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Gave Proof Through the Night That Our Mag Was Still There

Grist takes a vacation to celebrate Independence Day We Gristers are proud, patriotic, exhausted Americans, and damn, we need a vacation. We’ll be sipping American beer and watching American fireworks on Monday and Tuesday, so fellow Americans (and our international audience, we love you too) will have to live without Daily Grist. We shall return […]

A Lawn Time Coming

EPA may implement California small-motor standards across U.S. The U.S. EPA indicated yesterday that it was leaning toward approving California’s proposal to require catalytic converters on small motors like those in weed whackers and lawn mowers, eliminating the equivalent of emissions from 800,000 cars. Even better, the agency suggested it may implement the high standards […]

A Bitter Drill

House votes to end moratorium on offshore drilling The House voted yesterday to end the 25-year-old ban on oil and gas drilling off most of the U.S. coast. The highly contentious debate broke down more along geographic lines than partisan ones, as states standing to make money from the drilling largely supported it. Under the […]

Two Steps Back

Ford backs out on hybrid pledge, plans more alt-fuel vehicles Remember Ford’s much-hyped commitment to produce 250,000 hybrid vehicles by 2010? Er, about that: CEO Bill Ford Jr. backpedaled on the promise Wednesday. While not abandoning hybrids altogether, he said Ford’s focus (ha) is shifting (ha ha) to cars that can run on alternative fuels […]

Well Aisle Be

Whole Foods unveils initiatives to boost local and compassionate farming Whole Foods Market, the fast-growing natural-foods purveyor, has announced a series of initiatives that would support small, local farms and improve treatment of animals. In an open letter to food writer Michael Pollan, who has criticized Whole Foods for relying on “industrial organic” farms, CEO […]

A chat with freshwater experts Peter Gleick and William K. Reilly

The world’s freshwater systems are in crisis, beset by everything from global warming to population growth to corruption. Though it doesn’t get the media attention that’s lavished on energy issues, many experts predict that water will be the central resource issue of the coming century. Water, they say, is the new oil. To the last […]

Green Building 101

Yesterday, Inhabitat started a weekly series for the summer called Green Building 101. The series is focused mainly on LEED-H, the (developing) green standards for homes. It also mentions LEED-ND, the (developing) green standards for neighborhoods, which I'm super jazzed about. The series will walk through the basics of building or renovating a home for maximum eco-friendliness. Should be cool.

Check out the first installment, about choosing an eco-friendly site.

New initiatives from Whole Foods

I wrote a post a little while back about the exchange going on between food writer Michael Pollan and Whole Foods Market honcho John Mackey. The subject has been some claims about Whole Foods' relationship to "industrial organic" made in Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma. Read that previous post for background.

Mackey has written another detailed letter to Pollan. It's interesting throughout, but the big news comes at the end, when Mackey announces a series of new initiatives the company is undertaking. They will be attempting to build up a system of animal-compassionate small farms, buying more local food, setting up a loan program for small farmers, opening their parking lots for local farmers to sell directly to consumers (!), and increasing consumer education on the subject of local food. Pretty radical stuff.

I haven't seen this picked up in the mainstream media yet, but I expect it will be.

Here's the relevant part of the letter:

Lessons from Bogotá

Very worth reading: an article in British Columbia webzine The Tyee about the former mayor of Bogotá, Columbia, who catalyzed sweeping reforms in the capital city:

Enrique Peñalosa presided over the transition of a city that the world--and many residents--had given up on. Bogota had lost itself in slums, chaos, violence, and traffic...He built more than a hundred nurseries for children. He built 50 new public schools and increased enrolment by 34 percent. He built a network of libraries. He created a highly-efficient, "bus highway" transit system. He built or reconstructed hundreds of kilometers of sidewalks, more than 300 kilometres of bicycle paths, pedestrian streets, and more than 1,200 parks.

And much of the mayor's success stemmed from a decision to reclaim urban spaces from private cars, by restricting parking (no more cars on sidewalks!), raising gas taxes to pay for rapid transit, and reprogramming money for roads to other, more pressing concerns.

Gore on The Daily Show

I just got done watching last night's Al Gore interview on The Daily Show. (It's not online yet, unless you seek out the torrent.) He acquitted himself very well, much better than I expected.

There was some nice repartee. Stewart asked if Gore took some satisfaction in seeing that slide where Florida gets flooded. Gore said, "hey, I think I won Florida."

Also, Gore specifically dinged Bush's recent line that we need to get "beyond the debate," which of course I was happy to see. He said a doctor wouldn't look at your symptoms and say, well, let's not worry about what's causing them, let's just give you an aspirin and send you home. True dat.

But mainly, Gore effectively got across the point that the evidence is overwhelming and that it's time to put politics aside and just solve the damn problem. The audience loved him.

Update [2006-6-29 15:41:14 by David Roberts]: Here's the video.