News: Daily Grist

• Some E.U. countries close to giving legal rights to apes.• What will be the environmental makeup of the next Supreme Court?• Wal-Mart, Newmont Mining, and Conservation International partner for a more transparent jewelry supply chain.• New Orleans barrier islands endangered.• Governors back extension of wind and solar tax credits.• Toxic chemical levels dropping in Arctic animals.

Russian scientists are evacuating early from their research base on a shrinking Arctic ice floe. Last April, the floe was sturdy enough to build an air strip on. In September, 21 researchers and two dogs arrived, at which point their ice abode measured 1.2 by 2.5 miles. The researchers meant to leave in late August, but will evacuate this week from a floe that has shrunk to a mere 1,000 by 2,000 feet. Researcher Sergei Balyasnikov explains matter-of-factly, "The evacuation is ahead of schedule because of global warming."

MSNBC, 07/15/2008

A group of businesses has kicked off a new campaign with the goal of making energy cheaper by whatever means possible. The new Coalition for Affordable American Energy -- not to be confused with, ahem, the existing Coalition for Clean Affordable Energy or Coalition for Affordable and Reliable Energy -- is backed by various business associations, including the Business Roundtable, National Association of Manufacturers, and U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "It is not our intention to enter the debate on specific policies at the 'micro' level in great detail," said a letter sent to business associations last week. But the group certainly has its favored policies: "The coalition will support initiatives which encourage conservation and the development of renewable and alternative energy sources," says the letter. However, it adds, "Our focus will be on increasing domestic oil and gas production since alternative sources will not be able to meet U.S. demand for the next 25 years or more."

The Washington Post, 07/15/2008

The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico may be vaster than ever this year, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists predicted Tuesday. Thanks in large part to recent Midwest flooding, the oxygen-starved zone -- caused when fertilizer runoff from upstream ag spurs growth of algae that suck oxygen as they decompose -- could measure 8,800 square miles, or about the size of New Jersey. The current dead-zone record holder is the 2002 zone, which was 8,481 square miles. The Gulf zone gets its "dead" moniker because it cannot support most marine life, and thus poses a great threat to the second-largest fishing industry in the country and the nation's biggest single source of shrimp and oysters -- not to mention general fishy happiness.

		NOAA, 07/15/2008
		The Why Files, 07/15/2008
		As Midwest floods recede, what's being washed into the groundwater?, 07/15/2008

Some school and nonprofit fundraisers recently have turned to greener options to generate needed cash. Instead of sending youngsters out into the community to hawk items of questionable greenness like candy, magazines, and virgin-forest wrapping paper, some schools have instead turned to greener wares such as fair-trade coffee, metal water bottles, hand-made soaps, and recycled-content wrapping paper. The trend is not just about having kids sell items their parents might actually want to buy (though that's part of it), it's also aimed at avoiding contradictory messages to impressionable minds. "We're telling the kids about obesity and selling cookie dough," said Lisa Olson, founder of Greenraising, a greener-products fundraising company. "We're telling them about global warming, and they come home with this big catalog of wrapping paper with no recycled content."

The Wall Street Journal, 07/15/2008

Nuclear-power company Exelon today launched a program it says will reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by over 16 million tons a year by 2020 -- more than the company's current total annual emissions. The company's plan calls for buying renewable-energy credits to offset some of its emissions, generating a small amount of electricity from alternative sources such as landfill gas, wood, or crop waste, and complying with recently passed legislation in Illinois requiring the company to help customers reduce their electricity consumption through smart-metering and other measures. The company's largest emissions reductions would come from making some of its natural-gas-burning power plants more efficient, and (much less significantly) from increasing the output of its existing nuclear reactors, the logic being that increasing nuke output could generate increased power without creating more carbon emissions. "This is a mix of things that any sensible person would do," said Exelon CEO John Rowe. Exelon has also advocated for a carbon-trading program in the U.S., especially one under which it could earn credits for generating nuke power.

		The New York Times, 07/15/2008
		Exelon, 07/15/2008