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Rebuilding: more from AtKisson

More intriguing thoughts on rebuilding New Orleans from WC's Alan AtKisson.

Indian government on the cusp of allowing the Asiatic lion to go extinct

These pictures were taken at Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo. I hate zoos. They are rapidly becoming last ditch repositories for animals on the endangered species list. Of course, there are those who don't believe we are in the middle of the sixth great extinction event, or even care, so what's new.

While the Indian bureaucracy is flailing about, the Bengal tiger population drops to a new low. Adding gas to the fire was the poisoning of three of the last 300 remaining Asiatic lions in the Gir forest.

The other kind of population problem

France is paying women to have babies.

Readers talk back about kitty doo-doo, autumn leaves, and more

  Re: Litter Bugged Dear Editor: There’s some concern among sea-otter researchers in California that toxoplasmosis from cat feces may be infecting and killing the state’s threatened sea-otter population. Toxoplasma […]

Don’t It Make My Brown Eggs Blue

U.S. bans imports of beluga caviar to help conserve sturgeon The U.S. — destination for 60 percent of the world’s beluga-sturgeon caviar — yesterday announced a ban on beluga imports […]

Tax gas more and other stuff less

Not so long ago, it seemed like gas at $2.33 a gallon cost an arm and a leg; now it seems like a bargain. And not surprisingly, high prices at the pump have spawned a backlash against fuel taxes across the U.S. -- and have added fuel, so to speak, to the campaign to repeal Washington state's most recent gas tax hike.

As a general matter, I think responding to high gas prices by rolling back taxes is misguided. The specifics get murky, of course, since a lot of the money raised by gas taxes is slated for dubious highway projects -- so a vote for higher gas taxes isn't always a vote to reduce gas consumption. But in general, gas taxes are too low, not too high: Right now, they don't even pay for roads, let alone incorporate all of the other external costs (pollution, greenhouse gases, noise, collisions, congestion, etc.) caused by driving and burning fossil fuels. A stiff & sustained gas tax would do a lot more to reduce gas consumption than all the preaching in the world.

Bartlett’s conference

This Monday, Rep. Roscoe P. Coltrane Bartlett (R-Md.) convened a big ol' conference on peak oil, including speakers Kenneth Deffeyes, Matthew Simmons, and other such brainy energy types. Energybulletin.net has the transcript (parts one, two, and three), as well as a roundup of news and blog covereage. Check it out.

Cali Reclamation Board tries to slow development on floodplains; Arnold fires it

Carl Pope is right: this is just bizarre. In the wake of Katrina and Rita, levees and flood control are on everyone's mind. The California Reclamation Board, which oversees flood control on the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers (the state's two biggest), has been growing increasingly leery of developing in those floodplains without additional protections.

Many stretches of Central Valley levees were built decades ago to protect farmland; they are now aging and weakening at the same time they are being expected to protect thousands of new homes.

In an interview several months ago, [board member Jeffrey F.] Mount said, "We need regional land use planning so we don't continue to build behind these agricultural levees."

Also, he said, a mechanism is needed to pay for strengthening existing levees, and flood insurance should be mandatory.

"Everything I'm saying, of course," Mount said, "will be violently resisted by the building industry."

The need for better protection was so severe that a bipartisan group of California Congressfolk sent a letter to Schwarzenegger pleading for funding:

Scientists trace SARS to bats, blame human mucking with nature

In a move likened to “a microbiological episode of CSI,” a team of scientists has uncovered the culprit behind a disease that shook the world — and that could very […]

Biomimicry in Newsweek

All my environment-related RSS feeds go into a single "green" folder (in Thunderbird). I returned from paternity leave to find that folder bulging with more than 4500 unread entries. Eek. Thus far I've been too scared to even open it.

All of which is to say, I'm sure someone's already covered this. But Newsweek has a nice little article on biomimicry that's worth reading. It recounts various lessons engineers have learned from nature and the nifty widgets they've built. Nothing new for folks familiar with the subject, but a friendly intro.

"If you have a design problem, nature's probably solved it already," says Janine Benyus, cofounder of the Biomimicry Guild. "After all, it's had 3.8 billion years to come up with solutions."

...

"The truth is, natural organisms have managed to do everything we want to do without guzzling fossil fuels, polluting the planet or mortgaging the future," says Benyus.

Indeed.