What's Happening: USDA Organic Called Out, and more

TOP STORY

Purity of Federal 'Organic' Label Is Questioned

"The government's turnaround, from prohibition to permission, came after a USDA program manager was lobbied by the formula makers and overruled her staff. That decision and others by a handful of USDA employees, along with an advisory board's approval of a growing list of non-organic ingredients, have helped numerous companies win a coveted green-and-white "USDA Organic" seal on an array of products. 

Grated organic cheese, for example, contains wood starch to prevent clumping. Organic beer can be made from non-organic hops. Organic mock duck contains a synthetic ingredient that gives it an authentic, stringy texture.

Relaxation of the federal standards, and an explosion of consumer demand, have helped push the organics market into a $23 billion-a-year business, the fastest growing segment of the food industry." [Washington Post]

RECOMMENDED READING

Green Power Takes Root in the Chinese ...read full post

Comments (0)  |  July 3, 2009  |  By Ben Jervey

No Room For Tigers, and People

On a trip to Ranthambore National Park in northern India, I was able to speak with Belinda Wright, longtime conservationist and champion of tigers in India.

One thing she said really stuck with me - that there "doesn't seem to be much space in modern India for tigers." By that, she meant that humans looking to develop more land are encroaching on the Bengal tiger's natural habitat, ironically endangering their own fresh water sources.

Hear more about the crucial situation of the Bengal tiger in India in this documentary short from explore.org.

Comments (0)  |  July 2, 2009  |  By Charles Annenberg Weingarten

NYC Looks Forward With the Help of a New Generation of Urban Planners

 "You are important in the world of stewardship, whether it's stewarding a park or stewardship in a neighborhood." Vin Cipolla, President of the Municipal Arts Society of New York (MAS), spoke with encouragement when he addressed high school students at a recent award ceremony for the CITI Youth Program. With more than two million people in New York City under the age of 20, it's never too early to have a voice in shaping an urban vision for the city's future.

CITI Youth stands for Community Information Technology Initiative, a MAS project that takes high school students into the heart of urban planning, with maps as their guides. After learning how digital maps can be used as an important tool in community decision-making, students are placed as Map Technicians in paid internships with their community boards. Teenagers from the Bronx to the Lower East Side are finding that not only can they attend meetings and speak out about neighborhood ...read full post

Comments (0)  |  July 2, 2009  |  By Kris French

What's Happening: Farms in Subdivisions, Navy vs. the Florida Coast, and more

RECOMMENDED READING

ExxonMobil Continuing To Fund Climate Sceptic Groups

"The world's largest oil company is continuing to fund lobby groups that question the reality of global warming, despite a public pledge to cut support for such climate change denial, a new analysis shows.  Company records show that ExxonMobil handed over hundreds of thousands of pounds to such lobby groups in 2008."  [The Guardian]

Organic Farms as Subdivision Amenities

"From Vermont to central California, developers are creating subdivisions around organic farms to attract buyers...Increasingly, subdivisions, usually master-planned developments at which buyers buy home sites or raw land, have been treating farms as an amenity. “There are currently at least 200 projects that include agriculture as a key community component,” said Ed McMahon, a senior fellow with the Urban Land Institute."  [New York Times]

Is a Coal Production Boom Imminent?

"Though the price of ...read full post

Comments (0)  |  July 2, 2009  |  By Ben Jervey

A Goofy Way to Design Our Cities

Once upon a time, streets once belonged to everyone. They were a “commons” where people walked, biked, boarded streetcars, stopped for a conversations.  It’s where kids played and dogs napped. 

But that all changed during the second half of the 20th Century.  Streets became the exclusive property of automobiles, and everybody else had better get out of the way, or else!

An old Disney cartoon, starring Goofy, shows how this Tragedy of the Street came to pass:

Comments (0)  |  July 1, 2009  |  By Jay Walljasper

Power On!

Comments (0)  |  July 1, 2009  |  By Jaime Bedrin

What's Happening: Solar West, Poisoned Patriots, and more

RECOMMENDED READING

U.S. Works To Speed Solar Energy Development In The West

"The Obama administration on Monday announced that it would put solar energy development in the West on a fast track, with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar signing an order that sets aside more than 1,000 square miles of public land for two years of study and environmental reviews.  Although the clean-energy initiative identifies some 676,000 acres of federal land for study, more than half -- 351,000 acres in the Mojave Desert -- are in California." [Los Angeles Times]

EPA to Let California Set Own Auto Emissions Limits

"The Environmental Protection Agency yesterday granted California's request to set its own limits on greenhouse gases from autos -- a long-sought victory with limited impact now that the federal government has pledged to impose national limits. That decision grants California a waiver to impose a limit on the emissions from new cars, when no such rules ...read full post

Comments (0)  |  July 1, 2009  |  By Ben Jervey

Pushing Produce into Urban Food Deserts

There is a new fruit stand on the corner near my home. I think it’s terrific, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t belong there. The cart appeared on the day the New York Times announced a new citywide effort to encourage street vendors to bring fresh vegetables and fruit to low-income neighborhoods that have been called “food deserts” because of the predominance of fast-food outlets offering high-fat, high-sugar fare and the dearth of healthful culinary fare. I fortunately live in a neighborhood with several grocery stores offering an abundance of fresh, healthy whole foods, all within a few blocks of my home. There are fast-food outlets within walking distance, too, but they are farther away than the healthy food places.

The city, according to reports, has approved 1,000 new mobile food carts for neighborhoods in the five boroughs that have long been isolated from traditional supermarkets, grocery stores and farmers’ markets offering ...read full post

Comments (0)  |  July 1, 2009  |  By Wendy Gordon

"The End of the Line" for Fish?

Rupert Murray's new documentary "The End of the Line," based on the book of the same name by British journalist Charles Clover, presents a timely and shocking (but maybe not too surprising) look at the devastating overfishing of our oceans that has occurred over the last century. Through interviews with leading ocean scientists, local fishermen and concerned journalists from Asia to Africa to Alaska, the film explains how the majority of the world's edible fish will go extinct by 2048 if we do not change the way we fish.

Evidently, the world's fish stocks have been steadily declining for the last 20 years, even as more and more boats are sent out each year. Nowhere is this more evident than in the North Atlantic, where cod once filled the waters off Newfoundland. Today, a moratorium placed on cod fishermen there in the early 90s has not yet been lifted-overfishing was so rampant that the fish were brought to the brink of extinction, and ...read full post

Comments (0)  |  June 30, 2009  |  By Ted Lamm

What's Happening: Shrinking Gulf Coast, Illegally Harvesting Rain, and more

RECOMMENDED READING

Rising Sea Level To Submerge Louisiana Coastline By 2100

"A vast swath of the coastal lands around New Orleans will be underwater by the dawn of the next century because the rate of sediment deposit in the Mississippi delta can not keep up with rising sea levels, according to a study published today...For New Orleans, and other low-lying areas of Louisiana whose vulnerability was exposed by hurricane Katrina, the findings could bring some hard choices about how to defend the coast against the future sea level rises that will be produced by climate change."  [The Guardian]

Related: 

Even the mighty Mississippi's sediment won't be enough to save our vanishing coast  [Nola.com] 

The Legalities of Rainwater Harvesting

"Just as people use the sun to generate power for their homes, many homeowners capture rainfall for a variety of uses — from washing dishes to watering gardens during dry spells. But rainwater harvesting, as it ...read full post

Comments (0)  |  June 30, 2009  |  By Ben Jervey