Monday, 14 Feb 2005

Karen Hundt says the biggest challenge facing environmentalists is not out in the wilderness -- it's in the cities. What better recycling could be done, she asks, than to reuse the buildings and sewers already built in downtown areas? She helps to do just that in Chattanooga, Tenn., which has become a model for urban redevelopment. Hundt explains why she believes suburban sprawl is nasty, but developers aren't -- in InterActivist, today on the Grist Magazine website. Send Hundt a question of your own by noon PST on Wednesday, Feb. 16; we'll publish Hundt's responses on Friday.

That's Trawl, Folks

Bottom-trawling ban proposed for sensitive Alaskan waters

Paving the way for the largest fishing ban of its kind, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council voted unanimously last Thursday to ban bottom trawling on more than half a million square miles of ocean near Alaska's Aleutian Islands -- an area more than twice the size of California. Bottom trawling involves dragging weighted nets along the ocean floor, essentially bulldozing everything in their path, most notably deep-water corals and other sensitive habitat areas. Conservation groups applauded the move, of course, but so did fishing groups, recognizing that conservation is needed if the ecosystem is to continue producing healthy fish populations. The ban would apply largely to areas where little or no trawling is currently done, but it would limit the future spread of fishing. As bottom-trawl fisher David Fraser wrote to the council members, "If in the future we are unable to harvest up to our quotas, it doesn't mean we should seek new fishing grounds. It means we need to reexamine whether we have been managing conservatively enough."


Just in time for Valentine's Day, a twitterpated reader asks our advice guru Umbra Fisk if she's single and requests a photo. Umbra admits this isn't the first love letter she's received. Afraid it's also not going to be the last, she addresses all of her e-crushes in Ask Umbra -- today on the Grist Magazine website.

Brazilness as Usual

Amazon forests not doing well

If Amazonian rainforests are, as the old saying goes, the lungs of the world, then our respiratory outlook is not good. The forests face a trio of threats. There are fire and logging, as poor farmers, cattle ranchers, and agribusinesses clear land for crops or cattle. Then there's "dieback," whereby the forest vegetation dies from lack of water, which is driven by drought, which is driven by climate change, which is driven by excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is exacerbated by fire, logging, and dieback in the Amazonian rainforest. Ah, such tangled webs we weave. Attempts to break the cycle have been inauspicious. Last year, Brazil's Workers' Party, led by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, suspended logging licenses in an attempt to slow deforestation of the Amazon. In response, loggers and their allies rioted, blockaded a major highway, burned buses, threatened to seize an airport and dump poisonous chemicals in rivers, and promised that "blood will flow." The government vowed not to "cave into blackmail," and then, uh, caved into blackmail, restoring the licenses last week. And so the world's lung cancer progresses, untreated.


Modern zoos are built with a range of natural-looking features and diverse stimuli, but modern cities are more like the barren, featureless cages of 19th century zoos. This is one of the provocative insights that got Emily Gertz's brain spinning at Verdopolis, a New York City confab on the "future green city." She reports back on what cities designed for humans might look like, as well as the current state of carbon emissions trading markets (much more exciting than they sound!), in Dispatches -- today on the Grist Magazine website.

Six Percent Under

Canadian businesses find boon in Kyoto

Canadian renewable-energy companies are anxiously awaiting Feb. 16. That's the day the Kyoto Protocol goes into effect, and with Canada's target of a 6 percent cut in emissions from 1990 levels by 2010, companies selling green, low-or-no-emissions technology are expecting to see quite a bit of their own green. "What's happening -- which is a very pivotal change and I think timely -- is that we're broadening our visibility," says unwitting punster Art Aylesworth of Carmanah Technologies Inc., which develops solar-powered lighting systems. David Demers, whose company's technology allows engines to run on alternative fuels, agrees: "It's going to help us encourage people to look at alternatives, it's going to help us be more energy efficient." Canada's national plan for implementing Kyoto will be announced on Feb. 23 along with the federal budget.