Friday, 23 Jun 2006

What do you get when 80,000 blissed-out music fans spend four days in the Tennessee sun? Besides sunburns in inconvenient places, that is. You get trash: 600 tons of it. And you get a captive crowd, which makes it a fine time to offer words of eco-wisdom. Organizers of this year's Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival ramped up the green, using biodiesel-powered generators, hiring an army of recyclers, inviting artists to perform on a solar-powered stage, and more. Sarah van Schagen reports from the scene.


Last year, the National Academy of Sciences was commissioned by Congress to rigorously assess a notorious climate study that has become a flash point in the debate between global-warming denialists and the other 98 percent of us. The study contained a graph that's come to be known as the "hockey stick," which purports to show a spike in global average temperatures in the last 25 or so years, to the highest level in over 1,000 years. Yesterday, the NAS released its report. Though it cast some doubt on ancient temperature measurements and the study's methodology, the report reaffirmed the basic notion that temperature is rising, quickly, and that human activity is to blame. So there you have it. Global warming: really happening. In other climate news, a new study out of the National Center for Atmospheric Research found that global warming was responsible for over half the rise in ocean temperatures that led to the horrific 2005 hurricane season. Sometimes we wish they were wrong ...


Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) has built up a national reputation as a green governor -- taking on climate change, pushing renewable energy, protecting wildlands. But his newly anointed Democratic challenger in the California gubernatorial race, Phil Angelides, says the Governator hasn't gone nearly far enough. Neck and neck in the polls, both hope to get a leg up by hyping their green cred, Muckraker reports.

Hey, Poacher, Leave Those Squids Alone

Pirates cause a social and environmental ruckus in Africa

There's lots of money involved in commercial fishing off African coastlines -- a full trawler can bring in over $400,000. The high stakes, poor regulation, and lack of coast guards lure "pirates," foreign anglers who bully locals and deplete area fish stocks illegally. Many unlicensed vessels trawl with huge nets and discard up to 70 percent of their catch. A Greenpeace venture that tracked more than 100 ships in West African waters over a three-week period found that more than half were fishing illegally. Pirates cost the governments of Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia, and other sub-Saharan countries more than $1.2 billion in stolen fish, unpaid taxes, and lost work every year. "At the current rate, Sierra Leone will not have a fishing industry in the next 10 years," says a former fisheries protection officer for the country. Arrr.


As founder of a group promoting healthy eating among NYC youth and a chef in his own right, Bryant Terry has plenty of food for thought. Organically grown, sustainably harvested, locally sourced food for thought, that is. As InterActivist this week, Terry chews over questions from readers about soul food, Wal-Mart's organic offerings, South Central Farm, his love of okra, and more.

If You Can't Beat 'Em, Coin 'Em

Sierra Club will focus more funds on state and local political races

The Sierra Club plans to substantially boost the amount of money it spends on state and local races this year -- a tacit acknowledgement that the current federal government is a lost cause. Whereas in past years the club put about 5 percent of its campaign funding toward state races, this year state and local races will get about a third. The club plans to disperse $5 million to $10 million in total campaign funding, according to executive director Carl Pope. As Republican radicalism in Washington, D.C., has ground environmental progress to a near halt, many state governments have tired of waiting and forged ahead on their own, with new regulations on everything from capping greenhouse gases to restricting mercury emissions to upping fuel-economy standards. Says Pope, "Whatever happens this fall, Washington is still going to be paralyzed. This pattern of state and local leadership is going to continue environmentally."