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RESULTS		Results 1 – 25 of 41
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Headline	Author	Published	Section
Wishing You Well(s) Drought grips Iraq, threatening crops and water supplies		10 Jul 2008	News
Posted at 11:45 AM on 10 Jul 2008 On top of Iraq's myriad other problems, drought has hit the country hard recently, impacting crops and water supplies in many regions. Rainfall this winter was about 40 percent lower than usual in Iraq and Turkey, and as a result, the Tigris River near Baghdad is at its lowest level since 2001. In the country's main grain-growing area, Diyala province, some irrigation canals have dried ...
Topics: agriculture, Iraq, news, water crisis (all these topics)

The Iraqi Oil Ministry's new fave five All the oil news that's fit to print	Guest author	07 Jul 2008	Gristmill
This is a guest essay from Nick Turse, author of The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives. It was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom's kind permission. ----- On June 19, the New York Times broke the story in an article headlined 'Deals with Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back: Rare No-Bid Contracts, A Foothold for Western Companies Seeking Future Rewards.' Finally, after a long five years-plus, there was ...
Topics: Big Oil, energy, Iraq, mainstream media, oil, oil and gas drilling, politics, White House (all these topics)

Voters' Voices: Oregon II A chat with Portland's Charlie Stephens about petrodollars and oil wars	Melinda Henneberger	07 Jul 2008	Gristmill
This is part of a series of dispatches from Melinda Henneberger, who's talking to voters around the U.S. about their views on the environment and the election. One thing I learned traveling around the country a couple of years ago, talking to voters for a political book I was working on, is that Americans tend to give their elected officials a super-size helping of benefit of the doubt. One night, I was in Suffolk, Va., having dinner with some active-duty ...
Topics: economy, energy, Iraq, oil, Oregon, politics, Voters Voices (all these topics)

Garrisoning the global gas station Challenging the militarization of U.S. energy policy	Guest author	13 Jun 2008	Gristmill
This is a guest essay from energy analyst Michael T. Klare. It was originally run on TomDispatch; it is reprinted here with Tom's kind permission. ----- American policymakers have long viewed the protection of overseas oil supplies as an essential matter of 'national security,' requiring the threat of -- and sometimes the use of -- military force. This is now an unquestioned part of American foreign policy. On this basis, the first Bush administration fou ...
Topics: Department of Defense, energy, fossil fuels, Iraq, Nigeria, oil, oil and gas drilling, politics (all these topics)

Out of the mire man made of Earth, back to the father who gave us birth	David Roberts	23 Mar 2008	Gristmill
In the Christian tradition, Easter Sunday marks Jesus' ascent from death to eternal life.In Iraq, this Easter Sunday marked the death of the war's four thousandth U.S. solider.
Topics: holiday, religion and spirituality, Iraq (all these topics)

How can we make the war in Iraq more eco-friendly? The Onion with another masterful satire	Sarah K. Burkhalter	07 Mar 2008	Gristmill
Oh, Onion. You make me laugh and want to cry: In The Know: How Can We Make The War In Iraq More Eco-Friendly?
Topics: funnies, George Bush, international politics, Iraq, politics (all these topics)

Iraq and Roll Iraq ratifies the Kyoto Protocol		28 Jan 2008	News
Posted at 4:32 PM on 28 Jan 2008 While presumably having plenty else to worry about, Iraq has found time in its busy schedule to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. In other news, reports have it that U.S. President Bush, who refuses to ratify the protocol, will deliver a State of the Union speech tonight lauding progress in Iraq. Oh, the irony could make us weep. sources:� Agence France-Presse, The New York Times From the Archives ...
Topics: climate science, Iraq, Kyoto Protocol, news (all these topics)

What Is It Good For? War ain't good for the planet, says new report		14 Dec 2007	News
Posted at 1:14 PM on 14 Dec 2007 It's the time of year for thinking about shopping peace on earth, and an aptly timed new report carries a reminder of the impact of war not just on people, but on the planet. Modern warfare tactics cause unprecedented damage to natural landscapes, says a new article from the Worldwatch Institute. Think spraying of Agent Orange in Vietnam, Rwandan refugees stripping forest for shelter, and the im ...
Topics: habitat loss, insanity, Iraq, news, Rwanda, Vietnam (all these topics)

Priorities	David Roberts	12 Nov 2007	Gristmill
Here's a nice little graph showing U.S. R&D spending in various types of energy compared to spending in Iraq for 2007 (click on the image for background): This is what we, collectively, deem important.
Topics: scientific research, Iraq, energy (all these topics)

