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Yes, that Benin. Bear with me on this one, folks. It's going to take a minute, but I'll get there.

1. WTOP reported this morning on the Census Bureau's research on travel patterns in the D.C. metro area. The findings: of the region's 2.2 million workers, about 1.5 million commute alone, and about 600,000 carpool or use public transit. The average commute time was about 32 minutes.

Read More "What Do D.C. and Benin Have in Common?" »

Here is a little “news analysis” I think our City Paper constituency can appreciate.

Yesterday, beer lovers were devastated to hear global warming is hurting beer production. While that news was bad, the Washington Post followed up with a dispatch today suggesting that we can solve global warming if we stop having kids.

Put the two news items together in time-honored “news analysis” tradition and what do you get? A solution! To assure a lasting supply of quality beer, forget about having that The Waltons-style family you were considering. In fact, better not too have any of the little darlings, according to a crack team of researchers at the London School of Economics.

That’s right, if we stopped having kids, we’d pretty much wipe up the climate change problem, according to the U.K. study. And, we’d presumably still be able to drive around in Hummers, live in sprawling suburban McMansions, shop until we drop, and spend every evening at the pub - mugs of a top of the line pilsner in each hand.

Read More "News Analysis: To Save Beer from Global Warming, Stop Having Kids" »

George Washington University has pulled up its grade in a national environmental group's annual college ranking. Then again, there really was no place to go but up after last year, when the Sierra Club named G.W. one of the five least sustainable universities in the country, the student-run GW Hatchet, pointed out in its front page coverage today.

Even though the school's environmental record doesn't suck quite as much this year, it hasn't exactly entered the “ivy league,” so to speak, of eco-friendly campuses. It is now ranked 81 out 135 universities around the country; hardly a passing score even with grade inflation so common at colleges these day.

Still, the Sierra Club’s third annual Cool Schools report didn’t even consider other D.C. colleges such as Georgetown University, American University and the University of the District of Columbia. So, there is no way to establish the true pecking order, environmentally-speaking, of D.C.  higher-learning institutions. The only other area schools included in the ranking also received uninspiring grades: The University of Maryland beat G.W. with a 67, while George Mason University brought up the rear with an 89.

After a few weeks of micro-blogging, I think I’ve figured out what Twitter is good for: all manner of information whizzing by haphazardly. I miss 90 percent of this stream-of-consciousness info. stream, what with real work to do.  But when I take the time, there is usually some funky item worth crowing about. 

Check out this set of instructions for building your own wind turbine. OK, most of us aren’t going to rush out and erect one of these above our row house or apartment building. But isn’t it nice to know you could?

Going to the beach these days is like taking a dip in an open sewer, according to a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The NRDC found the nation’s beaches are befouled by raw sewerage and floating debris that is not just seriously gross but a serious health hazard. This is the 19th year that the Washington-based environmental group has published its annual seaside report card, and things aren't getting any sunnier. For the fourth year in a row, it tallied more than 20,000 closing and advisory days at popular beaches around the country.

Public health officials say swimming with sewage can make you sick and sometimes kill you. The list of waterborne illnesses includes stomach flu, skin rashes, pinkeye, ear, nose and throat problems, dysentery, hepatitis, respiratory ailments and neurological disorders, according to the NRDC. The group's advice: To minimize risk, don't go in the water after heavy rains when raw sewerage and polluted storm runoff is often swept out to sea. 

But the report also has a tiny bit of good news: Out of 200 beaches around the country, only about a dozen received top marks based on five water quality and testing measures. We’ve got one of these “five star” beaches within driving distance: Ocean City in Worcester, Maryland.

To read the press release and full report, click here. Here is a USA Today story too.

The New York Times has a story today about farmed salmon from Chile that makes a few pretty scary points:

1. Chile used almost 350 times more antibiotics in its farmed salmon in 2008 than Norway, its chief competitor.
2. Chile is the biggest supplier of salmon supplier to the United States. So, if you’ve purchased the pretty pinkish fillets lately, they’ve likely come from Chile, though the story does note that Safeway and Wal-Mart, have reduced purchases of Chilean salmon due to concern about the fish illnesses that require producers there to use so many antibiotics.
3. Some of the antibiotics used in Chile are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

The terms "carbon footprint" and "locavore" have just been added to the dictionary. Then again, so has "flash mob,” according to this story in The Huffington Post. Could this be just a "flash in the pan" or signs that “green” thinking is hitting the mainstream?

A new study casts yet more doubt on the notion that biofuels are going to save the planet from global warming and us from paying high gas prices. The report just published by the Government Accountability Office, found much ballyhooed “next-generation” biofuels are likely to have the same kinds of pitfalls plaguing the last.

By now, the downsides of the oh-so-last-year corn-based fuels are well known; they use too much water, harmful chemicals and petroleum. This has led some biofuels boosters to place their bets on cellulose from such things as grasses, wood chips and even algae.

Cellulose, however, has never been grown on a commercial scale, as the GAO points out in its new study. That means relatively little is known about how much water, fertilizer and pesticides it will take to grow it in industrial quantities. There’s virtually no information on what impact that’ll have on soil and water quality either, not to mention how much water and energy it will take to turn harvests into biofuel. 

This is just the latest news – much of it bad – for the emergent and yet booming biofuels industry, which begs the question: Isn’t it time to give up this pipe dream? 

