This year's Olympics in Sydney have set a new eco-friendly standard, and the IOC plans to take environmental concerns into account in making future hosting decisions. The Chinese government says it will replace coal-fired boilers with heaters that burn natural gas, construct two new subway lines, build a number of greenbelts, and widen nine major roads. Beijing has already promised to replace diesel buses with ones that run on cleaner-burning fuel and impose strict vehicle emissions tests. As fisheries in shallower waters are depleted, the massive trawlers drag their large nets along the seafloor in deeper areas, trapping fish and clearing everything in their paths. Surveys off the coast of Norway indicate that one third to one half of the charted deep-sea reefs have been harmed by fishing.
Damaged corals can take hundreds of years to regrow.
So far, almost 2,000 homes and 115 businesses have signed up for the green power option, and TVA hopes to boost that to 8,000 homes by next spring. In addition to its wind power project, TVA already operates four solar collectors. Meanwhile, Seattle's mayor and a member of the city council write today in an op-ed in the Seattle Times about the city's Earth Day pledge to work toward meeting all of its electricity needs while producing no net greenhouse gas emissions. Rain in New England contains mercury levels four times higher than the feds consider safe for aquatic life, suggesting that the risk of eating freshwater fish in the region is growing, according to a report being released today by the National Wildlife Federation. Coal-fired power plants, trash incinerators, and other industrial sources in New England release about 35,000 pounds of mercury into the air each year.