Iraq, You Wrack Largest Iraqi dam on verge of collapse, say U.S. officials		30 Oct 2007	News
Posted at 10:11 AM on 30 Oct 2007 The largest dam in Iraq "is judged to have an unacceptable annual failure probability," according to assessments by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In other words, the "most dangerous dam in the world" could potentially collapse in the near future, sending a trillion-gallon wave of water into the cities of Mosul and Baghdad and possibly killing hundreds of thousands ...
Topics: Army Corps of Engineers, dams, Iraq, news (all these topics)

Iraq flushes Blackwater: Time for a real debate on troop levels?	Tom Philpott	18 Sep 2007	Gristmill
When Gen. Petraeus faced down Congressional questioners last week, few of his interlocutors were impolite enough to ask about what I have called the "rent-a-soldier surge": the some 180,000 private contractors, many of them heavily armed, now serving in Iraq at the pleasure of President Bush, on the dime of the U.S. public.To put their number in perspective, note that the number of official U.S. soldiers in Iraq now stands at 160,000 (of whom President Bush ha ...
Topics: international politics, Iraq, politics (all these topics)

The real 'surge' in Iraq: Rent-a-soldier In a privatized war, mercenaries outnumber soldiers -- and bring home cash for their bosses	Tom Philpott	16 Aug 2007	Gristmill
Everybody thought it was a big deal last spring when President Bush announced his "surge" of 20,000 troops in Iraq, which brings the total number to 160,000, four years after the invasion. Meanwhile, with little public or Congressional scrutiny, the president has been eagerly shelling out billions to maintain an even larger private armed force in Iraq. According to the journalist Jeremy Scahill -- without whose dogged reports in The Nation and on Democra ...
Topics: international politics, Iraq, politics (all these topics)

Iraq and electricity again Micropower is smarter military strategy	David Roberts	08 Aug 2007	Gristmill
This post from Tom Grant at his excellent blog Arms & Influence reinforces the point I (channeling Amory Lovins) made in this post, namely: The centralized power grid in Iraq is intrinsically vulnerable to terrorist attack, thereby crippling our efforts to create some measure of security and civil society. Our determination to rebuild it, rather than assisting the development of a decentralized micropower grid, is driven by corporatism rather than clear-eyed stra ...
Topics: electricity grid, international politics, Iraq, politics (all these topics)

Iraq and electricity Distributed power could have saved us some serious pain over there	David Roberts	30 Jul 2007	Gristmill
Earlier this year, it was reported that residents of Baghdad could count on about five or six hours of electricity a day. Last week, it was reported that they could now count on about ... one. The Bush administration's response to this trend is paradigmatically Bushian: it's going to stop reporting. Seriously: But that piece of data has not been sent to lawmakers for months because the State Department, which prepares a weekly 'status report' for Congress on condi ...
Topics: energy, international politics, Iraq (all these topics)

All You Need Is Lovins A conversation with energy guru Amory Lovins	David Roberts	26 Jul 2007	Main Dish
If politicians think in sound bites and intellectuals think in sentences, Amory Lovins thinks in white papers. His speech is studded with pregnant pauses -- you can almost hear the whirs and clicks as an enormous mass of statistics, analyses, and aphorisms is trimmed and edited into a manageable length. I've talked to experts who struggle to substantiate their answers. Lovins struggles to leave thing ...
Topics: Amory Lovins, biofuels, cars, coal, Congress, energy, energy efficiency, ethanol, fuel efficiency, Iraq, renewable energy (all these topics)

You Mean Bombing Doesn't Help? Four years of war has not improved Iraq's environment		22 Mar 2007	Daily Grist
You Mean Bombing Doesn't Help? Four years of war has not improved Iraq's environment After four years of U.S.-led war and the two Saddam-ized decades preceding it, Iraq's water, land, and air are in rough shape. "The Tigris and Euphrates rivers are essentially open sewers," says Azzam Alwash of Nature Iraq, who also says clean-up is needed on over 500 industrial plants that would qualify for Superfund status in the U.S. ...
Topics: air pollution, Iraq, news (all these topics)

Terry Tamminen: Iraq and energy security It's all about oil, baby	David Roberts	13 Jan 2007	Gristmill
DR: You say pretty openly that Iraq and a good chunk of our defense spending -- about half total federal expenditures now -- is about oil. Not very long ago that was written off as a hysterical lefty conspiracy theory. TT: Certainly with respect to Iraq, as the excuses get peeled away one by one, even people who wanted to give the president the benefit of the doubt have got to say, either the guy's an incompetent moron, which may be true, or he's been lying ...
Topics: energy, interview, Iraq, oil, Terry Tamminen (all these topics)

