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New initiatives from Whole Foods

I wrote a post a little while back about the exchange going on between food writer Michael Pollan and Whole Foods Market honcho John Mackey. The subject has been some claims about Whole Foods' relationship to "industrial organic" made in Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma. Read that previous post for background.

Mackey has written another detailed letter to Pollan. It's interesting throughout, but the big news comes at the end, when Mackey announces a series of new initiatives the company is undertaking. They will be attempting to build up a system of animal-compassionate small farms, buying more local food, setting up a loan program for small farmers, opening their parking lots for local farmers to sell directly to consumers (!), and increasing consumer education on the subject of local food. Pretty radical stuff.

I haven't seen this picked up in the mainstream media yet, but I expect it will be.

Here's the relevant part of the letter:

Lessons from Bogotá

Very worth reading: an article in British Columbia webzine The Tyee about the former mayor of Bogotá, Columbia, who catalyzed sweeping reforms in the capital city:

Enrique Peñalosa presided over the transition of a city that the world--and many residents--had given up on. Bogota had lost itself in slums, chaos, violence, and traffic...He built more than a hundred nurseries for children. He built 50 new public schools and increased enrolment by 34 percent. He built a network of libraries. He created a highly-efficient, "bus highway" transit system. He built or reconstructed hundreds of kilometers of sidewalks, more than 300 kilometres of bicycle paths, pedestrian streets, and more than 1,200 parks.

And much of the mayor's success stemmed from a decision to reclaim urban spaces from private cars, by restricting parking (no more cars on sidewalks!), raising gas taxes to pay for rapid transit, and reprogramming money for roads to other, more pressing concerns.

Gore on The Daily Show

I just got done watching last night's Al Gore interview on The Daily Show. (It's not online yet, unless you seek out the torrent.) He acquitted himself very well, much better than I expected.

There was some nice repartee. Stewart asked if Gore took some satisfaction in seeing that slide where Florida gets flooded. Gore said, "hey, I think I won Florida."

Also, Gore specifically dinged Bush's recent line that we need to get "beyond the debate," which of course I was happy to see. He said a doctor wouldn't look at your symptoms and say, well, let's not worry about what's causing them, let's just give you an aspirin and send you home. True dat.

But mainly, Gore effectively got across the point that the evidence is overwhelming and that it's time to put politics aside and just solve the damn problem. The audience loved him.

Update [2006-6-29 15:41:14 by David Roberts]: Here's the video.

Another Fine Mess

GAO says EPA is sloppy and plagued with management problems Well, here’s a shocker: the U.S. EPA is inconsistent in its environmental enforcement and keeps sloppy records. That’s what the Government Accountability Office told the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works yesterday. Upon reviewing reports and studies from the past six years, the GAO […]

Let there be (more efficient) light

Big savings possible:

A global switch to efficient lighting systems would trim the world's electricity bill by nearly one-tenth.

That is the conclusion of a study from the International Energy Agency (IEA), which it says is the first global survey of lighting uses and costs.

The carbon dioxide emissions saved by such a switch would, it concludes, dwarf cuts so far achieved by adopting wind and solar power.

GM CEO admits killing electric car was a blunder

So Rick Wagoner, CEO of General Motors, is asked in the June issue of Motor Trend magazine (not online) which decision he most regrets as CEO. His answer is appropriate, what with a certain documentary coming out soon, and it's under the fold.

Geoengineering redux

RealClimate weighs in on the debate over geoengineering (which was featured in a much-discussed NYT piece yesterday). There's some technical discussion, but here's the take-home point:

... in my opinion, the proposals are unlikely to gain much traction. Maybe an analogy is useful to see why. Think of the climate as a small boat on a rather choppy ocean. Under normal circumstances the boat will rock to and fro, and there is a finite risk that the boat could be overturned by a rogue wave. But now one of the passengers has decided to stand up and is deliberately rocking the boat ever more violently. Someone suggests that this is likely to increase the chances of the boat capsizing. Another passenger then proposes that with his knowledge of chaotic dynamics he can counterbalance the first passenger and indeed, counter the natural rocking caused by the waves. But to do so he needs a huge array of sensors and enormous computational reasources to be ready to react efficiently but still wouldn't be able to guarantee absolute stability, and indeed, since the system is untested it might make things worse.

So is the answer to a known and increasing human influence on climate an ever more elaborate system to control the climate? Or should the person rocking the boat just sit down?

We hold these truths to be self-evident …

With July 4th nearly here and all the Declarations of Energy Indpendence out there, it is time to ponder what American leaders of the past would have to say about energy and environmental issues confronting the nation today.

Perhaps they would like energy judged not by the color of money, but by the content of its carbon? Or maybe they would challenge us to ask not what our country could do for our cars, but what cars we could drive for our country?

Get your creative juices flowing and leave your adaptations in the comments.

Here's what I think Lincoln might say:

And even more fun if it’s recycled

This site is pretty awfully designed, but I like it because it's called news.com.com. Hee hee. Oh, and also because it brings news(.com.com) of an Israeli firm that's experimenting with extracting oil from sewage sludge.

"Sludge is a major problem in the world. Cities pay $50 a ton or more to get rid of it," [Eco Energy CEO Amit Mor] said. "And it's good-quality light oil."

A ton of high-quality sludge can produce about 30 kilograms, or 66 pounds, of such oil, Mor said. The process can also convert pulp, agricultural waste, plastics and tires into oil.

Recycling: good. Producing conventional oil: bad. Chances of this going mainstream: about as good as the chances of fighting global warming with floating white plastic islands.

When It Uraniums, It Pours

New nuke-waste plan follows license for new nuclear facility The U.S. government could store nuclear waste for up to 25 years at interim sites on federal land (including national forests) under a new proposal by Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.). Over 50,000 tons of radioactive waste sit at nuclear power plants awaiting transfer to the proposed […]