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Gets national reforms on the basis of local violations

Can somebody with more knowledge and experience tell me if something extraordinary is going on in the office of Kevin J. O'Connor, the U.S. Attorney for the Connecticut district? It certainly seems extraordinary to me -- and deserving of wider notice and praise.

Readers talk back about ethanol, cell phones, home renovations, and more

  Re: Kernel Ganders Dear Editor: Thanks for covering the ethanol issue and our paper in Science. David Pimentel erroneously claims we didn’t include energy for farm machinery in our analysis, and unfortunately his claim, though false, has been repeated several times in the media. Your article also attributes to our study the claim that […]

Win Some, Luge Some

WWF gives Turin Olympics mixed grade for eco-impacts For the next few weeks the world will be glued to its TVs for a spectacle of heartbreak and triumph called … American Idol. But some folks might also watch the Olympic Winter Games. Are they green? WWF has given the Turin Games a mixed score, noting […]

And You Were Worried!

Expert panel backs Energy Department nuke-waste transport plan An expert panel organized by the National Academy of Sciences has concluded that it’s likely safe to ship tens of thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel to Nevada for disposal. After all, what could go wrong? [Spends a moment in terrified contemplation.] The panel reviewed the […]

Food imports may force new food policies

A little over a year ago The Wall Street Journal (31 Jan 2005) reported that the U.S. would become a net food importer on a more or less permanent basis by the end of 2005. To me, this is an immense challenge to our food security, but also marks a great opportunity for the U.S. to rebuild its food markets. I'm interested in how others see it.

Pooln

Check out Pooln, a nifty web-2.0-y tool that uses a "community/social-network approach to carpooling." You plug in your home zip code and your work zip code and it tries to find you someone to carpool with -- it even has RSS feeds for zip codes, in case a new carpooler shows up. The future is now!

There's a decent interview with the proprietor of Pooln on eHub.

Deutsch determined to further embarrass self

Oh Jeebus. I haven't written much about the sad, hilarious, but mostly sad saga of George Deutsch, the late lamented NASA press aide who spent his days telling some of the world's premiere scientists to be sure to follow mentions of the Big Bang with the word "theory" and to stop being so icky-scary about the whole global warming thing, and then got called on it, and then resigned in shame, and then sunk further into shame when a blogger uncovered the fact that he didn't graduate from Texas A&M, contra his resume, and may not have graduated from college at all. Lots of other bloggers and newspapers have covered it in detail.

But this ... dude. George. A piece of friendly advice: STFU.

And the award for truthiness goes to …

Environmental Action and DeSmog Blog both got this already, but it's too hilarious to pass up:

The American Association of Petroleum Geologists presented their annual journalism award to ... wait for it ... Michael Crichton.

Yes, this Michael Crichton.

What's a satirist to do?

Finally, some real environmentalists

We've found a little slice of heaven for Jeff!

High-end book printing races to the bottom.

While we're on the topic of shocking revelations regarding high-profile green types, check out what I found out when reviewing two great, sustainable-minded books for Grist. The books, Michael Ableman's Fields of Plenty and Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio's Hungry Planet, are big, beautiful, and lavishly illustrated, with powerful photographs and printed on really, really nice paper (especially Fields). Thus I was stunned at their relatively paltry price tags: $40 for Hungry, $35 for Fields. I found the answer to this riddle inside their dust jackets: One was printed in China, the other in Singapore.

The fossil-fuel energy embedded in these books rises even as their retail price tags fall, financed by cheap labor overseas. Ah, the wonders of neoliberal globalization!