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It kicked ass

The Grist reader party in San Francisco on Friday was a smashing success. Over 300 eco-glitterati packed into the art gallery, and they were resplendent: young, urbane, and utterly destructive to every caricature that's ever attached to the word "environmentalist." A reporter who was there researching a story on Grist, speaking afterwards, was moved to exclaim: "I can't believe how hot everybody was!"

Indeed.

Race bitter to the very end

For anyone still paying attention, the race in New Mexico's 1st Congressional district continues. As of this morning, Republican incumbent Heather Wilson is about 1,487 votes ahead of Democratic challenger and state Attorney General Patrica Madrid.

Julian Dautremont-Smith, higher-education sustainability advocate, answers questions

Julian Dautremont-Smith. What work do you do? I’m the associate director of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. AASHE has a staff of two, so I have a hand in almost everything the organization does. How does it relate to the environment? AASHE is a membership-based association of colleges and universities […]

Too Hot to Handle

Toxic exposure gives firefighters higher risk of some cancers, study says Rushing into infernos seems risky enough, but new findings suggest flames may be the least of a firefighter’s worries. Researchers at the University of Cincinnati say blaze-battlers face a higher risk of developing some cancers than the general population, likely due to their exposure […]

Fund, Fund, Fund ’til Daddy Took the T-Note Away

U.N. climate talks continue, but dissension rules the day As week two of the U.N. climate talks kicks off in Nairobi, Kenya, debate is raging over how to manage a fund that will help poorer countries adapt to climate change. Western countries want the $3 million fund — which is expected to grow to $750 […]

Moderate or not, he had to go

Among the interminable analyses of the election running in the New York Times this weekend came this wistful piece from defeated Rhode Island Senate incumbent Lincoln Chafee, who chalks his defeat up to anti-Bush "virulence."

He recalls meeting with his fellow Northeastern Republican moderates and Dick Cheney shortly after the 2000 election. He was somewhat taken aback -- all of them were, I imagine -- by the uncompromising partisan, ideological agenda Cheney promised to pursue. He sent a letter to Cheney afterwards, urging moderation. It included this passage:

Dams squeeze methane out of river water

There is a major controversy brewing on how carbon neutral large scale hydroelectricity really is. It has been known for a long time that dams emit both methane and CO2. The question has always been, how much of those emission are net? According to the International Rivers Network (PDF), studies by ecologist Philip Fearnside of the National Institute for Research in the Amazon (INPA) have shown that net methane emissions from hydropower are slightly higher than those from burning natural gas.

An op-ed in a UK paper

An opinion piece in The Independent argues that carbon trading is not the most effective way to reduce emissions, and is in fact counterproductive.

I've been known to make this argument myself, so I'm glad to see it in a major UK paper. (It will be quite a wait before we see it in major U.S. media.)

How much can we or should we limit our food imports?

Continued from last week ...

Soon, it's hairnet time. We pass through the double doors that separate the break room from the plant itself. The building looks big enough to hold several jumbo jets, and is divided into a tasting area, a storage area that holds the green as-yet-unroasted beans that arrive at Equal Exchange in burlap bags, and a roasting area featuring an enormous red roaster.

The green, unroasted beans are dumped into one of eight hoppers, then mixed at the roaster's discretion so they achieve the right blend of beans for the type of coffee being roasted that day. The entire contraption is controlled by a modest laptop computer, lending the whole endeavor a kind of mad-scientist feeling, like those giant weather-changing machines movie villains use to hold the world hostage.

On the other side of the plant are rows and rows of beans that have been bagged for delivery to stores and other retail customers. The sheer quantity of coffee is overwhelming. Rodney explains how quickly and dramatically Equal Exchange has grown: Over its 20 years, the co-op has grown on average more than 30% annually, and since just 2002 it has doubled to its current size of $23 million.

Animal rights and environmentalism should stay separate

I was going to write a post on animal rights a few months ago but thought better of it. I changed my mind and fluffed up what I had written in order to supplement (but not invalidate) the discussion initiated by Jason over here.

Environmentalism and animal rights should remain separate groups. Their interests, though sometimes related and even mutually beneficial, are just as often too disparate for a harmonious union. For example, hunters can make powerful conservationists (conservation being a major branch of environmentalism), but hunters and animal-rights activists mix worse than oil and water.

This article makes mention of the hundreds of thousands of goats that have finally been eliminated from the Galapagos Islands. By eliminated I mean: they were shot. Had an organized and well-funded animal-rights campaign arisen, accomplishing that task might have taken much longer, or cost a great deal more. Or it might not have happened at all. I use these goats as an analogy for the horse roundup mentioned in Jason's article. Both species of domesticated animal are the result of many thousands of years of genetic engineering by human beings to produce an animal of use to them. Neither has a place in the wild. The ecosystems they evolved in are human-generated.