|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
GREEN ALL THAT YOU CAN GREEN It’s enough to raise the cynic’s eyebrow: After the press uncovered and publicized an email memo ordering U.S. Army garrison commanders around the world to cut back on environmental programs at their bases to save money, the Army announced that—whaddya know?—it had found the money to sustain the programs after all. “All those things we said in the [memo] concerning environment are off the table,” said the Army’s Phil Sakowitz. Army spokepersons denied that bad press influenced their decision. In an unrelated attempt to demonstrate its green credentials, the Army yesterday conducted a show-and-tell at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska, showcasing the energy-efficient vehicles it has in production, including hybrid tankers, electric transports, and fuel-cell-powered all-terrain vehicles. Sources: San Francisco Chronicle, Associated Press, John Heilprin, 27 May 2004; Los Angeles Times, Elizabeth Shogren, 28 May 2004; Anchorage Daily News, Associated Press, Rachel D’Oro, 28 May 2004. WINNEBAGO-GO-GO When you see a school-bus-sized RV trundling down the road, “eco-friendly” is not the first thought that comes to mind. Surely these beasts are guzzling gas and trailing pollution? Not necessarily so, says a small and growing group of environmentalists. Even without modifications, an RV dweller uses less energy that an average house dweller, since there is less space to heat or cool (and RVs often travel with the seasons to kinder temperatures), the owner is more directly in touch with the waste cycle (we’ll leave it at that), and the vehicles are often parked for months at a time. Some folks, however, are making RVs even greener, retrofitting them to run on vegetable oil, adding insulation, replacing interior fixtures and decorations with eco-friendly alternatives, using composting toilets and solar panels, and generally creating mobile renewable-energy showcases. With the right modifications, say enthusiasts, RV dwellers can enjoy all the amenities of modern living with a vastly smaller ecological—not to mention financial—footprint. And as a bonus, they get to travel whenever the urge strikes. Source: Natural Home Magazine, Carol Venolia, July/August 2004. ONWARD GRISTIAN SOLDIERS The USDA announced yesterday that it will rescind changes to organic food standards made last month that would have cleared the way for use of antibiotics on organic dairy farms, toxic pesticides on organic fields, and more. The changes—first reported in Grist—prompted a wave of protest from many organic farmers, though not from some agribusiness conglomerates that want to rake in a bigger share of the booming $11 billion-a-year organic-food market. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman announced the reversal, citing “a tremendous amount of interest” and public concern in recent days in the wake of media reports on the issue. The news was met with an outpouring of praise from environmentalists, legislators who support the standards, and smaller-scale organic farmers. “We were really stunned,” said Nancy Hirshberg of Stonyfield Farm, an organic producer. “It really doesn’t happen often that democracy prevails and voices are heard.” Sources: The New York Times, Marian Burros, 27 May 2004; San Francisco Chronicle, Carol Ness, 27 May 2004. OPEN-SOURCE AGRICULTURE Imagine a technology that can produce all the benefits of biotech crops—resistance to pests and pesticides, long shelf life, rapid (or delayed) ripening, etc.—without the worries about environmental harm, corporate consolidation, and international trade wars. Some researchers believe they have discovered—or rather, rediscovered—just such a science. It harkens back to centuries-old methods of cross-breeding and hybridization and adds a new twist from contemporary genomics. Scientists are now able to map the genetic code of crops, analyze the gene markers for various traits, and quickly breed several generations of a crop in laboratory cultures, thereby doing in a short time what once took decades. It’s called “smart breeding” and it’s producing crops called “super organics.” Some researchers hope to turn smart breeding into the equivalent of the open-source movement in software, putting info about plants into the public domain for free use. Source: Wired Magazine, Richard Manning, May 2004. TAKING THE LEED Need an occasional boost? The place to get one, strangely enough, might just be in the crowded urban area nearest you. Property owners large and small are starting to think green. Urban landscape architects are getting hep to “green roofs” covered in vegetation and gardens based on native plants and wild growth. Green office towers are sprouting up all over, like the Washington, D.C., office of the National Association of Realtors, which like many green buildings is certified by the Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program. The council has, as one consultant put it, “helped take [green building] out of the earthy, crunchy alternative image and brings it into the mainstream.” Meanwhile, private homeowners are finding that recycled building materials and eco-friendly techniques for insulation and air circulation save more money than they cost. Green, green, everywhere! And you were all gloomy. Sources: The New York Times Magazine, Jane Jacobs, 16 May 2004; The Washington Post, Dana Hedgpeth, 17 May 2004; The Washington Post, Daniela Deane, 15 May 2004. WHAT CAN BROWN DO FOR YOU? A well-fed dairy cow produces 120 pounds of poop a day—some 43,000 pounds a year. What to do with all that doo? Dairy farmer Albert Straus of Marin County, Calif., puts it in a big covered lagoon, where it decomposes and generates tons of methane gas, which he captures and uses to power his farm, his creamery, and his electric car. In California, where 1,950 commercial dairies house some 2 million excreting bovines, the state energy commission recently allocated $10 million in matching funds to encourage farmers to build methane digesters, and a 2003 state law paved the way for utilities to set up “net metering” for the farmers, which makes it possible for them to reduce or erase their electric bills. Not only will