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Stats on the biggest kid on the Asian block.

Our fascination with China around these parts is well-known. However, we're not so fascinated that we want to read long, number-filled reports about it. I mean, it's Friday fer chrissake.

So, we let Joel Makower do that work for us. He waded through WorldWatch's just-released "Vital Signs 2," a compendium of info on worldwide environmental trends, and found lots of tasty (and, okay, some terrifying) tidbits on the world's fastest growing big economy. Read his summary and be enlightened.

Here's a taste, from WW:

Weekend reading

The Senate Energy Committee released some of the titles of their draft energy legislation today. So what are you waiting for? Start reading!

Are greens jumping the gun by bashing GE’s new ecomagination?

Over on TomPaine.com today, Frank O'Donnell of Clean Air Watch takes on GE's "ecomagination." Frank makes some compelling arguments -- similar to comments made on gristmill earlier in the week -- as to why this is just a bunch of greenwashing.

As strange as it makes me feel to ask this question, I'll do it. Aren't we jumping the gun here, gang? Shouldn't we want a polluting corporation to have an "Extreme Makeover"? Or are we saying "Mission Impossible" to any attempts to change because of past environmental sins?

Call me naive (and you probably will in the comments), but it seems like we have to actually give GE a chance to fulfill their "ecomagination." So what do you think? Extreme makeover or mission impossible?

(I'll admit they are not off to a good start with this appropriation rider shenanigans.)

Better Latte Than Never

Eco-friendly coffee could save El Salvador’s dwindling wildlife Environmental groups are working to help El Salvador’s coffee farmers achieve green certification so that they can survive in a volatile worldwide market — and the wildlife that finds refuge on their farms can survive as well. The country’s native ecosystems have been almost entirely wiped out, […]

Rivers Phoenix

Many small waterways rising from ashes, but U.S. rivers still ailing With press attention focused on major river cleanups — when it’s focused on rivers at all — some 37,000 small river and stream restoration projects in the U.S. have gone largely unnoticed, despite their environmental importance. The local, state, and federal restorations, costing an […]

Teach an Old Dog a New Mix

Brit researcher says clean energy has more juice than previously thought It’s a familiar argument: Renewable-energy technologies are not “mature,” and the power they provide is intermittent, so nuclear power is our only reliable, large-scale alternative to greenhouse-gas spewing oil and coal. But Graham Sinden of Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute begs to differ. With […]

A Sorted Affair

Japanese municipalities take recycling to a whole new level Yokohama, Japan, a city of 3.5 million, recently sent its citizens a 27-page instruction book on how to sort trash for recycling into 10 different categories, detailing how to dispose of more than 500 separate items, from used lipstick tubes to old socks. The city aims […]

Learn to identify certain common fallacies

In response to this post, both Jeff and Ana have good points.

Jeff's is that a parallel bit of slipperiness often pops up in arguments about nuclear energy. On the one hand, we hear that renewables aren't "mature" and that only nuclear can get us safely through the global warming crisis. On the other, we hear that nuclear can do this (safely) only with a decade and billions of dollars in R&D costs for new technologies. But if we have a decade and billions of dollars, why not funnel them into clean energy?

Ana's is about the related bogus argument that, to meet our energy needs, solar would have to carpet the entire state of Oklahoma! Or wind turbines would have to fill the state of North Dakota! Plus they are intermittent, so they would leave gaps in our power! Etc. But of course no one claims that any one of these alternatives can fill the gap. The point is that we should move to a distributed mix of sources: solar, wind, wave/tidal, biomass, and let's not forget, conservation.

On Ana's point, check out this story, which discusses research done at Oxford showing that such a mix could provide a much larger percentage of the U.K.'s energy needs than had been previously thought. Jamais looks at the research in more detail.

Arguments against clean energy often indulge in these fallacies casually. It's time greens started challenging them.

Massive new Washington habitat conservation plan is bad news.

Today is the final day for the public to weigh in on a giant new habitat conservation plan--called the Forests and Fish Plan--that will govern how Washington's timber industry behaves and how well it safeguards habitat for endangered salmon. Here's the punchline: the plan will essentially grant the timber industry 50 years of legal immunity to the federal Endangered Species Act.

This is not a smart move.

Habitat conservation plans, ostensibly designed to protect endangered species, often authorize destructive activity that harms the very creatures they are supposed to protect. The Forests and Fish Plan will supposedly require timber companies to repair roads that erode into salmon streams, as well as leave streamside timber uncut. But the plan also leaves out a number of important measures.

Here is just a sampling of criticism that appeared in a recent Seattle Post-Intelligencer article:

An ecological guide thereto.

Via Nick, a simple and useful ecological guide to paper. Don't be the last kid on your block to learn the difference between PCF and ECF!