From a report at NPR:

People who track killings of environmental activists say the numbers have risen dramatically in the last three years. Improved reporting may be one reason, they caution, but they also believe the rising death toll is a consequence of intensifying battles over dwindling supplies of natural resources, particularly in Latin America and Asia.

A report released Tuesday by the London-based Global Witness said more than 700 people -- more than one a week -- died in the decade ending 2011 "defending their human rights or the rights of others related to the environment, specifically land and forests." They were killed, the environmental investigation group says, during protests or investigations into mining, logging, intensive agriculture, hydropower dams, urban development and wildlife poaching.

The Global Witness report indicates that 106 activists were killed last year alone. In 2010, the figure was 96.

Photo by Austen Hufford.

Today marks a symbolic vote in the Senate: Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) is putting forward a Congressional Review Act resolution [PDF] that would stop the EPA's impending standards on mercury and other toxic power plant emissions in their tracks.

I won't rehearse all over again why the mercury rule -- mandated by court order, more than a decade overdue -- is such a big deal, or why further delaying it is a terrible idea, or how it fits into a comprehensive GOP plan to dismantle the system of U.S. environmental law, a plan relentlessly advanced by the most anti-environmental House in the history of Congress. Nor will I go on about how popular it is with the public. UPDATE: As Philip reported, and as expected, Inhofe's resolution was defeated in the Senate, 53-46.

I just want to mock the Romney campaign for a minute.

The EPA doesn't want you inhaling this.

Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS), a first-of-its-kind baseline regulating the emission of mercury (and, as you might have guessed, other airborne toxics) from coal- and oil-fueled power plants. Today, the Senate, led by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), will vote on blocking the regulation from ever taking effect. Thanks, Senate!

Obviously, everyone you know will be talking about this. Americans are obsessed with the intricacies of governmental regulation and the procedures by which they are overturned. So to ensure that you're the life of any party, we've put together this overview.

What is the Mercury and Air Toxics Standard?

The rule itself is straightforward. By reducing -- not eliminating -- mercury, sulfur dioxides, and particulate matter emissions, the EPA estimates that between 4,000 and 11,000 premature deaths can be prevented each year. That includes 4,700 heart attacks avoided, and 130,000 asthma attacks. The total economic benefits from this improved health are measured at between $37 billion and $90 billion annually.

The rule was originally proposed by the Bush EPA, but an appeals court determined that its scope was insufficiently broad. Last March, the EPA proposed a revised rule; last winter, they issued a final standard.

Twenty years ago, a 12-year-old rocked the Earth Summit in Rio with a plea to world leaders to get serious about saving the planet. Her name was Severn Suzuki, and today, she hands the torch to another young'un, Brittany Trilford, 17, who will address the leaders of 140 nations as the Rio+20 Earth Summit finally gets off to its official start.

Trilford hails from Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. Last winter, she entered the Date with History contest that invited young people to record themselves giving a speech to the leaders of the world about the future they wanted. She won the grand prize, a trip to Rio for the Earth Summit. She didn’t learn until later that she would actually have a chance to speak to at the summit in person.

Trilford’s date with history is at 9 a.m. Eastern time (that’s 6 a.m. on the West Coast). It should be webcast live here. Watch Grist for highlights later in the day, and a link to the video when it’s up. (See update at bottom of post.) Meantime, I caught up with Trilford yesterday with some questions about her speech, her prognosis for the planet, and how she got to be so freaking opinionated.

"OMG is that a drone?" (Photo by n0nick.)

The House of Representatives just set rules for debate on H.R. 2578, the "Conservation and Economic Growth Act," meaning it will come to the floor for a vote. (Every single bill currently proposed in the House must be titled with the words “economic growth” or “jobs” or both. If it doesn’t, the bill is put out on the Capitol steps and abandoned, where it sings doleful songs to passing children.)

Sorry. Got sidetracked.

Among 2,578 other things having to do directly or vaguely with land management, H.R. 2578 establishes a 100-mile zone within the borders of the United States in which U.S. Customs and Border Protection is given a free hand. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) thinks these measures are so important that DHS head Janet Napolitano deemed the effort "unnecessary" and "bad policy."

House Democrats, who oppose the measure, have labeled the 100-mile area the "Drone Zone," creating a website outfitted with intern-crafted, Twilight Zone-style graphics of a Predator drone sort of hovering over middle America. You are meant to be scared by this. As we mentioned yesterday, drones are the go-to bogeyman these days, the barely visible eye-in-the-sky that is taking out terrorists in Afghanistan and Yemen. (The "taking out" is not confirmed by the government; the term "terrorists" is not always supported by the evidence.) So, yeah, Drone Zone. Look out, America! Fine.

Here's what else H.R. 2578 would do: waive the application of each of the following laws [PDF] on any public land in that area.

Youth activists staged a "flash mob" at the Earth Summit talks yesterday, part of a broader effort to roll back subsidies for fossil fuels. (Photo courtesy of Human Impacts Institute.)