Straus save some $5,000 to $6,000 a month in energy costs, he is preventing tons of methane (a greenhouse gas 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide) from drifting into the atmosphere and organic pollutants from contaminating water sources. Plus, he now has a built-in, renewable source of jokes. Source: San Francisco Chronicle, Maria Alicia Guara, 14 May 2004. ESCAPE NOTICE Demand for gas-electric hybrid vehicles has automakers scrambling to keep up. Ford’s new Escape hybrid SUV won’t go on sale until August, but already 30,000 people have expressed the desire to buy one via Ford’s website, whereas the company had planned to sell just 20,000 a year. Meanwhile, waiting lists for Toyota’s Prius are growing, prompting the company’s U.S. arm to request a substantial increase in manufacturing from the Japanese factory that produces the hybrids. Toyota’s initial goal was to sell 34,000 this year; it now expects to sell 50,000. Sales of the Prius in April were up 150 percent from the same time last year. In other happy news, sales of large, gas-guzzling SUVs—including the Hummer, the Cadillac Escalade, and the Ford Expedition—are down anywhere from 17 to 33 percent from this time last year. While many attribute these trends to higher gas prices, optimists credit a blossoming eco-consciousness among Americans. Our glass is half-full! Sources: The San-Diego Union-Tribune, Jennifer Davies, 12 May 2004; USA Today, David Kiley and James R. Healey, 14 May 2004; The News Tribune, Bloomberg News, Alan Ohnsman, 14 May 2004. SEPARATING THE WHEAT FROM THE CHAFF With little fanfare, biotech-food giant Monsanto announced yesterday that it would abandon plans to introduce genetically modified wheat to the market. Anti-GM activists, who have fought Monsanto’s plans for some five years, celebrated the announcement as a major victory. However, the impetus for the shift was likely not the moral and ecological concerns raised by environmentalists, but the financial concerns of farmers. Some fifty percent of U.S. wheat is exported, and Japanese and European wheat millers—the biggest purchasers—had made it very clear they would not buy GM wheat. This led U.S. and Canadian farmers, who have embraced other GM crops, to lobby against GM wheat. While the three core GM crops developed by Monsanto—cotton, soy, and corn—are used in clothes and pressed into oils that end up in processed foods, wheat has a more direct and symbolically loaded connection to culture and the food on our plates. Sources: The Washington Post, Justin Gillis, 11 May 2004; Terra Daily, Agence France-Presse, 11 May 2004. BACKSTROKE Responding to a hurricane of criticism over its plans to count hatchery fish along with wild fish in determining which species to protect under the Endangered Species Act, the Bush administration is now pledging to safeguard wild salmon in the Pacific Northwest. It announced that “conservation of naturally spawning salmon and the ecosystems upon which they depend” will remain the central focus of its policy and that 25 of 26 salmon runs currently listed as endangered or threatened will likely remain so. The surprising announcement was met with guarded praise from environmentalists, who said the true test will come when the full policy is announced. Business and development groups, in sharp contrast, reacted with outrage. Attorneys for the Pacific Legal Foundation, which has filed suit over salmon listings in the past, promised to take the administration back to court over the issue. Sources: The Oregonian, Joe Rojas-Burke, 15 May 2004; The Seattle Times, Craig Welch and Hal Bernton, 15 May 2004. A BETTER BUSINESS CLIMATE Climate change seems to be climbing the corporate agenda. An annual survey called the Carbon Disclosure Project—sponsored by a group of more than ninety institutional investors that collectively control some $10 trillion in assets—received nearly three times more responses this year than last year. Companies described their efforts to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, control business risks connected to climate change, and develop new business opportunities related to climate change. The survey enforced the conventional wisdom that European firms are acting more aggressively on the issue than U.S. companies, but the latter appear to be closing the gap. Of some note was the fact that ExxonMobil, which last year ignored the survey, this year gave responses that “were intelligent and thorough, and suggest they have changed their position,” said a project spokesperson. “The world’s most powerful investors have an obvious reason for wanting to avert climate change. It would devastate their wealth,” said James Cameron, chair of the project. Sources: The Guardian, Terry Macalister, 15 May 2004; The New York Times, Barnaby J. Feder, 19 May 2004. COBRA POWER The hydrogen revolution got an injection of sex appeal with the launch of the Hydrogen Shelby Cobra, a version of one of the world’s most admired sports cars. The new model, being sold by the Los Angeles-based Hydrogen Car Co., uses hydrogen to power a traditional V-8 internal-combustion engine, a system that is cleaner and more efficient than a standard gasoline-powered engine and less technically complex than a hydrogen-powered fuel-cell engine. The big question, though, is where Cobra buyers will fill up. Though California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) has announced an ambitious plan to build a network of hydrogen filling stations along the state’s highways, that plan is going nowhere fast; there are currently only thirteen hydrogen filling stations in the state. And naysayers will point out that unless hydrogen is produced using clean energy, it’s not an environmental dream fuel. Of course, considering that the new Cobra has a starting price of $149,000, filling it up may be the least of a prospective buyer’s worries. Sources: Los Angeles Times, John O’Dell, 9 Jun 2004; The Independent, Damian Reece, 9 Jun 2004. For more environmental news from Grist.com, visit Grist Magazine, “Gloom and doom with a sense of humor,” at www.gristmagazine.com. |
|||||||||||||||||||||
All content and articles copyright ©2004 by Lightworks Inc except where noted. All rights reserved.