And Bonds - like many in a place where labor disputes have a violent history - fears more blows will follow as the fight escalates over mountaintop removal, the uniquely Appalachian form of strip mining that involves blowing tops off mountains and dumping the rubble in valleys.

For nearly a decade, environmentalists and the mining industry battled in courtrooms and the Capitol. Arrests were unheard of.

This year, as mountaintop removal has drawn more scrutiny from regulators, policy makers and the public, the activists strategy changed.

There have been nearly 100 arrests in 20 protests, most involving trespassing. Led by a new group called Climate Ground Zero, the activists have chained themselves to giant dump trucks, scaled 80-foot trees to stop blasting and paddled into a 9 million-gallon sludge pond. Theyve blocked roads, hung banners and staged sit-ins.

Virginia-based Massey Energy claims a single 3 1/2-hour occupation at Progress Coal Co. in Twilight cost the company $300,000. Two environmentalists pleaded no contest to battery after that incident for trying to push past a miner and climb a 20-story, earth-moving crane.

Mountaintop removal foes say the industry and its allies are stoking fear and anger among miners and their friends by accusing environmentalists, Congress and the Obama administration of trying to kill coal through regulation and permitting.

Massey equates anti-coal with anti-American. Pittsburgh-based Consol Energy blames the planned layoffs of 482 miners on a lawsuit by the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.

Both sides are fighting for a way of life. The miners see the mountains as their livelihood. The environmentalists see them as divine and irreplaceable creations.

Since that slap in June, conflict has manifested itself mainly in harsh words and shows of force: Shout-downs by hundreds of miners at an Army Corps of Engineers hearing; a bare-bellied miners profane, throat-slitting gesture at a picnic for environmentalists on Kayford Mountain; a curse-laden online tirade in which someone using the screen name “Superhippieslayer” warns, “Look out violence is coming your way. There is a group ready as we speak to eliminate the threat.”

The bitter feelings bubble up in comments posted on YouTube video links to incidents like the June 23 protest march where Bonds was slapped. Hundreds of comments were posted after she spoke at a Dec. 7 rally in Charleston, many laced with profanities.

Its to the point where Bonds, a diminutive 57-year-old, has installed home-security cameras, carries a handgun and checks her car for dangling bomb wires.

Lorelei Scarbro, an activist with Coal River Mountain Watch, said the industry provokes the miners as it demonizes the environmentalists.

“Its not the working man thats the problem here,” Scarbro said. “Its the industry and the way they continue to use and exploit people on both sides of the issue, whether its the working man trying to take care of his family or the environmentalist trying to take care of us all.”

Environmentalists use words like “corrupt,” “greedy” and “thugs” to describe the pro-coal establishment. Industry counters with words like “hippies,” “extremists” and “terrorists.”

The West Virginia Coal Association dismisses much of the inflammatory language as harmless rhetoric, to be expected when jobs are on the line.

“We absolutely dont condone people who use threats, intimidation and general thuggism,” said senior vice president Chris Hamilton. However, “from our standpoint, its more difficult to engage in constructive discussion with someone who has as their primary objective to shut the industry down.”

Source

So how will the EPA define greenhouse gas emissions from ethanol production and use? Given the political clout of farm interests, will the science conflict with the politics?

Environmentalists, citing various studies and scientific papers, say the agency must factor in more than just the direct, heat-trapping pollution from ethanol and its production. They also point to “indirect” impacts on global warming from worldwide changes in land use, including climate-threatening deforestation, as land is cleared to plant corn or other ethanol crops.

Ethanol manufacturers and agriculture interests contend the fallout from potential land use changes in the future, especially those outside the United States, have not been adequately proven or even quantified, and should not count when the EPA calculates ethanols climate impact.

“It defies common sense that EPA would publish a proposed rule-making with harmful conclusions for biofuels based on incomplete science and inaccurate assumptions,” complained Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.

He was one of 12 farm-state senators, both Democrats and Republicans, who wrote EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson in March, urging the agency to stick to assessing only the direct emissions.

Ethanol, which in the future may come from cellulosic sources such as switchgrass and wood chips, is promoted by its advocates as a “green” substitute for gasoline that will help the U.S. reduce its reliance on fossil fuels, especially foreign oil. That transition is a priority of the Obama White House.

