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E.O. Wilson pleads for a Christian environmentalism

Legendary biologist E.O. Wilson makes "a scientist's plea for Christian environmentalism." I'll be talking with Wilson in October.

(The article is on The New Republic and requires a sign-in. Cough.)

Tom Toles is not subtle …

... at least not today.

‘Tis the Season (for dealing with pests, great and small)

My parents were way ahead of the curve when it came to employing Integrated Pest Management for tending their garden. They would send me (henceforth referred to as "the pest") out into the garden to weed, partly to control the weeds and partly to get me out of their hair. The problem was, from my point of view (then and now), I was only four years old.

Some four-year-olds might be able to handle being out in a garden by themselves, but I was not one of them. It wasn't the weeding itself that bothered me -- it offered the same easy satisfaction one enjoys when picking at a scab, something I relished at that age -- and it wasn't the feel of the dirt on my bare knees, although it's true I didn't care for that very much. It was the bugs that got to me. There were so many of them and they were everywhere.

I liked some of them. Ladybugs were acceptable to me and I knew how to pick up earthworms and cut them into two to make two new worms. I have never minded ants (even after watching The Naked Jungle) but I hated, and still hate to this day, flying, stinging insects and spiders.

First Greenpeace e-waste scorecard released

Greenpeace has released their first e-waste scorecard, ranking electronics companies on their use of "toxic chemicals and electronic waste."

Here's hoping this gets manufacturers competing for higher scores.

Food and pleasure

I'm too lazy to find any actual poll numbers on this, so I could be wrong, but my strong guess is that most U.S. consumers involved in the recent growth of organic food are choosing organic for health reasons. One might even think of the organic boomlet as a subspecies of the general American health mania -- the same one that sent customers herding toward fat-free and low-carb food.

If this is true, we wouldn't expect consumers to particularly care about how far the food has traveled or what size farm it was grown on. They see "organic" as another health label; if it has any specific content to them at all (as opposed to vaguely healthful connotations), they probably associate it with lack of pesticides, and pesticide-free is pesticide-free, whether from an industrial farm in Chile or Farmer Bob's family farm down the road.

How can we get U.S. consumers to care about the broader food system? There are two basic ways.

Insight

An interesting, elegiac piece on the Honda Insight, which was the most fuel efficient car on the road when it was introduced in 1999 and has remained so ever since. Production will cease when it is replaced in two years with a new hybrid subcompact from Honda.

A great article on managing fisheries

For a nice discussion on how property-rights systems are an essential ingredient for improving the world's fisheries check out this article.

It covers all of the basics with lots of nice examples.

Biodiversivist

I’m back at the fairgrounds. One of my daughter’s roosters won first place. Her picture is hanging on his pen, braces reflecting the camera’s flash. As I sit here in the barn, I just watched her other rooster, the obnoxious and butt ugly turken, nail a guy who put his finger through the chicken wire (live and learn buddy). They are the largest chickens at the fair, which also makes them the loudest (WAV file, turn it all the way up). I’ll wager that the decibel level is outside OSHA limits. People turn their heads when one lets loose with a crow, and some toddlers even go running to mom. I can imagine what it would feel like to look eye-to-eye with a rooster your own size.

Can green biz bring environmental and civil rights communities together?

The folks at the Greenlining Institute sent along an issue brief they just produced, about how green business represents a chance for the environmental and civil-rights communities to partner with each other. It's somewhat schematic, but interesting, so I've reprinted it below. Lemme know what you think.

Jump on the plug-in hybrid bandwagon

Consider this an open invitation to get on the plug-in hybrid bandwagon. Plug-in hybrids, for those not in the know, are hybrids whose batteries can be recharged by the grid. By running in electric-only mode as much as possible, emissions are reduced and efficiencies gained.

The other week, I visited Prof. Andrew Frank at UC Davis, the popularly acclaimed father of the plug-in hybrid. Impressive stuff.

Among the many vehicles his students have built, he's got a Chevy Equinox -- a smallish SUV -- retrofitted with a 1.6L engine with a continuously variable drive transmission and a lithium ion battery pack that holds about 15 kWh of juice. It can go 60 miles on battery-only, and 100 mpg in all-day driving conditions. If you recharged every night, it could go across the country on one tank of gasoline (runs on e85). Performance? 320 horsepower, 0-60 in 6.5 seconds (vs 9.5 sec stock).

The benefits of plugging in are many.