Diablo Canyon Power Plant.
Credit: Wikimedia

Had last Friday’s 7.1 earthquake and other ongoing seismic shocks hit less than 200 miles northwest of Ridgecrest/China Lake, ten million people in Los Angeles would now be under an apocalyptic cloud, their lives and those of the state and nation in radioactive ruin.

The likely human death toll would be in the millions. The likely property loss would be in the trillions. The forever damage to our species’ food supply, ecological support systems, and longterm economy would be very far beyond any meaningful calculation. The threat to the ability of the human race to survive on this planet would be extremely significant.

Credit: Tee Public

Climate anxiety got you down? You probably already know that there is no better cure for anxiety than action—but it’s hard to know where to begin when you’re confronting a problem as enormous and complex as climate change. Deciding which climate actions to take has become even more fraught, given the recent debate over whether individual lifestyle changes make any meaningful impact at all—or whether we should focus all our energies on pushing governments and companies to transform practices.

The Rainforest Alliance firmly believes that to move the needle on the climate crisis, we must do both. Given that just 100 fossil fuel companies are responsible for generating 71 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Carbon Majors Report, applying relentless citizen pressure on governments to enact bold policy—as well as vigorous enforcement—is essential. Simultaneously, we must use our collective power as consumers to demand sustainable choices from companies, whose sourcing decisions impact how hundreds of millions of hectares of land are managed.

So don’t rule out everyday actions, but do pair […]

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Charles Anderson
Credit: Fox 13

ENGLEWOOD, FLORIDA  — Deputies arrested a Florida minister, who’s also a registered sex offender after they found child pornography on his personal computer.

Sarasota County Sheriff’s officials tell news outlets that Charles Andrews, 66, has been charged with 500 felony counts of possession of child pornography and three counts of failing to meet sex offender requirements.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children tipped authorities to two email accounts belonging to Andrews used to download child porn. They traced the accounts to his home IP address.

Andrews is a pastor at Osprey Church of Christ. Andrews also is a registered sex offender who was convicted in 2006 of second-degree sexual abuse in Alabama. Now he’s in jail, his bond set at more than $5 million.

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As if we needed more evidence that oil and gas drilling is bad news: mothers living near intense oil and gas development are 40-70% more likely to have babies with congenital heart defects (CHDs).

Published in Environmental International, the new study consisted of 3,324 infants born in Colorado, where 6% of the population lives within one mile of an active oil and gas well site, from 2005-2011.

“We observed more children were being born with a congenital heart defect in areas with the highest intensity of oil and gas well activity,” said the study’s senior author Lisa McKenzie, PhD, MPH.

CHDs are the most common birth defect in the country and a leading cause of death among infants born with birth defects. CHDs raise the likelihood of the infant having developmental problems and brain injuries.

One of the culprits causing these detrimental effects on the developing fetus may be teratogens, which are hazardous air pollutants emitted from well sites that are known to cross the placenta.

Previous studies in Colorado between 1996 and 2009 and Oklahoma found similar associations but had limitations on them, […]

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