"Women's Rights, Healthy Planet Go Hand-in-Hand"

This should be a known fact by now - but it doesn't hurt to repeat every now and then.

From NPR.

How do population, natural resources and women's rights all intersect? Robert Engelman explains in a new book how allowing women to control their reproduction can lead to a more sustainable planet. He argues that personal issues such as the availability of contraception are inextricably tied to much larger issues ... such as climate change.

Engelman says that he doesn't like to use the word overpopulation — "with its implication that some of us already here should not be" — but, he writes, "the reality remains that what most people call overpopulation is more evident, in more places, than ever."

Engelman talks with guest host Richard Harris about population and reproduction through the ages and its connection to environmental issues past and present. Engelman's book is titled More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want.

Book excerpt:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently urged his fellow New Yorkers to "face up to the fact" that overcrowding undermines environmental stability. Members of Rwanda's nearly half-female parliament considered a national drive to achieve three-child families in the land-short African country, in the hopes that slower growth might prevent a repeat of its genocidal 1994 civil war. China, its 1.3 billion people clambering up the lower rungs of the consumption ladder, reached to Brazil for livestock feed, to the west coast of Africa for fish, and to Ethiopia for oil, where nine Chinese oil workers were killed by Somali insurgents. And as for the gorillas of Bwindi, they are far from the only apes that may miss the train to the twenty-second century. The 373,000 human babies born on the day you read these words will outnumber all the world's existing gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, and orangutans, our closest animal relatives.

The most-covered story in the "population news" category, however, is one in which population received few mentions: final public acceptance that by using the atmosphere as a dump for waste gases, human beings are heating up the planet. Even as we have awakened to the scientific reality that human-induced climate change is real and happening now, we still pull up the covers and roll over in bed at the thought that this has any important connection to how many of us there are. In April 2007, Time magazine offered "51 things we can do to save the environment"; not one had anything to do with population. A report from the environmental group U.S. PIRG (Public Interest Research Group) called The Carbon Boom detailed state by state the rising emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from 1990 to 2004 in the United States. The word population did not appear in the report, even though the country's carbon dioxide emissions grew a hair less than did its population over the period, 18 versus 18.1 percent. As I neared completion of this book, serious talk began about the need to slash global and U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide by up to 80 percent within decades—with no discussions of how different population scenarios will affect our chances for achieving such a staggeringly challenging objective.

Why so much silence on something so firmly entrenched in the foundations of the environmental economic, and social challenges the world faces? Some resistance stems from the "impersonal reduction of humans to quantity," in the words of English historical demographer Peter Biller. Who wants to be reduced to a number, or go out for a beer with one? Partly, population is just a sensitive topic. Any discussion of population growth quickly taps into an edgy confusion of feelings most of us harbor about contraception and abortion, about childbearing and family size, gender relations, immigration, race and ethnicity, and—not least—the intense longing, the pleasure, and the risks we can't avoid as sexual beings. Sexual taboos are getting harder to confront as a wave of religious fundamentalism grows in apparent response to the same chaotic global complexity to which population growth itself contributes...

"US accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships"

The United States is operating "floating prisons" to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.

Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.

Information about the operation of prison ships has emerged through a number of sources, including statements from the US military, the Council of Europe and related parliamentary bodies, and the testimonies of prisoners.

The analysis, due to be published this year by the human rights organisation Reprieve, also claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when President George Bush declared that the practice had stopped.

It is the use of ships to detain prisoners, however, that is raising fresh concern and demands for inquiries in Britain and the US.

According to research carried out by Reprieve, the US may have used as many as 17 ships as "floating prisons" since 2001. Detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is claimed...

CIA "black sites" are also believed to have operated in Thailand, Afghanistan, Poland and Romania.

In addition, numerous prisoners have been "extraordinarily rendered" to US allies and are alleged to have been tortured in secret prisons in countries such as Syria, Jordan, Morocco and Egypt.

Oil prices up - Gas $4+/gallon US

Some various articles....

The first from the Oregonian about RV usage being down. Apparently it will affect their tourist industry. I'm surprised that any RVs get 10mpg - as big as they are. Most appear to not have considered any sort of streamlining or gas mileage. And why so big?- as if people have to take their whole house with them. I think it's nuts. It would be good if manufacturers made something more reasonable and people didn't drive them from coast to coast twice a year.

