News Forum Archives: 2008
Political Positions Shifted To Career Civil Service Jobs
By Juliet Eilperin and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Just weeks before leaving office, the Interior Department’s top lawyer has shifted half a dozen key deputies — including two former political appointees who have been involved in controversial environmental decisions — into senior civil service posts. The transfer of political appointees into permanent federal positions, called “burrowing” by career officials, creates security for those employees, and at least initially will deprive the incoming Obama administration of the chance to install its preferred appointees in some key jobs.
Continue Reading Administration Moves to Protect Key Appointees
Posted by Paul on November 18, 2008
By Al Gore
Op-Ed Contributor
The New York Times
November 9, 2008
The inspiring and transformative choice by the American people to elect Barack Obama as our 44th president lays the foundation for another fateful choice that he — and we — must make this January to begin an emergency rescue of human civilization from the imminent and rapidly growing threat posed by the climate crisis.
The electrifying redemption of America’s revolutionary declaration that all human beings are born equal sets the stage for the renewal of United States leadership in a world that desperately needs to protect its primary endowment: the integrity and livability of the planet.
Continue Reading The Climate for Change
Posted by Paul on November 10, 2008
By Dan Fost
The New York Times
October 30, 2008
Neil Young wants fuel-efficient cars, and as a politically active rock star, he wants everyone else to have them, too. But Mr. Young is not ready to give up his love of big cars, and he doesn’t think many other drivers are, either.
So Mr. Young, the iconoclastic godfather of grunge, has assembled a team to turn a nearly 20-foot-long, 5,000-pound 1959 Lincoln Continental into a vehicle that will run on natural gas, electricity or some other form of clean energy. His aim is to win the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize, a $10 million challenge to develop a vehicle that can get 100 miles per gallon or better by 2009.
Continue Reading Long May You Run: Neil Young’s Eco-Lincoln
Posted by Paul on November 03, 2008
By Thomas L. Friedman
Op-Ed Columnist
The New York Times
August 10, 2008
Copenhagen — The Arctic Hotel in Ilulissat, Greenland, is a charming little place on the West Coast, but no one would ever confuse it for a Four Seasons — maybe a One Seasons. But when my wife and I walked back to our room after dinner the other night and turned down our dim hallway, the hall light went on. It was triggered by an energy-saving motion detector. Our toilet even had two different flushing powers depending on — how do I say this delicately — what exactly you’re flushing. A two-gear toilet! I’ve never found any of this at an American hotel. Oh, if only we could be as energy efficient as Greenland!
Continue Reading Flush With Energy
Posted by Paul on August 30, 2008
By Elizabeth Royte
The New York Times
August 10, 2008
Before I left New York for California, where I planned to visit a water-recycling plant, I mopped my kitchen floor. Afterward, I emptied the bucket of dirty water into the toilet and watched as the foamy mess swirled away. This was one of life’s more mundane moments, to be sure. But with water infrastructure on my mind, I took an extra moment to contemplate my water’s journey through city pipes to the wastewater-treatment plant, which separates solids and dumps the disinfected liquids into the ocean.
A day after mopping, I gazed balefully at my hotel toilet in Santa Ana, Calif., and contemplated an entirely new cycle. When you flush in Santa Ana, the waste makes its way to the sewage-treatment plant nearby in Fountain Valley, then sluices not to the ocean but to a plant that superfilters the liquid until it is cleaner than rainwater. The “new” water is then pumped 13 miles north and discharged into a small lake, where it percolates into the earth. Local utilities pump water from this aquifer and deliver it to the sinks and showers of 2.3 million customers. It is now drinking water. If you like the idea, you call it indirect potable reuse. If the idea revolts you, you call it toilet to tap.
Continue Reading A Tall, Cool Drink of … Sewage?
Posted by Paul on August 12, 2008
By Larry Rohter
The New York Times
August 3, 2008
When Tesla Motors, a pioneer in electric-powered cars, set out to make a luxury roadster for the American market, it had the global supply chain in mind. Tesla planned to manufacture 1,000-pound battery packs in Thailand, ship them to Britain for installation, then bring the mostly assembled cars back to the United States.
But when it began production this spring, the company decided to make the batteries and assemble the cars near its home base in California, cutting more than 5,000 miles from the shipping bill for each vehicle.
“It was kind of a no-brain decision for us,” said Darryl Siry, the company’s senior vice president of global sales, marketing and service. “A major reason was to avoid the transportation costs, which are terrible.”
