Monday, 28 Aug 2006

If you live in a wildfire-prone area, you've no doubt seen them: the planes buzzing overhead, letting loose a cloud of red ... stuff. What exactly is in that anti-combustible cocktail, and is it dangerous for the animals and humans below? Advice maven Umbra Fisk jumps in with an answer.

April Showers Bring April Flowers

Spring is springing earlier in Europe, study finds

Across Europe, spring is arriving an average of six to eight days earlier than it did 30 years ago, according to new research published in the journal Global Change Biology. Scientists studied 125,000 sets of observations of 542 plant and 19 animal species in 21 European countries, and found that nearly 80 percent of all leafing, flowering, and fruiting is now happening earlier in the year. "Not only do we clearly demonstrate change in the timing of the seasons, but that change is much stronger in countries that have experienced more warming," said Tim Sparks, one of the report's authors. In Spain, which is heating up more quickly than any other nation in Europe, trees are leafing a full 14 days early. Animals are also adjusting to shifts in climate, but, said Sparks, "If you have species that are dependent on each other changing at different rates, that could just break down the food web." Yikes.


Alaska's fishing industry is the most sustainable in the nation, says David Benton, and the nonprofit he runs, the Marine Conservation Alliance, aims to spread the "Alaska Model" far and wide. As this week's InterActivist, Benton chats with Grist about saving coastal fishing communities, defusing an unusual "hostage" situation, and relieving stress by restoring a lighthouse. Send Benton a question by noon PDT on Wednesday; we'll publish his answers to selected questions on Friday.

Wrong as Rain

Acid rain and dirty air bedevil China and Hong Kong

One-third of China's landmass was hit with acid rain last year, according to a government report, posing a grave threat to soil health and food safety. Fast-growing China is the world leader in acid-rain-causing sulfur dioxide emissions, which rose 27 percent in the country from 2000 to 2005; coal-burning factories and power plants are largely to blame. Beijing, which has promised clean skies by the time the city hosts the 2008 Olympics, has its work cut out for it. Meanwhile, in business hub Hong Kong, where visibility was reduced to about half a mile on more than 50 days last year, a recent poll of business leaders found concern that worsening air pollution will reduce the city's appeal to foreign investors. Eighty percent of the 140 top executives polled by the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong said they knew professionals who had considered leaving or had already left the city because of the foul air.


Urban enviros like to tout the benefits of car-free living, but it's no cake walk if you reside in an average American town and you've got kids to cart around and groceries to buy and only a sad-sack public-transit system at your disposal. Christine Gardner, a mother of two living in aptly named Normal, Ill., decided to go car-free for a month in the land of minivans and subdivisions. What did life look like through the bus window, and will she ever take her two-year-old to Target again? Read her tale to find out.

A Ploy Named Sue

With feds asleep at the wheel, states sue to protect air and water

Frustrated by federal inaction, states and localities are increasingly suing companies and even each other in attempts to curb air and water pollution. Oklahoma, for instance, has filed suit against eight companies that operate chicken farms in neighboring Arkansas, charging that farm pollution is damaging a tourist-attracting lake. Kentucky is weighing whether or not to sue Virginia over a strip-mining operation that could pollute a fish-filled Kentucky reservoir that lures in tens of thousands of visitors a year. With Congress and the Bushies having dropped the ball on pollution enforcement, state attorneys general are stepping up. "It's more than a trend, it's an ideological decision that's been made by the Bush administration," says New York Attorney General (and gubernatorial candidate) Eliot Spitzer, who's taken the lead in many an environmental lawsuit. "Into that void we have stepped in to enforce the law."