MoJo Nukes Convo: Harvey Wasserman Highlights

Harvey Wasserman, author of Solartopia! Our Green Powered Earth, is an anti-nuclear activist. Wasserman feels that nuclear is a "costly and dangerous curse from previous bad decision-making." Nuclear is costly, he says, not only fiscally but environmentally. "The radioactive fuel chain is a major cause of global warming," Wasserman says. Instead, he suggests we embrace wind and solar power, which are "already proven and cheaper."

Below are highlights from Wasserman from MoJo's recent expert-led online reader conversation:

"Since you have quoted a Rockefeller study, how about we quote Al Gore, in a letter (to me) dated November 3, 2000:

'Thank you for your recent inquiry regarding nuclear energy and the Kyoto Protocol. Let me restate for you my long held policy with regard to nuclear energy. I do not support any increased reliance on nuclear energy. Moreover, I have disagreed with those who would classify nuclear energy as clean or renewable. In fact, you will note that the electricity restructuring legislation proposed by the [Clinton] Administration specifically excluded both nuclear and large scale hydro-energy, and instead promoted increased investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy. It is my view that climate change policies should do the same....Al Gore'

This letter is posted at the www.nirs.org web site, where answers to many of the other questions raised in this dialog can be found."

"There is more nuke than solar/wind capacity in the US not because of market forces favoring nukes, but because the US government, initally at the behest of the nuke weapons industry, has poured hundreds of billions into the technology."

"I have seen far too many containment domes to have any faith in any of them. No other kind of industrial facility can inflict the kind of damage that can come from a nuke."

"There is a reason there seems to be little middle ground in these nukes versus renewables debates, which is that there really isn't any."

"The critique of corporations is simple: corporations in the country have human rights, but no human responsibilities."

And here are what a few readers had to say about Wasserman:
"Harvey, I try to approach issues with an open mind. Keeping an open mind means maintaining a healthy disinterestedness, [but] I have run out of tolerance for your emotionally-laden sloganeering. Who are you to define what gets to be harmonious and what must be war? Sun and wind as love from the earth? The sun causes cancer. Wind becomes hurricanes that destroy cities."—Jonathan Severdia

"The problem with your perspective is that it's not being implemented, not by SMUD, not by anyone. If you look at who IS building wind-farms and solar (CPS) it's all the same utilities you've been screaming about for decades:FPL, PG&E, etc."—David Walters

"If you read Henry Wasserman's comments in his profile, it is OBVIOUS he knows what he's talking about, and is CORRECT in his assessment. An to anyone oblivious to the dangers that are posed merely from design flaws and human error...read about Chernobyl and gain an understanding of the loss that will impact literally generations and generations and generations."—Mike

"I gather that you are not enthusiastic about coal, so, without nuclear, how can we produce baseload power to meet projected demand? Massive solar thermal may do the trick for the Southwest, but how do we provide for Buffalo, Minneapolis & Flint?" —Douglas Price

How To Win A Nobel

Log enough hours of Foldit and you might play your way into a cooperative Nobel. The new online game is designed to understand how existing proteins fold themselves, as well as to design new ones. The ultimate goal is to tap into that endless supply of human gaming energy to solve really hard problems. You might find yourself part of a cure for HIV or Alzheimer's or malaria. Or one of the many who designs a new protein to break up toxic waste, say, or absorb CO2 from the air.

There are more than 100,000 different proteins in the human body. They form every cell, make up the immune system, and set the speed of chemical reactions. We know many of their genetic sequences but don't know how they fold up into shapes so complex it would take all the computers in the world centuries to calculate them. Yet humans' natural 3-D problem-solving skills, utilized in an addictive gaming scenario, might solve the problems in only years. Or less. At least that's what a bunch of computer scientists, engineers, and biochemists from the University of Washington are hoping.

The game looks like a 21st-century version of Tetris, with multicolored geometric snakes filling the screen. A half-dozen UW graduate and undergraduate students spent more than a year figuring out how to make the game accurate and engaging. They faced challenges commercial game developers don't encounter, including not knowing the best results themselves.

Let Them Eat Biofuel

Gas prices are rising and this could be great news. Even though it seems lousy in the short run. The truth is higher gas prices are already forcing people to drive less, skip trips, rethink vacations, and reject SUVs—part of a whole host of behavioral changes that add up to rare good news for our endangered atmosphere. LiveScience blogger Robert Roy Britt writes that some people are already slowing down on the roads as a means to save gas, as are some airlines. Higher gas prices are also saving human lives. Two thousand fewer people will die road deaths and 600 fewer will die from air pollution. One economist calculates that each $1 rise in gas equals 14 percent less fuel consumption over the long haul.

