Legislating/Suing and Green Capitalism

Salmon Campaigner Wins Top Award

Looks like he followed the Nature Conservancy's approach -- acquiring an easement or ownership to protect a resource, rather than pursuing legislation or filing a lawsuit to force someone else's action. When is one more effective than the other, or are they all equal, and just a matter of an advocate's choice?

Plastics are Forever

Great Pacific Garbage Patch: Plastic Turning Vast Area of Ocean into Ecological Nightmare

I'd like to quote so much, but I'll restrain myself to this:

am often asked why we can't vacuum up the particles. In fact, it would be more difficult than vacuuming up every square inch of the entire United States; it's larger and the fragments are mixed below the surface down to at least 30 meters. Also, untold numbers of organisms would be destroyed in the process.

Besides, there is no economic resource that would be directly benefited by this process. We haven't yet learned how to factor the health of the environment into our economic paradigm. We need to get to work on this calculus quickly, for a stock market crash will pale by comparison to an ecological crash on an oceanic scale. (Emphasis added.)

This is not a new article, but the garbage patch is new to me. Anyone know more? Wikipedia has an article with a useful-looking bibliography.

New Global Warming News Site

The Christian Science Monitor has rolled out a new website just on global warming, CS Monitor.com: Global Warming.

Two Supreme Court Env. Cases Decided

Mass. v. EPA -- The Court held that the EPA does have power under the Clean Air Act to regulate CO2 emissions from motor vehicles.

Environmental Defense v. Duke Energy Corp. "Modification" need not be interpreted consistently throughout the Clean Air Act.