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"Very Important Things I Learned About Mistletoe from the U.S. Geological Survey, Which Knows All Kinds Of Things Not Only About The Earth's Crust, As Their Name Would Suggest, But Holiday Flora As Well":

• American mistletoe, the type that invariably leads to smooching and should be avoided at office holiday parties at all cost, grows in the United States from New Jersey to Florida and west through Texas. Interestingly, the majority of the U.S. population is in that region. This only makes sense, because higher population means there have been more babies, which means there's been more ... kissing, which is because they're simply drowning in mistletoe. Maybe I should move.
• The dwarf mistletoe (which is smaller than the American mistletoe, leading to less kissing) will randomly shoot seeds out of its berries, to a distance of up to 50 feet! Wow!
• "Mistletoe" means "dung on a twig." How romantic.
• Mistletoe is poisonous to people. I imagine the thought process of the early what-do-we-do-with-mistletoe deciders was along the lines of, "Well, we can't eat it ... really, what else to do but hang it up and kiss under it!"
• One of the names on the USGS article is Todd Esque. Huh. That's very toddesque.
• And the most important thing you will learn about mistletoe this holiday season (drumroll please): Mistletoe is an endangered species! Okay, only 20 out of 1,300 species are, but still. So no matter how desperate you are, I have to advise against trundling out into the woods, tearing mistletoe off of the trees, and bringing it home by the armful, in hopes that Saint Nick will send his young, attractive assistant down the chimney this year. (Or better yet, a UPS carrier just for you. Yum.)

With this sad news, I think it's time to retire the poor mistletoe from its job as kiss-inducer and leave it to its other job of strangling conifers. The new holiday plant o' love should be ... the Bartlett pear. Take that, East Coast! Gristmill readers, you have my leave to kiss strangers whenever there are pears nearby. Consult a partridge as to the whereabouts of the nearest pear tree.

Will Washington state take on Big Oil?

The front-page story for the Seattle Weekly tells us that Washington State is going to take on Big Oil and that:

The sexy star of the industry is biodiesel. Although there is only one biodiesel refinery in the state, which employs 12 people, and no biodiesel crops are grown commercially in Washington, biodiesel has captured the media's, the public's, and the politicians' imaginations.

Part of the plan includes a new law that will require the use of up to 10 percent biofuels to run vehicles in the state. This reminds me of how the old Soviet Union ran its economy (into the ground). "You will produce and buy whatever the state tells you to produce and buy regardless of cost because we know what is best for you. The free market is for capitalist pigs." Nevermind that much of this biofuel will eventually be coming from big oil, or at least its equivalent. Turns out that Shell Oil has invested in a company building a cellulosic ethanol plant just one state over.

Has Shell invested in ethanol to save the planet or to capitalize on the money to be made when a state mandates usage of a given product regardless of cost, insuring a captive market for that product? I wonder.

Climate campaigners warm to “advanced coal” and sequestration, despite Bush backing

Bush administration officials tried their darnedest to derail the international climate-change negotiations that wrapped up in Montreal last week. But in the midst of their bombastic no-no-no-ing, they did offer up one constructive idea — a $950 million partnership between the U.S. Department of Energy and industry leaders to build FutureGen, a “prototype of the […]

Will Mother Nature beat the odds?

On the afternoon of Friday, Dec. 2, a number of suspicious wagers, originating primarily from New York and New Jersey, were posted on Mother Nature to be named Time Magazine's Person of the Year for 2005. -- PR Newswire

OK, I admit it. I was the one who placed those suspicious wagers on Mother Nature to win. I also bet on Father Time to show ... but you notice that didn't make the news. Is there something so wrong with an old man exposing himself?

Anyway, I digress. This weekend, the winner of Time's legendary honor will finally be announced, so I figured it's time to come clean.

The Twelve Days of Gristmahanukwanzakah

On the first day … … the Grist staff gave to me: the notion that Kwanzaa, Christmas, and Hanukkah are eco-holidays. Kwanzaa (“first fruits” in Swahili) has its roots in African harvest festivals. Christmas involves serious tree-hugging (thank the pagans for that). And Hanukkah celebrates squeezing every last drop from a tiny bit of oil. […]

Readers talk back about Montreal, nuclear power, holiday lights, and more

  Re: All This Aggravation Ain’t Satisfactionin’ Us Dear Editor: For the first time ever, you got a story completely wrong. Environmental groups just won a huge victory at the 11th Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change and first meeting of Kyoto Protocol Parties in Montreal. You missed it. “Plenty […]

Kids in the Holiday

Grist takes a winter break You better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout, we’re telling you why: Grist ain’t gonna be in your inbox for the next two weeks. Yes, even environmental journalists like to kick back with a cup of eggnog once in a while, and that once in a […]

Polar Distress

Enviro groups sue to get species-act protection for polar bears This week’s news about drowning polar bears got you all riled up? You’re not the only one. Yesterday, three green groups sued in federal court to force the Bush administration to consider listing the bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Greenpeace, the Center […]

Is It Hot in Here, Or Is It Just Me?

2005 to be one of the hottest years recorded This year will go down as one of the hottest on record. NASA’s Goddard Institute says 2005 will beat 1998, the current record-holder, while the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.K. Meteorological Office — using the same land and ocean data as NASA, but […]

Drill Sergeant

Stevens moves to hook Arctic Refuge drilling to military spending Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) is getting downright desperate; it seems he’ll go to any lengths to get oil drills into the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. His latest plan has him attaching an Arctic-drilling provision to a popular military spending bill, hoping that lawmakers won’t risk […]