High gas prices crimp RV lifestyle

When Hubert and Barbara Walsh retired seven years ago, their first RV trips from Florida to Oregon cost $390 one way. Last month, it cost $1,180.

The Walshes have made the RV journey from their home in Tallahassee, Fla., to Hubert's mother's place in Tigard at least twice a year since they retired in 2001.

Now, the couple say they may have to cut back their visits to once a year or come up with a different mode of travel.

"With the cost of fuel being what it is, I can buy plane tickets round trip for less than it costs to come one way," said Hubert, 62, a retired accountant and former financial manager for the Department of the Army. "It's very disappointing, because this is the lifestyle we love, and we'd planned to live it throughout our retirement."

Evidence of the RV industry's slide is everywhere -- from recent bankruptcies of two RV builders in California and Washington to the sparsely filled RV campgrounds along the Oregon coast over Memorial Day weekend. RV dealerships across the state are dealing with a glut of unsold units. For 2008, the Recreational Vehicle Industry Association predicts that -- because of higher gas prices, a slowing economy and the credit crunch -- sales will decline to 305,000, a 30 percent drop from 2006.

Unstoppable gasoline prices have not only put off many would-be buyers, they also have braked many who already own or forced them to take some detours in their habits.

Most full-size motor homes get 6 to 12 miles a gallon, though smaller ones can get 15 to 18 mpg. In a vehicle like the Walshes', which gets 10 mpg, a 500-mile trip at $4.15 a gallon for regular -- a price seen on some pumps in Oregon in the past week -- would cost $207.

From "GreenYahoo"

EcoGeeks get all the girls

According to a study conducted by GM as part of this year's Challenge X competition:

Nearly 9 in 10 women (88 percent) say they'd rather chat up someone who owns the latest fuel-efficient car versus the latest sports car.

Eighty percent of American car buyers would find someone with the latest fuel-efficient car more interesting to talk to at a party than someone with the latest sports car.

More than 4 out of 10 (45 percent) 18- to 43-year-olds say it's a fashion faux pas nowadays to have a car that's not green or environmentally friendly.

GM's Challenge X is a yearly competition among college students to make GM vehicles more efficient. This year's competition had students from 17 universities "re-engineering" Chevy's Equinox to make it more efficient and reduce its greenhouse impact, while retaining consumer appeal.

Meanwhile over at energybulletin.net - the cost of gas is quite a bit more serious for some people....

In Europe, where a decades-old policy of heavily taxing oil products has resulted in gasoline and diesel retailing for $8 to $11 dollars a gallon, protests, blockades, and strikes by fishermen, farmers and truck drivers broke out across the continent last week. The protesters say fuel prices are so high they can no longer make a living and demand that the many-dollars-per-gallon fuel taxes be cut. So far France’s President has proposed cutting the EC-wide 20 percent value added tax and Britain’s Prime Minister has urged the oil companies to produce more oil. Neither of these proposals was met with much enthusiasm.

In Asia, where most consumers have been shielded by subsidies and state-mandated retail price caps, the cost has become overwhelming. Imported oil has gotten so high that national budgets are being eviscerated or local oil companies are going broke. Last week several countries, after much debate and soul searching, moved to increase retail prices. Governments fear that price increases for petroleum products would invoke such hardships on their peoples that widespread social disorder would ensue.

Indonesia, Taiwan, and Sri Lanka have already raised prices and India is expected to follow soon. The Chinese, faced with high rates of inflation, are expected to withhold any decision until after the election. Fuel shortages are appearing in China, India, Pakistan, and many other countries as national oil companies are no longer able to absorb the cost of crude.

In the US indications of reduced gasoline consumption are starting to appear with reports from the Federal Highway Administration that vehicle miles in March were down 4.3 percent over 2007 and from MasterCard that gasoline sales just before Memorial Day were down by 7.6 percent. The EIA however is still reporting only a minor drop in gasoline consumption. In the next month or so we should have a better indication of how much of an impact $4 gasoline is having on American driving habits.