However, higher gas prices simultaneously feed biofuel fever. Why use oil when you can use corn? But biofuel is also associated with steeply rising food costs. The dilemma is that you and me can drive 1,000 miles or we can feed a person for a year, and people around the world are getting hungrier, writes Stan Cox on AlterNet. Our gas guzzling ways are about to drive the state of Iowa, the epicenter of agriculture, to import corn. How's that for weird? Apparently it's so weird that the politicos are scrambling to plow under last year's crop of legislature as fast as they can, writes Cox:

Now 24 Republican members of Congress, citing high food prices, have come out into the open to urge a retreat from the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which mandates rapid increases in biofuel production... Gov. Rick Perry of Texas has formally requested that the federal government relax biofuel requirements imposed on his state… The Missouri legislature is considering a rollback of its own recently passed law requiring that gasoline must be mixed with a minimum percentage of ethanol.

MoJo Nukes Convo: Jonas Siegel Highlights

Jonas Siegel is editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a media organization that focuses on the intersection of science and security, and has covered nuclear weapons and energy issues for the past five years.

Although Siegel is in awe of nuclear's amazing energy-generating power—"a pound of uranium 235 has more than 2 million times the energy content of a pound of coal," he says—he acknowledges that so far the industry has been hindered by safety issues. The industry must address the risk of nuclear proliferation and waste storage if it's to become a part of our future mix of energy-providers, Siegel says.

Check out some of Siegel's other views, below, as expressed in last week's Blue Marble expert-reader conversation:

"One of the most vexing aspects of the current system is that it allows ... the same uranium enrichment facilities that enrich fuel for power production can also enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. The plants that reprocess spent fuel after it is taken out of a reactor can be used to make additional fuel—or plutonium for nuclear weapons."

Pigs Spared Med School Surgeries

NatureNews reports how doctors used to practise surgery on animals before being allowed to work on patients. Nowadays only a handful of US med schools maintain animal labs. The Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Ohio will shut its live-animal lab this month. Next semester, instead of practising on anaesthetized pigs, its med students will use technologies like virtual simulations. It's all part of a general phase-out of animal labs across the US. In 1994 live-animal experiments were on the curriculum in 77 of 125 medical schools. Now as few as eight use them.

Cost is a factor in the change, since it's expensive to maintain animals and veterinary staff. But simulations have also developed impressively in the past decade. The most advanced simulators now have 'haptic feedback,' providing the sensation that the students' instruments are touching real tissue—advances that make the use of live animals gratuitous, according to John Pippin, a cardiologist in Dallas who once used live dogs to study heart attacks but now works for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. The group continues its work to convince the 6% of US institutes that still use live animals to change their ways—notably the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. NatureNews reports that Jonathan Lissauer, a doctor recently trained at Johns Hopkins, says that sometimes animal surgeries were used "as just a diversion for people who won't be using those skills at all. I think then you cross the territory from appropriate medical education to something worse than that. There was no medical utility in having pigs die so that people going into psychiatry could play around."

According to Erin Williams and Margo DeMello in their compelling treatise on how animals suffer in institutional settings, Why Animals Matter: The Case for Animal Protection, the switch from live-animal experiments to simulations was driven in large part because "medical students around the country expressed reservations about killing animals as part of their education, and many refused to participate in dog labs and other classes in which animals were killed…" Could this be a way to identify the compassionate docs from the not so compassionate?

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.

Green Porno: Are You Ready?

There's green lotion, green clothing lines, and even green sex toys. So why not the natural next step, green porn? The Sundance Channel is now hosting "green porno videos" on its website. But lest you think green porn means watching Laurie David and Al Gore getting hot and heavy whilst discussing the Kyoto Protocol, it's not. And thank goodness for that. Instead, it's Isabella Rossellini dressed up as snails, bees, and praying mantids to show how animals mate. Sometimes ridiculous, sometimes horrifyingly graphic, you just have to see it for yourself. Visit the official "green porno" site here.

MoJo Nukes Convo: Stewart Brand's Take

Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, is a futurist with Global Business Network and works half-time as president of The Long Now Foundation. Brand looks toward the future on nuclear power, musing that we'll likely increase nuclear power to become more like France (which gets 80% of its electricity from nuclear) or phase it out in favor of better methods. Of course, Stewart writes, the whole nukes debate "could seem irrelevant in the face of drastic climate events forcing huge-scale geo-engineering."

