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A nice New Yorker piece

Catching up on a month's backlog of reading, I came across an excellent piece on water shortages by Michael Specter, a former colleague of mine who writes on science and public health issues. It's called "The Last Drop: Confronting the possibility of a global catastrophe," in the 23 October issue of the New Yorker.

Specter opens the article by introducing us to Shoba, a young mother living with her husband and five children in Kesum Purbahari, a New Delhi slum, where women with buckets and pails line up at dawn to wait for a tanker truck carrying water. Everyone knows that to drink the thick, brown water from the community standpipe is to risk serious illness or even death. Some days, the tanker doesn't come.

India, with 20% of global population, receives only 4% of the world's annual supply of fresh water. India's groundwater aquifers are quickly disappearing from over-pumping.

Even in prosperous neighborhoods of cities like Delhi and Mumbai, water is available for just a few hours a day -- and often only as a brown and sludgy trickle -- forcing millions of middle class Indians to stumble out of bed at three or four in the morning to turn on their taps.

Big energy begs for climate rules, bottom-trawling ban fails, and more

Read the articles mentioned at the end of the podcast: Thank You, Sir, May I Have Another Nothing New Under the Sea For Every Action, There’s a Reactor You Give […]

Skiing, soccer, and motor racing, oh my!

Goodness. Sometimes this dashing (lovely?) sportswriter must resort to reeeally stretching to make a sports-environment connection; sometimes, the eco-athletics news springs up faster than you can, um, [insert your sports analogy of choice here].

What is it good for?

Whether we're addicted to heroin or hallucinogens, romance or righteousness, our addictions are resolved as we seek, in fellowship with others, to abandon our control-based mentality, and to develop our capacities for personal humility, indiscriminate compassion, and responsible participation in the many layers of community in which we are nested.

I like that quote from this short but suggestive piece in Orion by Roget Lockard. It's about addiction in general and addiction to righteousness specifically.

On righteousness, every progressive and every green would well heed these words:

SCOTUS should split the difference on GHG regs

Somewhat contra Andrew, I think the approaching Supreme Court case will be significant, and not just as a symbolic way to keep global warming in the headlines.

To me, the ideal outcome would be precisely the split decision alluded to by David Savage in the L.A. Times piece Kit mentioned. That is, I hope SCOTUS rules that the EPA can regulate CO2 under the Clean Air Act, but that it is not required to.

Humpback whales have ‘human-like’ brain cells

New discoveries point to the presence of more complex forms of brain cells in Humpback whales, which might explain their high levels of intelligence.

UN fails to ban bottom trawling

Warning: If you don't want to know the ending to Happy Feet, read no further.

On its opening weekend, the tap-dancing penguin raked in $42.3 million, topping the debut of the much-anticipated Bond flick Casino Royale. If you thought your eight dollars would buy an hour and a half of a warm and fuzzy penguin love story set to music, you'll be surprised by the realistic and serious tone of the film (as well as the penguins with Mexican accents ...).

Efficiency is the key

I previously noted that efficiency is essential to eliminating fossil fuel use, because non-fossil sources have an overall market price cost higher than coal, natural gas, and even oil. This is not as obvious as it seems. Up to a point, renewable energy is competitive with fossil fuels; the problem is, that point is never a majority of consumption.

Take electricity.

For Every Action, There’s a Reactor

Russian spy death linked to nuclear black market, and other glowings-on Oh, nuclear — will it ever cease to amaze? As authorities probe the radiation-poisoning death of former Russian spy […]

Nothing New Under the Sea

After days of negotiations, U.N. fails to pass high-seas bottom-trawling ban In a roughy outcome for conservationists, the U.N. failed to adopt a high-seas bottom-trawling ban supported by countries including […]