Latest Articles
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A roundup of forest-fire news
An association of fire ecologists have issued a five page warning:
Currently, we are observing wildland fire conditions previously considered rare, such as extreme wildfire events (e.g. high heat release and severe impact to ecosystems), lengthened wildfire seasons, and large-scale wildfires in fire-sensitive ecosystems (e.g. tropical rain forests and arid deserts).
And here, palm-oil plantation owners and entrepreneurs are being taken to court for setting fire to their forest holdings -- a cheap way to clear land for palm oil plantations to grow food for our cars.
The Indonesian government plans to sue three oil palm plantation firms and one oil palm entrepreneur for allegedly starting fires in their concessions that grew into massive forest fires in Riau province, a newspaper said Saturday.
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Not if you are dark-skinned, live in the South, or vote Republican.
Not if you are dark-skinned, live in the South, or vote Republican. Also not you if you're a woman, earn more than 60K a year, or prefer the Weekly Standard to the New York Times. These statistics (not verbatim, mind you) are the findings of a paper in the latest issue of Science Communications.
The authors write that the Pacific Northwest boasts the highest rate of environmental news coverage (70% of papers and 21% of TV stations have devoted staffers) of any region of the country. Only an abstract is available online, but Framing Science over at Science Blogs delivers a better-than-average digest -- which is great, because according to the survey, environmental reporters list "time constraints" as the greatest barrier to covering the green beat. Gotta run.
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And the challenges of enforcing environmental regulations
50,000 protests last year over pollution in China. Even the inward-looking U.S. press seems to be picking up at least weekly stories on the latest Chinese environmental accident. The New York Times has a nice piece highlighting the challenges of enforcing environmental regulations while the drive for economic growth remains king.
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A response to a plan to dramatically increase the scope of whaling
Earlier this summer Japan, Norway, and Iceland announced that they planned to dramatically increase the scope of whaling, extending it to species that currently aren't hunted. (They were eventually rebuffed by a small margin.) Upon learning this, I remember experiencing a strong sense of anger and frustration. Part of this was due no doubt to my recent trip to Hawaii and the opportunity I had to get up close to humpback whales, which were slated for slaughter by the Japanese. These magnificent creatures pose no threat to humans, are highly sentient (their famous songs are as complex as symphonies), and every year take part in the longest migration on the entire planet.
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‘Tis the Season (for the last of the big summer BBQs and family reunions)
Over the 4th of July weekend, I traveled from Boston to western New York to see my uncle and many of my cousins. I'd been there before but couldn't recall the route from memory, so I quickly printed the directions from a website, never thinking that there could be two different ways to get there when one route is so obviously superior. I hopped into my car and set off.
About an hour after I passed a turn-off for Albany, I thought to myself, "These rolling hills and grazing cows look different." Then I told myself that I was being absurd and that there was no way that a city mouse like myself could tell one set of rolling hills and grazing cows from another, but in fact I was right. These weren't my beautiful rolling hills, these weren't my beautiful grazing cows. My inner GPS told me that I was on a much more southerly route, and my choice of CD, the Dixie Chicks' "Long Way Round," suddenly seemed painfully apt.
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Generation X can make a difference.
As my inaugural blog for Gristmill, I'd like to send a shout out -- or rather, to put out an APB -- for Generation X, or what I would like to call my "Lost Generation."
No offense to Larry Page or Sergey Brin. You have shown that youth -- thrown in the deep end far too early -- can actually rise to the challenge, blossoming into revolutionary 25-35 year olds who truly change the world.
While past industrial revolutionists created the steam engine, the cotton en(gin)e, and the diesel engine, you created and revolutionized the search engine, and have revolutionized the internet. Good show!
But, honestly, where are your 1,000 counterparts, working together at every level of industry, government, and the nonprofit sector, to address our generation's Cold War -- the threat of global warming?
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New diesel cars will crop up in California.
New diesel cars have not been sold in California for years, due to air regs.
With the introduction of low-sulfur diesel, that will change. Expect to see a lot more 45 MPG VW TDI's on the road as a result. And for wannabe biodiesel enthusiasts, this means no more perusing Craigslist with nothing but beat-up Mercedeses to choose from.
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California’s emissions caps will spur the nation to follow
California has a long history of trailblazing environmental regulations that eventually spur federal action. The Clean Air Act and efficiency standards for appliances are good examples. Why does this happen? Sometimes it's because the rules prove proponents right and doubters wrong. And sometimes it is the regulated industries themselves that lobby for the expansion -- better a single standard than a patchwork of state regs.
So, will this week's accord on AB 32 in California result in a federal cap on carbon?
Some think so.
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Fair Price Energy has some ideas.
A new website entitled Fair Price Energy includes some interesting proposals for moving forward with sensible energy policy in America. While the author admittedly offers no entirely new ideas to the discussion, the combination of policies and the clear presentation merit a look.
Although economists for decades have proposed a host of policies that would greatly improve the energy situation (economists were among the first to call for gas taxes decades ago), the key issue is political viability; this is where the ideas at Fair Price Energy are somewhat lacking. Both the suggested tax on energy imports and a lack of compensation mechanism for industries hurt by the proposal seem to make it more than a long-shot in the current political landscape. But it is still worth a look, especially since it has a nice system for redistributing the tax revenue from higher energy prices in a very progressive manner, which would ease the concerns among many environmentalists about the potential regressive effects of higher energy costs.