Below are a few of Brand's choice comments from the MoJo online nukes conversation:
"The problem is not that nuclear is expensive. The problem is that coal is cheap."

Myanmar's Epic Floods Seen From Space

Go ahead, tell the people of Myanmar that global-warming-related superstorms aren't anything to worry about. That 100,000-plus aren't dead and 95% of the buildings in the path of Cyclone Nargis aren't demolished. These images from the European Space Agency's Envisat satellite, taken a year apart, show the extent of the flooding. Envisat's radar cut through the clouds to reveal critical Near Real Time situation on the ground. The image on the left (above) is from a year ago. The image on the right shows flooding (black areas) two days after the cyclone's passage. Accuweather reported Nargis made landfall with sustained winds of 130 mph and gusts of 150-160 mph—ramping up with frightening speed from a Category 1 to a strong Category 3 or minimal Category 4 hurricane at landfall. Not as big as they get, but combined with an 11.5-foot storm surge, about as deadly as they get.

NASA's color images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on its Terra satellite use a combination of visible and infrared light to highlight floodwaters. Water appears blue or nearly black, vegetation bright green, bare ground tan, and clouds white or light blue. The image on the left is from approximately a month before the cyclone. In the May 5 image on the right, the entire coastal plain is flooded. Fallow agricultural areas have been especially hard hit. Yangôn, with a population of over 4 million, is surrounded by floods. Several large cities, with populations between 100,000–500,000, are also inundated. Muddy runoff colors the Gulf of Martaban turquoise.

MoJo Nukes Convo: Judith Lewis Highlights

Judith Lewis, author of our May/June 2008 feature "The Nuclear Option," has been writing about nuclear energy-related issues for some time. While she has some safety concerns about nuclear power, she says that if we are as concerned about carbon in the environment as we say we are, then we cannot afford to ignore the relatively carbon-free electricity nuclear plants provide. At the same time, she says, "while we consider it, we also have to understand that the nuclear industry also has a lot of problems associated with it."

The main problems, as Lewis sees them, are the radioactive waste produced by nuclear power, the industry's faulty monitoring agency, and a geologic waste repository built on top of an active fault line. In the end, Lewis says, "only public participation can force industry and government regulators to do their jobs right."

Here are some of Judith Lewis's key comments from last week's Blue Marble expert-moderated reader conversation:
"On greenhouse gas emissions alone, nuclear energy does very well. While coal-fired electricity generation emits around 900 kg of CO2 per megawatt-hour of electricity generated, nuclear leaves us with only 16 to 55 kg CO2 per MWh (that’s including mining, milling, enrichment, plant construction, waste disposal—the whole deal)...whether the pros outweight the cons really does depend on how urgently worried we are about catastrophic climate change."

"The notion that coal releases more radioactivity than nuclear is a popular one in with the nuclear industry right now, but I'm not sure it's their soundest argument. Many coal plants were built before we knew enough to put buffer zones between them and residential communities, so people live closer to whatever radioactivity they release. We do know that 24,000 people die a year because of pollution from coal-fired power plants...and then there’s the carbon."

"I notice that this discussion swings wildly between extremes (Nuclear has no environmental impact! Solar is the only way! Nuclear will save the world!), but I suspect the real answers lie somewhere in the middle."

Our readers also had some words for Judith. Below are a few highlights:
"Judith: Thank you for your response that included the numerical data from nuclear fuel cycle studies. It is nice to see someone who thinks and recognizes that facts and figures matter more than vague generalizations."—Rod Adams

"Coal plants cause ~24,000 deaths annually, in addition to being the largest single source of global warming. Nuclear plants have no measurable impact (~0 deaths) and have a negligible global warming impact. Even the worst possible accident/meltdown event that could occur at a Western reactor would cause far fewer deaths than US coal plants do ANNUALLY."—Jim Hopf

"There is a reason there seems to be little middle ground in these nukes versus renewables debates (of which this one seems fairly typical) which is that there really isn't any. I don't see a "mix" of nukes and renewables as being desirable because of the horrifying killing power of atomic energy, both weapons and reactors. And since I agree with Al Gore that nuke power is not a solution to global warming, I am opposed to any and all of them."—Harvey Wasserman

Read the full conversation here.

Bush's EPA Pollutes Science

The A to Z Guide to Political Interference in Science by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Check out the interactive version.

