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Teensy fuel cells offer greener power sources for small gadgets Yes, yes, your new iPod nano is very cool. But wouldn’t it be just that much cooler if you could recharge it with a small bottle of clear liquid? It might happen: Toshiba and other Japanese electronics firms are developing itty-bitty fuel cells to juice […]

EI, EI, No

Bush admin waives environmental assessments in public-lands energy rush This past summer’s energy bill contained provisions making it easier to drill on public lands — and for the Bush administration, that’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull. The Bureau of Land Management recently told field managers to omit environmental reviews and […]

You Picked a Bovine Time to Peeve Me

USDA loophole lets penned cows get certified organic The U.S. Department of Agriculture may be caving to owners of factory dairy farms by failing to revise some rules on organic milk. At issue is how the agency defines an organic bovine. One requirement is that the cows have “access to pasture,” but another provision allows […]

USDA inaction supports feedlot-style

Consumers looking for milk from grass-fed cows can't rely on the USDA's organic label.

As this Chicago Tribune article shows, the department has been allowing feedlot-style mega-dairies to claim organic status -- despite a recommendation from the National Organic Standards Board that it close existing loopholes.

Access to pasture lies at the heart of any meaningful definition of organic farm-animal stewardship. Grass-fed cows produce a healthier product, they're easier on the environment, and they're not forced to live miserable lives completely enslaved by the mechanized milker.

Environmentalism will never succeed by relying on personal virtue

A post on "unnecessary driving" from Clark and a post on poverty and obesity patterns over on NEW's blog both point to the same fact: The structure of our built environment largely determines our day-to-day habits. It's hard to eliminate "unnecessary driving" if the store, school, and work are miles away through pedestrian-unfriendly highways. It's hard to eat healthy when you're surrounded by fast-food restaurants, the nearest supermarket is a long bus ride away, and local/organic food is nowhere to be found. Most people, particularly poor people, live in environments that make unhealthy and eco-unfriendly choices the path of least resistance.

There are very few built environments in the U.S. that make eco-friendly choices easy. You need to be relatively well-to-do and live near the core of one of a small number of transit-friendly, progressive cities.

So, it's fine and dandy to ask people to push against the grain, to sacrifice and go out of their way, to make eco-friendly choices. There's nothing wrong with pushing people to display personal virtue. But it sometimes seems to me that environmentalists are devoted almost entirely to this quixotic undertaking -- indeed that "environmentalism" is sometimes taken as synonymous with personal virtue.

That's bad. It gives an easy out to those at the local, state, and federal level who make public policy decisions. It reduces political matters to "personal responsibility."

Environmentalists ought to be devoted to reshaping public policy, in order to reshape our built environments, in order to make eco-friendly choices easy, so the health of the earth does not require most people on it to be virtuous, cause that's never going to happen.

And yes, I make this point over and over and over again. Sue me. I like to harp.

Turns out oil rig workers are using meth, getting fired, and driving up oil prices

Well, of all the things I might have thought would affect oil prices, here's one that never occurred to me: apparently a growing number of oil-rig crews are meth users.

Ben Dell, analyst at Sanford Bernstein, said the issue was serious enough to have an impact on international oil prices.

He said: "With a third of all rig crews in the Rocky Mountains having methamphetamine problems, it's difficult to get a crew that's not high."

Seems that sodium hydroxide, one of the main ingredients of meth, is used to reduce the acidity of drilling mud, and thus easily available on rigs.

Random drug tests are now the order of the day, people are getting fired right and left, and it's increasingly hard to find workers. This comes at an awful time for an industry whose workforce is aging: "Most industry groups put the average age of employees at 49, with 50 percent expected to retire in the next five to 10 years."

Tweaking, it turns out, is not really what you want in an oil-rigger:

"Meth is particularly dangerous for oil and gas workers because meth users go through a wide range of emotions including the Superman stage during which they believe themselves to be invincible," Mr Walsmith added. "Believing oneself to be invincible when working with hundreds of tons of steel and thousands of pounds of explosive pressure can maim or kill in an instant."

Crazy.

How about instead of drilling in the Arctic Refuge, we offer drug counseling on oil rigs? Probably have roughly the same effect on oil price.

(via The Watt)

Are we headed for peak pony?

One day you're just walking around, minding your own business, licking your liberal/progressive wounds and contemplating years and years of wandering in the political desert.

Next thing you know, you've got a schadenfreude sugar buzz:

... Republican woes have been a boon for the pony markets, which have seen prices soar to historic highs due to increased demand from ecstatic liberals. This spike in demand has led many experts to warn of a near-term pony shortage, and led to fears that the world may be approaching "Peak Pony", the point at which nations are no longer able to meet their vital pony needs.

For most of the 20th century, ponies were primarily used as imaginary companions for giggling pre-teen girls. However, the market base for ponies has expanded considerably in recent weeks and months, as liberal euphoria has reached such giddy heights that only brightly-colored, silken-maned, magical sparkly friendly talking flying ponies are capable of expressing.

"The problem is two-fold," explains Goldman-Sachs senior pony analyst Holden. "A combination of irrational Bush-hatred among liberals and irrational exuberance among pony speculators has led to this spike in demand for what is, after all, a finite resource. At the same time, decades of complacency on the part of the world governments has let a manageable problem evolve into a full-blown crisis. Now the Congress wants to open the Strategic Pony Reserve to try to bring prices under control. It's too little, too late."

Read more about the coming of peak pony ...

Umbra on getting local foods into college cafeterias

Dear Umbra, I am a student at Hartwick College running the Grassroots Environmental Club. The college’s major cafeteria is run by a large food company that also serves prisons. In a meeting with the director, I was told they have the power to get any food. When I asked if we can get local, organic […]

Liberal opposition to drilling is reason enough to support it for some folks

The Senate Energy Committee voted today to include Arctic Refuge drilling in a massive budget reconciliation proposal, which will make it filibuster-proof. The fate of the budget reconciliation is not totally clear, but the odds are looking pretty grim. Our own Amanda Griscom Little will be writing more about this later in the week.

If you want to do something to try to stop it, the Wilderness Society has your standard online petition going. Sigh.

As a political issue, I find the Refuge rather mystifying.

What is your position on smoking?

Food production and transportation have been popular topics of late thanks to numerous posts by new Gristmill contributor Tom Philpott, loyal Ask Umbra readers, and the fight over synthetic ingredients in organic foods. But regardless of which side you find yourself on the various issues, there is no denying we mere mortals need food to live. So how about taking a look at another type of crop we don't need to survive: tobacco.

According to one Ask Umbra article, where a reader seeks green reasons to quit smoking:

Smoking is horrid, and the harm you are doing to your own health is just the icing on the toxic tobacco cake. From seed to smokes, those little white sticks leave a swath of death in their wake. Pesticides, pesticides, pesticides -- no large-scale crop is grown without 'em, and you can bet your tobacco has been sprayed right up to the moment of harvest and beyond. Every time you purchase a pack, you are supporting the chemical companies that make the pesticides and contributing to water pollution, habitat destruction, and the pesticide poisoning of farm workers and their families.

And she doesn't stop there folks: