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Bartlett’s conference

This Monday, Rep. Roscoe P. Coltrane Bartlett (R-Md.) convened a big ol' conference on peak oil, including speakers Kenneth Deffeyes, Matthew Simmons, and other such brainy energy types. Energybulletin.net has the transcript (parts one, two, and three), as well as a roundup of news and blog covereage. Check it out.

Cali Reclamation Board tries to slow development on floodplains; Arnold fires it

Carl Pope is right: this is just bizarre. In the wake of Katrina and Rita, levees and flood control are on everyone's mind. The California Reclamation Board, which oversees flood control on the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers (the state's two biggest), has been growing increasingly leery of developing in those floodplains without additional protections.

Many stretches of Central Valley levees were built decades ago to protect farmland; they are now aging and weakening at the same time they are being expected to protect thousands of new homes.

In an interview several months ago, [board member Jeffrey F.] Mount said, "We need regional land use planning so we don't continue to build behind these agricultural levees."

Also, he said, a mechanism is needed to pay for strengthening existing levees, and flood insurance should be mandatory.

"Everything I'm saying, of course," Mount said, "will be violently resisted by the building industry."

The need for better protection was so severe that a bipartisan group of California Congressfolk sent a letter to Schwarzenegger pleading for funding:

Scientists trace SARS to bats, blame human mucking with nature

In a move likened to “a microbiological episode of CSI,” a team of scientists has uncovered the culprit behind a disease that shook the world — and that could very well strike again. Researchers announced today that they’ve traced the global SARS epidemic, which spread to 26 countries and infected thousands of people, to one […]

Biomimicry in Newsweek

All my environment-related RSS feeds go into a single "green" folder (in Thunderbird). I returned from paternity leave to find that folder bulging with more than 4500 unread entries. Eek. Thus far I've been too scared to even open it.

All of which is to say, I'm sure someone's already covered this. But Newsweek has a nice little article on biomimicry that's worth reading. It recounts various lessons engineers have learned from nature and the nifty widgets they've built. Nothing new for folks familiar with the subject, but a friendly intro.

"If you have a design problem, nature's probably solved it already," says Janine Benyus, cofounder of the Biomimicry Guild. "After all, it's had 3.8 billion years to come up with solutions."

...

"The truth is, natural organisms have managed to do everything we want to do without guzzling fossil fuels, polluting the planet or mortgaging the future," says Benyus.

Indeed.

Time to abandon the ‘population’ frame in favor of women’s empowerment and sustainable development

One last thing on the American Prospect environment package: Adam Werbach's piece on population is brilliant, and by that I mean it expresses my own position.

The basic point is that the "population movement" is a bad idea. Not only is the notion that the world's problems come down to a matter of raw numbers wrong on the merits, but it's terrible framing and terrible politics. It attracts unsavory folks whose opposition to immigration has as much to do with xenophobia and racism as with ecological concern. It comes off as misanthropic, Malthusian, and insensitive to the plight of the poverty-stricken, activating all the worst stereotypes about environmentalism. Population activists are, says Werbach, "fighting a losing battle against history, language, and commonly understood mythologies that attract the wrong types of allies."

The solution? Reframe the movement as "a women's empowerment and sustainable-development movement."

If we reject the population-control frame in favor of the goals of women's emancipation and sustainable development, we may achieve a healthier and more stable population, without inviting the unwelcome embrace of ugly exclusionists.

That's exactly right.

Fight over synthetic ingredients splits organics community

What do xanthan gum, an artificial thickener, ammonium bicarbonate, a synthetic leavening agent, and ethylene, a chemical that accelerates the ripening of fruit, have in common? These and other synthetic additives commonly lurk behind that “USDA Organic” stamp of approval you see on the organic products increasingly crowding the shelves of big-box stores and boutique […]

Toujours Gas

France contending with bovine-source greenhouse gases France’s 20 million cows account for 6.5 percent of the country’s greenhouse-gas emissions. Researcher Benoit Leguet of the Climate Mission of Caisse des Depots, a state-owned French bank, contends that bovine belches produce about 28.6 million tons of globe-warming gases annually, primarily methane and nitrous oxide. Cow poop (or […]

What Pricey Glory

Carbon sequestration a pricey but feasible way to curb global warming Carbon sequestration — capturing and storing carbon dioxide emissions — isn’t a cheap or easy solution to global warming, but it’s doable. A new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change finds that with major investments, up to 40 percent of CO2 emissions […]

Arctic You Glad We Didn’t Say Banana

Arctic ice cap is melting fast, say scientists The Arctic ice cap has shriveled to its smallest size in a century; at this rate of shrinkage, the summer cap may vanish by 2060. Researchers who compiled the data say the process appears to have become self-sustaining: As ice melts, there’s more water, which absorbs more […]

Strife After Death

“Death of Environmentalism” authors offer follow-up Among a series of stories on environmentalism’s fortunes in the latest issue of The American Prospect is “Death Warmed Over” by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, a follow-up to their notorious “Death of Environmentalism” essay of last year. In their latest treatise, argues Grist‘s David Roberts, they condescend to […]