Thursday, 15 Sep 2005

You might think of The Weather Channel as the skippable space between MTV and Comedy Central. Au contraire. The station is more with-it than you think: it even has a full-time reporter designated solely to the climate-change beat. How many mainstream media outlets can make that boast? Heidi Cullen, a climatologist by training, recently chatted with Grist's Amanda Griscom Little about covering Katrina, sexing up global warming for the masses, and more.

Flood Is Thicker Than Water

Assessing toxic hazards in New Orleans challenges the EPA

The post-Katrina mess of pollution along the Gulf Coast is "the largest national disaster that we at EPA or, we believe, that the nation has faced," U.S. EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said yesterday. Serious health problems threaten the region, he said, including floodwaters tainted with sewage-related bacteria and toxic chemicals, and a shortage of clean drinking water. The New Orleans area has also been hit with five major oil spills in the wake of the hurricane. The EPA is testing floodwaters regularly for more than 100 chemical compounds and has detected dangerously high levels of three substances: lead, hexavalent chromium, and arsenic -- the latter two known human carcinogens. Lower amounts of other chemicals, including pesticides and metals related to petroleum products, have also been detected. UCLA environmental health expert John Froines notes that some of these compounds can be absorbed through the skin, and that thousands of relief workers and law-enforcement officers wading through the waters every day may be at significant risk.


Since Katrina blew through New Orleans, discussion has been raging about whether, and how, to rebuild the legendary city. Some say it can never be the same as it was -- and that might be a good thing. Here's a chance, environmental advocates contend, to clean up the city's highly polluted act, restore coastal wetlands, and implement urban planning that makes sense, looks purdy, and treats people fairly. A chance to become an example for others. A chance to replace those plastic Mardi Gras beads with hemp. (We kid!) Today, Timothy Lange explores the promise of an "Eco New Orleans."

Giving Us the Business

World's biggest firms give lip service to cutting CO2 but lag on results

More than 70 percent of the world's 500 largest companies by market capitalization volunteered information on how climate change is affecting their businesses for a survey this year, but the info they released is not exactly heartening. According to a new report by the Carbon Disclosure Project, a London-based initiative backed by institutional investors that control more than $21 trillion of assets, 51 percent of the companies participating in the survey had put in place an emissions-reduction program, but fewer than one in seven had actually cut their carbon-dioxide emissions in the past year. In fact, at more than one in six of the companies, emissions had gone up. Companies that refused to participate in the survey are catching some flak, including Apple, Boeing, Morgan Stanley, News Corp., Time Warner, and Wal-Mart. Said a spokesperson for News Corp., parent company of Fox News, "I think it's pretty obvious that a media company does not have a carbon issue."

Feline Groovy

German inventor denies using dead cats to make biodiesel

German inventor Christian Koch says he's patented a way to convert trash into eco-friendly, high-quality biodiesel fuel that costs one-fifth the going price of diesel in his home country. To produce the alternative fuel, Koch claims he uses waste including paper, textiles, and plastics -- but no dead cats. Got that? Koch is trying to set the record straight after the German paper Bild ran a story claiming he used run-over cats as raw material -- "for a tank he needs 20 pussies," read Tuesday's headline. On Wednesday, the paper asked, "Can you really make fuel out of cats?" and quoted an angry Wolfgang Apel, president of the German Society for the Protection of Animals, who admonished that using felines in such a fashion "is outlawed in Germany." Bild now says it was just trying to make a theoretical point about Koch's process. "I've never used cats and would never think of that," says the inventor. "At most the odd toad may have jumped in."