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Speaking of the alleged death of environmentalism, ONE/Northwest has a few discussions thereof, introduced here, including some righteous umbrage from Tim Greyhavens, Executive Director of Wilburforce Foundation and Aron Thompson, ONE/Northwest board member. ONE'er Jon Stahl also links to this piece in the Tyee, which discusses the stuff from a Canadian perspective.

For various reasons, I find all the responses unsatisfying. A lot of it just amounts to, "No we're not!" and "We must redouble our efforts!" There's talk about a more positive, inclusive vision, but what is it?

It so happens I'm hard at work on an editorial on just that question, so all the questions will soon be answered and the debate will be called off. Ha ha.

Some people get rice and need water; some people get water and need rice

Enviros should pay a lot more attention to stories like this one about the role of grassroots techies in disaster relief in Indonesia. A group of people that met in an online chat room formed the Aceh Media Center, with coordination and funding help from the Indonesian Information Technology Federation, a coalition of nine local business groups. It's an absolutely remarkable tale:

An energy-secure state

There are very few details in the story, but it's intriguing nonetheless: Chhattisgarh, a reasonably undeveloped and biodiverse state in the heart of India, aims to plant some 2.5 million acres of jatropha, a source of bio-fuel, in a bid to become "energy secure."

Chief Minister Raman Singh said the plantations would cover only one million of the state's eight million hectares of wasteland and would provide energy security to the country by saving at least Rs.100 billion ($2.2 billion) on fuel imports every year.

"Besides import savings, jatropha cultivation would give the state Rs.40 billion from the sale of seeds. Reducing hazardous pollution from diesel-pumped vehicles, developing greenery in wasteland areas and providing employment to local population would be the other major advantages," he said.

Hm... using green industry and agriculture to develop and revive rural land while protecting it from old-school, polluting industrial development ... if only there were some other country where that might work ...

Two Degrees of Separation

Report warns of major climate catastrophe in as few as 10 years A task force of leading politicians, academics, and business leaders from around the world has quantified global warming’s so-called “point of no return.” And it’s bloody soon! In as little as 10 years, says a report by the task force, the global average […]

Bill McKibben sends dispatches from a conference on winning the climate-change fight

Tuesday, 25 Jan 2005 MIDDLEBURY, Vt. A crisp, cold, blue-sky New England day, fresh snow on the ground, and everything right with the world. Except that last night, as I was preparing to attend a three-day conference on climate change here in Middlebury, Vt., yet another disturbing report on global warming drifted across the net. […]

Drought, Drought, Let It All Out

Drought is up, and climate change seems partly to blame, report says The proportion of the planet’s land area suffering from drought has more than doubled since the 1970s, to about 30 percent, according to a recent study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Researchers attribute about half of that change to rising temperatures […]

Ay, Chihuahua!

New drilling approved for New Mexico’s Otero Mesa The Bureau of Land Management yesterday made the final decision to open nearly 2 million acres of Chihuahuan desert grassland in southern New Mexico to oil and gas drilling. The Bush administration insists that drilling in the area, known as Otero Mesa, won’t be a “free-for-all,” as […]

Of Motion and Emotion

I seem to have touched a nerve: it seems that more people had an opinion about my posts on the Cascadia Scorecard weblog discussing the Prius and the potential benefits of hybrid SUVs than about anything I'd written before.

My question is: why?

An elevator pitch for environmentalism

Update [2005-3-14 9:31:34 by Dave Roberts]: The Elevator Pitch contest is over! (You can continue suggesting ideas, but they won't be entered in the contest.)

The American Prospect is running a contest: develop an "elevator pitch" for liberalism. An elevator pitch -- familiar to folks desperate to raise money (hi) -- refers to a short, pithy summary of the benefits of one's project. Conservatives, the Prospectors say, have a familiar elevator pitch (strong defense, lower taxes, fewer gay people, etc.), but people are constantly baffled as to what liberalism "stands for." (You can read a few Prospect readers' attempts here.)

"Hm," I thought. "What does environmentalism stand for? Aside from this or that piece of legislation, what is environmentalism's elevator pitch?"

So, with apologies/thanks to the Prospect, I'm ripping off their idea and starting a contest of my own.

Submit an elevator pitch for environmentalism in comments. It must be no more than 30 words. Pitches longer than that will be disqualified. Imagine yourself in an elevator with a skeptical but open-minded Average Citizen. You have seven floors to make your pitch. What does environmentalism offer them? What does it ask of them? What are its core values, its core vision?  Try to limit your comment to a pitch -- if you want to discourse on the larger issue of environmentalism's future, you can do so over on this post.

The winner -- as determined by the Contest Dictator, i.e., me -- will win a highly coveted, fashion-forward, limited-edition, organic-cotton, still-have-a-few-lying-around-the-office, Very First Official Grist T-shirt (VGOFT) (this is on the front; this is on the back).

I'll announce the winner in a couple of weeks. Go to it!

Seabirds suffer as climate change unravels North Sea food web

Guillemots are disappearing … Photo: Dr. Brian Wilson, Centre for Bioscience ImageBank. On the south side of the isle of Shetland, off the coast of Scotland, there are more than 1,200 guillemot nests. Last spring, all of them were empty. No pear-shaped eggs, no downy chicks, no next generation of guillemots. Elsewhere on Shetland, the […]