environmental protection agency

In an attempt to both strengthen the US's negotiating hand in the upcoming Copenhagen climate talks, and to prod domestic lawmakers into swifter action on lasting legislation, the White House has told the Environmental Protection Agency to move forward with new rules regulating greenhouse gas emissions.

In an attempt to head off new emissions standards, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is threatening to sue the Environmental Protection Agency. The Chamber is calling it the Scopes Monkey Trial of the 21st Century, and wants to put the evidence supporting global warming on trial in a court of law.

After weeks of damaging midnight environmental rulings that have removed crucial endangered species protections, restrictions on mining the Grand Canyon, and allowed leasing of public lands for oil development, President Bush protected a whopping 195,000 square miles of the central Pacific’s tropical blue heart. With the stroke of a pen, he created the Mariana, Rose Atoll and Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monuments—and set aside an area the size of his home state of Texas, the largest swath of protected ocean on the planet.

The LifeStraw, from Danish company Vestergaard Frandsen, may be the best hope yet for the 1.1
billion people worldwide who lack access to safe drinking water. The 3.4-ounce â€straw†can filter up to 185 gallons of water, enough to supply one person for a year. Just dip the plastic tube into water
and suck on it to draw liquid up through three filters. Two textile layers remove dirt, iodine-based resin kills 99.3 percent of bacteria and viruses, and activated carbon catches whatever the iodine missed.