Rounding up the year’s biggest environmental stories

Google has released its annual Zeitgeist, a compilation of data about popular search terms, and according to Treehugger, the three most popular environmental topics from the past year are “How to Compost,” “What is Vegan,” and “What Causes Earthquakes.” To mark the end of the year, many environmental websites are doing plenty of seasonal features, from holiday gifts for the philanthropist to the year’s best environmental journalism. Perhaps our favorite is “2011: The Year In Pee And Poop.”

In other news this past week...

Federal government limits use of grant money for chimp research

The National Institute of Health has stood up for the rights of chimpanzees, declaring they deserve “special consideration and respect” and adopting new rules on federal research grants. Under the new protocol, no money will be given for research that uses  chimps unless researchers show it’s necessary for human health and there’s no other way to accomplishing such research. A New York Times science writer says this is a “profound step” that has the potential to reshape research and public perception of lab animals.

Using the power of bioluminescence to track oceanic pollution

A marine biologists believes that bioluminescent creatures under the ocean could hold the key towards fighting pollution. Dr. Edith Widder has been making hundreds of dives in deep-sea submersibles and measuring the concentration of toxic chemicals in the sediment. By doing so, she can trace sources of pollution and figure out which hot spot areas have reached dangerous levels threatening the health of the ecosystem.

Willie Nelson says, “Occupy the food system”

In an opinion piece on Huffington Post, singer Willie Nelson makes the case that the Occupy Wall Street movement should turn its attention to Big Agriculture. He writes, “From seed to plate, our food system is now even more concentrated than our banking system. Most economic sectors have concentration ratios hovering around 40 percent, meaning that the top four firms in the industry control 40 percent of the market.”

Congress slips up; passes wrong pipeline safety bill

The Keystone pipeline continues to get a lot of attention, but there’s a lot of other disconcerting news in the drive to uncover non-renewable energy. For example, the federal government has just approved Shell Oil’s plan to drill for oil in the Arctic. For anybody who believes that pipeline safety is paramount to lawmakers, point them to this article in Politico where Congress made the slip-up of passing the wrong pipeline safety bill. Legislators approved an early version, not the final bipartisan compromise, which doesn’t say much about the ability of humans not to make errors when conditions aren’t room temperature but rather extremely cold.