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Gristmill shameless product placement: Pagliacci Pizza

This weekend we ordered a pizza -- our usual: pepperoni, mushroom, and Kalamata olives -- from Pagliacci, the best pizza place in Seattle and one of the best pizza places in the country. When it arrived, there was a note sitting on top that read: "This one's on us! Thanks for being a great customer."

I heart Pagliacci.

Turns out Wal-Mart is greening

As I am contractually obliged to flag each and every story on Wal-Mart's greening -- and to mention that you should read my op-ed -- I should let you know that the Wall Street Journal has a short piece on the subject. Sounds like things are going pretty well:

Test-tube coral babies in the works

Twenty-eight years ago, the world welcomed (albeit with raised eyebrows) the first "test tube baby" into the world. Back then, in vitro fertilization (IVF) was considered a radical medical procedure. But after the success of a few hundred thousand IVF babies, it was only logical to take the concept to the next level. Enter coral reefs.

A team of University of Miami marine-science researchers is collecting coral eggs and sperm all this week during an annual reproductive ritual dubbed "coral spawning." They hope "test-tube coral babies" will take root to help restore a tract of reef ravaged by a 1984 ship grounding in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

Brace yourself for an even more radical idea to help coral reefs: not destroying them in the first place.

Gregg Small, director of the Washington Toxics Coalition, answers questions

Gregg Small. What’s your job title? Executive director of the Washington Toxics Coalition. What does your organization do? WTC works to protect human health and the environment from the impacts of toxic pollution. What are you working on at the moment? Photo: iStockphoto A top priority right now is our Pollution in People Project. For […]

Fear and environmentalism

For a long time I've had a post rattling around in my head about fear. I've had no luck writing the thing. But this great post by Alex, about a Cato Institute paper called "A False Sense of Insecurity" (PDF), finally spurred me to make the attempt. Bear with me.

What harms people in the U.S.?

Mainly heart disease and cancer, along with several other health ailments, accidents (mostly automobile), and suicide.

Homicide used to be among the top 15 killers, but it dropped off that list in 2003. Military attack on home soil hasn't happened since WWII. And terrorism? From the Cato paper:

AB 32 and Arnie’s ABC 32 (C is for “caps optional”)

As I said a couple of weeks ago after Arnie's eco-rendezvous with the British PM, the real measure of the governor's greenness will be in the passage of several bills being deliberated in Sacramento right now.

In the next ten days, assembly members will decide whether The Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32 [PDF])and the Clean Alternate Energy Act (Prop 87 [PDF]), among others, will arrive at Schwarzenegger's desk intact or as grossly watered-down versions. According to this story in the L.A. Times, business groups and even the California Chamber of Commerce are putting major pressure on the governor to reign in those legislators who would be so brash as to listen to their constituency (a poll conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California and released in mid-July indicated that 80% of likely voters support these climate change bills).

Schwarzenegger is indeed straddling a barbed fence: on the one hand, he can ill afford to alienate the businessmen who support his campaign, yet on the other, public opinion is strongly anti-global warming.

‘Tis the Season (for parlor games, Shrimp Louis, and watching the world go to hell on TV)

A few weeks ago I sat down to watch No Reservations, Anthony Bourdain's food and travel show. It was a surreal experience to watch him wend his way through Sweden knowing that he and his camera crew had recently been stranded in Beirut. Indeed, his August 21st show will be devoted to that experience. (He and his crew evacuated safely a few weeks ago.) You can read Bourdain's account of what went on there on Salon.

Meanwhile, back in Sweden, the show included all the sorts of segments one might expect: checking out a herd of reindeer, spending the night in a yurt-like structure somewhere near the Arctic Circle, and going out on the town to see musicians play at a club with a comely Swedish MTV host. (A great deal of the show is dedicated to Bourdain's oft-expressed hatred of Abba.) After he and the young host went clubbing they headed out in search of late-night street food.

At a perfectly normal-looking street-corner establishment they ordered something that Swedes apparently eat all the time (although none of my Swedish friends has ever mentioned it ...), namely a hot dog, shrimp salad, and mashed potatoes served together in some kind of wrap.

Albert, Martin, and … Ralph? Solving the real energy crisis

New crises demand new modes of thought.

In the early 20th century, scientists were baffled by the paradox that the speed of light never changes, even if the observer is rushing toward the light source. Einstein resolved the crisis by redefining time from a constant to a variable.

In the mid-20th Century, America was struggling to escape its centuries-old legacy of slavery and segregation. Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement found us all a way forward, by redefining racism as an assault on the souls of whites as well as blacks.

Today, America's and the world's prodigal use of fossil fuels is creating twin crises: a climate crisis from emissions of heat-trapping pollution into the atmosphere, and a security crisis self-created by the industrial world's thirst for other people's oil.

We can solve both crises, but only if we relinquish deep-seated beliefs about fuels and energy. And the attitude we must fling overboard first is our sense of entitlement to cheap energy. We need to recognize that energy does not cost too much; in fact, it doesn't cost nearly enough. To preserve Earth's climate, and wrest political authority from the corporate oil barons and petrodollar sheiks, we must conserve fuel massively and permanently, starting now.

The United States, the biggest consumer of coal, oil, and gas by far, probably needs to cut back by 75% within just two decades.

Yet so long as energy is cheap it will never be conserved, except in token and totally inadequate amounts.

Energy-efficiency standards are often held out as the alternative to higher fuel prices. Standards have proven modestly valuable in some sectors, and going forward they can be a helpful supplement to price-based conservation.

But by themselves, standards will never come close to achieving the necessary reductions in energy usage. For every activity that is brought under efficiency standards, dozens of others will elude regulatory control, either through industry "gaming" or due to the creative unruliness of consumer capitalism, forever finding new ways to burn fuels.

(Cases in point: the "light truck" loophole to CAFE standards that spawned the SUV plague, and the advent of flights-by-the-hour air travel that consumes even more fuel per passenger.)

The lesson should be clear: whether the resource is muscles, water, fuel, or time, we humans squander what's plentiful and husband only what's dear.

To be sure, few people in public life have yet articulated the need to make energy expensive. One prominent advocate missing in action so far is Ralph Nader, the activist icon and two-time Green Party candidate for president.

Make ’em spend it all

The money is lining up against Prop 87 in California.

Prop 87 is a ballot initiative that would impose a small fee on oil drilling in the state. The fee is indexed to the price of oil, making it essentially a tax on oil company profits. Those wells that went in when oil was $25 a barrel? They still cost the same to run. If they were profitable then, they are goldmines now.

Over 10 years, Prop 87 will raise $4 billion. The money will go toward kicking our oil addiction.

<pSounds good. And it is good.

He’s everywhere!

Good interview with Joel Makower over on Treehugger. It's nice to hear someone explicitly involved with green business say this:

What's the biggest eco-myth out there?

That we can shop our way to environmental health.