Four Democratic senators called on EPA chief Stephen Johnson to resign yesterday: Barbara Boxer of California, who is chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. They basically accused Johnson of perjury. They also announced they’d asked Attorney General Michael Mukasey to look into prosecuting him.
Archive for July, 2008
The WTO Is Nearly Dead, Long Live the WTO
This is one of the most important stories of the year, decade if things further sour.
Optimists can look for — and hope for — a better WTO, or successor organization to wear the crown. This one looks as though its time has come and gone.
EPA Memo Told Employees Not to Talk to Own Inspector General
The Associated Press just published an internal memo the EPA’s chief of staff sent to managers telling them to not let staffers cooperate with the agency’s own inspector general but forward the info requests to him. In addition to the inspector general, employees aren’t supposed to talk to congressional investigators (!) or reporters (no “!”).
We Have the Technology: Bioplastics to Boom & Replace Petrol-Based Products
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The European Bioplastics Association says a million tons of bioplastics are poised to hit the market over the next three years replacing petroleum-based plastics that are the Earth’s scourge.
SUV-Trashing Blogger Seeks Suggestions, Gets Huge
So you no longer want to be a scourge of everything we hold dear / friend to Saudi Arabia. You want to throw away your SUV. But how is it done? A San Franciscan named Ryan Mickle raised the question for real on a web site this month, and little by little became a web phenom.
Energy Goals Cost Exactly as Much as Putting a Man on the Moon
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We hear it a lot: We can beat this [global warming]. We just need the will. We had the will to put a man on the moon and we did it…
Die Greener
Grist has a piece up about greening your death. Some of the advice is unsurprising: have your funeral near where the people who care about you live so there are minimal transportation costs, try to get people to carpool, etc.
The interesting part is that cremation is greener than burial. You just have to tell the funeral home to take out your fillings, which contain mercury, before they burn you up. When you get buried, you generally get embalmed with toxic chemicals. There is a Green Burial Council, but the green burial industry is still in its infancy.
A Hindu friend of mine told me that Hindus traditionally don’t go in for burial or even graveyards, which is deeply enviro of them because a graveyard is big lawn maintained with pesticides.
Image: flickr/bookish in north park
Xeriscape!
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Originally developed for drought afflicted areas, xeriscaping is catching on in more temperate areas too as water becomes increasingly scarce.
Xeriscaping is a form of landscaping where you plant native species that don’t require additional watering. As H2o Conserve points out, “grassy lawns make sense in wet climates, but in dry areas like the southwest they’re huge water-wasters. Instead, suggestions for dry climates include landscaping with rock gardens and cacti.
For the (green) thumbsketch of what it’s all about, check out eartheasy’s piece on the trend.
Activist Tries to Glue Self to English Prime Minister
A member of Plane Stupid, an English group that advocates for less flying, tried to glue himself to PM Gordon Brown yesterday. According to Plane Stupid’s web site, he was spectacularly successful in driving home his point about Brown’s aviation policies. 
Beijing Tries to Clean Air Before Company Arrives
In LA, people can barely handle carpool lanes. I wonder what would happen here if we tried what Beijing just allegedly pulled off: a day when cars with odd-numbered plates have to stay off the road, then another day when the ones with even-numbered plates have to stay home. This was accomplished because their smog is actually worse than ours and they have an Olympics coming up.
If we tried that here, it would be one situation in which having a vanity plate would actually be worth it. (No numbers in WLD DOGZ). So for America I propose an alternate system: women are forbidden from driving one day, men the next. What better way to subject cultural stereotypes regarding driving habits to scientific rigor? Teenagers vs. old people would be next.
Image: flickr/zzanthras777


