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Arctic Dance: The Mardy Murie Story

With the depressing news about the Arctic Refuge, I wanted to point to the inspirational story of Mardy Murie, mother of the American conservation movement, who played a central role in establishing the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Act in 1960 and the Alaska Lands Act in 1980.

Arctic Dance: The Mardy Murie Story is "a collaborative effort by a group of passionate filmmakers, writers, musicians, and biologists to produce the definitive film biography of this exceptional woman. Directed by Bonnie Kreps and written by Charlie Craighead, the documentary is both an intimate portrait of a well-loved national figure and a poignant historical document."

You can learn more and watch a preview at the documentary's website.

(Via Greener Magazine)

Water proves good fodder for two new books, fact and fiction

My rubber boots are ankle deep in mud. An overhang of moss supported by a wedge of ice taller than I am — ice that has likely never before been exposed — is dripping water onto my hat. It is August 2004, and I am standing on the North Slope of Alaska, at a spot […]

Will Waters Never Cease?

Aussie firms extract both clean energy and drinking water from ocean Among our many environmental problems, two of the most vexing are dwindling freshwater supplies and a dearth of clean energy. Now two Australian firms think they’ve hit on a way to tackle both at once: a desalination plant that could convert saltwater to freshwater, […]

Cabal and Chain

International Energy Agency predicts grim future Unless the industrialized world gets off its ass and starts weaning itself from oil, the future holds sky-high energy prices, a more than 50 percent rise in greenhouse-gas emissions over the next 25 years, and near-total dependence on a small cabal of Middle Eastern countries. This grim portent comes […]

Seattle’s waste dump is an example of how not to do things

Because I live so close to it, I take an interest in how well Seattle's north-end waste transfer/recycling station is run (as if that is not obvious by now, this being my third and, thankfully, last post on the subject). The Wallingford neighborhood in which it is located is known for its tolerant, liberal-minded denizens, which explains why, in addition to the waste transfer station, the city has also placed numerous mental halfway houses and drug rehab centers there.

Kansas School Board redefines science

The Kansas Board of Education has hit on an innovative way to stop the abuse of science: They just passed new science-curriculum standards that "rewrite the definition of science, holding that it no longer is limited to searching for natural explanations for natural phenomena."

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So, I am totally not a fan of Wife Swap -- the TV show that takes two very different households and has the two wives change places for two weeks. And I definitely did not see last night's episode where Susan Heiss, who lives in an upscale neighborhood in Rhode Island in a house with nine (9!) televisions and her husband Big "Bada bada bing!" Ed, switched lives with Sienna Kestral, an eco-conscious, dreadlocked freegan from Virginia.

Therefore I cannot report on how upset I was at the first half-hour of the show, wherein Susan Heiss ridicules the environmental lifestyle (no dishwasher or other modern appliances, baking soda and water for cleaning supplies, the "if-it's-yellow-let-it-mellow-if-it's-brown-flush-it-down" toilet mantra, etc.) of the Kestrals. When reading the first sentence of the Kestral family manual: "We are a community-minded, left-activist, eco-oriented ... radical family"; Susan responds, "I have no idea what those words mean." Oh, we have a looong way to go, middle America.

The two families couldn't have been more different at the outset, as demonstrated in their post-switch analysis:

Roman Catholic church in the UK teaches that Bible can be factually inaccurate

Here's an interesting development, from the U.K. Times Online:

The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church [in England, Scotland, and Wales] has published a teaching document instructing the faithful that some parts of the Bible are not actually true.

This includes the first 11 chapters of Genesis, wherein the earth and humankind are created in six days. It's a rebuttal to strict creationism.

Sometimes I have a sneaking suspicion that this is still news to some people: There are lots of different Christians, and they believe lots of different things. So in a sense, the publication of this teaching document doesn't really mean anything -- I'm pretty sure we're all going to keep on believing what we're believing. But it seems significant to me, and potentially to the environmental community, since, as the article points out, the Church has historically condemned those who don't take the Bible as the literal word of God.

Anyway, I just thought that was interesting (as did Matthew Wheeland at Alternet, who beat me to the punch.)

Is Kucinich politicizing science?

Last week, Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) introduced to the Congressional record a Resolution of Inquiry (H. Res. 515), cosigned by around 150 House Democrats, "demanding that the White House submit to Congress all documents in their possession relating to the anticipated effects of climate change on the coastal regions of the United States." (Press release; PDF of the resolution.)

The idea, according to InsideEPA.com (as quoted by Roger Pielke Jr. -- I don't have the required subscription), is to put pressure on moderate Republicans, who are increasingly coming around on the climate-change issue.

Observers say the ROI will present House Science Committee Chairman SHERWOOD BOEHLERT (R-NY), Rep. VERNON EHLERS (R-MI) and Rep. WAYNE GILCHREST (R-MD) with a critical choice between siding with their party in deflecting attention from the president's climate policies and their environmental records, which have won them praise and endorsements from environmental groups. Their decisions on the matter may prove crucial during their 2006 primaries, where at least one is expected to face a tough fight against a more conservative GOP candidate.

What to make of this?

Shanghai Hopes

China plans even bigger expansion of its clean-energy capacity China yesterday announced plans to more than double its clean-energy capacity — from 7 percent of electricity production today to about 15 percent by 2020, up from a previous goal of 10 percent. While this could make the country a leading global player in the hydropower, […]