These highly anticipated standards would result in significant savings at the pump for American families, reduce climate-threatening carbon pollution and provide Americans with better and more fuel efficient vehicle choices.

In response, Michael Brune, Sierra Club Executive Director, said, “these standards will save American families $44 billion at the gas pump, reduce our oil use by 23 billion gallons, and cut carbon pollution by an amount equal to the annual emissions from 72 coal-fired power plants – and that’s all just in one year.”

BlueGreen Alliance Executive Director David Foster said, “Producing cleaner cars to meet consumer demand could create as many as 190,000 jobs through 2020.”

In response, Mary Anne Hitt, Director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign issued the following statement:

“The EPA has been trying to enact national protections to stop this kind of disastrous spill from happening again, ever since the TVA disaster in 2008, and our Congress has been blocking them every step of the way. As a result, communities across the nation remain at risk and unprotected. This spill in the Great Lakes is a tragic reminder of why the status quo is not good enough. As long as Congress interferes, spills like this are going to happen, and dozens of communities are at risk. Congress needs to back off and allow the EPA to finalize strong protections.

“In 2008 we witnessed first-hand how a lack of strong national protections leaves the job in the hands of state regulators that lack the will and ability to protect communities from coal ash incidents. Since the TVA disaster, industry groups have been lobbying hard to block the EPA from establishing strong federal protections, arguing, they say, that states are doing a fine job regulating coal ash. Just weeks ago, at the urging of We Energies and others in the coal industry, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to block the EPA from enacting strong national protections, thereby allowing states to continue the status quo that led to this disastrous collapse. This bill, called the Coal Residuals Reuse and Management Act (S.1751) is now before the Senate for consideration.

“This spill shows that states are not protecting our health and our environment from cancer-causing coal ash, and as long as the EPA fails to act there will be more coal ash spills. “This collapse is particularly troublesome because We Energies has known for years that its management of coal ash was a threat to human health. They have even been providing bottled water to neighbors who have contaminated wells.

“The Senate should immediately stop work on its bill to block the EPA from protecting Americans from toxic coal ash, and our Senators should urge the EPA to finalize its rulemaking process that began in 2009, received hundreds of thousands of comments in support, and has still not been finalized because of industry pressure.

“We want to thank the first responders, cleanup and safety workers for their courage in helping to clean up this mess. We are very grateful that no one appears to have been injured. Unfortunately, residents of Southeast Wisconsin have been victims of We Energies negligence for years. The burning of coal is a public health menace. This incident underscores that as long as we are still mining and burning coal someone somewhere is paying the price.”

When we go to the store, we don’t think about what the cow that our ground beef came from ate, or whether it was on antibiotics or why.  We, again, only care that we don’t pay too much for it.  We fail to take into consideration the fact that most of these animals are kept in dirty, cramped, cement feedlots where they are fed corn.  “Okay so they eat corn.  What’s the big deal?”  Have you ever seen a cow in the wild eat corn?  If you can’t remember, or don’t know, I can tell you.  NO!  They eat grass.  Their digestive systems are specifically designed for this purpose.  When they eat corn, they get sick because their digestive systems are not made to process corn.  So, we give our cows corn, they get sick because they are made to eat grass.  What is the obvious solution?  If you thought “Feed them grass, duh.”  you’d be wrong….at least according to the industrial food machine.  When cows (and any other feedlot animal for that matter) get sick, we don’t look for the source of the problem, we pump them full of antibiotics, duh.

Now, that must be okay though because the FDA and USDA have tested all these antibiotics to make sure they are safe for human consumption right?   Weeeeelll….you’d think, but that is surprisingly not always the case.  Most of the time, the USDA/FDA work retrospectively, meaning, they wait til there IS a problem to deal with it rather than trying to avoid it in the first place.  Seems counterintuitive to me too.  ESPECIALLY when it comes to food that millions of people are eating.  People they are supposed to be protecting from that kind of stuff.

Back to corn.  Why would we use antibiotics to treat cows and other animals so that we can feed them what they’re not supposed to eat?  Because we can grow more corn per acre than pasture.  We can subsidize corn farmers, and allow private corporations to control over 90% of the corn seed planted in the united states.  By the way, this particular corn seed is patented.  You heard right, PATENTED.  That means that corn farmers cannot save their seeds to plant the next season like they used to….for thousands of years.  As a matter of fact, this is the first time that it has been more common for farmers as a whole to plant new seed every year than to keep their own, since the implementation of agriculture.  Doesn’t seem right to me, I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

Fortunately, recently there have been more and more pastured (or at least grass-fed) meat choices available in grocery stores.  This means that if you can’t or don’t want to go to your local farmer’s market and get non-feedlot meat, you can still go to your regular store and help to stop the breakdown of the food chain.  Remember, vote with your fork and “Eat FOOD.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.”

“The Sierra Club applauds the decision to protect these precious public lands. The Grand Canyon is a crown jewel of our national park system, and an important piece of American history, culture and economy,” said Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune. “These public lands are no place for destructive energy and mineral development.”

Each year, nearly 4.4 million people come to experience Grand Canyon National Park, contributing over $680 million to the Northern Arizona economy. These visitors come from across the nation and around the world to enjoy the grand scenery and outdoor recreation opportunities, and to see a wide array of wildlife, including the desert tortoise, the California condor, the northern goshawk, and the Kaibab squirrel–found no place else.

