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This week, Gabriel Pacyniak and Katherine Chandler are traveling throughout southern West Virginia to report on mountaintop removal mining (MTR). They'll be visiting coalfields with abandoned and "reclaimed" MTR mines, and talking with residents, activists, miners, mine company officials, local reporters, and politicians.

We'll publish their reports throughout the week.

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"This is what people around here don't understand, that this is forever," says Terry Steele, a former coal miner who has brought us up to a reclaimed mountaintop removal mine (MTR) site just above his home in Meador Hollow, West Virginia. "This mountain will never be like it was." The site has been reclaimed close to its original contour. That is, it's about the height it used to be, but now it's topped with pale rocky soil and anemic vegetation.

Scene from alongside the hollow road heading to an MTR site near Meador, W.Va. (photo: Katherine Chandler)

A biodegradable doggie bag

This week, here at Grist HQ, we got an interesting package in the mail that contained two biodegradable doggie bags. No, not for your leftover takeout … but rather, ahem, for your doggie’s leftovers. The Skooperbox, which actually looks quite like a takeout box, is apparently made of 100 percent recycled material and is 100 […]

Existential threats are a bummer

Following the letters to Grist complaining about a declining humor quotient and the posts wondering if we're just focusing too darn much on the climate crisis, it occurred to me that there's precedent for what we're going through.

Just like people in the USA and USSR had to get used to the idea of annihilation -- and still go about their daily lives -- we are watching people struggle with the problem of living their lives while knowing that the chances that their kids will be able to live nearly as well are declining rapidly.

Thus, the paradox: knowledge is no longer power. Instead, the better informed you are, the more likely you are to feel existential despair.

Bovines aren’t the only ones to blame

Thought cows were the only gassy animals belching up a climate change storm? Apparently the Scandinavian moose is also quite the methane machine: Norwegian newspapers, citing research from Norway’s technical university, said a motorist would have to drive [about 8,000 miles] in a car to emit as much CO2 as a moose does in a […]

Will bikes or cars win?

China has an environmental problem. No, I'm not talking about weathering huge dust storms, opening one coal power plant a week, surpassing the U.S. as the largest emitter of carbon dioxide, or flooding ecosystems with huge dam projects. I'm talking about something serious: If pollution does not get better in Beijing in time for the 2008 Olympics, the long-distance track events may be canceled.

According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, "China's new middle class in love with cars -- big cars":

The auto boom has dire implications for next summer's Olympic Games in Beijing because it contributes to the noxious cap of smog that makes it the world's most polluted capital city.

Jacques Rogge, the International Olympic Committee president, suggested at a ceremony in Beijing on Aug. 8 that events such as long-distance races might have to be postponed if the smog remains too heavy a year from now. "My concerns, which I believe are the concerns of everyone, are the climate and the environment, and especially the air environment," he said.

This weekend, in a test of the drastic anti-pollution measures expected for the eve of the Games next year, Beijing authorities are banning half of all vehicles from city streets, alternating days between odd-numbered and even-numbered license plates.

Also, Chinese car ownership is projected to increase dramatically:

The biggest car-buying boom in world history is under way in China as vast numbers of people join the middle class, abandon their bicycles for autos and sport utility vehicles -- and, in the process, add to China's already fast-growing emissions of greenhouse gases ... total car ownership is expected to surpass the U.S. level by 2025.

Researchers track large marine predators across the globe

I spent the spring and summer of 2002 studying at Hopkins Marine Station, in Pacific Grove, Calif. -- splashing around in tide pools, diving in kelp forests, and wading through mud in Elkhorn Slough. One of the highlights of my time there was helping Dr. Barbara Block and Dr. Dan Costa experiment with placing satellite tags on elephant seals. These seals can dive as deep as 1700 ft, spending up to 30 minutes underwater, so they were great test subjects to see how the tags would hold up.

After capturing a few seals on Año Nuevo Island and trucking them an hour down the coast to Hopkins, the scientists glued the tags on and released them, tracking their progress as they swam back home.

Block and Costa are lead scientists in the Tagging of Pacific Predators project. The project is helping them to understand where migrating sharks, leatherback turtles, bluefin tuna, seals, albatross, and other large marine animals spend their time.

Not only do the tags track the animals' location, swim speed, and depth and duration of dives, but they also collect information about the temperature and salinity of the seawater, which is beamed back to the researchers via satellite. Fancy, eh?

Toying With Our Emotions

Bush administration may be complicit in lead-painted-toy debacle While China has endured a lot of criticism from the lead-painted-toy debacle, the Bush administration is not off the hook. Consumer advocates say the anti-regulation administration has hindered attempts to crack down on inspection of imported Chinese playthings; in addition, critics accuse the feds of encouraging the […]

Lovely Nissan, Meter Made

Nissan to install fuel-efficiency gauge in all its models Automaker Nissan announced plans yesterday to install a gauge in all its vehicles that estimates fuel-efficiency to let drivers know how their driving habits affect gas mileage. The gauge already appears in some of Nissan’s newest luxury cars, but its plan to eventually showcase the efficiency […]

Teddy Would Be Proud

Conservation organization sues feds over energy development The Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership has sued the U.S. Department of the Interior over the authorization of thousands of new oil and gas wells, roads, and miles of pipeline in a wildlife-rich area of Wyoming. News that an organization has sued the federal government over environmental travesties is, […]

Do They Just Not Caribou?

BLM offers yet another plan for drilling on Alaska’s sensitive North Slope In 1923, U.S. President Warren G. Harding designated 23 million acres on Alaska’s North Slope as a national petroleum reserve. The ecologically sensitive northeast corner of the reserve — which includes pristine Lake Teshekpuk and is vital habitat for breeding caribou and migrating […]