Thursday, 12 May 2005

The 30th-anniversary edition of Ernest Callenbach's cult-classic novel Ecotopia has hit the shelves. Readers flocking to the book for the first time seeking an inspiring vision of a sustainable society may be surprised to find a loopy mélange of free love, Marxism, paganism, ritual warfare, legalized drugs, and therapy speak. Though often characterized as a political work, the inhabitants of Ecotopia are so numbingly alike that politics are superfluous, writes reviewer Pat Joseph. But despite its dubious aesthetic merits, it can't be dismissed as a relic.

They're Just Not That Into You

Low Northwest salmon run confounds fishers, closes fisheries

Conservationists, salmon enthusiasts, and fisheries managers along the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest are wondering, Is it something we said? They've been stood up by thousands of chinook salmon that were expected to swim up the river to spawn this season, but never arrived. Original projections estimated some 254,000 chinook would pass the first of many dams along the Columbia this spring, but so far only about 52,000 have, and dejected fishery experts are now expecting only a few thousand more, perhaps totaling a paltry 80,000. The numbers are so low that Idaho, Oregon, and Washington banned chinook fishing outright, devastating the region's sport-fishing industry and disappointing local fishers, among them Indian tribes with treaty rights to the salmon. "A lot of people had declared the salmon crisis over," said Buzz Ramsey, sales manager for a fishing-tackle company. "Last year's disappointment and this year's disappointing run shows we're really not over it." Many enviros and tribal officials blame federal dams along the river for the disappearance of the fish.


Eco-minded institutional investors pledged this week to channel $1 billion into clean-technology investments and take other steps to help combat risks posed by climate change. The action plan emerged from a summit at U.N. headquarters in New York where leaders of the green-suit crowd -- everyone from pension-fund managers and state treasurers to Al Gore and former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill -- met to talk about how environmentally concerned shareholders could prod U.S. corporations into facing up to the challenges of global warming. Emily Gertz sends a dispatch from the scene.

Uncle Sam Wants You! ... To Clean Up After Him

Closed military bases frequently icky

Irony alert: Hot on the heels of news that the Pentagon is appealing to Congress for exemptions from air and hazardous-waste laws comes word that closed military bases are ridden with, uh, dirty air and hazardous waste. Thirty-four military bases shut down since 1988 are on the U.S. EPA Superfund list of toxic sites, and the upcoming round of base closings will likely add more to that list. An Associated Press investigation found that there are more than 100 military sites where uncompleted cleanups worry the EPA, though the Pentagon has spent some $8.3 billion on toxic cleanups and environmental compliance during the last four rounds of base closings and realignments. Most of the delays in handing over closed bases to non-military hands have to do with environmental problems ranging from contaminated groundwater to radioactive materials, leaded paint, and asbestos. No doubt the substantial environmental costs and the request for environmental exemptions are unrelated.

Power Ploy

California flirts with high-tech electricity meters, new pricing scheme

California, ever the leader in innovative greenish programs, is planning yet another experiment, this time involving electricity use and pricing. With up to 15 million high-tech meters, at a cost of around $3.6 billion, three California utilities plan to meticulously track consumers' minute-by-minute energy usage (something current meters can't do) and raise energy prices during peak hours to encourage conservation. Next-generation meters could eventually be used to remotely control energy-sucking appliances -- that is, utilities themselves could turn down your too-high air conditioning or refrigerator (creepy, but potentially energy-saving). The meters and the accompanying "dynamic pricing" scheme have gotten mixed reviews from consumers and businesses involved in test programs, but Severin Borenstein of U.C.-Berkeley's Energy Institute is optimistic: "I think we're going to find there's a lot of price responsiveness at the residential level," he said. The California Public Utilities Commission is still reviewing the proposal.