....The EIA also reported last week that US crude imports during the first 143 days of 2008 were down by 2.9 percent over 2007 and that petroleum product imports were down by 19.6 percent. The US’s top suppliers in March were Canada (1.7 million b/d), Saudi Arabia (1.5 million b/d), Mexico (1.2 million b/d), Nigeria (1.1 million b/d), Venezuela (0.8 million b/d), and Iraq (0.8 million b/d). As exports to the US from Mexico, Venezuela and probably from Nigeria drop, increased imports from Iraq and Saudi Arabia are picking up part of the slack.

Some schools and businesses are considering going to a 4-day week to reduce fuel costs.

Good News and Bad News

By Mark Morford, SFGate.com Columnist

The good news: The pendulum is swinging. Can you feel it? From toxic war-happy neocon evangelical groupthink, back toward something resembling progress, and intelligence, and thoughtfulness, spiritual openness, a renewed respect for science and the environment and ethical foreign policy right along with a renewed desire for a president who doesn't embarrass us on the international stage every single day?

The bad news: It's a pendulum, not a stone. It swings one way, it's bound to eventually swing back again....

"Toyota builds third hybrid battery plant"

Detroit News

Toyota is preparing to rev up production of hybrids, announcing Tuesday its third plant in Japan for producing batteries that are key components for the "green" cars.

Just last week, it announced that it was building a second such battery plant.

Toyota Motor Corp. has emerged the world leader in hybrids with its hit Prius, which has sold more than a cumulative 1 million vehicles over the last decade. Sometime after 2010, it hopes to sell 1 million hybrids a year.

For that, it needs to boost battery production as Honda Motor Co. and other automakers aim to catch up with their new gas-and-electric hybrids -- a technology that is growing in appeal for the world's drivers as gas prices soar.

The 30 billion yen ($291 million) plant in Miyagi prefecture, northern Japan, will be operated by Panasonic EV Energy Co., Toyota's joint venture with Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.

Set to be running by 2010, the factory will make nickel-metal hydride batteries, with production capacity at 200,000 a year, with start-up production at about half of that.

The latest move follows a similar announcement just last week about Toyota's plans to build a 20 billion yen ($194 million) plant in Shizuoka, in central Japan, also to produce nickel-metal hydride batteries for gas-electric hybrid vehicles.

Hybrids reduce pollution and emissions that are linked to global warming by switching between a gasoline engine and an electric motor to deliver better mileage than comparable standard cars.

Last week, Honda, Japan's second-biggest automaker after Toyota, said it will boost hybrid sales to 500,000 a year by sometime after 2010. Honda said it will introduce a new hybrid-only model next year for a lineup of four hybrids.

Nissan Motor Co., which still hasn't developed its own hybrid for commercial sale, said it will have its original hybrid by 2010.

Nissan says its joint venture with electronics maker NEC Corp. will start mass-producing lithium-ion batteries in 2009 at a plant in Japan.

Lithium-ion batteries, now common in laptops, produce more power and are smaller than nickel-metal hydride batteries. Toyota has said lithium-ion batteries may be used in plug-in hybrids, which can be recharged from a home electrical outlet, but it has not given details about a plant on such batteries.

"Numbers of migrating shad dip"

Baltimore Sun

Conowingo Dam counts down 90% over 7 years

The number of shad migrating up the Susquehanna River in Maryland has fallen by almost half over the past year, part of a worrisome decline up and down the East Coast, scientists say.

The drop means that counts of American shad at Conowingo Dam have fallen by more than 90percent over the past seven years. That is a stark reversal from the 1990s, when the construction of fish lifts at dams - and bans on shad fishing - spurred a revival of what has been called "the founding fish" because of its dominance as a food in Colonial times.

Researchers count the shad in April and May as they swim through a fish elevator that allows them to pass over a dam in Harford County to go upstream to spawn.

Because of the decline here and elsewhere, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission is planning public hearings on whether more restrictions should be imposed on catching American shad, officials said. Fishing for the species is banned in Maryland and Pennsylvania, but not in New Jersey, Delaware, New York, North Carolina and other states.

"We've seen decreases in American shad at fish lifts all along the East Coast, suggesting it's not just at the Conowingo Dam," said Erica Robbins, fisheries management plan coordinator at the commission.

