Wednesday, 06 Apr 2005

You might have heard by now that Grist is giving away a trip to Iceland. Despite the fact that its name conjures images of a frozen, forbidding landscape, it turns out there are green fields, verdant forests, and at least 127 people there! We've got to go track down our third-grade teachers and tell them they were right. While we're gone, take a look at photographer Layne Kennedy's gorgeous images from the country. And try not to drool on your desk. (To find out how to win a trip to Iceland, click here.)

Canadian Breakin'

Automakers sign emissions deal with Canada, say nyah-nyah to Cali

Major automakers signed a deal with the Canadian government yesterday that will have them voluntarily reduce their fleets' greenhouse-gas emissions by roughly 25 percent by 2010. Though it takes the heat off them in Canada, where mandatory federal regulations had been threatened, it puts automakers in a tricky public-relations position in the U.S., where they are suing California over the state's recent adoption of greenhouse-gas standards for vehicles. There are important differences between the Canada and California situations. While California's limits basically demand improved fuel economy from autos, Canada's deal simply calls for a total reduction of emissions tonnage, which gives automakers more flexibility. Also, the Canadian deal is countrywide, while California's standards threaten the auto industry with a patchwork of state-by-state regulations. But still, the "optics" are bad, as they say in the PR biz, allowing people like Roland Hwang of the Natural Resources Defense Council to say things like, "Americans shouldn't have to cross the border to buy cleaner cars like prescription drugs." Zing!

The Shipping Spews

Shipping line agrees to pay $25 million for illegal oil dumping

Evergreen International, one of the world's largest shipping lines, agreed Monday to pay a $25 million fine after pleading guilty to 24 felony charges and one misdemeanor involving secretly dumping oil off the coasts of five U.S. states and purposefully lying to U.S. Coast Guard officials about the practice. The plea agreement follows a four-year criminal probe, which found that at least seven of the company's 140 ships were using what investigators call a "magic pipe" to bypass required oil-water separators. Officials said Evergreen employees were told to deny knowledge of the illegal dumping and tried to hide evidence by cleaning or painting pipes, altering ship records, shutting off alarm systems, and even throwing a pipe section overboard. The $25 million fine is the largest to date in a federal case involving deliberate pollution from a ship.

Announcing: Business as Usual

Plan for Colorado River to aid wildlife, preserve intensive water use

Federal water managers this week joined the states of California, Arizona, and Nevada in trumpeting a new 50-year plan to aid native wildlife along parts of a 400-mile stretch of the Colorado River from Lake Mead to the Mexican border. Prompted by a 1997 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ruling that the Bureau of Reclamation's dams and other water diversions along the Colorado imperiled endangered species of birds and fish, federal and state managers dreamed up the new plan to stay in compliance. But instead of removing dams, using controlled water releases to mimic the Colorado's natural flooding, or even just diverting less water, the plan does just enough to keep water agencies from violating environmental laws, while largely preserving the status quo. It calls for planting new cottonwood groves to provide habitat for endangered birds, but the groves will have to be artificially irrigated to keep them alive, and populations of native fish will be sustained by raising them in hatcheries for release into the river.

A Hug's Life

Survey reveals truth to tree-hugging Californian stereotype

It is often said that Californians are unfairly stereotyped as bleeding-heart tree huggers. Turns out it's not true. The "unfairly" part, that is. A new survey reveals that more than 60 percent of Californians really have hugged trees, some 24 percent have surfed, and 21 percent think mud baths are totally rad. A questionnaire compiled by marketing professor Dennis Tootelian of Cal State, Sacramento, asked 500 folks from five California cities -- Los Angeles, San Francisco, Fresno, Sacramento, and San Diego -- about their true nature. Kevin Starr, author and former state historian, isn't surprised by the findings: "I see tree-hugging as an aspect of California's greenness." It's also part of the state's history, he adds, what with the establishment of Yosemite National Park in the 1860s and the birth of the Sierra Club in Berkeley under John Muir. "Moved by the state's natural diversity and grandeur," Starr says, "Californians have largely been protective of their state's environment."