Earth Island Journal articles from January 2009

Earth Island Journal archives from January 2009

Shrugging off a cataclysm.(FROM THE EDITOR)(Editorial)
January 1, 2009... Five years ago, I took a backpacking trip to Alaska because, as I wryly put it then, I wanted to "see the place before it melted." Like most tourists to the Last Frontier, I was blown away by the burly beauty of the state, the ease with which...

Kudos.(LETTERS & E-MAILS)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2009... In a word, kudos on an excellent issue, especially the cover piece ("Mirage," Autumn 2008) on water issues in the desert Southwest. I live in Reno, and we have water issues and willy-nilly, take-the-money-and-run development. Recently a...

Steel wheels revisited.(LETTERS & E-MAILS)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2009... In the article "Get on the Bus" (Summer 2008), David Dobbs is right on the money when he encourages greater investment in light rail transit. The Los Angeles Bus Riders Union has it wrong. They forget that at one time, in the Los Angeles area...

Miracle cure?(LETTERS & E-MAILS)(Letter to the editor)
January 1, 2009... In addressing malaria, there is a simpler solution for people and the planet rather than yet another genetically engineered miasma ("The $38 Million Mosquito," Autumn 2008). Jim Humble has found a cure for malaria: Treat the person rather than...

Sun seekers.(AFRICA)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... Africa is the poorest continent on the planet, and approximately three quarters of the people living south of the Sahara have no access to electricity. But the continent is wealthy in terms of sunlight. Proposals are now being developed to tap...

Palming off responsibility.(ASIA)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... Environmental groups working in the forests of Indonesian Borneo say that two major palm oil companies have violated an agreement not to clear land in orangutan habitat and are putting thousands of the great apes in jeopardy. Subsidiaries...

Cat food.(ASIA)
January 1, 2009... With rising sea levels shrinking India's unique Sundarban Islands and pushing the region's tigers out of their habitat, the ancient question--What's for dinner?--is taking on an uncomfortable new meaning as cat attacks against people increase....

Chemical warfare.(ASIA)
January 1, 2009... Tens of thousands of US troops, military contractors, and Iraqi civilians may have been exposed to cancer-causing dioxins and poisons such as arsenic and carbon monoxide as the military continues to burn tons of hazardous waste in an open-air...

New wave.(EUROPE)("Waves of Portugal" project)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... Renewable energy proponents' longtime dream of harnessing the power of the world's oceans became a reality this fall when Portugal brought online the first commercial wave-powered electricity generating station. The aptly named "Waves of...

Filthy lucre.(EUROPE)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... Compared to many other countries, Norway is something of a green superstar, building mass transit, discouraging people from driving, and even making its prisons sustainable. The irony is that the country's ability to take these steps is...

Party for the planet.(EUROPE)(WATT nightclub)
January 1, 2009... The Netherlands--home to legalized marijuana and the headquarters of Greenpeace International--is a country well known for its progressive politics and party-friendly lifestyle. It shouldn't be surprising, then, that these two Dutch instincts...

Whoa or woe?(NORTH AMERICA)
January 1, 2009... Will the financial markets' meltdown and the likelihood of a deep recession push the budding green economy into the red? Or will the future not be as black as many people fear? As headline writers and journalists try to navigate the color wheel...

Blasting forward.(NORTH AMERICA)(Stream Buffer Zone Rule)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... Good news--blowing the tops off mountains will soon be so much easier! The Bush administration has made changes to the Stream Buffer Zone Rule, a 1983 regulation that prohibits coal-mining companies from conducting activity within 100 feet...

'Gas-tax'.(OCEANIA)
January 1, 2009... No one said reducing greenhouse gas emissions would be easy. Leaders in New Zealand are finding out just how difficult the task is as a proposal to cut emissions runs into opposition from the country's powerful ranching interests. A...

Do as I say, not as I do.(SOUTH AMERICA)(Brazil's environmental protection efforts)
January 1, 2009... Ever eager to burnish its environmental credentials, the Brazilian government often announces with great fanfare various initiatives to safeguard the Amazon rainforest, the world's largest. Last August, for example, President Luiz Ignacio Lula...

