Monday, 20 Jun 2005

Twelve years ago, Al Norman led a successful campaign to keep Wal-Mart out of his hometown. Now, his organization Sprawl-Busters helps community groups fight off big-box sprawl all over the U.S. As InterActivist this week, Norman talks up smart land-use planning, explains why friends don't let friends shop at Wal-Mart, and more. Send him a question of your own by noon PDT on Wednesday, June 22; we'll publish his responses to selected questions on Friday.

Cattle Star Redactica

Bush admin alters science to support expanded grazing on public lands

In developing new proposed regulations for cattle grazing on public lands, the Bush administration intentionally obscured the damage grazing causes, according to two government scientists. Erick Campbell and Bill Brookes, both recently retired from the Bureau of Land Management, determined in an environmental impact statement that the new rules, which would increase grazing on 160 million acres of public land, would harm water resources and wildlife, including endangered species. But in the statement accompanying the newly released regulations, lo, the science has been transformed. The rules, which once would have had a "significant adverse impact," are now "beneficial to animals." (Well, cows are animals, we suppose.) They would restrain BLM staffers from acting quickly to limit grazing that's damaging land; lengthy studies would now be required instead. And public input on grazing decisions would no longer be mandated, merely allowed. While a BLM official calls the changes part of the agency's standard review process, Campbell and Brookes are dismayed. "They rewrote everything," says Campbell. "It's a crime."


If you're a conscientious consumer, then this newfangled internet thing might turn out to be the sustainable, sweatshop-free shopping mall of your dreams. (That's assuming you're not one of those fusty people who has to touch and try on every garment before buying it.) Umbra helps a reader who's sick of prowling through secondhand stores and peering at labels find a few new places to get green duds.

Storm Affront

Global warming to cause X-treme hurricanes; Sprite sponsorship in works

Coming soon to our warming globe: extreme hurricanes. Research just published in the journal Science suggests that as higher temperatures draw more ocean water into the atmosphere, hurricanes and typhoons will intensify. Over the course of the 20th century, water vapor over the oceans increased by 5 percent overall and 10 percent in areas where hurricanes form, and will jump an additional 7 percent for every 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit the planet warms. Climatologists can't determine if there will be more storms -- numbers tend to hold steady worldwide from year to year -- but worry about the punch they'll pack. "It's not just about the hurricane itself or even the strength of the winds," says the study's lead author, Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. "It's every bit as much about the rainfall and the flooding." According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the five hurricanes that hit the U.S. in 2004 caused more than $850 million in flood damage. Batten down the hatches!

Cool Aid

Groups say foreign aid to Africa should be joined with climate action

U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair's top two agenda items for the upcoming G8 meeting of industrialized countries -- aid to Africa and climate change -- are intimately linked, say a pair of new reports. Britain's leading scientific body, the Royal Society, argues that Africans are uniquely vulnerable to climate change, as more extreme temperatures and changes in rainfall are likely to be particularly ruinous on a continent where 70 percent of people rely on small-scale, rain-fed agriculture. Meanwhile, the Working Group on Climate Change and Development, a coalition of green and charity groups, argues that efforts to reduce poverty in Africa are hopeless without concomitant efforts from G8 countries to reduce their own greenhouse-gas emissions, increase support for local renewable-energy and small-scale farming projects in Africa, and end their exploitation of the continent's fossil fuels. The group's exhortation to "join the dots" comes at a bad time for Blair, who's got the aid dot more or less under control, but is running into resistance (cough U.S. cough) on the climate-change dot.