Thursday, 08 May 2003

Nice Day for a Green Wedding

May is upon us, and with it the onset of wedding season. Yes, it's that time of year when happy couples decide to make it official -- but can the knot be tied in an environmentally friendly fashion? Traditional weddings are often highly resource-intensive, from the invitations you send to the transportation used to bring your nearest and dearest together to celebrate the occasion. But committed enviros can use weddings to make a difference: With the average ceremony costing $20,000 (egad!), it's a great opportunity to support markets for local, organic, recycled, and recyclable goods. Suzanne Gerber of the Green Guide offers the latest advice on how to have an eco-friendly wedding, in Earthly Possessions on the Grist Magazine website.

Respect Your Elders

U.S. EPA Administrator Christie Whitman announced yesterday that the Bush administration put the "citizen" back in "senior citizen" by ending its practice of devaluing the lives of older people when calculating the costs and benefits of environmental regulations. Nicknamed the "senior discount," the highly controversial computational method involved valuing the lives of those older than 65 at 37 percent less than the lives of younger people. Unsurprisingly, news of the practice enraged older citizens and environmentalists alike -- a major factor in axing the policy, according to Whitman, who said the EPA had never actually used it to make policy decisions. "I'm not in the business of putting a price on life -- young or old," she said. The EPA plans to replace the senior discount with the "life-expectancy method," which estimates years of life gained or lost due to a policy change. That method still amounts to factoring in the age of the people affected; in the past, the EPA had looked only at the estimated number of lives extended or cut short, not by how long.

City of Enviro Angels

Best known for its smog, sprawl, and consumption-oriented lifestyle, Los Angeles is not an easy place to be an environmentalist. But that doesn't stop Jerilyn Lopez Mendoza, this week's Grist diarist and policy director for Environmental Defense's Los Angeles Environmental Justice Project Office, from fighting the good fight. From battling freeway expansion in low-income, minority neighborhoods to promoting increased green space in L.A.'s urban core, Lopez Mendoza tries to improve the quality of life for all Angelenos. This week alone, she's hard at work fighting to decrease smog by restricting diesel-fuel use, calling for more neighborhood parks and green spaces, and organizing candidate forums to educate politicians and community members alike on the importance of smart, fair urban planning. Get a glimpse of the life of an L.A. enviro, only on the Grist Magazine website.

Smoked Salmon Plan

The Bush administration will have to rethink its salmon-management plan in the Columbia River Basin, following a federal court ruling yesterday that found the current plan inadequate to protect the endangered species and reduce the negative impact of hydroelectric dams. The ruling marks a major triumph for environmentalists and a serious blow to the White House and the National Marine Fisheries Services, which must now draft a new plan to promote the recovery of the 12 populations of Columbia Basin salmon and steelhead that are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act. The new plan could potentially include the breaching of four dams on the lower Snake River, an option that is favored by environmentalists but opposed by farmers, electric utilities, and other industries. Other options include allowing more water to spill over dams rather than through hydropower turbines to boost the survival rate of young salmon on their way to the sea, or upping the water flow in the summer, when the fish need it most.

Fuel Independent Candidate

Jockeying for name recognition and post position, the candidates for the 2004 Democratic primary are busily trying to stake out the issues that will define them as the election unfolds -- and Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman has settled on energy independence. In his first major policy speech, given yesterday to environmentalists, Lieberman declared a goal of reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil by nearly two-thirds within the decade and eliminating it entirely within 20 years. To reach that goal, he proposed new fuel-economy standards; incentives to auto manufacturers to produce more efficient vehicles; smarter use of national resources, including cleaner coal; requirements that utilities purchase 20 percent of their energy from renewable resources by 2020; and tax credits for consumers and businesses for buying fuel-efficient vehicles. With the speech, Lieberman joined fellow Democratic candidates Sen. John Kerry (Mass.) and Rep. Richard Gephardt (Mo.) in taking a stand on renewable resources and conservation to wean the country off of foreign oil.