Ohio Residents Fed Up With Fracking Wastewater

Much of the wastewater from Pennsylvania’s fracking industry is trucked across the border to Ohio.  Last year, Pennsylvania and West Virginia contributed nearly half of the more than a billion gallons of frack waste that were  injected into underground wells in Ohio. Residents in at least one county say they’ve had enough. State representative Glenn Holmes (third from right) has introduced two bills in the Ohio House of...

Climate reality requires starting at home: Weaning...

Fossil fuels have to go. It didn’t take the latest report from the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to tell us that: we’ve known it for three decades. But the report makes it clearer than ever: Burning billions of tons of coal, oil, and natural gas is creating a thickening blanket over the Earth, holding in its heat and disrupting all kinds of systems, from oceans temperatures and chemistry to storm patterns,...

Historical records in the climate crosshairs

Climate change is a high priority for many Americans. But on election days, many of those passionate environmentalists do not vote. Stinnett: “We’ve identified 10.1 million who didn’t even vote in the 2016 presidential election, an election that was only decided by seventy-seven-thousand votes. So this is an enormous population of environmentalists just waiting to be energized.” They contact unlikely voters – Republican,...

Taking Your First Steps Into Local Climate Action

Yes, yes—it can feel daunting. The climate crisis is more urgent than it’s ever been. Some days we feel like we’re making good progress, when we hear of countries powered by 100 percent renewable energy or a big commitment to take on fossil fuel corporations from a city like New York. But other days, it’s a heavy burden knowing there’s so much more that needs to be done to unseat the fossil fuel...

4 Groundbreaking Announcements From the Global Cli...

Over the past three days, more than 4,000 people have gathered in San Francisco for the Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS) convened by California Governor Jerry Brown to mobilize regional, local and business leaders around climate change. Seventeen states and 400 cities, representing together the world’s third largest economy, have now joined Brown and summit co-chair and UN special envoy for climate action Michael...

Utilities have a problem: the public wants 100% re...

Renewable energy is hot. It has incredible momentum, not only in terms of deployment and costs but in terms of public opinion and cultural cachet. To put it simply: Everyone loves renewable energy. It’s cleaner, it’s high-tech, it’s new jobs, it’s the future. And so more and more big energy customers are demanding the full meal deal: 100 percent renewable energy. The Sierra Club notes that so far in the US, more than 80...

In Ohio, solar co-ops unite neighbors to help with...

Solar United Neighbors has helped more than 200 Ohio homeowners collectively install 1.4 megawatts of solar capacity. A network of local solar power cooperatives is helping Ohio residents overcome obstacles to installing solar panels on their homes. Since January 2016, Solar United Neighbors of Ohio has formed 14 co-ops that have helped more than 200 homeowners collectively install 1.4 megawatts of solar PV capacity. The...

How a Family Surrounded by Shale Gas Plants Took A...

Allen Young and his family are surrounded. They can see three sizable natural gas plants–operated by Dominion and Energy Transfer Partners–without taking a step off their property. Over the past three years, these facilities have taken over the boomerang-shaped ridge less than a half-mile from the Young’s home in Powhatan Point, Ohio. Soon after the compressor stations went into operation, Allen, his wife and two...

How a Pediatrician Became a Detective

Dr. Hanna-Attisha exposed the lead poisoning of children in Flint, MFLINT, Mich. — Lead. It was real. I could see it in the blood of kids who visited my medical clinic here. It was the end of the summer of 2015, and children were being poisoned. Ever since the city’s water source had been switched from Detroit’s municipal system to the Flint River 17 months before, residents had been complaining, holding meetings and...

More Than 400 Glyphosate Cancer Lawsuits Can Go to...

A federal judge presiding over more than 400 lawsuits claiming that glyphosate—the active ingredient in Monsanto‘s Roundup weed killer—causes cancer ruled Tuesday that the plaintiffs could present their evidence in court, ABC reported. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria said the evidence presented by experts in March hearings linking glyphosate to a type of cancer called non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma were “not...

Couple plans for renewable energy of solar panels ...

Randy and Renee Ruchotzke have installed enough solar panels on their house in Kent to power everything in their house and an electric car. Most of the solar panels are on the sunny side of the house, with a couple on the front. YellowLite, a solar energy contractor of Cleveland, installed the 22 panels in March, and they were operational by April. The system cost the husband and wife $17,000. Renee said they took out an...

9 Reasons to Buy Products Made From Organic Cotton

What’s the dirtiest crop on the planet? You may be wearing it. At a production rate of 25 million tons a year, cotton is one of the top four GMO crops in the world—and nearly 95 percent of that global cotton production is GMO and/or conventionally grown. Cotton earned the title “dirtiest crop” because it’s sprayed with some of the worst pesticides, including: Bayer’s aldicarb, which was banned...

Families and business owners near Perry State Fore...

PERRY COUNTY, Ohio — There’s a rumbling in Perry State Forest where coal mining could return by the end of this year if a permit is approved. Families who live and work near a proposed mining site don’t want it there. They say it would be a disruption to the beauty of the forest and their lives. Lauren Ketcham is co-owner of Down the Road Farm. The name spells out her vision. “Our name Down the Road, one of the reasons...

Grassroots: Columbus Could Soon Reclaim Jurisdicti...

A local grassroots campaign to give Columbusites the “legal teeth” to fight air, water and soil pollution has garnered enough support to get on the November ballot. Dubbed the Community Bill of Rights, the ordinance is an amendment to the Ohio State Constitution that would establish local governance over oil and gas activities taking place within the City of Columbus. It’d also enable residents to hold companies liable for...

Will Scott Pruitt Decide We’ve Been Reducing...

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has announced several plans, the latest on June 13, to revise the economic analysis that undergirds the nation’s limits on pollution, including the emissions of greenhouse gases that are warming the planet. Pruitt’s basic assumption in the agency’s rulemaking seems to be that the United States has reduced pollution too much, because government analysts have overestimated its adverse effects. ...