National Public Radio: A federal judge in West Virginia issued a ruling Tuesday that dealt another blow to the controversial mining practice known as mountaintop removal. The process involves blasting away the tops of mountains to expose coal seams underneath. The resulting tons of rock and dirt are typically dumped into valleys and streams. U.S. District Judge Joseph R. Goodwin in Charleston blocked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from issuing so-called "nationwide" permits, which streamline the …

U.S. News and World Report: Since taking over the Environmental Protection Agency, Administrator Lisa Jackson has moved quickly to reconsider several controversial Bush-era environmental decisions, signaling that the agency under her direction will play a very different role from that under recent predecessors. Nowhere is this change in direction more apparent than in a handful of recent, potentially far-reaching maneuvers related to climate change policy. In January, Jackson directed EPA officials to reconsider …

Telegraph:

IRIN: Countries staring into a gloomy future of low food production, less water, higher storm surges, longer dry periods and other expensive consequences of climate change have been told they can adapt at a cost ranging from several hundred billion dollars to over a trillion dollars. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has stepped in to help overwhelmed developing countries calculate the cost of implementing measures not only to mitigate their greenhouse gas emissions but …

ScienceDaily: Researchers at the universities of Leicester and Oxford have made a discovery about plant growth which could potentially have an enormous impact on crop production as global warming increases. Dr Kerry Franklin, from the University of Leicester Department of Biology led the study which has identified a single gene responsible for controlling plant growth responses to elevated temperature. Dr Franklin said: "Exposure of plants to high temperature results in the rapid elongation …

ScienceDaily: Global warming could have chilling consequences for European livestock, warned Professor Peter Mertens from the Institute for Animal Health, at the meeting of the Society for General Microbiology in Harrogate on March 30. Since 1998, rising temperatures have led to outbreaks of bluetongue (BT) across most of Europe, which have killed over 2 million ruminants (mainly sheep). The outbreak (the largest on record) caused by Bluetongue virus serotype 8 (BTV-8), which started in the …

Herald: Africa is facing difficult times. The effects of the global economic recession and climate change have already begun to reverse the progress the continent has made over the last decade. Many countries are experiencing reduced trade and economic activity, withdrawal of investors and an acute scarcity of credit. Projects are being postponed or cancelled altogether. Financial inflows are dropping, including levels of international assistance and remittances. The result is that the …

Indo-Asian News Service: US President Barack Obama has invited the leaders of 16 major economies including India to Washington for a forum on energy and climate next month to prepare ground for a new global climate change regime. The forum, scheduled for April 27-28, seeks to "generate the political leadership necessary" for a successful outcome at the UN climate change negotiation to be held in Copenhagen in December, the White House said in a statement Saturday. Obama, who recently turned his …

New Vision: The districts of Mbale, Bududa and Manafwa have received $1m (about sh2.8b) from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to fund environmental programmes. Christopher Nuttall, the UNDP director for innovative partners, said the programme that starts in July would focus on providing renewable sources of energy like solar and biogas. Speaking to district leaders on Wednesday at Mt. Elgon Hotel in Mbale, Nuttall added that the programme would also promote proper water …

Fuel from food and already overstressed terrestrial ecosystems is immoral and unsustainable. The Obama administration must start by rejecting the proposal to increase the corn ethanol fuel blend limit from 10-15%.

TAKE ACTION! Please support US environmental and social justice groups calling upon the new Obama administration to halt financial and policy support for large scale biofuel production [search]. In particular, the Obama government’s potential support for agrofuel [search] expansion — making of transportation fuels from food — runs counter to their aim to urgently address climate change and threatens to cause more hunger, human rights abuses, and degradation of soil and water.

The Obama administration promised to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to boost renewable energy. Unfortunately, a large part of their solution involves further boosting agrofuel production, both in the US and abroad. The new administration must heed the overwhelming evidence that agrofuels worsen climate change through further deforestation and the destruction of other ecosystems; drive food prices up, forcing more and more people worldwide into hunger and malnutrition; and decimate biodiversity and ecosystems.

Rainforest Rescue and Ecological Internet are concerned with America’s growing ethanol industry, and the implications it has in setting a precedent for massive agricultural industrialisation of the world’s remaining rainforests and other natural wildlands. We concur with the growing ecological consensus that large-scale industrial production of transport fuels and other energy from plants such as corn, sugar cane, oil palm, soya, trees, grasses, or so-called agricultural and woodland waste threatens forests, biodiversity, food sovereignty, community-based land rights and will worsen climate change. TAKE ACTION!