Environmental problems are becoming a big issue in today’s life around the world; so is the case in the USA. Recent opinion polls show that the common people of this country are quite concerned about clean air, water and land. This is a new phenomenon recenlty developed among the Americans. Historically the cities of USA were faraway from nature and there were lots of other hindrance too. But as the time moved on, grass route organizations sprung up to safeguard the natural resources and protect wildlife.

But the real revolution in the environmental world of the country took when the first Earth day was observed. In the same year, Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) was also established. The primary objective of EPA was to protect the human health and environment and preserve the environment as much as possible for the future generation. Besides this regulatory body, there are other certain key laws, which were passed e.g. National Environmental Policy Act, which assists to keep the nature clean in general; Clean Air Act to control the air emission, The safe drinking Water Act to control the quality of drinking water. The Clean Water Act helps to keep the water clean and The Oil Pollution Act was established to strengthen EPA’s ability to prevent and respond to catastrophic oil spills.

Similarly there are certain other laws, which were also passed with distinctive objective to protect the resources of the nature. All these steps gave the country a new life and also presented the future generation with a promise of a far better environment.

There has been an agreement between the Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA) and Emery County to deal with the lease and sell of school trust lands measuring around 2,500 acres by the Emery County. This beautiful piece of land is just located west of the Green River and there is a proposed plan of turning itself into a Green River Industrial Park in the near future.

The first right to buy an area of 1,600 acres of industrial park by Transition Power Development was given by Emery County Commissioner. The said Commission has also plans to sell 640 acres of land to Bluerock Resources, LLC, a Canadian firm for the purpose of building uranium mill. The 90% of the areas of the industrial park is now dedicated either for the nuclear reactors or uranuium plants. The Emery County and the Transition Power Development has entered into such a contract that the Emery County will not be allowed to sell the other parts of the land to any third party, even if then third party offers more money than the Bluerock Resources.

As the deal between the Emery County Commissioner and SITLA has been finalized along with Transition Power Development and Bluerock Resources; the role of the County Commissioner is almost over now. The Transition Power Development needs approval from the Emery County to sale and rezone the land. The Government Regulators at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will soon decide the fate of the nuclear project.

It is well known news today that Barrack Obama is the President of USA and more importantly he is a “Black President” in the White House. He is representing the Democrats and became the President after defeating Hillary Clinton, the wife of former President Bill Clinton. Obama is very popular from the beginning especially among the blacks and also among the American youth. But if you think that he has won the election only because of his skin color, then it will be unfair on him. In every sense he has been able to show a new dream to his countrymen, which give them a new hope to build a better future. That is most probably the main reason why he is the President at the moment.

USA is currently going through a terrible economic crisis in the world due to the effect of economic recession. From the very beginning Obama have been saying that he will manage the situation and he will bring his country out from the difficult times. Through his speech and Pre-election campaigns, he became the symbol of hope & optimism. Finally when the day came for, which the whole of America was waiting; and Obama became the President. The whole nation celebrated the victory and there was a smile of joy and satisfaction, which was found on the faces of the general Americans. He received best wishes for his tenure from all over the world. Now it is only the time, which can tell whether the people of USA have chosen the right leader for them or not.

With the development of plastic, it is being used in a wide variety of ways. The common daily items are often made of plastic; or we use plastic to wrap around many things. This is not the problem; the main problem arises when we do not want to use that plastic. Disposing them is a very difficult task. The throwaway plastics are cheap and hence mostly preferred by people all over the world. This leads to a huge pollution problem as these plastic bags do not decompose for a long period of time and even need ultra-violet lights to breakdown. Plastics disposed off in the sea are polluting the sea as well as threatening the marine lives. Studies conducted show that there are about 3500 particles of plastic per square kilometer of sea in the southern African coast. The plastic pollution has increased by more than 190% in different beaches of South Africa.

The problem can not be solved overnight, but definitely can be reduced. For that it needs serious and urgent attention. The basic thing we need to do is to reduce our usage of plastic bags and other plastic materials in our day to day lives. The use of recyclable plastic bags should be encouraged, if possible it should be made compulsory by the Government. Whenever we go for shopping, we must carry our own bags and also encourage and convince others not to use plastic bags so frequently. Do not throw away plastic materials and plastic bags on roads and seas. This simple behavior of yours will encourage other to follow you and keep the mother nature clean and green.

