Monday, 15 Dec 2003

One Final Squeeze

Last Chance to Take Part in the Grist Grapefruit Challenge

It's the very last day of the 2003 Grist Grapefruit Challenge -- mere hours left for us five Grist staffers to subsist only on grapefruit, and mere hours left for Grist readers to contribute toward our goal of raising $35,000 to help hire an additional editor. So far, devoted readers have pitched in an impressive $28,208, leaving us just $6,792 short. (A profuse thank-you to givers; you're making it possible for us to ramp up coverage of the environment during the upcoming oh-so-important election year.) If you've been putting off donating until the last minute, well, here it is! Whether you can spare $10, $50, or $100, every gift makes a difference (and earns you green karma points). Just click on through to our giving page, where you can make a tax-deductible donation by credit card or find our snail-mail address and send a check, retro-style. Come on: It's painless. It's fun. It's virtuous. Dick Cheney wouldn't want you to do it ...

Green Eye for a Great Buy

Demand Rises for Recycled and Organic Home Products

The hot gift this holiday season (in our humble, green-leaning opinion): anything recycled or organic. Demand for home products made from recycled or organic materials grew by 66 percent in 2001 and continues to rise, according to research conducted by New Hope Natural Media in Boulder, Colo. Plenty of niche sellers such as EcoPlanet.com offer organic cotton sheets, furniture made from non-toxic materials, and other eco-friendly wares. "The main reason people are demanding organic products is for health reasons, like preventing cancer and protecting groundwater," says Lester Kan, vice president of EcoPlanet. Big-time retailers are also getting into the game: L.L. Bean, for example, now offers chairs made from recycled plastic jugs, and Petsmart sells dog beds fashioned from clear plastic bottles. To find retailers selling all manner of recycled goods, check out GreenGiftGuide.com, a website produced by the California Department of Conservation.

Dirty Minds

A New Book Looks at the Effects of Pollution on Kids' Noggins

Our society is polluting young minds. No, we're not talking about violent video games or Internet porn (as much as we like talking about them). We're talking about environmental toxins and their long-term effects on children's cognitive development. Or rather, Colleen Moore is talking about them in her new book Silent Scourge: Children, Pollution, and Why Scientists Disagree. Using the storied history of lead as an illustrative case, Moore discusses a source of policy disagreement less sexy but often more significant than corporate influence or political corruption: differing scientific "decision standards." The information science produces depends on the questions we ask of it, and right now, Moore claims, we're asking the wrong questions, with potentially disastrous results for growing kids. Erik Ness reviews Moore's grim but educational read -- only on the Grist Magazine website.

Coming Clean

Strange Bedfellows Push for Clean Energy in Canada

Some of the biggest polluters in Canada are teaming up with enviros to make the case that the nation could produce as much energy from renewable sources as it now does from fossil fuels and nuclear facilities. Today, three oil companies -- Suncor Energy, BP Canada, and Shell Canada -- and four major Canadian environmental groups will release a jointly written report arguing that the country has huge untapped potential for producing energy from wind, waves, and other non-polluting sources. The report claims that Canada will need to tap that potential as the growth of the fossil-fuel industry is constrained by concerns about climate change. Ken Ogilvie, executive director of the environmental group Pollution Probe, says he's happy to join forces with energy companies because they can articulate the business case for renewable energy much more effectively than environmental groups. The report's backers want the national government to set targets for green power production.

Bicycles Shanghaied

Shanghai Bans Bicycles from Major Streets

Shanghai, China, whose streets once teemed with peddling people, will ban bicycles from most major thoroughfares beginning next year. It's a dramatic (and, many say, depressing) shift for a city that was home to some of the nation's earliest bicycle factories. Now, Shanghai has become a center of China's burgeoning auto industry. Though bicycles are still the main form of transportation for the country's masses, members of China's burgeoning affluent class are buying cars in ever-growing numbers and finding that bikes are getting in their way. "Bicycles put great pressure on the city's troubled traffic situation," said Shanghai police official Chen Yuangao. Cycling advocates counter that cars, buses, and taxis are the real traffic scourge and that they contribute to the notoriously bad air quality in China's major cities. Beijing and other metropolitan areas are also shunting bikes aside, encouraging autos to dominate the roads.