Friday, 13 Jul 2007

As Long As the Sox Are OK

Study says climate threatens Northeast icons like lobsters and foliage

Imagine the Northeast without lobsters, snow, cranberries, and colorful foliage. Without that, you'd have -- what, white churches and crusty old lumberjacks? But all those natural icons are at risk from climate change, says a report the Union of Concerned Scientists put together with scientists and economists. "The character of this region is at stake," says UCS President Kevin Knobloch. "The emissions choices that we make today will lead to starkly different futures in our lifetime and certainly the lifetime of our children." In an area where average annual temperatures have climbed 1.5 degrees since 1970 -- and winter temps more than 4 degrees -- climate risks are real. Scientists say if temperatures keep rising, droughts could imperil agriculture, while warming ocean waters would prove inhospitable to crustaceans. Hardwood forests could die out, along with the spruce and fir that are key to the region's pulp and paper industry. One New Hampshire ski operator put it simply: "We're the affected."


When are public-transit rail projects a bad thing? When they come at the expense of a strong bus system that low-income working people of color depend on, argues Eric Mann. He's knee-deep in the fight over Los Angeles's public transit, working with other grassroots activists and the Bus Riders Union to fight a big increase in bus fares; the city's transit agency has raised the fares to help pay for cost overruns on expensive but relatively little-used rail lines. Mann tells the tale in Gristmill.

Airing on the Side of Caution

Chemical dangers to air-breathing animals overlooked, researchers say

A new study in Science says regulators have overlooked the effects that thousands of chemicals could have on air-breathing organisms. Such as, for instance, people. In general, regulators study how chemicals accumulate in aquatic-based food chains; they look at how toxics dissolve in water and fat, but not at how easily they're expelled from lungs. Canadian researchers say that's a problemo: as many as a third of the roughly 12,000 chemicals under review in Canada could accumulate in air-breathing animals. The pesticide lindane, for example, doesn't build up in fish -- but researchers have found it in wolves that eat lichen-munching caribou. "About one third of all the commercial chemicals that are in use right now belong in this group of chemicals that are potentially biomagnifying," says lead researcher Frank Gobas of British Columbia's Simon Fraser University. "In Canada, it will be three to four thousand. And our list of chemicals is small compared to the list of chemicals in the U.S. and E.U."


This week's interview with Michael Kieschnick, president of credit card and long-distance provider Working Assets, got readers hung up on the socially conscious company's affiliation with the not-so-socially conscious Bank of America. Today, Kieschnick admits that he harbors no delusions about the ease of looking out for the environment in an economy-focused world -- but he's not gonna leave the earth hangin', either. This week's InterActivist also responded to readers about health risks from cell phones, America's response to Hurricane Katrina, and why he couldn't do what he does without you. Aww.

Bowled Over

Mayors of 29 Great Lakes cities vow to cut water consumption

What's a Friday without some toilet talk? The mayors of 29 Canadian and U.S. cities in the Great Lakes region have agreed to cut water consumption 15 percent from 2000 levels by 2015, and one of their solutions is banning inefficient potties. "We need provincial legislation about low-flow toilets," said Toronto Mayor David Miller yesterday at a meeting of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative. "They need to be mandatory in home renovations." The cities -- including other big guns like Montreal, Chicago, Hamilton, Ont., and Buffalo, N.Y. -- also passed a resolution calling for a revolving loan fund to help fix leaky public water systems, and compared notes on conservation plans that 11 of them already have in place. "We are all under pressure to reduce greenhouse gases generated by [water treatment and distribution]," said Miller, whose city has exceeded its water-conservation goals. "And the silver lining is that municipalities save money through water conservation." Imagine that.