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The Utah Legislature will soon begin its 2009 session, and we may expect bills promoting two favorite pieces of home-grown pork, the Lake Powell pipeline and Transition Power's nuclear nightmare on the Green River. But before legislators cast more of our recession-stretched cash before these two swine, they should read the latest study of Colorado River issues, James Powell's Dead Pool , from which the following is taken. For eight years under George W. Bush, the Bureau of Reclamation has refused to acknowledge the effects that global warming is having and will yet have on the Colorado, in spite of record temperatures and the recent 500-year drought that nearly brought Lake Powell to its knees. Instead, the bureau continues to use only data from the last century, the first half of which was one of the wettest periods in the known history of the Colorado. According to Bush's BOR, in 2050 Lake Powell, which reflects the health of the river as a whole, will stand at 3,660 feet, just 40 feet below full pool.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today set aside the Bush administration's midnight timetable for a vast expansion of offshore drilling. Salazar sharply rebuked the "headlong rush of the worst kind" put in place in Bush's final week in office. Announcing that "the time for reform has arrived," Salazar explained that he "will extend the public comment period by 180 days, get a report on offshore energy resources, hold regional conferences, and expedite rulemaking for offshore renewable energy resources": I intend to do what the Bush Administration refused to do: build a framework for offshore renewable energy development, so that we incorporate the great potential for wind, wave, and ocean current energy into our offshore energy strategy. The Bush Administration was so intent on opening new areas for oil and gas offshore that it torpedoed offshore renewable energy efforts.

The Times reports that China is struggling with mass layoffs of workers and the worst drought in years - China declares an emergency amid worst drought in 50 years. The worst drought in half a century has parched fields across eight provinces in northern China and left nearly four million people without proper drinking water. Not a drop of rain has fallen on Beijing for more than 100 days, the longest dry spell for 38 years in a city known for its arid climate. The Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters described the drought as a phenomenon "rarely seen in history" as the Government declared a state of emergency. President Hu Jintao said that all efforts must be made to save the summer grain harvest.

The Worldwatch Institute has released the latest version of their State of the World series, State of the World 2009: Into a Warming World:

A new study done by Duke University says exposure to the fly ash from the TVA spill could have "severe health implication." Duke University scientists collected water and solid ash samples at sites affected by the TVA spill on Jan. 9. Following preliminary analysis, the solid ash samples were incubated and underwent more detailed analysis. "Our radioactive measurements of solid ash samples from Tennessee suggests the ash has radiation levels above those reported by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for typical coal ash," said Avner Vengosh, associate professor of earth and ocean sciences at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment. "Preventing the formation of airborne particulate matter from the ash that was released to the environment seems essential for reducing possible health impacts." More than a billion gallons of sludge coal waste spilled from a pond at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Kingston coal-burning power plant on Dec. 22.

President Bush will establish three national monuments in the Pacific Ocean today in a move that will protect a vast marine ecosystem from mining, oil exploration, and commercial fishing. With the stroke of a pen this afternoon, Bush will have set aside more square miles of ocean for protection than any other political leader in history. The three new monuments, surrounding far-flung islands, reefs and atolls scattered across the Pacific, will add 195,000 square miles of protected waters to the nearly 140,000 square miles around the Northwest Hawaiian Islands that Bush protected in 2006 [Los Angeles Times]. The United States has authority over these waters because the tiny atolls and islands are U.S. territories. The three areas are thronged with fish, sharks, coral reefs, and other forms of sea life, all of which will benefit from the new protections. Blue-water fish such as yellowfin, bigeye tuna, and marlin-all in decline-will be big winners because they breed in these waters. So will sharks, birds, turtles, and dolphins accidentally caught by the tuna long-line fleets [ScienceNOW Daily News]. One of the new national monuments also encompasses the deepest location of the earth's crust. The Marianas Trench, which reaches depths of more than 36,000 feet in some locations, contains undersea volcanoes and hydrothermal vents around which cluster tough organisms that can withstand high temperatures and harsh chemicals. These "extremophiles" are of interest to scientists who think they signal forms that extraterrestrial life could take.

How important is it to eat organic? Is it a fad, a craze or is it a warning against chemical fertilizers and GMO crops, which will help protect the next generation? Organic farming is natural farming, that means no chemical fertilisers, no genetic modification for either food crops or feed crops. Commercial farming pushing demand for agricultural produce forced a shift towards chemical fertilisers and farming methods to maximise output, for maximum profit, unaware of the significantly unnatural processes being used can be harmful. At the consumer level organic produce is a relatively new phenomena. On the supermarket shelves we are finding products labelled 'organic', most of us think it means 'natural' or 'cruelty free'. When you buy organic you are buying a green product . That means methods such as green fertilisers, crop rotation and biological pest controls are used instead of toxic chemical fertilisers and genetically modified organisms which are harmful to the land. Organic farming composes about 2% of all farming on the planet.

The White House is working to enact a wide array of federal regulations, many of which would weaken government rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment, before President Bush leaves office in January. The new rules would be among the most controversial deregulatory steps of the Bush era and could be difficult for his successor to undo. Some would ease or lift constraints on private industry, including power plants, mines and farms.

