Monday, January 05, 2009
Is The Library A Museum?
Are end times near for books and magazines? I still enjoy words on paper, but then I'm over the magical, all-digital age of 30.
To wit, note these recent developments in online reading: In addition to the many newspapers you can read online for free, Zinio is currently offering free one-year digital magazine subscriptions on some 200 magazines. (Who doesn't love free? Check it out.)
You may already have heard of Amazon's new digital reading device, Kindle. The interface still isn't as nice as real paper, to my eye, but it offers a convenient way to get texts quick. The "books" themselves are cheap, but the device costs $359.
Of course, paper isn't all good, either. I'm pleased to see my weekly issue of the New Yorker in the brick-and-mortar mailbox, but I'm not happy to see catalogues addressed to former housemates' siblings and mystery persons with whom I clearly have nothing in common. I'm resolving this New Year to do what I can to cut down on junk mail. Here are two options: Go to the belly of the beast, the Direct Marketing Association, and change your preferences. Sending an email with your name and address to the other major paper-spammer will also help. Finally, you can also go to this greenie site to opt out of various catalogues.
With still more newspapers shrinking or folding, let's rekindle the reading debate: Will the internet eventually displace paper texts altogether? Is there anything about paper that's worth saving? And is the evidence that reading online is better for the environment really conclusive?
For what it's worth, I'm also not wholly convinced that the internet is the sole villain of the newspaper story. Think another popular bad guy: Wall Street.
| Jan 05 at 03:02 PM
One For The Road
The Bush administration is poised to pass through one last environmental deregulation, allowing the nation's largest private landowner, Plum Creek Timber, to pave its logging roads, making it much easier for mountain forests to be converted into housing developments. Plum Creek has been increasingly active in the real estate industry.
The change in policy is being spearheaded by Mark Rey, the former timber lobbyist who leads Bush's Forest Service, and has met with strong opposition from local government in Montana, where much of the land lies: So much for the Republican ideal of states' rights.
Montana, like many other states, has been moving toward funneling development to existing towns, and many outdoors men and women worry that the change will further limit dwindling access the state's wild lands. President-elect Obama campaigned against the move in Montana this summer.
| Jan 05 at 11:57 AM
Friday, January 02, 2009
Life's A Beach...Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
While commenters from as far away as Monroe, La., and Fayetteville, N. Car., weighed in on this blog to deny that temperatures are rising and/or that human activity is causing the change, the existence or non-existence of debate doesn't matter much to the planet, and industries and individuals are struggling to adapt to changes already underway.
L.A. Times
For example, the celebrities and other super-rich folks who own property in Malibu hired independent contractors to assess how much of the beach will be lost to rising sea levels. The conclusions aren't good, and the homeowners are looking into privately funding a $10-20 million sea wall project to ensure that their property won't go underwater.
Surfers, too, are considering action to protect not just beaches but ocean currents that provide some of the best breaks.
The wine industry, whose products depend on nuances of climate and soil, has also been among the first to acknowledge and begin adapting to changing weather patterns.
Insurance companies aren't environmentalists, by a long shot, but to a large extent they are among the first to have to pay for the damage industrialized society has done to the environment. Last year was the third most expensive on record, exceeded only by 2005, the year when Hurricane Katrina struck, and 1995, which brought the Kobe earthquake (earthquakes aren't affected by climate change).
If you have doubts about how far outside the mainstream one has to be to continue to dispute the growing body of scientific, economic and cultural evidence of climate change, check out this recent speech given by coal executive Don Blankenship at a conference—he thought—of like-minded peers. See for yourself how looney his thinking is:
Beyond talk about the climate, what changes do you see people or businesses in your community making to adapt to new weather patterns?
| Jan 02 at 01:39 PM
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Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Up In Smoke
Blame my love of the outdoors on the fact that I was born on the summer solstice, June 21. This year's solstice found me in the Lakes District of the Sierras, car camping with some friends. As we sat around the picnic table playing a game, big drops of rain began to fall and, to our surprise, were accompanied by thunder and lightning. We jumped in the car and waited it out for 15 minutes or so, then resumed our game.
