Tuesday, 30 Jan 2007

Eh, You'll Be Fine

U.S. says some gray wolves no longer need Endangered Species Act protection

The U.S. government announced yesterday that it will remove 4,000 gray wolves in the western Great Lakes area from Endangered Species Act protections and work to delist 1,200 others in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. Canis lupus management in Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin will shift to state and tribal leaders, who are expected to ban trophy hunting for at least five years. Calling coexistence of wolves and humans "a difficult balancing act," Interior Deputy Secretary Lynn Scarlett claimed victory: "We have saved this icon of the wilderness." The love it-or-loathe-it predator has been protected since 1974; its removal marks the 17th time in the 33 years of the Endangered Species Act that a species has been delisted. Some worry that the move is premature, but others are rejoicing. "Any time you have a large vertebrate species down so low as it was when it was listed and come back in such dramatic fashion," said Jeff Towner of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, "it's kind of a red-letter day."

Fetch Me Another Rouge Taureau

Scientists, officials hash out climate report wording in Paris

Call it the cram session from hell: about 500 scientists and officials are spending the week cooped up in Paris, undertaking a word-by-word edit of a major report on climate change. The first installment of the fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, due Friday, is expected to offer more certain conclusions about our global fate than earlier versions. Since the report must be approved by 154 countries, its seemingly radical predictions of devastating heat waves, sea-level rises, and more are in fact quite conservative. Some critics even say the report is too cautious, ignoring recent findings on the dangers posed by melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. However, U.S. reviewers -- who are pushing for the draft to dwell on the wonders of voluntary (read: anti-Kyoto) action -- think the whole thing is too darn pessimistic. They complained in a letter to the IPCC that "the report tends to overstate or focus on the negative effects of climate change." Vive le dumb.


Upon reading about the history of vegetarianism in the new tome The Bloodless Revolution, food writer and occasional meat-eater Tom Philpott wonders: will the consumption of sentient animals one day be widely denounced as immoral? It's not inconceivable, he says -- but for now, Americans eat a stunning three-quarters of a pound of meat per day. While large-scale agricultural production may deserve more ire than meat itself, Philpott says in his latest Edible Media column, it's still time to cut back -- and encourage others to follow our lead.


Remember how report-card time brought a mix of emotions -- excitement, anxiety, a little bit of vomit in your mouth? Oh, to be a student again. But last week, the tables were turned as 100 universities across the country were graded in a College Sustainability Report Card released by the Sustainable Endowments Institute. The schools were critiqued in a number of categories ranging from on-campus practices to financial holdings. Who made the grade? Grist's Sarah van Schagen investigates.

They Put the Heat in Heath

Australian leaders suggest water recycling to address ongoing drought

As evidenced by Heath Ledger, Australians are hot -- so hot, in fact, that they've used up much of their water. As the state of Queensland suffers an ongoing drought, Premier Peter Beattie has warned that residents may soon be drinking recycled sewage water. Premiers of other Aussie states pooh-pooh effluent recycling, but Environment and Water Resources Minister Malcolm Turnbull urges states not to rule it out just because it "sounds yucky." Says Beattie, "It's not like we are part of a freak show -- the rest of the world is doing this." Water recycling consumes less energy than the more popular practice of desalination, and has not been found to pose health problems. Prime Minister John Howard, a climate-change skeptic reformed to "climate-change realist," has declared water security to be Australia's biggest challenge; in this election year, Howard faces strong opposition from Labor leader Kevin Rudd, who has pledged to (gasp!) sign on to the Kyoto Protocol and fight global warming.


File this one under "Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time": federal support for farmers stems from Roosevelt's New Deal, which countered price drops by buying up surplus grain and paying growers to leave land fallow. Thoughtful, yes, but the plan had a few kinks, and by the early 1970s it was upended. Find out how subsidies evolved from there, why you're still paying farmers to grow too much, and what Rusty Butz has to do with it.

The Airspeed Velocity of an Uneaten Swallow

Food imported by air may lose organic certification in Britain

Foods imported into Britain by airplane may not qualify as organic if the country's main certification body has its druthers. On Friday, the Soil Association announced it will spend a year considering a proposal to factor flight distance into its organic standards. While it will ponder different labeling options, fair-trade schemes, and carbon offsets, Director Patrick Holden says there is "a pretty strong chance" that the association will end up giving the boot to flown-in foods. The Soil Association certifies more than 70 percent of organic produce sold in Britain; Holden shrugs off the possibility of losing business, saying, "[I]f the Soil Association believes that it is in the public interest that standards must be raised, then it has a responsibility to act even at the risk of losing market share." Doth our cynical ears deceive us? Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, the U.S. FDA has come to a tentative conclusion that cloned meat can be labeled organic. Back so soon, cynicism?