Environmental News Wrap July 27-August 2: Congressional Inaction, the Sound of Wind Turbines, Record Heat Waves, and more…

GlobalWarmingisReal contributor Anders Hellum-Alexander wraps-up the climate and environmental news headlines for the past week:

• Congressional inaction: Apparently the worst environmental disaster in the history of the USA (BP oil spill), an environmentalist President, a full congress majority for Democrats, clear science supporting the theory of climate change and its negative affects and a public at least 51% in support of action to address climate change is not enough to pass any federal law to comprehensively address the negative effects of our dirty economy.
  The Guardian reports, “Where next for the wrecked US climate bill?”
  National Geographic reports, “How Prospects Cooled for U.S. Global Warming Bill”
• Some Oregonians are being paid $5,000 to sign a contract to never complain about the noise from wind turbines. Some complain that they cannot sleep because of the noise from the turbines, many others don’t even notice.
• The recent oil spill in China is in the clean up phase, check out this picture of how the Chinese clean up their oil spills.
• 2010 is another record hot year. National Geographic reports, “Heat Wave: 2010 to Be One of Hottest Years on Record.”
• A charging station has been developed that works through magnetism that is being applied to electric vehicles. Imagine driving to work and then while your car sits in the parking lot it is being charged by a charging station installed in the ground.
• Oil prices have reached up to $80 a barrel. Oil exporting countries want the price between $40 and $70, about. If oil gets too high people will use a substitute and reduce use, if oil prices get too low then countries end up making less overall profit from their reserves. The higher the price, the better it is for environmentalism, but no one wants people to suffer from increased prices for necessities. Environmentalism is truly a difficult cause to navigate.
• Environmental Justice (EJ) is a movement to make better environmental decisions in low income communities that are disproportionately affected by pollution. The EPA is making a revived effort to support EJ. The opposition to EJ believes that EJ kills economies and jobs, while many EJ advocates just want a more favorable process for placing polluting facilities, which statistically are found more in low income communities in the US.