The storm didn't do much damage to our adventure, but it cost the state of California big bucks: This year's spending on fire fighting hit the billion-dollar mark for the first time ever, in large part because the summer solstice lightning storm started a lot of fires. All told, 1.4 million acres burned in the state this year, an area three times the size of Orange County.
The fire season was so bad that many lawmakers began to utter a long forbidden word: prevention. But a series of commonsense bills nonetheless failed or were vetoed as developers threw around scary words like "building freeze" and "job killer" to describe changes in codes as logical as insuring ingress, egress and adequate water pressure in fire-prone areas.
The fact is, it's a lot cheaper to prevent a fire than to put one out hairy-scary as it approaches people's homes and shuts down major roads such as Route 1. An article in the current deforestation issue of Earth Island Journal argues that we think of firefighting as a war, which has led us into expensive quagmires much like the one in Iraq:
"In virtually every other arena of government spending, we have budgets," says Andy Stahl, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics. "Except when it comes to wars. Because any amount of money is acceptable to win a war. The problem with the war on fire is that we don't know what victory looks like."
The article goes on to suggest that the firefighting has little effect on how far a fire eventually travels, and does more environmental damage to the area than simply letting nature take its course. And fighting all fires leads to so much build-up of kindling and dry leaves that a lightning strike is akin to lighting a match in a gas-filled room.
The good news is that public pressure growing for the Forest Service to allow controlled burns and for California to require fire-safety measures in local building codes—and billion-dollar boondoggles have a way of making change happen.
What do you think the state should do to change its fire policies?
| Dec 31 at 11:40 AM
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Green Starch "Peanuts": Yay Or Nay?
When I first saw biodegradable packing peanuts—the green ones, which are made from starch—I thought it was one of the best green ideas I'd ever seen. Styrofoam is an ecological disaster, and I've always found packing peanuts to be a pain in the rear: You save them for a future use that never materializes, and, meanwhile, some escape from the box and invade the most unlikely corners of your home.
The green peanuts, unlike their styrofoam (technically, polystryene) counterparts, which don't biodegrade, are supposedly water soluble. But a new study conducted by frustrated city engineers in Raleigh, N.C., found that even with overnight mechanical agitation, the green peanuts did not dissolve in water. Flushing them down the toilet is consequently a big problem for city sewers.
Of course, San Francisco and Oakland have wonderful curbside composting programs. The green bins make a happy home for the green peanuts. But makers of the peanuts should change their disposal recommendations (see picture).
What are some of the best, simplest green ideas you've seen? Share them in the comments.
| Dec 30 at 11:41 AM
Monday, December 29, 2008
Quietly Disappearing
Meet the next victim of climate change: the moose. The giant creatures simply don't fare well in warm weather. As Minnesota's winter temperatures have warmed 12 degrees—yes 12 degrees—over the last 40 years, the moose population has plummeted by 50 percent. If current trends continue, the moose will be extinct by 2060.
Because the climate is the primary cause of the animal's plight, it will not be eligible for federal protections due to one of George W. Bush's midnight regulations enacted earlier this month.
Compare the range maps of the polar bear (in green) to the moose (in red) and you'll see that we're essentially seeing a wave of extinction starting at the poles and moving towards the equator.
Scary stuff.
Quiet and solitary, the moose is a symbol of the Northern wilderness. Read an excerpt after the jump from Nova Scotian poet Elizabeth Bishop's poem, "The Moose." Read More »
| Dec 29 at 11:36 AM
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
George W. Bush's Nightmare Before Christmas
"Yes, my term's nearly done with—but I got one last goal:
To fill the national stocking with a big lump of coal!"
Enjoy, and happy holidays.
| Dec 24 at 12:55 PM
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Warning: [REDACTION] Is Dangerous For Your Health
How do you know if something is toxic? The government requires a label, or a public disclosure or something, right? Wrong, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The Environmental Protection Agency's mandate includes a toxics program designed to protect Americans from new, dangerous chemicals created by industry. The program identifies dangerous compounds and puts on public record what they are, who makes them, and where and when they're used. But the agency under Bush has routinely been redacting all the important details of its files, making the program meaningless and breaking the law. Such a procedure is permitted in extraordinary circumstances only, but Bush's EPA has made it business as usual, allowing redactions of filings in more than half of the cases.
