Monday, 09 Jan 2006

We're just one week into this election year and already a cadre of D.C.-based environmental leaders is elbow-deep in plots to green Congress come November. Top priority: defeating Rep. Richard Pombo (R-Calif.), chair of the House Resources Committee and champion of a lengthy list of environmental rollbacks, from weakening the Endangered Species Act to selling off national parks. Muckraker examines Pombo's prospects.

Where There's Smokescreen There's Ire

U.S. and Asia-Pacific countries gear up for not-Kyoto climate meeting

The first meeting of the Asia-Pacific climate partnership will kick off this Wednesday in Australia. The six participating nations -- Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea, and the U.S. -- will emphasize the transfer of clean technologies to developing countries, instead of Kyoto-style emissions caps. But eco-advocates -- who are being excluded from the confab -- say the meet's a smokescreen for some of the globe's biggest polluters. "It's about how big business and bureaucrats can best ensure that the climate-change agenda and the politics of confronting ... global warming doesn't derail their profit taking," says Greenpeacer Danny Kennedy. Australian Environment Minister Ian Campbell counters that public-private collaboration is crucial to curbing climate change. But now that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has opted to remain in Washington (to monitor developments in the Middle East) instead of jetting to Sydney, some think the meeting may already be a bust.


As president of sport-utility-bike company Xtracycle and cofounder of a nonprofit that provides load-carrying bicycles to workers in the developing world, Kipchoge Spencer is a big fan of the two-wheeled transit alternative. This week's InterActivist, Spencer chats about owning three bikes and no car, working on an MTV reality show, scheming to wheel Cameron Diaz to the Oscars, and more. Send him a question by noon PST on Wednesday; we'll publish his answers to selected questions on Friday.

Northern Blights

Flame retardants are yet another toxic threat to polar bears

New research confirms that polar bears -- for years known to be victims of northward-spreading toxic substances -- are accumulating in their bodies worrying levels of flame retardants called polybrominated diphenyl ethers. The effects of this PBDE contamination are unknown, but similar chemicals are believed to be weakening the bears' immune systems, changing their bone structure, and skewing their sex hormones. According to research published in December in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, polar bears in eastern Greenland and Norway's Svalbard islands are the most highly contaminated of all Arctic populations. Scientists believe that most of the PBDEs are coming from northwestern Europe and the east coast of North America. In the U.S., they're widely used in manufacturing furniture, carpet padding, electronics, and plastics.


Ah, those wacky green dilemmas. Today, a reader from Italy wonders if condoms are recyclable. Advice maven Umbra Fisk cuts to the chase, then spins the question into an opportunity to review the success of her 2005 New Year's resolutions.

The Mod Quad

Green buildings, sustainability studies going mainstream on campus

More than 110 colleges and universities around the U.S. have or are building eco-friendly structures, saving on energy costs and attracting students who want to go to a school that "gets" being green. At Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, for example, students designed a green roof that now features prominently in class projects, and a recently constructed green dorm -- billed by school officials as the first in the country -- has become a living lab for students, architects, and engineers studying energy use and sustainable construction. Carnegie Mellon is integrating sustainability into coursework, and leading in a national effort to green up the nation's 1,500-odd engineering programs. The idea is "to take some of the ideas of sustainability out of the fringes and put them into the mainstream," says engineering professor and green advocate Cliff Davidson.