War and Environment Day … yesterday

Gristmill contributor Geoff Dabelko, who's having a little trouble with the posting widget, sent this to me, and I'm passing it along to you.  Enjoy:

A couple years back the U.N. General Assembly declared today [ed.: yesterday], November 6, to be International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict.  

In resolution 56/4 [PDF], the U.N. called attention to the often long-lasting damage done to the natural environment done in times of conflict.

Having a special day for an issue is great, but what is the U.N. really doing about environmental security links on the ground?

Enviro group launches campaign against Victoria’s Secret catalogs

An enviro group called ForestEthics has trained its sights on the Victoria's Secret catalog, urging the company to make the shift to more eco-friendly paper and avoid fiber that comes from endangered forests. The real target is Victoria's parent company, Limited Brands Inc. Limited Brands procures coated paper from an International Paper Co. plant near Jasper National Park in Alberta, Canada, which ForestEthics charges has damaged surrounding forests and wildlife. "We're exposing Victoria's Dirty Secret, which is that the million catalogs that it mails a day are destroying some of the world's last remaining old-growth forests and threatening endangered species," said ForestEthics' Tzeporah Berman. Limited Brands denies everything and claims to be environmentally sensitive, as does International Paper. Speaking of exposing, a Grist editor has volunteered to do further investigation into this vital story. He will report his results in a week. Maybe two weeks.

Victoria’s Dirty Secret

Enviro group launches campaign against Victoria’s Secret catalogs An enviro group called ForestEthics has trained its sights on the Victoria’s...

All the mus(ing) that’s fit to print

In its Sunday endorsement of Kerry and scathing critique of Bush, The New York Times spends more time on the environment than the candidates did in their three debates. (To whom does such an endorsement speak -- do any undecideds read The Times?) Amidst the many many paragraphs that lay out an argument against a second Bush administration, the patient greenie finds this one:

If Mr. Bush had wanted to make a mark on an issue on which Republicans and Democrats have long made common cause, he could have picked the environment. Christie Whitman, the former New Jersey governor chosen to run the Environmental Protection Agency, came from that bipartisan tradition. Yet she left after three years of futile struggle against the ideologues and industry lobbyists Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney had installed in every other important environmental post. The result has been a systematic weakening of regulatory safeguards across the entire spectrum of environmental issues, from clean air to wilderness protection.

The editorial spends more time condemning Bush's record than building a case for a Kerry presidency. Yet, the editorial board found space among the relatively few sentences allocated to praising Kerry to call attention to this environmental matter:

Environmental leaders and thinkers on what comes next

What do we do now? That’s the question one early riser asked Grist in a letter to the editor right...

Mongo and Found uncover the hidden pleasures of reduce-reuse-recycle

Flo and Channing, a pair of occasionally employed, twentysomething hipsters in lower Manhattan, live well. At least, they eat well. They favor sushi and vegetarian pizza and soy milk and artisan bread, and they also like to indulge in custard pastries, chocolate-covered strawberries, chocolate croissants, and Krispy Kreme doughnuts. They're especially fond of waffles. And they eat it all for free. All they have to do is spend a few hours each night lurking outside restaurants, rescuing their favorite menu items from the trash. "Sometimes, people see what we're doing and say, eee-yew, how gross," says Flo. "Other times they offer to buy us a meal. We just say, no thanks, we have plenty of food here."

Bush’s pick to head the USDA is a big ethanol booster

At a White House ceremony last week announcing the nomination of Nebraska Gov. Mike Johanns (R) to succeed Ann Veneman...

Lead Astray

Lead contamination in municipal water systems systematically underreported If you live in the U.S., the water you drink may contain...

Little Red Tibet

Tibet suffers melting glaciers and nuclear dumpage As if living under the heel of a repressive communist neighbor wasn’t bad...