In one case, an EPA case file "marks as confidential the names of the chemical and the company that makes it. Even the generic class of chemical has been removed." So a program designed to alert consumers and residents about newly discovered toxic chemicals does precisely the reverse. Another example of the utter perversion of democratic processes embraced by the Bush administration. But, sadly, there's no undoing the redactions barring expensive additional research, so these black marks—flagging dangers to your health without telling you what, or where, or when—will remain in the public record long after Bush is gone.
Surprised? Let's recap some highlights of the EPA under George W. Bush. Reasonable Republican head Christine Todd Whitman was forced out for trying to protect the environment and keep Bush's campaign promise to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. Despite a Supreme Court ruling prompting the agency to regulate greenhouse gases, the agency has refused to do so. The current administrator, Stephen Johnson, defied legal precedent and the advice of his employees to reject California's request for a waiver allowing it to regulate its own greenhouse gases. Just this month, Johnson told regulators not to consider GHG emissions when ruling on permits for new coal-fired power plants.
Environmental Protection Agency, indeed. Make that Environmental Protection Agency.
| Dec 23 at 12:22 PM
Weird Weather Watch: Snow In Seattle
It's been known to snow in the Pacific Northwest, but a near-record amount of snow has brought Seattle and Portland to a grinding halt.
And more bad weather is on the way: The Pacific Northwest will see more snow before temperatures warm, bringing rain that is likely to result in urban floods.
Meanwhile, across the continent, Portland, Maine, has seen record December snowfall. Add this week's winter weather advisories across the center of the country and the result is thousands of frustrated travelers trapped in airports.
Yes, Virginia, the climate has the power to bring the economy to its knees. Thankfully, we have a new administration that recognizes that.
| Dec 23 at 11:19 AM
Monday, December 22, 2008
Obama's Fox In The Henhouse
Most of Obama's cabinet picks to date have been solidly uncontroversial. Few batted an eye at the announced nomination of former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack for Secretary of Agriculture. But with a groundswell of dissatisfaction with industrial agriculture among Americans—and even some international aid groups—Vilsack represents a huge failure of vision.
Groundswell, you say? Indeed. Local, sustainable and organic eating have taken off as some of the most popular attempts to go green. As Michael Pollan's crusade against corn products has gained attention, so too has the widespread use of palm oil grown on recently cleared rainforests in Southeast Asia. Industrial agriculture has been outed as among the greatest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, among other environmental problems (it contributes some 20 percent worldwide). And biofuels—agribusiness's baby—have been shown to make the problem worse, not better.
Vilsack has been an advocate for wind energy and reducing greenhouse gases in agriculture. But he's also taken some far less enlightened stances. Obama specifically praised Vilsack's support of biotechnology, which has led the Iowan to back genetically modified food products. (This blogger's take: If you can't sell it with an accurate label on it, that's a good sign it's a bad product.) As governor, he expanded agribusinesses' polluting and malodorous feedlot business in Iowa, and took away towns' say about their location.
Vilsack, like Obama, supports ethanol, and frankly anyone who isn't on the dole of some agribusiness or other can see that ethanol is an absurd idea. In fact, it's hard to find a worse political idea, and that's saying a lot. For starters, it takes almost a gallon of oil to make a gallon of ethanol. The corn-based fuel contributed to a dangerous spike in food prices that only the global economic slowdown has abated, and it has pushed other common U.S. staples such as soy into newly converted cropland in the Amazon rainforest. (Soy grown in South America doesn't go into your tofu, don't worry—it's fed to livestock in the developing world.)
The National Academy of Sciences has now released a study showing that as more corn is grown, replacing what little biodiversity was left on American farmland, soy pests have increased, meaning that even more soy production will likely be exported to South America.
Americans are genuinely ready for farm policy that doesn't kowtow to Big Ag at the expense of family farmers and consumers: The passage of Prop 2 in our own state proves it. Some "cup half full" (or "Obama can do no wrong") types are hoping that Vilsack's connections to Big Ag will give him credibility to make some tough calls, but that sounds excessively optimistic to me.
How do you want agricultural policy to change under Obama? Weigh in in the comments.
| Dec 22 at 08:36 PM
