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Don’t It Make My Brown Eggs Blue

U.S. bans imports of beluga caviar to help conserve sturgeon The U.S. — destination for 60 percent of the world’s beluga-sturgeon caviar — yesterday announced a ban on beluga imports from the Caspian Sea, where sturgeon stocks have plunged by about 90 percent in the past two decades, a casualty of pollution and unlawful harvests. […]

Tax gas more and other stuff less

Not so long ago, it seemed like gas at $2.33 a gallon cost an arm and a leg; now it seems like a bargain. And not surprisingly, high prices at the pump have spawned a backlash against fuel taxes across the U.S. -- and have added fuel, so to speak, to the campaign to repeal Washington state's most recent gas tax hike.

As a general matter, I think responding to high gas prices by rolling back taxes is misguided. The specifics get murky, of course, since a lot of the money raised by gas taxes is slated for dubious highway projects -- so a vote for higher gas taxes isn't always a vote to reduce gas consumption. But in general, gas taxes are too low, not too high: Right now, they don't even pay for roads, let alone incorporate all of the other external costs (pollution, greenhouse gases, noise, collisions, congestion, etc.) caused by driving and burning fossil fuels. A stiff & sustained gas tax would do a lot more to reduce gas consumption than all the preaching in the world.

Bartlett’s conference

This Monday, Rep. Roscoe P. Coltrane Bartlett (R-Md.) convened a big ol' conference on peak oil, including speakers Kenneth Deffeyes, Matthew Simmons, and other such brainy energy types. Energybulletin.net has the transcript (parts one, two, and three), as well as a roundup of news and blog covereage. Check it out.

Cali Reclamation Board tries to slow development on floodplains; Arnold fires it

Carl Pope is right: this is just bizarre. In the wake of Katrina and Rita, levees and flood control are on everyone's mind. The California Reclamation Board, which oversees flood control on the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers (the state's two biggest), has been growing increasingly leery of developing in those floodplains without additional protections.

Many stretches of Central Valley levees were built decades ago to protect farmland; they are now aging and weakening at the same time they are being expected to protect thousands of new homes.

In an interview several months ago, [board member Jeffrey F.] Mount said, "We need regional land use planning so we don't continue to build behind these agricultural levees."

Also, he said, a mechanism is needed to pay for strengthening existing levees, and flood insurance should be mandatory.

"Everything I'm saying, of course," Mount said, "will be violently resisted by the building industry."

The need for better protection was so severe that a bipartisan group of California Congressfolk sent a letter to Schwarzenegger pleading for funding:

Scientists trace SARS to bats, blame human mucking with nature

In a move likened to “a microbiological episode of CSI,” a team of scientists has uncovered the culprit behind a disease that shook the world — and that could very well strike again. Researchers announced today that they’ve traced the global SARS epidemic, which spread to 26 countries and infected thousands of people, to one […]

Biomimicry in Newsweek

All my environment-related RSS feeds go into a single "green" folder (in Thunderbird). I returned from paternity leave to find that folder bulging with more than 4500 unread entries. Eek. Thus far I've been too scared to even open it.

All of which is to say, I'm sure someone's already covered this. But Newsweek has a nice little article on biomimicry that's worth reading. It recounts various lessons engineers have learned from nature and the nifty widgets they've built. Nothing new for folks familiar with the subject, but a friendly intro.

"If you have a design problem, nature's probably solved it already," says Janine Benyus, cofounder of the Biomimicry Guild. "After all, it's had 3.8 billion years to come up with solutions."

...

"The truth is, natural organisms have managed to do everything we want to do without guzzling fossil fuels, polluting the planet or mortgaging the future," says Benyus.

Indeed.

Time to abandon the ‘population’ frame in favor of women’s empowerment and sustainable development

One last thing on the American Prospect environment package: Adam Werbach's piece on population is brilliant, and by that I mean it expresses my own position.

The basic point is that the "population movement" is a bad idea. Not only is the notion that the world's problems come down to a matter of raw numbers wrong on the merits, but it's terrible framing and terrible politics. It attracts unsavory folks whose opposition to immigration has as much to do with xenophobia and racism as with ecological concern. It comes off as misanthropic, Malthusian, and insensitive to the plight of the poverty-stricken, activating all the worst stereotypes about environmentalism. Population activists are, says Werbach, "fighting a losing battle against history, language, and commonly understood mythologies that attract the wrong types of allies."

The solution? Reframe the movement as "a women's empowerment and sustainable-development movement."

If we reject the population-control frame in favor of the goals of women's emancipation and sustainable development, we may achieve a healthier and more stable population, without inviting the unwelcome embrace of ugly exclusionists.

That's exactly right.

Strife After Death

“Death of Environmentalism” authors offer follow-up Among a series of stories on environmentalism’s fortunes in the latest issue of The American Prospect is “Death Warmed Over” by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, a follow-up to their notorious “Death of Environmentalism” essay of last year. In their latest treatise, argues Grist‘s David Roberts, they condescend to […]

Crichton testifies before Congress

Not always. And definitely not yesterday at the Senate Environment and Public Works committee hearing on the role of science in environmental policy making.

Such an important topic demands the opinions of distinguished scientists and policy makers, right? Wrong. Headlining the hearing was none other than science fiction author Michael Crichton, whose latest book, State of Fear, takes on the science of global warming and the evil environmentalists behind it. (Read Dave's review here.)

I couldn't face watching it, but the brave scientists at Realclimate.org did. Their summary is worth a read.

Oil poster

Forget pin-up girls and rock bands. The hip new thing for dorm room walls is the oil poster, and handily distilled summary of historic oil production and its inevitable decline. Chicks dig it!