The Bering Sea is known to scientists and conservationists as one of the most remarkable places on Earth — a home to sponges, coral, fish, crab, skates, sperm whales, orcas, Steller sea lions, and a vast array of other species all part of a delicate ecosystem extremely vulnerable to human activity. Take a look.

But here’s what’s new — as of this week, the Bering Sea is remarkable for another reason — it’s the impetus for a an amazing breakthrough in the way we work to protect our oceans.

“Environmentalism” and “going green” are so pervasive today it’s hard to imagine a time when those concepts were largely absent from popular discourse. When Rachel Carson released Silent Spring 50 years ago, it changed everything; not just for Carson, whose already-successful career took a dramatic turn, but for the emergence of the modern environmental movement.

William Souder’s insightful portrait of Carson, On a Farther Shore, is an account of her life and work, but it’s also a vital addition to our understanding of the current environmental crisis.

Today is the last day of the legislative session before Election Day. Lawmakers will go home to campaign on September 21, which is the earliest date during an election cycle in decades. And they leave a lot of pending legislation on the table. As John Boehner announced in the above clip, the House plans to adjourn without dealing with the farm bill. A bipartisan farm bill has already passed the Senate, and the House Agriculture Committee cleared their version months ago. But Boehner has been unable to line up support on the floor for it, out of an insistence that most of his caucus support it.

The House will take up its standalone disaster relief bill today, which will serve as a talking point in rural Republican districts as “action” being taken to respond to the historic drought plaguing the country. The House waited until the last possible day before the August recess to pass the measure, giving the Senate basically no time to concur. So there won’t really be action taken before the recess, but House members can say “I passed a bill and now the Senate must act.”

Lost in the shuffle yesterday amid the health care ruling and the contempt citation for Eric Holder was the deal reached on a minibus package for freezing student loan interest rates, extending surface transportation funding for two years, and reauthorizing for five years the flood insurance program. That package will get House and Senate votes by this afternoon, just beating key deadlines on all three measures, and allowing Congress to go home for the July 4th recess.

Three countries–one gets 29 percent of its electricity from nuclear power, one gets 26 percent from nuclear, and one gets 20 percent. Guess which one is winning the future. . . or, more to point, guess which one is not.

An alternative energy future is possible, but to get industry’s horses to take your there, you have to stop putting most of the hay in the wrong barns. Our government doesn’t seem to get that.