I read your cover story "Is the Green Movement in the Dumps?" (May/ June 2005), and I have some feedback as a lifelong green, educator and policy guy. George Lakoff has it right, but if he has to be paid $350,000 to "re-frame" the issues in plain English, then we are already dead. We are […]
The U.S. auto industry has its own peculiar logic. The thinking goes like this: Big SUVs have sold really well for us in the past. They’re really cheap to make, but we can charge a lot for them. By relying on mammoth land yachts we don’t have to worry about making cars that can compete with what’s coming out of Europe and Japan.
After a speech last month in San Francisco, an audience member asked Collapse author Jared Diamond if the threat of global warming augured a renewed role for nuclear power–as has been suggested recently by such environmental luminaries as Stewart Brand and James Lovelock. To the surprise of the audience, Diamond said he agreed: "To deal with our energy problems we need everything available to us, including nuclear power." Echoing the concerns of others, Diamond added that it should be done carefully "like they do in France" so as to avoid accidents.
With high-grade marijuana now bringing in even higher profits than methamphetamine, and post-9/11 border security tighter than ever, Mexican marijuana cartels are digging their heels deep into American soil, most notably in wilderness areas on public lands in California, according to Joe Robinson of the Los Angeles Times. "Parts of Sequoia [National Park]
are no-go zones for visitors and park rangers during the April-to-October growing season, when drug lords cultivate pot on an agribusiness-scale," writes Robinson.
Laurie Garrett, the only reporter to win all three of journalism’s big "P" awards (the Peabody, the Polk and the Pulitzer) is extraordinarily well positioned to tell the frightening and emerging story of avian flu. The author of two major public health books, Betrayal of Trust and The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World out of Balance, she was a science correspondent at National Public Radio before joining the science-writing staff of Newsday in 1988.
"Biofuels" such as ethanol and biodiesel account for only about three percent of all transportation fuel sold in the U.S., but they are coming on strong, with domestic consumption doubling just since 2001. With a little extra help from Congress in the form of strong biofuel incentives in the new omnibus energy bill, ethanol and biodiesel could eventually emerge as key players in the high-stakes fuel wars.
As analysts continue to pore over the details of the new omnibus energy bill Congress approved and President Bush signed last week, many are questioning the wisdom of providing numerous fossil fuel subsidies to industries that are making windfall profits. Indeed, Congress has asked for tens of billions of dollars to help nuclear, oil and coal companies that are hardly ailing as surging fuel prices throughout the U.S. and abroad generate record earnings.
It is a rugged forest, dotted with lakes and bogs, graced by lush meadows, criss-crossed by rocky ridges where black bear and bobcats roam. Hawks ride currents overhead, migrating song birds find refuge during their long trips, and hikers on the Appalachian Trail pause to appreciate vistas of a wild world rolling away in all directions. And all this is within an hour’s drive of New York City.
Recent research at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta indicates that melting down asbestos fibers may yield a safe and efficient means of reprocessing the hazardous material, once widely used as building insulation.
What do the ministers of tourism from Senegal, Burkino Faso, Togo, Zaire, Madagascar and Zambia have in common? They’re all interested in "ecotourism"–the movement to promote tourism in wild and wonderful places and to reform the industry so that it treads more lightly on these natural areas. Ecotourism has other benefits too-attracting tourists to see and photograph Africa’s magnificent wildlife, for example, is a potential moneymaker for debt ridden countries where better health care and food are needed.