AutoTrader is a place from where you can buy or sell your automobile. This unique site is a hub for trading automobiles with others. Online trading gives you the scope to interact with more prospective parties and thus it help to seal a better deal.

The site looks very fresh with an “AutoTrader” logo on the left hand top of the home page. It is built on a white background, which gives it a very professional look. You will find links to various parts of the site located horizontally on the upper part of the page. The links are highlighted with grey and red colours, which make them every prominent. The site can be browsed with an ease. The links are clearly described for their features. You get the opportunity to buy or sell a new car or a used one in this site. The search option on the left side of the page helps a visitor to find a suitable match for him or her. You can specify your search by selecting various options from the drop down menus like the model and make of the car along with the distance already travelled. You can also mention your approximate budget.

The AutoTrader not only sells or buys cars but also provide loans and insurance facilities to the clients. You can also read the reviews about various types of automobiles on the site. This site has more than 377,000 details of cars in its database. It is a very helpful site for people who are willing to buy or sell their cars; as this online trading reduces the time and effort required to complete a transaction for both buyers and sellers.

The Environment Appeals Board of the US Environment Protection Agency has ruled that they were unable to find any solid reason for their refusal of using the best available control technology for limiting the emission carbon dioxide from a power plant in Utah, which primarily uses coal as its main ingredients.

The Sierra Club before the Environmental Appeals Board requested that the air permit issued by EPA Region 8 be overturned as it has failed to control the carbon dioxide, which is the primary cause of global warming. Joanne Spalding, the attorney of the Sierra Club argued that the decision paved a meaningful way to fight against global warming and suggested to introduce a clean energy economy. The three members Board in this ruling sent the air permit back to EPA Region 8 for reconsideration of how the best technology should be used to limit the emission of carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide is a pollutant under the Federal Clean Air Act and can be subject to regulation by the US E.P.A. This decision follows a ruling of US Supreme Court, 2007. EPA Region 8 argued unsuccessfully that it has the authority to monitor and report against the carbon dioxide emission but does not have the authority to actually control them. Desert Power is a 110 megawatt plant, which emits 3.37 million tons of carbon dioxide a year. This company serves more than 45,000 customers and sells additional power to municipalities, marketers and other electric systems in six states. The company was not available for any direct comments but their website stated that the Bonanza Power Plant is a top ranked environmentally clean coal fired plants.

Looking for more household stuff to reuse? Have you overlooked the bath soaps? Not the bath salts, of course. What about the kids’ crayons and oil pastels?

Bar soaps that have thinned and softened are often left alone to melt or thrown away. The shortened crayon sticks are abandoned or ignored, and they all eventually end up in the waste can.

These items are still useful. Collect the bits of bath soaps and dry first before storing inside a small jar. Gather all the color nubs in a small box. When you have enough bits and nubs to create into new soaps and new crayons, bring them all to the kitchen.

This project could be done with some kiddie help. Ask your kids to get some muffin cups made of aluminum from the kitchen cabinet; while you take out a muffin baking pan.

Let them fill each cup with soap bits until semi-full. Set these cups aside.

Do the same with the color and pastel nubs. Let those small fingers segregate the colors with the same shade. If there were not enough nubs to fill a cup, mix them with others to create a new color shade. For example, red nubs mixed with yellow nubs can turn into an orange crayon; or red and blue into violet; or yellow and blue into green. The kids will surely have a lot of fun learning about the color wheel.

Put all the aluminum cups in the muffin baking tray and place inside the oven. Bake in very low heat, about 200 degrees for several minutes or until the soap and crayons have melted nicely. Turn off the oven and let cool before taking out the muffin tray. Let the muffin-shaped bath soaps and crayons cool off for about 30 minutes. When completely hardened, you can remove the new soaps and crayons from the aluminum cups. Ask your kids to put the cups in a sealed plastic bag for reuse.

This procedure can also get those shortened candle sticks be melted and reused in new shapes. Do not forget to stick a short wick at the center of each muffin-shaped candle during the cooling period.

Unless the green and grassy lawn in front of your house has some sentimental value to you, a greener and eco-friendly lawn may be the right one for you and your family.

To keep those grasses on your lawn as green and as plump need a lot of the following: water, pesticide, fertilizer, and gasoline for the lawn mower. According to recent studies, your lawn could be the most ‘ungreen’ space in your home because of the following reasons:

1. The lawn grasses need a considerable amount of water to stay green. During hot months, these lawns need daily watering.

