Gristmill

USDA recommends mercury as part of a healthy diet.

Seems there's a bit of a snafu in that fancy new food pyramid the USDA recently unveiled.

[Swordfish and king mackerel] are among [the fish] most contaminated with mercury, a pollutant released from coal-fired power plants -- which the Bush administration has failed to crack down on. According to E.P.A. research, some 600,000 U.S. newborns, each year, are at risk for learning disorders and behavioral problems because of their exposure to the neurotoxin in the womb.

The USDA's new Web site ignores all these mercury warnings, recommending the very fish most likely to contain high levels of mercury. "Not only does the new food pyramid shirk away from telling the public which unhealthy foods to avoid," said David Wallinga, director of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy's Food and Health Program in Minneapolis, "it actually tells people to eat fish that other federal agencies warn are too contaminated with mercury to eat."

Oops!

Invisible satire

Judging from the letters we got about it, nobody -- and I mean nobody -- got this joke.

So, if your satire is so subtle that nobody gets it, does that make it really, really good, or really, really bad? I suspect the latter ...

President cozies up to Saudi dictator, begging for lower oil prices.

Our overreliance on oil makes us do things that are economically stifling, ecologically destructive, and geopolitically self-defeating.

And then sometimes it just makes us look pathetic.

I refer, of course, to Bush's man date with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, during which he begged the repressive dictator to lower oil prices, something the repressive dictator couldn't do even if he wanted, which he doesn't particularly. All this took place, of course, on the holy ground of Bush's increasingly brush-free ranch in Crawford, where Bush and his repressive dictator buddy strolled, hand in hand, appearing for all the world like star-crossed lovers.

Matt Welch is grossed out, and so is Justin Logan, and so am I.

Via Matt Yglesias, who adds this:

[The price of oil] may go up or down a bit thanks to this or that gambit (Bush's Saudi ploy, the Democrats' hackneyed Strategic Petroleum Reserve proposal) but fundamentally it's something we need to start dealing with, rather than whining about. If cars were more fuel efficient, then high oil prices wouldn't be so bad, and over time prices might start to fall. If we stopped relying on oil for electricity generation, that, too, would improve the situation.

You could say that.

China’s emerging energy policy

A pseudonymous guest author on Winds of Change looks at China's quest for oil, its tentative relationship with Russia, and the potential for friction between those powers and the United States.

Meanwhile, Jim, a retired engineer who writes on energy topics, has a good post about China's growing realization that it needs to broaden its approach beyond searching for imported oil.

Optimism

Joel Makower makes the case for optimism:

From my perch -- overlooking the landscape of business and how it is responding to the environmental challenges we face -- there is much good news to report. The world of commerce, still seen by many as the Earth's Evil Empire, is moving, slowly but ever so surely, toward a new environmental consciousness. Despite -- or perhaps in spite of -- the near abdication of energy and environmental leadership on the part of the White House, Congress, and most regulators -- the private sector increasingly is rising to the occasion.

Today's news that JP Morgan Chase bank will be issuing a new set of environmental policies seems to lend weight to Joel's sentiment.

Mainstream environmental groups don't seem to be getting anywhere in D.C. these days. Perhaps they should devote some of their billions to an aggressive cultural campaign, targeting the private sector and pop culture. That's where the individual battles are being won, and despite the paranoia of some progressives, if culture moves, eventually the political class will move with it.

Whether you recycle plastic really doesn’t matter.

I've been mulling over this "environmental confessions" business. I get that it's fun and light-hearted and I shouldn't take it too seriously. Horrible me, sometimes I don't recycle the kenaf-paper my peasant-collective-raised free-range hand-fed weekly-massaged organic beef comes in! Ha ha, I feel better.

But if there's one thing my two readers expect, it's dry, ponderous posts on subjects of soul-crushing weight, so who am I to deny them?

My thoughts on the matter are captured by this excellent comment from reader greenmark. Read the whole thing, but here's the main bit:

Board election means club won’t take a stance on immigration limits

The neutralizers carried the day in the Sierra Club's contentious board election, which wrapped up today.

 

Sierra Club members turned out in historic numbers this year ... to reject a ballot initiative that would have forced the group to support restrictions on immigration. Over fifteen percent of the Club's membership returned 122,308 ballots -- the second highest in the Club's recent history -- and defeated the anti-immigration measure by more than a 5 to 1 margin.

In addition to calling for club policy to remain neutral on immigration, members also elected five establishment-backed board members, while board candidates who advocated immigration restrictions, backed by Sierrans for U.S. Population Stabilization, were soundly squashed.

So immigration's off the table, until next year's election ...

Sprol

Check out this blog, Sprol, which gathers satellite images and descriptions of "the worst places on Earth" -- i.e., the places most ravaged by human activity. It's fascinating.

(Via Dave Pollard)

Dress down for the earth

Well here's an energy-saving program I can get behind!