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Green-burial movement gets more ambitious
Resting in peace at Ramsey Creek. Photo: Memorial Ecosystems. “I’d prefer to be put in the ground, under a tree,” says Joe Sehee, contemplating his inevitable demise. “But I don’t want to go in the ground with anything, I just want to be buried in a simple pine box or shroud, and that’s it.” If […]
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Docket Science
Global warming likely to spur litigation against polluters As global warming’s effects reverberate across the planet, expect an uptick in litigation against governments and companies. Pacific Islanders whose homes are being swallowed by the ocean, African farmers with withered crops, and ski-resort owners resigned to offering mountaintop waterskiing may seek redress. “If the evidence [of […]
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The Air of Their Ways
EPA falling short on clean-air protection, GAO says The Government Accountability Office is on the U.S. EPA’s case again, reporting that the agency has, and we quote, “not reduced human health risks from air toxics to the extent and in the time frames envisioned in the [Clean Air] Act.” The EPA has largely failed to […]
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And the Wind Cries Scary
Pacific Northwest ocean dead zone getting larger Researchers believe global warming is behind a recurring low-oxygen “dead zone” in the Pacific Northwest ocean. Triggered by north winds, a process called upwelling encourages the growth of phytoplankton blooms; when the water calms, the phytoplankton die for lack of nutrients, sink to the bottom, and rot, using […]
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Cotton a Trap
GM cotton doesn’t cut pesticide use long term, new research indicates Biotech giant Monsanto touts its genetically modified cotton seed — spliced with the bollworm-killing Bt toxin — as money- and earth-saving, because it lowers the need for pesticide use. Funny story about that: a new study found that cotton farmers using the seed soon […]
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Learning to love Wal-Mart
We've done some good stuff on Wal-Mart's greening, but Marc Gunther's cover story in Fortune this week pulls it all together better than any single story I've seen, and advances it in some interesting ways.
Particularly in reference to our ongoing debate over morality, listen to Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott:
To me, there can't be anything good about putting all these chemicals in the air. There can't be anything good about the smog you see in cities. There can't be anything good about putting chemicals in these rivers in Third World countries so that somebody can buy an item for less money in a developed country. Those things are just inherently wrong, whether you are an environmentalist or not.
He later says:
I had an intellectual interest when we started. I have a passion today.
What moved him from intellectual interest to passion? Morality.
I hadn't realized how big a role a Walton played in the story. This line sounds like the beginning of a joke:
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freecycle: TM, and R.I.P.
I've got a funny story for you. Here's a preview of the punchline: freecycle, once a clever, idealistic way to prevent material from entering landfills, has been made by its leadership into a clown show.
Some background.
Way back in May 2004, we did a (glowing) story on the new freecycling movement, whereby people give stuff away rather than throwing it away, via internet-based networks.
Roughly a year later, in May 2005, we did a follow-up story about freecycle's growing pains. Freecycle founder and executive director Deron Beal had accepted corporate sponsorship, attempted to secure a trademark on the freecycle name, and started exercising what some group moderators saw as dictatorial control over regional and local freecycle networks.
In Gristmill, there was a looong and heated debate over the article. Looong. And heated.
Shortly thereafter, Grist received a letter from the freecycle media relations people, urging us in unctuous tones to always capitalize the word "freecycle," never use such bastardized constructions as "freecycler" or "freecycling," and always use the trademark symbol when referring to the entity as a whole: The Freecycle NetworkTM. The letter deserved, and received, mockery.
But tinpot tycoons can never get enough mockery. Which brings us to the present.
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Bombing yields massive oil spill off Lebanon beaches
The Mother Jones blog has a bit of a scoop, plucked from the Arabic-language press:
It looks like an eco-nightmare is taking place on the beaches of Lebanon. Reports coming in say beaches are being clogged with oil because five out of six oil tanks at the electricity plant in Jiyeh were destroyed by Israeli bombs.
The Lebanese Embassy in Washington confirmed the spill. -
Obama leads bipartisan effort to raise fuel-economy standards
Is the sting of $75-a-barrel oil and the threat of World War III exploding in the Middle East enough to convince Congress to finally boost auto fuel economy? Probably not, but a bipartisan coalition of senators led by Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is launching an admirable new effort anyway — the Fuel Economy Reform Act. Barack […]
