Wednesday, 10 Dec 2003

All Juiced Up

Weird, but True: Grist Staff Gets Thinner in an Effort to Expand

Here's a little riddle to brighten your day: What do a grapefruit and a fundraiser have in common? Appeal! (Get it? Appeal? A peel? Oh, right, you got it. Sorry.) Yes, we have been waiting years to make that stupid joke -- and what could be a better time than the final stretch of the 2003 Grist Grapefruit Challenge? That's right, folks; there are just three work days left to donate to Grist. When you give to us, everyone wins: We get to hire a new editor, so you get even more of the irreverent, informative environmental news you count on. Also, we get to eat real food again -- and not a moment too soon. (We're thin and famished over here, but on the bright side, we haven't had to worry about scurvy.) So if you haven't already, please give to Grist this holiday season. We thank you from the bottom of our empty stomachs.

Wes Is More

Clark Unveils Environmental Platform

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean grabbed the campaign spotlight this week by earning the endorsement of former Vice President Al Gore. Meanwhile, off in the shadows, fellow Democratic presidential contender retired Gen. Wesley Clark presented his environmental platform yesterday. Perhaps it befits Clark's military background that he described that platform not in terms of natural resources it would preserve or emissions it would reduce but rather in terms of the number of lives it would save: 100,000 people spared premature death from cancer or respiratory ailments by 2020. Other than the spin, the details of his environmental plan are similar to those unveiled by other candidates: cuts in dangerous emissions, greater enforcement of environmental protections, and increased fines for repeat environmental offenders.

Splitting Airs

Dishing the Dirt on Mercury, the Energy Bill, and More

Is "better than nothing" good enough? That's the question surrounding proposed rules by the Bush administration that would cap sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions at power plants in 32 states. The rules, which are essentially a regulatory version of President Bush's stalled Clear Skies initiative, were meant to please environmentalists and distract the media from another rule -- one that would reduce mercury emissions by, er, next to nothing. But the PR machine spun the other way when news of the mercury rule was leaked early, as Amanda Griscom reports in Muckraker. Also in this week's column: Republicans try to revive the energy bill, and Russia goes looking for a market for emissions credits -- only on the Grist Magazine website.

Extract Marks the Spot

Development, Tradition on Opposite Sides in South American Energy Battles

Given its vast reserves of oil and natural gas, the Amazon basin should be heaven for extractive industries. Instead, the people who make their home in the basin are trying to make life hell for energy companies. Over the years, Amazon natives have become both more sophisticated and more forceful in efforts to protect their pristine homeland -- efforts that include everything from protests and lawsuits to vandalism and kidnappings. At issue is the struggle to balance national growth with traditional culture, and the stakes could scarcely be higher: millennia-old ways of life on the one hand, and South America's future role in the international economy on the other. A short list of proposed projects in the region includes 800 miles of pipeline in Peru, a $1 billion project to pipe gas through the rainforest in Brazil, and an all-out effort by Ecuador to tap as many of its 4.6 billion barrels of oil as possible.

Disease on Down the Road

Can Environmental Problems Fuel Plagues?

Most people think of diseases as things that simply happen to us -- lousy karma or acts of God or just the way of the world. But in the new book Six Modern Plagues and How We Are Causing Them, journalist Mark Jerome Walters argues that we have far more control over diseases than we think -- and that major outbreaks are often the result of the damage we've done to the natural world. The six plagues referred to in the title are AIDS, salmonella, Lyme disease, hantavirus, mad cow disease, and West Nile virus. Walters looks at how we've helped them spread through urban sprawl, factory farming, illegal bush-meat trade, and other environmental disasters. Michelle Nijhuis reviews the results, only on the Grist Magazine website.

It Doesn't Look a Day Over 29

Taking Stock of the Endangered Species Act at Age 30

Who knew the Endangered Species Act was a Sagittarius? That's right, this month the act will turn 30. Signed into law by President Nixon in 1973, the ESA aimed to prevent extinctions, bring imperiled species back to viable population levels, and protect the natural habitat needed to sustain wildlife. Five years later, the law gained some teeth when the Supreme Court halted work on a federal dam in Tennessee that would have harmed a now-famous fish, the snail darter. In its ruling, the court determined that Congress meant for the ESA to protect species "whatever the cost." Now, though, the act is coming under fire from the Bush administration, which has characterized it as "broken." How well has the act served its purposes? How will it fare in the future? On the 30th anniversary of the law, The Oregonian looks at the prospects of both the ESA and the growing list of endangered species nationwide.