The shad's rise and fall has created a twist to an environmental success story. Populations of rockfish, or striped bass, in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries surged after a ban on catching them. But the bass eat shad. And as the bass have multiplied, they seem to be gobbling up the shad, said Dilip Mathur, a fisheries biologist who has run the annual shad count at Conowingo Dam for decades.

"The striped bass are taking a good chunk of the American shad," said Mathur, an environmental consultant for Exelon Corp., which owns the hydroelectric dam. "There wasn't really a large population of striped bass until 10 or 15 years ago, and since then the population has exploded - and now the organisms are trying to reach a balance."

But pollution and excessive fishing also are likely factors, scientists said.

American shad are silvery fish with rows of darks spots along their sides. They grow to about 2 feet and are oily and bony but famously tasty - especially their eggs, or roe.

Until nets stretched across rivers nearly wiped out the species in the 19th and early 20th centuries, shad was among the most popular dishes in the Chesapeake region.

In the spring, shad swarm up rivers and streams all along the Atlantic Coast to spawn. After laying their eggs, the adults return to the ocean and spend the summer feeding on plankton off the coasts of Maine and Canada.

Striped bass grow to three times the size of shad and eat just about anything. Like shad, they were nearly eliminated by overfishing, but a ban on catching them in Maryland and elsewhere in the late 1980s helped their numbers rebound, according to the state Department of Natural Resources.

Dale Weinrich, manager of the finfish program at the agency, said the rising numbers of striped bass, catfish and other predators probably are eating American shad.

But he said that's only part of the picture - and he doubts that's the main reason for the shad's recent drop. He noted that shad and bass coexisted in abundance for thousands of years before people messed up the ecological balance with pollution, dams and overfishing...

"China Sacks Plastic Bags"

Scientific American

SHANGHAI—Thin plastic bags are used for everything in China and the Chinese use up to three billion of them a day--an environmentally costly habit picked up by shopkeepers and consumers in the late 1980s for convenience over traditional cloth bags. Fruit mongers weigh produce in them, tailors stuff shirts into them, even street food vendors plunk their piping hot wares directly into see-through plastic bags that do nothing to protect one's hands from being burned or coated in hot grease. They even have a special name for the plastic bags found blowing, hanging and floating everywhere from trees to rivers: bai si wu le, or "white pollution," for the bags' most common color.

Yet, the Chinese government is set to ban the manufacture and force shopkeepers to charge for the distribution of bags thinner than 0.025 millimeters thick as of June 1—and no one seems prepared. "I don't know what we'll do," Zhang Gui Lin, a tailor at Shanghai's famous fabric market, tells me through a translator. "I guess our shopping complex will figure it out and tell us what to buy to use as bags."

His wife adds: "Maybe it will be like this," tugging a thicker mesh orange plastic bag she is using to carry some shoes. Such thicker bags may prove one replacement for the ubiquitous thinner versions.

The clothes makers are not alone. "I don't know actually," says a vendor of Chinese tamales, known as zong si, who declined to give her name. "I'm sure the government will come up with a solution. Maybe people will just eat it [the zong si directly.]"

The Chinese government is banning production and distribution of the thinnest plastic bags in a bid to curb the white pollution that is taking over the countryside. The bags are also banned from all forms of public transportation and "scenic locations." The move may save as much as 37 million barrels of oil currently used to produce the plastic totes, according to China Trade News. Already, the nation's largest producer of such thin plastic bags, Huaqiang, has shut down its operations...

"Rockefellers Seek Change at Exxon"

New York Times

The Rockefeller family built one of the great American fortunes by supplying the nation with oil. Now history has come full circle: some family members say it is time to start moving beyond the oil age.

The family members have thrown their support behind a shareholder rebellion that is ruffling feathers at Exxon Mobil, the giant oil company descended from John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust.

Three of the resolutions, to be voted on at the company’s shareholder meeting on Wednesday, are considered unlikely to pass, even with Rockefeller family support.

The resolutions ask Exxon to take the threat of global warming more seriously and look for alternatives to spewing greenhouse gases into the air.

One resolution would urge the company to study the impact of global warming on poor countries, another would encourage Exxon to reduce its emissions and a third would encourage it to do more research on renewable energy sources like solar panels and wind turbines.