But that doesn’t seem likely anytime soon. The buzz around biofuels is propelling any number of hair brained schemes. Besides cases of out-and-out fraud, there are plenty of dubious projects underway. Investor excitement over fuels made from such crops as corn and palm oil have driven up the prices of tortillas in Mexico and led to food riots in other countries. Plans to log this country’s publicly owned forests to feed biofuel plants, meanwhile, seem to make little sense for many reasons. One biggie is that climate scientists say we need to keep the world's remaining forests upright if we are too stave off more global warming.

If we are going to burn it, why bother turning wood into cellulose anyway? Why not just cut down the trees for firewood? O.K., O.K., before some smarty pants chimes in with a reason why burning woody biomass is better than lighting up a plain, old fashioned log, let me just say my point is rhetorical: Why embrace dirty alternative fuel made from finite resources when there are cleaner, more renewable options out there?

The House of Representatives just passed cap and trade legislation to combat global warming.

The final tally - webcast live on C-SPAN - was 219 to 212, largely along party lines, though more than three-dozen Democrats defected to vote against the legislation. 

The coal industry is having a tough week. Yesterday, the environmental and human toll of mountaintop removal coal mining was the subject of a Senate hearing. Today, the DC government announced a $2,500 fine to anyone using coal tar in pavement projects. 

Staring Jul. 1, DC will no longer issue construction permits for roadway and driveway builds involving coal tar. It will also be illegal to sell the stuff. Coal tar has been used as a pavement sealer for many years but comes with some nasty environmental side effects. The District Department of the Environment says the ban seeks to prevent toxic chemicals from being carried along with rainwater into the Anacostia and Potomac rivers and Chesapeake Bay.

Have you heard of mountaintop removal coal mining? The companies who do it prefer the more value neutral “mountaintop mining.” But the “removal” part is very descriptive.  The practice involves blowing off the tops of mountains to get at the coal underneath. Leftover rubble is dumped into the mountain valleys, burying hundreds of streams, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

This goes on mostly in Appalachia, so you may be wondering what it has to do with the District. While D.C. doesn’t have any coalmines or coal-fired power plants, the city relies on electricity from coal produced in other states, according to American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a trade association.

In my less than comprehensive Internet search, I have failed to unearth, so to speak, the exact amount of D.C.’s electricity that is fueled by mountaintop removal coal. (Does anyone know? Please share.) Suffice it to say, however, that if we go on this way S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford is going to have to come up with a different excuse next time he rendezvous with his Argentine paramour because the Appalachian Trail will be an even less viable excuse.

This brings me to my point: Activists fighting to end mountaintop removal and miners looking to keep the practice alive are set to face off on the Hill any minute now. The Senate Environment and Public Work Committee’s Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife is holding a hearing this afternoon that environmentalists and Appalachian activists hope will mark the beginning of the end of mountaintop removal.  Both sides have descended on D.C. by the busload. According to my sources, the first skirmish was over seating in the hearing room. But you don’t have to leave the comfort of your Internet connection because all the action will be webcast, live blogged and twittered.

Plenty of folks at this point (hat tips: Scott's Take, DCist) have pointed out that the Mayor's Conservation Corps---part of the city summer jobs program---have spent their first days on the job handing out paper doorhangers.

Many of them have ended up on the street and sidewalks, and then there's the obvious irony of promoting a green initiative by distributing tons of thick paperstock around town.

LL called up the D.C. Department of the Environment, which runs the Green Summer Jobs Program, and asked spokesperson Alan Heymann about the doorhangers and the ironical elements at play.

Read More "Why the City Is Promoting Conservation With 100,000 Paper Doorhangers" »

Well, it’s not the lawn, exactly, but the country’s most widely used weed killer that French scientists say also kills human cells and may cause miscarriages, abnormal fetal development and low birth weight babies.

Environmental Health News reports today that one of the inert ingredients in Roundup, the country’s most widely used herbicide, might not be so innocuous after all. The story goes on to say: Read More "Is Your Lawn Killing You?" »

This sounds like a bad summertime horror movie. The kind that’s beyond ridiculous but you still can’t quite wipe from your mind.

Now Playing! Dohn-DA, dohn-DA, dohn-DA, dohn-DA …  Attack of the Joyriding Jellyfish!

New research warns the spineless blobs are poised to take over the world’s oceans. It’s hard to deny the comic elements of this story but it’s also a pretty gruesome proposition. Jellyfish "blooms" have already evicted entire species of fish and will likely to take over more of the world’s watery real estate, according to Anthony Richardson, a biologist from Australia’s University of Queensland. 

Richardson, who has dubbed them "joyriding jellyfish," tells Mongabay that humongous infestations have been observed along the North Atlantic Coast, the Gulf of Mexico, the Mediterranean, and the Black and Caspian Sea. No word yet as to whether we’ll be seeing them this summer at Dewey Beach or Rehoboth. 

Did you know that much of the city’s trash is trucked to Fairfax County, where it is incinerated and turned into electricity? According to the Department of Public Works and the “waste-to-energy” industry, it's a "win-win" scenario; the trash disappears and the country reduces its dependence on foreign oil. What could be more patriotic, especially since officials say filters on the smokestacks keep nasty pollutants from escaping into the air around the Lorton plant.

Well, in a report released today, environmentalists take aim at those claims. Clean Water Action, the Toxics Action Center and six other groups from around the country are seeking to debunk the growing buzz around waste-to-energy plants as sources of clean “alternative” fuel. Their conclusion: an incinerator is an incinerator is an incinerator. 

"The core impacts of all types of incinerators remain the same: They are toxic to public health, harmful to the economy, environment and climate, and undermine recycling and waste reduction programs,” according to the report, “An Industry Blowing Smoke."