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Cotton a Trap
GM cotton doesn’t cut pesticide use long term, new research indicates Biotech giant Monsanto touts its genetically modified cotton seed — spliced with the bollworm-killing Bt toxin — as money- and earth-saving, because it lowers the need for pesticide use. Funny story about that: a new study found that cotton farmers using the seed soon […]
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freecycle: TM, and R.I.P.
I've got a funny story for you. Here's a preview of the punchline: freecycle, once a clever, idealistic way to prevent material from entering landfills, has been made by its leadership into a clown show.
Some background.
Way back in May 2004, we did a (glowing) story on the new freecycling movement, whereby people give stuff away rather than throwing it away, via internet-based networks.
Roughly a year later, in May 2005, we did a follow-up story about freecycle's growing pains. Freecycle founder and executive director Deron Beal had accepted corporate sponsorship, attempted to secure a trademark on the freecycle name, and started exercising what some group moderators saw as dictatorial control over regional and local freecycle networks.
In Gristmill, there was a looong and heated debate over the article. Looong. And heated.
Shortly thereafter, Grist received a letter from the freecycle media relations people, urging us in unctuous tones to always capitalize the word "freecycle," never use such bastardized constructions as "freecycler" or "freecycling," and always use the trademark symbol when referring to the entity as a whole: The Freecycle NetworkTM. The letter deserved, and received, mockery.
But tinpot tycoons can never get enough mockery. Which brings us to the present.
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Bombing yields massive oil spill off Lebanon beaches
The Mother Jones blog has a bit of a scoop, plucked from the Arabic-language press:
It looks like an eco-nightmare is taking place on the beaches of Lebanon. Reports coming in say beaches are being clogged with oil because five out of six oil tanks at the electricity plant in Jiyeh were destroyed by Israeli bombs.
The Lebanese Embassy in Washington confirmed the spill. -
Just my imagination, once again…
Greenpeace is not having much luck catching illegal tuna fishermen because the fishermen are are not having much luck catching any tuna. However, you can bet they will continue to try as long as the Japanese are willing to pay $50,000 for a single large adult bluefin. You wouldn't think that one or two trips to the local sushi bar a year would help drive tuna to extinction, but that's how it works. Our biodiversity is dying a death from 6.5 billion tiny cuts. This is also why harping at consumers has such limited success. The good news is that this will free up Greenpeace resources to shadow other boats in other waters until whatever they are fishing for goes extinct. What if our Navy, instead of wandering around killing whales and dolphins with their sonar, were to spend some of their free time helping Greenpeace enforce fishing bans?
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Songbirds show high mercury levels
Conservation groups have spent the last few years fighting to make sure that FDA warnings about mercury are actually shared with consumers -- and we're starting to have some real success getting the message out. Many consumers, especially expecting mothers, now know about these warnings and are closely monitoring which -- and how much -- seafood they eat in a given week to avoid mercury contamination. But as The New York Times reports, a recent study shows that mercury has spread further than previously thought.
This "eye-opening" study tested songbirds in New York and found that every one had elevated levels of mercury -- meaning that mercury is now literally finding its way into our back yards.
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Readers talk back about Wal-Mart, vegetarian jokes, hope for the future, and more
Re: The Writing on the Wal-Mart Dear Editor: First let me say, I love Grist and appreciate the work you do and, mostly, enjoy the irreverent humor with which you do it. However, being a staunch liberal Protestant, a devoted environmentalist, and an ardent Democrat living in a deeply red state, I found your […]
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Farmers’ almanac
Last Sunday, the Wichita Eagle published a long front-page feature on global warming. Not on global warming as "scientific controversy," mind you, but on global warming's potential future impacts on state agriculture (more droughts, more dryland crops), native wildlife (more armadillos, altered bird migrations), and intensified tornado seasons.
Higher temperatures mean more energy in the atmosphere. More energy means more turbulence. More turbulence means greater extremes. More heat waves like last week's. More snowstorms. More thunderstorms. More tornadoes.
Hunker down, Dorothy.
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They Weren’t Kidding About the “Future” Part
Feds move forward with clean coal plant — kind of The U.S. government is moving ahead with FutureGen, a $1 billion demonstration clean coal plant — and by “moving ahead,” we mean they’ve decided that it will be built on one of four sites in either Texas or Illinois. The final siting decision will be […]
