By LESLIE KAUFMAN, New York Times

See Original Article HERE

At Yellowstone National Park, the clear soda cups and white utensils are not your typical cafe-counter garbage. Made of plant-based plastics, they dissolve magically when heated for more than a few minutes.

At Ecco, a popular restaurant in Atlanta, waiters no longer scrape food scraps into the trash bin. Uneaten morsels are dumped into five-gallon pails and taken to a compost heap out back.

And at eight of its North American plants, Honda is recycling so diligently that the factories have gotten rid of their trash Dumpsters altogether.

Across the nation, an antigarbage strategy known as “zero waste” is moving from the fringes to themainstream, taking hold in school cafeterias, national parks, restaurants, stadiums and corporations.

The movement is simple in concept if not always in execution: Produce less waste. Shun polystyrene foam containers or any other packaging that is not biodegradable. Recycle or compost whatever you can.

By LIZ GALST, for New York Times

Most "green-job" training aim to teach low-income workers the job skills necessary to join the nascent clean-tech economy: energy-efficiency retrofitting, wind turbine maintenance, brownfield remediation, and so forth.

But do these programs train low-income individuals to become environmentalists, too?

At present, there seems to be no academic research addressing that question, though anecdotal evidence gathered while reporting my story in today’s New York Times suggests that, at least in some cases, they do.

By Jim Snyder and Silla Brush

Civil rights groups on Tuesday will lobby for climate legislation as a key Senate panel begins to examine the issue in earnest this week. But some question whether the climate bill itself poses a risk to minority communities. Supporters of the bill say severe weather patterns some scientists believe to be the result of climate change have a disparate impact on minority and poor communities. But Frank Stewart, the president and chief operating officer of the American Association of Blacks in Energy, believes the legislation could lead to a transfer of wealth from urban communities with large black populations to rural areas that stand to benefit more from “green” jobs created by a carbon cap.

By Nancy Sutley, Chair of the Council on Environmental Quality

See Original Blog Post HERE

Last week, I joined fellow members of the Ocean Policy Task Force in New Orleans for a Public Meeting to continue our ongoing discussion of ocean and coastal environmental issues, this time with a focus on the Gulf Coast Region. At the meeting on Monday, we heard a wide variety of comments from local residents and gained valuable insight into the central issues affecting the region that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina just over four years ago. In addition to being there in person, we were able to virtually link all five Gulf states thanks to the Gulf Coastal Ecosystem Learning Centers, and had the benefit of live participants from Corpus Christi, TX; Tampa, FL; Dauphin Island, AL; Ocean Springs, MS as well as New Orleans, LA. The lessons learned from this trip once again highlight the need for a national policy that ensures the protection, maintenance, and restoration of our oceans, coasts, and marine ecosystems.

On Tuesday, we toured the Gulf Coast region to get a first-hand view of the issues. We took an aerial tour of New Orleans’ 9th Ward, coastal wetlands and barrier island chains, and the Mississippi river, followed by an airboat tour of the Big Branch Marsh National Wildlife Refuge and its unique habitats and diverse plant communities. Our trip allowed us to see both the bird’s eye view of the Gulf from the air, and actual restoration efforts on the ground. The Obama administration is working to strengthen the wetlands and barrier islands that are the first line of defense for the Gulf Coast – a priority that, while critical to this region’s physical protection, is also critical to our environment and to our economy.

Communities on the Frontlines of Climate Impacts Push for Clean Energy Bill

Message to Senators as Hearings Begin: “We’re Counting On You”

Washington, DC (October 27) – As the Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works kicks off hearings on the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, leaders from communities on the frontlines of climate impacts are on Capitol Hill, making their case for action on the Clean Energy bill.

BBC News

A map designed to show the predicted effects of a 4C rise in global average temperature has been unveiled by the UK government.

It shows a selection of the impacts of climate change on human activity.

These include extreme temperatures, drought, effects on water availability, agricultural productivity, the risk of forest fire and sea level rise.

The map is based on peer-reviewed science from the Met Office's Hadley Centre and other scientific groups.

It was launched at the Science Museum by Foreign Secretary David Miliband, Climate and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and the UK's chief scientist Professor John Beddington.

According to the Department of Energy and Climate Change, agricultural yields would be expected to decrease for all major cereal crops in all major regions of production.

I want I want to thank all of you for the warm welcome and for the work all of you are doing to generate and test new ideas that hold so much promise for our economy and for our lives.  And in particular, I want to thank two outstanding MIT professors, Eric Lander, a person you just heard from, Ernie Moniz, for their service on my council of advisors on science and technology.  And they have been hugely helpful to us already on looking at, for example, how the federal government can most effectively respond to the threat of the H1N1 virus.  So I'm very grateful to them.

We've got some other special guests here I just want to acknowledge very briefly.  First of all, my great friend and a champion of science and technology here in the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts, my friend Deval Patrick is here.  (Applause.)  Our Lieutenant Governor Tim Murray is here.  (Applause.)  Attorney General Martha Coakley is here.  (Applause.)  Auditor of the Commonwealth, Joe DeNucci is here.  (Applause.)  The Mayor of the great City of Cambridge, Denise Simmons is in the house.  (Applause.)  The Mayor of Boston, Tom Menino, is not here, but he met me at the airport and he is doing great; he sends best wishes.

By SAM DILLON, New York Times

On any given day, about one in every 10 young male high school dropouts is in jail or juvenile detention, compared with one in 35 young male high school graduates, according to a new study of the effects of dropping out of school in an America where demand for low-skill workers is plunging.

The picture is even bleaker for African-Americans, with nearly one in four young black male dropouts incarcerated or otherwiseinstitutionalized on an average day, the study said. That compares with about one in 14 young, male, white, Asian or Hispanic dropouts.

Researchers at Northeastern University used census and other government data to carry out the study, which tracks the employment, workplace, parenting and criminal justice experiences of young high school dropouts.

“We’re trying to show what it means to be a dropout in the 21st century United States,” said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern, who headed a team of researchers that prepared the report. “It’s one of the country’s costliest problems. The unemployment, the incarceration rates — it’s scary.”

A coalition of civil rights and public education advocacy groups and a network of alternative schools in Chicago commissioned the report as part of a push for new educational opportunities for the nation’s 6.2 million high school dropouts.

“The dropout rate is driving the nation’s increasing prison population, and it’s a drag on America’s economic competitiveness,” said Marc H. Morial, the former New Orleans mayor who is president of the National Urban League, one of the groups in the coalition that commissioned the report. “This report makes it clear that every American pays a cost when a young person leaves school without a diploma.”

The report puts the collective cost to the nation over the working life of each high school dropout at $292,000. Mr. Sum said that figure took into account lost tax revenues, since dropouts earn less and therefore pay less in taxes than high school graduates. It also includes the costs of providing food stamps and other aid to dropouts and of incarcerating those who turn to crime.

The federal government made billions of dollars available in the stimulus package for weatherizing homes of low-income people. But what about everyone else?

A report to be released later this morning, from the office of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Council on Environmental Quality, outlines a strategy for persuading more Americans to retrofit their homes to make them more energy efficient. Such improvements could save up to $21 billion each year, the report said.

Wyclef Hosts Green the Block Launch Party!