Friday, 11 Feb 2005

The Verdopolis confab currently under way in New York City is celebrating urban sustainability, bringing together businessfolk, environmentalists, designers, and cultural leaders to think and talk about ways to build the "future green city." Emily Gertz notes that something seems different about this gathering of enviros ... oh, yeah, it's the optimism! She sends word from a session on green energy -- in Dispatches, today on the Grist Magazine website.

Complicating, Circulating, New Life, New Life

GOP congressfolk announce plan to revamp Endangered Species Act

House Resources Committee Chair Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) has expressed open hostility toward the Endangered Species Act numerous times, so some conservationists are questioning the sincerity of his recently announced effort to "breathe new life" into the law. Along with Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) and Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), as well as, to the dismay of ESA's backers, moderate Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.), Pombo announced plans to introduce a single ESA reauthorization bill that would include a number of changes long sought by critics of the act, including increased incentives for private landowners, increased state involvement, and stricter (opponents say prohibitive) scientific review for proposed listings. The talking point wielded by ESA's critics is that only 1 percent of the 1,800 species listed under the act have fully recovered and been removed from the list; the law's backers reply that the intent of the law is to prevent extinction, and only about 1 percent of the species have gone extinct, a rather striking success.


Grist readers of late seem fixated on the color wheel. In our latest letters batch, a few of you told us we're too green and not appropriately objective. Others scolded us for not being quite green enough. One reader found fault with Umbra's column on golden kiwis. Another was concerned less with how green we are and more with, how, er, blond and busty. And yet another questioned a race-related remark in our "Death of Environmentalism" commentary, saying color shouldn't matter at all. Find out why we're turning shades of red in Letters to the Editor -- today on the Grist Magazine website.

Dropping the Hybrids Off at the Pool

Hybrid incentive bills introduced in Congress

Fuel-efficient hybrids, the cars of choice for greens of means, are a hot topic in Congress, with two bills introduced this month that could further fuel their popularity. One bill, unveiled in the House last Tuesday by California Reps. Darrell Issa (R) and Brad Sherman (D), would let states decide whether or not to allow hybrid vehicles to use highway carpool lanes when they're occupied by just one person. Right now, since some funding for carpool lanes comes from the federal government, the feds make the rules about which cars are allowed -- so far, that's meant only electric or other alternative-fuel vehicles (and, you know, old-fashioned car pools). A separate bill reintroduced in the House this week by Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.) and supported by President Bush would offer tax credits of between $600 and $4,000 to buyers of hybrids and other fuel-efficient cars.

Cloudy Day, Sweeping the Doom Away

Artificially enhanced clouds may ease global warming, scientists say

With gloomy scientific report after gloomy scientific report warning about our globally warmed future, finally one group of scientists is offering a ray of sunshine -- in the unlikely form of clouds. Low-altitude, lumpy gray clouds, called stratocumulus, have the desirable quality of being especially reflective at their tops, which the scientists hope to exploit. Since, as atmospheric scientist John Latham says, "clouds become more reflective if you increase the number of droplets in them," the eggheads propose spraying seawater high into the air near stratocumulus clouds, causing salt particles to be absorbed, extra droplets to form, and the clouds to become both more reflective and longer-lasting. Thus would more sunlight be bounced back into space before it can warm the planet. Latham says the group found that in climate models, "[m]odifying an area covering around 3 percent of the Earth's surface produced a cooling that more or less balances the warming from doubled carbon dioxide levels." However, he cautioned, it's no long-term solution. "Our endeavors are directed toward buying time."