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Billy-Come-Lately

Bill Clinton calls climate change public enemy No. 1 In a Saturday speech to the assembled corporate bigwigs and governmental muckety-mucks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, former President Bill Clinton called global warming the single most pressing problem facing the world. “It’s the only thing that I believe has the power to […]

At Least the City’s Back Up and … Oh

Gulf Coast ecosystems slow to bounce back after hurricanes Gulf Coast ecosystems are struggling to rebound from last year’s record hurricane season. Hurricanes Rita and Katrina destroyed over 100 square miles of wetlands in Louisiana alone. They spread salt water inland and killed many plants, including marsh grasses along the Louisiana coast, popular chow for […]

Take a Drink Every Time He Says “Nucular”

Bush will talk up nuclear, hydrogen, and ethanol in State of the Union “We’ve got to wean ourselves off hydrocarbons, oil,” said President Bush on Friday. Yup, you read that right. In an interview aired on CBS, the president said he would use this Tuesday’s State of the Union address to decry “foreign oil” and […]

Hush Hush, Keep It Down Now

Top NASA climate scientist says he’s being censored by Bush admin If Bush administration officials were trying to keep NASA’s chief climate scientist quiet, as he charges, they failed spectacularly. Instead they got a front-page story in The New York Times. In it, James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, charges that […]

Ladies and gentlemen, your president

"... I want to see different kinds of cars on our road that don't require upon crude oil from overseas, but we have got a serious problem, and now is the time to fix it, and I'm going to address it again at the State of the Union."

Hunting and fishing groups are increasingly vocal about global warming

If you're a regular Gristmill reader, you've probably already digested this weekend's front-page coverage of climate change in The Washington Post and The New York Times.

Global warming also recently made the cover of Trout, the quarterly magazine of the sportsmen's group Trout Unlimited. The article, "Weathering the Change," explains how climate change could impact stream habitats and trout populations (which thrive in cold waters):

A study prepared in 2002 for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change predicted that a 1.5-degree increase in air temperature in the Rocky Mountain region could reduce suitable stream habitat for trout by 7 to 16 percent. A 4.8-degree increase could reduce habitat by a staggering 42 to 54 percent.

Along similar lines, The Waterfowlers' Guide to Global Warming (PDF), released last summer by the National Wildlife Federation, looks at how rising temperatures could evaporate the water necessary for duck breeding grounds in the U.S. and Canada:

The Prairie Pothole Region contains millions of shallow depressions that fill with water in spring, providing breeding habitat for millions of ducks and other migratory birds and many species of resident wildlife. As the climate warms and evaporation and transpiration by plants increase, many of these ponds are likely to dry up or be wet for shorter periods, making them less suitable habitat for breeding pairs and duck broods. Models of future drought conditions in the region due to global warming project significant declines in Prairie Pothole wetlands, from no change to a loss of 91 percent. This could lead to a 9 percent to 69 percent reduction in the abundance of ducks breeding in the region.

Sportmen's organizations in America have traditionally focused their resources on private habitat-restoration programs. Trout Unlimited, for example, organizes efforts to clean up abandoned mines and watersheds in Appalachia. But such groups are becoming increasingly active in public debates. Bringing their members up to speed on global warming is just one example.

P.S. Pleased to make your acquaintance here at Gristmill. Most of the time I write for The Washington Monthly, where I'm now researching a series of articles on the intersection of rural politics and environmental concerns. Feedback is more than welcome: larson_at_washingtonmonthly.com.

Top 25 green power purchasers

Let me officially become the very last green blogger on the planet to draw attention to the EPA's Top 25 Partners in the Green Power Partnership, "whose annual green power purchase is the largest, and whose green power purchase has been completed."

No. 1? The U.S. Air Force.

Interestingly, Whole Foods' recent moves have vaulted it to No. 2. Too bad its food costs so damn much. (But man, I've never had turkey/white bean chili like that before or since ...)

Hunting deer amidst strip malls

To the usual problems of suburban sprawl and strip development -- the traffic, mind-numbing visual blight, and acres of pavement -- add another: It's not easy enough to hunt deer.

That's the situation in Milford, Connecticut, where the owner of the local Honda dealership has asked the town for permission to put in a gravel road so he can hunt, with bow and arrow -- not on a remote tract deep in the woods but on a 100-by-100 plot behind his showroom.

Tilting at Pombo

Alternet has a story about green attempts to unseat Rep. Richard "Dick" Pombo (R-Calif.) that is substantially a retread of Amanda's story from a few weeks ago. There's a lot of hand-waving, but no good, practical answer to the main question, to wit: What chance in hell do these efforts have in succeeding? Perhaps I will be pleasantly surprised come 2006, but from everything I've seen my own answer remains: a snowball's.

(via Sustainablog)

Oh, and I forgot, Carl Pope also blogged about this, quoting a political scientist saying, "Personally, I'd look at anything less than a two-to-one win (by Pombo) as a clear signal." That's one way of defining victory, I guess.

L.A. Times: EPA Follies

On Saturday the L.A. Times ran a series of editorials collectively titled "EPA Follies":

• "A wrong-way agency" -- a general critique.
• "Sticking up for health" -- lauding the EPA for cracking down on teflon.
• "Good, clean information" -- bashing the agency for proposing to weakened the Toxics Release Inventory.

All short, all worth a read.