Airlines will be charged for carbon emissions
Europe’s highest court gave unreserved backing on Wednesday to a hotly contested EU law charging airlines for carbon emissions on flights to and from Europe, a decision likely to escalate tensions with the United States and other trading partners. All airlines flying to and from EU airports will buy permits under the European Union’s emissions trading scheme from 1 January 2012, the European court of justice ruled.
Local T-Shirts Made from Local Cotton, Now Includes Organic Too
In 2006, Eric Henry, president of TS Designs, and Brian Morrell, president of Mortex Apparel, met with experts in state agriculture. Their mission: to grow organic cotton in North Carolina. The response: it can’t be done. Now, five years later and for the first time in recent memory, a usable volume of USDA-certified organic cotton is being harvested in North Carolina. Despite a myriad of challenges to growing organic cotton in the state, including weeds, pests and defoliation issues, two North Carolina farms – Hickory Meadows Organics and Parrish Enterprises – have grown 65 acres of healthy organic cotton that will be harvested.
Normally an average of 74 dolphins are stranded on the northern shore of the Gulf of Mexico each year, especially during the spring birthing season. But between February 2010 and April 1, 2012, 714 dolphins and other cetaceans have been reported as washed up on the coast from the Louisiana/Texas border through Franklin County, Fla., reported the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Ninety-five percent of the mammals were dead.
Since many of the dead dolphins sink, decompose or are eaten by scavengers before washing up, NOAA believes that 714 may represent only a fraction of the actual death count. NOAA declared the die-off an “Unusual Mortality Event” as per the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972.
Although the timing of the die-off largely coincides with BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill and its aftermath, the deaths actually started increasing about two months before the April 20, 2010, explosion, which started the monthslong oil spill. Before the spill, 112 dolphins had already been reported stranded on the shore.
In the summer of 2011, NOAA tested 32 live dolphins in Barataria Bay, an area heavily impacted by the oil spill. The dolphins were underweight, anemic, and had low blood sugar and/or some symptoms of liver and lung disease. Nearly half had abnormally low levels of hormones that help with stress response, metabolism and immune function.