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We Double-Dog Dare You!

Donate to Grist and you could win a Global Warming Survival Kit When we ask y’all for money, we feel like Ralphie. We’re all, “We want the Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle!” And you’re all, “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid.” But we won’t! We know how to use smart environmental […]

Energy bill supporters

Hey look, I found some expressions of support for the energy bill. See if you can discern a theme.

“Quiet places are the think tank of the soul.”

Here's an interesting story in the Seattle Times about a professional sound recorder struggling to preserve the little quiet spot he found in Olympic Nat'l Park.

Uninterrupted natural quiet is so rare Hempton thinks many people under the age of 30 have never heard it. "Whenever someone tells me they know a quiet place, I figure they have an undiagnosed hearing impairment, or they weren't really listening. Most people believe they know what natural quiet is, but they have not had the experience; it is not the same thing as sitting in an empty theater, a church, a library.

"We spend our lives in containers. Cars. Buildings. Planes. Natural quiet is in open, living space. It's alive."

Technology could be used to monitor wildlife preserves

As this story in the Seattle Times suggests, the effectiveness of a wildlife refuge is directly linked to how well you can protect what is inside it: "... an international black market ... fuels the illegal slaughter of an estimated 500 eagles each year in southwest British Columbia alone, and an unknown number in Washington state."

Many nature preserves around the world have little or no protection, making them essentially worthless as preserves. There are not enough funds to hire an army of forest rangers to be everywhere all the time. The biggest problem with any system that relies on guys randomly driving around in pickup trucks is that 99.9% of the time nothing is happening, and when something does happen, it happens where the rangers aren't. Preventing poachers from killing hundreds of eagles is better than prosecuting them after the fact.

Maybe we should be using technology to protect the planet instead of destroy it? Like E.O. Wilson once said:

The race is now on between the technoscientific forces that are destroying the living environment and those that can be harnessed to save it.

Many feigned regret, but ultimately the pork pulled them in

I've written about negative reactions to the energy bill from mainstream green groups, the Apollo Alliance, newspaper editorial boards, and libertarians. I'm sure I could find more -- denunciations of the special-interest-giveaway fest are thick on the ground.

What about the converse, though: Who is reacting positively to this bill? Who will defend it?

The industries that directly benefit from the manifold subsidies and tax breaks, of course (see, e.g., the Nuclear Energy Institute). And the majority Republicans, who receive copious contributions from those industries and who will no doubt receive credit for "getting things done" (see, e.g., Domenici). But who else?

Well, how about that other party ... what's the name again? Demo-something?

Why did enough Dems support this bill to get it through? And are they happy about it? I investigate.

The Sweet Swim of Success

Lower Hudson River clean enough for dipping A dozen-plus locations along the lower Hudson River in New York state are once again fit for taking a dip, thanks to decades of cleanup efforts. Accounts of swimming in the Hudson date back to colonial times, but by the mid-20th century the river was an unholy stew […]

Looney Tuna

Feds, pressured by industry, lax in warning public about mercury in tuna The Wall Street Journal today continues its series on toxic chemicals and human health by taking a hard look at some fishy dealings concerning tuna and mercury. For years, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has known that canned tuna contains mercury. A […]

Comment on EPA’s Plan

The human and the sublime

While we're on the topic of wild spaces, there's a great article in the New York Times this morning. Even though the author, Edward Rothstein, did some of his exploring in a car, he captures the awe-inspiring beauty of nature in way that will wake you up faster than that cup of coffee.

Preserving wild spaces

There's been some discussion over at The Commons about the lesson that we should take from the Dr. Suess classic The Lorax. Full text of the book (no pictures, though) can be found here. The free-marketeer interpretation is that the demise of the Truffula trees results not from the greed of the Onceler nor the materialism of the society that gobbles up thneeds just as fast as they please. The reason the Truffula trees are all destroyed is that no one has property rights to them. They are part of the commons, and if the Onceler doesn't chop them, someone else will.