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Chukchi Sea oil lease auction goes ahead, polar-bear concerns ignored

The U.S. Interior Department is auctioning off oil and gas leases on Wednesday to drill in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea, despite opposition from environmentalists and some Democrats in Congress concerned about […]

Birds die in Portland neighborhood after alcohol binge

This story from The Oregonian gives new meaning to the term "dead drunk":

It's a case fit for wildlife CSI: 55 robins from the Mount Tabor neighborhood -- all dead within a few nearby backyards.

Toxic spill?

Mystery virus?

Maybe not. The leading theory is that the birds were fatally intoxicated, said Bob Sallinger of the Audubon Society of Portland's wildlife care center, where the birds ended up last week.

That's right: The birds drank themselves to death.

Not from a bottle, though. The birds' bellies were chock full of holly berries, skins and seeds. Sallinger isn't dismissing other explanations yet, but the current thinking is that the birds ate aged and fermented berries that killed them.

...

The robins travel in flocks this time of year, so they could have gobbled the berries together last week. They may have died from ethanol poisoning directly or dropped into such a stupor they died of exposure.

"Certainly a drunk bird in the rain is pretty vulnerable," Sallinger said.

Maybe they were just depressed.

Judge rules Navy must comply with sonar rules

A federal judge has ruled that the Navy must comply with earlier restrictions imposed on its use of sonar near the California coast despite a recent attempt by President Bush […]

Green election news, Bush’s State of the Union speech, and more

Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: At Least He Recycles PastGen Doing the Waive The Consent of the Governator Soakin’ Up the Sunshine State John, But […]

Converting the permanent military economy to a green economy

In the 1960s, the silver-tongued leader of the Senate Republicans, Everett Dirksen, is reputed to have said, "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you're talking real money." According to a recent article by Chalmers Johnson, "Going Bankrupt: Why the debt crisis in now the greatest threat to the American Republic," we may have to replace Dirksen's "billion" with the Pentagon's "trillion." By Johnson's accounting, the military is now spending over $1 trillion a year.

At the same time, Bob Herbert has been arguing for a serious committment to rebuild our physical infrastructure:

The country has been hit hard by lost jobs in manufacturing and construction. As government and political leaders are scrambling for ways to stimulate the economy in the current downturn, infrastructure improvements would seem to be a natural component of any effective recovery plan ... We appear to have forgotten the lessons of history. Time and again an economic boom has followed periods of sustained infrastructure improvement.

The way I see it, we need to understand three things: the nature of the military budget, the needs of the current infrastructure, and how infrastructure renewal could be used to create a green economy.

Jack Johnson’s new album is solar-powered

Grist has been all over Jack Johnson’s greenness (if you know what we mean …) for a while now, but this weekend, the Gray Lady got hip to him too. […]

Umbra on vinyl records

Umbra, I know that PVC is bad, and vinyl records are PVC (right?), but is there any harm in keeping the records I already have, or should I get rid […]

Me in The Nation

At the beginning of the year, progressive magazine The Nation started a new guest blog on its website: Passing Through, which "will feature postings by some of the blogosphere’s most […]

Stop

This is also bouncing around the tubes, and while I can’t think of a plausible green connection, what the hell, it’s pretty cool:

British military may obstruct planned wind farms due to radar fears

Echoing recent concerns of the U.S. military, the British Ministry of Defense has stepped up its opposition to some wind power projects due to concerns over turbines’ impact on radar […]