Fight over synthetic ingredients splits organics community

What do xanthan gum, an artificial thickener, ammonium bicarbonate, a synthetic leavening agent, and ethylene, a chemical that accelerates the...

The best thing greens can do is convince the public that eco-friendly lifestyles are healthier

Cardiovascular disease is the No. 1 cause of death in the U.S. and most European countries. In the latest issue of Newsweek there's a story about it called "Designing Heart-Healthy Communities." Here's how it starts:

Forecasting heart disease is becoming an ever-finer art, as researchers learn more about the risk factors. But here's a predictor you may not have heard about: street address. In a study published last year, scientists at the RAND Corp. scored 38 metropolitan areas on the "sprawl index" -- basically a measure of their dependence on cars. When the researchers tallied disease rates for the same areas, an interesting pattern emerged. Other risk factors aside, people in densely populated places graced with sidewalks and shops had the lowest rates of diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and stroke. ... Without even trying, the folks in those more-compact communities were apparently exercising enough to ward off chronic illness. As the RAND team deduced, "suburban design may be an important new avenue for health promotion."

To their credit , Newsweek teases out the more general point:

Pollsters aren’t asking the right questions about energy issues

There's more to this article than the headline, but the headline alone says quite a bit: "Poll: 8 in 10 want drivers to drop SUVs." That's another tentative -- though possibly shallow -- sign that high gas prices are turning Americans against their gas guzzlers. Of course, since SUVs, trucks, and minivans have commanded roughly half of the new-vehicle market in recent years, one wonders if this means that 3 in 10 people want other drivers to drop their low-mileage vehicles.

Other poll responses are equally telling. Seven out of 10 respondents want the government to fight rising gasoline bills by establishing price controls. Of course, holding down prices makes us consume more gas than we otherwise would. Plus, in a world of limited petroleum supplies, price controls could lead to all sorts of other problems -- shortages, rationing, etc. (As The Washington Post's Robert Samuelson reminds us, Cheap Gas Is a Bad Habit.)

Seven out of 10 also support new government spending on transit. But almost six in 10 now think it's more important to explore for new sources of energy than to protect the environment; and five in 10 favor opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas development, up from just 42 percent earlier in the year.

Jacques Leslie’s Deep Water sheds light on dam dramas

What does hell look like to an environmentalist? In the classic Encounters With the Archdruid, writer John McPhee imagines this...

‘Death’ authors getting a little too cocky

The American Prospect has a big package of stories in the latest issue called "The Environment: Death and Rebirth." In it, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus -- authors of the infamous "Death of Environmentalism" paper -- have a follow-up called "Death Warmed Over." It's meant as a response to critics of the original and something of a look ahead.

While it, like the original, contains nuggets of insight, the bulk is taken up with strawman bashing, bad analogies, and an entirely unwarranted degree of smug self-satisfaction.

Ceres on Katrina, insurance, and weather-related risk

Ceres, the "national network of investment funds, environmental organizations and other public interest groups working to advance environmental stewardship on the part of businesses," has just released a report on the enormous challenge to the insurance industry represented by escalating weather-related losses. You can read the executive summary here and the full report here (PDF).

An excerpt:

Yet, despite these rising insurance risks, climate change has received little attention to date from U.S. insurers, regulators and governments. Among the problem areas highlighted in the report:

• Only a small fraction of U.S. insurance companies have seriously examined the business implications of climate change and fewer still work closely with climate scientists or present their analyses publicly.
• Insurers and regulators currently do not have a comprehensive capacity to assess the cumulative weather-related risks from both catastrophic events and the growing number of small-scale events.
• The U.S. government's full financial exposure from insurance programs (flood, multi-crop insurance etc), disaster relief and other forms of weather-related assistance has never been assessed.

The report recommends the following actions, among others:

Insurers need to: collect more complete data on weather-related losses; incorporate climate modeling into their risk analyses; analyze the implications of climate change on their business and investments and share the results with shareholders; and encourage policy action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Regulators need to: include climate risks in company solvency and consumer-impact analysis; review the "standards of insurability" to identify new challenges, including climate-related hazards in the US and abroad; encourage insurers to collect more comprehensive data on losses; elevate standards for catastrophe modeling; and assess exposure of insurer investments and adequacy of capital and surplus to extreme weather events.

Government needs to: foster and participate in public-private partnership for insurance risk spreading; comprehensively assess the government's overall financial exposure to weather disasters; reduce vulnerability to disaster losses through improved early warning systems, land use planning and other measures; and take policy action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

CAFE standards reduce fuel use, but increase the total amount of miles driven

A point of clarification about CAFE standards, apropos of Dave's post below.

According to this report (careful, it's a pdf) from the Victoria Transport Policy Institute, increasing CAFE standards would, in fact, save fuel (contrary to the claims of this this moronic article). The problem is that more fuel-efficient cars are also cheaper to drive. And that would mean that CAFE standards, even as they save fuel, would also slightly increase the number of miles people drive.

Now, driving obviously has all sorts of "externalities" -- costs that are borne by someone other than the driver. Some of the externalities are related to fuel consumption and the resultant air emissions; CAFE standards do help reduce those problems. But extra driving also means more car crashes, more congestion, more noise pollution, more risks for walkers and bikers, higher rates of obesity, lower rates of physical activity, more expenses for road building and maintenance, and so on.

So in simple terms, all the bad stuff that comes along with extra driving would overwhelm the good stuff that comes from consuming less fuel. Yes, we'd import a bit less oil, but we'd get in more crashes, build more roads, sprawl a little more, etc. And the human and environmental costs of all those other things (according to the VTPI report, at least) outweigh the good that's done by raising CAFE standards.

I don't think that's reason not to have CAFE standards. But it is reason to be very careful about what other policies you have in place that would help soften those unintended consequences.

Wild moss collection like ‘strip mining forests’

As you have probably already guessed, this is a photo of a moss collection. There is an article in the most recent Conservation in Practice about moss cultivation that caught my attention. Wait ... read on:

Blaming enviros for New Orleans is a clever government strategy

Do Senate Republicans really think they can shift the blame for the flooding and deaths in New Orleans to environmentalists? Maybe that's not the question we need to ask ourselves.

This smear effort could become a significant distraction for eco-advocates -- at a time when a focus on implementing good wetlands policies in the Gulf is crucial, and as Republicans try to weaken environmental protections and implement bad energy policies as part of rebuilding efforts.

Groups ranging from Louisiana's Save Our Wetlands to American Rivers to the Sierra Club have issued angry rebuttals to the charges that environmental lawsuits helped destroy New Orleans. Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) have also issued statements castigating the effort.