2. The weekly or bi-monthly mowing produces a lot of cut-grass waste. The lawn waste may be biodegradable but they still need to be transported from your home to the landfill.

3. The lawnmower and other gardening equipment are fueled by gasoline and therefore emit carbon dioxide.

4. The monthly application of pesticide and fertilizer wash a lot of dangerous chemicals into soil and water supply. These pest killer formulations contain certain organic chemical compound such as benzene, which is also a known carcinogen.

One of the many ways to turn your lawn to an environment-friendly space is to have it covered with outdoor tiles or plain concrete. The center space can be an inviting play area for the kids, or a picnic table and some chairs for a barbecue party. You can still have some greenery in the form of potted plants or side planters, where shrubs or small trees can be grown in neat rows. There are many plant varieties that need less water and maintenance.

Another way to change your lawn is to build elevated gardens for vegetables and herbs. You will need some old wood planks, lots of hays or straws, and organic fertilizer from compost. This gardening option could mean some hard work to maintain but you will have fresh vegetables and herbs as rewards.

This command may sound harsh and inhuman; unless candy wrappers are made edible, too. But these small scraps of plastic are not the only culprit in our major problem on trash today. Cigarette butts are also one of the most common litter items. Can you imagine anyone eating an edible cigarette filter after smoking?

Studies show, about 20 percent of litter thrown in the streets, highways, and parks often ended in the waterways and carried out by flowing water to rivers and oceans. California spends around $30 million annually on clean-up and litter removal projects. In Los Angeles, the County Department of Public Works reports that residents throw cigarette butts anywhere at about 600,000 times a month. A quick computation would give 7,000,000 cigarette butts a year.

Both candy wrappers and cigarette butts take a long time to break, but the cigarette litter is the most hazardous. A single butt decomposes after 12 years and while undergoing the lengthy process, it is also discharging toxic pollutants such as lead, arsenic and cadmium that cause soil and water pollution. Because litters are swept away into oceans, some marine life may eat them and end up as food on our dining table—if these poor creatures did not choke after swallowing trash and die, of course.

5 Tips to Stop Littering:
1. Learn the habit of keeping small trash inside your pocket when outside your home. Empty those pockets in the waste can.
2. Keep a small waste can inside your car. Teach the kids to put the candy and chocolate wrappers in it, along with fastfood wrappers and plastic bags.
3. Dispose your cigarette butts properly. Stop thinking the highways as your giant ashtray. Even if you’re not a smoker, keep a covered ashtray inside your car for passengers’ butts and candy wrappers.
4. When cleaning the street in front of your home, do not use water hose to get rid of them in the drain hole. Sweep and scoop the litters to dispose on street garbage cans. Otherwise, the litters you sprayed down the drainage may come back in bulk the next flood.
5. Join the volunteer group for local clean-up of roads and streets. Some of the groups for litter prevention are KAB or Keep America Beautiful and Auntie Litter.

You live in this environment. Do your part to protect the environment. Keep your space clean.

Endangered Species

The Siamese Crocodile is one of the rarest and most endangered species in the world, with less than 200 of them remaining in the world. Plans for the construction of a dam in the Cardamom Mountains of Cambodia is threatening the lives of one-fifth of this already struggling population. The construction of the Chay Areng Dam will do untold damage to this unspoilt region; threatening not only the Siamese crocodile, but several other species living in this valley. Read the rest of this entry »

Utah has planned strategies to combat greenhouse gas emissions better and reduce the levels by 2020. The planned goal includes a 28% reduction in emissions over Business As Usual (BAU), over 27 million tons of carbon reductions over BAU, over 9 tons per person less than if the policies were not implemented and comparable performance with other Western Climate Initiative jurisdictions in all these metrics.

The current GHG reduction goals are according to BRAC policy options and are measured through an analytical process. Government agency experts, businesses and the public were involved in determining the goals. While it’s not a regulatory mandate, it’s a suitable policy. The goal is believed to be realistic and achievable. According to the plan, the greenhouse gases in Utah should be reduced to the recorded 2005 levels by 2020.

Environmental conservation has always been a topic for lengthy discussions, but up until recent times, global warming and climate changes were vague subjects, with no hard proof. Not surprisingly, the previous lack of attention to these issues have created a very gloomy outlook on our future. So, considering all this, what could be the biggest contributor to climate changes through global warming? Transportation – the man-made iron horses, flying machines and sea monsters, so to speak.

