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A sampling of recipes for Passover

Over the next few weeks, I will be writing about meals that express our connection to and appreciation for the earth. In keeping with this theme, I'll start with Marge Piercy's new book, Pesach for the Rest of Us: Making the Passover Seder Your Own.

My interest in seders (the meal served at Passover) started when I was in high school and worked as a "hostess helper" for families who were hosting seders. Having been raised Catholic, I had never experienced a seder before, and was deeply moved by the beauty and ceremony of it. As someone who loves food and ritual, I was especially interested in the foods that were assigned special meaning on the Passover plate.

Recently, when I told my friend Rabbi Michael Feshbach that I was writing about this topic, he said, "The greens, which are the first item eaten, are seen as signs of spring. I think of the entire seder as the first multimedia teaching experience -- you tell the message, you smell the message, you eat the message."

For all of these reasons, when I heard that Piercy was going to be in Cambridge doing a reading from her new book, I cleared my schedule so that I could go.

You have to read this to believe it

On Wednesday, the Inspector General’s office at the Department of Interior released a report showing that a Bush appointee who lacked any background in natural science had "bullied, insulted, and harassed the professional staff of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to change documents and alter biological reporting regarding the Endangered Species Program." She […]

Guster helps school students on climate change

I’ve told you before about the rockin’ work of environmental nonprofit Reverb, an organization that partners with musicians like Dave Matthews Band, Avril Lavigne, and Bonnie Raitt to "green" their tours and help educate fans about eco-issues. This year, they’re going even bigger by helping Warner Music Group reduce its industry-size carbon footprint, collaborating with […]

So correct it hurts

Via Hugg, here’s a remarkable video of Bill Clinton — on 9/11/02 — sharing a message on energy that’s so damn right it makes me want to cry:

May become U.S.’s first large offshore wind project

This just in: the Massachusetts Executive Office of Environmental Affairs has weighed in on Cape Wind's Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR), saying that it "adequately and properly complies" with the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act. The project can now advance to the state permitting process. I believe it is the first U.S. offshore wind project to have a certified final environmental impact document.

How high and how fast?

How high and fast will sea levels rise? An important piece (PDF) by Stefan Rahmstorf in Science concludes:

A rise of over 1 m by 2100 for strong warming scenarios cannot be ruled out, because all that such a rise would require is that the linear relation of the rate of sea-level rise and temperature, which was found to be valid in the 20th century, remains valid in the 21st century.

Sustainable food meets social justice

Grassroots organic is alive and well, even in the concrete jungles of New Haven and Boston. Today I spent an hour and a half at a talk called "Food Policy: Addressing Social Justice in the Sustainable and Local Food Movements." The event's keynote speakers were two women who work for urban sustainable food initiatives.

One of the organizations, CitySeed, is located in New Haven, Conn. At the talk, CitySeed's executive director, Jennifer McTiernan, spoke about how her organization works with Connecticut politicians to give low-income eaters access to fresh food and urban farmers' markets.

The other organization, The Food Project, hails from Boston, and works to integrate urban youth into their network of small scale organic production. Their speaker was a woman named Rebecca Nemec, who works as a policy fellow for the Project.

From Ferrell to Fuzz

You had us at Old School We’ve tried so hard not to giggle over the flabby buttocks, the shabby accents, even the promise of figure-skating glory. But it’s hopeless. If loving Will is wrong, we don’t want to be right. Besides, the environmental movement could use a little more cowbell. Photo: Vera Anderson / WireImage.com […]

More, please

This is a much more significant story than it might appear at first glance: Brazil’s government said it will provide free Internet access to native Indian tribes in the Amazon in an effort to help protect the world’s biggest rain forest. The environment and communications ministers signed an agreement Thursday with the Forest People’s Network […]

Dave Morris summary on problems with carbon trading

Dave Morris: "Problems with Carbon Trading."

An outline of his argument:

1. Buying offsets encourages complacency.
2. Carbon trading is inherently susceptible to fraud and manipulation.
3. Carbon trading encourages cheating and rewards low-cost cosmetic changes while undermining higher cost innovation.
4. Carbon trading separates authority and responsibility, undermining coherent, holistic, community-based efforts.
5. We have alternatives -- carbon taxes, and caps without trading.

Read the whole thing.