Latest Articles

Because it’s there

It’s difficult to work up outrage these days, I know. But still. Republicans have long had a >hard on for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It’s never made any sense — the amount of oil we could get is a tiny fraction of what we need, and it’s 10 years out in the […]

Biodegradable plastics

An intriguing story on Japan's increasing development and production of biodegradable plastics.

In 2000, production of such plastics stood at slightly more than 2,000 tons.

"It will increase to 50,000 tons this year and to 200,000 tons in 2010," the official [of the Biodegradable Plastics Society] said. ...  "Biodegradable plastics will account for about 10 percent of the market in around 2020."

Cool.

Umbra on trains vs. cars

Dear Umbra, My girlfriend recently made a trip by train (about 600 kilometers, I’d guess), and it made me wonder just how much more ecological it is to travel by train instead of by car. What’s your take on this? MichaelOttawa, Ontario, Canada Dearest Canadian Michael, The train, it is better. The car, it is […]

Poop is not funny

OK, maybe a little. Hot off the, er, presses: a company in Australia is seeking donations of kangaroo dung to make recycled paper. Inspired by African and Asian operations that make sheets from elephant excrement, Joanna Gair hopes to make "Roo Poo Paper" a household name. The "pooey" product has proven useful as a conservation fundraiser in some places and is, of course, a hit with the kids. "It's taken my breath away just how popular this [idea] is," Gair says. Which is not a funny quote at all.

Folks in Milford, Nebraska, might want to consider the same plan, since they just spent four months battling a massive, burning pile of manure at a feedlot. The 100-foot-long heap, estimated to weigh 2,000 tons, began smoldering due to organic action at its center (here's to the power of composting!). After the state Department of Environmental Quality cited clean-air violations, concerned parties spent several weeks pulling the pile apart, and finally quelled the fire. What a relief that is.

Pombo eggs on mercury debate with controversial report

Pombo says: Eat up! House Resources Committee Chair Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) — longtime bete noire of the environmental community — cooked up what appears to be some fishy science in a report released last week titled “Mercury in Perspective: Fact and Fiction About the Debate Over Mercury” [PDF]. The report — written not by scientists […]

Score one for the WaPo

Congrats to the Washington Post, winner of the 2005 Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting for their series on lead in D.C. water pipes. Details, and the other winners, below the fold.

We heart China, honest

Last week, Daily Grist reported -- somewhat tongue in cheek -- that China had surpassed the U.S. as the world's largest overall consumer. It's all part of our ongoing obsession with China's boggling growth, which is, from the environmentalist's point of view, probably the single most significant socioeconomic trend in the world right now.

We've gotten several letters since then yelling at us for being "anti-China." You see, China has four times as many people as the U.S., so on a per capita basis, Americans consume much, much more and produce much, much more waste.

Yes, yes, Americans are the evilest, forever and always. Bring me my hairshirt! Can we have our green credentials back now?

But still. The fact that China recently passed us, and has four times as many people, means that it's going to get way bigger. Huge. Fast. If it develops along the same lines as the U.S., using the same technologies and fuel sources, we are all screwed. The earth cannot handle another U.S.-style consumer, four times the size of the original.

The answer is not to try to stop China from developing -- as if such a thing were remotely in the realm of possibility -- or to demonize it. The answer is to do everything we can to try to make China a showcase for every sustainable development trick in the book. The Chinese want prosperity, just as we do, so let's help them leapfrog, get there without sucking up the rest of the world's oil and accelerating climate change. Given its closed political system, there's a limit to what Western greens can do, but at the very least we should be paying attention and doing what we can. There's evidence that China's government gets this, anyway.

Obviously, this should be done in conjunction with -- not instead of -- working to make Western industry and lifestyles more sustainable as well.

Marshing Our Mellow

Legendary Iraqi marshes slowly on the mend Despite certain, er, unfortunate events elsewhere in the country, one part of Iraq, subject to some of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein’s worst crimes, is experiencing a glimmer of hope. For years after the 1991 Gulf War, much of Hussein’s industrial machinery was turned toward a massive dam-building project […]

Global Warming — It’s Infectious

Environmental change linked to spread of infectious diseases If the catastrophic flooding, drought, and weather-related calamities associated with global warming don’t kill you, exotic infectious diseases might step up to do the job, a new report released by the U.N. suggests. It found that changes to the environment — such as deforestation, urban growth, mining, […]

Exhausted

Old diesel engines kill more than 20,000 Americans a year Particulate pollution generated by old diesel engines is killing more people per year than drunk driving, said a report released yesterday. Using data and methodologies from the U.S. EPA, the Clean Air Task Force and a coalition of public health groups found that more than […]