Latest Articles

Wacky dude makes cool stat-o-meter on what’s happening in the world

OK, so the guy who made this says he finds the “theory of global warming highly debatable,” but this thing is pretty cool: The World Clock. It lets you see a number of (likely somewhat flawed) stats about what’s going on in the world during the current year, month, week, day, or time period you’re […]

The next generation of riding transit

Riding transit just got way, way, easier. A new website called SpotBus is wildly better than existing online trip planners. For one thing, you can enter destinations like a normal person -- "Ballard," or "Ikea," or "ferry," or whatever -- not some arcane intersection. It's so much faster and more intuitive that it feels like giving up your old gimcrack five-disc CD changer for an iPod.

It only works in the Puget Sound area, but there's no reason something similar couldn't be devised for other regions.

A look at Mike Gravel’s environmental platform and record

Update: Mike Gravel switched from the Democratic Party to the Libertarian Party in March 2008; after failing to secure the Libertarian nomination, he ended his presidential campaign in May 2008. Mike Gravel, the darkest of the dark-horse candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, represented Alaska in the U.S. Senate from 1969 to 1981. He then […]

The need for good research

The rush to put biofuels in our gas tanks has given people analyzing natural resources and conflict some work to do. How are European and American policy mandates to dramatically increase the use of biofuels affecting the places that grow biofuel inputs? It seems fair to say that little consideration has been given to the potential conflict and equity impacts of this surge in demand for palm oil, sugarcane, and corn.

After President Bush's 2007 State of the Union address, which called for massive increases in biofuels, we heard stories of skyrocketing corn tortilla prices and resulting social disruptions.

Now we have stories coming from places like West Kalimantan, a remote region of Indonesia where the rush to plant palm-oil plantations is generating conflict with Indonesians who grow rubber trees and other crops on their small plots of land. The NGO Friends of the Earth Netherlands has a new report calling out the unethical practices of some palm-oil companies that clear existing crops first and make payouts (maybe) to the farmers who own the land later.

It strikes me that this particular link between natural resource management and conflict offers an avenue for addressing one of the traditional shortcomings of environment and conflict research.

Fairness tradeoff?

Sven Wunder, a researcher with the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), notes the following trade-off [PDF] for the kind of environmental charity where people are paid not to pollute. His conclusion: we are better off paying the moderately bad guys than the really bad guys or the good guys. I'm going to post this without further comment, because either you see hidden assumptions and problems with this, or you don't:

More evidence of the link to climate change

The weather is getting more extreme thanks to human-caused climate change (as I've pointed out many times, see here, here, and here).

Now the World Meteorological Organization reports more evidence:

In January and April 2007 it is likely that global land surface temperatures ranked warmest since records began in 1880, 1.89°C warmer than average for January and 1.37°C warmer than average for April. Several regions have experienced extremely heavy precipitation, leading to severe floods. The Fourth Assessment Report of the WMO/UNEP Intergovernmental Group on Climate Change (IPCC) notes an increasing trend in extreme events observed during the last 50 years. IPCC further projects it to be very likely that hot extremes, heat waves and heavy precipitation events will continue to become more frequent.

Prying kids away from TV and video games costs … $100 million?

Here's a quote from one of today's electronic-gadget-loving kids: "The reason I prefer playing indoors is because that's where all the electrical outlets are."

That was shared by Richard Louv (Grist interview here), author of Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder, during a conference call I hosted recently for the Orion Grassroots Network, to catch us up on what's new in the "getting kids back into nature" movement (full audio here). Turns out there's a lot.

The book documents how outdoor, unstructured play is critical to child development -- and is a bestseller, now in its 14th printing in five languages. But the amazing thing about this issue is that it really has legs, even with the notoriously finicky news media. Major outlets have printed multiple stories on the "indoor kids crisis" in the two years since the book came out. Even the 700 Club's Christian Broadcasting Network is concerned. Why? Louv has a couple thoughts about that.

How many more deaths will we tolerate?

About 4am yesterday, a mine in Utah collapsed, trapping six miners 1,500 feet underground, almost three and a half miles from the mine’s entrance. No one knows if they are alive; there’s been no contact since the collapse. Right now, rescuers are trying to drill through the mountainside to reach them. Progress has been slow, […]

Step It Up 2 is coming this November — get ready to hit the streetsAsk politicians to join Step It

Bill McKibben is organizing Step It Up 2, a national day of climate action. A scholar-in-residence at Middlebury College, McKibben is the author of The End of Nature, the first book for a general audience on climate change, and, most recently, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. He serves on Grist’s […]

The question must be asked

The thought didn't cross my mind until my Minneapolis-based brother suggested it. I had asked him for his thoughts on the collapse, and that is the question he posed.

I was skeptical at first, but after doing a Google search -- and after NBC reported Sunday that National Transportation Safety Board investigators are "looking at everything" including "the weather" -- I think it is a legitimate question to ask.

First, though, why is it an important question to ask? NASA's James Hansen says we are on the verge of turning the earth into "a different planet," thanks to uncontrolled greenhouse-gas emissions. We've seen the Brits and Chinese link recent flooding tragedies driven by extreme weather to climate change.

We are all facing far more extreme heat waves, floods, wildfires, rainstorms, droughts and hurricanes -- yet our infrastructure apparently can't handle the weather we have today, as Hurricane Katrina revealed. If we don't adopt aggressive actions to prevent catastrophic climate change, we need to seriously climate-proof our electric grid, our levees, and our water and sewage systems.

The question remains, do we need to climate-proof our bridges? Does a connection exist between climate change and the collapse of the I-35W bridge? Consider what a meteorologist who worked in the city for years blogged: