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The Soviet Union’s collapse led to a revolution in Cuba’s farming system

Speaking of the latest issue of Harper's, it also contains a great piece by frequent Grist contributor Bill McKibben called "The Cuba Diet." (It's reprinted in full on this blog.) Dang, the dude can write.

The piece begins as a sort of anthropological meander through Cuba's agricultural system. Turns out, when the Soviet Union fell, Cuba's heavily-subsidized, mechanized, chemical-soaked farm system collapsed. It was a huge and sudden economic change probably without precedent in the modern world. Since Castro wouldn't/couldn't open up trade, the whole country basically had to shift to a small-scale, localized, de facto organic farming system, almost overnight. Now they've got their crop load more or less where it was, with almost no use of petroleum-heavy pesticides or huge farm machinery. Pretty interesting.

McKibben pivots very subtly from this story to a meditation on our current agricultural system. It's worth reading the whole thing. Here's a tasty bit:

Harper’s article on Appalachian mountaintop-removal mining causes outbreak of despair, depression

Its contents are not available online (as far as I can tell), but the recent issue of Harper's Magazine contains a piece that makes it worth buying on the newsstand. It's called "Death of a Mountain," by Erik Reece. The subtitle is "radical strip mining and the leveling of Appalachia," and apparently Reece is at work on a book on the subject. (For a quick primer on mountaintop-removal mining, go here.)

It is -- and I say this as someone who reads a lot of depressing stuff -- one of the most disheartening things I've ever come across. It is truly monstrous what's going on in Appalachia, difficult even to comprehend. I've been faintly cognizant of the issue, but Reece's piece really paints the picture. Some of the oldest and most diverse ecosystems in the country are simply being blown up, irrevocably destroyed. The poor surrounding communities suffer from polluted water and air, denuded landscapes, and showers of debris (last year a boulder dislodged by a mining explosion crushed and killed a three-year-old boy in his bed). The process has been aided and abetted by the Bush administration

Worse, the mines provide almost no jobs -- a crew of nine people can blow the top off a mountain and dig out the coal below -- and most of the coal is sold outside the state. Virtually none of the enormous profits benefit local communities. There's a reason those communities are, and remain, some of the poorest in the country. The presence of coal is an almost unmitigated curse for the region. But by and large, poor Appalachians view environmentalists as their enemies, people who want to steal their jobs and economic livelihoods, who care more about forest critters than about them.

The injustices involved -- both natural and socioeconomic -- are tragic on a scale that boggles understanding.

Compare the amount of attention this gets to the amount lavished on the Arctic Refuge. Why is that? At risk of offending some delicate sensibilities, I've come to think that the refuge plays the same role for the left that Terri Schiavo played for the right: It's almost an abstraction, distant and uncomplicated, a blank slate where we can project our own virtue. In contrast, Appalachia has a deep and complicated history and is populated by working class, culturally conservative whites -- the kind of people that upper-middle-class lefties refer to behind closed doors as "white trash."

But make no mistake, there's a huge crime taking place, the effects of which will be felt by our grandchildren, and theirs. Ecosystems are being wiped out, and vulnerable communities along with them. We need to force this stuff into the mainstream media. I can't imagine any human being with a heart or a brain remaining unaffected.

(If you'd like to do something to help, head over to Mountain Justice Summer and sign up. Thanks to them for the picture above.)

Two Paths Diverged in the Desert …

Battle between coal and renewables plays out in Nevada A drama in the small Nevada town of Gerlach is a harbinger of things to come for communities around the U.S. On one side is Sempra Energy, which wants to build a coal-fired power plant that would generate enough energy for 1.5 million households and pipe […]

Oil and Peace Don’t Mix

Oil strategists plan for geopolitical drama as demand increases It’s a small world after all — with an even smaller oil supply. That’s what U.S. energy experts, oil companies, and national-security planners are concluding as they try to project America’s and the world’s oil demand versus declining supplies in coming years. Military planners in particular, […]

World War CO2

Feds, states, and interest groups face off in court over carbon dioxide An epic environmental case got a day in court on Friday, as a coalition of 12 states, several cities, and 13 nonprofit organizations squared off against the federal government, 11 states, and 19 industry groups before a panel of three judges in a […]

Johnson Pulls Out

EPA scraps controversial pesticide study Just two days after Senate Democrats announced they would block Stephen Johnson’s confirmation as U.S. EPA administrator until the contentious Children’s Health Environmental Exposure Research Study was cancelled, Johnson bowed to pressure, reversed the agency’s previous wait-and-see position, and pulled the plug. The creepily acronymed CHEERS would have given a […]

You Deserve a Breykjavik

Grist dangles prize, nakedly pursues more readers Other folks will claim to love you, but will they send you to a remote northern island? We didn’t think so. That’s the kind of love we’ve got in our hearts here at Grist. For a limited time, if you get two friends to sign up for our […]

Oklahoma Senator kicks off series of speeches

Chris Mooney, indefatigable chronicler of science politicization (say that five times fast!), draws our attention to the kick-off of Oklahoma Sen. and unrepentant flat-earther James Inhofe's promised series of speeches debunking mainstream climate science. It is, predictably enough, chockablock with misrepresentations, cherry-picked facts and phrases, and outright falsehoods. Head to Mooney's for the details, and if you have the stomach for it, read the speech itself.

Someday, our children will find this in the history books and marvel at how truly bizarre our political culture was in this transitional phase at the end of the oil economy.

Arni Finnsson of the Iceland Nature Conservation Association answers questions

Arni Finnsson. With what environmental organization are you affiliated? Iceland Nature Conservation Association. We are the biggest member-based NGO in Iceland with 1,300 members. What does your organization do? What, in a perfect world, would constitute “mission accomplished”? The powerful glacial river in the Karahnjukar area. Photo: Johann Isberg. INCA was established in 1997 and […]