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Grist Magazine
Posted By Gillian Auld On 10th March 2006 @ 17:16 In EcoGraphic Design | Comments Disabled
This week in Grist Magazine:
by Bill McKibben. Dear Friends, God, what a summer. Federal scientists have concluded that we've just come through the warmest six months, the warmest year, and the warmest decade in human history. Nineteen nations have set new all-time temperature records; the mercury in Pakistan reached 129 degrees, the hottest temperature ever seen in Asia. And there's nothing abstract about those numbers, not with Moscow choking on smoke from its epic heat wave and fires, not with Pakistan half washed away f … [more]
by Umbra Fisk. Send your question to Umbra! Q. Dear Umbra, Lately, I've been learning about all the dangerous toxic chemicals in our cosmetics. One of which is Sodium Laureth Sulphate, which is found in all the shampoos that I have. As there appears to be a hole in the system, exposing us to toxic chemicals on a daily basis, how can we find the safest and most natural cosmetics that really are natural and organic? Also are the same loopholes present with food and pharmaceutical products such as medici … [more]
by Christopher Mims. It's over: Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has conceded the primary race to her opponent, Joe Miller. Murkowski and three other Republicans will be leaving the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which means new leadership and four open seats for the group tasked with dealing with just about everything readers of The Climate Post care about. Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says he might have two Republicans on board for a lame-duck bill that would g … [more]
by Joseph Romm. Poor Carly Fiorina. To make conservative ideologues happy, she has to abandon science and her previous positions on the key issues of global warming and clean energy. But to win election statewide, she has to appeal to the majority of California voters, who understand that clean energy is the key to the state's long-term economic and job growth—and that unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gases will devastate California more than most states . And so in her first debate with cli … [more]
by Agence France-Presse. WASHINGTON—British oil giant BP revealed on Friday that it has so far spent $8 billion to battle the Gulf of Mexico disaster. At the same time, its crews worked to retrieve key evidence about the spill from the seabed. Robotic submarines recorded the delicate operation as engineers sought to raise a failed blowout preventer from the sunken rig to the surface and hand it over to the Justice Department. The U.S. government is conducting what could be a criminal investigation int … [more]
by Leslie Hatfield. Before you head over to Trader Joe's to stock up on cheap snacks for your Labor Day weekend festivities, stop and consider shopping somewhere else. Labor Day was enacted not as a general holiday to rest in honor of laborers, but in response to the tragic deaths of striking workers . And good old cheap Joe—which just agreed to stop selling eggs from Jack DeCoster's vile operations —is one of the remaining holdouts in this decade's most high-profile, life-or-d … [more]
by David Roberts. Brad Plumer has a great post on why humanity seems to be doing relatively well even though the environment is falling apart. The same subject's been on my mind since I read a piece by Foreign Policy editor Charles Kenny a few days ago called " Best. Decade. Ever. " His argument is pretty simple: More people have more money, better health, more mobility, more food, and more security than ever before in human history. That chart on the right is from the Human Development In … [more]
by April McGreger. If you're like me, summer is chaos: traveling, packing and unpacking, and structureless days. Fall usually brings much-needed order—if I can spend the time to get organized and to regroup. For me, cooler temperatures also mean a return to cooking. For me, Labor Day is the signal to get the kitchen ready for the season. My goals have been the same for years—I just try to hone in on them more every year. Like Grist's resident Urbivore Jennifer Prediger , I want to ea … [more]
by Todd Woody. A company controlled by the billionaire Koch brothers, who have bankrolled numerous right-wing causes, has donated $1 million to the campaign to pass Proposition 23, the California ballot initiative that would suspend the state's global-warming law. The contribution was made Thursday and came from Flint Hills Resources , a Kansas petrochemical company that is a subsidiary of Koch Industries. The Koch brothers were the subject of a recent profile in The New Yorker . The Koch donation cam … [more]
by Jonathan Hiskes. You can bet an artist is grappling with questions of place and home and belonging when she belts out a line like, "Sometimes I wonder if the world's so small / that we can never get away from the sprawl … Dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains / And there's no end in sight." That's Arcade Fire 's Régine Chassagne singing on the tail end of the new album The Suburbs , which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard charts last month. … [more]