A fourth resolution, which the Rockefellers are most united in supporting, is considered more likely to pass. It would strip Rex W. Tillerson of his position as chairman of Exxon’s board, forcing the company to separate that job from the chief executive’s job.

A shareholder vote in favor of that idea would be a rebuke of Mr. Tillerson, who is widely perceived as more resistant than other oil chieftains to investing in alternative energy...

“Exxon Mobil needs to reconnect with the forward-looking and entrepreneurial vision of my great-grandfather,” Neva Rockefeller Goodwin, a Tufts University economist, said in a statement to reporters.

“The truth is that Exxon Mobil is profiting in the short term from investments and decisions made many years ago, and by focusing on a narrow path that ignores the rapidly shifting energy landscape around the world,” she added...

The Rockefeller family has always been identified with oil and the legacy of Standard Oil, but for several generations, it has also been active in environmental causes and acquiring land for preservation. John D. Rockefeller’s grandsons devoted themselves to conservation issues, and Rockefeller charitable organizations have long promoted efforts to fight pollution.

Ms. Goodwin, one of the most vocal Rockefellers on the environment today, is co-director of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts...

The involvement of the Rockefellers, said Robert A. G. Monks, a shareholder who has been urging a separation of the chairman and chief executive jobs for years, shows that “this is not just a matter of the self-appointed good guys against the cavemen, but also a matter of the capitalists wanting to make money.”

Nineteen institutional investors with 91 million shares announced last week that they would support resolutions asking Exxon to separate the top executive positions and tackle global warming. They included the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System and the New York City Employees’ Retirement System.

California’s treasurer, Bill Lockyer, who serves on the boards of the two California funds, said the company’s “go-slow approach” on global warming “places long-term shareholder value at risk.”...

"Peak Oil: Everything is going to change"

(This piece ran online with an ad for an "All-New" Chrysler Town and Country Mini-Van "Engineered Beautifully" in the middle - and an ad for a Jeep "Have fun out there" - next to it. That's America.)

By STATE REP. TERRY BACKER in the Connecticut Post

There is little government can do about the price of oil. That is not what people want to hear. Yet it is a fact. The U.S. government and all the states have no "Plan B." They continue to rely on a delusional "Plan A" — more oil and cheaper oil all the time. Politicians, generally asleep at the wheel on this issue, have been shocked into trying to do something about the current and future problems arising from oil costs. They are spinning around looking for someone to blame, dazed by the precipitous rise from $50 per barrel last January to $126 this past week.

In an election year, members of Congress are beating the bushes trying to escape the fallout of their years of dozing in their seats. They point at speculation, greedy profit takers or big oil companies, perhaps all true to one extent or another. However, despite the rising chorus of voices pointing out rising demand coinciding with falling or flat production, they seem to be ignoring the 800-pound gorilla in the room that is "Peak Oil" production. Just a few years ago, Mexico, Russia, Norway, England and Indonesia were producing vast amounts of oil for the world market. Today, England and Indonesia are net importers of oil, Russia's production is flat, Norway's production is falling and Mexico has informed us that their giant oil field, Canterall, is in terminal decline and may not be able to export after 2015.

Neither drilling in Alaska, the continental shelf or other ultra-deep-water sites will change the trends of less and more expensive oil. Only changing our infrastructure and consumption patterns will preserve somewhat our current lifestyle.
Connecticut broke out of the pack this month to become the first state in the country to make a major step forward in planning for the increasingly high cost and reduced availability of petroleum. With only 15 minutes remaining until the end of the 2008 General Assembly session, the state Senate approved by unanimous consent and sent to Gov. M. Jodi Rell the "Energy Scarcity and Security" bill.

The measure requires the state to develop a planning scenario model that will predict impacts based on the price of oil. The model will predict future impacts on heating, transportation, food cost, road paving, fleet operations, education, public health I think you get the idea. The outputs of the model will guide us in formulating Plans B, C and D for the state.

The model won't make more oil or cheaper oil; it will reveal to us the impacts on our citizens and our state before they happen. It will allow the Legislature and municipal governments to reprioritize what is possible and what is not.

Thanks to the members of the Connecticut Legislative Peak Oil and Natural Gas Caucus, state government opened its eyes for a quick peek into the future. A small awareness has begun in the Legislature, but it is not an understanding. The public now must educate itself about the issues of oil supply and help lead its government to make the changes that will surely be painful, but needed.