In 2007, Congress ordered huge increases in ethanol use, requiring refiners to blend 20 billion gallons with gasoline by 2015 and a further expansion to 36 billion gallons a year by 2022.

Congress said any fuel produced in plants built after 2007 must emit 20 percent less in greenhouse gases than gasoline if it comes from corn, and 60 percent less if from cellulosic crops.

Meeting the direct emissions would not be a problem. But if indirect emissions from expected land use changes are included, ethanol probably would fail the test.

Nathaniel Greene, director of renewable energy policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, said that wouldnt mean the end of ethanol.

Ethanol from existing production facilities is grandfathered and “there are ways to produce advanced ethanols that would comply with the greenhouse thresholds,” even using land use climate impacts if the industry chose to adopt them, Greene said.

The senators letter said that an overreaching regulation by EPA on ethanols link to climate change “could seriously harm our U.S. biofuels growth strategy by introducing uncertainty and discouraging future investments.”

Environmentalists say there have been enough studies on the indirect impact of ethanol on greenhouse pollution to justify the science.

Ignoring the indirect impacts “will undermine the environmental benefits” of the renewable fuels program “and set a poor precedent for any future policies attempting to reduce global warming pollution,” 17 environmental group wrote Jackson in response to the senators plea.

Greene said the EPAs handling of the ethanol rule will be a “a test of our ability to follow sound science” even when it conflicts with the interests of powerful interests.

The environmental organizations noted that Obama has “vowed to make the U.S. a leader on climate change” and put science over politics, and “now is the time to uphold those pledges.”

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In one study, samples taken at two treatment plants down the sewer line from drugmaking factories contained a range of pharmaceuticals - among them opiates, a barbiturate and a tranquilizer at “much higher detection frequencies and concentrations” than samples taken at other plants, according to preliminary research by the U.S. Geological Survey.

One drug, the muscle relaxant metaxalone, was measured in treated sewage at concentrations hundreds of times higher than the level at which federal regulators can order a review of a drugs environmental impact.

Based on secrecy agreements with the researchers, the treatment plants were not identified.

USGS researcher Herb Buxton, who co-chairs a White House task force on pharmaceuticals in the environment, said its important that federal scientists test the pharmaceutical industrys claims that their wastewater is not a meaningful source of pharmaceuticals in water.

“Its critical that those types of assumptions are confirmed through real testing,” said Buxton.

In another study, Environmental Protection Agency researchers tested sewage at a municipal wastewater treatment plant in Kalamazoo, Mich., that serves a major Pfizer Inc. factory. Bruce Merchant, Kalamazoos public services director, provided data that showed unusually high concentrations of the antibiotic lincomycin entering the plant, a drug the factory was producing around the time samples were collected.

“Theres some product going down the drain,” said Merchant.

While nearly all the lincomycin was removed during wastewater treatment, some did survive. According to a separate 2008 study, lincomycin combined in minute concentrations with several other drugs that also have been detected in surface water made human cancer and kidney cells and fish liver cells proliferate.

Biologist Francesco Pomati, at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, was so concerned with the findings that he and his colleagues warned that chronic exposure to the combination of drugs via drinking water could be “a potential hazard for particular human conditions, such as pregnancy or infancy.”

In earlier experiments, lincomycin acted as a mutagen, changing genetic information in bacteria, algae, microscopic aquatic animals and fish.

Pfizer spokesman Rick Chambers said that while the company does not test wastewater from the facility for the drugs made on site, “compliance with all environmental, health and safety laws is imperative to our business operations worldwide.”

Researchers in India, where multinational companies have increasingly turned for the manufacture of raw pharmaceutical ingredients, found that 100 pounds a day of the antibiotic ciprofloxacin enters a river from a wastewater treatment plant that processes sewage from dozens of pharmaceutical makers.

In Switzerland, a study sponsored by drugmaking giant Roche documented that 0.2 percent of active pharmaceutical ingredients escape during its own processing. That kind of loss rate doesnt sound like a lot until its projected out over the entire annual production of drugs worldwide. Studies in Taiwan and China also suggest drugmaking plants discharge product.

All of which raises questions about U.S. manufacturing.

“Is it as bad in the U.S. as it is in India? Probably not. But it does make me think we should test,” said Kyla Bennett, a former EPA enforcement officer who is now an ecologist and environmental attorney.

