Over the last generation, a very few companies have gotten a stranglehold on the seed industry — raising prices and reducing innovation in the process.

Talk about dry. Farmers in the Murray River region of Australia are living through a decade of the worst drought on record. Blaine Harden, a Washington Post reporter, tells us of citrus farmers who have had to bulldoze their trees (after a half century in production). Brush fires killed 173 people earlier this year during a southeast Australia heat wave. "Rising temperatures and declining rainfall are, with increasing frequency, transforming the Outback into a crematorium for kangaroos, livestock and farm towns," Harden writes. 

But farmers here don't back global warming laws because they don't think their drought is caused by climate change. The Australian government can act to pay for programs to reduce the effects of drought, but there is stubborn resistance to climate change legislation. "We have got the science, we have got the money and we have got the policy, but we have not yet got our heads around the human factor," said Tim Stubbs, an engineer and project manager for the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists, which has advised the government on the Murray River. "I worry that we will spend all these billions and we still will not have fixed the river or persuaded farmers to change the way they think."

"We just need a good flood," said one farmer. "I think we are coming to the end of a 10-year cycle of drought," said another. Disbelief in the human impact on climate has led to defeats of Prime Minister Keven Rudd's push to cut carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. The legislature defeated a carbon trading system last week for the second time in less than six months. Good slideshow with this story.

The fight in the northeast over gas drilling took a turn Friday as Pennsylvania residents filed suit in federal district court to stop future drilling in the Marcellus Shale by Cabot Oil and Gas, a Houston-based energy concern, according to ProPublica reporter Abrahm Lustgarten. Companies are drilling (or plan to drill) in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and Western New York. The residents in this case claim their streams and fields have been damaged by toxic spills and that their drinking water has been contaminated. 

Lustgarten reports that the residents are alleging that "Cabot allowed methane and metals to seep into drinking water wells, failed to uphold terms of its contracts with landowners, and acted fraudulently when it said that the drilling process, including the chemicals used in the underground manipulation process called hydraulic fracturing, could not contaminate groundwater and posed no harm to the people who live there."

Lustgarten tells the history of conflict between the residents and Cabot. One woman's well exploded after a methane buildup. Methan and metals have been found in other wells in the area. The state has found that Cabot is responsible for several surface spills of fuel and fluids. "In addition to the cost of health care and health monitoring, the suit seeks compensation for the loss of property values in the rural area -- something that would allow affected residents there, if nothing else, to leave," Lustgarten reports.

Bloomberg's Jim Efstathiou Jr. writes about the threat the mayfly posses to mountaintop removal coal mining in the East. The Bloomberg reporter writes that applicants for new mines must show that they won't cause pollution that will adversely affect the mayfly. (Above.) Efstathiou writes: "That puts at risk about $3 billion a year in coal that operators led by Massey Energy Co. and International Coal Group Inc. extract in Appalachia, said Kevin Book, an analyst at ClearView Energy Partners LLC. Without fresh permits to dump debris, mines may shut by 2012 in states such as West Virginia, he said. 

'The future of mountaintop mining looks bleak,' Book, who is based in Washington, said in an interview. 'Ripping off mountaintops gets cheap clean coal, but there’s no way to do it without environmental impacts.'"

Deepmining coal adds from $3 to $10 a ton to production costs. Mountaintop removal accounts for 6 percent of U.S. coal production. And ending mountaintop mining in Appalachia would remove 70 million tons a year from the market, increasing the demand for western coal. "More than 1,200 miles (1,930 kilometers) of creeks and streams have been buried by mining debris in Appalachia from surface-mining techniques, including mountaintop removal, the EPA said in 2005," Efstathiou wrote.

The EPA for the first time has held up mountaintop mining permits because of potential harm to the mayfly.