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Step It Up

Monday, 8 Jan 2007 MIDDLEBURY, Vt. The most important question about global warming right now is: what do I do once I’ve changed the damned lightbulbs? And one small answer is Step It Up 2007. This is the first of 12 dispatches I’ll write, one a week through mid-April, that will chronicle the first nationwide […]

Saving gas the non-hybrid way

A nice story from Mother Jones this month on "hypermilers," people who use all kinds of wacky techniques to maximize fuel economy:

Happy Feat

GM unveils plug-in hybrid at Detroit car show, sticks out tongue at greens The media got a peek at Detroit’s North American International Auto Show yesterday, and manufacturers had a surprise in store: cars so green they could play hide-and-seek in a cornfield. The biggest buzz surrounded the Chevy Volt, a plug-in hybrid from General […]

Better Not, Pout

North Sea fish population declines as water warms, says new study For the first time, those meddling scientists have found a direct link between warming seas and dying fish. A heated habitat leads to rapid population decline for the eelpout, a shallow bottom-dweller in the North Sea, according to a decade-long German study recently published […]

Their Day in Cote

Groundwork begins for Ivory Coast toxic-dumping lawsuit It’s been almost five months since a cargo ship dumped over 400 tons of toxic “slops” in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, leaving at least 10 people dead and more than 40,000 ill. At the time, residents of the African nation responded by blockading streets, burning stuff, and collapsing their […]

UN Declares ’07 Year of the Dolphin

Happy New Year! As you may have heard, the Chinese have confirmed 2007 as the Year of the Pig and Newsweek has coined it the Year of the Widget. But my personal favorite designation comes from the United Nations, which has declared 2007 the Year of the Dolphin.

We've got our work cut out for us over at Oceana to do justice to this special year. In 2006, we stopped Congress from weakening the Marine Mammal Protection Act, thanks to a little help from our friends on the right. Some members of Congress tried to eliminate the "Dolphin Deadline," a key provision of the Act that sets the timeline to reduce the death and injury of marine mammals by commercial fishing operations to insignificant levels. Hopefully, this year we'll be able to do even more to protect the dolphins.

Watch the clip

So true. So, so true.

Ag chair presents his vision on biofuels

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.), along with two members of Congress from South Dakota, Rep. Stephanie Herseth (D) and Sen. John Thune (R), participated in the annual South Dakota Corn Growers convention on Saturday.

Naturally, a big part of the convention's focus was on ethanol.

NYT readers weigh in

In the NYT there are six letters to the editor about Andy Revkin’s much-discussed article. Naturally, my favorite is the one that says … … on every major point, starting with the question of whether climate change is an established scientific finding, the middle stance agrees with the Gore position and rejects the Bush deception. […]

Your lifestyle won’t save the world

I urge everyone to check out this great article in The Nation.

Here's the money quote: