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How to maintain a green, healthy diet on a budget

Dear Lou,

With the economic crunch, how is it going to be possible to afford healthy foods for my family, especially organics? It's not like I can go foraging in the medians of the major roadways.

Karl from Southern California

 

Report shows that feds have failed to protect marine mammals, even though it's required by law

Pity the poor false killer whale.

Fishermen in Hawaii who set longlines studded with thousands of hooks over dozens of miles often snag the whales -- actually large dolphins -- instead of their desired tuna or swordfish. Even the federal government, in the form of the National Marine Fisheries Service, acknowledges that the false killer whale is seriously threatened by longline fishing. NMFS has named the whale a top priority for protection under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

In 2004, NMFS determined the fishery was killing false killer whales at a level that mandated action under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, yet the agency has yet to attempt to solve the problem. The Hawaiian longline fishery continues killing false killer whales, unabatedly.

And this isn't an isolated scenario. In a scathing new report [PDF], the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that NMFS has failed to follow through on the directives of the Marine Mammal Protection Act on numerous levels, primarily thanks to a lack of funding and inadequate data.

Kingston, coal ash, and the coal lobby’s grip on the EPA

The American News Project files a report on "The EPA and the Curse of Coal Ash." Fantastic, affecting stuff, as always from ANP. Watch:

Carbon tax is better on merits, cap-and-traders trade away political advantages

Standards-based regulations and public investment are superior to either carbon taxes or cap-and-trade. But we need some form of carbon pricing to reinforce public action, and a carbon tax is superior to carbon trading.

The main policy advantage cap-and-traders offer over a carbon tax is certainty. They claim that it is better to fix the ceiling on emissions and let the price vary than to fix the price and hope it produces the reduction you want. However, most cap-and-trade advocates favor an escape clause, a price ceiling which would trigger the issue of more permits, either because they see it as the price you have to pay to get a bill through, or because they honestly favor the policy. In either case, once you have an escape clause, you no longer have the certainty advocates tout so highly.

Major media outlet officially over eco-trend

CNN -- or some overworked and over-it headline writer at CNN -- calls it: "Cisco Goes -- What Else? -- Green." Seriously, Cisco -- that's so 2008.

The prospects for ocean protection under a new president and Congress

This is a guest post by David Helvarg, an author and a coordinator of the upcoming Blue Vision Summit in Washington, D.C. His next book is Rescue Warriors: The U.S. Coast Guard, America's Forgotten Heroes (May 2009).

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America now has, among other historic precedents, its first bodysurfing president. Of course, protecting the ocean (71 percent of the planet's surface and 97 percent of its livable habitat) is still not likely to be the top priority of Hawaii-raised Barack Obama. He's got more than enough policy challenges for his first weeks in office, with the collapse of a world economy based on American consumers buying stuff, two ongoing and intractable wars, and the civilization-ending threat from fossil fuel-fired climate change.

Still, healthy oceans and coasts are essential to the nation's economy, security, and stability. About half of America's GDP is generated in its 600 coastal counties (which are home to $4 trillion of insured property). And to some degree, everyone is at risk from the cascading marine ecological disasters of overfishing (loss of food security), nutrient and plastic pollution (public health threats), coastal sprawl (increased risk of disaster), and climate change (big increased risk of disaster).

The first sign of hope is the new president's insistence that change has to come from bottom-up engagement of our citizenry. On Martin Luther King's birthday, the night before the inauguration, some 300 people participated in a seaweed shoreline restoration in my Bay Area neighborhood of Richmond, Calif., and about half of the participants had heard about it on an Obama-linked volunteer website.

Images of an evolving world by artist Don Simon

These images are from a series of drawings titled “Unnaturalism” by artist Don Simon. His work examines the impact of industrialization and sprawl on ecosystems. From his artist statement: “Throughout history, particularly since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, mankind has been less than kind to our cohabitants on the planet. We build, produce, and […]

A $4.6 billion coal gift in stimulus package, record profits for FutureGen members

While Peabody Coal, one of the prime sponsors of the FutureGen boondoggle in Illinois, announced an eightfold increase in profits in their fourth quarter reports for 2008, the Senate Appropriations Committee just approved legislation for an additional $4.6 billion in handouts to the coal industry as part of the stimulus package, in the guise of "clean coal."

There's a new detail on this "clean coal" money: $2 billion are no longer slated for zero emissions plants, but "near-zero emissions" power plants -- so much for all of those TV ads about zero emissions.

What are near-zero emissions? Sorta like near-zero coal ash ponds and accidents, near-zero 10,000 black lung cases, near-zero workplace mining accidents, near-zero 1 million acres of strip mining and mountaintop removal, near-zero watershed contamination, and near-zero coal truck accidents?

This is on top of $2.8 billion the coal industry picked up in the last bailout.

In the meantime, check out the dream team sponsors of FutureGen, the much ballyhooed poster child of the "clean coal" proponents who somehow like us to forget that before coal will ever be burned with near-zero mercury and carbon dioxide emissions, coal first needs to be extracted, processed, transported, and burned with ash piles.

FutureGen Alliance Members include:

More on conservatives and carbon taxes

Bill Chameides, all around smart guy and dean of Duke's Nicholas School, takes a look at the rash of conservatives supporting carbon taxes (which I addressed the other day in more, um, colorful terms):

Some of my colleagues believe it's the poisoned pawn ploy -- since taxes are not viable politically, kill climate legislation by favoring a carbon tax.

I have a different hunch.

His hunch is that conservatives want to raise a carbon tax (which is regressive) in order to lower income taxes (which are progressive) -- in other words, they want a regressive tax shift. These newly minted carbon tax fans are longtime champions of that agenda:

Coincidentally, Inglis and Laffer just happen to favor replacing our progressive tax system with a more regressive one (see here and here). Inglis has earned the Citizens for Tax Justice's highest rating for his opposition "to progressive taxes," and Laffer is a highly vocal proponent of the flat tax that would replace our progressive tax system with a single tax rate for all Americans.

Many things about the tax vs. C&T debate are uncertain, but one thing I have no doubt about is that James Inhofe and Rex Tillerson are not participating in good faith. If those two guys told me the earth was round I'd be rechecking satellite photos.

Take the chill off the bad economy with a frugal, delicious vegetable soup

Photo: Library of Congress In our food system, the part of the animal that delivers the most flavor — the bones — often gets thrown away. Purveyors then sell the boneless meat at a higher price. During hard times, such wasteful practices come into relief. We explore humbler, bone-in cuts of meat and underappreciated vegetables. […]