Earth Island Journal articles from September 2008

Earth Island Journal archives from September 2008

Running dry.(FROM THE EDITOR)(Editorial)
September 22, 2008... Several months after finishing author Maude Barlow's fine book Blue Covenant, there's a line I can't get out of my head: "Farms, cities, and industries all over the world are... drilling deep into the Earth to pull up ancient aquifer waters...

Telecommute solution.(LETTERS & E-MAILS)(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2008... I just read Adam Federman's article "Roadkill" (Summer 2008) and am hoping we can overcome some of the noise around congestion pricing and telework. At worst, congestion pricing constricts access. It is amazing to me that, given the changing...

Corporate classrooms.(LETTERS & E-MAILS)(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2008... After receiving the Winter 2008 Journal, I jotted clown my reaction to your article on corporate-funded research at universities ("Taking Care of Business" by Sonya Huber), but didn't send it in until I realized that no other readers put into...

[Cartoon].(LETTERS & E-MAILS)(Cartoon)
September 22, 2008... This one is for when oil reached $100 a barrel. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Kudos.(LETTERS & E-MAILS)(Letter to the editor)
September 22, 2008... My compliments on a very solid collection of stories on urban transportation (Summer 2008). I have been working in this area for years, and am currently leading efforts for car-sharing in Boulder and Denver, and designing a new transportation...

The $38 million mosquito.(AFRICA)(malaria prevention)
September 22, 2008... Malaria, a disease transmitted primarily from mosquitoes, strikes the hardest in Sub-Saharan Africa, where most of the estimated annual 350 to 500 million cases of the illness occur. When the flying pests bite to get the blood they need to...

Fish: fried.(AFRICA)
September 22, 2008... Lake Malawi, Africa's third largest freshwater source, is the center of life for many Malawians. The lake, which also crosses into Tanzania and Mozambique, is an important source of food and livelihoods for the country. Approximately 40,000...

Inappropriate technology.(AFRICA)(carbofuran usage)
September 22, 2008... Carbofuran, a lethal insecticide, has been banned in Europe. In its granular form, carbofuran is also prohibited in the US, and the EPA is seeking a complete ban on the substance. In many parts of Africa, however, carbofuran is readily...

Unnatural disaster.(ASIA)(mud explosion)
September 22, 2008... For two years, a giant mud volcano in the Sidoarjo district of East Java, Indonesia has wreaked havoc on the local population. Gushing some 3.5 million cubic feet of mud per day (enough to fill 50 Olympic-sized swimming pools), the volcano has...

Conservation diplomacy.(ASIA)
September 22, 2008... Iran, increasingly isolated, threatens to shut down oil shipping in the Persian Gulf, which a US admiral says would be "an act of war." The Israelis, worried about Iran's nuclear program, hint that they are prepared to launch an attack against...

Prerogatives of the apes.(EUROPE)(Brief article)
September 22, 2008... Spain may be better known as the home of bullfighting than as a bastion of animal fights, but that reputation may soon change. Spain's parliament recently passed a law that bars harmful experiments on apes. The resolution, which grants to...

Trump's cards.(EUROPE)(Donald Trump's resort development)
September 22, 2008... Real estate mogul Donald Trump is not exactly known for his modesty--or his ecological sensitivity. Trump's soaring high-rises, casino complexes, and eponymous resorts (where you can experience the "Trump lifestyle") are hardly examples of...

Nobody nose.(NORTH AMERICA)(air pollution in Mexico City, Mexico)
September 22, 2008... Mexico City is filled with people more than 20 million of them--many of whom find work in the metropolis's factories manufacturing auto parts, textiles, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, plastics, and electronics. According to Brittanica.com, the...

EPA cost cutting.(NORTH AMERICA)(Environmental Protection Agency's assessment of the value of human life)
September 22, 2008... With skyrocketing gasoline costs fueling inflation, the price of nearly everything seems to be on the rise, from a carton of eggs to the tickets at the movie theater. The one major exception? A human life. Earlier this year, the...

Wholly coal.(OCEANIA)(Australia's coal-dependent electric system)
September 22, 2008... Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd won the election last year in large part on a promise to lead his country in reducing greenhouse emissions, something his predecessor had obstinately refused to do. But now it appears that Rudd's Labor Party...

Wake up and smell the deforestation.(SOUTH AMERICA)(growing coffee in Panama)
September 22, 2008... For coffee connoisseurs, few kinds of beans are prized as highly as the unique "geisha" variety grown in Panama. The coffee beans--which are sometimes described as the champagne of coffee for their subtle jasmine-like taste--are eagerly sought...