by Todd Woody. The California Legislature started out the week in the green by passing the nation's first energy storage bill . But legislators quickly ran into the red Wednesday when they failed to approve legislation to impose a statewide ban on plastic bags, or to codify Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's (R) executive order that utilities obtain a third of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. But don't go crying in your organic beer yet. On Thursday, the California Public Utilit … [more]
by Randy Rieland. If we hadn't spent the summer watching crude gush into the Gulf, no one outside the industry would have noticed or cared much about Thursday's explosion on a Mariner Energy oil platform . No serious injuries, no spreading slick. But everyone did notice, and it reminded us that no matter how much BP and the rest of Big Oil say they've learned from the Deepwater Horizon disaster, offshore drilling remains a high-risk business, even in shallow water. Plus, Tony Hayward had n … [more]
by Joseph Romm. I know that you are shocked, shocked to learn the owner of the offshore oil and gas platform that exploded yesterday in the Gulf of Mexico had two violations just this year from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's Outer Continental Shelf Civil and Criminal Penalties Program. This not terribly surprising story is brought to you by Think Progress : The Vermilion Oil Rig 360, owned by Mariner Energy—which was recently purchased by Apache Corp.—was producing about 58,800 ga … [more]
by Agence France-Presse. NEW ORLEANS—An oil platform explosion Thursday in the Gulf of Mexico forced the crew to dive into the sea and threatened further damage to waters still recovering from the BP disaster. Fire engulfed the offshore platform 100 miles south of the Louisiana coast shortly after 10:00 a.m. EST and massive plumes of gray smoke billowed into the sky as rescuers rushed to fish out the workers. Photographs showed the 13-strong crew linking arms as they bobbed up and down in special flot … [more]
by Ashley Braun. Are farmers markets not fresh enough for you? Is the urban farm down the street too full of dirt? Do you love the experience of walking up and down aisles of artificially lit food which the grocery store can offer but cringe at the miles and minutes it took for your dinner to reach you? Then Agropolis may be for you! It's the soil-free, pesticide-free, and travel-free concept grocery store, urban farm, and restaurant , all rolled into one. Peruse the produce growing up the walls and p … [more]
by Agence France-Presse. OTTAWA—A fuel tanker has run aground in Canada's far north, carrying 2.4 million gallons of diesel fuel that risk spilling into the Arctic waters, the Canadian Coast Guard said Thursday. A Coast Guard spokesman told AFP no leaks from the tanker had yet been detected in the pristine waters. The ship struck a sandbar in the famed Northwest Passage, southwest of the town of Gjoa Haven in Canada's Nunavut territory, on Wednesday. It was carrying fuel to resupply remote … [more]
by Ashley Braun. Oxygen bars are so Japan circa 1997. Huffing canisters of "Fresh Air" is where it's at. At only two Hong Kong dollars a pop (that's one shiny U.S. quarter), Hong Kongers can finally huff and puff and blow their birthday candles out … just "like the rest of the world does." With a deal like that, why would you breathe anything else? Unfortunately for the seven million residents respiring in Hong Kong, they have to breathe some of the dirtiest air in the … [more]
by Michelle Venetucci Harvey. Does growing food organically really matter? Supporters of conventional agriculture say that organic farming is little more than a fad—and that organic produce lightens consumers’ wallets for no tangible benefits. And unfortunately, since agro-ecosystems are so complex, scientists have had a hard time cutting through the haze of claims and counter-claims. Until now: " Fruit and Soil Quality of Organic and Conventional Strawberry Agroecosystems ," a study … [more]
by Adam Browning. Today, the California Public Utilities Commission issued two big solar decisions. The first was to approve the San Diego Gas and Electric PV program , which will bring on-line 100 MW of PV over the next few year, in 1-5 MW increments. The utility will build and own 26 MW, and buy a further 74 MW through competitive auctions. This program mirrors similar programs in PG+E and SCE utility territories, for a total of 1.1 GW statewide. Details here , Union Tribune article here . Secondly, the C … [more]
by Sean Casten. In the fall of 2003, I was at a barbeque in Vermont with a friend and former (Clinton-era) DOE official. The northeast blackout that August was still in the news, and I asked him whether he anticipated that it would lead to any policy reforms. His response was that during his tenure in D.C., the biggest challenge to smart energy policy was that with very rare exceptions, energy has never been an electoral issue. Those who seek elected office therefore find themselves personally disadvantaged … [more]