The world economy has become so integrated that shoppers find relatively few T-shirts and sneakers in Wal-Mart and Target carrying a “Made in the U.S.A.” label. But globalization may be losing some of the inexorable economic power it had for much of the past quarter-century, even as it faces fresh challenges as a political ideology.
Continue Reading Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization
Posted by Paul on August 04, 2008
By Susan Saulny
The New York Times
July 10, 2008
CAMPTON TOWNSHIP, Ill. — In an environmentally conscious tweak on the typical way of getting food to the table, growing numbers of people are skipping out on grocery stores and even farmers markets and instead going right to the source by buying shares of farms.
On one of the farms, here about 35 miles west of Chicago, Steve Trisko was weeding beets the other day and cutting back a shade tree so baby tomatoes could get sunlight. Mr. Trisko is a retired computer consultant who owns shares in the four-acre Erehwon Farm.
“We decided that it’s in our interest to have a small farm succeed, and have them be able to have a sustainable farm producing good food,” Mr. Trisko said.
Continue Reading Shoppers Buy Slices of Farms
Posted by Paul on July 10, 2008
By Robert X. Cringely
bob@cringely.com
June 20, 2008
There is a scene at the end of the movie Back to the Future in which Doc Emmett Brown returns from the far future in his time-traveling DeLorean to get Marty McFly. Before going forward in time to save Marty’s family, Doc Brown stuffs with apple cores and diet soda the Mr. Fusion machine now powering his DeLorean. It’s a step up from the stolen plutonium or captured lightning required earlier in the film to produce the 1.21 gigawatts of power needed for time travel. Yet as we in 2008 look at $130-per-barrel oil, there are those who argue that our energy independence can be found, just like Doc Brown’s, in trash. What if they are correct?
Continue Reading What a Difference a Day Makes: A father and son propose U.S. energy independence.
Posted by Paul on July 08, 2008
CLEVELAND — There’s produce and profit growing in a Cleveland vacant lot that used to be filled with garbage. It’s an upside to the economic downturn in the city. Dozens of inner city residents are becoming urban farmers and turning a barren landscape into profitable growing spaces.
Continue Reading Urban farmers growing profit in Cleveland
Posted by noble on June 27, 2008
By Bill McKibben
The Washington Post
Friday, December 28, 2007
This month may have been the most important yet in the two-decade history of the fight against global warming. Al Gore got his Nobel in Stockholm; international negotiators made real progress on a treaty in Bali; and in Washington, Congress actually worked up the nerve to raise gas mileage standards for cars.
But what may turn out to be the most crucial development went largely unnoticed. It happened at an academic conclave in San Francisco. A NASA scientist named James Hansen offered a simple, straightforward and mind-blowing bottom line for the planet: 350, as in parts per million carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It’s a number that may make what happened in Washington and Bali seem quaint and nearly irrelevant. It’s the number that may define our future.
To understand what it means, you need a little background.
Continue Reading Remember This: 350 Parts Per Million
Posted by Paul on May 22, 2008
To address the problem of greenhouse gases, conscientious consumers are turning their attention to the supermarket and dinner table. It’s not just paper versus plastic anymore.
By Kenneth R. Weiss
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
April 22, 2008
Not every student in line at the University of Redlands cafeteria was ready for self-sacrifice to save the planet.
“No hamburger patties?” asked an incredulous football player, repeating the words of the grill cook. He glowered at the posted sign: “Cows or cars? Worldwide, livestock emits 18% of greenhouse gases, more than the transportation sector! Today we’re offering great-tasting vegetarian choices.”
Continue Reading Treading lighter with low-carbon diets
Posted by Paul on April 29, 2008
Editorial
The New York Times
April 3, 2008
To the long list of things the Bush administration is willing to trash in its rush to appease immigration hard-liners, you can now add dozens of important environmental laws and hundreds of thousands of acres of fragile habitat on the southern border.
On Tuesday, Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, waived the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act and other environmental protections to allow the government to finish building 700 or so miles of border fence by year’s end without undertaking legally mandated reviews of the consequences for threatened wildlife and their habitats.
Continue Reading Michael Chertoff’s Insult
Posted by Paul on April 03, 2008
In a sweeping use of its authority, the Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday that it would bypass environmental reviews to speed construction of fencing along the Mexican border.
Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, issued two waivers covering 470 miles of the border from California to Texas well as a separate 22-mile stretch in Hidalgo County, Tex., where the department plans to build fencing up to 18 feet high into a flood-control levee in a wildlife refuge.
“Criminal activity at the border does not stop for endless debate or protracted litigation,” Mr. Chertoff said in a statement.