Pineapple upside down country.(SOUTH AMERICA)(Coasta Rica)
January 1, 2009... Pineapple doesn't seem so sweet to many Costa Ricans these days. Since 1996, production of the fruit in Costa Rica has more than tripled, surpassing coffee and bananas as export crops. Pineapple now consumes more than 100,000 acres of land, and...

Big brother is watching.(TEMPERATURE GAUGE: Notes from a warming world)(Maryland State Police)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... First they spied on the peace activists. Then they targeted the anti-death penalty organizations. Then they came for the climate justice groups. During 2005 and 2006, undercover agents with the Maryland State Police used aliases to...

Gore should be worried.(TEMPERATURE GAUGE: Notes from a warming world)(Al Gore)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... Perhaps former Vice President and Nobel Peace Prize Winner AI Gore should also be worried about finding himself on a terrorist watch list. After all, in September, Gore urged young people to engage in nonviolent protest to halt new coal plants....

Digital emitter.(TEMPERATURE GAUGE: Notes from a warming world)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... Your new flat screen television or wafer-thin solar panels might appear the apotheosis of the gleaming, green economy, but these high-tech tools are--like that old, dirty coal plant--helping to roast the planet. A gas used in the...

In Ecuador, trees now have rights.(SPYHOPPING: A whale's act of coming out of the water to examine its surroundings.)
January 1, 2009... On September 29, the Associated Press reported that Ecuador's new constitution would "significantly expand leftist President Rafael Correa's powers." It wasn't until the end of a 15-paragraph article that the AP mentioned the new...

John de Graaf.(EARTH ISLAND PROJECT NEWS)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... John de Graaf, an Earth Island Institute board member, is promoting federal legislation to have a peak in the Sierra Nevada renamed in honor of Earth Island's founder, David Brower. In August, de Graaf wrote an op-ed in The Sacramento Bee...

Earth Island's project network continues to grow!(EARTH ISLAND PROJECT NEWS)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... Earth Island's project network continues to grow! We're pleased to introduce our four newest projects: coalSwarm assists grassroots groups fighting Big Coal and mobilizes support for that movement outside the current framework of...

International Marine Mammal Project.(EARTH ISLAND PROJECT NEWS)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... The Mexican government is trying to gut the Dolphin Safe label for tuna and circumvent US law. The International Marine Mammal Project and other environmental and fair trade groups are crying foul. Mexico's tuna fleet kills dolphins by...

Lawrence Makili.(EARTH ISLAND PROJECT NEWS)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... Lawrence Makili, an outspoken dolphin protector, was recently abducted from his home in the Solomon Islands and attacked. Makili received a broken right arm, fractured ribs, a fractured facial bone, and several other injuries. Makili has...

Altai Project.(EARTH ISLAND PROJECT NEWS)(Brief article)
January 1, 2009... The Altai Project and its international partners are cautiously celebrating a temporary victory in their campaign to reroute a gas pipeline, road, and railroad away from the sensitive, high-altitude Ukok Plateau. The Russian government has...

Earth Island Institute.(Directory)
January 1, 2009... Staff JOHN A. KNOX Executive Director DAVID PHILLIPS Executive Director CLAUDIA BALL Accounting/HR Associate KAREN CAMPBELL Administrative Assistant MATTHEW CARLSTROEM Web Site Manager KEVIN CONNELLY...

Red Panda Network: fighting for the firefox.(EARTH ISLAND PROJECT NEWS)(Nepal)(Country overview)
January 1, 2009... Cradled by India and nestled under China, Nepal boasts a wealth of cultural and biological diversity. Scarcely larger than Arkansas, Nepal has more than 100 ethnic groups and 92 unique languages and dialects. Its extreme climates range from...

Viva Sierra Gorda: livelihood from the land.(EARTH ISLAND PROJECT NEWS)(Jalpan de Serra)
January 1, 2009... Everyone I know in Jalpan de Serra--a small town in the Mexican state of Queretaro where I live--has a loved one working in the US. Located more than 400 steep curves up mountain roads from the nearest city, Jalpan de Serra is located in the...

The Amazon: it's what's for dinner: the spread of soy plantations poses a new threat to the rainforest.(EARTH ISLAND PROJECT NEWS)
January 1, 2009... Edilberto Sena is a priest in the liberation theology mold. After running a community development project deep in the Amazon for six years, he now manages Radio Rural, a Catholic radio station in the Amazonian city of Santarem. He uses the post...

Mission impossible: ecologists agree that there is no way to win the war against wildfire. So why is the forest service spending more than ever on fire suppression.(Editorial)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] On June 21, 2008, a lightning storm ignited a pair of wildfires in California's Los Padres National Forest, the rugged terrain of pine valleys and chaparral hillsides that frames the picturesque Big Sur coast. Within...

Forest of memory.(1,000 WORDS)('Anoranzas'; photo exhibit in Sierra Gorda)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] When photographer Elena Baca Suquet first exhibited her images of Central Mexico's Sierra Gorda wilderness at the Culture and Arts Institute in her home state of Queretaro, she called the series...

Fever in the forests.(disturbance)(sudden oak death)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Some of the 1,000-year-old redwoods in Muir Woods National Monument are so tall their crowns disappear in the sky. Their broad trunks, standing side by side, nearly create walls, and their thigh-thick roots contour...

Borderlands: illegal logging threatens Russia's last great wilderness.
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] One month after the failed August 1991 coup that fatally weakened the Soviet Union, a group of Russian and American scholars gathered in Moscow to review what might have seemed a politically irrelevant topic--the...

A future with forestry: community forest enterprises offer hope for Rural Mexico.
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] It is before dawn when the late-1980s pickup truck rumbles to life outside Gabriel Reves's adobe-walled home, perched on the steep slopes of the Indigenous Zapotec community of San Juan Ozolotepec, high in the...

Frederick Schilling.(CONVERSATION)(Interview)
January 1, 2009... When Frederick Schilling started Dagoba Chocolate, everyone was sweet on him. A tiny operation run out of Schilling's home kitchen, the fair trade chocolate company was the model of a virtuous start-up. With high standards for social and...

Fear factor: can we learn to live with predators among us?(human-animal interaction; predatory animals)
January 1, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] On a bright July day about 10 years ago, I set out for a hike on the steep and forested Pacific Crest Trail above the McKenzie River in the foothills of Oregon's Cascade Mountains. Rounding a switchback, I stopped at...

Up in smoke: big tobacco ruins a small African nation.(Malawi)
January 1, 2009... "It is probably only in Malawi where one win find nothing strange in the cutting down of a tree that one never planted, protected or looked after: It has to be only in Malawi where the Government fails to apprehend and bring to book people who...

Flow.(Video recording review)
January 1, 2009... Flow Directed by Irena Salina Produced by Oscilloscope Laboratories, 84 Minutes It was a blistering hot afternoon when I watched the DVD of Flow. Before starting the film, I strolled to the kitchen, and, with the touch of a button...

The World Without Us.(Book review)
January 1, 2009... The World Without Us by Alan Weisman 320 pages Thomas Dunne Books, 2007 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] There is something wistful in the title of Alan Weisman's sweeping account of what would become of Earth if humans were to...

Notes From a Catastrophe.(Brief article)(Book review)
January 1, 2009... Notes From a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert 240 pages Bloomsbury USA, 2006 I'm on my third trip through Elizabeth Kolbert's Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change, appreciating its power and grace...

Bargaining for Eden: The Fight for the Last Open Spaces in America.
January 1, 2009... Bargaining for Eden: The Fight for the Last Open Spaces in America by Stephen Trimble 336 pages, University of California Press, 2008 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] As people who love the land, environmentalists often desire to have a...

A tale of two wildernesses.(VOICES)(Travel narrative)
January 1, 2009... I knew things were bad when Paulino dipped his empty plastic water bottle into a shallow, muddy swamp puddle. After attempting to sweeten the sludge with a bright orange vitamin C tablet, the middle-aged Guatemalan archaeologist smiled at his...