State Rep. Terry Backer is co-founder of the Connecticut Peak Oil and Natural Gas Caucus and a member of the General Assembly's Energy and Technologies Committee. He represents Stratford's 121st Assembly District.

"Red tide has spread from Maine to Mass."

From The Boston Globe

Red tide has spread from central Maine to Gloucester, making it unsafe to harvest soft-shell clams or mussels from those coastal waters and potentially signaling the onset of a business-damaging season, state officials say.

The single-celled algae carries toxins that concentrate over time in shellfish, making them poisonous, even lethal. Red tide often occurs in late spring and summer, when the algae grow rapidly. Crabs, lobsters, fish, and shrimp are not affected.

A combination of abundant beds of the algae seeds and excess winter precipitation could translate into the worst red tide season since 2005, oceanographers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution say.

The 2005 outbreak, which also began in the middle of May, extended from northern Maine to Nantucket with algae counts 40 to 100 times higher than normal. It halted business for nearly 2,000 clammers, oyster farmers, and mussel harvesters for much of the summer. They lost tens of millions of dollars.

"I'm not in a position to make predictions, but we're always worried," said Michael Hickey, chief biologist for the state Division of Marine Fisheries.

He said the no-harvesting order along the North Shore took effect on Thursday for mussels, carnivorous marine snails, and soft-shell clams. But he said it was not unusual to see red tide this time of year.

"We are always watchful of this from the beginning of May," he said.

Hickey added there's no risk for residents who eat clams or mussels already on the market. The state suspends harvesting when officials find 80 micrograms of the toxin for 100 grams of shell fish meat. It takes 250 to 300 micrograms to make people ill.

Don Anderson, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who specializes in red tide issues, said his oceanographic models show this year's bloom could approach the damage that occurred in 2005...

The state has sampling stations that test shellfish every two days. Massachusetts has been monitoring red tide since 1972, when there was also a large outbreak.

"Famine Looms as Wars Rend Horn of Africa"

From the New York Times

DAGAARI, Somalia — The global food crisis has arrived at Safia Ali’s hut.

She cannot afford rice or wheat or powdered milk anymore.

At the same time, a drought has decimated her family’s herd of goats, turning their sole livelihood into a pile of bleached bones and papery skin.

The result is that Ms. Safia, a 25-year-old mother of five, has not eaten in a week. Her 1-year-old son is starving too, an adorable, listless boy who doesn’t even respond to a pinch.

Somalia — and much of the volatile Horn of Africa, for that matter — was about the last place on earth that needed a food crisis. Even before commodity prices started shooting up around the globe, civil war, displacement and imperiled aid operations had pushed many people here to the brink of famine.

But now with food costs spiraling out of reach and the livestock that people live off of dropping dead in the sand, villagers across this sun-blasted landscape say hundreds of people are dying of hunger and thirst.

This is what happens, economists say, when the global food crisis meets local chaos.

“We’re really in the perfect storm,” said Jeffrey D. Sachs, a Columbia economist and top United Nations adviser, who recently visited neighboring Kenya.

There has been a collision of troubles throughout the region: skimpy rainfall, disastrous harvests, soaring food prices, dying livestock, escalating violence, out-of-control inflation, and shrinking food aid because of many of these factors.

Across the border in Ethiopia, in the war-racked Ogaden region, the situation sounds just as dire. In Darfur, the United Nations has had to cut food rations because of a rise in banditry that endangers aid deliveries. Kenya is looking vulnerable, too.

A recent headline in one of Kenya’s leading newspapers blared, “25,000 villagers risk starving,” referring to a combination of drought, higher fertilizer and fuel costs and postelection violence that displaced thousands of farmers. “These places aren’t on the brink,” Mr. Sachs said. “They’ve gone over the cliff.”

Many Somalis are trying to stave off starvation with a thin gruel made from mashed thorn-tree branches called jerrin. Some village elders said their children were chewing on their own lips and tongues because they had no food. The weather has been merciless — intensely hot days, followed by cruelly clear nights.

This week, Saida Mohamed Afrah, another emaciated mother, left her two children under a tree and went scavenging for food and water. When she came back two hours later, her children were dead.

She had little to say about the drought. “I just wish my children had died in my lap,” she said.

I give up, says Brazilian Environmental Minister

From the Independent

Brazil has been accused of turning its back on its duty to protect the Amazon after the resignation of its award-winning Environment Minister fuelled fresh fears over the fate of the forest. The departure of Marina Silva, who admitted she was losing the battle to get green voices heard amidst the rush for economic development, has been greeted with dismay by conservationists.

"She was the environment's guardian angel," said Frank Guggenheim, executive director for Greenpeace in Brazil. "Now Brazil's environment is orphaned."

In a letter to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Ms Silva said that her efforts to protect the rainforest acknowledged as the "lungs of the planet" were being thwarted by powerful business lobbies. "Your Excellency was a witness to the growing resistance found by our team in important sectors of the government and society," she wrote.

The decision by Ms Silva to walk away five years on from her triumphant unveiling as a minister in President Lula's first term has underlined just how far the former trade union hero's administration has drifted from the promises made in its green heyday.

"Her resignation is a disaster for the Lula administration," said Jose Maria Cardoso da Silva, of Conservation International. "If the government had any global credibility in environmental issues, it was because of minister Marina."

The Latin American giant's supposed progress on environmental protection has unravelled in the past year as revelations of record levels of deforestation, violent land disputes and runaway forest fires have followed in quick succession. The worldwide boom in agricultural commodities has created an unparalleled thirst for land and energy in Brazil, and the result has been a potentially catastrophic land grab into the world's largest remaining rainforest. The Amazon basin is home to one in 10 of the world's mammals and 15 per cent of its land-based plant species. It holds more than half of the world's fresh water and its vast forests act as the largest carbon sink on the planet, providing a vital check on the greenhouse effect.

Since President Lula won a second term Ms Silva found herself a lone voice in a government acutely aware that its own political future depended on the vast agribusiness interests she was trying to rein in. The final breakdown in her relationship with the President came after he gave the green light to massive road and dam-building projects in the Amazon basin, and a plan she drafted for the sustainable management of the region was taken from her and handed to a business-friendly fellow minister.

Marcelo Furtado, the campaign director for Greenpeace Brazil, said the resignation was "disastrous" and blamed it on the government's Amazon policy and pressure to ease environmental regulations on factories....

"Obesity Contributes To Global Warming"

It doesn't take a study to know the obvious - that more consumption contributes to global warming - whether it is eating or other things....

Posted on Planet Ark ->

Obese and overweight people require more fuel to transport them and the food they eat, and the problem will worsen as the population literally swells in size, a team at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine says.

This adds to food shortages and higher energy prices, the school's researchers Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts wrote in the journal Lancet on Friday.

"We are all becoming heavier and it is a global responsibility," Edwards said in a telephone interview. "Obesity is a key part of the big picture."

At least 400 million adults worldwide are obese. The World Health Organization (WHO) projects by 2015, 2.3 billion adults will be overweight and more than 700 million will be obese.

In their model, the researchers pegged 40 percent of the global population as obese with a body mass index of near 30. Many nations are fast approaching or have surpassed this level, Edwards said.

BMI is a calculation of height to weight, and the normal range is usually considered to be 18 to 25, with more than 25 considered overweight and above 30 obese.

The researchers found that obese people require 1,680 daily calories to sustain normal energy and another 1,280 calories to maintain daily activities, 18 percent more than someone with a stable BMI.

Because thinner people eat less and are more likely to walk than rely on cars, a slimmer population would lower demand for fuel for transportation and for agriculture, Edwards said.

This is also important because 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions stem from agriculture, he added.

The next step is quantifying how much a heavier population is contributing to climate change, higher fuel prices and food shortages, he added.

"Promotion of a normal distribution of BMI would reduce the global demand for, and thus the price of, food," Edwards and Roberts wrote.

"Los Angeles Eyes Sewage as a Source of Water"

New York Times

Faced with a persistent drought and the threat of tighter water supplies, Los Angeles plans to begin using heavily cleansed sewage to increase drinking water supplies, joining a growing number of cities considering similar measures.

Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa, who opposed such a plan a decade ago over safety concerns, announced the proposal on Thursday as part of a package of initiatives to put the city, the nation’s second largest, on a stricter water budget. The other plans include increasing fines for watering lawns during restricted times, tapping into and cleaning more groundwater, and encouraging businesses and residents to use more efficient sprinklers and plumbing fixtures.

The move comes as California braces for the possibility of the most severe water shortages in decades.

Snowfall in the Sierra Nevada, which supplies about a third of Los Angeles’s water, is short of expectations. At the same time, the Western drought has lowered supplies in reservoirs, while legal rulings to protect endangered species will curtail water deliveries from Northern California.

Worsening the problem, Los Angeles is expected to add 500,000 people by 2030, forcing the city to examine new ways to meet demand. One option off the table, Mr. Villaraigosa said, is a repeat of the city’s troubled history, fictionalized in the movie “Chinatown,” of diverting a distant river southward to slake the city’s thirst.

The city, pushed by legal claims, is already paying millions to restore dried-up portions of the river, the Owens.

“There simply are no more holes or straws to pitch,” Mr. Villaraigosa said at a news conference at a water plant.

Many cities and towns across the country, including Los Angeles, already recycle wastewater for industrial uses and landscaping.

But the idea of using recycled wastewater, after intense filtering and chemical treatment, to replenish aquifers and reservoirs has gotten more notice lately because of technological advances that, industry leaders say, can make the water purer than tap water. San Diego and South Florida are also considering or planning to test the idea, and Orange County, Calif., opened a $481 million plant in January, without much community resistance, that is believed to be the world’s largest such facility.

None of the proposals or recycling projects already under way send the treated water directly into taps; most often the water is injected into the ground and gradually filters down into aquifers.

That is what Los Angeles would do, too. But the city abandoned that idea seven years ago in the face of political opposition, and is likely to face some debate about it now.

Fran Reichenbach, a founder of the Beachwood Canyon Neighborhood Association, one of the groups that opposed the plan, said she remained unconvinced the water would be safe.

“I appreciate them trying to save us in a time of water shortage, but the fact remains the kind of toxins and chemicals that are created on daily basis cannot be tested for,” Ms. Reichenbach said, disputing industry claims to the contrary. She said the group would push for independent testing and analysis of the treated water.

But Mr. Villaraigosa and H. David Nahai, the general manager of the Department of Water and Power, said they would push forward.

It will cost about $1 billion to retool the water works to treat the sewage, capture more rainfall and make other improvements. The money, city officials said, will come in part from state grants and fees on polluters, though they have not ruled out increases in water bills as well. The City Council must approve some of the changes.

Heat Wave on West Coast

Yesterday, according to weather.com, it was 100 degrees in Palo Alto. The previous record high for the day was 91 - the average high is 73 degrees. There are heat warnings today.

The whole west coast up to Seattle is having a heat wave from a high pressure system.

From the Stanford Daily, Heat wave scorches Stanford, Bay Area

Students waded through the Claw fountain in White Plaza to beat the heat wave passing through the Bay Area. Temperatures peaked at 97 degrees on Thursday, and the National Weather Service issued a second “Excessive Heat Warning” for Friday afternoon, forecasting temperatures up to 98 degrees.

“It is not uncommon for the Bay Area to experience temperatures nearing 100 degrees during the latter part of the summer, but it is very uncommon this early in the season,” said Associate Vice Provost for Environmental Health and Safety Lawrence Gibbs in an email to The Daily.

According to weather.com -that area has not been this hot this early in the year since records began in 1874.

From AP - Sea lions likely died from the heat

PORTLAND, Ore. - The deaths of six sea lions found in traps on the Columbia River earlier this month were likely caused by the heat, and not by gunshots as officials first suspected, the National Marine Fisheries Service said.

Oregon and Washington officials had been trapping the animals as part of a federally approved removal process because they feast on salmon at the Bonneville Dam....

The fisheries service said Wednesday the results of necropsies on all six animals were consistent with death from heat stroke. Studies of tissue samples taken after the May 4 deaths are expected in about 10 days and might reveal more...

Meanwhile - it's unseasonable cool out here in Indiana. We usually average around 74 as a high - but it only got up to 60 yesterday. I planted some wildflowers that I normally plant at the end of March - and the temperatures have been so low - the soil temps and all should be fine.