On December 14th, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection began accepting comments on proposed revisions to the state’s oil and gas regulations. The PA DEP’s Environmental Quality Board is also conducting 7 public hearings during the 60-day comment period that ends on February 12th. Currently, communities in 38 counties are being fracked, yet the EQB is only holding hearings in 7 counties, including 2 where no fracking is occurring. Meanwhile, the most heavily impacted counties, like Bradford and Butler are being passed over. We are calling on the DEP to add hearings in every county being fracked. In addition, the 60-day comment period is far too short. Proposed rules like these demand ample time for comment. Rules on similarly important matters have been subject to comment periods anywhere from 120-days to six months long. The short comment period also impacts the scheduling of the hearings. The first hearing is scheduled for January 7th, the second day of the first full work week of the new year. All seven will be held within 17 days during one of the most difficult travel months of the year. No alternate dates have been provided by the DEP, nor have they stated a process for cancelling and rescheduling meetings due to weather. Does the DEP really want to hear from you? Sure doesn’t seem that way! Demand that the DEP do its job and listen to your comments and concerns. Tell them to add hearings so people, some whose lives have been turned upside down by fracking, are heard. Tell them to extend the comment period so that these proposed rules receive the proper scrutiny. We risk nothing by taking our time to get this right; we risk everything by rushing.

The Leuser Ecosystem is home to the densest population of orangutans remaining anywhere in the world and is the only place where orangutans, tigers, elephants, rhinos and sun bears live in the same forest together. The people of Aceh have long fought to protect the Leuser Ecosystem as it also provides them with clean water for downstream irrigation, agriculture and food production and helps avoid soil erosion, flooding, landslides and pest outbreaks. Massive palm oil companies are pushing hard to open this pristine ecosystem up for mass clearing in order to plant palm oil plantations. Local activists and community members are being joined by scientists and conservationists around the world to call for protection for the Leuser. And protection comes down to one man, Governor Dr. Zaini Abdullah, who can nominate the Leuser as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Port of Olympia has been taking shipments of a material called "proppants." These materials are used in the fracking industry of North Dakota (Bakken) oil shale. The hydro-fracking industry of North Dakota is implicated in harms: social destabilization, and serious environmental pollution has occurred. Economic gains, jobs and domestic petroleum production have resulted in a boom that will eventually end in a bust. Support for the hydraulic-fracking extreme extraction industry conflicts with building a level playing field for renewable energy to compete. For the good of all people, we need urgent transition away from fossil fuels. For health, we need sensible policies. We believe the Port of Olympia can do better than to engage in the fracking business.

Newspapers need to stop publishing letters that deny climate change. Just as no legitimate news publications would ever again print "opinion" pieces that deny the harmful health consequences of smoking and second hand smoke, nor should they ever again print opinion pieces that deny the impact of human generated climate change. It's time for the national conversation about climate change to focus on moving forward in our race to lower greenhouse gas emissions, not ping pong back and forth, as if there were no sense of urgency to our expanding set of consequences and dilemmas.

A new report shows direct ties between hardwood flooring giant Lumber Liquidators, organized crime, and the illegal logging of the habitat of the last 450 Siberian Tigers. This shameless disregard for the last few remaining members of the species in pursuit of cheap flooring is not only disgusting, it's illegal under American law and has prompted a federal investigation. Lumber Liquidators needs to immediately and irrevocably take action to improve due diligence and bring itself into compliance with the Lacey Act. It must eliminate forest illegality, destruction and human rights violations from its supply chain. Lumber Liquidators must cut supply chain ties with Xingjia, the supplier which is the source of this illegal hardwood, and adopt and implement a comprehensive procurement policy that ensures the company will never again be involved in destroying old growth and endangered forests, abuse of human rights and run away climate change.

As Ameren customers, we acknowledge that our energy use has an acute impact on that environment, and that Missouri residents living closest to Ameren’s coal plants bear the greatest burden of that impact and that Ameren is in the business of making money for its investors and executives. But Ameren is doing this at the expense of the health and well-being of local residents. Ameren relies almost entirely on dirty, out-of-state coal to generate electricity, poisoning our air and water in Jefferson County in the process. Currently, Ameren is able to pollute almost limitlessly. Ameren’s plants lack pollution controls for dangerous sulfur dioxide, a pollutant that contributes to severe respiratory illnesses. Ameren is just starting to monitor groundwater at its existing coal ash pond at Rush Island, and has not yet produced any data. Although Ameren’s own documents concede that coal ash is already sitting in the groundwater at the existing ash pond, Ameren has no plans to clean that up before building a new landfill directly above the ash pond. Now, Ameren is trying to rush through proposals to build a new landfill for coal ash without informing or protecting our communities.

The people of Collingwood Bay have built their culture and livelihoods around the primary forest and pristine marine environment that surrounds their community in Papua New Guinea. Now their way of life and ancestral lands are under attack by palm oil giant KLK, which has already landed a barge with palm oil seeds and security personnel in Collingwood Bay. HSBC is a principal bank to KLK, and has the power to stop this entire land grab in its tracks. Please demand HSBC take immediate action to halt KLK's theft of the Collingwood Bay community's land.

Communities living near contaminated sites have the right to know what’s in their food and water. For nearly a decade, Georgia communities near the Savannah River Site nuclear weapons complex, one of the most toxic facilities in the country, have gone without robust information about contaminants in their food and water due to lack of funding for environmental testing in Georgia.

Too many of my friends and family have cancer or unexplainable birth defects.

Newspapers need to stop publishing letters that deny climate change caused by human burning of fossil fuels.

Newspapers need to stop publishing letters that deny climate change.

The rising Radiation levels will affect all of us as a nation. We have a right to know the truth about the contamination in this country from the Fukushima Nuclear Reactor disaster in Japan. Ocean life is already showing signs of what exposure to Radiation has caused. It is our right to know what we are facing and what if anything we can do to protect our children.