Green Is the New Camouflage U.S. general in Iraq calls for renewable power		07 Sep 2006	Daily Grist
Green Is the New Camouflage U.S. general in Iraq calls for renewable power The latest dirty hippie to issue an urgent call for renewable power is ... U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Richard Zilmer. The top U.S. commander in western Iraq recently sent the Pentagon a "Priority 1" request for solar panels and wind turbines to augment traditional diesel generators. (What's nex ...
Topics: Department of Defense, energy, Iraq, news, solar voltaic power, wind power (all these topics)

An Eden Break Birds return to Iraq marshes, but long-term recovery in doubt		30 Aug 2006	Daily Grist
An Eden Break Birds return to Iraq marshes, but long-term recovery in doubt Birds have begun to return to restored wetlands in southern Iraq, the famed marshes rumored to have been the location of the biblical Garden of Eden. In decades past, ornithologists recorded more than 250 bird species in the region, including the fun-to-say Iraq babbler and lesser white-fronted goose. In the 1980s and '90s, Saddam Hussein dra ...
Topics: Iraq, news, water conflicts, wildlife (all these topics)

The Station Agent Chicago Tribune series traces a gasoline fill-up to its source		01 Aug 2006	Daily Grist
The Station Agent Chicago Tribune series traces a gasoline fill-up to its source Told that tracking gasoline from a single gas station back to its sources was impossible, reporter Paul Salopek did it anyway. In compiling a multimedia series for the Chicago Tribune, Salopek sourced gas dispensed at a Marathon station in South Elgin, Ill., to the Gulf Coast, Venezuela, Nigeria, and Iraq. He then ...
Topics: business, energy, Illinois, Iraq, news, Nigeria, Venezuela (all these topics)

And Things Were Going So Well ... Struggling Iraqi refineries dump oil byproduct near Tigris River		19 Jun 2006	Daily Grist
And Things Were Going So Well ... Struggling Iraqi refineries dump oil byproduct near Tigris River The government of Iraq has been disposing of millions of barrels of oil refinery byproduct by pumping it into mountain valleys in the north of the country and setting it on fire. The result: huge black bogs and thick smoke carried as far as 40 miles downwind. The oily bogs are threatening to seep into the nearby ...
Topics: energy, Iraq, news, oil, pollution and waste (all these topics)

Wing Man How birding and blogging changed one soldier's time in Iraq	Emily Gertz	03 May 2006	Arts and Minds
Glassing the evening sky for feather and foe. Photo courtesy of Jonathan Trouern-Trend. Jonathan Trouern-Trend has been a dedicated bird-watcher since he was about 12. So in 2004, when the now 38-year-old Connecticut National Guard sergeant got sent to Iraq, he had birds on the brain. While stationed at Camp Anaconda -- a huge American installation located about 40 miles north of Baghdad in the Sunni ...
Topics: Iraq, outdoor recreation, wildlife (all these topics)

F'd Troops Whistle-blower says Halliburton supplied foul water to troops in Iraq		24 Jan 2006	Daily Grist
F'd Troops Whistle-blower says Halliburton supplied foul water to troops in Iraq Former employees of a subsidiary of Halliburton, the big military-services contractor once helmed by Vice President Dick Cheney, say the company exposed thousands of American troops and Iraqi civilians to sewage-laced water. Testifying yesterday before Senate Democrats, whistle-blower and water-quality expert ...
Topics: commercial and industry organizations, Iraq, news, water pollution (all these topics)

Let Freedom Sting Thousands of sites in Iraq contaminated with chemicals, uranium, more		11 Nov 2005	Daily Grist
Let Freedom Sting Thousands of sites in Iraq contaminated with chemicals, uranium, more Donald Rumsfeld wasn't kidding when he said freedom is messy. More than 20 years of war and neglect have left Iraq with serious chemical spills, heavy-metals contamination, and widespread pollution from depleted uranium -- and the cleaning bill could run up to $40 million. The U.N. Environment Program examined five sites near Baghdad for environmenta ...
Topics: Iraq, news, toxics (all these topics)

Marsh o'Potamia Once-vast marshlands being restored in Iraq		25 Aug 2005	Daily Grist
Marsh o'Potamia Once-vast marshlands being restored in Iraq The marshlands of Iraq, drained nearly dry by Saddam Hussein, are making a surprisingly robust comeback. Seen by some as the inspiration for the biblical Garden of Eden, the lush wetlands once covered nearly 3,600 square miles near the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers. Mid-century drainage projects took a toll, but the marshes were primarily destroyed by Hussein ...
Topics: Iraq, news, wetlands (all these topics)

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