Wednesday, 17 Aug 2005

Summer school never looked so good. A dozen University of Washington students just got back from a trip to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the highlight of a class focusing on what may be the most hotly disputed chunk of land in the whole U.S. of A. Journalist David B. Williams tagged along as the students rafted into the area that could be opened to oil drilling, met with reps of the native Inupiat and Gwich'in people, got spun by political operatives, and saw for themselves what all the fuss is about.

The Expiration Superhighway

Sales of endangered critters rampant on the web

What do deviant porn and endangered elephants have in common? No, not that, you twisted perv! The answer: Both are easy to find in the anonymous wilds of the world wide web. The International Fund for Animal Welfare found that in just one week, nearly 9,000 wildlife products were for sale on English-language websites alone (including eBay), with at least 70 percent involving species protected under international law. IFAW documented live animals on the block including a gorilla for $8,141, a two-year-old giraffe for $15,000, and a young Siberian tiger for $70,000. Other listings included more than 500 turtle and tortoise shells, nearly 250 wild-cat products, 2,630 reptile goods, and over 5,500 elephant products, including an elephant-foot ashtray. IFAW is calling for more international cooperation to curtail what it calls a "cyber black market," but law-enforcement officials say stopping wildlife crime is generally a low priority.


For every one person who's running her car on french-fry grease, there are approximately 57,682 others out there who want to. At least, that's how it looks from here, as questions on the topic pour in. Today a reader asks Umbra which is a better choice for her diesel Mercedes, biodiesel or straight vegetable oil. And Umbra gives a road-tested answer: it all depends.

Call Me Fishmeal

Cape Cod's namesake may not rebound unless fishing is further curtailed

Cod off the Massachusetts coast have declined almost 25 percent since 2001, and some fear the once-abundant fish may never bounce back unless fishing is further restricted. Many marine scientists worry that the overall cod population may be well below what's needed for survival and recovery. Georges Bank cod were long a mainstay of New England's fisheries, but crashed in the mid-1990s after years of being caught faster than they could reproduce. Regulators have imposed sharp overall cutbacks in catches, but overfishing is still sometimes allowed to buoy the region's fishing industry. Conservationists argue that maintaining cutbacks is key to cod recovery; as fisheries expert Andrew Rosenberg put it, "They're still fishing them, and when you kill them, they tend to die."

Trade to Black

U.K. market leads the pack in lucrative carbon-emissions trading

Newfangled carbon trading has become quite lucrative in the Old World, where the European Union's fledgling carbon market has taken off. Many doubted that the emissions-trading scheme (part of E.U. plans to meet Kyoto emissions-reduction targets) would prosper, especially since the U.S. -- world leader in market-driven economics -- didn't come to the party. But au contraire: The average daily volume of emissions trading increased threefold between January and June, to 1.1 million tons, and the value of a carbon credit more than tripled. London traders have embraced the new scheme, turning carbon trading into one of the fastest-growing market sectors in the City of London (the U.K.'s Wall Street equivalent). Some U.K. analysts say that British companies will soon have to factor the cost of emissions and other "climate risks" into their financials if they want to maintain market credibility.