Monday, 13 Sep 2004

Walking on Blair

Conservatives Accuse Blair of Being Weak on Climate Change

In a depressing illustration of just how far global consensus on climate change has left the U.S. behind, this week British Prime Minister Tony Blair was criticized for doing too little on global warming by Michael Howard, the leader of the conservative Tory party. Howard attacked Blair for failing to use his close relationship with President Bush to push the U.S. to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. He accused Blair's Labor Party of putting all its eggs in the onshore wind-power basket, ignoring the potential of several other forms of renewable energy. "Promoting greener behavior need not hold back economic growth or restrict choice," Howard said, "but the longer we delay action, the harder it will be to achieve the outcome." Meanwhile, Blair and Howard were both criticized from the left by the Liberal Democratic Party for dropping the ball on climate change and other green issues. Lest we belabor the point, however, notice: Britain's three leading political parties are competing to see who can take the toughest line on global warming. Compare and contrast.

Barge and In Charge

Chad Pregracke, Cleaner of Rivers, Answers Grist's Questions

Sometimes environmentalists overthink things, getting lost in political and scientific minutiae. Not Chad Pregracke. He saw a bunch of gross trash in his beloved Mississippi River, so he went out to clean it up -- and then found he couldn't stop there. The founder and president of Living Lands & Waters, Pregracke lives aboard a barge 10 months out of the year and invites volunteers to spend their free time fishing trash out of rivers near and far. And what do you know? It works. Read about the virtues of grassroots action as Chad answers our questions -- in InterActivist, only on the Grist Magazine website. And don't forget to ask him a question of your own by noon on Wednesday, Sept. 15.

Schoolhouse Rocks

Public Schools Starting to Offer Organic Lunches

Healthy, organic food is increasingly popping up in, of all strange places, school lunches. The Seattle school district recently banned junk food and exclusive soda contracts (despite the big dollars dangled by soda companies) and started urging schools to offer "fresh, local, organic, non-genetically-modified, non-irradiated, unprocessed food, whenever feasible." A handful of California school districts also have organic lunch programs, and schools in six states are installing vending machines stocked with all-organic snacks, thanks to a program sponsored by organic yogurt company Stonyfield Farm. Lincoln Elementary in Olympia, Wash., put in an all-organic salad bar, while cutting per-lunch costs by two cents, in part by -- are you sitting down? -- eliminating dessert. "Our kids don't need dessert -- they have all this great fruit. It's not like kids don't get sugar," said Lincoln Principal Cheryl Petra, demonstrating how odd a sane voice sounds in a crazy world.

Solar Perplexus

Umbra on Making the Move to Solar

Solar technology is ever evolving, so a reader from sun-drenched California wonders: Should she jump on the solar-panel bandwagon now, or is there some new fancy-pants, must-have technology right around the corner? Advice columnist nonpareil Umbra Fisk checks in with the experts and gets a clear, unambiguous answer. Find out what it is in Ask Umbra -- only on the Grist Magazine website.

Mustang Silly

Herd of Wild Horses Gets in Way of Bush Admin's Drilling Plans

It may come as a surprise to some that the U.S. is still home to about 27,000 wild, free-roaming mustangs, not yet driven from their open ranges by human development. But just wait. The Bureau of Land Management is set to round up one of Colorado's five remaining mustang herds and remove it from its terrain in order to make room for -- can't you just guess? -- oil and gas drilling. The horses will either be adopted or moved to "sanctuaries," i.e., long-term holding facilities. Conservationists say this Bush administration move would contravene a federal mandate on management of wild horses and set a bad precedent for treatment of other mustang herds. Says Andrea Rococo of The Fund for Animals, "We think it's shameful." But Bob Fowler of the BLM defended the agency's treatment of horses, and added that mustangs might be returned to the area after oil and gas reserves are depleted -- in perhaps 40 years.

Do Good

Take Part in a Nationwide Mercury-Testing Project

You'd be hard-pressed to find waterways or freshwater fish in the U.S. that haven't been mucked up by mercury pollution, as a steady stream of reports have warned us in recent months. Greenpeace wants to find out how many people's bodies have been mucked up too. A new Greenpeace project asks people to order a mercury sampling kit and send in a hair sample for analysis to determine whether the level of mercury in their bodies is abnormally high. Greenpeace will compile test results from people around the U.S. and use them to push for tougher restrictions on coal-burning power plants, the No. 1 source of mercury in the country.