Friday, 21 Jun 2002

Limelight

If you plop a twist of lime into your beer bottle, drink the beer, and then want to recycle the bottle, will the lime interfere with the recycling process? It's questions like that that make us love our readers -- and make our readers love Umbra, the world's finest environmental advice columnist. In this month's installment of Ask Umbra, the Lady of the Stacks takes on the finer points of environmentally correct booze drinking, plus other curious topics from curious readers, only on the Grist Magazine website.

The Name of the Haze

The U.S. National Weather Service has long maintained the tradition of giving names to hurricanes, but in Toronto, the environmental organization Greenpeace is taking matters one step further by naming excessively smoggy days after national politicians. The program is designed to call attention to the failure of the Canadian government to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and shame politicians into action. The naming kicked off yesterday with Smog Day Augustine, named after Parliament Member Jean Augustine, who "for nine years ... has taken Toronto's votes but done nothing to clean Toronto's air," said Greenpeace Executive Director Peter Tabuns. Tabuns would not say which Canadian politician will be (dis)honored next.

Sick 'em

Global climate change isn't just going to make our planet hotter -- it's going to make it sicker. That was the finding of a wide-ranging study of world ecosystems, published in today's issue of Science and showing that warmer temperatures have sparked a plague of epidemics in plants and animals. From oysters to oak trees, species are suffering from new diseases or more virulent versions of old ones as warm temperatures enable disease-bearing organisms to survive longer or migrate to new latitudes and elevations. Scientists first proposed the link between climate change and disease over a decade ago, but the connection has been a controversial one, especially vis a vis human diseases. The spread of illness among humans is complicated by so many factors, including poverty, sanitation, and the quality of the public health infrastructure in the affected area, that many scientists have been reluctant to view global warming as a significant element. The new study largely sidesteps that issue by focusing primarily on plants and non-human animals, but some scientists find its implications for world ecological health sobering.

Oh, I'm Glad I'm Not in the Land of Cotton

For the first time, genetically modified insects have been released in the wild, in a secret location in the cotton fields of Arizona. The insects, pink bollworms, were modified by scientists to effectively destroy their own species; they are designed to be sterile, so that when they mate with natural bollworms, no offspring will result. Concern about the development is coming from an unlikely corner: the pro-GM chemical giant Monsanto. Monsanto sells genetically modified, bollworm-resistant cotton at prices farmers say are exorbitant. So the farmers are backing the GM version of the bollworm instead, which, if successful, would enable them to plant regular cotton and save money on chemical pesticides. Critics of genetic engineering have bigger fish to fry. They say the mutations could take unpredictable paths, and that the health of entire ecosystems are at stake. Although the experimental batch of bollworms has been released under netting, some dread that the experiment will go awry and the modified insects will wreak havoc in the wild.

The Sludge Report

From the department of You've Got To Be Kidding: An internal U.S. EPA document alleges that the 200,000 tons of toxic sludge dumped by the Army Corps of Engineers into the Potomac River every year is actually good for fish, because it forces them to flee the polluted area -- and escape from anglers in the bargain. It is not a "ridiculous possibility," according to the document, that the sludge "actually protects the fish in that they are not inclined to bite (and get eaten by humans) but they go ahead with their upstream movement and egg laying." The Corps began dumping the sludge in 1989 under an EPA permit that expired in 1993. Not so the dumping, which continued until this year. The National Wilderness Institute is suing the EPA to stop the discharges, which many claim violate the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act. The House Resources Committee is holding hearings this week about the sludge dumping. Rep. George Radanovich (R-Calif.) said, "To suggest that toxic sludge is good for fish because it prevents them from being caught by man is like suggesting that we club baby seals to death to prevent them from being eaten by sharks."

Take It Off. Take It All Off.

Writing about the undoing of Mutha Earth is a barrel of laughs, but even Grist staffers sometimes need a break. We'll be taking a vacation over the next two weeks. We know you'll miss your daily fix of green news, but fret not -- we'll be back at work on July 8, in better humor than ever.