NEWSBYTARA LOHAN

Walmart is the largest jewelry retailer in the world, so you'd think it would be a major victory when the company came out with their Love, Earth jewelry line, designed to be a transparent operation that would ensure the jewelry was environmentally- and socially responsible. The line was also supposed to be a pilot program to help transform the jewelry business, which is notorious for its abuses of both people and the land.

But so far, it looks like Love, Earth has accomplished little.

Jean Friedman-Rudovsky, a La Paz, Bolivia-based freelancer for TIME and an ABC News producer, wrote, "While Love, Earth may shine like gold, that's only varnish. Underneath, its anatomy is greenwash: The product is no better for the environment -- or the people who manufacture it -- than a standard piece of jewelry."

Friedman-Rudovsk wrote an expose recently for the Miami New Times after meeting with Bolivians working in sweatshop-like conditions to manufacture the jewelry for paltry pay and without property safety equipment. Their working conditions were a far cry from what could be considered socially responsible.

A recent report about the carcinogen chromium 6 in drinking water from the Environmental Working Group (EWG) garnered a lot of headlines and a lot of people wondering if they should be drinking bottled water instead. The answer to that question is usually no. Estimates are that around 40 to 50 percent of bottled water in the U.S. comes from the same source as tap water. Tap water is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which requires way more testing than the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is responsible for bottled water. Plus, bottled water creates a ton of waste, with the minority of the containers making it into the recycling bin.

Now, another report from the EWG paints an even grimmer picture of bottled water companies. Since 2009, bottled water sold in California is required to provide information on the label revealing the source of the water. Packages must also list two ways in which consumers can contact the water bottling company to get a report on the quality of the water.

Now, two years later, it seems that water bottlers are not being too compliant. EWG looked at 96 different kinds of bottled water in the state and found that only 24 percent were following the law. Let's let that sink in a minute — fewer than one-quarter of bottled water brands were compliant with state law. And, to throw a little salt in the wound, EWG also found that labels on bottles sold in California listed their source less often than those on bottles sold in other states.

I'm not a big fan of our government's so-called "war on drugs." Except, of course, when we're referring to the seemingly growing interest by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the amount of antibiotics that are being used in the animals that we eat.

For the first time ever, the FDA released its estimate on how much antibiotics were given to animals used in food production. That number is a shocking 29 million pounds this past year alone. At least that number seems shocking to me, but there's little basis to compare it to as this is the first year that such an estimate has been released.

As a reference though, about 10 years ago a veterinary trade group put the estimate at about 17.8 million pounds a year, a number that many non-profits thought to be too low, writes Grist's Tom Philpott. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) guessed the number to be around 24.6 million pounds for antibiotics that were used not for treating illnesses, but for making animals grow faster and preventing them from getting sick in their factory farm environments.

It's impossible to know how much drug use has changed over the past 10 years or if concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) are using more or less than they were before. Because we seem to be packing more animals into CAFOs these days, it's hard to imagine that we could be using less. But here's another point of reference to put farm animals' drug use into perspective: "I took another look at that classic UCS report, called ‘Hogging It: Estimates of Antimicrobial Abuse in Livestock,’" writes Philpott. "In it, the group estimates that total U.S. antibiotic production stands at 50 million pounds. Assuming that's roughly still correct — again, the paper came out in 2001 — that means factory animal farms use a stunning 60 percent of all U.S. antibiotics." And you thought Lindsay Lohan had a drug problem.

If you didn't know that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge just turned 50, don't worry, there is still time to get a nice gift. What ANWR really needs is a status update —and not on Facebook. A growing campaign is calling on Obama to designate ANWR a national monument to help keep it out of reach of the drilling industry's oily hands.

For decades there has been pressure to drill in ANWR — an area of 19 million acres that is now most commonly described as one of the last, true wild places left in the U.S. You likely have never been and neither have I (not yet, anyway) and neither will most Americans — unlike more easily accessibly national monuments, this one benefits us in a different sense. It preserves life for communities of indigenous people and as Athan Manuel, director of the Sierra Club's land protection program writes, "It's the place where massive caribou herds roam, and where polar bears raise their young. It's home to thousands of birds that we all see each year when they migrate to the lower 48."

Sometime this fall, Hillary Clinton is going to announce the winner of the Secretary of State's Award for Corporate Excellence. Some of the contenders are downright laughable. To be fair, there's no BP on the list, but there are a bunch of corporations that could be considered questionable, to put it lightly. I can't see how a company can receive an award for corporate excellence when they have a disregard for the environment and the communities in which they operate.

So, Secretary Clinton, please let me know why Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Fiji Water are all on your list. There is ample reason to take issue with various facets of how Pepsi and Coca-Cola do business, but for now, I'm just going to focus on what all three of these companies have in common — selling bottled water.

The award is apparently designed to "recognize American companies who are global leaders in corporate social responsibility," but the environmental impacts of selling single use plastic water bottles can in no way be considered responsible. Both bottled water brands sold by Coke and Pepsi (Dasani and Aquafina) are repackaged tap water drained from municipal sources and then sold back to consumers for hundreds of times the cost, contributing to the 38 million plastic bottles that are tossed into the garbage each year in the U.S. Communities in India have also reported that Coke's bottling facilities there have poisoned drinking water and sucked agricultural water sources and wells dry, leaving rural communities without drinkable water or the means to grow food.

