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Call Me Fishmeal

Cape Cod’s namesake may not rebound unless fishing is further curtailed Cod off the Massachusetts coast have declined almost 25 percent since 2001, and some fear the once-abundant fish may never bounce back unless fishing is further restricted. Many marine scientists worry that the overall cod population may be well below what’s needed for survival […]

The Expiration Superhighway

Sales of endangered critters rampant on the web What do deviant porn and endangered elephants have in common? No, not that, you twisted perv! The answer: Both are easy to find in the anonymous wilds of the world wide web. The International Fund for Animal Welfare found that in just one week, nearly 9,000 wildlife […]

David B. Williams sends dispatches from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

David B. Williams is a freelance natural-history writer based in Seattle. He is the author of The Street-Smart Naturalist: Field Notes from Seattle and has written for Smithsonian, Popular Mechanics, National Parks, and The Seattle Times. Friday, 29 Jul 2005 SEATTLE, Wash. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is at the center of one of the […]

Swimming out to the exurbs

What could be even more appalling to James Howard Kunstler and company than the suburbs? The exurbs.

If the extension of government services to the suburbs is a huge money sink, the extension of those services to the exurbs is a black hole. This is one issue mentioned in the three letters to the editor in response to the NYT article.

KB Home is the big, bad developer in this story, and the exurb in question is New River, Florida.

They know almost to the dollar how much buyers are willing to pay to exchange a longer commute for more space, a sense of higher status and the feeling of security.
...
The answer, the company decided, is that a house in New River must be $12,000 cheaper than the same house in the north Tampa suburbs, 15 minutes closer to downtown.

Suddenly, the situation described in last week's Washington Post article doesn't sound that bad -- many things are a five-minute drive, and everything is a fifteen-minute drive away.

The effects of three-dollar gas occur on different timetables in different sectors of the economy. The retail industry may be feeling the effects already. It takes longer for people to switch to more fuel efficient cars, and even longer for people to express that they value a shorter commute by increasing the demand for homes that aren't "in the middle of nowhere."

Might it be time to concede that people are unwilling to relinquish cars and instead promote communities where car use can be minimized?

Avian flu is on its way, and we are not prepared

Never let it be said that I ignore signs sent to me by the internet gods.

Today two of the smartest folks I know separately wrote me and urged me to blog about the rising threat of avian flu and the developed world's dangerous inaction. Instead, I'm going to let them do it for me.

Tom's Dispatch is hosting a stellar piece of writing by Mike Davis, author of the just-released The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian Flu. It is a fairly easy-to-read primer on the threat the flu poses and the state of our preparedness (which is not -- spoiler alert -- good). Here's a taste:

As for a universally available "world vaccine," it remains a pipe-dream without new, billion-dollar commitments from the rich countries, above all the United States, and even then, we are probably too late.

"People just don't get it," Dr. Michael Osterholm, the outspoken director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota recently complained. "If we were to begin a Manhattan Project-type response tonight to expand vaccine and drug production, we wouldn't have a measurable impact on the availability of these critical products to sufficiently address a worldwide pandemic for at least several years."

"Several years" is a luxury that Washington has already squandered. The best guess, as the geese head west and south, is that we have almost run out of time. As Shigeru Omi, the Western Pacific director of WHO, told a UN meeting in Kuala Lumpur in early July: "We're at the tipping point."

Whee!

Taking a slightly more can-do tone, WC's Alex Steffen challenges bloggers and civilians alike to spread awareness of the threat in hopes we can collaborate our way out of it. He also has links to a number of resources and background materials. Of particular interest is this guide to spreading the word without spreading panic, by two World Health Organization communication advisors.

I highly recommend you read both pieces, educate yourself about the danger, and start pushing your state and federal representatives to put money behind serious preparation efforts.

Gas prices skyrocket

The USA Today headline blares: $3 a gallon. But the paper is not alone. The reason everyone is talking about the surge in prices is that everyone is paying for it. Everyone is starting to employ their own personal favorite gas-saving tactics, but this means different things for different people.

Both MSNBC and the LA Times have reactions to gas prices today. Between the two they run the gamut, everything from people who aren't complaining at all to people who have decided that a bicycle (or a scooter!) is their mode of transportation from now on.

We’ve already collected nature quotes — how about some quotes on energy

And I don't mean oil futures ...

Dave got a lot of people to contribute their favorite quotes on nature last month. I was recently asked about famous energy quotes and drew a complete blank.

Can you, uhm, enlighten me? Leave your faves in the comments.

Smokey and Mirrors

Feds cut estimated economic worth of recreation in national forests During the Clinton administration, the U.S. Forest Service estimated that by the year 2000, recreation in national forests would contribute about $111 billion a year to the American economy. Now the Bush administration has slashed that estimate by a whopping $100 billion for 2002, down […]

Consider This a Bear Hug

Fervent support from Grist readers brings a tear to our eye Really, you’re too much. Our two-week fundraiser is over, and more than 1,000 of you responded to our desperate, naked pleas for support, sending a remarkable $54,478.74 our way. You shot the mercury right out of our hackneyed fundraising thermometer, forcing us to stare […]

Diary of a Mad Black River

Millions of gallons of liquid cow manure flow into N.Y. river At some point last week — nobody’s quite sure when — one wall of an earthen reservoir on one of New York state’s biggest dairy farms collapsed, releasing some 3 million gallons of liquid cow manure into the Black River. “That stinks,” noted observant […]