Articles by Kit Stolz

It’s in the movies

I enjoy the DeWittian sting of James Wolcott's writing as much as anyone, but even a good critic can go wrong sometimes. He underestimates Little Miss Sunshine, which resonates far beyond its modest means -- even on an environmental scale.

Here's why:

The nuclear bomb that almost blew up

Sometimes old news deserves attention: Ari Berman, of the lively Notion blog at The Nation, posts that we recently nearly saw an accidental nuclear detonation at the one plant for decommission and retirement of nuclear weapons in this country, run by Pantex in Amarillo, Tex.

He writes:

In March 2005, a nuclear warhead almost exploded in Texas. The near miss accident occurred in Amarillo, when workers at the Pantex nuclear weapons plant bungled the dismantling of a W-56 warhead, a weapon 100 times stronger than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II.

This emerged after a less-provocative-but-still-troubling story from Ralph Vartabedian at the L.A. Times, who revealed that the U.S. Department of Energy fined Pantex $110,000 for violations revealed after the incident, and has launched an investigation.

Sounds reasonable. But at the same time, the DOE declared that it had "confidence that Pantex will continue its outstanding work, while keeping stringent safety and security policies in place."

So why investigate?

The year, alphabetically

When it comes to global warming and the environment, everything seemed to change in 2006 -- at least in terms of public awareness. Here's an A-to-Z accounting of just some of those changes:

A is for An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's scientific but surprisingly human documentary on the threat of climate change, which was expected to take in at most $6-7 million at the box office but went on to gross over $45 million, the biggest documentary of the year and the third-largest of all time.

B is for biofuels, which went from becoming a hippies-only fringe product to a highlight of the State of the Union address. To date, Washington has been focused mostly on ethanol, but other fuels requiring much less fossil energy to produce are coming to the fore and proving surprisingly popular. Or as the bumper sticker says: "Biodiesel: No war required."

C is for California, which set a new standard for pollution control by passing a bipartisan package of bills designed to cut tailpipe greenhouse-gas emissions by 30 percent by 2016 (and many other measures). For this, Iain Murray, a fossil fuel-funded think tank writer for the far-right National Review, declared: "It is hard to escape the conclusion ... that what California has done is to decide to join the Third World."

Cutting-edge nature writer discusses … nature

Jenny Price is a nature writer, but unlike most of the species, she insists on writing about nature as it actually exists in our lives. If that means writing about plastic pink flamingos and concrete-bound rivers, well, that's the nature we see in the 21st century.

Her recently published dissertation from Yale is the remarkably light and witty Flight Maps. On the site L.A. Observed, she has a popular guide to half-secret access routes to the beaches of Malibu. For The Believer, she recently wrote a spectacular essay on the Los Angeles River, and last month published a tribute to the late, great plastic flamingo for The New York Times ($) that concluded: "Rest in peace, my pink plastic friend. It was fun while it lasted."

She is a Guggenheim fellow whose writing takes chances, and can open minds. For Grist, she graciously consented to an interview via email, which went back and forth for nearly two weeks. Take a look:

Kit Stolz: Last month the Union Products factory that has been making the plastic pink flamingo for nearly fifty years shut down, and the inventor Don Featherstone said he thought his creation would soon become extinct. Can we use that word for something that was never alive in the first place?

Jenny Price: Well, I think it's more accurate to say it's stopped reproducing.