A growing cadre of consultants are specializing in helping developers and architects gain approval from the U.S. Green Building Council through its LEED certification program. “Going green used to be part of just a handful of organizations’ mission statements, but now it’s become part of everyone’s agenda,” said Ashley Katz, communications director for the Green Building Council. “That has, of course, increased the need for sustainability consultants.”

CLIMATE CHANGE

"We need a president who understands we can't solve the problems of global warming by giving windfall profits to the oil companies while ignoring opportunities to invest in the new technologies that will build a green economy," Hillary Rodham Clinton told the Democratic convention. 

"Republicans caution against the doomsday climate change scenarios peddled by aficionados of centralized command-and-control government," the platform draft reads. "We can -- and should -- address global warming without succumbing to the no-growth radicalism that treats climate questions as dogma rather than as situations to be managed responsibly." League of Conservation Voters president Gene Karpinksi, whose group has endorsed McCain's rival, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), said the platform language suggests McCain would follow in the footsteps on President Bush on the question of climate change.

Beneath ''Pro-Family Pro-Obama'' placards, a range of faith leaders framed poverty, climate change, human rights and abortion as not just policy causes but moral ones.

Environmental groups said the ice melt was another alarm bell warning of global warming.''This is not surprising but it is alarming,'' said Deborah Williams, a former Interior Department special assistant for Alaska. ''This was a relatively cool summer, and to have ice decrease to the second lowest minimum on record demonstrates that global warming's ongoing impact is profound.'' Sea ice is the primary habitat of polar bears.

CONSERVATION

Authorities said the dogs were never let out of their cages and rarely, if ever, touched by a human being. Sheriff's deputies first arrived on the property Saturday to serve a search warrant while investigating anonymous complaints of improper discharge of dog-related pollution into a dry creek bed.

Dream Catcher used to share part of its name, 'Equus Sanctuary,' with an L.A. County haven closed for violations. Donor confusion has halted fundraising.

According to "Visions of Caliban: On Chimpanzees and People" by famed primatologist Jane Goodall and Dale Peterson, the original "Clyde" was trained with a can of mace and a pipe wrapped in newspaper. He was viciously beaten the day before filming started to make him more docile. Near the end of filming the sequel "Any Which Way You Can," the orangutan was caught stealing doughnuts on the set, brought back to the training facility and beaten for 20 minutes with a 3 1/2 -foot ax handle. He died soon after of a cerebral hemorrhage.

SUSTAINABILITY

Wind Energy Bumps Into Power Grid’s Limits  (NY Times)
The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey went to federal court to try to stop the Bush administration from auctioning off airport landing slots in a market-based approach to easing congestion.

Grab your kids and some baskets and head out to the nearest U-pick farm for the freshest fruits and vegetables.

The World Bank said Tuesday that more people were living in extreme poverty in developing countries than previously thought as it adjusted the recognized yardstick for measuring global poverty to $1.25 a day from $1. While most of the developing world has managed to reduce poverty, the rate in sub-Saharan Africa, the world’s poorest region, has not changed in nearly 25 years.

POLLUTION / DEGRADATION

Nearly a year after federal epidemiologists first sounded the alarm over a cluster of rare blood cancers in northeastern Pennsylvania, their research has zeroed in on a hardscrabble region 80 miles northwest of Philadelphia that is home to several Superfund sites and a power plant fired by waste coal.

The carbon emissions of China's electric power sector will jump by about a third this year and surpass the total emissions of the U.S. electric power industry for the first time, according to a report by the Center for Global Development , a Washington-based think tank.

Ex-Engineer Guilty of Coverup at Nuclear Reactor
Jurors on Tuesday convicted a former nuclear plant engineer of hiding information from government regulators about the worst corrosion ever found at a U.S. reactor.

Nancy Floyd, a venture capitalist who invests in clean technology, told the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday: “There are thousands of entrepreneurs with new solutions and investors are lining up to back them. What’s missing is leadership from Washington.”

Traditional herbal supplements used by thousands of Americans may contain dangerously high levels of lead and other toxins, a study shows.

OFFSHORE DRILLING

In Santa Barbara County, where an oil spill devastated the coastline in 1969, the opposition against offshore drilling may be softening.

NATURAL DISASTER

Rising rivers in eastern India that swamped more land and homes yesterday have affected more than 2 million people, some of whom vented their anger by attacking officials trying to assess damage. Since the monsoon season began in June, torrential rains have killed more than 1,000 people in South Asia.

SOCIAL JUSTICE

Government teams have dug up more than 1,500 bodies, opening a window onto the calculated savagery. Attorney General Mario Iguarán, whose office oversees the exhumations, said in an interview that authorities think more than 10,000 bodies might still be scattered across the country. That number is three times as high as estimates made by human rights groups in 2005 after a forensics team unearthed dozens of bodies at a farm in northeastern Colombia that paramilitary forces had used as a base.

Diplomacy comforts the dictators of Burma.

AND FURTHERMORE...

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This news summary has been prepared for you by:

 Carole Ashkinaze
Editor / Writer / Communications Consultant

Washington, D.C.
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