Friday, 21 Oct 2005

What do you get when you mix a bunch of celebrities with an environmental awards show? You get the giddies, of course! Vanessa McGrady hit the green carpet for Grist at this week's Environmental Media Awards ceremony in L.A. and reports back about Ed Begley's showering habits, Nicole Richie's mad skillz, and what happens when you get ink on a star's cashmere sweater. A magic carpet ride, indeed.

When It Rainforests, It Pours

Amazon logging damage: now with twice the depressingness

You know all that damage logging has done to the Amazon rainforest? It's not as bad as you thought. It's twice as bad! Researchers have developed a way to wring far more detail out of satellite photos, a bittersweet accomplishment in light of the results. Turns out the practice of illegal "selective logging" -- removing individual commercially valuable trees rather than whole swaths of forest, to better conceal the devilry -- is "much more widespread than previously thought," says Greg Asner, lead author of a study published today in Science. In fact, depending on the region examined, overall forest damage is anywhere from 60 to 123 percent worse than previously reported. Selective logging, if conducted heedlessly (as one assumes illegal loggers conduct it), can damage surrounding trees and vegetation, increase soil erosion, hurt endangered species, increase the risk of forest fires, and dramatically reduce the ability of forests to serve as "carbon sinks." Otherwise it's peachy.


Last week a reader wondered, What are the environmental implications of eating soy vs. eating meat? Not surprisingly, Umbra's response failed to please everyone. Our veg-head and carnivore readers alike pounced on the opportunity to point out soy's contribution to Amazon deforestation, shame Umbra for not mentioning animal rights, and suggest deer hunting as an alternative. We're soy-ry!

Exhaust in Translation

Green cars all the rage at Tokyo Motor Show

The most buzzworthy attractions this week at the 39th Tokyo Motor Show weren't the biggest or the most powerful but the most eco-friendly. Hoping to dazzle drivers battered by high gas prices, automakers debuted a dizzying array of low-pollution, high fuel-efficiency vehicles -- some electric, some powered by hydrogen fuel cells, some with hybrid gas-electric motors, and a few with combinations thereof. The big story behind the scenes, of course, is the hefty can of whoop-ass opened by Japanese automakers Toyota and Honda on their American counterparts over the last few years. Chastened by bad financials and bad press, Ford, GM, and Chrysler ostentatiously greened their rides, rolling out a number of shiny, gadget-filled concept models. In practical terms, Honda and Toyota are still years ahead, but beleaguered U.S. companies aren't giving up. "Is that [hybrid] race over?" asked one GM VP. "Not at all."


Whitman College professor Phil Brick tries to emphasize cross-cultural communication in his eco-politics classes -- which is why he takes groups of (mostly blue-state) students on a semester-long trek through Western red states to learn more about environmental issues. In answering reader questions, Brick chats about keeping environmentalism nonpartisan, encouraging his students to be eco-citizens, choosing a Chevy Suburban for trek transport, and more.

A Journey of a Gazillion Miles Begins With a Single Inch

Wal-Mart declares it's going green

After months of scattered signs -- green-built Supercenters in Texas and Colorado, a program to conserve thousands of acres of land through The Nature Conservancy -- Wal-Mart executives have made it official: Their company is going green. Or, well, greenish. In a speech at a biz school yesterday, CEO H. Lee Scott Jr. said Wal-Mart would be putting more pressure on its overseas suppliers to meet environmental and social standards. At a meeting of the Sustainable Packaging Forum, VP Matt Kistler announced that some of Wal-Mart's petroleum-based packaging would be phased out in favor of corn-based packaging, saying the company would thereby "save the equivalent of 800,000 gallons of gasoline and reduce more than 11 million pounds of greenhouse-gas emissions." At a meeting of the Corporate Council for Conservation, VP Andrew Ruben announced the company would be selling clothes made from organically grown cotton starting next year. Though it will be a long time before activists soften to the retail giant, its immense size and power make it a potential game changer. We'll see.