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“It’s our view that the Northwest Passage is for international access and unfettered access needs to be maintained,” James Steel, a U.S. Embassy environment counselor in Ottawa, said at a Montreal conference on Arctic shipping.

Arctic sea ice shrank to the smallest area on record last year, opening up the Northwest Passage, a shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans that sailors sought 500 years ago. That is creating potential new shipping routes and a rift between Canada and the U.S., who view the passage as part of international waters.

The North American neighbors “have a good sound agreement to disagree,” Franklyn Griffiths, a professor at the University of Toronto and specialist on Arctic policy, said at today’s conference.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in August he’ll seek to amend Canada’s Arctic environmental protection law to extend the range over which the country regulates shipping by an additional 500,000 square kilometers (193,000 square miles). Harper also said ships in the area would be forced to report to Canada’s sea-traffic control system.

“We encourage shipping and navigation of the Arctic but will enforce Arctic environmental protection,” said Alan Kessel, legal adviser to the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs. “It depends on what you mean by unfettered.”

The reporting requirement for ships would apply in the disputed Northwest Passage, which opened this year for only the second time in recorded history. Ships in the area now report to the traffic tracking system on a voluntary basis.

The U.S. says the passage, which meanders through Canada’s Arctic archipelago and can cut travel between China and New Jersey by 7,000 kilometers, runs through international waters.

Source: Bloomberg

Sumatra, with 45 million residents, has lost almost half of its rain forest since 1985 to make way for palm oil and pulpwood plantations, according to the WWF. Deforestation in Riau Province has resulted in an 84 percent decline in the elephant population and a 70 percent drop of Sumatran tigers, the group said.

Implementing the new forest preservation policy will require coordination between Sumatra’s 10 provinces, which have endorsed the plan, and various Indonesian ministries on an 1,100-mile-long (1,790 kilometers) island that has more than 200 mammal species and 580 bird species, officials said.

“There are a lot of challenges in the future to ensure successful implementation of the commitment,” Noor Hidayat, director of conservation areas at the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry, said in a statement at the IUCN meeting in Barcelona.

About 13 percent of Sumatra’s remaining forests are peat forests, a major source of carbon-dioxide emissions when cleared, according to the IUCN. Cutting down Sumatran rain forest over the past 25 years has generated the equivalent of 58 percent of Australia’s annual emissions, the WWF said in February.

Source: Bloomberg

The huge bull elephant had a long history of raiding villagers’ crops during the harvest, sometimes wiping out six months of income at a time. But this time a mobile phone card inserted in his collar sent rangers a text message. Lesowapir, an armed guard and a driver arrived in a jeep bristling with spotlights to frighten Kimani back into the Ol Pejeta conservancy.

Kenya is the first country to try elephant texting as a way to protect both a growing human population and the wild animals that now have less room to roam. Elephants are ranked as “near threatened” in the Red List, an index of vulnerable species published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

The race to save Kimani began two years ago. The Kenya Wildlife Service had already reluctantly shot five elephants from the conservancy who refused to stop crop-raiding, and Kimani was the last of the regular raiders. The Save the Elephants group wanted to see if he could break the habit.

So they placed a mobile phone SIM card in Kimani’s collar, then set up a virtual “geofence” using a global positioning system that mirrored the conservatory’s boundaries. Whenever Kimani approaches the virtual fence, his collar texts rangers.

They have intercepted Kimani 15 times since the project began. Once almost a nightly raider, he last went near a farmer’s field four months ago.

It’s a huge relief to the small farmers who rely on their crops for food and cash for school fees. Basila Mwasu, a 31-year-old mother of two, lives a stone’s throw from the conservancy fence. She and her neighbors used to drum through the night on pots and pans in front of flaming bonfires to try to frighten the elephants away.

Once an elephant stuck its trunk through a window into a room where her baby daughter was sleeping and the family had stored some corn. She beat it back with a burning stick. Another time, an elephant killed a neighbor who was defending his crop.

“We had to go into town to tell the game (wardens) to chase the elephants away or we’re going to kill them all,” Mwasu remembered.

But the elephants kept coming back.

