Latest Articles

This week in ocean news

• the European Union closed the bluefin tuna fishing season in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean, calling the stocks "exhausted" ...
• a developer proposed dredging up 2.6 million cubic yards of sand from the ocean floor in order to build an artificial beach in Nantucket. The developer will replace the 105 acres of seabed habitat with 28,000 concrete railroad ties over 60 acres ...
• A New York coastal manager told the state government that its 3,200 miles of coastline were in danger from pollution and overfishing. "New York was born on the waterfront, and its future depends on managing those resources," he said ...
• Australian authorities detained 61 crew members of six illegal fishing boats. A catch of trepang, a sea slug, was found on board one of the ships. It was thrown back into the water ...

Another agrofuel protest hits City Hall

Candace Heckman, writing for the Seattle P-I Big Blog, put up a brief post about the protest yesterday by Duff Badgley and his rag-tag group against local biodiesel-refiner Imperium Renewables. Imperium is getting downright defensive:

Imperium spokesman John Williams said this afternoon that the company is actively looking at "feedstocks" other than palm oil, and that for the next year-and-a-half, the City of Seattle would not be buying biodiesel made from palm.

This blog post "makes it sound like at some point we might sell palm biodiesel to the city. We haven't, we don't and we won't."

Get the violins and hankies out:

Williams said his company is being unfairly targeted ... [ahem] Although, Imperium is not in the position to completely swear off palm as the company grows into a global corporation.

Imperium has no choice. It has to make a profit. It has to try to pay back its investors. It is pointless to harp at Imperium. The power lies entirely in the hands of the consumer who can choose not to purchase food crop based agrodiesel.

The problem is with our local politicians. They have mandated its use, subsidized its profit margin, and to ice the cake, have allowed millions of dollars of retirement funds to be invested in Imperium. This was all done with money taken from consumers via taxes. Adding insult to injury, these same consumers have to buy back this environmentally destructive fuel from the government at whatever cost every time they take a bus or ferry.

Our politicians may have good intentions, but the road to hell is starting to look like a parking lot.

A few of our favorite parenting and health links

It’s possible to say a lot in a two-week series on parenting and health, but it ain’t possible to say it all. That’s why we’ve compiled a list of sites we’re finding pretty dang helpful and entertaining. They tell the rest of the story, and they’ll keep telling new stories after our series is over. […]

Charges reinstated against company that allegedly exposed small town to asbestos

The long-running legal battle over whether chemical company W.R. Grace knowingly exposed thousands of residents of Libby, Mont., to asbestos has taken an upswing: an appeals court has reinstated environmental and conspiracy charges against the company, which were thrown out by a federal judge last year. Next stop, trial; if convicted, Grace could be fined […]

New U.S. Pirg report recommends 100 percent of allowances be auctioned

Speaking of auctioning the permits under a cap-and-trade system, yesterday U.S. PIRG released a new report: “Cleaner, Cheaper, Smarter: The Case For Auctioning Pollution Allowances In A Global Warming Cap-and-Trade Program.” It argues for auctioning 100% of permits: Auctioning all allowances under a cap-and-trade program is fair, reduces the societal cost of achieving emission reductions […]

An eco-entrepreneur’s advice on kid-proofing your cleaning supplies

Photo: iStockphoto As a practically perpetually pregnant person — I’m a mom of three and have been either pregnant or breastfeeding for 10 years of my adult life — I’ve needed to make my surroundings clean in a nontoxic and green way. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no snooty domestic diva. I strongly believe cobwebs […]

Is global warming the moral equivalent of World War II?

From Al Gore to Lester Brown, writers concerned about preventing the worst of global warming have proposed that our "commitment will need to be of a scale comparable to what we did during World War II." But the parallels never go beyond a vague reference.

PBS is about to run a series, premiering this Sunday, called "The War," so it might be a good time to think a little more deeply about the connection.

There are two main questions that need to be asked: Is global warming -- or more generally, the assault on the biosphere, including the wholesale destruction of ecosystems and species -- an emergency, as was World War II? In other words, do we have to do something quickly? Second, what was done in World War II to meet the emergency, and what lessons can we learn from that response?

Land-use decisions a key factor in emissions reduction, says analysis

How to reduce U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions? Building compact, mixed-use neighborhoods would be just as effective as much-touted policies like boosting fuel economy, cleaning up power plants, and building green, says a new analysis from the Urban Land Institute. The U.S. population is expected to grow 23 percent by 2030; under the sprawl-encouraging status quo, driving […]

USDA secretary resigns; industrial-corn man takes charge

Big doings at the USDA yesterday: Mike Johanns, the reliably pro-agribiz former governor of Nebraska, resigned from his post as USDA chair — right in the middle of Farm Bill negotiations, now in the Senate. He says he’s going to run for the Senate seat that Chuck Hagel is vacating. Chuck Conner, currently the USDA’s […]

Does anyone choose to live in a condo?

One of the curiosities of language is that our usage can sometimes inadvertently reveal our underlying beliefs. Consider how condos are often described as if they are conscious actors who perform actions, such as "packing people together."

One example comes from the Seattle P-I: "Now, condominiums are building upward, packing people into to what used to be inexpensive property." According to this way of writing, it's the condos, not the owners, that have what we philosophy majors call "agency."

This is just weird. Admittedly, I don't get out a lot, but I've never seen condos roaming the streets, rounding up suburban residents, and stuffing the poor saps into boxes. I've always been under the impression that developers build condos in urban neighborhoods because there are lots of people who want to live in them.

Single family homes, by the way, aren't given the same treatment in our usage.