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Humans spur worst extinctions since dinosaurs

Humans are responsible for the worst spate of extinctions since the dinosaurs and must make unprecedented extra efforts to reach a goal of slowing losses by 2010, a U.N. report said on Monday.

Habitats ranging from coral reefs to tropical rainforests face mounting threats, the Secretariat of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity said in the report, issued at the start of a March 20-31 U.N. meeting in Curitiba, Brazil.

"In effect, we are currently responsible for the sixth major extinction event in the history of earth, and the greatest since the dinosaurs disappeared, 65 million years ago," said the 92-page Global Biodiversity Outlook 2 report.

Keep reading (if you can). Or go straight to the report.

In absentia

Posting will be light today -- I'm hip-deep in other things. (Watch for the Obama interview later today.) Should be back on the job tomorrow.

If At First You Don’t Succeed, Tritium Again

Illinois nuke-plant operator sued for tritium spills it tried to hide Boy, we can’t wait for that “safe, clean nuclear power” President Bush is always talking about, ’cause this stuff we have now is kind of nasty. The Braidwood nuclear power plant in Illinois, owned by Exelon Corp., has been leaking millions of gallons of […]

Sierra Club Chronicles

Turns out, we're not the only game in town paying attention to the intersection of economic and environmental issues (thankfully). So are the folks over at the Sierra Club Chronicles, a monthly TV series featuring community efforts to protect environmental health.

This month, the series focuses on the fate of DeLisle, Mississippi, home to a Dupont chemical plant. When the plant was first built, it was welcomed by DeLisle's residents, who were hungry for steady work. Twenty-five years later, more than 2,000 current and former residents and employees are suing the company, blaming dioxin and other heavy metals from the plant for the cancer clusters and high illness rates in the area.

The 30-minute film, "Dioxin, Duplicity, and Dupont," will air this Thursday (March 23) at 8:30 PM Eastern and Pacific on Link TV (DIRECTV channel 375 and Dish Network channel 9410). You can also download the film to Video iPod.

Using TV to illumininate and inspire

Last night I watched the film Good Night, And Good Luck. If you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend it. It is currently available on DVD.

The movie is about the 1953 CBS News team (led by Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly) that successfully went head-to-head with the junior senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy. How closely the situation in 1953 mirrors today is disturbing, but CBS's success gives us hope.

Boehlert over and out

Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) -- a frequent ally of environmentalists -- announced today that he won't seek re-election in November.

The party that can see into the future

President Bush, yesterday:

‘Kulongoski’ is almost as fun to say as ‘fungible’

A) How did I miss this, and B) did Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski really just say that he wants 100% of the state government's energy to come from renewable sources by 2010?

(via WattHead)

Meta-trackback

The other day I indulged in one of my favorite hobbies: Chauncey Gardiner-esque musings on oil and geopolitics. Even more auto-delightfully, I used the word "fungible" a bunch.

Well, over at The Oil Drum, Yankee linked to said musings and kicked off a comment thread that ended up containing all sorts of fascinating reflections, some more related to what I actually said than others. Definitely worth a peruse. The thread is capped by this magisterial pronouncement from TOD proprietor Dave (no relation):

All these considerations are inter-related. This question has so many independent variables in it that no meaningful prediction or opinion can really be expressed.

Ha ha, but you can't stop me, Dave! I have a blog!

‘Eco-terrorism’: A non-retraction

The other day I linked to a letter to the editor in the Toronto Star in which the head of the U.S. Humane Society defended his organization against accusations by the Center for Consumer Freedom that it is tied to "eco-terrorist" organizations. Today another letter, from David Martosko at CCF, insists that no such accusations were made. Martosko sent me a link to the letter and asked, "care to retract?"

As it happens, no, I don't. I don't know any of the specifics about what CCF may have said about HSUS, or why HSUS may have misinterpreted it, but I'm perfectly willing to accept that CCF did not make the accusations in question. But the specific accusation was never my point. Martosko makes much of the distinction between HSUS and other animal-rights groups: