By IAN AUSTEN
Quebec province, anticipating continued strong growth for its natural resources, has rolled out an ambitious 25-year plan to develop its vast but sparsely settled northern and Arctic regions.

The region is well endowed with mineral resources, woodlands and potential hydroelectric developments, but it currently lacks the roads, railways and other infrastructure necessary for their exploitation.

This scares everybody, the fact that we can't stop this well," - BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles, May 29, 2010: More oil-spill responders hospitalized and exposure information gaps persist

Reporting from New Orleans and Los Angeles

As the Louisiana sun beat down on the Westwego Seafood Market, the aisles were as empty as the coolers. Fish hawkers paced alongside sparsely filled counters dotted with shrimp and crabs, calling out in strained voices to the few customers strolling by. Many of the outdoor stalls were boarded up. There wasn't a single oyster to be had. Just a week ago, the market outside New Orleans was packed with crowds grabbing up shellfish for their crab boils, oysters Rockefeller and shrimp etouffee. One load of shrimp — about 350 pounds, at $5 a pound — disappeared in an hour.

I read a couple of articles this morning talking about the environmentally irresponsible behavior of the VIPs attending the conference in Copenhagen this week.

- More private planes than the city's airport can handle.

Could we, the human race, really miss an ever-narrowing chance to save the planet from the ravages of global warming? "The Age of Stupid," which will be screened in hundreds of venues around the world next week, contemplates this grim scenario with the open aim of galvanising a collective effort to prevent it.

Former UN chief Kofi Annan is expected to attend a special "green carpet" showing in New York Monday, on the eve of the world's first United Nation's climate summit.

There was a horrifying report in The Denver Post on Aug 21 that told of 1,300 children being poisoned by pollution from a manganese-processing plant.

This occurred just days after emissions from a lead smelter in another province sickened hundreds. The people are protesting but this tiny article on page 19A one paragraph long is the canary in the coal mine in regards to the terrible toll the Chinese people are paying in the name of economic development.

The Scripps research vessel (R/V) New Horizon left its San Diego homeport on Aug. 2 for the North Pacific Ocean Gyre, roughly a thousand miles off California's coast. With collaborators from Project Kaisei, the team is surveying plastic distribution and abundance, collecting samples for analysis in the lab and assessing the impacts of debris on marine life.

The scientists and research volunteers onboard are seeking scientific data on just how much influence the accumulation of human-produced plastic and other debris has on this ocean area. Prior to this cruise, very little was known about the size of the "garbage patch" and threats to marine life and the gyre's biological environment.

(CNN) -- The world's oceans are full of trash, causing "tremendous" negative impacts on coastal life and ecology, according to a U.N. report released Monday.

Trash clutters the world's oceans, as shown here near Hong Kong.

More than 20,000 dolphins and porpoises are being slaughtered every year in a cove in Taiji, Japan. Their meat, containing toxic levels of mercury, is being sold as food, often times labeled as whale meat. Courageous documentary filmmakers infiltrated the heavily guarded cove to uncover the truth about what's going on there, expose it to the world, and protect the 20,000 dolphins that will swim by Taiji next year. The movie they made, The Cove, is in theaters now so we have an incredible opportunity to take action and put a stop to this.

Please sign the petition End the Brutal Killing of 20,000 Dolphins in Taiji, Japan today.

Taiji Town: Ground Zero for the World’s Largest Dolphin Slaughter

Taiji is a small fishing village located on the southern part of the Japanese archipelago at the tip of the peninsula that extends into the Pacific Ocean.