Ukrainian attorney Olya Melen stands up for the Danube Delta

Olya Melen doesn’t think small. In her first-ever court case, the young Ukrainian attorney challenged a massive canal project proposed...

Media Shower: A weekly roundup

Wow, I guess I underestimated my ability to influence coverage here at Grist. If you haven't noticed, environmental media has been getting a lot of play around here lately. So, this week I'm simply going to provide a roundup of green-media topics appearing on Grist (and elsewhere):

Kicking Toyota out of the country

Let's say you're threatened by hybrids. Let's say you're particularly threatened by hybrids coming into the U.S. from another country, and proving mighty popular. What might be a creative way to fix the problem?

Oh, how about suing for patent infringement? "If the International Trade Commission agrees with Solomon, [Toyota] could be banned from importing the systems and the Prius and Highlander hybrid models that they power." Stay tuned.

Poverty & the Environment

Grist launches a seven-week special series In much of popular and political culture, the environmental movement is dismissed as the...

Spring brings a new crop of climate bills in Congress

A small crop of new climate bills is sprouting up in Congress, and none too soon. Grow, little seedling, grow....

Organic arugula, Lake Tahoe, and poverty

In kicking off its seven week series, the talented and witty team at Grist pondered the paradox of U.S. environmentalism: "In much of popular and political culture, the movement is dismissed as the pet cause of white, well-off Americans -- people who can afford to buy organic arugula, vacation in Lake Tahoe, and worry about the fate of the Pacific pocket mouse."

This perception, and how the environmental community responds to it, will determine whether it becomes a movement for everyone, or just for those with a Nalgene in every cupboard and a Gortex in every closet.

Many Americans, environmentalists included, see poverty as a necessary evil, a "by-product of civilization" that will always be with us. In other words, its existence is natural. This analysis of poverty may seem pragmatic, but it morally justifies the continuation of a social system that provides comfort and extravagance for a few, while leaving others to scrape, toil, and struggle to meet their basic needs.

The environmental movement has a sophisticated analysis of environmental degradation, eco-systems, and the political forces influencing the planet. Does the environmental movement have an analysis of poverty? If so, what is it? How do you explain the existence of poverty in the most affluent nation in the world? As an anti-poverty activist (and environmentalist) I'm interested in knowing what Grist readers think.

Incentives should reward fuel efficiency, not hybrids per se

Hybrid cars are good for us, right? So policymakers should provide incentives -- things like tax breaks, access to HOV lanes, and free parking for hybrid drivers.

Well, not so fast, says a great article in today's Washington Post. There's growing reason to believe that those incentives for hybrids will make things worse -- actually generating more gasoline use, not less. That's because many of the incentives confuse the means for the end.

Reducing fuel use (and attendant GHG emissions, air pollution, etc.) is the goal; getting drivers into hybrids is simply one instrument in pursuit of that goal.

But one of the more popular incentives to boost fuel efficiency has been to encourage hybrid ownership by offering hybrid drivers access to HOV lanes, even when the drivers are alone. And as the article rightly points out:

An incentive -- whether it's access to a carpool lane or cut-rate financing -- still aims to put another car on the road, and that undermines efforts to encourage carpooling.

Giving over HOV lanes to hybrids is probably counterproductive. In Virginia, where allowing hybrids in HOV lanes was pioneered, officials are worried that solo drivers in hybrids are clogging the high-capacity lanes and thereby discouraging carpools (because carpooling is no longer any faster than driving alone). In fact, 25 percent of all Virginia HOV lane users are hybrid drivers. And despite their hype, hybrids are not so fuel efficient that they can offset the fuel efficiency of an ordinary car with two or three riders. So the fuel efficiency of Virginia hybrids may become illusory as the vehicle fleet actually consumes more gas because drivers give up carpooling.

Same goes for other popular incentives: tax breaks and free or reduced-price parking. These incentives encourage people to drive by making it cheaper.

And if some incentives are wrong-headed, it's because they seem to miss the reason why hybrids are good in the first place. If we want to reduce fuel use, it's hard to see why hybrids deserve special tax breaks not afforded to buyers of other fuel-efficient, gas-powered cars (some of which are actually more efficient than certain hybrids). What's so special about hybrids?

A dispatch from China’s Jiuzhaigou National Nature Reserve

Eric Wagner is a graduate student in biology at the University of Washington. He reports from China, where a group...

Three new books put the spotlight on our warming world

Here at Grist, we tend to be good at detecting extremely subtle patterns. Like, say, the way certain politicians keep...