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Umbra on composting weeds

Dear Umbra, I’ve been weeding the garden and yard, and got to thinking about some of the more invasive plants. I’ve heard that not everything goes in the compost pile, but what weeds can I toss in? I’m fairly new to the composting game, so any advice is much appreciated. Danielle Walker Monroe, Ore. Dearest […]

And so it begins

Al Gore mentions "relapse."

Update [2006-5-17 10:14:32 by David Roberts]: In other Gore news, the Competitive Enterprise Institute is launching a full TV ad campaign against him "global warming alarmism" a week before Gore's movie opens. Think Progress has the lowdown on CEI.

Americans and Climate Change: The perfect problem

"Americans and Climate Change: Closing the Gap Between Science and Action" (PDF) is a report synthesizing the insights of 110 leading thinkers on how to educate and motivate the American public on the subject of global warming. Background on the report here. I'll be posting a series of excerpts (citations have been removed; see original report). If you'd like to be involved in implementing the report's recommendations, or learn more, visit the Yale Project on Climate Change website.

Below the fold is the first half of the introduction to part one, which describes how global warming is a "perfect problem."

Taking Care of Business

New York Times runs series on green biz The New York Times is running a ginormous series today on green business, creatively titled “The Business of Green.” (Hey, NYT, if you need headline help for the next series, just let us know.) Read about green collaborations among businesses and enviro organizations; Chicago’s success in combining […]

Carbon Upset

European Union’s fledgling carbon-trading market hits turbulence A hullabaloo has erupted in the European Union over its one-year-old carbon-trading market, established to help the E.U. meet its targets under the Kyoto Protocol. It turns out that 21 of the 25 countries involved have come in under their greenhouse-gas emissions targets, leaving a 70.5 million ton […]

The Labor of the Land

Organic farming creates more jobs, U.K. study finds Organic agriculture has traditionally been linked to health and environmental benefits. Now it can add job creation to its portfolio: A study of nearly 1,200 farms in the United Kingdom and Ireland found that organic farming creates on average 32 percent more jobs than conventional agriculture. The […]

This Land Is Poorly Managed Land

BLM accused of not preserving cultural sites Hundreds of millions of acres of public lands are going unprotected, with their historical artifacts undocumented, as the Bush administration focuses Bureau of Land Management funds and staffing resources on energy development in the West, according to a new report from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Under […]

Corporations going green: The fifth horseman or the winning horse?

David pointed out that a common thread in the recent Wal-Mart discussion was anger over dilution of the organic label by corporate finagling. Underlying the labeling issue, and a part of so many environmental discussions, is environmentalists' ambivalence towards corporate involvement in any pro-environmental action.

Today the NYT gave me the perfect segue to this topic by devoting a whole section to the "business of green." There's tons of great stuff in there, worth many discussions, but I'll just pull one quote from the article "Companies and Critics try collaboration."

If politics makes for strange bedfellows, global warming, endangered forests, dwindling water supplies and scary new technologies have made for even stranger ones. Environmentalists and corporations are engaging in a new spirit of compromise.

For some of us, that quote is the canary in the coal mine, singing out loud that the environment has been sold out. For others it is a signal that we've entered a new era of environmental progress.

Daryl Hannah makes a splash with her new eco-blog

Daryl Hannah. Courtesy dhlovelife.com. The day started a long, long time ago, but Daryl Hannah’s got that laid-back, just-woke-up vibe — occasionally stumbling for a word, inserting a slow, easy laugh here and there. And who can blame her? She’s been working long nights shooting a film in Vancouver, B.C., about dirty cops. And on […]

Pombo gets no love

Remember that absurd website hosted by the House Resources Committee (read: Dick Pombo)? The taxpayer-funded one that slanders the entire environmental movement as greedy alarmists? Environmentalists are irritated about it. Pombo, as is his wont, doesn't give a damn:

"It's all part of the policy debate," Pombo said. "Hey, these groups can't scream that my site is political and turn around and say their stuff is educational. They can't have it both ways."

This is stupid. Nobody would ever see the website if people didn't make a fuss about it. It deserves mockery, nothing else.

In happier Pombo news, Defenders of Wildlife recently released a poll (press release; PDF summary) showing that if the election were held today, Pombo would LOOOOOOOOSE! Ahem.

A major factor in Pombo's drop in support is the fact that a majority of voters now believe that he "puts corporate interests over the people's interest."  53% of voters believe that the above description describes him well, while only 30% say it does not describe him well.

And remember, this is in a deeply, deeply Republican district.

I wonder how much of this is attributable to the general decline in Republican popularity, how much to events, and how much to the campaign by green groups. Some signs point to the latter -- these numbers are sharply down from last September, and Pombo now boasts some of the worst re-elect numbers of any Republican incumbent. Says the summary: