A Movable Beast: Asian Pythons Thrive in Florida

New York Times:By ANDREW C. REVKIN
Invasive Snakes:Click for photo

EVERGLADES NATIONAL PARK, Fla. — Skip Snow, a federal biologist in Everglades National Park, would love to spend his days monitoring the dizzying array of native wildlife across this 1.5-million-acre “river of grass” west of the ever-expanding Miami metropolis.

Lately, however, he has been spending ever more time studying the remains of the park’s birds and animals, extracted from the stomachs of captured or road-killed Burmese pythons, the latest — and most spectacular — addition to Florida’s growing list of biological interlopers....

Lori Williams, the executive director of the federal invasive species council, said Florida’s growing focus on snakes and other terrestrial introduced species could raise the profile of the issue in Congress....

Well, one could set a python free in the halls of Congress...Only problem would be deciding with whom to mate, now that Tom DeLay is gone.

While Mr. Snow is hunting whatever pythons he can find and pushing for new laws and more money for preventive programs, he is also working at the grass-roots level.

In frequent slide presentations to community groups, he pulls no punches, describing how the snakes seize prey with small sharp teeth and suffocate it with muscular coils. There are several recorded deaths of pet owners in the United States strangled or suffocated by pythons.

One slide says: “Do you really want a snake that may grow more than 20 feet long or weigh 200 pounds, urinate and defecate like a horse, live more than 25 years and for whom you will have to kill mice, rats and, eventually, rabbits?”

Now I admit that I've been critical of the Congress. But this, I think, is going too far...

God, Man, and Green at Yale

Weekly Standard: By Ernest Lefever

A HALF CENTURY AGO, William F. Buckley, Jr., created quite a stir when he published God and Man At Yale, bemoaning the junior status accorded the Almighty within its ivied walls. Today a new phenomenon is sweeping the Yale campus, especially at Yale Divinity School, where in the mid-1940s I studied theology and social ethics.

Yale has not escaped the many moods and causes dredged up by the countercultural zeitgeist. None has been more colorful, flamboyant, or intense than the current green revolution. This is dramatically manifest in the current issue of Reflections, the official quarterly of the Divinity School. It's theme and title is 'God's Green Earth: Creation, Faith, Crisis.' ...

I could go on and on, but this may be sufficient to suggest that Yale Divinity School is promoting a new Pantheism, the belief that "nature is God," a worldview popular in the eighteenth century and long held by many tribal peoples who are persuaded their god speaks to them through volcanoes, earthquakes, and lightening[sic].

Reading this version of Yale's new green creed, including it's[sic] veneration of all living things large and small, recalls a limerick I wrote two years ago:

I love all trees and buzzing bees
And great things like the Seven Seas.
Everything global
Makes me feel noble
But I still have a problem with fleas.

And, I dare say, with spelling, grammar, and cognizance of the real world.

Buckley, Lefever, and the Weekly Standard deserve one another (although I think Buckley can spell, unlike the other two). I'll take Yale.

And let me insert a plug for panentheism, somewhat distinct from pantheism.

Lefever's tiresome rant eventually finds its way to a discussion of nuclear energy, a subject I have discussed in previous postings. I actually share the view that consideration of nuclear alternatives for generating electricity should not be summarily dismissed. But Lefever's advocacy is smug and deceptive (the nuclear fuel cycle, both in early and late stages, is environmentally toxic, although in different ways than fossil fuels), and neglects a number of major challenges that must be addressed forthrightly (not least security in a time of terrorist threat, both at plant sites and along transportation routes).

G!d (immanent or transcendent, pantheist or panentheist) save us from the idiocies of those with whom we may, a little bit, on a very few issues, maybe, partially, agree.

I hate buzzwords! It's not "carbon," it's "carbon dioxide"

Salon Life: By Cary Tennis

Question:... After 'carbon-neutral' became a buzzword, I asked a co-worker to explain what it meant and what carbon had to do with it. Was that covered in the parts of 'An Inconvenient Truth' I had skipped over?

The co-worker explained about carbon dioxide offsets and this was a concept I understood, even though it seems a lot like the buying of indulgences. What I don't understand is why no one is calling the concept correctly -- carbon is not carbon dioxide! One is a black solid. One is an odorless, colorless gas. Couldn't they call it CO2 neutral? ...

Dear Bothered by Bad Buzzwords,

The crowd is dumb but it knows what it wants. It wants a picture of the pollution it opposes. It cannot see carbon dioxide, but it can certainly see the evil Blackie Carbon!

So it names this thing it opposes "carbon," rather than "carbon dioxide," in an act of willful synecdoche. ...


The crowd hates us when we dare to point out that it is carbon dioxide and not carbon that is pouring out of exhaust pipes... You just don't get it, the crowd replies. It's the spirit of oneness we feel in opposing what we oppose. You obviously do not feel the ecstasy of belonging that we feel, so it is irrelevant to speak to you. You are not one of us. If you want to be one of us you must perform a sacrifice. You must put aside your carping about facts and join us in spirit. We are the crowd. We are omnipotent. We have the songs to prove it.

And you can put that in your pipe and offset it, too...

Is our family annoying because we own a Prius?

Slate Magazine: By Emily Bazelon

Why are Prius sales surging when other hybrids are slumping, the Times asked? Because buyers 'want everyone to know they are driving a hybrid.' According to a marketing survey (which the Times ran in a graphic I couldn't hide from), more buyers bought the Prius this year because it 'makes a statement about me' (57 percent) than because of its better gas mileage (36 percent) or lower carbon dioxide emissions (25 percent) or new technology (7 percent).

If I'm being honest, I'd answer 'all of the above' in response to that survey. It also made me worry about how my kids perceive our family Prius ownership. Do they think we're doing our small bit to save the Earth, or are they imbibing a look-at-me smugness?

Of possible sins that middle class families can commit, this seems to me rather low down on the list...Ditto on my list of things to worry about...

The Power of Green

New York Times:By Thomas Friedman (old)

"Hence my motto: ''Green is the new red, white and blue.''"

I wonder how Muslims read that?
The last American national politician I can remember (my memory is not as good as it once was) who used green as a signature campaign color (before it acquired its current environmental meaning) was Jimmy Carter. Might that say something about its subsequent lack of political popularity?
Or are we just locked into red and blue in perpetuity?

Global Warming Worries Drive Atomic Renaissance

Truthout:

Sitting in the belly of the beast - Dominion's 2,000-megawatt Millstone nuclear power plant in Waterford, Connecticut - the company's chief nuclear officer, Dave Christian, seems an unlikely environmentalist. But he says concern about climate change is what got him involved in the peaceful pursuit of the atom in the first place. ...

The case for Dominion as a friend of the Earth is based on a few simple facts: It generates 45 percent of Connecticut's electricity and 30 percent of Virginia's without taking a huge toll in smokestack-emitted global warming gas. In fact, there are no smokestacks, because (aside from the occasional release of radioactive material) the only thing nuclear power plants vent is steam. What's more, in contrast to the modest current capacity of wind and solar power, nukes can produce very large amounts of electricity - enough to counter global warming by taking highly polluting coal-burning plants offline even as electricity demand increases. ...

Nuclear power has already won some powerful allies in the environmental community. Fred Krupp of Environmental Defense says, "We should all keep an open mind about nuclear power." Jared Diamond, best-selling author of Collapse, says, "To deal with our energy problems we need everything available to us, including nuclear power," which should be "done carefully, like they do in France, where there have been no accidents." To which Stewart Brand, another apostate green who founded The Whole Earth Catalog and Whole Earth Review, adds, "The only technology ready to fill the gap and stop the carbon dioxide loading of the atmosphere is nuclear power." James Lovelock, originator of the Gaia theory about the planet's self-regulating systems, has called for, to quote The Independent, "a massive and immediate expansion of nuclear power." Actor Paul Newman visited New York's Indian Point plant and praised its climate role. In many cases, these environmentalists see nuclear as only a temporary fix....

To get the public to accept a major expansion of nuclear power, the industry will have to convince Americans terrified by the specter of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and intentional terrorism-related sabotage. ...

Meanwhile, plans to relocate America's nuclear plant waste to a secure federal site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada are slowly inching forward. The facility is designed to house 77,000 tons of nuclear waste, including the 50,000 tons already waiting for storage at reactor sites in dozens of states. The project director, Edward Sproat, said that a 2017 start date is now unlikely, and that the waste facility may never be built without increased Congressional funding.

The current plan is to transport the waste to Yucca Mountain, stored in reinforced casks, by truck and rail through 43 states. The watchdog group Public Citizen says this plan would put the waste "within half a mile of 50 million people." And it adds that "more waste would be shipped in the first year alone than has been shipped in the U.S. in the past three decades."

These facts led an increasingly skeptical Atlanta Constitution to write, "[W]orldwide, it would take some 2,000 new nuclear power plants, at a cost of over $1 trillion, to make a dent in greenhouse gas emissions. Those plants would require a new Yucca Mountain-sized repository every few years to store the tidal wave of highly radioactive nuclear waste. With no answer to its radioactive nuclear waste, it is clear that nuclear energy will not be the answer to global warming." ...

In his book Insurmountable Risks: The Dangers of Using Nuclear Power to Combat Global Climate Change (IEER Press), Brice Smith admits that, when compared to fossil fuels, nuclear power emits far lower levels of greenhouse gases, even when mining, enrichment and fuel fabrication are taken into account. But to effectively challenge the global warming problem, he says, a new reactor would have to come online somewhere in the world every 15 days on average between 2010 and 2050. Even with this growth, he calculates that the proportion of electricity coming from nuclear sources would grow only slightly, from 16 to 20 percent over the period.

This is a debate we are going to have to confront. In addition to the obvious issues of plant operational safety and our ongoing failure to resolve "the fuel cycle" (what do we do with all the radioactive gunk produced by the process, and how do we safely transport it to burial), security issues (nuclear facilities make such a delicious terrorist target) pose an ongoing challenge of enormous magnitude.

But the production alternatives suck.
Note that electric cars, even if they are not killed yet again, need an ultimate source of electricity.
Coal is hardly an optimal answer, although economically (as we now--improperly--measure things) currently most favorably positioned, here and in rapidly growing economies like China and India. What a looming disaster, both in traditional pollution terms (possibly subject to some amelioration with new technologies) and its (huge) contribution to global warming.
Conservation (including, but not limited, to higher efficiency technologies), of course, offers the greatest potential, if we are willing to pay its costs.

Paint the army green. Especially the bombs.

Informed Comment: By Juan Cole

Dennis Kucinich wants a massive government program to retrofit homes for solar and wind energy. I don't know if homes are the place to start, but I agree that solar and wind would become more viable if the government threw a lot of money at them. Personally, I'd start by making the Defense Department and the military as green as possible. This would have the advantage of being attractive to the Republicans, of getting the corporations on board, of potentially giving our military advantages in the field, and of being hard for the conservatives to argue against.

An unanticipated nugget. (Green) black humor from Prof. Cole?

Seven Lights for the Green Menorah

The Shalom Center:

(Report from Rabbi Arthur Waskow. See below for background and fuller exploration of an extraordinarily rich meeting on energy policy and the danger of global scorching/ climate crisis held by The Shalom Center on June 18, 2007. Out of this meeting came this approach to policy change.)

To save our planet, crops, water supply, & coastlines from the ravages of climate crisis & global scorching, The Shalom Center urges these seven directions of PERSONAL & POLICY change at all governmental levels, corporate and labor-union decisions, and household / congregational action. To work for these policy changes, write Office@shalomctr.org or Shalom Center, 6711 Lincoln Drive, Philadelphia PA 19119.

A. Making carbon pay: making it public policy that carbon emissions into the atmosphere must cost the emitter, whether through a carbon tax or carbon caps, or a combination, and providing for a rising ramp of such costs. At the personal level, this means agreeing as hoiuseholds, congregations, even individuals to reduce our carbon emissions in one area of our lives if we need to increase them in another.

B. Shifting public subsidies, loans, and investments from high-carbon to low-carbon energy sources: Ending subsidies to such carbon-producing sources of energy as coal, oil, and corn-based ethanol; creating and constantly increasing subsidies for research and production of non-carbon-emitting sources of energy such as wind, solar, switch-grass. For individuals and households, this means chamging our purchasing habits, joining wind-energy plans, etc.

C. Energy conservation in buildings. Setting strong building-code regulations for new buildings and retrofitting old ones. We can make these decisions as well in our own homes, our congregational buildings, etc.

