NEWSBYJUAN-PABLO VELEZ

At the dawn of the 19th century, North America was the land of the bison. Tens of millions of the great beasts thundered ceaselessly across the continent in their swirling migrations. By the century's close, they were close to extinction, decimated by hunters racing to line the coats of Europeans. The demise of the bison went hand in hand with the conquest of the American West.

Today, about 31,000 of the furry bovines still roam free, the descendants of a last-ditch conservation effort in the early 20th century. These free packs are dwarfed by the 400,000 buffalo in commercial herds.

It would appear that the great plains are long over-due for a spot of rewilding: a number of scientists and conservation groups recently published an ambitious blueprint for the restoration of large, free-roaming bison populations.

Another rig down: this time, a natural gas platform off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. Venezuelan authorities claim that all 95 workers were safely evacuated and that the accident has been contained and poses no threat to environment.

With the whole world looking at the oil spill, and this being the glorious Bolivarian-socialist state, that’s what we’d be hearing even if gas was pouring into the Caribbean.

So, for now, it’s unclear whether this latest rig sinking is an environmental threat. Why the rug sunk is also unclear.

For the past few days, northern winds have kept the Gulf of Mexico oil slick from crashing into the beaches and wetlands of Louisiana. Last night, our luck ran out.

Oh, and another cheery bit of news: it looks like the oil is actually leaking at a rate of 5,000 barrels a day, fives times faster than the initial estimate. At that pace, it will now take the Deepwater Horizon spill only a couple of months to one-up the Exxon-Valdez disaster.

Attempts to use robots to turn off the well at the source - 5,000 feet below water, on the ocean floor - are going nowhere, so we’ll be waiting at least half that time before BP can deploy a dome to catch the leaking oil as it rises to the surface. While this trick has worked before, it has never been attempted in deep water. If that fails, we’re looking at 2 to 3 long months for oil rigs to plug the leak with mud and concrete.

First the Great Barrier Reef, now the Gulf of Mexico - barely two weeks later, we're on the brink of another major oil spill. In Australia, disaster was narrowly averted. Not this time.

Let's start at the beginning.

On Tuesday night, an oil platform 50 miles off the coast of New Orleans burst into flames. It burned for a day and a half before sinking into the sea early on Thursday, raising fears about the possibility of a major oil leak from the well below. Already, a 1-by-5 mile oil slick haloed the platform’s smoldering remains.

Big news from the sustainable business front: computer giant IBM has asked its 30,000 suppliers to green up their act. First, each supplier is to create an environmental management system (EMS) suited to their business. An EMS is a tool that companies use to track and continually improve their environmental performance - the ecological footprint of their business processes, products, and services. They must measure their energy conservation, greenhouse gas emissions, and recycling practices; make these results public; and set goals for improvement.

IBM's EMS requirement is, well, a BFD. IBM is the world’s largest technology company, and its supply chain stretches across 90 countries.The firm has tremendous purchasing power. Many of its suppliers depend on IBM’s business for their survival. This means they’ll listen, because they can’t afford not to. Plus, IBM is pushing its suppliers to turn around and tell their suppliers to move in the same direction, so their decision should have cascading effects.

Though the company did not set a firm deadline for itself, it aims to get this done by the close of 2011.

Let's Raise A Million is a student-led environmental justice project based in Atlanta, Georgia dedicated to bringing energy and water efficiency to low-income and minority communities. The idea is simple: a crew of students go door to door, swapping out incandescent bulbs for CFLs and installing low-flow shower heads and sink nozzles. For free.

“Environmental justice is a very hard message to apply to these types of neighborhoods. We wanted to adapt the discussion of climate change and make it more applicable to their everyday lives,” says Richard D. Merritt, a senior at Morehouse College who helped found the project.

After attending Powershift, the first national youth summit on climate change, back in 2007, Merritt and his two co-founders wondered how they could make climate action relevant for folks who were struggling to make ends meet. They decided to hone their message by focusing on the lower utility bills that simple electricity and water retrofits bring, and by finding sponsors to make these fixes affordable - indeed free - to those most in need.

“We said why should only people who can afford the upfront costs reap the benefits of energy efficiency? As things stand, you have to have money to save money, which shuts out the people who need it the most,” says Merrit.

The U.N. climate talks groaned back to life from their post-Copenhagen hangover last week, as negotiators descended on the picturesque West German city of Bonn. The mood was generally dour, rich-poor country tensions flared, and discussion was marred by discord and division - what else is new?

The bottom line - barring a miracle, we won't see a fair, ambitious, and binding treaty in 2010. U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer said so himself in a remark about the talks' shifting goal posts: "We reached an agreement in Bali (in 2007) that we would conclude negotiations two years later in Copenhagen, and we didn't. The finishing line has now been moved to Cancun, and I wouldn't be surprised if the final finishing line in terms of a legally binding treaty ends up being moved to South Africa," in 2011.

Not in the Copenhagen Accord? No money for you! The Obama administration has just announced that it will be denying climate aid to Bolivia and Ecuador for their boycott of December's woefully inadequate climate deal.

Here's how Todd Stern, the U.S.'s chief climate negotiator (pictured above), put it to the Washington Post: "There's funding that was agreed to as part of the Copenhagen accord, and as a general matter, the U.S. is going to use its funds to go to countries that have indicated an interest to be part of the accord."

In the State Department's original request to Congress for international climate aid, Bolivia was to get $3 million and Ecuador $2.5 million. Stern said the decision was not "categorical," meaning other countries that opposed the accord might not get the axe.

An environmental nightmare is in the making: A Chinese coal freighter has slammed into the Great Barrier Reef and is threatening to spill up to 1,000 tons of fuel oil into the planet's largest marine ecosystem. (Click here for video footage.)

The Shen Neng 1 was carrying coal en route to China when it ran into the reef at full-speed. It had wandered 9 miles from its authorized shipping channel, into a protected section of the reef that is off-limits to shipping. It's not yet clear why the ship strayed so far from the open water shipping lanes that 6,000 ships navigate safely each year.

Greenpeace recently released a report that skewers Koch Industries, the least progressive oil giant you've never heard of, for funding the climate denial machine and corrupting the political process.

Based in Wichita, Kansas, Koch is the second largest privately-held company in the United States. The industrial colossus operates in a dozen industries, including oil refining and mineral mining, chemicals, textiles, ranching, financial trading, and paper products. Brothers Charles and David Koch, who own the conglomerate, are each worth of $16 billion. (They are tied as the 9th richest men in the U.S.)

According to the report, Koch's foundations poured $24.8 million dollars into around 40 climate denial organization between 2005 and 2008. This nearly triples the donations of ExxonMobil, who has been the whipping boy on this issue. The Koch brothers' shopping list reads like a who's who of libertian-denialist outlets: the Cato Institute, which Charles Koch co-founded, got $1 million; Americans for Prosperity, a group founded and chaired by David Koch, got $5 million; the Heritage Foundation got $1.6 million.

Among other accomplishments, the Koches' dirty web hyped the ClimateGate "scandal," ran that spread misinformation about climate science, and exaggerated the cost of climate policy. Now Koch is getting in the dubious scientific exhibit game.