Uncategorized

A sad realization

Yesterday, my trusty steed bit the dust. It had been (to use the technical terms) smelling funny and running funny for a few weeks, and we finally gave up on our home hospice care and took it to The Man. The Man said we had seven oil leaks. The Man said stop driving your car […]

Creation care idea is spreading

Jehovah's Witnesses. Two of them just knocked on my door. I mention it because they had a brochure detailing their version of "creation care." I told them I was happy to see more Christian sects beginning to interpret Bible passages in an environmentally positive manner. "Oh no," they assured me. "We aren't environmentalists."

Yay for Austin

Sustainlane has released a list of the top five U.S. "cleantech incubation clusters," which despite the name is quite interesting. Here’s what qualifies a city: Start-up or advanced stage venture capital (VC) and investor network access, including mentoring. Academic or federal research lab collaboration. Active state or local government participation (field testing, prototyping, and pilot […]

Cool feature in Nat’l Geo

National Geographic has a fairly awesome new web feature. It's an interactive look at smart growth that does a good job of spelling out -- with pictures! -- some of the key differences between low-density sprawl and healthier compact communities. There's more in the magazine.

Unfortunately, NG's representation of healthy urban development seems to make a puzzling omission. I was unable to find the multibillion dollar giant new elevated freeway through the heart of town -- the hallmark of responsible planning for the future.

A bit odd, if you ask me.

More interesting than it sounds

In case you hadn’t heard, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is suing the Bush administration’s Council on Environmental Quality for refusing to reply with its FOIA request for records relating to global warming science and policy. Surely the administration isn’t hiding anything …

Finally!

At last, some of the nation's biggest newspapers have been making a big deal of energy efficiency and conservation.

Over the weekend the Washington Post ran an article on California's ambitious and profitable efforts by utilities. The Post's article followed an energy series by the Wall Street Journal on cutting energy use and costs.

It doesn’t work out

There’s a lot of talk about geoengineering lately, specifically around climate change. We can just send up space mirrors or seed the atmosphere with sulfur or some such, right? Then we can just keep on keepin’ on. Sprol has a great post on a huge geoengineering project that didn’t turn out quite as well as […]

Chlorine plants receive polluting awards

It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's a spray-painted pregnant mannequin bestowed to uncomfortable chlor-alkalai chlorine plant executives ...

Five days before the Oscars, Oceana announced the winners of the inaugural Masters of Making Mercury in the Environment (MOMMIE) Awards, celebrating America's chlorine plants for outstanding achievement in the field of poisoning our tuna fish sandwiches. In 2004, the FDA advised women who might become pregnant, women who are pregnant, nursing mothers and young children to limit their consumption of certain types of seafood to prevent mercury contamination.

Most people remain unaware that a small subset of the chlorine industry makes a major -- and completely preventable -- contribution to the global mercury crisis. Oceana has been working to convince nine chlorine companies to go mercury free since early 2005. Of these "naughty nine," four plants have stopped using the outdated technology.

Read all about an awards moment that was even more uncomfortable than David Letterman's ill-fated "Uma ... Oprah ... Oprah ... Uma" monologue.

Wyoming joins Oklahoma in drought

Irony is no stranger to our posts derived from the U.S. Drought Monitor, and again, this case is no exception.

The monitor reveals severe to extreme drought covering most of the state of Wyoming (for at least the last three months), the home of none other than Vice President Dick Cheney.

A coastal geologist explores the flaws in modeling nature

The New York Times yesterday published a short piece on a new book by coastal geologist (and InterActivist alum) Orrin H. Pilkey and his daughter Linda Pilkey-Jarvis, also a geologist. The book, Useless Arithmetic: Why Environmental Scientists Can’t Predict the Future, argues that nature’s unruliness — conditions are highly variable and uncertainties inevitable — makes […]