Batian Craig, the conservation and security manager at the 90,000 acre Ol Pejeta conservancy, says community development programs are of little use if farmers don’t have crops. He recalled the time when 15 families had their harvests wiped out.

“As soon as a farmer has lost his livelihood for six months, he doesn’t give a damn whether he has a school or a road or water or whatever,” he said.

Iain Douglas-Hamilton, founder of Save the Elephants, said the project is still in its infancy - so far only two geofences have been set up in Kenya - and it has its problems.

Collar batteries wear out every few years. Sometimes communities think placing a collar on an elephant implies ownership and responsibility for the havoc it causes. And it’s expensive work - Ol Pejeta has five full-time staff and a standby vehicle to respond when a message flashes across a ranger’s screen.

But the experiment with Kimani has been a success, and last month another geofence was set up in another part of the country for an elephant known as Mountain Bull. Moses Litoroh, the coordinator of Kenya Wildlife Service’s elephant program, hopes the project might help resolve some of the 1,300 complaints the Service receives every year over crop raiding.

The elephants can be tracked through Google Earth software, helping to map and conserve the corridors they use to move from one protected area to another. The tracking also helps prevent poaching, as rangers know where to deploy resources to guard valuable animals.

But the biggest bonus so far has been the drop in crop raiding. Douglas-Hamilton says elephants, like teenagers, learn from each other, so tracking and controlling one habitual crop raider can make a whole group change its habits.

Mwasu’s two young daughters play under the banana trees these sultry evenings without their mother worrying about elephants.

“We can live together,” she said. “Elephants have the right to live, and we have the right to live too.”

Source: AP

That’s up from 41 million people reported by the AP in March as part of an investigation into the presence of pharmaceuticals in the nation’s waterways.

The AP stories prompted federal and local legislative hearings, brought about calls for mandatory testing and disclosure, and led officials in at least 27 additional metropolitan areas to analyze their drinking water. Positive tests were reported in 17 cases, including Reno, Nev., Savannah, Ga., Colorado Springs, Colo., and Huntsville, Ala. Results are pending in three others.

The test results, added to data from communities and water utilities that bowed to pressure to disclose earlier test results, produce the new total of Americans known to be exposed to drug-contaminated drinking water supplies.

The overwhelming majority of U.S. cities have not tested drinking water while eight cities - including Boston, Phoenix and Seattle - were relieved that tests showed no detections.

“We didn’t think we’d find anything because our water comes from a pristine source, but after the AP stories we wanted to make sure and reassure our customers,” said Andy Ryan, spokesman for Seattle Public Utilities.

The substances detected in the latest tests mirrored those cited in the earlier AP report.

Chicago, for example, found a cholesterol medication and a nicotine derivative. Many cities found the anti-convulsant carbamazepine. Officials in one of those communities, Colorado Springs, say they detected five pharmaceuticals in all, including a tranquilizer and a hormone.

“This is obviously an emerging issue and after the AP stories came out we felt it was the responsible thing for us to do, as a utility, to find out where we stand. We believe that at these levels, based on current science, that the water is completely safe for our customers,” said Colorado Springs spokesman Steve Berry. “We don’t want to create unnecessary alarm, but at the same time we have a responsibility as a municipal utility to communicate with our customers and let them know.”

Fargo’s water director, Bruce Grubb, said the concentrations of three drugs detected there were so incredibly minute - parts per trillion - that he sent them to the local health officer to figure out how to interpret the information for the community.

“We plan to put this into some kind of context other than just scientific nomenclature, so folks can get some level of understanding about what it means,” said Grubb.

The drug residues detected in water supplies are generally flushed into sewers and waterways through human excretion. Many of the pharmaceuticals are known to slip through sewage and drinking water treatment plants.

While the comprehensive risks are still unclear, researchers are finding evidence that even extremely diluted concentrations of pharmaceutical residues harm fish, frogs and other aquatic species in the wild and impair the workings of human cells in the laboratory.

And while the new survey expands the known extent of the problem, the overwhelming majority of U.S. communities have yet to test, including the single largest water provider in the country, New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection, which delivers water to 9 million people.

In April, New York City council members insisted during an emergency hearing that their drinking water be tested. But DEP officials subsequently declared that “the testing of finished tap water is not warranted at this time.”

