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Perchlorate

We get lots and lots of press releases here. Occasionally I like to pass one along.

Earlier this month, virtually every paper in the nation published a story on a National Academy of Sciences report on the rocket-fuel ingredient perchlorate. The report, they claimed, showed that perchlorate is some 20 times safer than U.S. EPA estimates, which could save businessses millions.

But according to the Environmental Working Group, this isn't actually what the report said. Read on:

The Maoist That Roared

China tries to balance need for energy with environmental caution China’s economy, as we report with obsessive regularity, is growing like gangbusters, and with it grows the country’s need for energy. One response to this need is an aggressive push to develop nuclear energy: Conservative estimates project the commissioning of two new reactors a year […]

British science adviser harassed by industry lobbyists

Sir David King, the U.K.'s chief scientific adviser, says American fossil-fuel lobbyists are pestering and hectoring him as he goes around the world talking about the impending dangers of global warming. King ticked off some powerful folks last year when he said climate change poses more of a global threat than terrorism and blasted the U.S. for not taking the lead in addressing the problem. Reports The Independent:

Since then, he has given many lectures to international audiences but found individuals among them who are there solely to create the impression that he is presenting biased information.

"They'll be in the audience to stand up and raise questions to get into the audience's mind that I haven't represented a balanced view," he said.

"You have a group of lobbyists, some of whom are chasing me around the planet, which I'm chuffed about because it means they are worrying about what I'm saying, and these lobbyists stand up after I've given an hour's talk and say, 'There are scientists who disagree with you'," Sir David said.

"I always say, 'Which bit of the science that I've just presented to you are you challenging'? I don't get the answer."

Photos of the once-mighty, now-drained Owens Lake

Owens Lake, on the eastern flanks of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in southeastern California, was, at its peak, a 200-square-mile perennial lake. Located at the terminus of the Owens River, it held water continuously for at least 800,000 years. It is now an extreme example of the destabilizing effect of surface-water extraction in desert regions. […]

Near Death Experience

Living in pollution hotspots ups chance of kiddie cancer, study says Many childhood cancers likely have environmental causes, according to a new study from the U.K.’s Birmingham University. Women who live within a half-mile radius of emission hotspots such as industrial areas and major roads, it says, are two to four times more likely than […]

Dimming hopes

Let's get one thing straight: Grist was into global dimming before global dimming was cool.

Now: A BBC documentary is pushing, with great hype (not to say hysterics), the notion that efforts to reduce fossil fuel use will reverse global dimming and thus -- irony! -- accelerate global warming. I have already grumpily blogged this once. Now the folks over at RealClimate, about whose site I use the adjective "indispensable" with numbing regularity, have addressed the subject, saying, in effect, Slow down, cowboy! We don't really know that much about dimming.

Now that some perspective has been added to the hype, I'm certain that wingnuts will stop forwarding around the new dimming stories as proof that driving SUVs is a virtue. Right?

Update [2005-1-21 15:17:39 by Dave Roberts]: More from RealClimate.

Plenty

Everybody else is talking about it so, being joiners, we shall as well: Check out Plenty, a new glossy mag that dares to assert that "if we make the right choices, we can have a world of Plenty." I have not seen the magazine, but I agree with the sentiment. Check it out on your local newsstand.

(An aside to the folks responsible for the Plenty website: Splash screens are bad. And useless. FYI.)

RFK Jr. eyeing NY attorney general spot

Crusading environmental lawyer and Bush-basher Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is considering a run for state attorney general of New York, insiders say. He'd be a fitting successor to Eliot Spitzer, who's gone after pollution-spewing utilities with as much as gusto as he's gone after corporate malefactors on Wall Street.

Veneman to head UNICEF

Outgoing U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman (never beloved by enviros) has been tapped to head UNICEF. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced her nomination yesterday; she was reportedly the Bush admin's top pick for the post. Here's hoping she does a better job of protecting the world's children than she did of protecting America's forests!

MLK Jr.

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day (despite Dick Cheney's objections), and while Grist is taking the day off, it's worth remembering both the incredible progress the U.S. has made on civil rights in a relatively brief time (Matt Yglesias has some good stuff on this subject) and one area where justice continues to lag, namely, the environment.

The low profile of the environmental justice movement within the larger green movement is a scandal, and one of the issues we'll be discussing more in our ongoing series on the (alleged) "Death of Environmentalism."

For more on environmental justice, check out this EPA page, the Environmental Justice Foundation, and the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark University, where we find the principles of environmental justice and this bit of history:

Just three decades ago, the concept of environmental justice had not registered on the radar screens of environmental, civil rights, or social justice groups. Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. went to Memphis in 1968 on an environmental and economic justice mission for the striking black garbage workers. The strikers were demanding equal pay and better work conditions. Of course, Dr. King was assassinated before he could complete his mission.

Of all the many quotes from perhaps the most quotable man of the last century, on this day environmentalists should above all heed this one: "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."