Latest Articles

Holy Frijoles!

Burgeoning soybean market transforming South American environment The global market for soybeans is exploding, largely driven by massive demand from China, and the resulting modern-day agricultural gold rush is transforming the landscape in South America. Farmers are chopping down rainforests, colonizing savannahs, damming rivers, and digging canals, all in an effort to get more land […]

Hagelian Dialectic

Kyoto opponent Hagel may ally with Blair for new climate agreement U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair’s efforts to cajole the U.S. into doing something about climate change — and shake off his rep as a Bush “poodle” — may have found an ally in Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.). Hagel met with Blair this week in […]

Leapfrogging

"Leapfrogging" is the notion of developing countries adopting modern, sustainable technologies, without following the path the developed world took through the intervening (and highly polluting) steps of industrialization. It's a meme that's catching on, and WorldChanging has a kind of leapfrogging primer up to familiarize you with the basics.

WTF?

Jeff McIntire-Strasburg reads this post by Dave Pollard and calls it "inspiring!"  I had a somewhat different reaction, more along the lines of, "Stalinesque lunacy!"

Umbra on odd fruit

Dear Umbra, Yesterday in the grocery store I saw a “golden kiwi.” Is there really such a thing? It was over twice the size of a regular kiwi and the familiar fuzz was not there. It was almost as smooth as a nectarine. When I inquired of the produce representative, she told me that it […]

Dude, Where’s the After Party?

U.N. negotiators begin talking about post-Kyoto actions Two months before the Kyoto Protocol even takes effect, representatives meeting in Buenos Aires for the annual U.N. conference on climate change are already discussing plans for reducing emissions post-Kyoto. So far, says Eliot Diringer of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, participants have agreed that any […]

Ay-Yay-Yayurvedic

Imported herbal remedies found to contain lead and other nasties Ayurvedic herbal supplements imported from South Asia may contain lead, mercury, and arsenic, sometimes at levels high enough to cause serious health problems, including vomiting, convulsions, and seizures. A new report in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that 20 percent of the […]

A Post Whipping

Newmont Mining Corp. accused of environmental misdeeds across the globe The Denver Post has put together an extensive two-part investigative series on Denver-based precious-metal giant Newmont Mining Corp., detailing questionable environmental practices at a number of the corporation’s mining operations worldwide. Among the findings: Newmont violated water-quality standards in Nevada, operated illegally without required environmental […]

Counter-Inuitive

Eskimos cast global warming as human-rights issue The Inuit people of the Arctic are trying to shift the debate on global warming, casting it as a human-rights issue rather than a purely environmental one. They plan to seek a ruling from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that the U.S., by spewing greenhouse gases into […]

Our daily oil spills

Most of the points I mentioned on Northwest Environment Watch's blog about the recent devastating oil spill in southern Puget Sound also apply to the Unalaska spill now unfolding in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Here's a recap of the most relevant points, with an addition.

1. Like the death toll in the Middle East and the melting of the Northwest's glaciers, these spills show us the true cost of oil -- which is far higher even than the prices in this year's world oil market.

2. The spilled petroleum is ship fuel, not a product being transported on a tanker. Parts of the shipping industry are holdovers from the bad old days of dirty fuel, dirty engines, and careless practices. The "bunker fuel" they burn is literally the dregs of oil refining: the polluting crud that's left over after gasoline, diesel, and other products are "cracked" out of crude. In recent years, shipping has finally begun to get the attention it deserves from the press and environmental regulators, both to its air pollution and to the sewage dumped by cruise ships. But it's still in the days cars were in before catalytic converters.