The question we have now is ‘how green is our transportation?’ The majority of the world’s vehicles are fueled by oil (petrol, diesel and kerosene). Even if they rely on electricity, the stations used to generate this electricity use fossil fuels for power! Excluding vehicle manufacture, transportation is responsible for 14% of the artificially created greenhouse emissions, mostly carbondioxide.

Automobiles, trains and planes are all responsible for this problem, but cars are the highest impact-makers. They release approximately six times more carbondioxide than a plane and seven times more than sea vessels.

Every now and then, the remains of a few limited dinosaur fossils are found in the Utah region but the current find by the team of Illinois scientists is anything but the same. They have found the remains of multiple dinosaur fossils buried along with coniferous trees in a well-preserved state, so much so that one can actually fell the bark of the tree fossil. Fossils in such a state of preservation are quite rare and offer the scientists a glimpse into Utah’s past.

The group of scientists representing the Burpee museum of natural history has uncovered the 148 million years old remains of about 6 or so dinosaur species, all in a single place. The mystery here is what could have led these different dinosaurs to die and get fossilized in the same place. Perhaps, they were all drinking water when a disaster of massive proportions took place, killing them all, in the process. That could well account for the fossils of different species of dinosaurs being found together.

Jurassic period is one that continues to engage the intelligence of the scientists worldwide and the current find could well shed a light on the many mysteries of that particular epoch. According to paleontologist Matt Bonnan, an associate professor of biological sciences at Western Illinois University, this find could well rival those of Utah’s famous Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry and Dinosaur National Monument. For the very first time in quite a long while, different species of dinosaurs have all been found together and this find is sure to propel Hanksville as a reservoir of fossils, with many yet to be discovered!

Even a sock toy has the power to stir up an entire state or so it seems, with accusations of racism being flung right and left. It all started out with Binkley toys manufacturing a sock toy and labeling it as Obama. Binkley toys was contracted to mass-produce the sock toy and has now found itself in mire that seems to be getting deeper by the minute. The toy in question is black and has been labeled as Obama, fine; I can understand why it may seem offensive to many.

But this is the age of advancement and knowledge; as such, it is time we all started to act according to the age, not our age, but the time itself. Gone are the days when we had to cry bloody murder over the smallest thing and end up making a mountain of a molehill. The premise for objection to this toy in particular is sound and Binkley toys has come out assuring all that it will no longer manufacture this toy and has rendered an apology. The matter should rest there but it seems that this issue is being dredged up every now and then to serve a persons self interest’s rather than the issue at hand. One can even say that this issue is being used as a sort of a political platform, to what ends, one can only guess.

This view may seem a bit cynical but given all that the current politicians are capable of, one should not be surprised to hear this issue dominating the airwaves for days to come ahead. All aside, Binkley toys may find itself facing a bigger problem soon as it has breached the contract with ‘The sock Obama’, the contractor for this sock. The Obama sock has already been labeled as “pure racism in its extreme” by Jeanetta Williams, president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. I do wonder what the current political establishment has to say about all this? Would action of any kind be taken against Biknley toys and its contractor? Let us hope so.

Mussels are considered a threat in Utah as well as in most parts of the United States as they pose a certain danger to marine wildlife on account of their voracious appetite for plankton. That aside, Mussels are pretty hard to get rid off, lets say that you come across a mussel, try removing it with your hand and you will know exactly why it is hard to remove them. In addition to being hard to remove, Mussels tend to build colonies very rapidly thus making it near impossible to remove them altogether from small-sized water bodies.

Taking into account the threat that they pose to the local marine life, the Utah state officials were unpleasantly surprised last week when they came across a boat contaminated with Zeba mussels. What made this incident shocking is the fact that despite random checks on all the local boats plying on the flaming gorge reservoir, this had happened. The biologists from the Division of Wildlife resources were happy to note that the mussels hiding in the drive train area of the boat were all dead. The mussels continue to pose a threat to the marine flora and fauna, in addition to causing damage to any local aqua project.

The Utah officials surmised correctly that the mussels were dead as the boat had sat out of the water for a long duration and had it not, the news would not be good. This was a near miss but one cannot count on being so lucky all the time. When it comes to mussels prevention is the best policy to adopt, so when it comes to Utah, say no to mussels!