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Merry Christmas!

Just a quick note to wish all Grist (and Gristmill!) readers a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. Here's hoping Santa brought all of us what we really need: Enough courage and compassion to overcome fear.

Game over, man?

Greenpeace is taking on the French government ... again:

Africa has already lost two-thirds of its ancient forests in the last thirty years, industrial logging threatens most of what remains. In as little as five to ten years Africa's apes, the gorillas, chimpanzees and bonobos, will disappear with the last undisturbed forest areas.

And France, by accepting timber from illegal and destructive sources, is also jeopardizing the development of legitimate trade in legal and environmentally and socially responsible timber.

Click here for the government's response to date.

That five-to-ten-year time frame also applies to Orangutans in Asia. Is this the end? As I have said before, extinction in the wild is extinction, period. Zoos are just fleeting holding tanks for creatures that no longer have a place on our planet. The great apes are our closest remaining cousins and when they go, there will only be us and the monkeys. Shiver ....

Better control over reproduction is still crucial.

A few days ago, I received an email update from the Sierra Club's newsletter, PopNews:

There's nothing better than to end the year with a victory! On December 12th, after years of effort made by Choice New Jersey, a coalition of organizations, including Sierra Club, Contraceptive Equity Bill A292 passed the New Jersey Assembly by a vote of 57-14. The bill mandates that insurance companies who cover wellness medication prescriptions such as those for diabetes, high blood pressure, and especially if they cover Viagra, must also cover female contraceptives.

It is incredible that they had to work so hard for so long for what seems like such a simple thing. There is hardly a better way to limit environmental impact while improving the quality of someone's life than to help him or her avoid an unplanned pregnancy. One little question: Why only female contraception?

I’m dreaming of a solar Christmas

My parents are in the midst of building a new house -- their retirement home, as it were -- and I spent a little time (okay, very little) trying to persuade them to include some green building techniques. The pat answer was that there's not enough sun in Middle Tennessee to run solar panels.

Put aside the fact that solar is the tip of the green-building iceberg. Is it true that solar panels are only useful in areas with tons of direct sunlight?

According to a fascinating post from Jamais Cascio, no: Solar can be effective even in areas where it -- gasp -- snows. Read the post and follow the links. Interesting stuff.

California dreamin’, on such a winter’s day…

Just a few days ago, I posted on a mileage-based car insurance program that recently made its debut in Japan -- and hoped that this could hasten the introduction of a similar system on this side of the Pacific.

Now, the LA Times reports on an announcement by California's insurance commissioner that he's planning to ...

... propose rules forcing auto insurers to set rates based on the driving records and miles driven by motorists, and to give less weight to where drivers live -- a change that could affect the pocketbooks of 23 million California drivers.

The proposal was embraced by consumer and civil rights advocates who have long complained that city dwellers -- especially in minority neighborhoods -- pay higher rates than drivers with similar records who live in rural towns and suburbs. [Emphasis added.]

Seems like the U.S. didn't have to wait for Japan's lead after all. Obviously, this is not yet a done deal. But it's still promising -- because it could make the automotive insurance system fairer to people who don't drive much (notably women, the poor, and city-dwellers), and because it could give all drivers the opportunity to control their insurance costs by driving less.

This year’s acts of nature were anything but

This straightforward story makes a no-doubt-unpopular point: The "natural" disasters of 2005 were anything but.

From the Mississippi delta to the mountains of Kashmir and the beaches of the Andaman Sea, governments failed in almost every case to respect the basic laws of sustainable development.

It's not a point many will see, or want to see. But we obviously need to.

Car travel up for the holidays

Well, there's no question that high gas prices and the specter of peak oil are causing Americans to wean ourselves from the automobile.

Oh, wait -- guess not.

Convicted wetland developer gets jail

In coastal Mississippi, which is still digging out from the damage that Hurricane Katrina wrought upon low-lying areas, paving over wetlands now comes at a much higher price than the usual fine. A developer and two associates convicted of subdividing protected wetlands into "Big Hill Acres," and of building septic systems that leaked into drinking water supplies, have received long prison terms for their environmental misdeeds.

On December 5, U.S. District Court judge Louis Guirolla sentenced developer Robert Lucas Jr., real estate agent (and Lucas' daughter) Robbie Lucas Wrigley, and engineer M.E. Thompson Jr. to 7-8 years in prison apiece and $1.4 million in restitution. Their affiliated companies will pay another $5.3 million in fines. EPA agent David McLeod said, "Today's historical sentencing demonstrates our resolve to vigorously prosecute those who despoil our nation's precious wetlands."

[Found at Jackson, Miss. Clarion-Ledger, via Smart Growth News]

Top environmental story of 2005

What was the year's top environmental story? You can vote at the Sierra Club's website.

Think they missed something? Let us know in comments.

Sen. Ted Stevens: Crybaby

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) has spent the last week or so -- nay, the last 25 years -- attempting to circumvent the clearly and repeatedly expressed preferences of a majority of U.S. citizens by allowing oil drilling to take place in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The latest attempt involved attaching drilling to the defense appropriations bill, in effect holding military funding hostage in the middle of an armed conflict.

We have perhaps become numbed by the sheer repetition and persistence of these efforts, but it's worth pausing, stepping back, and noting just how utterly venal and anti-democratic they are. The country would not benefit from Refuge oil. It would be sold on the world market just like any other oil. Oil companies and the state of Alaska would benefit. For that, Stevens is willing to make a mockery of legislative procedure and tradition.

Stevens' latest defeat produced a self-pitying, thumb-sucking tantrum on the floor of the Senate. He said it was the "saddest day of his life." He also threatened his fellow Senators, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) in particular:

"I'm going to go to every one of your states, and I'm going to tell them what you've done," he told colleagues who voted against the measure. "You've taken away from homeland security the one source of revenue that was new ... I'm sure that the senator from Washington [Cantwell] will enjoy my visits to Washington."

He also, in effect, threatened to quit, saying "It's a day I don't want to remember. I say goodbye to the Senate tonight. Thank you very much." You can watch a little bit of the pathetic performance here (via Atrios).

(It's worth noting that when Refuge drilling came out of the defense bill, so did assistance for low-income people to heat their houses. The LIHEAP program will receive less funding this year than last year, despite record high heating prices. Maybe Stevens should shed a tear over that.)