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Mad About Peru

Take a photo journey to the far reaches of Peru Have we mentioned we’re giving away a trip to Peru? We are! Check it out. But first check out a gorgeous collection of Peruvian photos by Gary Braasch, a globe-trotting, conservation-minded photog. Today he takes us to the Amazon, the Andes, Machu Picchu, and other […]

Waddle They Do Now?

Global warming also affects — noooooooo! — penguins Need a new weapon in your arsenal against global-warming skeptics? Try baby penguin fuzzy-wuzziness. According to a new study, penguins and other Antarctic seabirds are nesting and laying eggs later than they did half a century ago, and scientists blame … the usual culprit. In eastern Antarctica, […]

A photo journey to the far reaches of Peru

In a collection of photos, Gary Braasch takes us on a visit to Peru’s rivers, mountains, ancient temples, and young faces — the country’s true gems. Photos: © Gary Braasch   Peru is dominated by two features that are, to most outsiders, the stuff of legend: the Amazon and the Andes. The lush forests and […]

The biggest Nature Conservancy financial commitment ever

The New York Times tells us about the biggest financial commitment in the Nature Conservancy's history:

On Tuesday, the International Paper Company announced it would receive $300 million in a deal arranged by the Nature Conservancy and the Conservation Fund for 217,000 acres in 10 states around the Southeast.

Urban sprawl has reached a fever pitch in many parts of the country:

If the 39,000 acres in the two tracts...near the Georgia border -- were up for sale, Mr. Frampton predicted, it would be bought up instantly and subdivided into hunting clubs and hobby farms and eventually second-home communities. There are 100 golf courses in the Myrtle Beach area... and The Charleston Post recently reported that there were 134,000 building permits in Charleston County alone.

Climate neutral carpet

I just got this intriguing email from Interface.

Getting climate change into the nightly weather report

Also on Salon today is a fascinating piece from Linda Baker on efforts among the meteorological community -- that is, local weathermenpersons -- to inject a little scientific education on climate change into their segments, and the resistance they're getting from the suits. The depressing thing is the consensus among everyone Baker spoke to that stories about, or even mentions of, climate change are bad for ratings. People seem really to resist having global warming inserted into what, uh, somebody (who was that, anyway?) called the "sacred mundane," the rituals of day-to-day life that give us a sense of grounding and safety. Joe Sixpack would rather climate change stay "out there," as a political or scientific issue, a public debate. He doesn't want it intruding on his private world.

That's the kind of barrier we have to get through. We have to connect climate change to the sacred mundane. And what's more mundane than the nightly weather report?

(On a related note, see Amanda's interview with the Weather Channel's climate-change specialist Heidi Cullen.)

Hope: the new fear

A while back I criticized the new global-warming ads from Environmental Defense for relying entirely on fear. I wrote an alternate script, based on hope and uplift.

According to near-universal consensus, my alternate script ... sucked.

Fine. But I still maintain that while fear might serve the short-term purpose of getting people's attention, like a burst of adrenaline, it won't suffice to produce substantial social change.

Happily, I'm not the only one thinking this way. Today in Salon, Kevin Sweeney offers an eloquent defense of hope.

The facts of climate change can be overwhelming. I recently observed focus groups in South Carolina, part of an effort to create messages to help moderates and conservatives understand the urgency of climate change. I saw lively conversations progress to a point when, abruptly, some of the participants began to shut down. As they grasped the urgency, they couldn't envision solutions or the political will to bring them about. They looked depressed.

Peter Kropotkin, the Russian anarchist, wrote, "It is hope, not despair, which makes successful revolutions." While this is a notion most American generations haven't needed to understand -- ours has been a fortunate history -- it may be time for us to learn it. When we tell stories of potential desperation, we must also find ways of offering hope. Always.

Word.

Universities up their organic offerings

At about this time yesterday, students filling up their trays at the U.C. Berkeley salad bar realized something was missing: the carcinogens.

On Monday, the Cal campus debuted an organic salad bar at one of the student dining facilities. Though many schools are offering organic options these days, Berkeley is the first in the nation to have an officially certified organic salad bar, complete with separate prep facilities -- so as to save the organic shreds of lettuce from the indignity of mingling with the non-organic variety, of course.

And students are noticing the difference. Said one 19-year-old sophomore, "It's not just that it tasted different, but it felt different. It seemed more like lettuce, I guess." Dude ... deep.

Meanwhile, in a much colder and less, uh, surfer-dude-populated area of the country, the U. of Wisconsin-Madison became the latest collegiate body to join the Humane Society's campaign against factory farms. Along with more than 80 other schools, UW-Madison's Food Services has agreed to the "near-exclusive" use of organic, cage-free (or "cruelty free") eggs, improving the lives of some 3,000 egg-laying hens.

Some universities are doing even more to push organic -- they're educating future organic farmers:

Come Off It … no, not like that

I feel obliged to mention that today is Come Off It Day, which has to do with reducing your personal energy use, not porn.

Biological control helps curb populations of knapweed, humans

A popular weapon in the anti-pest arsenal is biological control -- i.e., the introduction of a natural enemy. It's considered a nice environmental alternative to pesticides.

But it can still disrupt the local ecosystem and have serious consequences, like this example from a NY Times article: The knapweed is widespread in the West. The gall fly was introduced to control it. The deer mouse likes gall fly larvae, and now the mouse population is exploding. The droppings of deer mice can cause hantavirus, an infection that can be fatal to humans. Whoops!