The announcement angered environmental groups, which have raised concerns through lawsuits and public hearings about the damage that fencing could cause to wildlife. Property owners, particularly along the Rio Grande, have also objected to what they considered federal intrusion on their land and access to the river.
Continue Reading Government Issues Waiver for Fencing Along Border
Posted by Paul on April 01, 2008
By Bridget Stutchbury
Op-Ed Contributor
The New York Times
March 30, 2008
Woodbridge, Ontario
Though a consumer may not be able to tell the difference, a striking red and blue Thomas the Tank Engine made in Wisconsin is not the same as one manufactured in China — the paint on the Chinese twin may contain dangerous levels of lead. In the same way, a plump red tomato from Florida is often not the same as one grown in Mexico. The imported fruits and vegetables found in our shopping carts in winter and early spring are grown with types and amounts of pesticides that would often be illegal in the United States.
In this case, the victims are North American songbirds. Bobolinks, called skunk blackbirds in some places, were once a common sight in the Eastern United States. In mating season, the male in his handsome tuxedo-like suit sings deliriously as he whirrs madly over the hayfields. Bobolink numbers have plummeted almost 50 percent in the last four decades, according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey.
Continue Reading Did Your Shopping List Kill a Songbird?
Posted by Paul on March 30, 2008
By Brenda Goodman
The New York Times
March 11, 2008
MOUNDVILLE, Ala. — After residents of the Riverbend Farms subdivision noticed that an oily, fetid substance had begun fouling the Black Warrior River, which runs through their backyards, Mark Storey, a retired petroleum plant worker, hopped into his boat to follow it upstream to its source.
It turned out to be an old chemical factory that had been converted into Alabama’s first biodiesel plant, a refinery that intended to turn soybean oil into earth-friendly fuel.
“I’m all for the plant,” Mr. Storey said. “But I was really amazed that a plant like that would produce anything that could get into the river without taking the necessary precautions.”
Continue Reading Pollution Is Called a Byproduct of a ‘Clean’ Fuel
Posted by Paul on March 12, 2008
By David Streitfeld
The New York Times
March 9, 2008
LAWTON, N.D. — Whatever Dennis Miller decides to plant this year on his 2,760-acre farm, the world needs. Wheat prices have doubled in the last six months. Corn is on a tear. Barley, sunflower seeds, canola and soybeans are all up sharply.
“For once, there’s great reason to be optimistic,” Mr. Miller said.
But the prices that have renewed Mr. Miller’s faith in farming are causing pain far and wide. A tailor in Lagos, Nigeria, named Abel Ojuku said recently that he had been forced to cut back on the bread he and his family love.
“If you wanted to buy three loaves, now you buy one,” Mr. Ojuku said.
Everywhere, the cost of food is rising sharply. Whether the world is in for a long period of continued increases has become one of the most urgent issues in economics.
Continue Reading A Global Need for Grain That Farms Can’t Fill
Posted by Paul on March 09, 2008
Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these “green” fuels are taken into account, two studies being published Thursday have concluded.
The benefits of biofuels have come under increasing attack in recent months, as scientists took a closer look at the global environmental cost of their production. These latest studies, published in the prestigious journal Science, are likely to add to the controversy.
Continue Reading Biofuels Deemed a Greenhouse Threat
Posted by Paul on February 08, 2008
By Raya Widenoja and Brian Halweil
Worldwatch Institute
January 23, 2008
Casual observers might consider it a setback for proponents of ethanol and biodiesel now that Europe is planning to ban biofuels made from crops grown on high-value conservation lands. But the truth is, shunning biofuels produced on wetlands, grasslands, and deforested land is good for both critics and supporters. Overall, it’s even good for the biofuel industry because it might restore some faith in their product, which has been attacked from all corners in recent months. The main problem with Europe’s new law, in fact, may be that it is not stringent enough.
Continue Reading Analysis: Banning “Bad” Biofuels, Becoming Better Consumers
Posted by Paul on January 25, 2008
By James Kanter
The New York Times
January 14, 2008
PARIS — In a sign of shifting attitudes toward biofuels, officials of the European Union are proposing to ban imports of certain fuel crops whose production could do more harm than good in fighting climate change, according to a draft law seen Monday.
The proposals, to be unveiled next week, are aimed at enhancing the environmental credentials of biofuels like biodiesel or ethanol to counter concerns that European drivers are playing a role in destroying wetlands, forests and grasslands in areas like Southeast Asia or Latin America each time they fill up their tanks.
Continue Reading Europe May Ban Imports of Some Biofuel Crops
Posted by Paul on January 14, 2008