Wednesday, 20 Oct 2004

We Will Berry You

Enviros have compromised too much, says Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry's mad as hell, and he's not taking it any more. If we all love our land like we say we do, why do we accept -- nay, participate in -- its destruction? Why do we pass the keys over to corrupt politicians and big business? Why do we lobby for wilderness areas but abandon the poor and disadvantaged to economic depravation? We compromise too much. It's time to get radical, Berry says -- in Soapbox, today on the Grist Magazine website.

The Meek Shall Inherit the Dearth

Climate change threatens to reverse progress on fighting poverty

Global warming will disproportionately harm the world's poorest people and "perpetuate injustices unprecedented in human history," says Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth. Such is the conclusion of a sobering report called "Up in Smoke," released this week by a 17-member coalition of environmental and international aid groups. Climate change, it says, threatens to make the Millennium Development Goals -- focused on halving world poverty by 2015 -- unattainable. When it comes to recommendations, the report pulls no punches: It says developed countries need to reduce their carbon-dioxide emissions by 60 to 80 percent from 1990 levels, well beyond Kyoto targets, and stop subsidizing fossil-fuel industries to the tune of tens of billions of dollars a year. It also urges that plans be made to relocate communities hit particularly hard by warming, and asks developed countries to spend more on education and small-scale renewable-energy projects in poor countries.

Terminal With Extreme Prejudice

An activist reports from the scene of LNG-threatened Coronado Islands

A new gold rush is on. Giant energy companies see glittering opportunity along the coasts of California and Baja California, where they're plotting to build liquefied natural gas terminals. One such project is planned for the Coronado Islands, not far from the U.S./Mexico border line, in an area where elephant seals, great white sharks, and thousands of nesting seabirds make their home. Serge Dedina is there, marshaling a coalition of some 25 environmental groups fighting the project, and he sends word from the scene -- in Dispatches, only on the Grist Magazine website.

Feather Report

Birds in decline across North America

Last week we heard that amphibians -- the alleged environmental "canaries in the coal mine" -- are dying off in record numbers. But what if birds, not amphibians, are the better environmental indicators, as John Flicker of the National Audubon Society claims? Well, then ... we're still hosed. According to a new report by the group, close to 30 percent of bird species in North America are experiencing a "significant decline." By analyzing data on 654 species, collected from 1966 to 2003, the group discovered that 36 percent of shrub-land species are disappearing, along with 25 percent of forest species, 23 percent of birds in urban areas, 13 percent in wetlands, and a whopping 70 percent in North America's grasslands. The primary culprit, the report says, is loss of habitat. It calls for more habitat protections and increased preservation efforts by private landowners and homeowners.

For the Price of a Starbucks Latte, You Could Save the Whales Too

Group says power plants could cut mercury by 90 percent for cheap

Electric utilities could use commercially available technologies to reduce their mercury emissions by 90 percent and it would cost consumers the equivalent of a cup of coffee per household per month, according to a new National Wildlife Federation study. The group looked at power plants in five states that rely heavily on coal to produce electricity -- Illinois, Michigan, North Dakota, Ohio, and Pennsylvania -- and concluded that substantial emissions cuts, even assuming all the costs were passed along, would cost households from $0.69 to $2.14 a month in increased energy bills. An industry trade group responded that NWF had underestimated costs and overestimated the effectiveness of the technologies. Last year, the Bush administration backed away from a plan to force mercury reductions of 90 percent by 2008, proposing instead a 70 percent reduction over more than a decade.