Wednesday, 26 Feb 2003

Car Talk

Jack Kerouac asked: "Whither thou goest America, in thy shiny car in the night?" Grist Magazine asks: How much does it cost you, the economy, and the environment to get there? In our latest Counter Culture column, we assemble recent stats on automobiles. (Such as this one: In 1995, the average U.S. family drove 34,459 miles, or enough to circumnavigate the Earth about one and a third times.) For similarly interesting -- and appalling -- numbers, check out Counter Culture, only on the Grist Magazine website.

Freedom Riders

Speaking of cars, President Bush's FreedomCAR and Fuel Initiative has ceded its brief control over the headlines to war cries, snowstorms, and Michael Jackson's second coming. But the plan still merits attention, both for its deep flaws and for the opportunity it offers to define a broader plan of action -- one capable of mapping the shift toward a hydrogen-based energy system that will permanently wean us off of our environmentally disastrous dependence on fossil fuels. In this month's Powers that Be column, renewable energy expert Amanda Griscom assesses the economic, environmental, and marketing issues that must be addressed to make that shift possible. Read the definitive word on fuel cells, only on the Grist Magazine website.

The Rootworm of All Evil

In a major win for the biotech industry, the U.S. government yesterday gave Monsanto the green light to sell corn that has been genetically modified to resist rootworm disease, the most significant threat to the crop. The effort to combat rootworm has been the single biggest reason farmers use pesticides, so the decision will be a test case of whether genetically modified crops will benefit the environment by reducing use of toxic chemicals, as the industry claims. That possibility was cited by the U.S. EPA as a major factor in its decision to approve Monsanto's corn -- a decision it acknowledged was made in the face of lingering questions about the potential environmental impact of the altered seed. For the most part, the GM corn will be used as animal feed, so people will only eat it indirectly, but it could also be used in edible products such as corn syrup.

Withering Heights

The Bush administration's proposal for addressing climate change was subjected to withering criticism by 17 experts in a report released yesterday. The experts, who were convened by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences at the request of the administration, said that the proposal lacked "a guiding vision, executable goals, [and] clear timetables" and that its goal -- to determine the seriousness of global warming in order to make sound decisions about how to address it -- could never be achieved at the current funding level sought by the White House. The panel also criticized parts of the proposal for seeking to fund research on questions about which there is already a scientific consensus: One expert said, "It's as if these people were not cognizant of the existing science. Stuff that would have been cutting edge in 1980 is listed as a priority for the future." The Bush administration said it welcomed the recommendations and pledged that some of them would be reflected in the final proposal, slated to be released in April.

Spirited Away

In a move that could set a precedent for a new kind of conservation effort, communal landowners in Mexico turned over an unspoiled island to the federal government. The $3.3 million deal was designed to protect the island, Espiritu Santo, from tourist development. The Manhattan-sized island, which is located 20 miles off the coast of La Paz on the Baja peninsula and is home to one of the region's most pristine desert ecosystems, was communally owned by mainland Mexicans. There are no permanent inhabitants of the island, although it is occasionally visited by fishing boats and tourists. However, permanent residents do include five species of mammals and reptiles unique to the island. In the past decade, pressure to develop such areas has become all but irresistible, as tourism has increased through the southern tip of Baja. The agreement to protect Espiritu Santo was the result of three years of negotiation; the money for the deal was raised by nonprofit environmental organizations.