Extensive uranium mining in the plateaus surrounding the Grand Canyon would industrialize wild lands and Native American sacred sites, destroy areas important to dozens of rare plants and wildlife and permanently pollute groundwater and springs. The Colorado River watershed provides water to millions of acres of farmland and people living throughout the Southwest.

“Today’s decision protects drinking water for millions of people in southern California, Arizona and Nevada who rely on the Colorado River. Radioactive uranium mining should not happen near our water or next to Grand Canyon National Park,” said Sandy Bahr, Director of the Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon Chapter.

The Administration’s announcement follows efforts by Congressman Grijalva (D-AZ), scientists, tribal and local government leaders, businesses and hundreds of thousands of concerned citizens to secure protections for the region and its waters. The federal protections granted today respect permanent uranium mining bans put in place by the Hualapai, Havasupai, Kaibab-Paiute, and Hopi tribes, as well as the and Navajo nation on their lands in northern Arizona and near the park.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar is expected to formally finalize today’s decision in 30 days.

The design was one of two that the team, led by faculty from the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, presented to NASA last month as part of a $2.1 million research contract to develop environmental and performance concepts that will help guide the agency’s aeronautics research over the next 25 years. Known as “N+3” to denote three generations beyond today’s commercial transport fleet, the research program is aimed at identifying key technologies, such as advanced airframe configurations and propulsion systems, that will enable greener airplanes to take flight around 2035.

MIT was the only university to lead one of the six U.S. teams that won contracts from NASA in October 2008. Four teams — led by MIT, Boeing, GE Aviation and Northrop Grumman, respectively — studied concepts for subsonic (slower than the speed of sound) commercial planes, while teams led by Boeing and Lockheed-Martin studied concepts for supersonic (faster than the speed of sound) commercial aircraft. Led by AeroAstro faculty and students, including principal investigator Ed Greitzer, the H. Nelson Slater Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the MIT team members include Aurora Flight Sciences Corporation and Pratt & Whitney.

Their objective was to develop concepts for, and evaluate the potential of, quieter subsonic commercial planes that would burn 70 percent less fuel and emit 75 percent less NOx than today’s commercial planes. NASA also wanted an aircraft that could take off from shorter runways.

Designing an airplane that could meet NASA’s aggressive criteria while accounting for the changes in air travel in 2035 — when air traffic is expected to double — would require “a radical change,” according to Greitzer. Although automobiles have undergone extensive design changes over the last half-century, “aircraft silhouettes have basically remained the same over the past 50 years,” he said, describing the traditional, easily recognizable “tube-and-wing” structure of an aircraft’s wings and fuselage.

The MIT team met NASA’s challenge by developing two designs: the 180-passenger D “double bubble” series to replace the Boeing 737 class aircraft, currently used for domestic flights, and the 350 passenger H “hybrid wing body” series to replace the 777 class aircraft now used for international flights.

The engineers conceived of the D series by reconfiguring the tube-and-wing structure. Instead of using a single fuselage cylinder, they used two partial cylinders placed side by side to create a wider structure whose cross-section resembles two soap bubbles joined together. They also moved the engines from the usual wing-mounted locations to the rear of the fuselage. Unlike the engines on most transport aircraft that take in the high-speed, undisturbed air flow, the D-series engines take in slower moving air that is present in the wake of the fuselage. Known as the Boundary Layer Ingestion (BLI), this technique allows the engines to use less fuel for the same amount of thrust, although the design has several practical drawbacks, such as creating more engine stress.

According to Mark Drela, the Terry L. Kohler Professor of Fluid Dynamics and lead designer of the D series, the design mitigates some of the drawbacks of the BLI technique by traveling about 10 percent slower than a 737. To further reduce the drag and amount of fuel that the plane burns, the D series features longer, skinnier wings and a smaller tail. Independently, each tweak might not amount to much, but the “little 5-percent changes add up to one big change,” Drela said. Although the plane would travel slightly slower than a 737, he said that some of this time could be recovered because the plane’s wider size should allow for quicker loading and unloading.

Not only does the D series meet NASA’s long-term fuel burn, emissions reduction and runway length objectives, but it could also offer large benefits in the near future because the MIT team designed two versions: a higher technology version with 70 percent fuel-burn reduction, and a version that could be built with conventional aluminum and current jet technology that would burn 50 percent less fuel and might be more attractive as a lower risk, near-term alternative.

Carl Burleson, the director of the Federal Aviation Agency’s Office of Environment and Energy, said that in addition to its “really good environmental performance,” the D series is impressive because its bubble design is similar enough to the tube-and-wing structure of current planes that it should be easier to integrate into airport infrastructure than more radical designs. “You have to think about how an airport structure can support it,” he said. “ For some other designs, you could have to fundamentally reshape the gates at airports because the planes are configured so differently.”

Although the H series utilizes much of the same technology as the D series, including BLI, a larger design is needed for this plane to carry more passengers over longer distances. The MIT team designed a triangular-shaped hybrid wing body aircraft that blends a wider fuselage with the wings for improved aerodyamics. The large center body creates a forward lift that eliminates the need for a tail to balance the aircraft.

The large structure also allows engineers to explore different propulsion architectures for the plane, such as a distributed system of multiple smaller engines. Although the H series meets NASA’s emissions-reduction and runway-length goals, the researchers said they will continue to improve the design to meet more of NASA’s objectives.

The MIT team expects to hear from NASA within the next several months about whether it has been selected for the second phase of the program, which will provide additional funds to one or two of the subsonic teams in 2011 to research and develop the technologies identified during the first phase.