Source: AP

Environmentalists say today’s supercars, with huge engines pumping out up to three times as much carbon dioxide (CO2) as the average vehicle, have no place in a world struggling to rein in climate change.

But Lamborghini and its rivals argue that theirs is a rare art that needs protecting, blending timeless European design elements with cutting-edge technologies that themselves can help save the planet.

At the same time, sports cars usually only leave the garage at the weekend, contributing just 0.3 percent of European Union car emissions. “As a high-luxury brand we are representing Europe to the world,” Lamborghini Chief Executive Stephan Winkelmann told Reuters. “We are a species to protect.”

Many European car makers fear that the EU’s focus on emissions will make them uncompetitive around the world, leading to their eventual demise.

As part of its drive to lead the world in battling climate change, the EU’s executive has proposed cutting carbon dioxide emissions from new cars to an average of 120 grams per km by 2012, compared with a current EU average of around 160 grams.

But the EU has come up against the political muscle of big auto, with its wide range of marques from the tiniest Fiat to the most powerful Porsche.

Sports cars, which usually pump out anywhere between 200 and 500 grams of CO2 a km, will be handled differently to avoid damaging their ability to compete in international markets. “We want a strong outcome for the environment … but we don’t want the rules to disproportionately disadvantage small volume and niche manufacturers, many of which are in the UK,” said a British diplomat in Brussels.

Niche manufacturers making less than 10,000 vehicles a year will be able to negotiate individual targets with the EU executive, including Britain’s Aston Martin, which supplies mythical secret agent James Bond with his DBS coupe. “We don’t believe the intention is to make us extinct,” said Bradley Yorke-Biggs, director of strategy at Aston Martin.

But the situation for its Italian and German rivals is far less certain as they are divisions of larger auto groups and cannot argue their own targets. “We are committed to reduce CO2 emissions heavily in the next years so we are doing whatever is possible without destroying the DNA of the brand to bring them down to a much better level than today,” said Lamborghini’s Winkelmann. “But you have to understand, it will never meet the 120 g or 130 g per km.”

Sports car makers are already cutting weight to improve acceleration and reduce fuel consumption and emissions.

Britain’s Lotus has managed to get carbon dioxide emissions down to 196 grams per km in its Elise S, using a glass-composite body and aluminum chassis. “Weight is a good thing to cut as it doesn’t help anyone,” said Aston’s Yorke-Biggs.

Cars powered by hydrogen or fuel cells remain in the realm of fantasy, and the next big technological step looks set to be electric-powered cars.

Although electric sports cars like the U.S.-based Tesla are available, customers might be slow to embrace that technology. “An Aston Martin is a very emotional drive, and how much of the appeal would be lost with an electric engine?” said Yorke-Biggs. “It would take time for our customer base to accept that.

Peter Everingham, 62, says fellow Ferrari drivers might accept an electric Ferrari one day, as long as it featured the same perfectionist design qualities they have become used to. “At the same time you’re buying into the history, the Formula One team — all that is part of the passion,” added Everingham, who drives a 20-year-old Ferrari 328 and is secretary of Britain’s Ferrari owners’ club.

While working to reduce emissions as much as possible, sports car makers still need to cut a deal with EU politicians.

The European’s Commission’s exemption for niche manufacturers would cover Aston Martin, which hopes to sell 7,500 cars this year, 60 percent of them in the EU. It could also cover smaller marques like Britain’s Lotus and Morgan, which still uses wood in its cars.

But it would not help Ferrari or Maserati. The two marques sell less than 5,000 high-powered cars a year in the EU, but they would be excluded on the grounds they are part of the larger Fiat group with western European sales of around 1.2 million. “Fiat does not agree with the current proposal, which would discriminate against Ferrari and Maserati,” said Fiat Group spokesman Gualberto Ranieri.

The European Commission argues Fiat could spread the burden of the sports car emissions across the group — a situation that Fiat says would add around 1 gram per km to every car.

Everingham says that just as the world is changing to focus more on the environment, so sports car drivers are also changing the way they use their cars, driving more on race tracks and less on crowded highways.

Resorts are cropping up in the United States and Spain where enthusiasts can keep their cars, visiting at the weekend to put them through their paces. “They’ll thrash them round the track for a couple of days, send them to the repairers, and then they’ll head home,” he said.

Source: Reuters