by Agence France-Presse. NEW ORLEANS—A mile-long slick is spreading from an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico after an explosion forced its 13 rig workers into the water, one of whom was injured, the U.S. Coast Guard said. The workers told rescue crews that the slick was about 10 feet wide but hoped that no more oil would leak into the sea, Chief Warrant Officer Barry Lane told AFP. The rig is still ablaze and the blast raises fresh pollution fears as the region struggles to recover from the largest … [more]
by Jonathan Hiskes. Oopsy daisy : An offshore oil platform exploded in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday morning, injuring one worker, the United States Coast Guard said. The platform, which was owned by the Houston-based Mariner Energy, was floating in relatively shallow waters 340 feet deep to the west of where a drilling rig leased by BP blew up and sank this spring, killing 11 people and touching off an environmental calamity. All 13 members of the work crew on board Thursday were accounted for, the Coast … [more]
by Randy Rieland. Ready for your morning bowl of crazy? Five years ago, Congress set aside millions of acres of public land in the Southwest for the development of solar farms. This was primo real estate for solar, considered one of the best spots in the world. So far not one solar panel has been erected. Oh, you want us to build something? This discouraging news comes courtesy of the AP's Jason Dearen , whose investigation shows that the understaffed U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) focused almos … [more]
by Steph Larsen. There's a clan of blood-sucking vampires that calls my farm home. Unlike most, this clan is entirely female, and they like to hunt in the evening after the sun goes down. There aren't any coffins for them to sleep in, though they enjoy hanging out in the shade of leafy vegetables in the garden. I'm talking, of course, about mosquitoes. This summer's substantial rain has led to an exploding population of them, and it's made an otherwise lovely country existence … [more]
by David Roberts. In my depressing-ass post yesterday, I noted that Sen. Lisa Murkowski's (R-Alaska) departure from the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee (ENR) would leave Richard Burr (R-N.C.) as the ranking Republican. Burr, I said, "seems unobjectionable." It has been pointed out by certain interested parties that despair is no excuse for abandoning standards altogether. As it happens, there is plenty about Burr's record to which one might reasonably object. He has vot … [more]
by Ashley Braun. That's what I consider the core message to be of the Monterey Bay Aquarium's cute animated video about climate change's effects on sea creatures. Deviating from the nature mockumentary style , this one instead takes the high tech approach to global warming by going the CGI walrus route. This pretty clearly emphasizes the difference between humans mitigating climate change (e.g., driving less) and marine life adapting to climate change (cue flying walruses). It's prob … [more]
by David Roberts. Y'all know I love The Avett Brothers something fierce. (See Friday Music Blogging here and here .) It's rare that they wander into Grist's purview, so I don't usually get a chance to write about them. However! On Monday, they planned to be passing through Portland and wanted to do a show, so they looked around for a worthwhile cause for which to play a benefit. They heard about Terra Nova Community Farm , a project whereby Terra Nova High School students grow and se … [more]
by Ashley Braun. You may remember the small town of Black Hawk, Colo., for its recent ban on cycling because bikes were getting in the way of all its casino traffic . Well, city officials still don't consider this move a gamble and to date have no plans to roll back the ban. As bike advocates gear up for a court battle over the issue , you might not think this wild west town would be going out of its way to court pro-cycling groups. Oh, the irony, then, when one of the town's top "priority … [more]
by Jonathan Hiskes. Bill McKibben chats with David Lettermen about [1] 350.org , his book Eaarth , and a new tour to bring rooftop solar back to the White House (Jimmy Carter installed panels; Ronald Reagan took them down; and students from Unity College in Maine, where they've been stored, are traveling to Washington to have them put back up). Hard worker, this guy: Related Links: A call for direct action in the climate movement: we need your ideas Stimulus driving clean energy innovation, manufacturing, … [more]
by Grist. dummmy Related Links: Rules of enragement: The filibuster and Senate reform Cities of the Future Cafeteria Confidential: Behind the scenes in school kitchens [more]
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[1] 350.org: http://350.org
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