D. Energy conservation in transportation: Reducing/ ending subsidies to high-emission forms of transportation (autos and airplanes), imposing costs on them, insisting on strong conservation measures to reduce emissions from autos and airplanes, and raising subsidies to lower-energy-consuming forms of transportation (bikes, rail, walking) and for meetings by teleconferencing, etc., that use less energy. Again, what forms of transpoiration do we choose as households?

E. Whether in actual cities or in suburbs, strongly encouraging urban-style high-density living and discouraging sprawl -- with subsidies, investment in urban recreation, workplaces, etc. vs investment in suburban and low-density housing, long distances between home and workplace, etc.)

F. Focusing education, arts, and science on climate crisis. Subsidizing scientific climate-crisis analysis; climate-centered educational projects throughout school years from pre-K through grad school; support for art, literature, music, dance, film, games, etc. that address climate crisis. In religious life and specifically Jewish life, infusing celebration of festivals, life-cycle markers (esp. intergenerational markers like bar/bat mitzvah & confirmation), prayer, and Torah-study with concern for the earth and climate.

G. Shabbat: Setting aside restful time as practice and model (especially but not exclusively in Jewish life). Encouraging minimal work and use of carbon-emitting energy for the time of Shabbat itself ; and on that principle, making public policy favoring longer vacation and holiday time for family, neighborhood, and communal celebration (as against long-distance high-energy-consuming vacation time).

Sierra Club sues Wisconsin, UW on clean air

From The Badger Herald: by Joanna Pliner

The state of Wisconsin — and the University of Wisconsin in particular — could face litigation for violating the federal Clean Air Act.

The Sierra Club, an international environmental organization, held a teleconference and issued a statement Monday announcing its intent to sue the two parties.

According to Jennifer Feyerherm, coordinator for the Sierra Club’s Wisconsin Clean Energy Campaign, coal power plants are the largest sources of soot and fine particulate matter in the air. The Sierra Club’s case against the state of Wisconsin and the university focuses on UW’s Charter Street Heating Plant and the state’s Capitol Heat and Power plant, which both use coal to produce energy.

David Bender of Garvey McNeil & McGillivray, S.C., the law firm representing the Sierra Club, said the environmental organization discovered numerous modifications made to the boilers at the aforementioned coal power plants. Since the Charter and Capitol power plants did not receive permits to make those modifications, he added, the Sierra Club alleged that the plants violated the Clean Air Act.

Bruce Nilles, director of the Sierra Club’s Midwest Clean Energy Campaign, said UW and the state need to “step up” to put Wisconsin on track for “cleaner air and a better future.”

Yale starts work on ‘greenest’ school

New Haven Register :
By Mary E. O’Leary

NEW HAVEN — It was more of a 'bottom-out ceremony,' than a groundbreaking, as dignitaries gathered Thursday at the future site of Kroon Hall, which Yale University hopes will be the 'greenest' building on Earth....

Scheduled to be complete by late 2008, the building [the new Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies] has been designed to meet a platinum Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standard by combining environmentally friendly materials with high-tech energy savings.

Yale President Richard C. Levin, who speaks often about the importance of environmental leadership, most recently at a gathering of business leaders at Davos, Switzerland, predicted the entire Ivy League will make a collective effort along the lines of what Yale is already doing.

The university has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 10 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, "at a cost that is well under 1 percent of our operating budget," Levin said.

"That’s a small tax. Who wouldn’t pay that price ... for the safety of the planet. That’s nothing. We could do that globally, we could do that across all our institutions. If our government would wake up, we could do that," Levin said.

He said he hopes to have a conference of the 10 leading global universities this summer to get similar commitments.

Can and should great universities be doing more to provide environmental leadership for the society? Is meeting minimum legal requirements an adequate policy?

Harvard A&M?

From Boston Business Journal::
Harvard ponders sustainable farm in Allston

Some Harvard University students and faculty are asking the university to create a farm on some of its holdings in Allston, according to the Harvard Crimson.

The student newspaper reported that Harvard administrators have 'entertained discussions' about a sustainable farm, saying the idea was 'still in the concept phase.'

The Crimson said other ideas put forward to the university include a driving range, a day care facility for Harvard students and staff and a student center.

Maybe a driving range over a sustainable, ethanol-producing sawgrass field? Perhaps with some pot plots, to help with financing? Talk about self-sustaining!