Loggerheads.(SOUTH AMERICA)(displacement of nomadic tribes due to loggers)
September 22, 2008... Loggers in the jungles of Peru often find much more than forests to destroy: Nomadic tribes frequently fall to the loggers' invasion. Of the estimated more than 100 uncontacted tribes in the world, more than half are believed to live along...

Saving for the rainforest.(SOUTH AMERICA)(Brief article)
September 22, 2008... Eager to find new ways to protect the Amazon, the Brazilian government is reaching out to international donors to help pay for preservation of the world's largest rainforest. In August, Brazilian President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva signed...

Welcome to the anthropocene.(TEMPERATURE GAUGE: Notes from a warming world)(Brief article)
September 22, 2008... The Geological Society of London is the oldest association of Earth scientists in the world. Its members, as author Mike Davis reports in Rachel's Democracy & Health News, spend a good deal of time dividing the planet's history into different...

Pickens picks wind.(TEMPERATURE GAUGE: Notes from a warming world)(T. Boone Pickens's investment in wind power)(Brief article)
September 22, 2008... The biography of Texas oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens is like something out of the film There Will Be Blood. In the 1980s, Pickens' Mesa Petroleum earned a reputation as a no-holdsbarred master of the corporate takeover, targeting oil companies...

Acid bath.(TEMPERATURE GAUGE: Notes from a warming world)(acidity of seawater being caused by carbon dioxide)(Brief article)
September 22, 2008... When power plants and automobiles pump out C[O.sub.2], most of it goes straight into the atmosphere. But about one-third is absorbed by the planet's oceans. The oceans' daily absorption of some 22 million tons of C[O.sub.2] is steadily...

Look out below.(TEMPERATURE GAUGE: Notes from a warming world)(Brief article)
September 22, 2008... In addition to the long-term threat of a steadily acidifying ocean, sea creatures are facing a more immediate danger from climate change: falling icebergs. Marine species in Antarctica are taking a pounding from the increasing amount of...

South Africa's water woes echo global problems.(SPYHOPPING: A whale's act of coming out of the water to examine its surroundings)
September 22, 2008... June's winter Westerlies are pelting Cape Town, but beyond the peaks of the Overberg, most of the country is experiencing South Africa's typical rainless winter. It's 6 a.m., and our canvas-topped 4x4 lurches through KwaZulu-Natal in search of...

International Marine Mammal Project.(EARTH ISLAND PROJECT NEWS)(Brief article)
September 22, 2008... Ocean Embassy, a company planning to capture and traffic live dolphins in Panama, has closed in the face of widespread public opposition. The Save Japan Dolphins Coalition--consisting of the International Marine Mammal Project of Earth Island...

California Student Sustainability Coalition.(EARTH ISLAND PROJECT NEWS)
September 22, 2008... The California Student Sustainability Coalition (CSSC) is having its 5th Annual Fall Convergence at San Francisco State from October 24 to 26, 2008. The convergence will bring together 400 to 500 young people from all over California to...

Bay Area Wilderness Training.(EARTH ISLAND PROJECT NEWS)
September 22, 2008... Climb a mountain, get kids outdoors, and take home lots of great outdoor gear! Join Bay Area Wilderness Training and a team of climbers on one of several mountains (Mr. Rainier, Mt. Whitney, or Mt. Shasta) to raise money to get urban youth...

The Altai Project.(EARTH ISLAND PROJECT NEWS)(Brief article)
September 22, 2008... Concerned residents in Russia's mountainous Altai Republic, who have been working for the past two years to reroute a proposed gas pipeline away from a high-altitude protected area, learned recently that China plans to accompany the pipeline...

The Borneo Project.(EARTH ISLAND PROJECT NEWS)(Brief article)
September 22, 2008... The Borneo Project is assisting three Penan villages in Sarawak, East Malaysia to develop community preschools. For a generation, the Penan people have been at the forefront of Malaysia's indigenous movement to defend rainforests against...

Viva Sierra Gorda.(EARTH ISLAND PROJECT NEWS)(Brief article)
September 22, 2008... Biodiversity Conservation of the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve is the inspiration of three artists who have each donated 25 images to raise awareness about the northern third of Queretaro State. A major exhibition will take place in Queretaro...

Campaign to Safeguard American Waters (CSAW).(EARTH ISLAND PROJECT NEWS)(Brief article)
September 22, 2008... Campaign to Safeguard American Waters (CSAW)filed three notices of intent to sue major cruise lines in Alaska for violating the cruise ship law passed by a statewide vote in 2006. The suits charge that the cruise lines have not provided...