Science Soviet style! More than half the scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency report political interference in their work over the last five years. This, according to a new investigation by the Union of Concerned Scientists, follows on the heels of prior UCS investigations (Food and Drug Administration, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as well as climate scientists at seven federal agencies). The earlier examinations also found significant manipulation of federal science by the Bush administration.

"Our investigation found an agency in crisis," said UCS's Francesca Grifo. "Nearly 900 EPA scientists reported political interference in their scientific work. That's 900 too many. Distorting science to accommodate a narrow political agenda threatens our environment, our health, and our democracy itself."

Among the UCS report's top findings on the EPA: • 889 scientists (60 percent) said they had personally experienced at least one instance of political interference in their work over the last five years. • 394 scientists (31 percent) personally experienced frequent or occasional "statements by EPA officials that misrepresent scientists' findings." • 285 scientists (22 percent) said they frequently or occasionally personally experienced "selective or incomplete use of data to justify a specific regulatory outcome." • 224 scientists (17 percent) said they had been "directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information from an EPA scientific document." • Of the 969 agency veterans with more than 10 years of EPA experience, 409 scientists (43 percent) said interference has occurred more often in the past five years than in the previous five-year period. Only 43 scientists (4 percent) said interference occurred less often. • Hundreds of scientists reported being unable to openly express concerns about the EPA's work without fear of retaliation; 492 (31 percent) felt they could not speak candidly within the agency and 382 (24 percent) felt they could not do so outside the agency.

Global Warming Killing Caribou

Fewer caribou calves are being born and more are dying as a result of a warming climate. The problem is timing. Peak food availability in West Greenland no longer corresponds to the peak time of caribou births, according to a study by Eric Post of Penn State. Throughout the Arctic winter, when there is no plant growth, caribou dig through snow to find lichens. In spring they switch to grazing on newly growing willows, sedges, and flowering herbs. As the birth season approaches, cued by increasing day length, they migrate to areas where newly-emergent food is plentiful.

But the routine that's worked for millennia is faltering because caribou are unable to keep up with accelerated plant cycles tied to global warming. Now when pregnant females arrive at the calving grounds they find plants that have already reached peak productivity and are declining in nutritional value. The plants initiate growth in response to temperature, not day length (unlike the caribou), and are peaking dramatically earlier in response to rising temperatures. "Spring temperatures at our study site in West Greenland have risen by more than 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees F) over the past few years," said Post. "As a result, the timing of plant growth has advanced, but calving has not."

The phenomenon is called trophic mismatch and is a predicted consequence of climate change. Trophic mismatches have been documented in birds. The most famous example being the study on Dutch birds and their caterpillar prey highlighted in Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth. "Our work is the first documentation of a developing trophic mismatch in a terrestrial mammal as a result of climatic warming," said Post. "And the rapidity with which this mismatch has developed is eye-opening, to say the least."

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.

Creationists Flunk Masters Degree

Hallelujah. Rationality returns. A religious group has been rejected in its bid to offer a Master of Science degree. The Institute for Creation Research, which backs a literal interpretation of the Bible, including the creation of Earth in six days, seeks a certificate to grant online degrees in science education in Texas, reports Nature. But the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board voted unanimously last week not to pass the request, following the recommendation of Raymund Paredes, the state's commissioner of higher education. "Religious belief is not science," Paredes said… Amen.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.

Bring Back the Bison

Want to see bison back in the North American landscape? It's not only possible but could be achieved in only 100 years, says a coalition of scientists, conservationists, ranchers, and Native Americans/First Nations peoples. Bison are a keystone species in this continent's natural history and could repopulate large areas from Alaska to Mexico, including grasslands, prairies, mountains, taiga and deserts. The continent-wide assessment, published in Conservation Biology, is based on a "conservation scorecard" evaluating the availability of existing habitat. The goal is ecological restoration of bison, defined as large herds of plains and wood bison moving freely across extensive landscapes within historic ranges, interacting with other native species (elk, bear, wolves, prairie dogs, birds), as well as inspiring, sustaining and connecting human cultures. It will likely take a century, says the Wildlife Conservation Society, and will only be realized through collaboration with a broad range of public, private and indigenous partners.

Bison once numbered in the tens of millions but were wiped out by commercial hunting and habitat loss. By 1889 fewer than 1,100 animals survived. Of the estimated 500,000 bison alive today, 20,000 are wild, the rest live on private ranches— awaiting liberation back into the wild.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.

Cheney: 300 Endangered Whales Is 300 Too Many

Hot on the heels of a GAO report detailing the Bush administration's assault on the EPA, this little tidbit pops up.

Cheney's office has been delaying attempts to issue speed limits near the habitat of the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale for FOUR YEARS. There are only about 300 right whales alive today, and ship collisions are their leading cause of death. As Henry Waxman wrote in his letter to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, "the death of even a single whale, particularly a breeding female, may contribute to the extinction of the species."

Pro-Nuke? Anti-Nuke? Talk About It With the Experts

We asked a futurist, a MoJo writer, a No Nukes activist, and a weapons security expert:

What is nuclear energy's place in the future mix of energy sources?

They'll be checking in on this Blue Marble entry starting Monday to discuss their controversial answers with readers—and each other. Want to talk to Stewart Brand, Judith Lewis, Jonas Siegel, or Harvey Wasserman about their take on nukes? Now's your chance. Leave a comment below for one of the four guest Blue Marble moderators and they'll respond.

Stewart Brand is a futurist with the Global Business Network and founder of the Whole Earth Catalog:

I expect that nuclear will grow slowly but steadily in the mix for a couple decades, because it's a mature technology that provides baseload electricity with minimum carbon emissions. Where it goes after that depends on the rapidity of climate change; the rapidity of other high capacity energy technologies such as space solar, massive electrical storage, high-tech microbe farming, etc; and the usefulness of further nuclear technology, such as decentralized nuclear "batteries," cheaper reprocessing, fusion, etc. By mid-century or later, depending on how all those work out, nuclear could be heading toward a majority role, like in France now; or it could be headed toward a phase-out by the end of the century, replaced by better things; or the question could seem irrelevant in the face of drastic climate events forcing huge-scale geo-engineering and/or enormous human dieback in the face of collapsing carrying capacity.

Judith Lewis wrote "The Nuclear Option" for the May/June 2008 issue of Mother Jones:

Nuclear energy is far from environmentally benign, but it does have one significant advantage over coal-fired electricity generation: It does not emit carbon dioxide. Even taking into account nuclear's entire lifecycle, from mining to refining to enrichment of uranium, from plant construction to startup to waste, it adds far less carbon to the atmosphere than coal or natural gas do, and sometimes even beats solar generation. If we accept that catastrophic climate change caused by a buildup of carbon in the atmosphere is our most urgent environmental problem, we should at least consider replacing the coal-fired power that provides half the nation's electricity with nuclear energy (which currently provides only a fifth).

But while we consider it, we also have to understand that the nuclear industry also has a lot of problems associated with it, including a compromised federal monitoring agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And then there's the waste: It's becoming ever more clear as the Department of Energy moves ahead with its plans to build a nuclear waste repository in a mountain of porous volcanic rock on earthquake fault that the DOE and Congress made a very bad decision when it chose Yucca Mountain. There needs to be much more public involvement in the process of choosing such sites.

The same goes for just about every part of the nuclear industry's operations. The industry does seemed poised for a renaissance, and it might deserve one. But if the renaissance happens, people in the U.S. need to get as much information as they can handle about nuclear power; only public participation can force industry and government regulators to do their jobs right.

Jonas Siegel is editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a media organization that focuses on the intersection of science and security, and has covered nuclear weapons and energy issues for the past five years:

Since its inception, nuclear energy has earned legions of supporters. The enormous amount of energy contained in a small amount of nuclear fuel—a pound of uranium 235 has more than 2 million times the energy content of a pound of coal—alone inspired visions of grandeur. Despite its potential, nuclear energy has not overcome a range of risks—safety, nuclear proliferation, and waste—to sustain its growth in the marketplace. If nuclear is going to be a part of the world’s future mix of energy sources, it needs to address these risks head on—and compete economically with other sources.

Harvey Wasserman is a No Nukes activist, the author of Solartopia! Our Green Powered Earth, and edits Nukefree.org:

Nuclear power has no place in our future mix of energy sources except as a costly and dangerous curse from previous bad decision-making. The Peaceful Atom is humankind's most expensive technological failure. To "revisit" this corporate boondoggle is to ignore 50 years of staggering losses. Economically, there is no reason to believe a "new generation" of reactors will be any less disastrous than the last one. The radioactive fuel chain is a major cause of global warming. The ecological, public health and safety aspects of unsolved problems with terrorism, human design and operator error, "routine" radioactive emissions, impossible spent fuel transport and management, weapons proliferation and much more make atomic energy the "Titanic" of energy generation. A dollar invested in efficiency saves seven times the energy a dollar invested in nukes can produce. Wind and solar are already proven and cheaper. Let's do that instead of re-running the same radioactive horror show.

