Monday, January 21, 2008

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Monday, January 21, 2008
News of Note

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Nearly half of all Swedes back building new nuclear reactors in their country, which voted to scrap atomic power in a 1980 referendum, an opinion poll published on Monday showed.

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BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Commission lawyers have stopped Poland's move to ban trade and plantings of genetically modified (GMO) seeds, saying it had no scientific justification, the EU's Official Journal said on Monday.

According to the business press, a near majority of economists are now predicting recessions. Economists don't predict recessions. Almost all of them missed both the 2001 and the 1990–1991 recessions. Economists' predictions of a recession are a lagging indicator showing that we are in fact in a recession. The economists' predictions go along with a large collection of other data—rising unemployment rates, crashing house sales and slumping retail sales—all of which indicate that the economy has likely entered a recession. The fact that even economists now recognize the economy's dire straights just seals the case.

John Mackey, co-founder and chief executive officer of Whole Foods Market Inc., has a good idea as to what the future of global organic and alternative food production should look like.

Despite consumers' "willful ignorance" toward how their food is made and the "lies" fed to consumers by the industrial agriculture industry, a new era of food production is on the horizon, Mackey declared Thursday evening during a presentation at the American Grassfed Association's Grazing America '07 Conference in Austin, Texas, hometown of the $5.6 billion natural and organic retail giant.

They have tentacles coming out of their heads, live underground for months on end, do not need to feed for up to 10 years, and survived whatever killed the dinosaurs. The Zoological Society of London in the UK has launched the top 100 list of the world's weirdest, most wonderful and rarest amphibians.

ENN Spotlight

China is now the third largest producer of motor vehicles in the world behind Japan and the US. In 2006 more than 7 million cars, trucks and whatever rolled off Chinese production lines. About the same were sold there. Japan and the US each saw over 11 million vehicles produced.

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Scientists have discovered a layer of volcanic ash and glass shards in Antarctica, evidence of an old eruption by a still active volcano that researchers believe may be contributing to the thinning of Antarctic glacial ice.

Hugh F.J. Corr and David G. Vaughan, two scientists with the British Antarctic Survey, recently published their discovery of the volcanic layer in the journal Nature Geoscience. The discovery is unique according to Dr. Vaughan. He said "This is the first time we have seen a volcano beneath the ice sheet punch a hole through the ice sheet."

During the ancient Zhou dynasty, soyabeans were among China's five sacred grains. Thousands of years later soyabeans maintain their importance to the Chinese and most other Asians, but they have recently triggered much more down-to-earth preoccupations.

Gulf Arab oil exporter Abu Dhabi plans to spend $15 billion in the first phase of an initiative to develop green energy and build the world's largest hydrogen power plant, it said on Monday.

The investment would be part of the Masdar initiative, set up to develop sustainable and clean energy, Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahayan told the World Future Energy Summit in the emirate. He gave no time frame.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Renault-Nissan said on Monday it signed a deal to begin mass producing electric cars as part of an Israeli-led project to develop alternative energy sources.

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Member Press Releases
By: the Center for Biological Diversity
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced January 17 that it will not prepare a recovery plan for the endangered jaguar and will not attempt to recover the species in the United States or throughout its range in North and South America. The decision was signed by Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall on January 7, 2008. By: International Fund for Animal Welfare
Environmental and animal welfare organizations applauded yesterday's decision by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to delay the Bush Administration's attempt to nullify protections for marine mammals from potentially lethal underwater sound blasts until a federal district court can review the decision. By: the International Fund for Animal Welfare
Today the International Fund for Animal Welfare released On Thin Ice: The Precarious State of Arctic Marine Mammals in the United States Due to Global Warming, a comprehensive report commissioned to gauge the effects of unprecedented climate change on polar bears and other ice-dependent marine mammals within the United States. By: the Center for Biological Diversity
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed six imperiled birds from around the world as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act Wednesday. Fourteen years after first determining these species warranted protection, the Service finally responded to a series of lawsuits by the Center for Biological Diversity and listed the black stilt (New Zealand), caerulean paradise-flycatcher (Indonesia), giant ibis (Laos, Cambodia), Gurney's pitta (Burma, Thailand), long-legged thicketbird (Fiji), and Socorro mockingbird (Mexico) as endangered species. By: National Wildlife Federation
As Congress considers legislation that seeks to reduce the nation's greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by mid-century, colleges and universities may hold the key. Campuses nationwide have launched climate-driven projects that are taking a significant bite out of emissions along with saving money, according to a new publication from the National Wildlife Federation, Higher Education in a Warming World: The Business Case for Climate Leadership on Campus. The report demonstrates how schools are stepping up efforts in response to the potential threats of global warming and how these institutions are reaping multiple rewards. By: Stockholm International Water Institute
Companies that have contributed to pollution elimination or reduced freshwater consumption through innovative programs, policies, processes or products now have the opportunity to be nominated for the prestigious 2008 Stockholm Industry Water Award. By: the Center for Biological Diversity
In a January 7, 2008, memo, Mike Lockhart, who retired from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in frustration after 32 years - including the past eight years as the leader of the black-footed ferret recovery program - strongly criticized the agency's leadership for making back-room deals with the state of South Dakota and U.S. Forest Service that undermined the black-footed ferret recovery program by allowing poisoning of prairie dogs. Black-footed ferrets depend on prairie dog colonies for survival; prairie dogs are their primary prey, and prairie dog burrows are used as shelter and dens. By: the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment
The National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE) will present a Lifetime Achievement Award to Dr. Robert W. Corell, Global Change Program Director at The H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics and the Environment, and Senior Policy Fellow of the American Meteorological Society, on Thursday, January 17, 2008 in Washington, D.C. Given for a lifetime of leadership and achievement in advancing environmental science and its use in decision-making, the award will be presented during NCSE's 8th national conference, Climate Change: Science and Solutions, at a special ceremony at 5:30 p.m., at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center.

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