Obama’s Ethanol Policy an ‘Ecological Disaster.’ A story of how one borderline environmental policy can have far-reaching and disastrous consequences.
Tag: environment
Save the trees?
I wonder how many trees Progressive could have saved by sending this as an email instead of a hard copy letter.
The End of Cheap Coffee: Why the Diner Staple Is About to Become a Luxury. A feature story from Good Magazine about the way environmental conditions and consumption habits are changing the way we experience coffee.
Fly or Drive Calculator. Neat little web app for calculating the relative cost of flying and driving somewhere. It estimates the financial, time, and environmental cost of the trip. (via Andrew Sullivan)
The Bay Line apartments?
An interesting proposal to turn the soon to be replaced Bay Bridge into a floating apartment and park complex. Really great idea even if it doesn’t come to pass it should make us consider what we can do with older pieces of infrastructure. Photo via BLDGBLOG: The Bay Line.
Please just link to the study
From the otherwise stellar Seed Magazine article on organic foods:
So here we have a nicely delimited study of available research with rigorous standards and a fairly worded conclusion, all publicly available to download and read on the FSA website.
Well if it’s so publicly available and downloadable then why can’t you take the time to link to it? The author (web editor?) took the time to go through and link to such blogs as Food Politics, Matthew Yglesias, and more but linking to the study that the article centers around? No, that’d be too much to ask.
Build them to last – time for new urban development
I found this today via Andrew Sullivan’s blog. Well put together video explaining the need for sustainable urban development. Not only would this be something that would be better for the earth, but it would lend itself to greater human communities and probably make everyone a happier person. Watch it!
Bookmarks for April 12th
In order to share what I’ve found to be useful/interesting/etc. while browsing around below are my links for April 12th. You can find my full set of bookmarks at my Delicious account.
- China Outlines Plans for Making Electric Cars (NY Times) – An article (4/10/2009) from the New York Times about China’s push to create electric car technology. It’s interesting and could actually see more success in China than other countries. They make the point that since many Chinese are still buying their first cars they have less of a preconception about what a car is and what a car needs to do. Seems as though Americans might be too stuck in their 200+ HP mindset to accept electric cars for a long while.
- django-newsroom – Google Code – An interesting project to create a newspaper-friendly install of django. Sounds like it has some interesting concepts behind it. Seems to be more appropriate for news than a WordPress install. Note to self: learn django and write a theme for it. (via @danielbachhuber)
- Thousand Yard Stares: Ruins and Ghosts of the Battle of Peleliu – A great piece written by someone who traveled to Peleliu recently. The island was the site of heavy activity during WWII and only became fully independent in 1994. Apparently the South of the island is still littered with pieces of WWII gear and equipment. The photos look incredible.
Protecting Wild Utah
The New Republic’s Energy and Environment blog has an article today about Ken Salazar, the new interior secretary, and his effort to repeal one of the last-minute Bush administration laws. In the closing months of the Bush administration they passed a bill that would open up large tracts of Bureau of Land Management land in Utah. The problem is that Salazar has simply stalled the opening of these lands for drilling, which is currently a legal practice. From the article:
Unfortunately, there’s an underlying problem that still needs fixing. In offering the leases for sale in December, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) was simply acting in accordance with the new resource-management plans for its lands in Utah. These plans, which the Bush administration rushed to complete before the end of last October, leave about 80 percent of the BLM’s 11 million acres in Utah open to energy development. If the BLM continues to manage its Utah lands according to these guidelines, which are supposed to last for 20 years, then this week’s environmental victory will only be a temporary one. Conservation groups are challenging the management plans in court, and their lawsuits may well be successful. But the Obama administration needs to start drafting replacement plans that take into consideration the sensitive nature of Utah’s red-rock country by putting more of it off-limits to drilling.
I would love to see the Obama administration expand federal protection through not only Utah but much of the other semi-protected federal lands in other states. Traveling through Southern Utah during my Freshman year here at Whitman was simply amazing and truly created a new sense of environmentalism in me. I only wish that the lands stay pristine so that others can have the same experience that I was fortunate enough to have.
Link via Utah Drilling Stopped. But For How Long? – Environment and Energy .