The Problem With Nuclear: No Uranium

Nuclear foes have long cited environmental damage as a key reason to oppose atomic power. But even pro-nukes folks may have trouble supporting nuclear power in the future, since a new report shows that high-grade uranium ore, the raw material that powers nuclear plants, is steadily declining worldwide. In fact, uranium supplies have been waning for about 50 years and the situation will only get worse as more power plants go online in the near future, requiring more fuel.

Most uranium is now mined in Australia, Niger, Canada, and some former Soviet bloc countries. But as their supplies dwindle, raw uranium deposits will likely be located deeper, of lower quality, and harder to extract. This would, the scientists involved say, make nuclear power more environmentally damaging by increasing the amount of mining, digging, and refining necessary to create enriched uranium.

"Over time, as ore grades decline and more energy is required for uranium production, this will lead to a higher carbon intensity for nuclear power, eventually becoming similar to gas-fired electricity," said Gavin Mudd, the Australian Monash University environmental engineer who conducted the study.

You can read more about nuclear's carbon footprint here. And for an overview of nuclear resurgence in the U.S., check out our current feature article, "The Nuclear Option."

Carbonfund.org: Seattle Man Offsets Entire Life; Onion: Please Give Our Headline Back

A typical American life offers no shortage of carbon sins to offset. Eco-conscious consumers can offset their air travel, their weddings, even their offspring. But so far, no one (that we know of, anyway) has gone whole hog and offset everything they've emitted, ever.

Enter Brad Mewhort, 33-year-old vegan, pedestrian, and apologetic air traveler. Earlier this month, carbon offset nonprofit Carbonfund.org announced that that the Seattle sales rep had just finished scrubbing his imprint from the Earth by donating the last $1,500 of a $3,000 contribution to the group. The three grand covers emissions even from family car trips when Mewhort was young, as well as all of the plane trips he must take for his job, and the recent journey to Antarctica that convinced him it was time to take action.

"I was absolutely amazed by what I saw there," says Mewhort. "It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I love penguins, I always have, and they're more incredible than I expected. Their habitat is directly threatened by the impacts of human activity. I decided that I don't want to be personally contributing to this destruction. I decided to purchase offsets as soon as I could."

Wal-Mart Rations Rice

Shoot! You were planning a rice-and-beans dinner party for 100, and you thought for sure your local Wal-Mart would meet all your bulk rice needs.

Think again. Because of rising rice prices around the globe and worries about shortages, the biggest big box has announced that it will ration long grain, jasmine, and basmati rice, allowing customers to purchase only four bags per visit.

Since the beginning of 2008, rice prices have risen 68 percent worldwide. This is one of the main reasons that food riots have broken out recently all over the developing world.

Saint Louis Meriska's children ate two spoonfuls of rice apiece as their only meal recently and then went without any food the following day. His eyes downcast, his own stomach empty, the unemployed father said forlornly, "They look at me and say, 'Papa, I'm hungry,' and I have to look away. It's humiliating and it makes you angry."

In light of this two-spoonfuls anecdote, Wal-Mart's four-bag limit sounds downright decadent, but rice rationing in the U.S. means that whatever is going on with supply and demand trends is not good. Once land-o'-plenty retailers start fretting about global food shortages, you can be sure it's time to worry.

Will Low-Carbon Diets Catch On?

Britain's largest food retailer, Tesco, says it's going to start putting carbon footprint labels on food in its stores next month. Although the "carbon labels" will only be on food produced under Tesco's own brand name, it will be the first time a major food retailer has made such a move. Tesco worked with the Carbon Trust to find a way to calculate foods' footprints and create the labels. "It has not been simple, but we are there," said Tesco CEO Sir Terry Leahy. Leahy said details will be revealed and he hopes Tesco's labels "will end up being a standard."

Stateside, the LA Times reports that 400 college eateries serviced by Bon Appetit Management Co. will be able to provide a "low carbon diet" to students. One sign posted at a "low carbon" college cafe had a sign posted saying "Cows or cars? Worldwide, livestock emits 18% of greenhouse gases, more than the transportation sector! Today we're offering great-tasting vegetarian choices." Translation: no hamburgers today.

There have been a few disgruntled students, but Bon Appetit aims to reduce its carbon footprint by 25% by serving more vegetarian entrees and less beef, lamb, and cheese. This may sound like a small change, but if Bon Appétit's parent company also went low-carbon, it would affect 8,000 locations lincluding sports arenas, public schools, and hospitals.