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My favorite side effects of the ivory-bill discovery

Best local creation to emerge from the recent discovery of the ivory-billed woodpecker in Arkansas: a haircut that pays tribute. For $25, you too can sport a moussed mohawk painted red, white, and black.

Second best: the ivory-billed cheeseburger. Um ... gross.

And finally, best factoid to surface in the media hype: the former name of bird town Brinkley, Ak., is Lick Skillet.

Mag looking for eco-gals to take it all off

Well, for one issue. Kinda.

From a Playboy press release dated today:

Playboy magazine is searching for the sexiest environmentalists in America, women willing to take it all off for their favorite cause. The magazine is planning a pictorial for an upcoming issue featuring women involved in environmental causes or with groups dedicated to saving the planet or protecting wildlife. In addition to a modeling fee for each of the participants, Playboy will make a donation to the favorite causes of the women chosen to appear in the pictorial.

But will they be as hot as Leona Johansson?

Much as I'd love to help Grist get more exposure (ahem), I won't be entering myself. But the rest of you "enthusiastic and uninhibited environmentalists," as Playboy puts it, have at it. Call 312.373.2717 for details.

(And you thought gastroporn was racy.)

David Cash, Massachusetts air-policy director, answers questions

David Cash. What work do you do? How does it relate to the environment? I’m the director of air policy for the state of Massachusetts in the Executive Office of Environmental Affairs. EOEA is an umbrella agency that oversees and coordinates the activities of numerous other environment-related agencies such as the Department of Environmental Protection […]

Vegetarianism gets hotttt.

The hottest thang in veggie circles these days? Gastroporn.

It comes (ahem) courtesy of Britain's venerable Vegetarian Society, as part of its "Can you keep it up for a week?" campaign. A must-watch.

(Check out The Independent for the backstory.)

Mega-mall in upstate New York could give birth to a clean-energy awakening

Could a mall mogul’s dream project give a big boost to renewables? Image: DestiNY USA. As the Senate deliberates over the Bush-backed energy bill and enviros send out another round of distress signals over America’s obdurate fossil-fuel dependency, who would believe that the next big thing in renewable energy is being driven by a tenacious […]

Readers accuse Umbra of missing the mark, and more

  Re: Epistled Off Dear Editor: I work for a consumer-product company (apparel, not cleaning products), and I know the impact of emails and letters from customers. I think Umbra missed the boat by not suggesting that the consumer send letters by mail, as well as by email. Emails are really easy to miss in […]

A Bum Wrap

Study settles cloth vs. disposable diaper question The debate over the relative environmental merits of cloth vs. disposable diapers, like the one over paper vs. plastic bags, arouses passions entirely out of proportion to its significance in the grand scheme of things. But still, the U.K. Environment Agency decided to settle the question once and […]

Revenge of the Filth

Space is getting awfully dirty Litter encircles our planet, in the form of thousands — or even millions — of bits of space debris: abandoned satellites and rockets, chunks blown apart by collisions, radioactive fuel, and that one blue sock you lost. “It’s sort of a classic environmental problem, not unlike air pollution or water […]

Coast Riposte

House blocks attempt to lift ban on coastal drilling; more to come An attempt to weaken the U.S. moratorium on offshore oil and gas drilling — established by Congress in 1982 and renewed every year since — was blocked yesterday in the House by a 262-157 vote. However, drilling opponents view it as just the […]

‘Eco-terrorism’ is the feds’ new all-purpose excuse to increase domestic surveillance.

Now, I don't really have a conspiratorial temperament. I tend to think that stupidity is responsible for far more of what ails the world than evil -- which is why I'm more optimistic than many of my eco-brethren.

However, this seems worth worrying about. After all, as the old saying goes, it's not paranoia if they're really watching you.

Trying to drum up this sort of frenzy serves dual, overlapping purposes. One, it reignites some of the flagging terrorist hysteria that does so much to prop up the right wing, greasing the skids for a further expansion of domestic police powers. Two, it works to discredit the green movement as a whole, greasing the skids for further deregulation of corporate power.

At the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee show trial yesterday, they trotted an FBI flunky in to proclaim earnestly that the ELF and the ALF constitute the single greatest domestic terrorist threat the nation faces today. (* See correction below)

The first thing to note, of course, is that both these organizations explicitly renounce violence against people and have been responsible for not a single death. Not one.

The second thing to note is that they are not "organizations" as such. They have no leaders, no central coordinating councils or locations. They are loosely affiliated cells, united by a cause. The feds might be able to bust this or that cell, but there's no sense in which they could "defeat" these organizations.

This gives the feds license for an unending, ever-escalating war -- and really, what do the feds love more? They get greater surveillance latitude and any number of extra-judicial powers. After all, it's terrorism!

But of course, it's not really those organizations Inhofe is after anyway, is it?

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., the panel's chairman, said he hoped to examine more closely how the groups might be getting assistance in fund raising and communications from tax-exempt organizations' "mainstream activists" not directly blamed for the violence.

"Just like al-Qaida or any other terrorist organization, ELF and ALF cannot accomplish their goals without money, membership and the media," Inhofe said.

Yes, let's "examine more closely" the mainstream activists that give us such trouble. I can practically hear the Dr. Evil laugh here.

Make no mistake, this is what they want: