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Photos of B.C.’s renowned — and threatened — Great Bear Rainforest

The Great Bear Rainforest of British Columbia — home to the legendary white spirit bear, as well as huge grizzlies, rare wolves, countless salmon, and other wildlife galore — is one of the only remaining pristine regions of temperate rainforest left on earth. Take a virtual tour through this biological hotspot with the Raincoast Conservation […]

Pete Myers

What a great deal!  The American Chemistry Council, a large trade association of companies manufacturing chemicals, has entered into a partnership with the US EPA to measure how much of pesticides and other chemicals get into kids up to age 3 when homes are sprayed regularly.  

Participating parents get $970 over two years, if they consent to "routine spraying," although apparently "routine" includes "homes with potentially high pesticide use." EPA's fact sheet says they're only going to work with households that already use pesticides.  Let's hope the money doesn't lure some families in economic trouble into taking risks they wouldn't have.  

The press coverage (Chemical and Engineering News, The Washington Post) doesn't note if there is separate compensation for health care costs.  

Any university-based study would require informed consent by participants. Perhaps toddlers in Florida have already taken short courses in pesticide toxicity.

ACC is putting $2.1M into the funding pool, EPA another $6.9M. With all the recent furor over conflicts of interest at NIH, you'd think that the EPA would want to keep the fox out of the chicken coop.

Making the green with green

The World Resources Institute (WRI) teamed up a  while back with nine corporations based in the northeastern U.S. to form Climate Northeast, a kind of proof-in-the-pudding demonstration that corporate policies to meliorate global warming don't have to cost big -- in fact, they can be profitable.  You can download the case studies (PDF) from their site.

"We are undertaking these projects because they make business sense," said Randolph Price, vice president for environment, health and safety, Consolidated Edison Company of New York. "We hope our experiences will be useful for other businesses interested in getting started with greenhouse-gas management programs."

Some examples, from the press release:

Green building products

Those of you interested in eco-friendly building may want to check out the GreenSpec Directory, which "includes information on more than 1,750 green building products carefully screened by the editors of Environmental Building News, organized according to the 16-division CSI MasterFormat(tm) system." If you don't know what the 16-division CSI MasterFormat(tm) system is, well dude, get with it!  You can find it over on BuildingGreen.com -- like all their stuff, it's got no advertising or sponsorships, so it should be the straight scoop.

Enviro journalist winners

I meant to mention this last week:  The Society of Environmental Journalists announced the winners of its third annual awards for excellence in environmental journalism.  Congrats to Seth Borenstein (who, you will recall, I heart) in print, Ilsa Setziol in radio, Ed Rodgers in television, and the many other winners. According to SEJ:

The number, quality, and diversity of entries vying for this year's awards signaled a renewed interest in environmental journalism after a year in which the nation's attention -- as well as the news media's -- had been focused on terrorism and war.

Wishful thinking? I hope not.

In the spirit of crazy horse …

Fans of The Snow Leopard, Killing Mister Watson, At Play in the Fields of the Lord -- or for that matter, anyone who cherishes good writing and clear thinking -- might want to check out Orion Online's three-part video interview with wise man Peter Matthiessen. The interview series is entitled "Our Political Environment:  Environmental Policy, Corporate Ethics, and Global Warming."

Cheers: Where Everyboy Knows Your Game

Study of chemical impacts on kids raises questions A study of pesticide and chemical exposures in children being conducted by government researchers is raising some disturbing — and by that we mean “outright creepy” — questions. For one thing, $2 million in funding will come from the American Chemistry Council, an industry group with, one […]

More power to the sweet stuff

A story in The New York Times last week reports the increasing popularity in Brazil of flex fuel vehicles that can use gasoline or ethanol interchangeably. Drivers with these snazzy cars can choose a fuel for the day's driving based on availability, price, or sheer whim. These flex fuel vehicles might have a market well beyond Brazil now that oil has hit $54 a barrel. While using ethanol as a transportation fuel won't solve all air quality problems, it can be part of the solution in many countries.

Laying eggs

Tom Toles in The Washington Post.

David Orr, environmental educator and writer, answers questions

David Orr. What work do you do? I am disguised as a professor at Oberlin College, but consider myself an Educator, capital E, not an educational technician or bureaucrat, and certainly not one “in the box” of a single discipline. At its best, education means to “educe,” or draw forth, so I consider it essential […]