Latest Articles

Actually, it is about the oil

Also in the NYT (but behind the $elect wall), Ted Koppel (who I guess is looking for new ways to spend his time) points out the obvious:

Keeping oil flowing out of the Persian Gulf and through the Strait of Hormuz has been bedrock American foreign policy for more than a half-century.

...

Perhaps the day will come when the United States is no longer addicted to imported oil; but that day is still many years off. For now, the reason for America's rapt attention to the security of the Persian Gulf is what it has always been. It's about the oil.

Why else would we be building permanent bases in Iraq?

And why are statements like this still viewed as vaguely conspiratorial and wacky? If we can't openly discuss the plain truth, we'll never get anywhere.

Short and blunt

James Gustave Speth (see Grist interview here) writes a letter to The New York Times:

The world we have known is history. A mere 1 degree Fahrenheit global average warming is already raising sea levels, strengthening hurricanes, disrupting ecosystems, threatening parks and protected areas, causing droughts and heat waves, melting the Arctic and glaciers everywhere and killing tens of thousands of people a year.

Yet there are several more degrees coming in our grandchildren's lifetimes.

It is easy to feel like a character in a bad science fiction novel running down the street shouting "Don't you see it!" while life goes on, business as usual.

Climate change is the biggest thing to happen here on earth in thousands of years, with incalculable environmental, social and economic costs. But there is no march on Washington; students are not in the streets; consumers are not rejecting destructive lifestyles; Congress is not passing far-reaching legislation; the president is not on television explaining the threat to the country; Exxon is not quaking in its boots; and entire segments of evening news pass without mention of the climate emergency.

Instead, 129 new coal-fired power plants are being developed in the United States alone, and so on.

There are many of us caught in this story. We must find one another soon.

James Gustave Speth
New Haven, Feb. 20, 2006

Community forests help revitalize New England towns

Beyond a set of granite gates on a hillside in Rumford, Maine, a lost city sits amid silver maples and oaks, just across the river from a sprawling paper mill. It’s called Strathglass Park, and it’s a vestige of an experiment in corporate benevolence. Designed in 1904 by noted architect Cass Gilbert, who later designed […]

Gore’s presentation

There's been a lot of talk lately about Al Gore and his fabulous PowerPoint-based global warming presentation. There's even a movie coming out about it.

If you care to know the details -- in advance of seeing the movie -- Ethan Zuckerman, who saw Gore at the TED 2006 conference, has a play-by-play.

Always low toxics? Well, sometimes, at least

A while back I wrote about all the "fake news" -- really, just corporate P.R. -- that comes into my email inbox as a result of our work on flame retardants in people's bodies. Most of the news stories are really just press releases from companies touting the fact that they'd removed PBDEs and other hazardous substances from their products. Any single press release, by itself, is hardly worthy of notice. But viewed as a whole, the steady drumbeat of companies announcing that they'd managed to make their products less toxic seemed like an important, if unheralded, good news story.

There aren’t that many skeptics left, and they aren’t the problem

Coby Beck has an entertaining and informative series of posts called "How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic," if you're into that sort of thing.

But let me hazard an assertion: Maybe it doesn't matter all that much how to convince a global warming skeptic. Why? Because there aren't that many.

Head over to ES&T and read about a series of surveys done in four countries -- the U.S., U.K., Sweden, and Japan -- on climate change and related subjects. The way it's written up is a bit opaque, to say the least, but there are a few clear results (FYI: I've also got a copy of the original paper, which is behind a subscription wall).

Acceptance that global warming is a real problem is above 90% in all four countries.

The U.S. does have a small, hard core of skeptics -- around 7%, compared to 3% max for other countries. But I don't see why that 7% should be the focus of so much attention.

Here's a more important finding:

Global warming was ranked as the one of the top two environmental problems facing their country by 55% in the Swedish survey and 49% in the British survey, far ahead of any other environmental problems. In the U.S., however, global warming was only ranked fifth at 21% after water pollution, ecosystem destruction, overpopulation, and toxic waste.

Now, one way to react to this might be to say: Sure, Americans accept that global warming is a problem, but they don't understand how bad a problem it is. So the solution is ... more facts!

I disagree.

Human beings are not rational creatures. We make decisions, set priorities, establish habits based on a whole range of factors: personal history, peer groups, identity, taste, serotonin levels, whatever.

Two eco-events upcoming in NYC

Hey, New York -- what are you doing on Tuesday night? February 28 is Fat Tuesday, and Grist is throwing a phat party in NYC. All Grist readers -- and people who wanna have a good time, but really those are one and the same -- are invited to Mardi Grist to rub elbows with a pack of Grist representatives and eat yummy food. A quarter of the proceeds will go to NOLA-area green groups. What's not to love? RSVP today!

Priorities

The Bush administration spent more than $1.6 billion over a 30-month period on public relations and advertising contracts to promote its policies and programs, according to a report released yesterday by the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress.

By way of comparison, Bush's much-heralded Advanced Energy Initiative pledges a total of $996 million to alternative energy research.

Auto news from Ithe land o’ luck

A spiffy old car takeback program is being launched in Ireland.

The proverbial land o' luck plans to institute the End-of-Life Vehicle (ELV) directive in 2007. Hee hee, elves. Hee hee, leprechauns. Um, anyway ... the first draft of regulations were revealed today. Hot off the presses! Lucky you! Hee hee, lucky ...

Under the regulations -- "a kind of car equivalent to the WEEE directive" -- each automobile importer or manufacturer would have to establish an authorised treatment facility (ATF) in every Irish county that consumers could bring their cars to for scrapping. These sites would be required to meet high environmental standards, remove pollutants in the dismantling process, and recover at least 85 percent of car material. If they don't, they could face big fines and prison time.

"The main effect of these draft regulations will be that when a person has a car or small van that has reached the end of it's useful life, there will be at least one facility available in their county or city where they can bring the vehicle in the knowledge that it will be depolluted and dismantled to a high standard," said Environment Minister Dick Roche.

Sweet.

Old Dog Poop, New Tricks

San Francisco looks to harness the power of pet poop Renewable energy is the sh*t. No, really. San Francisco Bay Area cities are aiming to generate no trash by 2020, and nearly 4 percent of San Francisco’s residential waste is animal excrement. What to do with the doo? Turn it into methane and heat your […]