Tuesday, 02 May 2006

Sue and Improved

States to sue Bush admin over weak fuel-economy standards for SUVs

Stop us if this sounds familiar: A group of states plans to sue the feds over lax environmental regulations. At this point, the feds have more suits than Armani! Their federalism federalisn't! Take my states ... please! (Hey, we have to liven these stories up somehow.) The latest suit -- to be filed this week by 10 states and two cities -- is over the Bush administration's recently released changes to fuel-economy standards for SUVs and light trucks. The plaintiffs, led by California Attorney General Bill Lockyer, hope to push the administration to toughen the rules. They say the feds violated the law by failing to rigorously analyze the effect of the standards on air quality and climate change. A spokesperson for the Department of Transportation called the lawsuit "predictable." So the feds expect that their governing will piss off the states? That inspires confidence.

The Threat Set

Polar bear and hippo added to list of at-risk species

Animals and plants considered threatened with extinction now number 16,119, including 20 percent of assessed shark and ray species, the polar bear, and the common (no-longer-happy) hippopotamus. So says the latest Red List of Threatened Species, produced after two years of study by the World Conservation Union (confusingly acronymed IUCN). Unregulated global fishing is largely responsible for the shark decline; climate change in the Arctic may reduce polar bear numbers by over 30 percent in the next 45 years; and rampant hunting in the Democratic Republic of Congo has led to a 95 percent decline in hippos in the country since 1994. The Red List includes one in three amphibians, one in four coniferous trees, one in eight birds, and one in four mammals (!). Oh, and 16,119 is a "massive underestimate of the true problem," according to an IUCN researcher. The main culprits: human activity and global warming. Sigh.


Here at Grist, we hear tales of students and professors who use our modest magazine in their classrooms, and we're proud to be part of ye olde educational system. So we were intrigued to hear from Allegheny College professor Eric Pallant, who told us not only that he'd used Grist to teach environmental studies this year, but that all his other resources were web-based too. No more textbooks? What's the world coming to? Pallant explains his reasoning and the results.

Rhymes With Blagojevich

Mercury emissions from power plants on the rise in the U.S.

Mercury emissions in the U.S. fell by nearly 2 percent between 2003 and 2004, according to newly released federal data, but that small bit of good news masks a troubling trend. Mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants were actually up 4 percent over the same period, according to a Chicago Tribune analysis, thanks to increases in 28 states, including Texas, Missouri, and Illinois. The Bush administration's plan for decreasing mercury emissions -- a cap-and-trade system that gives utilities until 2017 to cut emissions by 70 percent -- is widely seen as weak, so many state-level politicians are coming up with their own plans. Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) is pushing to reduce mercury emissions from coal plants by 90 percent over three years, and similar measures are being discussed in Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania. Mercury pollution can cause all sorts of nasty health problems in humans, from messed-up nervous systems to brain damage.

Good Luck, Little Buddy

First captive-bred giant panda released into the wild

Good news for panda lovers (so, basically everybody): On Friday, the first of 103 giant pandas being bred at a Chinese research center was released into the wild. And panda-monium ensued! OK, not really. Four-year-old Xiang Xiang, whose name means "auspicious," wandered without event from his cage into the bamboo forests of China's Sichuan province. He will be tracked with a GPS device as he deals with real-world panda problems like parasites and group assimilation. Giant pandas are highly endangered due to loss of habitat, poaching, and a low reproductive rate; about 1,590 (make that 1,591) live in the wild. While Xiang Xiang's foray is "certainly a significant event," a World Wildlife Fund representative in China suggested that habitat preservation is still a better way of keeping pandas around than captive breeding.