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The farm bill is over, so what happens next?

In a stuffy room on Capitol Hill last week, I joined a couple dozen activists and farmers to discuss the farm bill. Why would we bother to meet in hot-as-an-oven Washington D.C. to discuss the legislative mess that recently sputtered to an all too drawn-out end?

While the ink is barely dry on the new farm legislation, the campaign for the 2012 Farm and Food Bill has already begun. The group of grassroots advocates met in D.C. last week to wipe the sweat from their brows, roll up their sleeves, and begin to strategize a coordinated effort to ensure $14 billion of funding won in the new farm bill translates into real support for sustainable farmers, environmental stewardship, rural economic development, urban food projects, and other good food efforts.

The $14 billion worth of programs can grow and nourish sustainable food and agriculture efforts around the country and in doing so, build the power of the 2012 Farm and Food Bill movement along the way. One of the keys is getting the word out about these new programs so that farmers and organizations can benefit from them.

If you’re going to eat meat, you can’t shy away from the whole beast

Ready to meat its maker. A few months ago, I decided to force myself to confront issues surrounding meat-eating head on — so to speak — by attending a hog-butchering class. Taught by Boston chef Jamie Bissonnette of KO Prime and offered through the Chefs Collaborative, the class focused on utilizing the whole animal, from […]

Ugandan coffee endangered by climate change

Uganda’s coffee industry could be basically kaput in 30 years, according to a new Oxfam report. Uganda is Africa’s second-largest coffee exporter after Ethiopia, but the report direly predicts that if “average global temperatures rise by two degrees or more, then most of Uganda is likely to cease to be suitable for coffee.” In the […]

Watch the video of Gore’s speech today

If the summary and full text of Gore's speech have left you wanting more, here's the vid:

Ugly babies

“Ethanol is an ugly baby, but it’s our baby. I’m not against any fuel unless it’s foreign.” — oil billionaire and energy independence evangelist T. Boone Pickens

Gore calls for carbon tax, 100 percent renewable electricity by 2018

[Editor's note: The headline was mistakenly published to read "energy" in place of "electricity." The fault lies with the Grist editorial staff instead of with Joseph Romm. Our apologies to Joe.]

July 17, 2008
A Generational Challenge to Repower America (as prepared)
D.A.R. Constitution Hall
Washington, D.C.

Ladies and gentlemen:

There are times in the history of our nation when our very way of life depends upon dispelling illusions and awakening to the challenge of a present danger. In such moments, we are called upon to move quickly and boldly to shake off complacency, throw aside old habits and rise, clear-eyed and alert, to the necessity of big changes. Those who, for whatever reason, refuse to do their part must either be persuaded to join the effort or asked to step aside. This is such a moment. The survival of the United States of America as we know it is at risk. And even more -- if more should be required -- the future of human civilization is at stake.

I don't remember a time in our country when so many things seemed to be going so wrong simultaneously. Our economy is in terrible shape and getting worse, gasoline prices are increasing dramatically, and so are electricity rates. Jobs are being outsourced. Home mortgages are in trouble. Banks, automobile companies and other institutions we depend upon are under growing pressure. Distinguished senior business leaders are telling us that this is just the beginning unless we find the courage to make some major changes quickly.

The climate crisis, in particular, is getting a lot worse -- much more quickly than predicted. Scientists with access to data from Navy submarines traversing underneath the North polar ice cap have warned that there is now a 75 percent chance that within five years the entire ice cap will completely disappear during the summer months. This will further increase the melting pressure on Greenland. According to experts, the Jakobshavn glacier, one of Greenland's largest, is moving at a faster rate than ever before, losing 20 million tons of ice every day, equivalent to the amount of water used every year by the residents of New York City.

Talking with voters in Nashua about the environment and the election

This is part of a series of dispatches from Melinda Henneberger, who's talking to voters around the U.S. about their views on the environment and the election.

Nashua, N.H. -- Suziana Moriera does not see soaring gas prices as all bad: "It's still not hurting enough. People complain, but it's got to hurt more" before Americans will start driving appreciably less. It's got to hurt more, she thinks, before her hometown of Nashua will ever come up with public transportation that doesn't involve "waiting an hour for a bus that still doesn't take you where you need to go."

That's why Moriera, a music teacher and registered independent whose daughter makes her living as an environmental consultant, puts green issues near the very top on the list of concerns she'll be voting on in November -- right below getting the troops out of Iraq and putting the economy back on track after what she sees as the disaster of the Bush years. ("I've had enough of the Republicans!") Yet she may well vote for John McCain for president, "even though he is in the Bush camp, and they have been terrible on the environment." Why? Essentially, because she suspects Barack Obama of being a little bit too nice a guy, a possible pushover.

Though a lot of us do seem to want a president we'd enjoy grilling out with, the less-discussed fine print on the wish list is that we want him to be the kind of good-bud neighbor who is also capable of acting like a jerk sometimes -- the dad next door who'd have no problem yelling at the kids in the party house to turn the music down, and no problem calling the cops.

"He's very much a gentleman," Moriera says of Obama -- and not at all responsible for what she saw as the sexist treatment of her first-choice candidate, Hillary Clinton. But could he be too gentlemanly? She wonders: "Does he have the backbone to deal with the huge problems he'll have to face?" So far, he has just not filled her with confidence on that score. "Obama has been flip-flopping so much, I'm not sure about him. On eavesdropping, I was shocked," she says, referring to his recent Senate vote in support of the new Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Obama had promised he would help filibuster any FISA bill that gave immunity to telecommunications companies that had cooperated with the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program. But then, he went ahead and voted for just such a bill. "And if he did that," Moriera reasons, "he could do other things." Come November, she may reluctantly conclude that what she sees as McCain's strength is more important than his specific stands, many of which she disagrees with: "I'll have to see."

Bush lifts offshore drilling ban, EPA says climate change could worsen smog levels, and more

Read the news items highlighted in this week’s podcast: Down the Interstate Is It Graduation Yet? The Smog Days of Summer (and Spring, and Fall) The Boreal World Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: Tide to be Fit Deflater House

Eighth warmest June on record means ‘Great Ice Age of 2008’ is still over

I know we're supposed to be going into a period of cooling, at least according to people who don't believe in the scientific method, but for those who do, NOAA's National Climatic Data Center reports in its "Climate of 2008 June in Historical Perspective":

Based on preliminary data, the globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was the eighth warmest on record for June and the ninth warmest for January-June year-to-date period.

It is pretty darn hot in Greenland and Siberia, not like there's anything important in those regions:

New Nature Conservancy prez chats about jumping from Goldman Sachs to the green scene

The stereotypes of biz-begrudging enviros and planet-pillaging business leaders were upended years ago. These days, green groups and corporations team up on everything from preserving land to pushing for climate regulations. Now, in the latest example of cross-pollination, they’re even swapping executives. Mark Tercek Photo: Mark Godfrey/The Nature Conservancy Mark Tercek, who took the helm […]