Yes, many of you completed Scarlett O'Hara's famous quote with Rhett Butler's famous retort. I get that. After all of my presidential messages in this journal, you are all ready to move on. However, I am planning to stick around. The progress of the last four years has excited me, so I am ready to do more things to help our Association grow. There are committees that need more volunteer help. I will still be around.

With the start of 2013, the roles of coeditors of Environmental Practice transition: I take on the role of lead coeditor while Dr. James Montgomery begins planning for his role as lead editor in 2014. Over the past year, the journal focused on a variety of topics, including green infrastructure, environmental ethics, and hydrofracturing. Strategic planning for the 2013 volume, with the assistance of Paul Looney and Roger Turner, has led to focus this year on a more international theme. While we have had manuscripts periodically on international topics, this year the editorial office made a strong effort to reach out to international authors and readers alike to bring a more global approach to understanding environmental issues. This special issue issue of Environmental Practice begins that international theme by focusing on the European Union (EU).

Since the beginning of the process aimed at achieving a shared European energy policy, various problems related to land use conflicts in agricultural contexts affected by large-scale green energy power plants have emerged within European countries as a major topic of national and local public debate. The examination and comparison of the relationships between current energy policies and the transformational processes of contemporary rural landscapes in two European regional contexts—the Beauce Plateau in France and the Alta Murgia region in Italy—suggests that a more transversal conception of both green energy and landscape policy may be needed. A hypothesis of working toward a new integrated approach to green energy and landscape policies emerges from the study, in addition to the potential to serve as the foundation for a set of landscape acceptability criteria for managing energy projects.

Environmental Practice 15:5–18 (2013)

Indicators can contribute to land use management, particularly in the context of sustainable urban development. Together with scenario analysis, they are key instruments in producing information for stakeholders and policy makers and aid their understanding of urban development processes. Based on such information, stakeholders and policy makers can understand better the driving forces, the current state of urban development, how their decision can influence the future trends, and what impacts their decisions can have on the urban landscape. This article presents an application of scenario modeling and indicator evaluation for sustainable land use management in the Greater Dublin Region, based on discussions with scientists, policy makers, and stakeholders in order to guarantee its relevance to practice. This research was a core contribution to the Strategic Environmental Assessment and the Habitats Directive Appropriate Assessment procedures (areas for conservation and protection) for the 2010 Regional Planning Guidelines for Dublin.

Environmental Practice 15:19–32 (2013)

Potential visual impact on coastal lands has emerged as a major concern in the development of offshore wind facilities in the United States and Europe. Optimal siting of offshore facilities requires accurate knowledge of the relationship between distance and the visibility of wind turbines. Past assessments of offshore wind turbine visibility were based on smaller turbines and facilities in use at the time and underestimate visibility for current projects, which use more and larger larger turbines. This study is a preliminary assessment of the visibility of offshore wind facilities in the United Kingdom. Study objectives included identifying the maximum distances the facilities could be seen in both daytime and nighttime views and assessing the effect of distance on visual contrasts associated with the facilities. Results showed that small to moderately sized facilities were visible to the unaided eye at distances greater than 42 km [26 miles (mi)], with turbine blade movement visible up to 39 km (24 mi). At night, aerial hazard navigation lighting was visible at distances greater than 39 km (24 mi). The observed wind facilities were judged to be a major focus of visual attention at distances up to 16 km (10 mi), were noticeable to casual observers at distances of almost 29 km (18 mi), and were visible with extended or concentrated viewing at distances beyond 40 km (25 mi).

Environmental Practice 15:33–49 (2013)

Biofuels are more environmentally friendly than fossil fuels but not necessarily sustainable. This article describes the legal power of the European Union (EU)—and the use of this power—to promote the sustainable use of the biofuels by formally binding criteria. The sustainability criteria laid down in the Renewable Energy Directive (RED) is analyzed, and explained is how it differentiates among biofuels on the basis of their environmental sustainability related to their processes and production methods. The use of these criteria has the twofold goal of making it possible to reduce greenhouse gas emissions caused by the use of fuels and to prevent the conversion of land characterized by high-carbon stock and high biodiversity for biofuel production. The EU rules do not prohibit trade of nonsustainable biofuels. The RED and the Fuel Quality Directive prohibit member states from counting nonsustainable biofuels as part of the fulfillment of their renewable energy obligations, and the European Community guidelines on environmental support are depriving the suppliers of nonsustainable biofuels from getting economic support. These EU rules may effectively eliminate the interest of the business in placing nonsustainable biofuels on the EU market. Thus, the EU exerts exterritorial jurisdiction by the way of the sustainability criteria. Only those sustainability criteria related to agroenvironmental practices are without effect on biofuel production outside the EU. The possible incompatibility of the EU rules and sustainability criteria with the World Trade Organization rules is discussed briefly. Mentioned are other examples of extraterritorial EU environmental criteria/schemes and several indications on the acceptance of such transnational protection of the environment.

Environmental Practice 15:50–61 (2013)

This article discusses the room for national maneuver (flexibility) in the implementation of two important European directives aimed at the improvement of air quality: the Ambient Air Quality Directive and the National Emission Ceilings Directive. Concrete examples of flexibility are time extensions for deadlines, the possibility for lowering standards, or the freedom to decide in which manner certain objectives like those for environmental quality are set. This flexibility is an important factor for the actual impact that these legal obligations could have on air quality. Evaluated is whether these directives are, considering the flexibility, actually capable of contributing to the environmental protection they seek to provide. The overall conclusion is that both directives set an inflexible environmental target and that a European level of ambition is being established.

Environmental Practice 15:62–71 (2013)

One main theme in the Rio+20 Conference was how to facilitate the growth of green industries. How can politicians more specifically promote renewable green industries such as wind turbines or solar energy? How can we get prices right in the market? Prices can be adjusted by the use of economic instruments such as taxes and subsidies. In this way, renewable energy sources and green industries become more competitive, thus enhancing the transition from brown to green economy. Not only can these economic incentives accelerate the so-called switch point in time from fossil fuel–based energy sources to those not based on fossil fuel, they also encourage innovation. An illustrative example of this logic in practice is the case of Danish wind energy production.

Environmental Practice 15:72–78 (2013)

The language barrier between science and policy is as large and often underestimated as that between British and American English. Although most of the words are the same, they often carry different meaning. One good example of this is the term theory, which has caused much trouble for policy makers in relation to school curricula on evolution. However, there are many other words that have one specific meaning when used by scientists and another more common meaning in everyday use. Translation difficulties may also arise from the particular phraseology and writing conventions used by scientists. These are often more subtle but can create just as much, if not more, trouble in the sound-bite world of mass media, especially in high-profile subject areas such as the effects of noise on marine mammals. Using an excerpt from a report in this subject area by the US National Research Council as a case study, the authors will provide some examples of where scientific language use can be misunderstood (and potentially even intentionally misused) by policy makers and stakeholders and offer some possible solutions to these issues. The intent is to facilitate communication between scientists and policy makers to order to improve management efforts.

Environmental Practice 15:79–83 (2013)

Forty-one years ago, in 1969, the air in St. Louis was fouled by emissions from a variety of smokestacks. Meatpacking plants, power plants, chemical plants, and other manufacturers discharged without restriction. Sanitary sewer plants pumped sewage treated to basic levels directly into the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, as well as local feeder streams, where it mixed with liquid discharges from manufacturing interests. Landfills accepted whatever people no longer wanted, and people who didn't want to wait for trash pickup just tossed garbage and waste out the window of their car.