Latest Articles

The Right-Whale Stuff

Emergency steps needed to save right whale from extinction, experts say The North Atlantic right whale could face extinction within the next century, according to marine scientists writing in the journal Science. Only about 350 right whales are alive today, and the researchers estimate that their deaths may be underreported by up to 83 percent […]

On the Gutting-Room Floor

Clean-energy measures dropped as Congress reaches energy-bill compromise Working into the wee hours Tuesday morning, House and Senate negotiators finished crafting a compromise federal energy bill, in the process killing two provisions intended to curb America’s fossil-fuel addiction. A Senate measure that would have required the president to find ways to reduce oil use by […]

A Little Dab’ll Do Ya In

Micro-exposure to common chemicals may cause big health problems Will wonders never cease? The Wall Street Journal, not typically known for its sympathy to green issues, had a blockbuster piece of environmental reporting plastered on page A1 yesterday. In the first part of an ongoing series, it describes new research on low-level exposure to common […]

Inuit fight climate change with human-rights claim against U.S.

Sheila Watt-Cloutier. Photo: ICC. When Sheila Watt-Cloutier was growing up in Kuujjuaq, an Inuit village in far northern Quebec, summer days never got hot enough for shorts and T-shirts. Only the very brave ventured into the frigid local river for a swim. But now, she says, there are many warm days, and “the whole community […]

Energy bill update

Looks like the energy bill is headed for passage. Ezra Klein sums it up:

Save for substantive modernization of our electricity grid, an increase in CAFE standards, an actual stance on global warming, a coherent framework for reducing our oil consumption, a serious investment in natural gas, an actual interest in new technologies for alternative sources, and really anything that'd have any sort of worthwhile impact on our energy situation at all, this bill has is just what we need. Subsidies. Giveaways. Handouts. Protection. Guidelines. Bureaucracy. All sprinkled with liberal amounts of Corporate Love and put on the Senate's desk.

...

This isn't conservatism. And it's only sold as progressivism. In reality, it's modern Republicanism distilled, a perfectly pure mixture of incoherence and corruption publicly aimed at solving a serious problem but privately written to ignore the issue in favor of industry demands.

They might not be so dangerous

Linda Marsa chronicles the work of one Bob Derlet in the LA Times outdoor section this morning. Derlet has acted on the fleeting question of every backpacker who's ever filtered or purified water from a pristine-looking mountain stream: "Is this really necessary?"

In short, Derlet's research (which sounds like a lot of fun) finds that it's not as necessary as people think. Although some disagree with Derlet, and the only way to be 100% sure that you won't get some microscopic friends with your water is to filter or purify it, a surprising number of streams contain drinkably low levels of giardia and cryptosporidium. Knowing where the little buggers are most likely to be found can greatly reduce the chances of contracting the diseases associated with them.

The article is very well written and a good read. I'm a little wary, however, of the suggestion that "good sanitary habits" means burying feces at least 10 feet away from water. I only hope that's a typo and there should be another zero (or two) thrown in there.

Cultural biases precede empirical facts; greens should fashion strategy accordingly.

Since risk and the perception of risk seem to be the topics of the day, let me point you to an interesting and provocative hypothesis on those same subjects.

Brad Plumer refers us to an intriguing paper by social scientists Dan Kahan and Donald Braman of Yale called "Cultural Cognition and Public Policy." The authors make use of the cultural theory of risk to argue that differences in public opinion arise not from incomplete science or inadequate education, but from "cultural cognition":

Terrorism may drive people away from mass transit.

Eight bombings in two weeks and the accidental shooting death of a suspect have everyone talking war on terror again. Not to detract from that conversation, but there's a distinctly "green" concern here -- the bombings are serving as a serious deterrent to mass transit use. There are two separate but related deterrents:

• The fear of being on a bus, subway, or train that is attacked, and
• the inconvenience of added security to get on said bus, subway, or train (like what New Yorkers are now experiencing).

Mass transit is essential to creating walkable neighborhoods with clean, efficient, affordable transportation for their denizens. It won't survive if people that would have otherwise used it no longer will because they are afraid of an attack, or they would rather not have their privacy invaded.

The security measures in New York are ostensibly supposed to deter another attack, but actually only serve to reassure mass transit riders, as many New Yorkers have pointed out. (Here's a question -- if the people who are supposed to be reassured are all pointing out the flaws in the system, is it really reassuring to them?)

Oh crap, there it goes.

A little over three years ago, an enormous section of Antarctica's Larsen Ice Shelf collapsed and splintered into thousands of icebergs. You'd think nothing positive would come out of this (except maybe a little awareness), but you'd be wrong.

Thanks to the collapse, researchers have discovered that an "expansive ecosystem of knee-high mud volcanoes, snowy microbial mats and flourishing clam communities lies beneath the collapsed Larsen Ice Shelf in Antarctica."

This discovery, as reported by AP, was detailed this week in Eos, the weekly newspaper of the American Geophysical Union.

You can read the PDF here.

Sadly:

Now that the ecosystem has been exposed, it is imperiled by fattening deposits of sediment produced through erosion runoff from the advancing glaciers and from dying algae settling to the bottom. The sediment is not only burying the ecosystem, but it is also introducing carbon and other new chemicals into the methane-powered environment ...

Sigh -- yet another reason to prevent climate change.

City cores are, if anything, safer than the ‘burbs.

This article in Sunday's Washington Post, penned by New America Foundation fellow Joel Kotkin, is definitely thought provoking. In the wake of terrorist attacks in London and New York, Kotkin argues that the single most important challenge facing modern cities is providing basic security to their citizens. To wit ...

While modern cities are a long way from extinction, it's only by acknowledging the primacy of security -- and addressing it in the most aggressive manner -- that they will be able to survive and thrive in this new century, in which they already face the challenge of a telecommunications revolution that is undermining their traditional monopoly on information and culture, and draining their populations.

Wiith memories of 9/11 still fresh, perhaps it's natural that people should question whether cities are really safe. Terrorism is, quite obviously, a serious problem; and central cities have proven to be ready targets.

Still, I think that the article's emphasis on terrorism per se reveals an interesting and broader cultural bias about risk. There are certain kinds of risks that our culture fears more than others. Some hazards -- say, the threat of random violence, whether by ordinary criminals or by terrorists -- seem intolerable, and society demands a concerted effort to put a stop to them. Others -- say, traffic accidents -- we generally shrug off, and accept as part of the unavoidable background of modern life.

But sometimes the "unavoidable" risks are far more hazardous, and every bit as avoidable, as the ones on which we focus our attention.