The Crazy Twitter Kids got a lesson in international diplomacy yesterday during a panel before the Rio+20 Earth Conference in Rio de Janeiro.

The panel was part of a broader push to end an estimated $1 trillion in government subsidies that go to fossil fuel companies around the world each year. At an event that has brought an incredible diversity of people to Rio, this was a largely white, Western bunch, with three Americans and a Scot (who currently resides in New York), no women (with the exception of Natural Resources Defense Council President Frances Beinecke, who introduced the event and then left), and a single researcher from India. Representatives of three environmental groups took turns arguing that it was time to stop pouring our tax money into oil, gas, and coal companies, and instead invest in clean energy like solar and wind.

“We’re handing a $1 trillion bill each year to the most profitable companies the world has ever seen,” said Iain Keith, a campaigner with Avaaz. “The measure of success this week will be whether or not we’re still paying $1 trillion to polluters after Rio.”

It was a clean, simple message at an event that has been characterized by cacophony and chaos, and even as the panelists spoke, it was going bananas on the Interwebs. Jamie Henn, communications director for the climate action group 350.org, beamed that, thanks to a “Twitterstorm” orchestrated by his group and others, the hashtag #EndFossilFuelSubsidies” had hit No. 2 on the list of top trending topics on Twitter worldwide. (No. 1 was “20FactsAboutMe.”) He rattled off the names of celebrities (Stephen Fry, Mark Ruffalo) and politicians (Nancy Pelosi, Mike Lee) who had added their voices to the storm. “We’re looking to see if that message can break through here in Rio,” he said.

If the conference room was any indication, it didn’t.

Friends, Americans, countrymen: WHERE IS YOUR PRIDE?

There was a day when the United States was a noble nation, a regular presence atop the podium, always leading the medal count. Now, the Canadians are eating our lunch -- and they’re not being nice about it. “Yeah, you guys used to win all these awards,” one Canuck told me last night. “I guess we’re on top of the heap now.”

He was talking about all the Fossil of the Day awards, of course -- the honor bestowed on the countries that are the biggest boneheads when it comes to working with the world to safeguard the planet. These dubious honors are being doled out here at the Earth Summit in Rio -- organized by the Climate Action Network and picked by popular vote -- and I can tell you, Americans, unless we get our act together, we’re not going to bring many of them home.

In the lead-up to the 2009 climate talks in Copenhagen, boosters branded the event “Hopenhagen.” Along those lines, the Earth Summit this week in Rio de Janeiro might be called “Rio-ality Check.” With just days to go, chaos and disagreement reign: It's a far cry from the master plan for a global green economy that world leaders promised to roll out. Nonetheless, on the fringes we’re seeing some interesting signs that the gathering here won’t be a complete waste of time.

Despite months of talks at the United Nations HQ in New York City and last-minute jockeying here in Rio, the delegates seem unable to agree on anything of any substance. Hell, they haven’t even been able to provide a consistent wifi connection here at RioCentro, a sprawling, heavily guarded conference center on the far edge of the city where the high-level talks are taking place.

This is outside your window right now, maybe. (Photo by quadrocopter.)

Did you hear that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is using drones to spy on farmers to track their movements and probably take away their Second Amendment rights and force them to use solar power and eat soy?

If you heard that, turn off Fox News. And maybe wean yourself off of Twitter.

A long time ago, the EPA discovered that it was much more cost-effective to monitor violations to the Clean Water Act by using small planes to fly over farms. As the Washington Post notes, the Supreme Court signed off on the practice in 1986, and it's only a very small part of how the EPA does enforcement.

In May, a group of U.S. senators sent a letter to the EPA asking about flyovers in Nebraska. A Twitter user with a fondness for eagles read "aerial surveillance" in the letter and tweeted "'security' drones." A conservative blog picked that up and, next thing you know, it's on Fox News. Fox, perhaps busy with other things, failed to call the EPA to ask whether the rumor was true.

Image by eldh.

Twitter is really great at letting you know about the weather. Twitter may be less great at impacting it. But two initiatives aim to try.

Activists from 350.org and partner organizations have launched a "Twitterstorm," encouraging people to tweet the hashtag #endfossilfuelsubsidies today. Their aim is to both draw attention to government underwriting of the fossil fuel industry and to put pressure on participants at the Earth Summit in Rio to take effective action on climate change.

They have a benchmark in mind: to best a record set by Justin Bieber fans in which the same message (wishing him a happy birthday) was tweeted 322,000 times in one day. Tracking the hashtag, it looks like they have a ways to go -- but any contest that aims to diminish the dominance of Justin Bieber is obviously one that receives my hearty endorsement.

Meanwhile, in Arizona, the Department of Transportation (ADOT) is having a poetry contest, as transportation agencies so often do. They've hit on a rarely recognized feature of Twitter: It's the perfect size for a haiku. (You remember haiku. A poem in three lines; five syllables, seven syllables, five syllables.)