Shade Cloth against Global Warming

The Australian Tourism Minister, Fran Bailey, recently said that using shade cloth could protect the Great Barrier Reef from the harmful effects of global warming, according to a report on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:

One of the suggestions is to attach the shade cloth to pontoons, which is an idea Ms Bailey says is worth considering if it will help protect the reef.

"We’re very concerned because this is a $5.8 billion tourist industry on the reef, employing 33,000 people," she said.

"So obviously we’re tackling this problem from both ends – the cause of the problem and also trying to find practical ways to mitigate the problem."

Australian blogger David Jeffrey adds some context:

The Great Barrier Reef stretches over 2,300 km along Australia’s north-east coast. Covering 344,000 square km, it’s almost one and a half times the size of New Zealand. That’s a lot of shade cloth.

Some researchers who have studied the GBR believe it can recover from "thermal stresses," but a 2004 study by the World Wildlife Fund and the Queensland government predicted that 95% of the reef would be bleached–killed–by 2050, even on a scenario that saw reduced emissions of greenhouse gases. 

Hmmm. Time for an experiment, perhaps?

How We Use the World

Sierra magazine, which comes with membership in John Muir’s famous club, is one of the oldest enviro magazines in our country. Its journalism is solid and trustworthy, and its essays often superb, but even though I’ve written for it in the past, I sometimes find it hard to read. The combination of bad news about the planet and the seriousness of the prose can be hard to take. (Muir was often caustic and sometimes outright funny; for whatever reason, his edginess rarely shows up in SC publications.)

But the latest issue of the bimonthly, on food, comes alive in a colorful and appealing way, I think, and I highly recommend it. Also nice–all the big pieces are available on-line. If you like to be coaxed into reading, as I often do, try this Secrets of the Supermarket with professor Marion Nestle.

The connection between how we care for ourselves and how we care for our planet is becoming ever more difficult to overlook, and this issue concludes with the reason why in one wonderful quote from Wendell Berry:

How we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used.

Also wonderful: this picture of idealist Kate Casale, director of the Alameda Point Cooperative, who teaches kids (such as Farrell Williams here) how to raise their own food:

Farrell_williams_and_kate_casale_2

Preacher Signs Global Warming Initiative, Therefore Deserves Ruination

Believe it or don’t.

It’s almost enough to make me feel sorry for evangelist Ted Haggard, who apparently while leading a vast congregation and leading the charge against gay marriage, was all the while cheating on his wife with a gay prostitute, aided by methamphetamine.

What did Mark Twain say? 

"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to Possibilities; Truth isn’t."

Beyond the Sound Bite: Republicans for Environmental Protection

In a week’s time, the political climate in America will change–or so the experts tell us.

Pollster Charlie Cook, "the Oracle of Washington," calls this a "wave" election, compares it to l994, and predicts the Republicans will lose "at least 20 to 35 seats, possibly more." In the LATimes, conservative historian Niall Ferguson compares this election to l958. Then a two-term Republican president found himself stuck with an unpopular war and a sluggish economy. The GOP lost 48 seats, setting the stage for a dynamic new Democratic President in l960, and Democratic domination of the Congress for the next twenty years.

If the election goes as these pollsters predict, November 7th will be "the end of George W. Bush’s presidency as he has known it," reported the Washington Post.

Will prospects improve for environmental protection?

Probably. But much will still depend on the Republican Party–and since l994, the Republican Party has largely turned its back on its own imperfect-but-real tradition of care and concern for clean air, clean water, wilderness, national parks and ocean waters.

It’s easy to forget, but once Republican representatives did believe in voting for the health and preservation of the planet. In l964, the Wilderness Act  passed by 73-12 in the Senate, and by 373-1 in the House. The Endangered Species Act passed Congress in l973 on a nearly unanimous vote.

