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More on Alito and the environment

From BushGreenwatch. Some good info about specific cases.

People, animals at risk of famine.

In case you weren't aware ...

Drought is causing crisis conditions in East Africa, leaving millions hungry in Kenya, Somalia, and bordering countries. Sudanese herders have driven livestock into a Ugandan wildlife reserve in an effort to find water. The drought is affecting animals too: Elephants are leaving sanctuaries to find food and hippos are dying as water levels are depleted.

You know when you feel totally helpless ... ?

A Whale of a Door Prize

Greenpeace dumps dead whale at Japanese embassy Greenpeace, ever masters of artful subtlety, dumped a big ol’ dead whale on the doorstep of the Japanese embassy in Berlin yesterday. Here we pause a moment to let you savor the mental image … ahh. The whale dump was a protest against Japan’s ongoing hunt for minke […]

A surprisingly short post, considering the ground to be covered.

When one sees a headline that says "Environmental hazard: space junk," one might assume the article will be about the environmental hazards of space junk. One would be mistaken, as the article is about the potential danger of spacecraft being hit by space junk. An issue in some circles, surely, but "environmental hazard"? Might I suggest to the Boston Globe headline writer that "Junk in the trunk" might have been better?

Luckily, a reader feeling disgruntled over having been eco-misled can link from the space junk article to the the highly adorable "Hamster, snake best friends at Tokyo zoo." Aochan the snake was given Gohan the hamster (whose name means "meal") as a tasty treat, but elected to make her his buddy instead. They live together in a cardboard box and sometimes snuggle up to take naps.

Yay! Cute animal stories make me happy. Plus you can link from snake-hearts-hamster to fun human-interest story "Man trapped in toilet when lock freezes." The world is a terribly interesting place.

Sonar, and Thanks for All the Fish

References to naval sonar cut from report on mass whale stranding Sonar who? A federal government report on the stranding of 37 whales on North Carolina’s Outer Banks last year conspicuously fails to mention the possible influence of naval sonar. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration investigator Teri Rowles says that although she initially suggested loud […]

Can environmentalism be sexy, hip, and fun?

By the looks of this party, I say hell yeah! What am I talking about? ICInyc. From the press release [PDF]:

On January 25th, 2006 New York's eco-conscious elite will descend on the trendy LES hotspot Libation for a party held by ICInyc. The first party of its kind, ICInyc will bring these eco-chic revelers together for a simple purpose; to show the rest of the world that being fabulous and easy on the planet are one and the same.

...

The future-forward set is hungry for an ultra chic venue that speaks to its consciousness. ICInyc ("ici" is French for "here"), a roving celebration of front line visionaries blending fashion, design, media and the arts with the modest task of saving the planet, fills the void. "We created ICInyc as a spectacle, experiment and gathering place for the growing number of fashionable, design-savvy, eco-conscious urban dwellers," says Charles Heckman, one of the masterminds behind the event.

And eco-fashion (for the life of me I don't know why Grist hasn't interviewed her yet) hottie Summer Rayne Oakes should be in attendance.

And by the looks of the press list, this might be a serious event.

(Via TH)

Is recycling glass worth it?

A random call from a reporter piqued my interest: Does recycling glass really save energy? That is, after you take into consideration all the energy spent to collect glass from people's homes, truck the collected glass to a distribution center, route it to a glass manufacturer, and then melt it down for reuse, does glass recycling really save anything, compared with using virgin materials?

I was actually fearing the worst here. Obviously, given all the energy costs of recycling glass, it's conceivable that it isn't a very good deal for the environment. Plus the reporter was asking specifically because he'd heard some mention that the benefits of glass recycling were overblown.

As it turns out, though, I shouldn't have worried. From just about every serious analysis I dug up, it seems that glass recycling really does save energy, compared with using virgin material. Some handy citations: here, here, here, and this extensive lit. review (PDF).

But as with most things, there is a bit of a twist.

Conservative columnist says he was taken down by environmentalist conspiracy

Ah, seems environmentalists just don't know their own power!

Disgraced conservative columnist (and frequent biotech-booster) Michael Fumento -- recently canned by Scripps Howard News Service after revelations that he accepted grants from Monsanto, which he never disclosed to his readers or to Scripps -- says he's the target of a "witch hunt" run by [ominous music] the greeeens.

It's no coincidence, you see, that he came under fire after conservative Doug Bandow admitted he wrote columns for lobbyist Jack Abramoff in exchange for cash. Fumento mutters darkly:

Bandow was long a critic of environmental activists, and when he went down a light bulb lit up over their heads.

They realized they might eliminate more of their critics by simply accusing them of being paid corporate shills, and then siccing the media on them to see what they could dig up. They assembled an "enemies list," giving it to reporters at publications including the New York Times and Business Week. I have locked horns with green groups for the past 15 years and earned a spot on that list.

Close reading of the rest of the column reveals rather little -- and by "rather little" I mean "zero" -- evidence for the existence of the alleged enemies list, much less for the light bulbs and subsequent environmentalist conspiracies.

Perhaps he doesn't want to reveal too much. After all, they're watching him ...

Sigh

I wish, instead of being a poor writer, I was a rich writer. Then I'd build a house like this. (Check out the slideshow.)

Values

From what I've seen, everything Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus have produced consists of one part genuine insight, one part confusion, and one part banality, presented with a breathless air of revolution, an undertone of smug satisfaction, and a generous dollop of self-promotion.

Garance Franke-Ruta's long, dense piece in this month's American Prospect more or less confirms that assessment. It's not about the Death stuff, but a broader project to map the current values of the American public and help progressives figure out how to appeal to them. The reapers are opening an American branch of the Canadian consumer-research firm Environics -- bringing the extremely sophisticated research tools used by the private sector to the public sector (where conventional polling is woefully inexact).

The basic picture is this: For the past couple of decades, "values" have come to eclipse, and in many ways serve as a proxy for, issues of economic self-interest. This has left the Democrats out in the cold. So what are those values?

Here's the nut: