Tuesday, 06 Feb 2007

Sweet, Now They Can Clean the Bathrooms

Bush 2008 budget proposal contains big bucks for national parks

With the National Park Service centennial looming in 2016, President Bush has proposed a 2008 budget boost that's making park advocates swoon. It would add $230 million to the 2007 park funding request and $100 million more each year for 10 years, making an additional $100 million available annually to match private funds. The gesture, which could total a princely $3 billion, would allow parks to make desperately needed basic improvements. "We simply have lost contact people who meet the American public," said one park superintendent. "What they're not seeing are rangers in flat hats." (Sadly, funding for flat hats was slashed, but we're not gonna tell him.) Some fear the matching program is "an illusion," and others are focusing on less-trumpeted budget goals like, oh, selling off $800 million of Forest Service lands. But the feds hope the park proposal "can be a source of healing for Americans," says Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne. "This one is not partisan. This one is American."


Yeah, yeah, the vast majority of the world's climate scientists believe immediate action is required to stem climate change -- but Bill McKibben is more excited about the action suggested by a sorority in Texas. And who wouldn't be? The Alpha Phi sisters at the University of Texas at Austin are backing the "Step It Up" agenda between gulps of kiwitini, calling for an 80 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2050. "We wanted to show that it's not just hippies who care about global warming," they say. Mc-Not-a-Hippie-Kibben reports that more than 500 groups are gearing up to hold climate rallies in their communities on April 14. Have you made your plans?

You Go, Hugo

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez mouths off about conservation

The campaign to fight climate change and reduce global oil use seems to have an unlikely new champion: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. In a country where car salesfolk do a healthy business and gasoline is subsidized to 12 cents a gallon -- that's about $3 to fill an SUV -- Chavez's environmental hype has been knocked as rhetoric. But at the very least, it's rhetoric with an impact: Chavez, who built ambitious social programs with oil wealth, now intends to direct fossil-fuel revenues to exploration of natural gas, solar, and wind energy. He is also distributing fluorescent light bulbs, encouraging citizens to take public transportation, and has said he plans to raise gas prices. While Venezuela's government is largely funded by its position as the fourth-largest oil supplier to the U.S., Chavez doesn't mince words regarding the 50 states' impact on global warming: "They're destroying the world," he says. "The human race will be finished if we don't change the world capitalist system."


Don't think the farm bill affects you? Think again. Even if you live in metropolitan Metropolistown, almost everything you ingest has its roots in U.S. farmland. Yes, even Coke, with its load of high-fructose corn syrup. So if you don't know where your food comes from or how many of your tax dollars go toward subsidies that prop up a failing federal system, do yourself a favor and read farmer Tom Philpott's explanation today.

It's All Ova

U.N. lifts year-old ban on Caspian Sea beluga caviar exports

The world's got a fever, and the only prescription is more caviar. In a two-part move, the U.N. has lifted a year-old ban on the delicacy, allowing Caspian Sea countries to profit despite concern about declining sturgeon populations. Yesterday, the U.N. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species announced an agreement on the waaay overfished beluga that will see Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan cut exports 29 percent from 2005 levels. The countries will also "release millions of young fish into the sea," according to Willem Wijnstekers, who heads up CITES. Wijnstekers hopes consumers will control their urges in order to keep beluga battering in check, but fish fans say his agency's action belies his concern. Julia Roberson of Caviar Emptor says beluga stocks in the Caspian plummeted 45 percent from 2004 to 2005: "The whole purpose of CITES is to allow trade only if there is a nondetrimental finding, and this screams to me it's detrimental to the fish."