Wednesday, 29 Mar 2006

When Eric Mann first encountered environmentalists, he saw them as a bunch of "arrogant, racist airheads." When Frances Beinecke first encountered environmentalists, she felt she'd found her cause. Now, both are tireless proponents of environmental sanity, but they work in very different ways. Mann is director of the L.A.-based Labor/Community Strategy Center, where he fights for environmental justice, immigrant and labor rights, and economic equity. Beinecke is president of Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the nation's biggest green groups. We got the two of them talking about poverty, the environment, and building a stronger movement; find out what they had to say.


Take thousands of squalid, rickety, flammable dwellings, cram them onto unstable hillsides, toxic dumps, flood-prone valleys, or eroding river banks, fill them with desperate poor people, and what do you get? Slums -- a human and environmental nightmare. Mike Davis examines the troubling trend that has impoverished people flocking to dirty, dangerous urban areas around the globe, and the way the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have exacerbated the crisis.

Labor Rattling

Britain will likely miss target for slashing greenhouse-gas emissions

For years, Tony Blair and his Labor Party have waved the climate-change flag, proclaiming danger and pledging to reduce Britain's greenhouse-gas emissions 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2010. All very inspiring, except for the whole not-actually-doing-it thing. Yesterday, after an 18-month climate-change policy review, Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett announced that the country would likely only make it to 15 to 18 percent. The failure isn't only ecological, as scientists, opposition parties, and greens denounce Labor for being all talk and no action. Blair -- until recently one of the biggest boosters of Kyoto's mandatory reductions -- has been inching toward the Bush administration's position: calling for a new international agreement that would emphasize technological development over emissions caps when Kyoto expires at the end of 2012. "In attempting to try to bring Bush on board he's moving so far that we might end up without a coherent framework," said Mike Childs of Friends of the Earth.


Hot on the heels of last week's free-range chicken dance, advice maven Umbra Fisk again dashes the hopes of food idealists everywhere by taking on the subjects of pesticide use and organic agriculture. Hint: the two are not mutually exclusive.

The Biggest Loser

Feds to lose at least $20 billion in oil-company royalties, report finds

Remember that outrageous story about how oil companies are going to gank U.S. taxpayers out of some $7 billion in royalties for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico? Well, time to crank up the outrage-o-meter: Turns out, based on a new report from the federal Government Accountability Office, taxpayers will actually be getting screwed out of $20 billion over the next 25 years. The report, presented in a private briefing Monday to congressional staffers and apparently leaked to The New York Times, cautions that the loss may quadruple to $80 billion if gas and oil firms win a lawsuit seeking further royalty reductions. Federal incentives designed to persuade petro-companies to drill in federally leased deepwater areas in the gulf were created about a decade ago, when energy prices were depressed. But oil prices hit $66 a barrel yesterday, oil companies are awash in record profits, a new estimate pegs the cost of the Iraq war at between $1 trillion and $2 trillion, the deficit has topped $8 trillion ... you see what we're saying.

Oiling for a Flight

The top 10 best places to live during an oil crisis

Pack yer bags, kids -- there's an oil crisis coming and we're moving to the Big Apple! Eco-website SustainLane has come up with a list of the 10 U.S. cities best able to weather an oil crisis, and New Yawk is number one. The most heavily weighted factor was mobility; in an oil crunch there's likely to be less of it. Thus, the top 10 were the usual suspects, big cities that have managed to avoid (relatively) excessive sprawl while encouraging citizens to use public transport. Philadelphia made No. 5 for its emphasis on local food production; geek-mecca Seattle came in at No. 8 for its passion for wireless connectivity and telecommuting. Cities singled out for their unsustainability were Arlington, Texas (population: 300,000; buses and trains: 0) and Oklahoma City, deemed the worst big-ish city in the nation to get stuck in when gas prices spike. Oooooklahoma should look into harvesting that wind sweepin' down the plain ...