A federal appeals court on Thursday blocked Royal Dutch Shell from drilling oil wells off Alaska's North Slope after finding that the Interior Department had failed to conduct an environmental study before issuing the company's drilling permit. In a long-awaited ruling, the court said that the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency in charge of offshore leasing, had violated the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act by failing to take a "hard look" at the impact that offshore drilling would have on bowhead whales in the Beaufort Sea as well as indigenous communities on the North Slope.

We look to new leaders in Washington to invest in clean energy - like wind and solar - to get America moving forward and put Americans back to work. These investments will create millions of good-paying jobs in the hardest-hit construction and manufacturing sectors and create pathways out of poverty for the most affected communities. Fill out the form below to call on President-elect Obama and the 111th Congress to produce a plan to Repower, Refuel and Rebuild America.

When Barack Obama spoke in Albuquerque on Oct. 27, Nathan Newcomer, associate director of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, gave congressional candidate Martin Heinrich a gift for the presidential candidate. The gift was a book - "Otero Mesa: Preserving America's Wildest Grassland." It was not a book to go on Obama's coffee table but one Newcomer hoped might influence his energy policy.

THE graphs climbing across these pages (see graph in detail, or explore the data) are a stark reminder of the crisis facing our planet. Consumption of resources is rising rapidly, biodiversity is plummeting and just about every measure shows humans affecting Earth on a vast scale. Most of us accept the need for a more sustainable way to live, by reducing carbon emissions, developing renewable technology and increasing energy efficiency. But are these efforts to save the planet doomed? A growing band of experts are looking at figures like these and arguing that personal carbon virtue and collective environmentalism are futile as long as our economic system is built on the assumption of growth. The science tells us that if we are serious about saving Earth, we must reshape our economy.

Here is a rundown of rules and regulations that the Bush administration is pushing through the rulemaking process in its waning days. We will update the list regularly by adding new rules, inserting links to breaking news on each rule, and tracking each rule through the rulemaking process. If you know of other rules we should add to this list, please send us an email here. You can use our tip-sheet to get started on your rules research.

Both the beauty and the fragility of the planet were on spectacular display Monday as TODAY reported on climate change and the power of water from the Ends of the Earth. Hosts Matt Lauer, Meredith Vieira, Al Roker and Ann Curry signed in simultaneously from the Western Hemisphere's longest coral reef in Belize; drought-stricken Australia, the world's driest inhabited continent; Iceland, where fire meets ice; and 13,000 feet up the flank of Mount Kilimanjaro, the "Roof of Africa," whose famous snows and glaciers are on pace to disappear within the next dozen years. Water covers 71 percent of the Earth's surface, but, as Lauer, Vieira, Roker and Curry reported, 1.1 billion people - a sixth of the planet's human population - do not have access to a clean supply of this most precious and essential resource.

A federal judge on Wednesday issued a ruling that could clear the way for a multimillion-dollar payout of punitive damages to thousands of commercial fishermen and others who claimed harm from the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989. Click to enlarge Click to enlarge Judge Russel Holland Story tools Comments (18) Recommend (0) E-mail a friend Print Digg this Seed Newsvine Send link via AIM Add to My Yahoo! Yahoo! Buzz Font size : A | A | A Judge H. Russel Holland of Anchorage rejected a bid from one plaintiff, Sea Hawk Seafoods Inc., to throw out a complex allocation plan for the damages and replace it with one that would steer potentially millions more dollars to the company.

flash video of the impacts of water by Leonard Dicaprio.

A high-level fight has erupted within the Interior Department between the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service over plans to sell leases for oil and gas drilling near Arches, Canyonlands and Dinosaur National Monument. The Park Service wants to delay the Dec. 19 lease sales. The BLM has refused to do so. "We're not anti-oil and gas but we're very much pro-park," said Denver-based Park Service regional director Mike Snyder. "I'm not saying not to put those up for a lease sale. I'm just asking they wait until the next quarter."

A former top EPA investigator who helped lead an investigation into a giant oil spill in Alaska is blowing the whistle to KING 5 News. The investigator says it should have been a felony criminal case. So was oil giant BP let off the hook? KING 5's environmental specialist Gary Chittim talked with the investigator in an exclusive report.

It didn't start that way: His land was once a low hill in a rugged hardwood forest - cherry, oak, hickory - skipping from ridge to ridge across one of the poorest, most rural areas of the Lower 48. Then came the mining companies with their dynamite and their trucks. They clear-cut the forest, blew the tops off the ridges and scraped the rocks into the hollows, pushing hundreds of feet of mountains into the valleys below.

The natural gas industry refuses to reveal what is in the mixture of chemicals used to drill for the fossil fuel State regulators and Washington lawmakers though are increasingly impatient with voluntary measures and are seeking to toughen their oversight. In September U.S. Congresswoman Diana DeGette and Congressman John Salazar, from Colorado, and Congressman Maurice Hinchey, from New York, introduced a bill that would undo the exemptions in the 2005 Energy Policy Act. Wyoming, widely known for supporting energy development, has begun updating its regulations at a local level, as have parts of Texas. New Mexico has placed a one year moratorium on drilling around Santa Fe, after a survey found hundreds of cases of water contamination from unlined pits where fracking fluids and other drilling wastes are stored. "Every rule that we have improved . . . industry has taken us to court on," said Joanna Prukop, New Mexico's cabinet secretary for Energy Minerals and Natural Resources. "It's industry that is fighting us on every front as we try to improve our government enforcement, protection, and compliance… We wear Kevlar these days."