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What are you doing to respond to the climate crisis?

Orion magazine has a brand new section, of interest to all Gristmill readers, where folks from all over are encouraged to write in and share what changes their families, communities, churches, etc. are undertaking to respond, now, to the climate crisis, peak oil, etc. I've seen so many ripe ideas posted on Gristmill, BioD's plug-in hybrid bike being a good example. So have a look at some of these great ideas and initiatives (a clustered, renewably-powered, affordable housing community in Missoula, for example) in the first installment of this section, called Making Other Arrangements, and share your own projects and ideas.

On the Markey, get set

I’m a little late on this, but Nation editor Katrina Vanden Heuvel has some smart advice for Rep. Ed Markey, chair of the new House committee on global warming. Speaking of whom — you saw my interview with Markey a while back, right? Good.

… especially at an auto show

Possibly in an attempt to convince attendees that a green auto show actually can be sexy, the UK's Eden Project named their eco-car fiesta -- wait for it -- "the Sexy Green Auto Show."

Luckily it seems to be living up to its moniker with an abundance of tempting auto treats, from a Volkswagen that gets 72 mpg to a racing car that can run on a 50 percent blend of jatropha nut biodiesel.

And god bless 'em, I saw zero scantily clad babes in the show's program -- just a whole lot of carbon fiber and flex-fuel engines. Now that's sexy.

Fisheries biologist’s work revealed extent of loss of oceanic fishes

From the Washington Post:

Ransom A. Myers, 54, the world-renowned fisheries biologist whose research showed that the number of large fish in the world's oceans has dropped by 90 percent in the past 50 years, died of a brain tumor March 27 at a hospital in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The journal Science has just published a major paper co-written by Dr. Myers, "Cascading Effects of the Loss of Apex Predatory Sharks from a Coastal Ocean," about the importance of sharks in marine ecosystems. There is an abstract of the paper on the Science website.

More than any other scientist, Ransom's work has alerted us to the full extent of the rapid decline in fish populations in recent years, particularly large pelagics and other predators.

Click for the full Washington Post obituary of Myers.

Forest Eviction

Judge tosses out Bush administration’s forest-management rules Heads-up to the Bush administration: You can’t always get what you want. (As always, the Rolling Stones know best.) On Friday, a federal judge tossed out the administration’s revised forest-management rules, issued in 2005, which allowed national forest managers to approve logging, mining, cell-phone towers, and other commercial […]

Breaking: Supreme Court rules against Bush admin. in global warming case

Word just came down that the Supreme Court has ruled against the Bush administration in the landmark global warming case of Massachusetts v. EPA. The ruling was 5-4, with conservatives dissenting and the crucial vote of Anthony Kennedy going with the … non-conservatives. Background on the case here, here, here, and here. The court addressed […]

Massachusetts Passes Wind

Cape Wind gets state OK, boosting chances it will get built If you’re not up on the history of the controversial Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound, here’s the brief version: It’s alive! It’s dead! It’s alive! It’s dead! Repeat. Our news today: It’s alive! Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick’s (D) administration declared Friday that the […]

Nom de Doom

Bush renominates controversial industry folk to environmental positions President Bush is recycling — nominees, that is. To fill three top environmental jobs in his administration, Bush has re-suggested three folks with ties to polluting industries, all of whom were blocked by Congress the first time they were nominated. William Wehrum, temporary-seeking-permanent administrator for the EPA’s […]

Chaos and Effect

New climate report from IPCC will have bad news and worse news On Friday, a comprehensive new report will map the likely effects of global warming — and it ain’t pretty. The good news is, we can expect higher food production in northern, more affluent regions. Whee! Now the bad news: globally, we can expect […]

Supreme Slapdown

Supreme Court rules against Bush administration in global-warming case In a landmark Supreme Court case — the first ever on the issue of global warming — the court has ruled that carbon dioxide is a pollutant under the Clean Air Act and that the U.S. EPA should regulate it as such. Boo-yah! The ruling is […]