The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is refusing to disclose records about a new class of pesticides that could be playing a role in the disappearance of millions of honeybees in the United States, a lawsuit filed Monday charges.

If Congress bows to pressure from Republicans and decides to lift its restrictions on offshore oil drilling, it is unclear exactly what would happen next. Such a move would take the country into uncharted waters.

The UN says the dumping of 500m tonnes of chemical waste in Abidjan led to at least 16 deaths and more than 100,000 other victims needing medical treatment. Two years on it is still here.

Stuart Orr of the World Wildlife Fund explains a new report that shows each Briton uses 4,645 litres a day when hidden factors are included

A new analysis of government data is the first to link low-level arsenic exposure, possibly from drinking water, with type 2 diabetes, researchers say.

When the state agency watching over polluters recently tallied how many folks it needed to protect the health of Puget Sound and local waterways, they concluded they had less than half of what they needed.

On the 30th anniversary of Love Canal, a preliminary New York State Dept. of Health study says women whose mothers were pregnant and exposed to the chemicals, have double the risk for reproductive problems as well as increased cancer rates.

Federal officials plan to remove over 16 million tons of abandoned uranium waste from a mining site along the Colorado River, but environmental groups warn that new toxic pollution threats lurk downstream.

China and Australia will test a post-combustion capture (PCC) pilot plant in Beijing as part of a plan to cut carbon dioxide emissions from thermal power stations.The plant, officially announced last week (31 July), is a collaboration between the China HuaNeng Group, the country's largest power producer, and Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).

If wind energy converters are located anywhere near a residential area, they must never become too noisy even in high winds. Most such power units try to go easy on their neighbors' ears, but even the most careful design cannot prevent noise from arising at times.

British Columbia's recent carbon tax made waves in the US. (Sightline's written about it here, here, and here.) But it's not terribly popular in BC, as economist Marc Lee of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives explains:

While there are plenty of good reasons why the Liberals should get beaten up at the polls, one of the key reasons for the change is the carbon tax, due to an aggressive (if questionable) campaign by the NDP and poor communications by the government.

In some public opinion work I’ve seen, two messages about BC’s carbon tax come out loud and clear. The first is that revenue neutrality is a bust — people may be willing to live with a new tax on carbon but think that giving the money back is a dumb idea; they would rather have revenues spent on public transit or anything else that would reinforce climate action. Second, they want tough action on industry.

Quick aside for American readers who may not follow Canadian politics: the Liberals are the right-of-center party that is currently in power in BC; they're the ones responsible for the provincial carbon tax. The NDP -- the New Democratic Party -- is the left-of-center opposition party, which has criticized the carbon tax. And yes, you heard that correctly: the right is proposing a carbon tax and the left is attacking it.

Confusingly, although the BC Liberals and the federal Canadian Liberals are different parties with different orientations and platforms, their fates may be wedded in the next election -- because the national party has also proposed a carbon tax. At the federal level, however, the Canadian Liberals are the opposition party; the national government is controlled by the Conservative Party.

Got that? Okay, so here's what Canada's carbon taxes may mean for the rest of North America...

According to Marc, in addition to the political difficulty of levying a carbon tax, there's a public perception problem with revenue-neutral tax-shifting, at least in BC. This is concerning to folks like me who think that revenue-neutral tax-shifting is an excellent idea on substantive policy grounds. For instance, Sightline tends to favor cap and rebate and cap and dividend approaches to climate policy -- policies that put a price a carbon but return a significant portion of the revenue to taxpayers.

But whatever the policy merits, the political will appears fragile. As Marc notes:

If both the federal and BC Liberals lose elections on the basis of the carbon tax, it would take carbon taxes off the table for all of North America, potentially forever.

I think Marc's right that it will be extremely informative to watch how Canadian (and British Columbian) politics play out over the next few months. Still, I'm not quite as bearish. In fact, I think revenue-neutral carbon taxes are actually gathering steam in the US. To my mind, carbon taxes are second-best to auctioned cap and trade, but they're still a very valuable tool.

In the meantime, policy wonks should keep an eye on the Progressive Economics Forum blog. We don't always see eye to eye on some climate policy issues, but it's home to reliably good thinking.

If you can’t make it out to Vancouver, Miracle Drywash is a new product whose makers hope will change the way we clean and polish our vehicles. It’s a non-aerosol spray that lifts dirt and grime from any painted surface. Then you wipe it and you’re done.

The product uses no water (other than that in the compound) and puts no harmful surfactants (soap suds and salt) down the drain. While Miracle Drywash cannot claim to be the complete green solution to these issues (the compound is based upon petrochemicals after all) it can help diminish the amount of water you use when washing your car.

Their new car cleaning kit comes with 500ml Miracle Drywash, 2 micro fibre cloths and 2 latex gloves.

From the press release:

MDW is sprayed onto the dirty area, gently wiped in, allowed to dry (2 minutes approximately) then wiped off with a second clean cloth. The surface, be it bodywork, or glass, is free of all dirt, and left with a layer of polish to further protect the cleaned surface. During the ‘drying period’, the compound lifts the dirt and grime off the bodywork, and suspends it within the drying liquid. When wiped off, the dirt and grime has already been enveloped by the compound and does not come into contact with the bodywork again, thus it does not scratch, or mark the bodywork as it is removed.

Warning: Comedy and foul language.

Going on an Imperial Bender: How the U.S. Garrisons the Planet and Doesn't Even Notice.

The headline says it all:  Fire retardant chemicals found in toddlers' blood.

Scientists are concerned that the chemicals cause brain damage in animals and may cause hyperactivity in children, says Jimmy Roberts, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics' committee on environmental health, who was not involved with the study. Doctors also are concerned that the chemicals affect the reproductive organs and hormone systems. A Danish study in 2007 found that boys whose mothers had high levels of fire retardants in their breast milk were more likely to have undescended testicles.

These are the same chemicals that we found in high levels in the breastmilk of Northwestern moms.  The worst forms have been banned in the US for several years, but one form is still in widespread use -- and apparently we may still be importing some of the worst kinds from overseas.  Even more troubling, there's still tons of these persistent flame retardants in people's homes, particularly in furniture foams that are gradually degrading.  And as they degrade, the flame retardants get into dust -- which toddlers & nursing moms then inhale.  It's a contamination problem that will likely affect our homes and workplaces for years.

The whole episode is a cautionary tale:  once you let a toxic genie out of the bottle, it's awfully hard to get it back in.

At a glance, this San Francisco Chronicle article is a bit difficult to parse, but it points to exactly the reason why I've been ranting about lousy oil price forecasts churned out by federal US agencies (see here, here, and here). To wit:

The Environmental Protection Agency says another arm of the Bush administration may be lowballing the economic benefits of increasing fuel economy standards for cars and trucks.

...the EPA said in comments filed with the Transportation Department that the department would have been better off using higher estimates for future gasoline prices when it proposed increasing the average fuel economy of all vehicles to 31.6 miles per gallon by 2015.

The proposed fuel economy increase was based in part on estimates that gas would range from $2.04 a gallon to $3.37 a gallon, averaging $2.42 a gallon in 2016.

So, basically, when gasoline costs more than estimated, we end up with lowball savings from higher mileage standards. (Higher standards means burning less fuel and hence spending less money.) Those lowball estimates make it seem unimportant to upgrade the standards. And when we don't upgrade the standards, then we waste money -- and we send more carbon in the atmosphere too.

Needless to say, gasoline currently costs more than the Transportation Department is estimating, as it has for much of 2008. And sure, it's perfectly possible that prices will go back down over the next 8 years -- predicting prices is tricky -- but it's maybe worth noting that the futures market doesn't think so. In other words, folks who have some skin in the game -- who make or lose money based on what oil prices do -- think that prices are headed gradually up between now and 2016. It seems it's only the government analysts who think gasoline will drop to $2.42.   

The really frustrating thing is that almost no one benefits from crappy price forecasts. Consumers lose, businesses lose, the environment loses -- and even oil companies lose.

Oh wait, check that. Oil companies don't lose at all: they make a killing when we burn more fuel than makes economic sense.

Just saying.

Are your electric bills going through the roof? A solution just may be up there too:The roof is a great place to install solar collectors that convert the sun's energy directly into electricity.

The current carbon market actually encourages cutting down some of the world's biggest forests, which would unleash tons of climate-warming carbon into the atmosphere, a new study reported Monday.

Northern Australia contains the world's largest remaining savannas and is one of the last great pristine wilderness zones, covering an area larger than western Europe, Australian researchers said on Tuesday.

Chile called home its ambassador in Peru Monday as a dispute flared over disputed maritime territory between the South American neighbors. They have bickered over the rich Pacific coast fishing waters for years, and Peru published a new map Sunday that pushes its bid to negotiate a new sea border.