Here's a story from the "Can You Believe This?" files: several states, California among them, are suing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for failure to regulate greenhouse emissions! In the words of the National Environmental Trust (NET):

First, the agency said that the Clean Air Act provided the agency no authority to regulate greenhouse gases (reversing the agency’s previous legal conclusion, which it had repeatedly voiced to Congress in 1998,1999, and 2000).

Second, EPA stated that it wouldn’t regulate greenhouse gas emissions even if it had statutory authority because the agency preferred voluntary programs and further study.

Here is more of NET's analysis. Here are articles retrieved by Google News on the story.

What is the Iraq Study Group? Sometimes referred to as the Baker-Hamilton Commission, this bipartisan group was formed at "the urging of Congress" to..."conduct a forward-looking, independent assessment of the current and prospective situation on the ground in Iraq, its impact on the surrounding region, and consequences for U.S. interests."

The group is facilitated by the United States Institute of Peace - although you may not of heard much from this government agency before, it is 21 years old! More here on the Institute of Peace.

A Factsheet on how the Iraq Study Group was formed and a list of the experts it has been working with is also available at the web site. The Iraq Study Group is due to present its report to the President, the Congress, and the American people "sometime after the November 7 U.S. elections."

And in the Did You Know department...

U.S. public library cardholders outnumber Amazon customers by almost 5 to 1. Each day, U.S. libraries circulate nearly 4 times more items than Amazon handles.

Source: http://www.oclc.org/roi/

The lesson is that libraries, in this case public libraries, are essential to economic growth; not forgetting the organization and dissemination of knowledge, the nurturing of imagination, the encouraging of critical faculties, and helping to dissolve the digital divide.

You can read some of the success stories at the link above, including that of the Gallo Winery.

Hmmm......should you be thanking your local library for the fact that your glass of red wine a day is helping to prevent certain cancers?

The next time you have to choose your own topic for an essay or research paper, consider an environmental topic. The state of the world's oceans are a cause for concern for many reasons: coral reefs are "bleaching" due to climate change, fishing practices, and coastal development. Forest clearing, unsound agricultural practices that increase sedimentation, expanding tourism, and increasing pollution are some of the human impacts on the oceans.

A very good resource is the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) - World Conservation Union's Global Marine Programme web site.

"IUCN formed the Global Marine Programme (GMP) in 1985. Since its inception, the Global Marine Programme has been working across Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, the Mediterranean, and Central and South America. These programmes have covered multiple areas such as integrated coastal and marine management, fisheries, marine protected areas, larger marine ecosystems, as well as coral reef rehabilitation, and the effects of coral bleaching and climate change."

The web site has many free publications, a news service, a newsletter, and links to other resources.

A little closer to home, click on the photo above to go to the Plastic Debris Rivers To Sea Project. The primary goal of the project is to reduce the land-based discharges via urban runoff of plastics and other discarded materials that degrade water quality and impair beneficial uses of inland and coastal waters.