Wednesday, 27 Sep 2006

The Gates and Rockefeller foundations this month announced a new partnership that will, they say, spur an agricultural "Green Revolution" in Africa. Hooray for gazillionaires thinking green! But if this new venture follows the pattern of the mid-20th century Green Revolution, which was also backed by the Rockefeller Foundation, it could mean bad news for the environment and small-scale farmers. Tom Philpott surveys the landscape.

So That's Why We Can Never Find a Parking Space

U.S. population to hit 300 million in October

As the U.S. population ticks ever closer to the 300 million mark -- 299,800,000-plus and counting! -- many enviros worry that the rising numbers will amplify existing environmental problems. "The U.S. is the only industrialized nation in the world experiencing significant population growth," says Vicky Markham of the Center for Environment and Population. "That, combined with America's high rates of resource consumption, results in the largest ... environmental impact [of any nation] in the world." Ecologists point out that at current consumption rates, the long-term "carrying capacity" of the U.S. wouldn't sustain even half of the nation's current population. Baby boomers, with their relative wealth and preference for big homes and vehicles, are doing more than their part as the highest resource consumers in the nation's -- and the world's -- history. The U.S. population doesn't look likely to stabilize anytime soon; it's expected to hit 400 million by mid-century. And in case you didn't notice, the world population hit 6.5 billion earlier this year. Feeling claustrophobic?


Is it bad to own an extra car if it doesn't mean you're driving extra miles? A reader from McLean, Va., asks Umbra Fisk's opinion of her family's three-vehicle fleet, and Umbra makes a frank assessment. Sneak preview: It doesn't involve buying more cars.

The Quality of Commerce Is Strain'd

Nature charges that Commerce Department blocked climate-change report

The Commerce Department blocked a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report indicating that climate change contributes to stronger hurricanes, the journal Nature reported yesterday. In February, a seven-member NOAA panel was directed to prepare a report on agency views regarding climate change and hurricanes, and a draft indicated that -- gasp! -- warming might indeed affect storms. In May, when the statement was to be released, a Commerce official informed the panel that the report was too technical to be made public. A NOAA spokesflack disputed the Nature article, saying the document was simply not ready in May -- and besides, it was not a report but a fact sheet. NOAA Administrator Conrad Lautenbacher had a different view, calling it an internal document that was not released because the agency could take no official position on the matter -- even though the report contained no policy statements. So many conflicting reports! Guess the only thing we can be sure of is that climate change affects hurricanes.


Environmentalists hear it all the time: that they're naysayers, wolf-cryers, Chicken Littles, nattering nabobs of negativism. And frankly ... well, OK, it's true. Full Disclosure columnists John Elkington and Mark Lee talk to fellow sustainability experts who say there's plenty to be concerned about with climate change and other looming global problems -- but just because you're worried doesn't mean there's no cause for hope.

Tender Loving Caribou

Judge sides with caribou, bans snowmobiles from some Idaho national forests

Mountain caribou celebrated last week as a judge banned snowmobiles from a nearly 470-square-mile caribou recovery zone in the Idaho Panhandle National Forests. The ban will hold unless the U.S. Forest Service can develop a winter recreation strategy that would enable noisy, polluting vehicles and the last mountain caribou herd in the Lower 48 states to coexist harmoniously, ruled U.S. District Judge Robert H. Whaley. There are about three dozen of the caribou left in the area, with what Whaley called a "precarious finger-hold" on survival (although hoof-hold, we think, would have been more apt). Snowmobile interests blamed logging, backcountry skiing, and climate change for the shrinking herd; conservationists presented evidence that snowmobile noise frightens caribou from feeding and calving grounds, and argued that vehicle trails compact snow, leaving the caribou without deep-snow protection from predators. "The court chooses to be overprotective rather than under-protective," Whaley wrote in his ruling.