Tuesday, 22 Apr 2003

Give It to Me, Baby!

Happy Earth Day, everybody! Are you struggling to find an appropriate gift for Ma Nature on this special occasion? Flowers are out; she gave them to you, remember? Ditto diamonds, wine, chocolate -- hey, actually just about everything comes from her. So give the gift that will help ensure that her bounty is protected and cherished forever: Donate to Grist and help keep the best, sassiest environmental journalism alive and kicking. What better day to reach into your hearts, pockets, and the deepest dark-green reaches of your soul and do a little extra for the planet? Grist is in the midst of its spring fundraising drive and we've received a generous matching grant: Whatever you can donate by May 5 will be doubled, so hop to it! Celebrate Earth Day in style -- give to the magazine that gives so much to you.

Whatchamacallem

Still uncertain about giving to Grist? We'll give you one good reason to support the magazine: Umbra Fisk, environmental advice goddess extraordinaire. (You know you love her.) In today's column, Umbra unveils the winner of the first annual and perhaps only "Cheer Us Up the Weather Is Godawful and We're at War" Grist Slang Invention contest, thereby introducing to the world a new word for "anti-environmentalist." She also celebrates Earth Day and the one-year anniversary of her column with a free, funny, interactive, politically minded gift to readers: environmental mad-libs! Don't miss out on the fun, only on the Grist Magazine website.

Kerry on

Massachusetts Democratic Senator and 2004 presidential contender John Kerry is honoring Earth Day today by calling on the federal government to protect the human and ecological health of poor and minority communities through strengthening its commitment to environmental justice. In a speech this afternoon, Kerry demanded the creation of a new environmental justice position at the U.S. EPA, a system for monitoring childhood asthma and other diseases influenced by the environment, and "environmental empowerment zones" -- poor and minority areas where development decisions would be subject to strict federal and local review. Kerry is a longtime supporter of environmental causes and helped organized the first Earth Day in Massachusetts in 1970.

May the Source Be With You

A newly released, two-year study of the federal Clean Air Act's New Source Review rules criticizes the Bush administration for taking steps to weaken clean air protections and calls for tighter regulations for older coal-fired power plants. New Source Review requires owners of power plants and other polluting facilities to install state-of-the-art emissions-control devices when upgrading plants; the congressionally commissioned report found that the rules have helped clean up new factories but have not succeeded in reducing pollution from older, dirtier plants. The study called for a new, performance-based standard that would force older plants to shut down within 10 years unless they met legal emissions guidelines. Meanwhile, in other clean air news, Dominions Resources reached a $1.2 billion agreement with the feds and five states to reduce air pollution at eight power plants in Virginia and West Virginia -- the largest-ever settlement under the federal Clean Air Act.

Loot, Loot, Loot for the Homeland

All that looting and chaos in post-war Iraq means the country isn't ready for U.S.-style democracy, right? Dead wrong, says Mark Fiore in Grist's Soapbox. On the contrary, the Iraqis have taken a page out of the book of American energy policy: Loot the treasury via sweet tax deals, block attempts to establish a rational, civil society (fuel-efficiency standards, anyone?), destroy national treasures, manipulate the market ... what could possibly be more red, white, and blue? Take a look at the animated cartoon from Fiore, only on the Grist Magazine website.

On the Scrap Heap of History

Improving gas mileage for cars and trucks is a goal shared by virtually all environmentalists -- but it turns out that efforts to do so have a hidden downside. As vehicle manufactures seek to improve fuel efficiency by making their products ever-lighter, an increasing percentage of cars and trucks are made from plastic. Unlike the metal components traditionally used in cars and trucks, the plastic is difficult to recycle. Moreover, it is hard to resell at a profit, because it is cheaper to make plastics from raw materials than recycled ones. "There's no really economical way to either separate it out, or there's no vendor who would want that material, so off to the landfill it goes," said Bob Garino of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries. With more than 10 million trucks and cars consigned to the junkyard each year, that's a lot of plastic waste. Enviros say the solutions lie in improving separation techniques for recycling and in designing cars with an eye toward their end-of-life uses.