If it were ever possible or even realistic to put the words Appalachia and victory in the same sentence, this might be one of those rare times: the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 3 Administrator Shawn Garvin has recommended the withdrawal of the mining permit for the nation’s largest proposed mountaintop removal coal mine site, the…

The Philippines declared a state of calamity in a northern province after super typhoon Megi made landfall on Monday, cutting off power, forcing flight cancellations and putting the region’s rice crop at risk. Megi, the 10th and strongest typhoon to hit the Philippines this year, hit Isabela province at 11:25 a.m. (0325 GMT) and was…

A super typhoon bore down on the northeastern Philippines on Sunday packing winds of more than 250 kph (155), and evacuations began before it makes landfall on Monday morning. Typhoon Megi would be felt on Sunday night in the north of the main island Luzon, a rice and corn growing area, and the government advised…

The Obama administration announced this week that companies able to meet new safety standards will be allowed to drill in the Gulf of Mexico, ending a six-month moratorium that had been scheduled to end next month. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the new rules imposed after the BP spill — the worst environmental disaster in…

The Department of Interior is planning to assess Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve for energy development. Spanning 37,000 square miles across western Alaska, the NPR-A is the biggest piece of public land in the United States. For now, this Arctic landscape is mostly undeveloped and home to caribou, grizzly bears, wolves, and a wide variety of…

This past Sunday, American Idol Season 9 runner-up Crystal Bowersox was married boyfriend Brian Walker in a small ceremony at a club where the two first met. What makes Bowersox worthy of a blog discussion here on ENN is the fact that her wedding was eco-friendly, ranging from her custom gown to the local, organic…

The magnitude 7.0 earthquake that caused more than 200,000 casualties and devastated Haiti’s economy in January 2010 resulted not from the Enriquillo fault, as previously believed, but from slip on multiple faults as well as primarily on a previously unknown, subsurface fault – according to a study published online this week in Nature Geoscience. In…

A new system for desalination has been designed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The system uses solar power to push ocean water through a permeable membrane which is capable of removing salt and other minerals. Such a portable system would be ideal for disaster-torn regions of the world which have lost…

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), an agency of the US Department of Labor has been given the responsibility and funding for the collection and implementation of data on green jobs. After considerable study they arrived at a formal definition…

Scientists are outfitting elephant seals and self-propelled water gliders with monitoring equipment to unlock the oceans’ secrets and boost understanding of the impacts of climate change. Oceans regulate the world’s climate by soaking up heat and shifting it around the globe. They also absorb huge amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide, acting as a brake on…