Articles by Geoff Dabelko

Wangari on a tightrope

The Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai is walking a tightrope on evictions of poor squatters from Kenya's few remaining forests. Over 50,000 have recently been forced out of the woods, often with little explanation and guns at their backs.

Maathai, who won the peace prize for protecting Kenya's forests from the plundering cronies of then-President Moi, now serves as deputy minister of environment in the very government doing the evicting. Read here where she supports the necessity of the expulsions to save what little remains of Kenya's forests, while condemning the way it is being done.

Grist coverage of her winning the Nobel Peace Prize is here.

Another voice from the global South criticizes the tone deafness of Western aid orgs

Forgive me for highlighting a piece that does not explicitly tackle environmental issues. But this Washington Post op-ed on foreign assistance, by former Eritrean finance minister Gebreselassie Yosief Tesfamichael, contains lessons for conservationists, if we choose to hear them.

Sewage in the kitchen?

Well, perhaps just the methane from the sewage, to cook our food.

This vision, swinging dramatically across the olfactory spectrum, is part of sustainability architect William McDonough's plan for seven new Chinese cities. The Chinese government has taken McDonough's book Cradle to Cradle on as policy for what he calls the "Next City." Read more at BBC.

Industry ‘science’ generates confusion in other areas than just climate change.

Climate change is not the only place where interested obfuscation is pervasive these days.

Former energy department official David Michaels writes in the June issue of Scientific American that business groups are pursuing a broad strategy of manufacturing uncertainty around science that might hurt the bottom line. His examples include beryllium, used in nuclear weapons and linked to lung cancer (Michaels was the "chief safety officer for the nuclear weapons complex" as assistant secretary of energy for environment, safety, and health from 1998 to 2001), and the appetite suppressant and decongestant phenylpropanolamine (PPA), linked to hemorrhagic strokes.

But he makes broader indictments about the process of using industry funded "science" to contest inconvenient scientific research.

Industry have tried to manipulate science no matter which political party controls the government, but the efforts have grown more brazen since George W. Bush became president. I believe it is fair to say that never in our history have corporate interests been as successful as they are today in shaping science policies to their desires.

Incidentally, environmentalists come in for criticism as well. Michaels says:

Furthermore, the denial of scientific evidence and the insistence on an impossible certainty are not limited to business interests. For instance, some zealous environmentalists remain adamantly opposed to food irradiation--the use of gamma rays, x-rays or electron beams to kill microbes in meats and produce--even though the benefits of the practice greatly outweigh the risks.