Month: November 2010

What If They Gave a Climate Summit and Nobody Came?

Last year about this time, everyone was excited about Copenhagen.  UCLA Law School even sent its own delegation.  President Obama was going to come.  It was the biggest thing in climate since Kyoto — maybe bigger, since now the US had an administration that believes in science. Now?  Not so much.  The coverage of Cancun …

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Bottles and cans, bisphenol-A, and chemical regulation

The online magazine Yale Environment 360 has published an informative and rather frightening interview with Frederick vom Saal, a biologist at the University of Missouri’s Endocrine Disruptors Group, about bisphenol-A and what he sees as a completely broken regulatory system for managing hazards from chemicals.  Elizabeth Kolbert, known recently for her stellar journalism in the New …

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NY Times Triples on Climate Change

The NY Times has three op-eds this morning dealing with climate change: An op. ed. by Bruce Usher argues for a clean energy strategy: “The United States still has a very long way to go to curtail emissions, but the states are heading in the right direction, and national energy policy must build on their …

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Our strawberries’ safety: will California approve methyl iodide this year?

As Margot Roosevelt reports in the Los Angeles Times, California’s Department of Pesticide Regulation has signaled that it will make a decision before Governor Schwarzenegger leaves office about whether to approve the use of methyl iodide as a strawberry fumigant.  Farmworker advocacy groups and environmental advocates fear the pesticide will be approved, and are planning …

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Black Friday Reflections on Happiness, Consumption, and Sustainability

As discussed in a fascinating new book by Derek Bok, psychologists have been busily researching a new set of issues relating to happiness. As a result of this research, psychologists are beginning to develop a deeper understanding of the factors that control well-being. Well-being is a multi-dimensional concept that includes objective factors such as health, …

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Community Planning: What Do People Want?

Gallup has published an interesting poll about the qualities that people value in communities.  They conducted a poll to find out what made people feel attached to their communities. The top three on the list are: Social offerings are the top driver of attachment in 2010. . . . This includes the availability of arts …

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Empty Plates

Many of us will have plenty of food on the table tomorrow.  Indeed, many of us will eat more than is really good for us.  But the U.N. reports that the global food situation is quite different, as explained by the NY Times: Global grain production will tumble by 63 million metric tons this year, …

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Green Housing, High-Tech Aspirations

For some holiday-time green inspiration, be sure to check out Lumenhaus, a dynamic new housing concept developed by Virginia Tech grad students, and currently on display in Chicago’s Millennium Park.

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CEQ finalizes guidance for categorical exclusions

Cross-posted at CPRBlog. The White House Council on Environmental Quality has issued the first of three expected final guidance documents for federal agencies implementing the National Environmental Policy Act. This one, which covers the use of categorical exclusions, is an excellent start. NEPA is the “look before you leap” environmental law. It requires that federal …

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BP Deep Water Horizon Oil Commission Takes on All Sides

The Presidential BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling Commission released two new reports yesterday, on the effort to stop the spill and anotheron whether response and clean up technology has kept pace with technology developments for exploration.  The reports continue a really impressive pattern emerging from the Commission:  taking on hard questions, devoting …

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