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Naked Lunch

Naked Chef hits reality TV to press for healthy, green school lunches Every day, at thousands of schools across the U.S., kids eat crap — over-processed, nutrient-poor, canned, just-add-water, microwaved mystery-meat crap. Not that we have any bitter memories. But a champion of healthy, eco-friendly, locally produced school food for American children has arisen — […]

Hall and Votes

Choice to head FWS has iffy record on endangered species Dale Hall, a 27-year veteran of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, will probably be confirmed today as the agency’s director by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. A full Senate vote on the confirmation is expected soon. Hall’s tenure at FWS seems notable […]

How many kudos does Bush deserve for endorsing conservation?

George W. Bush recently endorsed energy conservation. How much credit does he deserve?

The other post-Katrina recommendations featured in yesterday's press conference include trimming back environmental regulation on oil refineries, giving the feds siting authority over said refineries, and trimming money from Medicare, Medicaid, and the food-stamp program to pay for hurricane cleanup. No military or homeland-security programs will be touched, nor will there be any pause in the serial tax cuts for the rich.

Oh, and in the event of an avian flu outbreak, U.S. military grunts may be used as quarantine-enforcing first responders. Throw ya hands up for the Posse Comitatus Act! No, seriously. Put your hands up.

How much credit? Not so much.

Why the environmentalists shouldn’t ignore the ground beneath their feet

"Common as dirt," goes the old insult. Despite its antique nature, the saying may sum up industrial (and post-industrial) society's take on soil: low, squalid, filthy, annoyingly abundant, beneath dignity and respect.

Consider the zeal to clean, to wash, to sterilize and scrub. Claudia Hemphill, a doctoral student in environmental science at the University of Idaho, has been doing some interesting work on the recent social history of soil. As U.S. society mutated from primarily rural to overwhelmingly urban and suburban in the span of less than a century -- today less than 3 percent of the population engages directly in agriculture -- dirt came to be demonized, Hemphill argues.

By the dawn of the 20th century, when immigrants (many of them former farmers) and our own displaced rural populations flocked to U.S. cities, they found themslves confronted with a stark public-health slogan: "Dirt, Disease and Death."

A society washing its hands of agriculture didn't want dirt clinging to its trousers. Hence the cult of detergent.

Can 30 million evangelicals be a bad thing?

"Environmentalism and the religious worldview" is in the top ten Gristmill posts ranked by the number of comments. Apparently combining these two issues strikes a chord, or at least gets you all riled up.

So I'm wondering what y'all think of the Grist interview with Richard Cizik. Regardless of your views on religion, Richard can reach out to over 30 million people -- and he wants them to fight global warming.

And if if that isn't enough scripture for you, the Seattle Channel is streaming "Whose Planet Is It, Anyway?," the Foolproof event moderated by Grist's own Chip Giller where Richard and others discuss the future of the environmental movement. (You might want to make some popcorn for this one.)

Calling all environmental journalists

Or at least you good ones. You might want to get your name in the running for a new annual prize for top-notch environmental reportage; the winner(s) of the Grantham Prize for Excellence in Reporting on the Environment will take home $75,000. Info here.

Small-scale microgrids are more efficient, cheaper, and work just as well

If I were the kind of person who really dug in and learned about subjects in depth instead of a quasi-pundit dilettante who knows just enough about a lot of subjects to be dangerous [takes breath] I would study distributed electrical grids. They are, after all, the new black.

Here's the take-home message: Smaller-scale, distributed electrical generation (solar, wind, etc.), built closer to consumers, run by intelligent grids, is cheaper and more efficient than the big, centralized kind, could be implemented with no loss of quality or service, and would sharply reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. It is, as Martha is wont to say, a good thing. The impediments are not only technical but political, since distributed electrical grids are by nature democratizing.

More below the fold.

Too much time on a bike can impair sexual performance, researchers say

Bummer news for cycling advocates. Word's long been around that spending too much time on a bike seat can impair your performance in the bedroom. Now, researchers in this arena are getting even more adamant in their admonitions.

A New York Times article -- the No. 1 most-emailed on their site for the second day running -- highlights mounting evidence that frequent cycling by men can lead to a damaged perineum, loss of libido, "small calcified masses inside the scrotum," and/or impotence. Women, though less studied than men in this area, are also thought to be at risk.

Dr. Steven Schrader, a reproductive health expert who studies cycling at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, said he believed that it was no longer a question of "whether or not bicycle riding on a saddle causes erectile dysfunction."

Instead, he said in an interview, "The question is, What are we going to do about it?"

... The link between bicycle saddles and impotence first received public attention in 1997 when a Boston urologist, Dr. Irwin Goldstein, who had studied the problem, asserted that "there are only two kinds of male cyclists -- those who are impotent and those who will be impotent."

The hope is that better-designed bicycle seats can save the day. Otherwise, all those new bike owners may soon lose their steel steeds, for fear of losing something they care about a whole lot more.

Umbra on preparing for winter

Dear Umbra, With the coming winter, our local news did a story on how to save on heating. The tips included window treatments, lowering the water heater, etc. But those of us in apartments are limited in what we can do. I can feel the cold air seeping through the cracks, and laying towels on […]

Nobel goes to green chemists

Via WC, check it out: The guys who just won the Nobel Prize for chemistry are green chemists: