Wednesday, 03 Aug 2005

Lotsa people out there believe oil is on its way out. But like a certain folksy writer, the oil industry thinks these rumors have been greatly exaggerated. In fact, Big Oil is living pretty large these days, thanks in part to subsidies from U.S. taxpayers. But what exactly are these subsidies, a reader asks today: tax breaks? research funds? lollipops? Umbra breaks it down.

We Hear Helsinki Is Beautiful This Time of Year

The desertification of southern Europe may be under way

With 2003's deadly European heat wave still lingering in memory, this summer's spiking temperatures, rampant forest fires, and record droughts along the Mediterranean are increasingly being seen not as freaky aberrations, but signs of global warming. Dozens of fires have burned from Greece to Portugal. Some Spanish water reservoirs are 80 percent below capacity, and provincial governments are sparring over alleged water theft and illegal wells. The whole of Portugal is gripped by a major drought. In France, this year's extreme aridity spawned an invasion of rapacious locusts in the southern Aveyron region. The European Space Agency's Desert Watch project estimates that about 116,000 square miles of Europe's historically verdant Mediterranean coast, home to 16.5 million people, is threatened by desertification -- becoming so hot and dry that it could be useless for agriculture and, needless to say, less appealing to tourists. Says a U.N. sustainable development expert, "Everything is linked to the changing climate."

Hustle and Flow

Montana and mining companies to fund massive river cleanup, restoration

An historic financial settlement between the state of Montana and two mining firms has opened the door to a project of ecological scope virtually unprecedented in the U.S.: the removal of Montana's Milltown dam, located at the confluence of the Clark Fork and Blackfoot rivers, and the restoration of those rivers to their natural, free-flowing states. The $100 million deal resulted from three years of closed-door negotiations; the consent decree will now be available for public comment. Work could begin this fall and be completed by late 2009. Tons of contaminated mud, a toxic legacy of the region's mining industry, will need to be dredged from behind the dam, which is located in the center of one of the nation's largest Superfund sites. Pressure from the public was key to getting all the parties to negotiate and create a big-picture solution, said local rivers advocate Tracy Stone-Manning.

Arsenic and Old Rice

Arsenic levels in U.S. rice could pose health risk

U.S.-grown rice contains an average of 1.4 to 5 times the amount of arsenic found in rice from Europe, India, or Bangladesh. According to a study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, people consuming American rice at a "subsistence level" -- about one pound of dry rice a day -- may get a dose of arsenic over the maximum recommended by the World Health Organization. It's unclear whether or not this level of exposure is dangerous: Arsenic taken up into plants can bind to carbon-based molecules, creating organic arsenic that's less toxic than the inorganic variety that typically contaminates drinking water. However, a Taiwanese study has linked arsenic-tainted rice to increased bladder cancer. Much of the land now used in the U.S. for rice cultivation once grew cotton, and researchers think that arsenic-based pesticides used in cotton farming have persisted in the soil.

Britty Twister

Estrogen exposure blamed for upswing in male chest-reduction surgery

British men are flocking to clinics for surgery to reduce their man mammaries. Here we pause a moment to savor that sentence ... OK, done. U.K. doctors blame increased exposure to female hormones for a reported doubling over one year of the number of operations for gynecomastia, a condition in which men grow bosoms similar in structure and composition to those of women -- as distinct from the mere fat deposits adorning portly TV-sitcom husbands. A society of U.K. plastic surgeons reported that members performed about 53 male chest-reduction surgeries apiece in 2004 compared to 22 in 2003. Likely causes of the estrogen exposure include traces of women's contraceptive pills in the water supply and hormones fed to animals raised for human consumption. Increased female hormones in the environment are also blamed for falling sperm counts in British men, whose ongoing emasculation is raising world schadenfreude to levels not seen since the Thames flooded with raw sewage almost a year ago.