When it comes to our transportation future, there is only one thing I want more than a plug-in hybrid VW camper van (oh, and a bike trailer that my dog doesn't think will kill him). That's high speed rail.

I know, high speed rail exists—and excels—in other parts of the world. But I want it for the U.S. I want beautiful, clean, fast trains that link metropolitan areas together. And I want it to be affordable for everyone.

I'm not alone in that wish. With a global warming crisis breathing hotly down our necks, there has been a bit of a rail renaissance going on in the U.S. The Washington Post reported that Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood recently dished out $2.4 billion for high-speed rail in 23 states, in addition to $8 billion in stimulus funds given out already. A cool $3 billion went to my home state of California and I'm hoping it will be put to good use. So far all I've seen of our stimulus money has been road paving, road paving and more road paving. My shock-less car thanks the government, but our environment needs something much better.

The Post reported that, "Rail advocates sketched a vision Monday for a 17,000-mile network linking U.S. cities with electric trains capable of traveling at 220 mph." This is music to my ears. There's just one problem: A few incoming GOPers have to be haters. Those haters include the governor-elect of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, who promised to kill a rail project thank would link midwestern cities including Milwaukee and Madison.

Coca-Cola is about to reach the final frontier — the last place on earth that has not (yet) succumbed to the company's syrupy-sweet charm (or rather, its vast marketing resources). That place, according to a new article by Duane Stanford in Business Week, is Africa.

Like Nestle building its "supermarket" barge to convert Amazonians to junk food, the corporate behemoths of the food and drink world are having to get creative in order to rake in even more loot. Apparently, sales for sodas in the States are starting to stagnate. Americans, it seems, are finally catching on to the fact that sugary sodas and obesity are fast friends. Stanford reports that in 1989, North Americans threw back $2.6 billion worth of Coke, and now, two decades later, that number has only grown to $2.9 billion. We don't love our Coke as much as folks in Mexico do, where the average number of Cokes drank per year is 669 a person. Markets in India and China are apparently saturated with soda. Africa is where it's at — one final continent left to exploit.

So, is this good news for Africa? "Coca-Cola will rely on some of the poorest nations to generate the 7 to 9 percent earnings growth it has promised investors," wrote Stanford. "Chasing shillings in Nairobi is the sign of both a healthy company expanding its borders and an empire so mature that it must, for its last great push, reach into many of the most war-torn and impoverished countries on earth," writes Stanford.

Oh Chevron, you make it way too easy to hate you. It's not enough that Chevron is responsible for 18 billion gallons of toxic waste dumped in Amazon rainforest that the company won't clean up. Or that they're spending millions to try and lubricate legislators into letting them build an even dirtier facility in Richmond, California -- where people are already sick from their mess.

But now, as Paul Tullis wrote last week, they've launched new ad campaign called "We Agree," designed to make us think they actually care about renewable energy. As Tullis writes, Chevron claims to be investing millions in renewable energy technology -- but "millions" is peanuts compared to the $15.9 billion the company made in just the last three months.

California is well touted as an agricultural capital of our country. The state's 81,000 farms and ranches pull in approximately $36 billion a year. But some of that farming comes at an environmental and economic cost — one that's getting dangerously high in some places.

While pictures may make farming in California seem idyllic — with warm, sunny days and fertile, green fields — the truth is that in some parts of the state, agriculture has only been accomplished by irrigating the heck out of desert. Literally. A new report from the Environmental Working Group (EWG), "Throwing Good Money at Bad Land," shows that farming in areas like the Westlands water district in the California Central Valley is doing more harm than good.

Recently Nicole Makris wrote about how the world is losing 75 million acres of precious farmland a year because of industrialization. In this case the tragedy is the loss of farmland. In parts of California, EWG is advocating for taking farmland out of production for the good of the environment and taxpayers.

Here's the deal: The soil in Westlands, in the western part of the San Joaquin Valley, contains high amounts of selenium, which, when irrigated, seeps into groundwater. If not properly drained from the soil, the selenium poisons crops, pollutes drinking water, and causes ecological problems to fish and wildlife when it gets into waterways.

As far as I know, Oprah has never covered the issue of 'fracking' (otherwise known as hydraulic fracturing) on her program—that would be the ultimate sign that this issue had become fully embedded in our public consciousness. But, we may be close.

A few years ago, not many people had ever heard of fracking, the process used to get natural gas out of the ground by shooting a slurry of water and undisclosed chemicals underground. But now, this issue is becoming much more well-known, thanks mostly to the fact that the gas drilling industry wants to build thousands of wells in upstate New York (they've already been fracking next door in Pennsylvania), home to the water supply for New York City's millions. And, get this, a few of those million people happen to be famous.

A whole bunch of local residents—farmers, environmentalists, concerned citizens and um, actor Mark Ruffalo—are working on massive public education efforts and are lobbying state and federal governments to step in to halt the practice of fracking, which has been wreaking havoc on watersheds in Pennsylvania, Wyoming, Colorado, Texas and wherever else fracking has gotten a toe hold.

But what's also gotten a toe hold has been news stories, and big ones at that, explaining the hazards of fracking.

Just this week Good Morning America had a story titled, "Biggest U.S. Industrial Accidents May Be Waiting to Happen," that talked about the risks associated with fracking. And on October 4 Mark Ruffalo made an appearance on MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show," where Maddow coined the t-shirt slogan, "Don't Frack Me Bro" and spoke with Ruffalo at length about why upstate New Yorkers are concerned.