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The vexed question of exactly how far our food travels.

Update [2007-8-24 9:4:33 by Tom Philpott]: Now this is really getting vexed. As Gristmill blogger JMG comments below, the Department of Energy did not exist in 1969. (Jimmy Carter started it in ’77.) Hmmm. Rich Pirog of the Leopold Center, mentioned below the fold, emailed me with his source on the 1969 study: a paper […]

Could used chopsticks fuel a fire?

The whole point of alternative energy solutions is finding a fuel source that is already overly abundant and underused, and will continue to be ubiquitous for some time, right? In Japan, that fuel source is chopsticks.

And synthetic turf, to boot

Beijing’s four-day trial run of keeping vehicles off of its roads was either wildly successful or a complete wash, depending who you ask. The city plans to put 50,000 bicycles out to rent during the Games in hopes of easing congestion and pollution. (But will they be in fancy vending machines)? You’ll also be glad […]

And the ‘Climate Balls of Steel’ award goes to …

A new report penned by the environmental movement's genius uber-strategist Daniel J. Weiss of The Center for American Progress and his alliterative sidekick Anne Wingate examines exactly how big Big Oil's influence on individual members of Congress is. Working with OpenSecrets.org, Weiss and Wingate found that the 189 members who opposed a Democratic measure to redirect $16 billion in oil and gas subsidies to clean energy like wind and solar received on average $109,277 in contributions from Big Oil between 1989 and 2006. The 221 representatives that voted successfully to shift the subsidies to clean energy had only received an average of $26,277 over the same period.

While I'm sure some of those representatives who voted against the measure may sincerely believe that Exxon Mobil needs an extra few billion so that its shareholders don't go hungry, I suspect that most were just doing it to keep the petrodollars flowing right into their campaign account, and were willing to ignore the climate crisis to do it. It's amazing how cheaply those representatives are willing to sell their votes: $109,277 over 17 years isn't that much money -- generally less than 5 percent of what those candidates spent on their campaigns during that time.

It shows how contributing to political candidates remains one of the most effective ways to spend money: had Big Oil won this round, they would have spent one dollar for every $774 dollars they got back in subsidies (and that's just this one vote; actually their $20-million-plus in contributions have got them more than $35 billion annually in subsidies and tax credits). Industry has long known this, but environmentalists can get the same bang for the buck by directing more of their resources towards campaign contributions.

I'd like to highlight a few of the biggest recipients of Big Oil's big money:

New Mexico's Heather Wilson (R): $492,120
New York's Thomas Reynolds (R): $155,661
Virginia's Tom Davis (R): $134,360

But I've got to give today's Climate Balls of Steel award to New Jersey's Mike Ferguson (R), who sucked in $95,500 in oil money, but voted against Big Oil anyway. There aren't many people who can suck on Big Oil's teat and then spit crude oil in the harlot's face, but apparently Ferguson (at least in this instance) is one.

Are cougars coming back to the Northeast?

I just returned from a glorious week in Maine in time to see another cougar sighting reported in the local paper. Though mountain lions are listed as extinct in Massachusetts and all of the other Northeast states, this sports writer makes a habit of collecting and regularly publishing accounts like this one in his weekly outdoors column. The state's biodiversity is on the rise, with all manner of previously extirpated critters reentering its borders, from moose to bears and fishers, so it makes sense that they're here. But don't tell a state biologist that. Though the grassroots group Eastern Cougar Network has recorded 11 confirmed sightings in the east in recent years, state agencies steadfastly refuse to admit they're here.

More from W. Va.

((mtr_include))

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.