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All mixed up

Everyone knows you have to be careful about taking more than one prescription medicine at a time, since drugs can interact in strange and dangerous ways. A Google search of "dangerous drug interactions," for example, yields nearly 10 million hits.

Apparently the same is true of chemical contaminants in the environment. From Scientific American comes this troubling but none-too-surprising story (only part of which is free, unfortunately) suggesting that mixtures of toxic chemicals are often more potent and damaging than the compounds in isolation.

The Culinary Institure of America sells out to Coca-Cola

Undeniably, haute U.S. culinary culture has been a boon to the sustainable-food movement over the past 20 years or so. From Alice Waters' Chez Panisse to Dan Barber's Blue Hill at Stone Barns to the star-studded Chef's Collaborative, high-end foodie institutions have largely rallied round the cause of local, environmentally responsible agriculture.

While their wares are generally reserved for the expense-account-positive, these institutions invest in their local foodsheds and have been a valuable tool in the fight against flavorless, environmentally and socially destructive food.

All the more shocking, then, the brazen corporate flackery being performed by the Culinary Institute of America, the premier U.S. cooking school.

‘Eco-terrorism’: Motive matters

Seattle Times reporter Hal Bernton had an excellent story on "eco-terrorism" in Sunday’s edition. Most of it will be familiar to readers of my obsessive blogging on the subject, but […]

Density is political destiny?

The Poor Man is one of my favorite blogs, but I rarely get a chance to link there, since they rarely discuss green issues.

But this post offers an ingenious (albeit largely wishful thinking) argument. It begins with this delightful 'graph:

OK, so, I'm not saying that this country won't devolve into a fascistic hellscape of race warriors and man-eating rats, disintegrating beneath the weight of its own reactionary isolationism. But even through the first six years of "WPE: The Quickening," I've been able to remain relatively sanguine about our long term prospects for one reason: if you're a Republican, demographics are against you.

("WPE," as PM fans know, is Worst President Ever.)

The argument goes like this:

Readers talk back about Wal-Mart, endorsing Republicans, stupid puns, and more

  Re: Don’t Discount Him Dear Editor: That’s good news that Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott Jr. is taking his company down a greener path. But if he really wants […]

Monday link dump, part two

I've been swamped, blah blah blah, here's some more good stuff to read:

* Engineer-Poet yells at the American people about high gas prices. It's for their own good.

* RealClimate reviews the three big climate-change books of the past year. It picks Elizabeth Kolbert's Field Notes from a Catastrophe as its favorite. (Denis Hayes reviewed the book for Grist; I interviewed Kolbert.)

* The Singapore Environment Council created some clever ads about air pollution. (via TH)

* Watthead brings news of a new bill just introduced by a bipartisan (through mostly Democrat) group of senators: the Enhanced Energy Security Act of 2006 (press release here). It is focused on long-term reduction of American oil use. Amazingly, it does more than subsidize ethanol. There are real conservation targets in there, as well as some stuff with light-weight and electric cars. It almost seems like -- dare I speak the words -- a good bill. Naturally it will die in committee.

* Jerome a Paris writes a piece of fiction: The Day of the Oslo Warning. Read it. (via EnergyBulletin)

* Bill Clinton gives good speech:

Not Wade Away

U.S. streams in sad shape, says EPA analysis It’s Monday and most of the streams in the U.S. are in bad shape. Can we go back to bed? A U.S. […]

Mardi Gross

New Orleans opens new landfill without environmental safeguards Without environmental studies or community consultation, a new landfill has been opened on the eastern edge of New Orleans. The site is […]

Monday link dump, part one

I've been swamped, blah blah blah, here's some cool stuff you should read.

* The Watt reminds you that gas isn't really that expensive. Soda, however, is.

* Alex has an interesting interview with Davis Guggenheim, director of An Inconvenient Truth.

* Robert Rapier loves him some debunking. He takes on a Consumers Union report on how oil companies are ripping off the public (no they aren't) and eviscerates last night's 60 Minutes report on how ethanol is the answer to our energy woes (no it isn't). The latter, in particular, should not be missed.

* Speaking of ethanol cheerleading, Tom Daschle and Vinod Khosla have an op-ed in today's NYT arguing for a "Carbon Alternative Fuel Equivalent" standard (CAFE, get it?). As usual in this sort of piece, everything they say is obviously about corn, but in the throw-away line about carbon-dioxide emissions, there's a token mention of "ethanol produced from perennial energy crops like switch grass." Where is all that switch grass, anyway? Cause all I'm seeing is corn from sea to shining sea.

* OK, well, here's some switch grass:

60 billion barrels off the coast of Louisiana?!

Um, this is a hoax, right?

(via Sustainablog)