Latest Articles

When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Blaming

Rising oil prices send lawmakers into frenzy of empty gestures The American public will take lots of things lying down — inaction on climate change, ill-conceived wars, erosion of civil liberties — but expensive gas? Hell no! With oil prices topping $75 a barrel, gas prices sneaking up on $3 a gallon, and some East […]

The Land of Disenchantment

New Mexico cracks down on its filthy dairy industry Industrial dairy farms deplete groundwater, fill the air with bacteria-laden dust, and, what with the massive lagoons filled with manure (ew), kinda stink. If goings-on in New Mexico — the nation’s seventh-largest milk producer, fastest-growing dairy state, and home to the nation’s biggest cheese plant — […]

The World Bunk

World Bank report urges cleantech boost in developing countries The World Bank is turning its attention to helping developing countries meet their growing energy needs without, you know, frying the globe. At the request of the G8 nations, the World Bank produced a report on the subject, released at this weekend’s meeting with the International […]

Hydrogen Fidelity

Bush stumps for hydrogen on Earth Day For Earth Day, President Bush visited a California hydrogen fuel-cell project, decrying the danger posed to the planet by … high gas prices. Predicting a “tough summer” and calling the scourge at the pump “a serious problem we’ve got to do something about,” he pledged immediate action. And […]

My problem with David Kamp’s NYT review of Michael Pollan’s new book

In his review of Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, published in Sunday's NYT Book Review, David Kamp expresses a bit of received wisdom that needs rethinking.

Kamp, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and GQ who himself is writing a book about food, generally approves of Pollan's well-documented indictment of the dominant U.S. food system and exploration of its alternatives (which I reviewed here).

But to the big-picture problems presented by Pollan, Kamp demands big-picture solutions. And here is where I think Kamp, like many commentators on the vast-scale environmental troubles plaguing our culture, goes astray.

Umbra on the greenhouse effect

Dear Umbra, Man-made greenhouse gases are blamed for recent global-warming trends. But man-made greenhouse gases account for only 5 percent of the greenhouse effect. Water vapor, over which civilization has virtually no control, accounts for some 95 percent of that greenhouse effect. Why has so much attention been focused on man-made gases when they comprise […]

Grist in the MSM

As a small, scrappy, poor non-profit magazine devoted to the environment, we naturally revel in our thoroughgoing moral superiority to the mainstream media (MSM).

We also, naturally, giggle like schoolgirls whenever they mention our name.

Amanda's interview with Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott is covered rather extensively in the business section of the New York Times.

Also, our Maximum Leader Chip is quoted (for reasons not entirely clear, but whatevs, we love it) toward the top of this story about carbon offsets.

Also, ML Chip is interviewed by NPR's Weekend America for Earth Day (second segment down), about the changing image of environmentalists -- a change, we find out from the disinterested interview subject, being led by Grist!

Also, ML Chip has an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle today, about the connection between poverty and the environment -- a little late for our Poverty & the Environment special edition, but then, it's not like the problem has gone away.

And that's that for Self-Promotion Sunday. Tune in next week!

Every day is Earth Day … or at least yesterday was

I spent Earth Day in a small cabin on a sand spit that juts from the coast of Bainbridge Island, enjoying the sun, the waves, my kids' delighted squeals, and most of all, the four -- yes, four -- hour nap I took mid-day. Ah ... love me some Earth Day!

So I missed my chance to write an inspiring message. Instead, I offer this small roundup of stuff to read:

Biodiesel: The slippery facts

Biodiesel -- the cleaner-burning vegetable-based oil that can be substituted for ordinary petroleum diesel -- is getting a lot of press these days. That's not too surprising: alternatives to oil tend to get a lot of attention when fuel prices are rising, which they're certainly doing right now.

Perhaps the biggest piece of recent policy news is Washington state's new renewable fuels standard, passed just last month, which mandates that 2 percent of the diesel sold in the state must be biodiesel by the end of 2008.

That got me thinking -- why just 2 percent? Couldn't we do better than that?

Well, maybe so. But perhaps not by a whole lot.

LA Times can learn a lot from ESPN

I unfortunately did not take Dave Robert's advice, and went ahead and read Jonah Goldberg's vapid op-ed on global warming. I'll leave it to others to say why Goldberg is wrong. I want to discuss why the L.A. Times is wrong.

A year or so ago, ESPN hired Rush Limbaugh to provide color commentary (the irony only became apparent later) during NFL football games. This little experiment ended, as any idiot could have predicted, when Limbaugh made on-air comments that -- how to say this in a balanced way? -- some listeners thought might be racist, and others knew for sure were racist.

Limbaugh's shtick might play well on rightwing hate-radio (though is no less excusable), but no one, including ESPN, should have been surprised when it didn't translate well to a broader audience. An audience with black people, for instance. ESPN endured a firestorm of criticism -- the National Association of Black Journalists said "ESPN's journalistic credibility is at stake" -- and ended up issuing mea culpas and canning Limbaugh.

Ditto Goldberg. His vapid screed might play well over on National Review Online, but the L.A. Times insults the thinking members of its circulation when they publish this kind of horseshit on Earth Day. What's next? Paul Bunyan's ode to lumber on Arbor Day? Will they give Hugh Hefner free rein on National Chastity Day? (Trust me. It's only a matter of time.)

Shame on you, L.A. Times. You insult your readers at your peril.