Currents

A much-anticipated and long-overdue study by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) released last week concludes that large wind energy projects can move forward as long as developers take precautions against interfering with military radar installations. A lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club in June accused DoD of instituting a near-moratorium on the construction of new wind power facilities by failing to complete the study, which Congress passed last year as part of the National Defense Authorization Act. Without the study, at least a dozen wind farm projects were stalled, encompassing more than 600 individual windmills and capable of producing 1,000 megawatts of power.

Frances Moore Lappé says her new book Democracy’s Edge (Jossey-Bass, 2006) "is about hope—not sappy, wishful thinking but hope grounded in a grasp of the root causes of spreading misery. I propose that we are in the midst of an extraordinary historical moment—one in which anti-democratic forces appear to be in ascendance while at the same time, invisible to most of us, a powerful current is stirring that may well take us to democracy’s next historical stage. I cast aside the gloomy view that Americans are hopelessly divided, left vs. right and secular vs. religious, and uncover widespread shared sentiment and common democratic innovation across these supposed barriers."

Forest protection advocates are cheering a ruling last week by Federal Judge Elizabeth Laporte to throw out the Bush administration’s roadless area development rule of 2005.

This was my second AltWheels festival, and my how the event has grown! Last year it was a relatively modest display of clean vehicles, from hydrogen fuel cells to battery electrics, on the grounds of the Larz Anderson Auto Museum in Brookline, Massachusetts. This year it was on steroids, occupying the vast concrete plaza outside Boston City Hall September 22 and 23.

Against the recommendations of a long list of science and health organizations—not to mention two of its own scientific advisory committees—the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced last week it would leave in place its 1997 standards for annual exposure to particulate pollution (soot generated from coal-fired power plants, industrial facilities and vehicles), while only moderately strengthening its daily exposure soot standard.

Search engine goliath Google Inc. announced last week that it is adding environmental content to its free geographic mapping and satellite photo tool Google Earth. The company has already begun integrating overlays on Google Earth utilizing content and data from the United Nations Environment Program, the National Park Service, Discovery Networks, National Geographic and the Jane Goodall Institute, among others.

Climate change is becoming a major concern among leading American financial institutions and corporations, and they are starting to develop strategic responses, according to a report issued this week by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), a coalition of global investors with more than $31.5 trillion in assets.

MTV launches A Major New Campaign to Organize Campuses to Fight Climate Change…

For the first time in history, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to take up a case on global warming. This latest version of the lawsuit (<I>Massachusetts v. EPA</I>) was filed by a coalition of states, cities and environmental groups in an effort to force the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set mandatory limits for greenhouse gases emitted from automobiles.