Elizabeth Shogren

College Divestment Campaigns Creating Passionate Environmentalists

Elizabeth Shogren — Fri, 10 May 2013 07:16:00 +0000

At about 300 colleges across the country, young activists worried about climate change are borrowing a strategy that students successfully used in decades past. In the 1980s, students enraged about South Africa's racist Apartheid regime got their schools to drop stocks in companies that did business with that government. In the 1990s, students pressured their schools to divest Big Tobacco.

This time, the student activists are targeting a mainstay of the economy: large oil and coal companies.

So far only a few small colleges have opted to drop investments in fossil fuel companies.

Tar Sands Pipelines Should Get Special Treatment, EPA Says

Elizabeth Shogren — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 21:48:00 +0000

Up until now, pipelines that carry tar sands oil have been treated just like pipelines that carry any other oil. But the Environmental Protection Agency now says that should change.

Lionfish Attack The Gulf Of Mexico Like A Living Oil Spill

Elizabeth Shogren — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 06:56:00 +0000

A gluttonous predator is power-eating its way through reefs from New York to Venezuela. It's the lionfish.

And although researchers are coming up with new ways to protect some reefs from the flamboyant maroon-striped fish, they have no hope of stopping its unparalleled invasion.

Lad Akins has scuba dived in the vibrant reefs of the Bahamas for many years.

Arkansas Oil Spill Sheds Light On Aging Pipeline System

Elizabeth Shogren — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 09:11:00 +0000

Amber Bartlett was waiting last Friday for her kids to come home from school. One of them called from the entrance to the upscale subdivision near Little Rock, Ark., to tell her the community was being evacuated because of an oil spill. Bartlett was amazed by what she saw out her front door.

"I mean, just rolling oil. I mean, it was like a river," she says.

Drilling Companies Hope Fracking 'Truce' Will Ease Relationship With Environmentalists

Elizabeth Shogren — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 22:00:00 +0000

A group of environmentalists and drilling companies has crafted a truce of sorts over the rapid spread of natural gas production in the Appalachian Basin. Four major drilling companies and several environmental groups have agreed on 15 voluntary standards for cleaner drilling practices.

The practices of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing — when companies inject water laced with chemicals deep underground to split open rock formations and get the gas to flow faster — are transforming the rural region in the Eastern U.S.