Latest Articles

Do the Riot Thing

Chemical factory pollution sparks riot in eastern China Thousands of farmers rioted in a village in eastern China over the weekend, taking a stand against encroachment of the country’s fast-growing industries onto their land, and the pollution and health problems that result. Villagers had set up roadblocks to interfere with deliveries to and from the […]

Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Missing Waste

Like absentminded professors, nuclear plants misplace their waste A comprehensive new report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office reveals pervasive problems in the nuclear industry, abetted by lax federal regulation. You know all that waste nuclear plants produce, the stuff that stays radioactive for a kajillion years? Yeah, well, seems they keep losing track of […]

Check out Business Ethics’ list

Via TriplePundit, check out Business Ethics Magazine's new list of the "100 Best Corporate Citizens for 2005."

N.Y. Times columnist says climate change makes nuclear energy a must

Inspired, no doubt, by recent lively discussion in Ask Umbra and Gristmill on nuclear power (necessary evil or pure evil?), New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has decided to join the fray with his simplistically titled (and conceived) "Nukes Are Green" column. He's of the James Lovelock school of thought, arguing that with climate change bearing down on us and renewables not yet up to full speed, nuclear is our only hope.

Buzz Kill

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 […]