate?

The Times reports today on the "slow boil" over water issues now playing out between Upstate communities and New York City. Ulster County, for example, has been pissed at the City for years. The county says that it's unfairly had to endure "development bans, flooded basements and ruined crops" just ... More >>

Will Woodstock Criminalize Hydraulic Fracturing?

From a report earlier today, it looks like Woodstock might try outlawing hydraulic fracturing -- the highly controversial natural gas extraction method that many fear will pollute New York's water supply with carcinogenic chemicals and radiation. The Town Board has decided to consider a proposal t ... More >>

Hydrofracking Can Be Banned in Dryden, NY

​A court decided yesterday that the upstate town of Dryden -- located in Tompkins county -- can bar hydrofracking -- marking a major win for fracking opponents. The New York Times reports that Dryden's battle began in August, when the town's board passed a zoning law that bans gas drilling w ... More >>

Gasland Filmmaker Joshua Fox Arrested at Fracking Hearing, by Order of House Republicans

In an unprecedented move, House Republicans had a filmmaker arrested yesterday after he showed up to a public congressional hearing. The House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment was meeting to discuss the controversial topic of hydraulic fracturing, colloquially known as "fracking." When Joshua ... More >>

Department of Environmental Protection Clarifies Fracking E-Mail (UPDATE)

Mayor Mike Bloomberg has had his share of public reservations about hydrofracking, urging government honchos to keep drilling far from NYC's water. The City's environmental agency is on board, too. But a strange little newsletter released this afternoon from the Department of Environmental Protect ... More >>

Royally Fracked: Those 40,000 Comments on Hydraulic Fracturing Don't Change Anything

Remember how New York's citizens, many of them not too keen on having chemicals blasted into underground rock to extract natural gas, recently submitted 40,000 comments to the state's environmental agency? That public comment period on highly polemic hydraulic fracturing came to a close earlier th ... More >>

Frack! EPA Voices Concerns About Hydraulic Fracturing

The Environmental Protection Agency says that New York should set limits to the amount of radiation that can be in fracking wastewater before the drilling starts, according to The Associated Press [via The Wall Street Journal]. The EPA announcement comes just as the state's Department of Environme ... More >>

Hot Dogs Against Fracking

Eat this choucroute to show you oppose fracking.​ Actually, it's choucroute against fracking. Bark Hot Dogs, in Park Slope, has teamed with the makers of the film Gasland and the anti-fracking group United for Action for a dinner and screening next Wednesday, November 9.

Cuomo Attempts to Lift Ban on Hydraulic Fracturing

​When Governor Cuomo signed the landmark same sex marriage bill into law last week, you probably thought, "There's no way the 'gov is topping this." Guess again! The New York Times reports his administration will announce their attempt to lift what is effectively a statewide ban on hydraulic f ... More >>

Japan Cancels Whale Hunt Because People Might Get Hurt

​After repeated face-offs between Japanese whaling ship the Nisshin Maru and the Bob Barker and the Gojira -- boats helmed by anti-whaling activists from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society -- Japan has called off its yearly Antarctic whale hunt citing "safety concerns." Via BBC News, "Putti ... More >>

T.G.I. Friday's Among Those Charged With Dumping Waste and Raw Sewage in Brooklyn Waterways

Because untreated grease gives us all something to smile about!​Here's yet another reason we find ourselves weary of the continuing existence of T.G.I. Friday's.

Bin Laden Book Club: Terrorist's Recordings Recommend More Than Killing Americans

​Sunday's New York Times includes a somewhat original, overlooked take on the most infamous terrorist in the world, the still-not-caught Osama bin Laden, who released two new audio recordings over the weekend. The article, instead of the standard "Where's Waldo?", focuses on bin Laden's "wide- ... More >>

City Universities Are Part of Bloomberg's Green Jobs Vision

McCain weighs in on Sarah Palin's cap

​The ongoing pissing match over Sarah Palin's inked-up gimme cap has a new combatant, now that John McCain has taken a stand. If you managed to miss this earth-shaking controversy, the Senator's former running mate was photographed in Hawaii wearing a McCain campaign sun visor with the logo bl ... More >>

The Shake Shacking of America; The Big Plate Revolution of New York

​Dale Hemmerdinger, the ex-MTA chairman and current landlord, is evicting Shamsher Wadud, who for many years owned the Indian restaurant Nirvana on the roof of the building next door. Wadud is broke and a Parkinson's sufferer, and claims his apartment is overrun by rodents. [NY Post] The Shak ... More >>

All Wet

Bloomberg's man Dan Doctoroff has an answer for rising seas: more coastal condos!

Dumping on Everyone Else

Trash plan relieves our neighborhoods, but west of the Hudson, it's just more of the same old garbage from New York City

Fahrenheit 2050

The man who would've been president warns of an imminent deep impact

'The Great Warming'

Foul Play

Raw sewage continues to pour into the city's waterways

Stirring Up A Storm

Enviros hope 'The Day After Tomorrow' will change the climate regarding climate

Coal Dirt Cheap

New EPA Rule Threatens to Increase Local Pollution

Sierra Club Scores Shrub's First 100 Days

Prez Not All Bad on Environment. Just Mostly.

Libertarian Belle

Gale Norton Rings in an America Where Polluters Police Themselves and Environmentalists Go Extinct

Trading Gas

Polluters Fight Global Warming—and Government Regulation—With a New Market in Emissions Credits

Green vs. Green

A Bitter Struggle in New York City Splits the Sierra Club

King of the Earth

Eco-Friendly Leo Rises Above ‘Beach’ Accusations

Green With Envy

Pataki Wrestles Spitzer for Eco-Laurels

Unnatural Disasters

How Humans Are Behind the Weather Weirdness