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A Tip of the Cap

California will join Northeast greenhouse-gas reduction program California will participate in the carbon cap-and-trade program being established in seven Northeast states, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) announced today. Linking in with the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative — which we suppose won’t be so regional anymore — will help California’s industries comply with an impending mandatory […]

Cheri Sugal, defender of a Mexican rainforest, answers Grist’s questions

Cheri Sugal. What work do you do? I am the executive director of Friends of Calakmul. What does your organization do? Our organization protects land in the threatened rainforest of southern Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, in the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve. We sign lease agreements with local landowner groups, called ejidos. In exchange for an annual payment, […]

The tastiest tidbits from the news

I hope you people are making good use of the blogroll at the lower left of this page. Therein lie more treasures than I could possibly discuss or link to. Here's a little sampling of what I found just since Friday:

Forbes’ ‘Energy Outlook 2007’ makes bracing reading

Investment rags exist to fetishize the bottom line. They promise insights and information that can make their readers rich. People on the hunt for lucre need a clear-eyed view of how the world works -- the better to exploit conditions for profit.

That's the progressive case for monitoring the financial/business press. It's true, as far as it goes, though financial journalists are as susceptible as any others to hype, as their generally euphoric reaction to the dot-com bubble shows.

Business publications are also worth reading because they offer a window into the minds of captains of industry -- the people who yank the global economy's levers.

Forbes recently published a special issue titled Energy Outlook 2007. It's worth a look.

Energy is better spent elsewhere

(Warning: If speaking frankly about religion's dark side upsets you, please read no further.)

There has been a lot of discussion on this site recently about the potential positive role religion (specifically Christianity) can have in solving our environmental problems.

Call me skeptical.

Biodiesel for cell phone towers not all good

Here's a Reuters piece about using locally grown crops to power remote cell phone towers in areas of the developing world. Always walking that fine line between reality and pessimism, I have a few thoughts to share.

It turns out that most of the people in the world who do not already have cell phones also live where there is no power-generation infrastructure (electricity). It's a bit of a conundrum. If you are going to expand your cell phone market to the billions who don't have one yet, you have to find ways to power your cell phone towers, as well as give your potential customers enough electricity to power the phones you want to sell to them.

The latest issue is full of goodies

This month's issue of Science gave me lots of food for thought.

There was an article about Edmund Phelps, who just won the 2006 Nobel Prize in economics. It tells us that the U.S. swept the science Nobel Prizes this year -- analogous to winning all the gold medals at the Olympics. Putting it this way cheapens the whole process and is a reminder of the competitive nature of people, scientists included.

On the other hand, this is an example of how a country with enough wealth and education to pay millions of people to sit around on their butts and problem solve -- engineers, scientists, and economists -- can contribute solutions to the world's many problems.

Expect to see more solutions coming from India and China in the not too distant future. The three billion desperately poor of the world cannot contribute, having their hands full just staying alive. Those billions of potential problem solvers are lost to us, thanks to the tremendous rate of population growth that outstripped the economic growth, infrastructure, and education needed to keep them from being impoverished.

An insult generator for tree-huggers

Inspired by Mark Peters' piece on tree-hugging and name-calling, a dear reader and his friend converted an Elizabethan insult generator into a Conservative insult generator and then into a combined Elizabethan-Conservative insult generator. So there, you quailing, hazardous-waste-spooning pignuts!

Business Week cover story looks at the watering down of the organic ethos

A fine feature story in Business Week this week -- The Organic Myth, by Diane Brady. "As it goes mass market, the organic food business is failing to stay true to its ideals," the cover proclaims.

When I first glanced at the mag, I expected rah-rah boosterism for corporate organics and spite for old-school purists, but the article actually struck me as a pretty fair assessment of the culture clash between the organic ethos and the Big Biz model -- the gist being that the two are remarkably ill-suited. Corporate enthusiasm for organics notwithstanding -- and there's plenty of enthusiasm out there, from Wal-Mart to General Mills to Kellogg and beyond -- these two approaches to comestible commerce look increasingly irreconcilable.

None of this is new, of course -- our own Tom P. has written about the issue (and I'm interested to hear his assessment of this story). But this is the first article that's made me think the organic juggernaut is really about to blow up into a big ol' mess. Not just organic getting watered down, as is already happening, but the whole system breaking down, unable to support the new model of globally sourced organic items pouring into processed foods and mega-stores. Demand is outstripping supply by huge margins, corporations are demanding lower prices, production is being offshored to unreliable suppliers, individuals are growing even more confused about what "organic" means.

They’re on board

I read the statement below after a round of knocking on church doors to pitch a local screening of The Great Warming to pastors and priests -- yes, thank you, I did feel a bit silly. Anyway, Moab's 8,000 residents are served by 19 official houses of worship (you can find the less-organized believers at the co-op). By and large, churchgoers here vote, and they're pretty pro-active, especially when it comes to the health and welfare of the canyons.

Rick Sherman, a Catholic priest who's written on stewardship for a few newspapers, was quick to point out that his church has been on the environmental ball for years, and handed me a few pamphlets on the subject. Not having read many religious tracts lately, I was impressed -- and not scared a bit! This is from Global Climate Change: a plea for dialogue, prudence and the common good, a statement from the U.S. Catholic Bishops. Yes, it's a serious read, but it's not Latin and there's no math.