Erica Peterson

The members of Louisville rock band My Morning Jacket appear in a new campaign by non-profit Earthjustice that opposes mountaintop removal coal mining.

There's an Air Quality Alert in effect today, and the Air Pollution Control District has already predicted that ozone levels will also be high tomorrow.

The Air Quality Index is forecast to be 106, which is unhealthy for sensitive groups, like the elderly, the young and those with heart and lung conditions.

For air quality updates, call (502) 574-3319.

A three-judge panel has voted two to one to strike down a new rule from the Environmental Protection Agency that would require some states to reduce pollution that travels across state lines. This puts the EPA in a difficult position.

The Louisville Air Pollution Control District is forecasting an unhealthy air day tomorrow, and has put an Air Quality Alert for ozone in effect.

The Air Quality Index is expected to be 104, which is unhealthy for sensitive groups.

For air quality updates, call (502) 574-3319.

Something that may be of interest to those who have had trouble breathing on some of Louisville's unhealthy air days this summer: increase your vitamin C intake.

The Louisville Free Public Library is launching a new series called "What's Next" to look at important issues coming up in the future. The first lecture in the series? A discussion about climate change.

From the news release:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has designated another 68 Kentucky counties, including Jefferson, as drought disaster areas.

With the new drought declaration, Bell, Harlan, Leslie and Perry counties are the only Kentucky counties not officially in a drought. These counties are all clustered in the southeast part of the state.

University of Kentucky meteorologist Matt Dixon says the drought has been months in the making.

An Illinois-based fishery is working to open a plant in western Kentucky to process large amounts of Asian carp into fertilizer and food. Asian carp is an invasive species, and has been slowly working its way toward the Great Lakes.

Schafer's--headquartered in Thompson, Illinois--is highlighted in a recent PBS story about Asian carp.

Kentucky's Division of Water has joined neighboring Indiana and Ohio in entering a water pollution credit trading program.

Basically, this program would allow power plants and other industrial facilities to avoid some controls--and pollute a little more--if they pay farmers upstream to control their runoff.

A recent deal to send millions of tons of Appalachian coal to India could bring billions of dollars to Kentucky coal producers over the next twenty-five years. But it’s not very good news for climate change.

The deal will ship up to nine million tons of Appalachian coal to India for the next 25 years. This is a lot of coal—nine million tons is actually about equivalent to the amount of coal purchased by the state of Virginia in 2010.