Latest Articles

The Invisible Hand Drops Its Harpoon

Iceland halts whale hunt due to low demand After resuming commercial whaling just under a year ago, Iceland’s fisheries minister said recently that his country will not issue new whale-hunting quotas until there’s more demand for whale-derived products and until Iceland gets an export license to send whale meat to Japan. “There is no reason […]

Fear of death leads to authoritarianism, not sustainability

It’s tempting to think that if you scare the shit out of people — really convince them, down to their bones, that hurricanes, diseases, and starving refugees are hiding just around the corner — that mass mobilization against global warming will at long last ensue. There’s good reason to doubt it. Fear causes fairly predictable […]

Strung Out

Clotheslines growing more popular in U.S. The clothesline, nemesis of backyard cyclists everywhere, is making a comeback thanks to green awareness and energy costs. Many communities and homeowner’s associations have banned the misunderstood expanse of rope, assuming that neighbors aren’t interested in each other’s dirty — or clean — laundry. But as a burgeoning “right […]

Put It in Park

Donations roll in for national parks’ centennial projects The 100th anniversary of the National Park Service is a mere nine years away, and donations are rolling in to spruce up parks for the occasion. In a spending bill yet to be approved by Congress, Bush made funds available to match private giving; some $300 million […]

Green Goes the Lower Ninth

The Nation reports on sustainable revitalization of a New Orleans neighborhood Two years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is still, slowly, rebuilding. But the people of the ravaged Lower Ninth Ward are determined to bring their neighborhood back — and to develop it sustainably. In a piece from The Nation republished in Gristmill, Rebecca Solnit […]

And Now for Something Completely Familiar

China’s environment still terribly polluted, getting worse Almost nowhere else on earth today is a source for so much environmental gloom and doom as China. To sum up: It’s bad. In fact, for those prone to hopelessness … read on, there’s plenty to get depressed about. Nearly 500 million people in China lack access to […]

Umbra on attracting wildlife

Hi Umbra, I agree with your analysis of bird feeders, and would like to share a win-win solution. I have a huge variety of birds that visit my yard year-round. Instead of bird feeders, I have planted an abundance of native plants, including trees, bushes, and groundcover plants that provide berries, seeds, nesting material, and […]

‘Biodiesel’ is looking worse and worse

An example of a long-lived and wildly successful marketing scheme is the station wagon with oversize tires and a four-wheel drive transmission, repackaged as the Sport Utility Vehicle. The only significant difference between these and the cars our parents drove is the mental image planted in our heads by marketing. And the real beauty is that you get to pick from two images:

1. People envy you for having enough disposable income and leisure time to use your car for sport, skiing in the mountains or driving down the middle of your favorite trout stream to do a little fly-fishing.
2. People envy you for owning such a utilitarian vehicle, one befitting a rugged individualist who hauls tools and supplies to job sites (the Marlboro Man).

The glue that binds all this together, of course, is status-seeking behavior -- a genetic propensity for most social primates.

Another wildly successful recent marketing scheme is the word biodiesel. Bio is the Greek root for life: biosphere, biodiversity, and biology. Let's see how well this image of preserving life holds up against the reality of biodiesel.

You take a habitat filled with biodiversity, a forest (temperate/tropical) or grassland (Cerrado/Conservation Reserve), bulldoze and burn all vegetation, plow up the soil, sterilize it with herbicides and insecticides, and finally plant a single genetically modified crop on it. You now have a large flat expanse of land devoid of all life save a single species -- as I have said before, a mall parking lot plus one. The process used to produce the crop is by any definition industrial.

Doing this to produce food is one thing; doing it to feed our cars borders on immoral.

A new subculture has recently sprung up based around biodiesel use. It is a badge of honor (a status symbol) to own a car that runs on biodiesel in this circle, just as a Prius is in other circles. Devotees believe they are sticking it to the man (oil companies). Never mind that oil companies (or companies that look very much like them) will eventually own all biofuel production. As with the SUV, it is based on false marketing from industry televangelists, propagated by believers devoid of critical thought.

Time to cut through the marketing crap and give this fuel a more accurate label: Industrial agrodiesel. We need a new bumper sticker: "Biodiesel: feeding the planet to our cars." And no, I'm not a shill for the bumper sticker oligarchy.

Michigan gov. follows Gingrich’s example, kills science advisory board

Newt Gingrich, claiming a mandate to make government smaller, actually managed to abolish only two offices: the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA).

The OTA was a widely praised, nonpartisan board that helped Congress understand and deal with technical issues -- exactly the kind of office you don't need if you get your understanding of biology from Genesis, your thoughts on telecommunications from K Street, and your opinions on energy from Exxon. The OTA was probably one of the least-known but best performing offices in all of D.C.

Oddly, Gov. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan just killed the Michigan Environmental Science Board, which was composed of volunteer scientists appointed by the Governor. The only cost to the state was for member travel when on assignment, and for preparation and distribution of reports.

Here are the reports prepared by the MESB over the years:

Haiku Times on community gardens (with gorgeous photos)

There is a really nice issue of Haiku Times devoted to community gardens. The haikus are variously lovely, funny, and insightful, and the photos are absolutely beautiful.