Environment Memo

Haiti is basically denuded, compounding aid problems.  As stated in an AP article, here in the Chicago SunTimes: Almost everything has to be imported, even wood for building temporary shelters, because Haitians have denuded their hillsides by cutting trees for cooking fuel. “If you see Dominican Republic and Haiti from the air, it’s really striking,” [...]

I’m not too worried about this one. At $40,000 for a Volt, people won’t exactly be spending the night at the dealership to buy the first day they come out. As the Freepress reports, the chairman of Detroit Edison Energy, Tony Earley, stated yesterday that Preparing America’s neighborhoods to handle the additional power that electric [...]

Art imitates life in this latest dumpster decoration derby. The NY Times reports here on the work of artist C. Finley, who with some friends has been wallpapering a Dumpster in an elegant blue-and-white floral. A second Dumpster, covered in a green William Morris pattern and stuffed with a Christmas tree, had been finished elsewhere [...]

T. Boone Pickens’ new plan is to move big-time on natural gas to power trucks and buses and such, and help us get away from foreign oil. I’ll say one thing for Pickens, he knows how to get his ideas out there. Here are link to the Pickens Plan website (with a petition) and video:

A recent study published in the American Journal of Medicine, entitled “The Association between Smoking and Low Back Pain: A Meta-analysis,” concludes: Our findings indicate that both current and former smokers have a higher prevalence and incidence of low back pain than never smokers, but the association is fairly modest. The association between current smoking [...]

The Doomsday Clock was just moved back by one minute, from 5 minutes before midnight (or Armageddan) to 6 minutes before midnight. The press release by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which runs the Doomsday Clock, cites “unprecedented” steps being taking, saying that For the first time since atomic bombs were dropped in 1945, [...]

BBC reports that Finland may be getting ready to totally ban cigarettes from the country. This is unprecendented. The short BBC News interview is interesting. The representative of the smoking industry looks like she just sucked a lemon (what some might call the Carrie Prejean facial expression).

I’m not sure I buy it. But as the press release from Tel Aviv University  says, ” A Sonata a Day Keeps the Doctor Away,” in reference to a study indicating premature babies gain weight faster when exposed to Mozart. The theory is that the music calms the babies, so the food otherwise expended on [...]

Lisa Jackson, EPA Administrator, has a new memorandum to EPA employees, noting key themes “to focus the work” of the agency. Discussed in more detail in the memorandum, these themes are Improving Air Quality

Following up on the problem of cadmium in Wal-Mart toys made in China, I recall that the Mr. Squiggles controversy (discussed here) was solved because the company making Mr. Squiggles required he be tested according to a European Union standard. When the controversy struck, all the firm had to do was whip out (and post [...]