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The best idea I never had

Just learned of a new site, Since Sliced Bread, that's looking for "fresh, common-sense ideas" to perk the country up. The bestest will score $100,000.

This contest, sponsored by the Service Employees International Union, is already inspiring fantasies like, oh, universal health care and interstate rail systems. Crazy! (It also oughta prove the "it takes all kinds" theory, if the drinking shirt is any indication.)

So go forth and idea-ify. And share the prize with me, will ya? I'm fresh out.

Good, if hopeless, ideas on how to rebuild N.O.

It sure would be nice if New Orleans were rebuilt according to the principles of sustainability, wouldn't it? In a way that puts it in balance with nature? A way that's more equitable for the poor and disadvantaged? A way that could serve as an example of state-of-the-art urban design?

... wait for it ...

And a pony!

Back in the real world, the same people who ran the "reconstruction" of Iraq are running this gig. Literally: several of the officials who worked in Iraq are being hired by the companies contracted to work in N.O. Money is flooding in, accountability and transparency are completely absent, and the forces of good are being caught flat-footed. Expect travesty.

But still, we can dream. If we did have a responsible, imaginative government, what would the rebuilding process look like? Turns out the editors of Environmental Building News have a fantastic piece about just this subject. Read the whole thing -- seriously -- but here are the 10 steps they lay out:

Burning in New Orleans

Don't miss Carl Pope on the decidedly brown clean-up techniques being used by the recipients of the no-bid contracts for New Orleans remediation. In particular: they're burning the debris, which is likely loaded with toxic chemicals.

This, of course is the same reckless approach to cleaning up after a disaster that the Bush administration adopted in its official disaster response plans for another terrorist attack after 9/11. A Sierra Club analysis discovered that the Administration had decided that in another terrorist attack it would "waive" cleanup standards otherwise required under federal law, and that devastated communities would be left contaminated forever. We protested at the time that it seemed clinically insane to say that, if terrorists attacked a community, it would not get the same kind of protection and cleanup that would follow a natural disaster. Now it turns out that we hadn't heard the sound of the second shoe dropping. The response to Katrina shows that our government has no intention of protecting communities after they suffer any disaster, whether natural or terrorist.

School choice could be an answer to sprawl

Imagine a country — we’ll call it Hobsonia — that requires all its residents to shop at officially assigned supermarkets based on where they live. Now, Hobsonians care passionately about food, and since the law allows them to move if they wish, citizens decide where to live based largely on where they can buy groceries. […]

So a Priest Walks Into an Environmental Protest …

Brazilian priest on hunger strike to stop water-diversion scheme Roman Catholic bishop Luiz Flavio Cappio has been fasting for 10 days in a modest chapel 600 feet from Brazil’s Sao Francisco River, aiming to halt a massive water-diversion project. The $1.8 billion government plan involves building hundreds of miles of canals and other infrastructure to […]

We Mar the World

World Bank study says pollution, climate change hurt millions The World Bank is not the first institution that comes to mind when you’re looking for hard-hitting environmental analysis. But a new report from the powerful development agency asserts that while alcohol, tobacco, and unsafe sex are still the most common threats to human health in […]

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.