Bay Localize.(EARTH ISLAND PROJECT NEWS)(Glide Memorial church roof garden)(Brief article)
September 22, 2008... Inspired by the work of Bay Localize, San Francisco's Glide Memorial church is transforming its roof into an edible garden. The "Graze the Roof" project is an experiment in sustainable urban food production. It is implementing cutting-edge,...

Baikal watch: Siberia is not a (nuclear) wasteland.(EARTH ISLAND PROJECT NEWS)
September 22, 2008... Nobody wants to have radioactive materials stored in their own backyard. But is shipping the waste from nuclear power plants all the way to Siberia a viable (or even ethical) solution? Some 65 miles downstream from Lake Baikal, the city of...

China Rivers Project: taking Brower's vision to the Grand Canyons of the East.(EARTH ISLAND PROJECT NEWS)(David Brower)
September 22, 2008... The Great Bend of the Yangtze River carves a canyon plunging tens of thousands of feet deep through the tectonic crimps and folds of the Himalayan foothills. At times bucolic, at times roaring with world-class rapids, the Great Bend is formed...

Brower Youth Awards: meet our 2008 winners.(EARTH ISLAND PROJECT NEWS)(List)
September 22, 2008... Earth Island Institute established the Brower Youth Awards in 2000 to highlight the accomplishments of rising environmental leaders. The annual accolade goes to six young people who have demonstrated outstanding achievements in environmental...

All aflutter: the flap over the mail order butterfly industry.
September 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In the summer of 2007, Karen Oberhauser, a professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior at the University of Minnesota, posted a statement on her Web site, www.monarchlab.org, that reversed the...

You don't miss your water until your well runs dry.(1,000 WORDS)
September 22, 2008... Water makes all the difference between life and death. That immutable fact of existence on our blue planet has preoccupied the art of photographer Robert Dawson throughout his 30-year-long career. A native of California's agricultural...

Mirage: climate change threatens to dry up the southwest's future.(Cover story)
September 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The high ceilings of the Miracle Mile shopping mall in Las Vegas s Planet Hollywood Hotel and Casino are painted to resemble a perfect-day sky--the soft blues and downy white clouds of an idealized spring. About...

Return to Cochabamba: eight years later, the Bolivian water war continues.
September 22, 2008... On first sight, you might think nothing much happens in the Cochabamba Valley, and not much ever will. The temperate fertile valley, nestled in the Andean foothills, feels unrelentingly tranquil with its flowered plazas, colonial terraces, and...

Pink water: plastics, pesticides, and pills are contaminating our drinking supply.
September 22, 2008... In September of 2007, the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program in Norway released some startling statistics about birthrates in the globe's northernmost reaches. The group found that twice as many girls as boys were being born in some...

Tara Lohan.(CONVERSATION)(Interview)
September 22, 2008... In the US, we have had the good fortune, mostly, to take for granted that water is a human right. Aside from summer drought warnings asking us to take shorter showers, very few states have felt the limits of this seemingly unlimited resource....

Manufacturing thirst: the hidden water costs of our industrial economy.
September 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Cananea Consolidated Copper Company--one of the world's largest open pit copper mines, run by Grupo Mexico--forms a beautifully surreal landscape. Carefully sculpted red and gold curves of earth hug pools of...

Trouble in paradise: the struggle to save Belize's glover's atoll.
September 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] We approach the suspicious fishing boat at dawn. It's an outboard engine-powered craft rigged with a big wooden joist across the gunnels, a fulcrum for reeling in very heavy fish. The Belizean patrol craft we're...

Renewal.(Movie review)
September 22, 2008... Renewal Directed by Marty Ostrow and Terry Kay Rockefeller, Fine Cut Productions If someone you worshipped gave you an amazing gift, you'd take incredibly good care of it, fight? That's the question many religious leaders are asking...

Cadillac Desert.(Book review)
September 22, 2008... Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner 608 pages, Penguin, Revised 1993 Sometimes, being prescient is no prize. First published in 1986, Marc Reisner's Cadillac Desert." The American West and its Disappearing Water is, sadly, still...

Liquid confetti.(VOICES)(Personal account)
September 22, 2008... At noon and five p.m. every day, a bell rings throughout the verdant coastal town of Ikumi Beach in the Shikoku Province of Japan. It is the communal lunch chime that later in the day doubles as a curfew reminder for schoolchildren. For me the...