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Farmivores unite!

Tom's great post reminded me of this opinion piece by Tamar Haspel in yesterday's Washington Post. Having spent a fair amount of my childhood on my godfather's cattle ranch in central Texas, which because of his penny-wise ways was practically organic before organic was cool, I have a strong affection for farms, farmers, ranches, ranchers, and a good steak. Luckily for me, my part of Washington, D.C., has readily accessible organic meat and vegetables from farms in the region, so sign me up as a "farmivore." Anybody else want to join me?

Getting a toehold on your company’s climate footprint

“What’s your company’s climate footprint?” It’s a hot question these days — one being asked increasingly of companies by customers, investors, activists, regulators, and others. OK, it may not be exactly that question, but it’s probably in some form, like, “What’s your company doing to reduce its climate impacts?” Or, “How do you call yourself […]

Engineers Gone Wild

Automakers combine forces to develop new hybrid transmission Tired of getting their rear ends handed to them by the Prius, GM, BMW, and DaimlerChrysler plan to invest over $1 billion in R&D toward a new hybrid transmission that, boosters say, will leave Toyota’s market-leading hybrid in the dust. “Dual-mode” hybrid technology includes an onboard fuel-optimization […]

Spill ‘er Up!

Oil spills from Japanese and Philippine tankers It’s been an oil-spillarific few days. A Japanese tanker, en route from Jordan, collided yesterday with a distressed cargo ship and spilled about 1.4 million gallons of crude into the eastern Indian Ocean. The ship’s owner claims the spill has been contained and there’s no need to clean […]

How’s That Mars Exploration Going?

News flash: as world warms, weather gets worse As the globe warms, the risk of more frequent and severe forest fires, droughts, and floods rises. So says, well, the entire scientific community, forever. But a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is being billed as the most comprehensive look yet […]

David Mas Masumoto breaks down the joy and pain of farming.

This post marks the launch of "Edible Media," an occasional look at interesting or deplorable food journalism on the web.

Food coverage in The New York Times Sunday Magazine has been in a funk for a while now. Aside from the odd trenchant bit of commentary from Michael Pollan, the magazine's weekly food section has been slight and generally forgettable.

This past Sunday, though, the magazine ran a terrific piece on farming by David Mas Masumoto, a California fruit farmer and writer.

Ever wandered into a farmers market and seen a bleary-eyed farmer sitting behind mounds of gorgeous produce, and wondered why the hell he's charging so much? Read this piece.

Regarding a field full of ripe fruit but on the verge of a weed explosion, Masumoto conjures the most vivid description of weeds from a farmer's perspective I've ever read:

Can industrial civilization really become sustainable? Should it?

To be, or not to be — that is the age-old question, and civilization today faces its own dire version of it. As the negative social and ecological effects of 150 years of industrialization are becoming impossible to ignore, people are asking whether we can maintain our standards of living. But very few are asking […]

Green Bean counting

Chicago, like several other cities, has a Green Permit Program (PDF) that grants faster building permits for green buildings. Erik Olsen, the program's administrator, gets to scrutinize every single green building in the entire city. Luckily for us, Erik recently started GreenBean, a blog profiling the blueprints that cross his desk.

So far, he's posted eight building profiles, including two single-family houses (both in my neighborhood -- must be my aura), high-rise offices, and the rehab of a YMCA into subsidized housing. For each, he notes the level of green-ness, unusual green techniques used, and perhaps a little back story about quirky geothermal wells or an underappreciated project manager who pushed the green angle.

Faux green

I'm not sure I would want to live in a house made out of power-plant fly ash, but hey, any idea in a storm. I attended a catered open house the other night (wine, beer, you name it) sponsored by a manufacturer of construction materials. The original 100 year-old, two-story home had been demolished and sent to a landfill, which meant that the land by itself was worth half a million dollars. The new 4,000 square home is unfinished, having just been framed up, and sits on less than an eighth of an acre. The young owners eventually arrived to partake in the festivities.

Dessler blogging

I was out of commission all last week, suffering from the latest virus passed to me by the snot-encrusted disease vectors I fondly call "my children."

In catching up, I noticed that climate scientist Andrew Dessler's new blog has come out of the gate strong, with all sorts of good tidbits.

1. The decisive answer to George W. Bush's question: whether or not we're causing global warming.
2. A brief but insightful reminder that whether one uses Dick Cheney's terrorism policy (even a 1% chance of attack requires strong response) or Bush's global warming policy (we need 99% certainty before acting), the decision of how much certainty is required for action is a matter of values, not science.
3. A pointed observation that many of the most prominent climate-change skeptics are professors emeritus, which means they, to put it gently, may not be vigorously keeping up with the latest research.
4. A finally, exposure of an email sent by a new group of evangelicals hoping to reign in the recent evangelical enthusiasm for climate sanity. They're hoping to recruit people, evangelical and otherwise, to sign on to a new "open letter" (PDF) that points to a "call to truth," (PDF) which in practice means "a call to renewed bullshit and obfuscation." Dessler sagely comments:

   From a strategic view, however, this type of campaign makes perfect sense. First, the recent emergence of an evangelical coalition in favor of action on climate change was one of the most significant events of the recent past. This represented a titanic shift in the political fault lines of this policy debate. Those opposed to action on climate change had to be terrified that they were on the brink of losing the entire policy debate. So this response makes perfect sense. Second, by arguing about science, they can drag the debate into a complete gridlock, as argued by Jon Miller. The report, with it's appearance of credibility and objectivity, leads the other side (those in favor of action) to leap to an enthusiastic defense of the reality of climate change - and the trap is sprung: the public tunes out (too boring), the media downgrade the story (too complex) and the politicians have the greatest excuse for doing nothing (let's wait until the science is clear).

So. At least somebody's out there blogging well.