In l989, during a shockingly hot shocking hot summer in Washington, D.C., the Senate held hearings on climate change, which featured James Hansen (now something of a movie star).  Later a Republican president named Ronald Reagan authorized the creation of a new federal funding organization, the US Global Change Research Program. This executive order was confirmed by H.W. Bush and codified by the Democratic Congress in l990. The USGCRP has spent billions on atmospheric research into the reality and the threat of climate change since.

Contrast this past concern for the natural world with the Rovian GOP of today. Featured in the House is an Orwellian nightmare named Richard Pombo, who claims to want to protect the Endangered Species Act, even as he guts it, attempts to sell off national parks to corporate givers, and calls for drilling along coasts and in wilderness. (Pombo pushed his anti-ESA bill through the House, but it stalled in the Senate, thanks in part due to opposition from moderate Republicans.)

But there’s hope. Pombo and his money-grubbing anti-environmental zeal turn out to be appalling to Republicans, too. Or so I gather from Jim DiPeso, who helps lead the Republicans for Environmental Protection. During an email interview, without any prompting he said bluntly:

Theodore Roosevelt is on Mount Rushmore. Richard Pombo
is not and never will be.

DiPeso is the REP’s policy director. He insists that most Republicans do care about clean air and water, our wilderness, wild creatures, and lovely climate, and will vote to protect to protect the environment. I found his faith heartening, if not always easy to believe.

For the interview, please see the full post at Grist.

In reference to this story, please note also this fully wonderful VoteGuide to the upcoming election in California’s 11th Congressional district, a seat currently held by the Attila the Hun of money-grubbing bribe-er-donation-taking, lie-spewing anti-enviros, who goes by the name of Richard Pombo. According to the non-partisan site, the Republican Party has outspent the Democratic party 13-to-1 on this race, but is trailing in the latest independent poll, according to the Contra-Costa Times, although the race is very close, and well within the margin of error.

One thing for sure: the grassroots are fired up about this race. Check out this protester highlighting Pombo’s chicken-like refusal to debate. Love those chicken feet! 

Pombo_the_chicken

 


The Kind of Problem Only Radiation Cures

Once upon a time, back in the early 80’s, for the usual inexplicable cultural reasons, a variation of reggae music known as ska became hugely popular, especially in England and L.A., led by such groups as the Specials and (my favorite) the English Beat.

The Beat had a unique ability to blend the personal and the political, and in one of their best songs, called Get-a-Job, they dared to question the need for all of us to work at jobs creating "rubbish," pointing out that the process has bad bad side effects. Specifically:

[you] manufacture rubbish

although no one can afford it

you could make a profit

more than anyone deserves

so you find you’re left with poison

so you dump it in our water

and so create the kind of problems

only radiation cures

That last couplet has stuck with me forever, and aptly gets to the point of this editorial from a couple of weeks ago by Michael Pollan, surely the best writer on "The Vegetable-Industrial Complex" in our time. In brief, Pollan warns that the spinach/e. coli 0157 outbreak last month will lead to calls for mass radiation of our vegetables:

[A]ny day now, calls to irradiate the entire food supply will be on a great many official lips. That’s exactly what happened a few years ago when we learned that E. coli from cattle feces was winding up in American hamburgers. Rather than clean up the kill floor and the feedlot diet, some meat processors simply started nuking the meat — sterilizing the manure, in other words, rather than removing it from our food.

That’s just the opening to this terrific piece. Your humble blogger recommends you check it out.

Sunday Morning on the Planet: St. Francis

Back in l985, the Pope said that St. Francis should be the patron saint of ecologists. This brings to mind the famous story about St. Francis preaching to the birds. According to Wikipedia, that story is probably folklore, but it is a story with roots in fact (St. Francis had no interest in money, and loved hiking in the hills and mountains of Umbria).

Just a week and a half ago I was hiking in the hills of Big Sur with a friend and came across a lovely little St. Francis in an altar by the trail. So the legend, in its Catholic way, has become a fact. And, as they said in a famous Western, "When legend becomes fact, print the legend."

