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January, 2008
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Green Buzz: Too Much Meat; Environmental Rollbacks; SOTU
SOTU: The Show Finally Closes. For eight years the State of the Union address has put me in exactly the mood Bialystock and Bloom expected their theatrical horrorshow to engender. The last few years, I've skipped actually watching it and just read the next day's news coverage, sparing myself the fits of apoplexy that an hour-long stretch of 43's orations would inevitably bring on. (Others cope similarly, or by seeking solace in the bottle.)
The verdict on the 2008 edition speech from the ...
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Kenya Dispatch
Kim Larsen, having recently spent much time in Kenya while researching and writing "Bad Blood," her report on Africa's malaria crisis, was in a unique position to gather some news of the civil unrest that's broken out after elections late last December. Here she shares her findings. -- editor
As I write this, former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan is in the midst of his first day of efforts to broker some sort of agreement between the rivals in Kenya’s disputed December 27th elections....
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Green Buzz: Week in Review
A subjective round-up of the week's top news stories, blog posts, and other online phenomena relating to the environment:
Nuke the Whales. Major fireworks attended the latest round of legal wrangling between the Bush administration and wildlife advocates over the U.S. Navy's use of intensely loud active sonar -- deadly to marine mammals -- during practice maneuvers. On January 4, after protracted study, U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper issued some pragmatic rules protecting whales and...
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Green Buzz: Plug-In Wheels, EPA Woes, Fake Fish, Inhofe "Pwned"
The last year or two have seen plug-in hybrid cars garner much attention as a promising technology for cutting automobile carbon emissions. NRDC's analysts like 'em just fine, and consider PHEVs to be an important part of ratcheting down use of carbon-intense fuels over the next few decades? The caveat has been that the outlook for plug-ins to become a dominant technology has been 20+ years -- not fast enough for a world that needs to cut carbon pollution immediately.
But over at Climate Pro...
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Noah's Descendants
In a recent column, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times discussed how the planet is entering the “Noah phase.” In a first for humanity, we will be witness to the disappearance of species due to climate change, habitat loss, new patterns of disease, and other factors. Friedman’s column brought to mind Rick Bass’s recent essay in OnEarth, in which he ruminated on a similar thought: As he introduces his daughters to the natural wonders in their corner of the planet—the “salmon surg... -
Open Your Eyes, Bill
Does anyone know where the New York Times reporter William Yardley lives? If it’s in New York City, I question his observational skills.
Yesterday he penned an article for the paper of record (which was then picked up on NY1 news that morning, which is where I first heard of this story, while I was groggily brushing my teeth) on new measures to improve bicycle safety in Portland, Oregon.
I perked up rather quickly when I heard this “news” because we ran almost the very same story a year... -
Blog Buzz: CES, Carbon Offsets, Compact Fluorescents
The annual gadgetapalooza known as the Consumer Electronics Show has been happening in Las Vegas this week, occasioning as usual reams of mainstream-media stories and blog posts. The enormous conference claims that it has gone green (Green Wombat approves, with some reservations), and the din of companies trumpeting green products and environmentally friendly business practices has never been louder. Earth2Tech and InfoWorld have good round-ups of the major themes on display, and The Guardian...
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Green Juice and Green Anxiety
I’m one of those strange people who drink green juice. For the past few months I’ve been drinking it for breakfast: spinach, parsley, celery, apples, and lemon on a typical day. Usually I buy it; a guy named Melvin makes it at the LifeThyme Natural Market on Sixth Avenue, which I pass on my walk to work. His juice comes out better than mine. I never get the proportions right. For example, this morning I made my own and I put too much lemon in, tried to correct it by adding extra pear, but...
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The Blue Guy Makes Me Think
I saw the blue guy on Monday in the West Village. He was on the Today show earlier that morning and appeared to be doing a little sightseeing when I spotted him crossing the road at Christopher Street and Greenwich Avenue. I was running home to pick up something I'd forgotten, and I tried not to stare while I wondered if he was blue because he'd been drinking colloidal silver. (I hadn't seen the Today show that morning, so when I got back to work I Googled "blue guy" and this story popped up.... -
Have a Happy New Year?
Nearly every imaginable environmental solution lies right over there, just within reach. But the implementation—ah, that’s another matter. That’s because so many solutions lie at the intersection of science and good intentions.
This is obvious to everyone, right? Newspapers and magazines report almost daily on ingenious ideas that could/would/should have a profound impact on a wide array of vexing problems facing the planet. What is lacking (usually) are not answers but political will,...
Behold, The Lord God Bird