Thursday, 03 Aug 2006

Dalai Drama

China plans massive diversion of Tibetan river water

The Chinese never met a problem they couldn't solve with a few billion dollars and a massive engineering project out of scale with anything ever attempted before by humanity. The latest is a $37 billion undertaking which would divert water from rivers in the high reaches of Tibet -- which, when you think about it, don't really need all that water anyway -- through an elaborate, 190-mile series of canals and tunnels to the western reaches of the over-tapped Yellow River, which feeds the water-parched northern regions of China. The diversion would initially carry about 1 trillion gallons a year, rising to 4.5 trillion gallons over time. Construction could start as soon as 2010. The technical challenges are formidable: for one, the proposed route would divert water from an altitude of 13,600 feet, where it's usually frozen. Much of Tibet's water comes from glaciers that are in the midst of melting, so, as Tibet expert Tashi Tsering understates it, "This project is definitely not meant to develop Tibet."


We've heard about the devastating effects of mountaintop-removal mining on the living, both people and landscapes. But what about its effects on the dead? Jessica Tzerman pokes around in coal country to find out how this aggressive mining technique is destroying family cemeteries, historical graveyards, and other sacred sites -- and what activists are doing about it.

Vail Hails Gales

Vail Resorts to be second-biggest corporate wind-power buyer in U.S.

Colorado-based ski-resort company (and one-time eco-vandal target) Vail Resorts announced this week that it will buy enough wind power to offset all of the electricity it uses at its five ski areas, as well as in its corporate offices and stores. The company's promise to purchase about 152,000 megawatt-hours of wind-power credits a year makes it the second-largest corporate buyer of wind power in the U.S., behind 458,000-MWh-a-year natural grocer Whole Foods, which went wind-powered earlier this year, and just ahead of 150,000-MWh-a-year Starbucks, now pushed to No. 3. To encourage average citizens to make the conversion too, Vail is offering a free or discounted lift ticket to electricity consumers who offset their own power use for one year through Renewable Choice Energy, via the Vail website. Attention poor ski bums: Offsets start at $5 a month; lift tickets start much, much higher.

Smokey Robbin's On

Urban-style crime in national forests seems to be on the rise

In some parts of the U.S., being a forest ranger isn't the cushy job you might imagine. Far from keeping cartoon bears away from picnic baskets, rangers have been confronting a rising tide of urban-style crime: everything from domestic violence and drunken driving to armed robbery and marijuana cultivation. "It's really a microcosm of where we are with society," says Jack Gregory, head of the Law Enforcement and Investigations Branch of the U.S. Forest Service's southern region. The past 10 years have seen a marked increase in the number of violent incidents involving forest law enforcement -- remarkable considering the number of USFS law-enforcement officers has declined by a third since 1993. There are now only 660 such officers to patrol some 193 million Forest Service acres, one for every 292,000 acres of land. And it can't be easy striking terror in the hearts of evildoers while wearing a goofy hat.

Bawh-Chikka-Baaawh

Report accuses U.K. media of indulging in global-warming "porn"

The first comprehensive analysis of climate-change coverage in the U.K. media has deemed it "confusing, contradictory, and chaotic." Produced by the Institute for Public Policy Research, the report, "Warm Words," accuses media outlets of presenting apocalyptic pictures and portents as a kind of "climate porn" to sell copies. Trouble is, just as coverage of the problem is grandiose and scaremongering, coverage of solutions tends to be picayune and infantilizing. "The style of climate-change discourse," says communications consultant Solitaire Townsend, "is that we maximize the problem and minimize the solution." In contrast to pictures of melting glaciers and mega-hurricanes -- which the report says amount to a "counsel of despair" -- efficient light bulbs and commuter bikes can seem somewhat trivial. We propose that all media outlets choose porn names. We call dibs on Gristi Lix. We love you long time!