Latest Articles

Right-wingers exploit tsunami by accusing enviros of exploiting tsunami

Was global warming behind the recent catastrophic tsunami in the Indian Ocean? Of course not. Nor did it cause the Iraqi insurgency, the national debt, or Ashley Simpson’s lip-synching episode. A devastated village in India. Photo: USAID. Global warming is an atmospheric phenomenon caused by a buildup of airborne greenhouse gases, and though it’s expected […]

Readers talk back on porn, radicalism, Christmas trees, and more

    Dear Editor: Thank you, thank you, thank you! I never miss my Daily Grist, but most of what I read depresses the hell out of me. Your story on Fuck for Forest is the first thing I’ve seen in a long time that actually gives me hope for the future. I was charmed […]

Free Winona! (From enviro prejudice!)

It's not like the woman hasn't paid her dues. Winona Ryder did 480 hours of community service to atone for that little shoplifting mishap (the $7,600 worth of Saks duds she lifted in 2001 -- oopsy!), and still the actress endures discrimination -- now from enviros, of all people.

Ryder says she wanted to sign a petition calling on Bush to get behind the Kyoto Protocol but was turned away because of her criminal record. No word on which green group did the spurning -- last we heard, enviros weren't rebuffing any would-be signers from their go-nowhere petitions, let alone celebs, even of the has-been variety.  

Come make your voice heard on the virtual pages of Gristmill, Winona. We won't turn you away!

You go Conoco

ConocoPhillips has decided to withdraw from Arctic Power, the main lobbying group pushing for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. We were actually going to write this up in the Daily Grist today, but our subscription to the Wall Street Journal, where it was reported, has mysteriously stopped working. (Anybody got a login they'd care to share? Not that I would ever encourage you to do something illegal, like send the login and password to droberts at grist dot org.)

Luckily, the Green Life Blog has a summary of the story, with some trenchant thoughts on its significance.

Of course, this good news is tempered by the fact that Sen. Pete Dominici (R), recently re-elected chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is hell-bent on getting into ANWR. "We are going to make a push to develop our vast oil resources in the Arctic Refuge in a way that leaves the environment pristine while stabilizing oil prices and enhancing our energy independence," he said, which is fine unless you consider he's being dishonest about the "vast" part, the "pristine" part, the "stabilize" part, and the "independence" part. Sadly, the "push" part is true.

Green coffee for the office

A short, concise, and helpful answer to the question of how to find the most eco-friendly coffee solution for your office, from Treehugger.

Consistency Blows

Wind power set to explode in 2005; bats set to haunt Grist Several readers pointed out — rather snarkily, we might add — the seeming dissonance between Umbra’s latest column praising wind farms and the news, reported the following day, that some such farms have been chopping up quite a few bats. But hey, like […]

Baby Got Adirondack

Pataki protects big swath of New York’s Adirondack Mountains New York Gov. George Pataki (R) yesterday announced a deal whereby some 104,000 acres of land in the northeastern Adirondacks will be protected from development and opened up to public use — the third-largest land conservation deal in state history. The parcels of land lie on […]

Harmer’s Market

Energy execs vacation with Bush admin officials — innocently, of course High-level Bush administration environmental officials and members of Congress are canoodling with energy execs at a posh resort in Arizona this week, discussing policy over golf, wine, and canapes. They are, of course, shocked — shocked! — at the implication that anything untoward, like, […]

An interview with Kevin Knobloch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists

The Bush administration is gearing up to push for second-term priorities — including an energy bill, power-plant emissions legislation, and amendments to the Endangered Species Act — under a cloud of accusations that it has manipulated federal scientific research on these and other issues to support its agenda. These arguments have been voiced most prominently […]

True preparedness

Most of the Northwest's coast is equipped with early warning systems for tsunamis. (See, for example, this article from the Newport (Oregon) News-Times.) But that doesn't make us immune from giant earthquakes and the resulting tsunamis. The 1964 Alaska earthquake was actually bigger on the Richter scale than the recent Indonesian temblor, and it set off a giant wave that swept a few Oregonians and Washingtonians to their deaths. A similar-scale quake and wave with more-local origins likely occurred around 1700, according to a good article in the Coos Bay (Oregon) World.

Flooding rivers pose a similar threat. They're typically not as sudden as tsunamis, but far more northwesterners are exposed to them. And unlike tsunamis, river flooding is an annual occurrence, with massive floods coming once or twice in a lifetime. (As climate changes, the severity of flooding may be accelerating.)

And though we have more systems in place, preparedness in the form of disaster kits, escape routes, and early-warning sirens is still a pale imitation of true preparedness for high waters.