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One Meeellion Years

Feds create million-year health standard for Yucca Mountain dump The U.S. government has no plan for getting out of Iraq, balancing the budget, or repairing a hemorrhaging health-care system, but nuclear waste? It’s got that covered for the next million years. Yes, responding to a 2004 federal court ruling that the previous standard of 10 […]

What does the accusation mean and how should greens respond?

James Schlesinger had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal the other day called "The Theology of Global Warming" (paid subscription required, but really, don't bother). It's full of the usual skeptical blather -- if you're interested in the specifics, and in finding out why Schlesigner in particular is an unreliable source, I refer you to Chris Mooney.

I'm more interested in this general idea that global warming, and environmentalism generally, has become a "secular religion." You hear it a lot. It's become a favorite talking point on the right. (And let's be honest: When you hear anti-environmentalist talking points, it's coming from the right. I wish it weren't so, but it is.)

What should a green make of this charge?

I think it's strategically brilliant. It's a way for the leadership on the right to reach two constituencies simultaneously:

Eating locally — part three.

For those of you who read the hundred-mile diet post and are hungry for more, The Tyee published the latest from J.B. MacKinnon and Alisa Smith about two weeks ago and I'm now getting around to linking to it.

In the third installment, J.B. provides a little more detail about what exactly they have been eating and offers up a few recipes for Breakfast Fritters, Hundred-Mile Pesto, and Fanny Bay Pie in the hopes to challenge you to try a Hundred-Mile Meal.

For the appetizer lovers, here's a little morsel to whet your appetite:

... There are a lot of Big Issues associated with the food system, and there will be time to write about several of them here as the Hundred-Mile Diet continues. The point of this dispatch is to forget about the politics and . . . rhapsodize. Eating locally is a grand adventure. It has taken us to 40-year-old family fish shops and introduced us to people who have grown their own soy beans for homemade tofu. It has left us calling our mothers to find out how to wash and cook whole-grain wheat. Best of all, every time I open the refrigerator to come up with something for dinner, I feel like a pioneer.

To the join them on their journey, go here.

Legalize it, don’t criticize it

The U.S. is the only developed nation that does not cultivate industrial hemp as an economic crop. The Industrial Hemp Farming Act could change that -- if it's passed.

Given the Bush administration's retrograde attitude toward pot (which yes, yes, I know, has nothing to do with hemp), I highly doubt this bill has a chance. But I could be wrong.

Joel Makower has the details.

Controversial judge sides against enviros on mercury regs

Janice Rogers Brown is already proving her worth on the federal bench. Last week, she and her colleague David Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia blocked an effort by environmental groups to halt implementation of the Bush administration's much-maligned mercury rules.

Judiciary committee chair to question SCOTUS nominee about commerce clause

Those who read our piece on Supreme Court nominee John Roberts know that one of greens' principle concerns about him is his interpretation of the commerce clause. In short, the commerce clause, which gives Congress the right to regulate interstate commerce, has been broadly interpreted and used as the foundation for a great deal of important environmental legislation. If SCOTUS chooses to interpret it more narrowly, much of that legislation could be challenged. (This is what was at stake in the case of the "hapless toad that, for reasons of its own, lives its entire life in California" -- i.e., doesn't cross state lines.)

Meanwhile: Arlen Specter (R-Penn.), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is sick and tired of SCOTUS questioning -- nay, mocking! -- the reasoning Congress uses to pass laws. He just sent Roberts a letter saying as much: "members of Congress are irate about the Court's denigrating and, really, disrespectful statements about Congress's competence." Denigrating and disrespectful statements about Congress! Say it ain't so.

In particular, Specter asked Roberts about his his opinion of two cases -- U.S. v. Lopez and U.S. v. Morrison -- that turned on the commerce clause. (Both were narrow judgments finding that Congress had overreached.)

Why should you care about this? Well, Specter says he plans on asking Roberts about this stuff at his confirmation hearings. And that's somewhat surprising -- Republican leadership had been saying that Roberts shouldn't have to answer questions on individual issues. (I'd be curious to find out if Specter is off the reservation about this.) So while ineffectual Democrats will have no luck finding out what Roberts really thinks about an issue central to environmental legislation, Specter might just find out for them.

(You can read more about this, and Specter's letter, on Greenwire if you have a paid subscription, which you probably don't.)

Philanthropic landowner in Chile needs to get Chileans involved

A New York Times article documents the difficulty Douglas Tompkins is having protecting the thousands of square miles of pristine ecosystems he has purchased in Chile. From a historical perspective, what he has done is old hat. Wealthy individuals from Chinese emperors to British Lords have owned nature preserves. The problem is that things begin to unravel once the originator goes to heaven. One example is a private preserve in 1600s Europe that sheltered the last herd of Auroch. Cave paintings of these now-extinct wild cattle can be found in Southern France. Similarly, the last wild European Bison was killed by poachers on a private preserve in 1927 (they have since been reintroduced into the wild from zoos).

It could happen

Fusion too far in the future? Moving to the moon (or Mars) not an option? Nuclear a big fat no? Skeptical about the hydrogen hype?

Enter chemist Daniel Nocera. His goal: create a renewable energy source by using sunlight to separate water into oxygen and hydrogen.

From the AP (via Wired):

There is a beautiful model for this: photosynthesis. Sunlight kickstarts a reaction in which leaves break down water and carbon dioxide and turn them into oxygen and sugar, which plants use for fuel.

But plants developed this process over billions of years, and even so, it's technically not that efficient. Nocera and other scientists are trying to replicate that -- and perhaps improve on it -- in decades.

Here is where he is today:

Nocera has performed the reaction with acidic solutions, but not water yet. The catalyst he used was a compound that included the expensive metal rhodium. To be a practical energy solution, it will have to be made from inexpensive elements like iron, nickel or cobalt.

Good luck Daniel!

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China’s hybrid economy leads to inefficiency

This morning's Washington Post proclaims "Electrical Inefficiency A Dark Spot for China." It seems that lighting up the beautiful Bund comes at the expense of blackouts and brownouts in the less glitzy, more industrial parts of the country. But there's a simple solution:

"A lot of China's energy security problem could be solved if you improved our domestic efficiency," said Yan Maosong, an industrial engineering expert at Shanghai University who advises the central government. "From generation to transmission to power usage, in every link of the chain, our energy industry is not very efficient. Top government leaders have not paid enough attention."

Sound familiar?

Also notable was the article's attribution of China's wastefulness to it's hybrid economy -- a hybrid between "communist roots and a free-market future," that is.