Here’s a tribute to that sentiment encountered a week ago in the Morris Arboretum on the outskirts of Philadelphia, one of the most beautiful gardens I’ve ever had the good fortune to see. St. Francis is with us still…

Saint_francis

The Panic of A Denialist

In recent years right-wingers in this country, including the President, have scoffed at the idea of global warming, and ignored those who expressed concern and called for action. Now, even among Republicans and conservatives, the need to act to reduce the risks of climate change is looking increasingly like the new conventional wisdom.

The obvious example is in California, where a September 1st story in the Wall St. Journal [$] rightly predicted that a high-stakes deal between a Republican executive and a Democratic legislature "to cut emissions tied to global warming is likely to boost a resurgence in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s popularity." The "halo effect" from this deal has remade Schwarzenegger’s image among independents and Democrats, which–baring an act of God–will easily carry him to victory on November 7.

But the California electorate for decades has supported environmental regulations for the sake of clean air, clean water, coastal protection, and parks and wild lands.

How is global warming viewed in the right-wing media?

Big changes are coming, it appears, and the news does not loook good for denialists such as Steven Milloy, seen here on FOX News. For more on this exciting (I think) story, please see Grist.

Steven_milloy_junk_science_1

Amazing but True: Pombo in Trouble

Richard Pombo, the anti-enviro zealot who first came to Congress in the anti-Clinton "wave" election of l994, now faces losing power in the anti-Bush wave election of 2006.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy–or a bigger liar.

For the full story, check out this superb piece from the LATimes earlier this year by Bettina Boxall, which may have been the first to fully document Pombo’s claim that Jack Abramoff "never lobbied me on anything." Pombo has continued with this lie (You Tube) even though the record shows otherwise, as that far-left rag Forbes magazine reported expertly.   

One interesting note: according to this financial statement, Pombo is only the 191st wealthiest person in the Congress, with assets in the range of $450,000 to 950,000. Yet according to OpenSecrets, a watchdog group that compiles Federal Election Commission data, the Pombo campaign has taken in nearly $3.5 million in just the last year alone.

Could a man considered one of the most corrupt members of Congress really have failed to line his pockets at all?

Seems unlikely, doesn’t it? Pombo’s financial disclosure statement to the House is on-line. It’s remarkably bland, and claims he took no gifts, no honoraria, and had no outside income.

Here’s doubting. For more on why enviros are daring to hope that Pombo might actually lose, check out this thorough report from Amanda Griscom Little in Grist.

Worst Congress Ever?

Tough to blog well when your computer is in the shop, but I have to bring to your attention to a truly extraordinary story in Rolling Stone by Matt Taibbi on the Congress.

He calls it the worst ever, and just about proves it with his vivid depictions of corrupt, inept, lazy, stupid and all-around scummy Congressmen.

True, it’s possible Congress was worse back in the days of Joe McCarthy. But Taibbi points out that numerous Senators and Congressman in the sixties, seventies, and eighties effectively and independent represented their unique constituents; only in recent years has the body utterly collapsed into corruption, ineptitude, laziness, and self-embarrassment.

But what makes the story special is not the horrors in D.C., which have been reported before, but the Hunter S. Thompson-esque bluntness and zeal; in a word, bad boy Taibbi goes for it.

Here’s his description of Wade Cunningham, a former chairman of a House Intelligence Subcommitte, a man now serving at least ten years in prison for taking millions of dollars in bribes: "…a man who can barely write his name in the ground with a stick…"

Believe it or don’t. If you don’t believe a man can be that stupid, read this letter from Cunningham to the reporter who helped bust him from prison:

"As truth will come out and you will find out how liablest [sic] you have & will be. Not once did you list the positives. Education Man of the Year…hospital funding, jobs, Hiway [sic] funding, border security, Megans law my bill, Tuna Dolfin [sic] my bill…and every time you wanted an expert on the wars who did you call. No Marcus you write About how I died."