From Aliens to Australians
Climate science goes sci-fi and Glamour mag goes green, in this week's Grist List. Sign up to get The Grist List each week by email.
Tell Your Kids the Truth
Need to get your kids out of the house? Grist is giving away a limited number of tickets to a March 10 slideshow for kids 8-12 that's based on Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Click here for more info on this Town Hall Seattle event and find out how to win.
Need to get your kids out of the house? Grist is giving away a limited number of tickets to a March 10 slideshow for kids 8-12 that's based on Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Click here for more info on this Town Hall Seattle event and find out how to win.
Good God, Y'all
U.N. chief says climate change poses as big a threat as war
When we were in school, assemblies were a chance to see something fun, like a juggler or a movie. How times change. Two months after taking office, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon gave his first climate-change speech, saying all kinds of gloomy things to an audience of schoolchildren from around the world. To wit: "The majority of the United Nations' work still focuses on preventing and ending conflict, but the danger posed by war to all of humanity and to our planet is at least matched by the climate crisis and global warming." And: "In coming decades, changes in our environment and the resulting upheavals from droughts to inundated coastal areas to loss of arable land are likely to become a major driver of war and conflict." And then there was: "The world needs a more coherent system of international environmental governance. Unfortunately my generation has been somewhat careless in looking after our one and only planet but I am hopeful that is finally changing." See kids? Ban has hope.
straight to the source: The New Zealand Herald, Reuters, Michelle Nichols, 02 Mar 2007
straight to the source: Houston Chronicle, Associated Press, Alexandra Olson, 02 Mar 2007
Don't Make Her Bust Out That Bustier
Famed California town may have to fight yet another pollution battle
Note to pollutey people: if you want to keep a low profile, perhaps it's wise not to situate yourself in a location made famous for being unjustly polluted. A sewage-sludge conversion plant is being planned eight miles away from Hinkley, the small California town made forever infamous by Julia Roberts' rack in the based-on-a-true-rack film Erin Brockovich. Hinkley residents fear that the processing of 400,000 tons of sludge a year into compost could kick up bacteria-laden, illness-causing dust -- not to mention an icky smell. The femme crusader herself (Brockovich, not Roberts) issued a statement opposing the plant, noting, "Citizens in this area already have compromised immune systems." An attorney for the sludge company claimed, "The bottom line is that composting biosolids is safe. We're far away from people and communities and from industry." If it's so safe, why do you need to be far away? Just asking.
see also, in Grist: On Hollywood's downtrodden eco-chicks, and how they've changed
 | NEW IN GRIST Swum of the Time Michael Boots, director of the Seafood Choices Alliance, answers readers' questions |
Michael Boots has never sucked the head of a crawfish, but he sure does know a lot about seafood. As this week's InterActivist, the director of the Seafood Choices Alliance advises readers who can't make head nor tail of whether to eat shrimp, Chilean sea bass, or organic farmed salmon. And he floats a few ideas about bottom trawling, carbon offsets, and mercury to Boots -- er, boot. Dive in! 
And You Thought It Was the TPS Reports
Your commute may be killing you, says clean-air advocacy group
Here's one more reason to hate your commute: it could be making you sick. Commuters -- on car, train, bus, bike, or foot -- breathe in up to eight times more diesel soot particles than they would just being in a downtown area, according to a new study by the nonprofit Clean Air Task Force. Based on air-quality monitoring on routes through New York City, Boston, Columbus, Ohio, and Austin, Texas, the task force estimates that during the 6 percent of the day spent commuting, the average person breathes in up to 60 percent of their daily total of lung-attacking particles. It's just like driving in a closed car every day with a smoker! Whee! The feds have recently required new diesel engines to have emissions-reducing technology, and Congress has authorized subsidies for retrofitting the 13 million heavy trucks currently on the road. In the meantime, commuters, keep your windows closed, try not to follow garbage trucks, and, if at all possible, don't breathe.
straight to the source: Austin American-Statesman, Jeff Nesmith, 01 Mar 2007
straight to the source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Don Hopey, 01 Mar 2007
straight to the source: Scientific American, Reuters, Timothy Gardner, 28 Feb 2007
see also, in Grist: Drop Goes the Diesel
Carry On My Wayward Gene
Kansas could see first commercial crop of human-gene-containing rice
A California company is one step closer to growing rice that contains human genes on a commercial scale. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has given a preliminary OK to a plan to sow 450 Kansas acres with the stuff this spring, with 2,750 more acres to come. Ventria Bioscience's three Frankenrice varieties produce human immune-system proteins -- and in case this story hasn't turned your stomach yet, we give you CEO Scott E. Deeter: "We can really help children with diarrhea get better faster." This big-ag altruism has been rejected by farmers with fears of cross-fertilization in California and Arkansas; in Missouri, rice-buying giant Anheuser Busch blocked Ventria by threatening a boycott of the state's entire crop. Because no rice is currently grown in Kansas, objections there have been muted, but critics are still speaking up. "This is not a product that everyone would want to consume," said Jane Rissler of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Who gets our vote for understatement of the year.
straight to the source: The Kansas City Star, Scott Canon, 01 Mar 2007
Grist: Environmental News and Commentary
©2007. Grist Magazine, Inc. All rights reserved. Gloom and doom with a sense of humor®
Grist: Environmental News and Commentary
©2007. Grist Magazine, Inc. All rights reserved. Gloom and doom with a sense of humor®
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