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A chat with Maryland Sen. Paul Pinsky on the Healthy Air Act

Last week, Maryland passed the Healthy Air Act, thereby joining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative -- the eighth Northeast state to do so. (The Baltimore Sun has more coverage.) It was the rare victory for environmentalists.

I got in touch with state senator Paul Pinsky (D), one of the bill's sponsors, to get the backstory. Our exchange is below the fold.

Fair trade palms

Loving thy palm grower as thyself, a growing number of churches opted last Sunday to celebrate Palm Sunday with palm fronds grown in conditions deemed both worker-friendly and environmentally sustainable.

As Brenda Meier, parish projects coordinator for Lutheran World Relief, told Religion News Service:

To have in our hand on Palm Sunday a palm that we know has been harvested in an ecologically friendly way, in a way that's going to benefit the communities and the people who harvested them, adds that much more depth to our celebration of Palm Sunday.

Amen, sister.

A bit of here, a bit of there

With an ever-growing list of things I want to blog about, I'm inspired by Dave's inconsequential post to encourage him to grow his hair long again embark on my own post o' randomness.

So with no further ado:

If I were an artist -- which I most definitely am not, until "adults drawing like six-year-olds" becomes the new rage -- I would want to put my talents to use at something like disappearing zine. The artist renderings of rapidly-disappearing species are very cool, in a depressing-as-hell sort of way.

The Daily Grist Headline Battle Royale: Match 7

Ladies and gentleman, we have a tie! Last week, both "Tiiiiiime Is on Our Side, Yes It Is" and "Bait and Switchgrass" garnered 34% of the vote (until some smart aleck casts another).

Here are the next batch of nominees:

1. Guster's Last Stand: The barnstorming band that's changing the world, one campus at a time
2. Enthuse Your Curbism: Two new nature books for city slickers
3. Good Mennonite, and Good Luck: Discovery of oil in Belize leads to craziness all around
4. Waddle They Do Now?: Global warming also affects -- noooooooo! -- penguins
5. We've Got Poll, and We're Super Bad: Polls find Americans worried about energy and climate problems

Vote!

Two matters of absolutely no consequence

An item in the recent Grist List set off a firestorm of controversy, both inside and outside Grist. I refer, of course, to the purported status of Thandie Newton as a "B-list movie star." One staffer argues that Newton's presence in the year's Best Movie Oscar winner vouchsafes her A-list-ness; similarly, a British reader asks, "Doesn't a BAFTA win qualify one as an A-list star?"

Well, no.

Halloween VIV: The Inconvenient Truth

I finally got around to watching the trailer for the new Al Gore/global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Oy.

Readers talk back about Obama, radicals, religion, and more

  Re: For Those About to Barack Dear Editor: I used to have a great deal of respect for Barack Obama, but no longer do. He voted for the egregious bankruptcy bill and Dick Cheney’s hideous energy bill — neither are even remotely progressive pieces of legislation. Everyone is getting on the biofuels bandwagon, which […]

Charles Munn, a pioneer of South American ecotourism, answers questions

Charles Munn. What work do you do? I am chair of the board of Tropical Nature, a nonprofit conservation group specializing in conservation through ecotourism. What does your organization do? We run the world’s largest network of eco-lodges in tropical rainforest — in Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Brazil. We also consult for rainforest and tropical […]

Ask the feds

Via The Washington Post, the Department of Energy wants to block Montana's attempts to regulate the impacts of coalbed methane extraction on local water supplies.

The state's Board of Environmental Review has voted in favor of requiring extraction companies -- which use large quantities of water to retrieve natural gas from coal seams -- to replenish those groundwater supplies in their original, nonpolluted state. But federal officials and Wyoming's congressional delegation object that the move could slow down the pace of energy development in Montana and neighboring states.

As Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer told the Post:

We want to develop energy in Montana, but we want to do it right. Here's the bottom line with the federal government: They're usually not helpful, and they weren't this time, either.

How's an honest man to do his job?

Dirk in a Full Nelson

Debate over offshore drilling may hold up Kempthorne’s confirmation A Bush administration plan to open 2 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas drilling has created rifts in Congress and may hold up Dirk Kempthorne’s confirmation as interior secretary. The sentimentally named “Area 181,” south of Pensacola, Fla., is estimated to […]