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Your random thoughts could help a hungry econ student

Here at Grist, we get a lot of requests for help with problems that, frankly, we're not smart enough or equipped enough to handle. So when a request comes along that we can actually do something about, it makes us happy.

Kimberly Garvie, a graduate student in economics at the University of Wyoming, asked us to spread the word about a survey on invasive species she's doing for her thesis. Take the survey! Help her out! (Number-phobes, beware: it's heavy on the econ, light on the invasives.)

For details, you can emailE=('kgarvie@' + 'uwyo.edu') document.write('' + 'contact' + '') her directly.

More on canvassing

A while back, we ran a story by Nathan Wyeth about the crappiness of progressive canvassing operations. It prompted a long and lively discussion on the blog.

For those interested in the topic, check out Greg Bloom's new story in In These Times. It's about how canvassing operations burn young workers out, fight their attempts to unionize, and generally serve as a sweatshop for the creation of donor rolls. Bloom also blogs at MyDD, and his latest post is a follow-up to the article.

Fighting solutions

First, see the op-ed by a fellow at the hyper-libertarian Atlas Economic Research Foundation: "Global warming foes fight global warming cures."

Second, see Dave's talking point.

Repeat as necessary.

(via deSmog)

Sunstein on global warming incentives

There's a smart op-ed in today's WaPo by University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein (via Dessler).

The basic point is simple: The two countries that are contributing most to global warming (the U.S. and China) will be among the least harmed by it, according to most projections, and thus have the least incentive to do something about it.

(In case you're wondering, India and Africa are going to take the brunt of it, via damage to agriculture and especially vulnerability to disease.)

The dynamic more or less insures inaction, unless one of three things happens.

First, we could decide that even though we will be better off relative to other countries, the absolute losses will be too much to risk. Sunstein alludes to that here:

Rehabilitated turtle returned to ocean home

On Wednesday, more than 150 admiring beachgoers said goodbye to "Little Crush" as it was returned to its salty underwater home. This rehabilitated green sea turtle washed ashore five months earlier, underweight and ill from ingesting more than 70 man-made items discarded in the oceans. After being treated by a team of Walt Disney World animal-care specialists, it regained its health and was released into the ocean.

Little Crush (so named for his resemblance to Disney's turtle character in Finding Nemo) was also equipped with a satellite transmitter enabling researchers to keep tabs on its ocean voyages. According to 11-year-old Alex Custer, the ceremony was "awesome."

Little did Alex and those other 150 beachgoers know that Little Crush is not heading into a ocean of possibilities; he's heading into a sea of danger. He'll have to run a gauntlet of commercial fishing gear and may -- if he's like many other sea turtles -- end up hooked on a longline or captured in a net.

Alex and the beachgoers also likely don't realize that our government ignores its own laws and officially sanctions and allows the catching (and killing) of thousands of endangered and threatened sea turtles by commercial fishing operations every year. Not quite the Disney ending we'd (all) hope for.

In Clemente Conditions

Radioactive, cancer-causing tritium leaks into California groundwater Tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that can cause cancer, miscarriages, and birth defects, has leaked from a nuclear power plant near San […]

Smoky Chokey

National parks aren’t breathing easy From California to Maine to Alaska — sea to shining sea, as it were — almost a third of America’s national parks suffer poor air-quality […]

Still have glimmers of childlike wonder and hope?

Well, time to give 'em up. Dolphins are stupid.

(Thanks to reader ET -- or should I say, "thanks.")

Werbach and Wal-Mart

Lest I let a single article about Wal-Mart pass by without notice: check out the San Francisco Bay Guardian's long look at Wal-Mart's greening and the company's hiring of Adam Werbach.

(And lest I let you forget that I wrote an op-ed on the subject: here's my op-ed on the subject -- and a bloggy follow-up.)

Listen to Werbach:

Water scarcity will cause lots of scary things to happen.

In anticipation of World Water Week next week, news on aqueous gloom and doom abounds. This is, um, not comforting:

Cholera may return to London, the mass migration of Africans could cause civil unrest in Europe and China's economy could crash by 2015 as the supply of fresh water becomes critical to the global economy.

That's nearly as frightening as Snakes on a Plane (all the hype surrounding it, not the movie itself).

But seriously. By 2015? That's damn soon.

Analysts from 200 of the world's largest companies, brought together by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, made the grim forecast, also predicting (hoping?) that water scarcity will spur better management and water-saving technologies. As a third of the world's population already lives where water is overused or inaccessible, future conflicts over water are virtually inevitable.

The analysts, who took three years to study future water availability, came up with three potential future scenarios: