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Hospitals take aim at ‘the greatest health threat of the 21st century’

by ErlindaSpalding Posted on September 14, 2018

One of the larger themes at this week’s massive Global Climate Action Summit taking place in San Francisco is the relationship between climate change and human health.

“Health is the best way to relate to human beings on the issue,” former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said Friday during a session titled “Health is where climate change hits home.” “Let’s put a face on climate.”

Activist artist (and 2018 Grist 50 honoree) Favianna Rodriguez was among those to lend their visage to the cause. “I grew up in a very dirty community — a community that is plagued by asthma as a result of fossil fuels burning up and down the freeway,” said the Oakland native, who spoke at a session on climate justice and equity (where health was also front and center).

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In response to the public health threat posed by warming, members of the health care sector pledged to go beyond just treating patients and shrink their carbon footprints. That might not sound huge, but consider that if America’s health care system were a country, it would be the world’s seventh-largest producer of carbon dioxide.

Earlier this week, health care institutions representing more than 17,000 hospitals and clinics across more than two dozen countries agreed to slash four coal plants’ worth of carbon emissions from their operations each year. The initiative, led by the Global Climate and Health Forum, calls climate change “the greatest health threat of the 21st century. ” The forum notes that warming threatens food and water systems, helps to spread mosquito-borne diseases, and exposes more people to heat waves and other extreme weather events.

“Our biggest hope is that the summit will serve to mobilize people in the health sector around the world to really step up and take action,” says Linda Rudolph, who heads the Public Health Institute’s Center for Climate Change and Health and also hosts the U.S. Climate and Health Alliance.

Rudolph and the Global Climate and Health Forum have outlined a call to action encompassing 10 priorities that they are pushing other health organizations to endorse. They include everything from exceeding the commitments of the Paris Agreement, making solutions to climate change a critical part of health systems, and ensuring that action to stop warming includes gender equity.

“The health sector can reduce its own footprint by moving to renewable energy, by using a food supply chain that’s local and healthy and sustainable,” Rudolph tells Grist. “The health sector can make sure that we build resilience in our communities.”

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Hospitals take aim at ‘the greatest health threat of the 21st century’

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Why Veganism is the Future

by ForrestWalter Posted on June 14, 2016

Earlier this year scientists celebrated one of the biggest discoveries in physics within the last century. They were elated to discover the first evidence of gravitational waves, which pretty much proved Albert Einsteins last prediction in his theory of relativity was correct. Going down in history as one of the brightest minds to ever have lived and decades later having your work reaffirmed may just be the beginning of his brilliance, however.

There is another prediction Einstein made during his lifeone whose evidence mounts more and more each day: Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. There has yet to be another movement that significantly addressesand even reversesas many of the major health and environmental concerns out there as the vegan movement.


One study that made its rounds earlier this year explored an idealized shift toward plant-based eating and predicted that between 6 and 10 percent of the planets mortality rates and 29 to 70 percent of greenhouse gas emissions could be cut if the world went primarily vegan. Luckily, if we consider some recent trends, it seems we are already headed in this direction.

Animal Welfare

When it comes to animal suffering, eating meat, dairy and egg products are the biggest culprits worldwide, hands down. It might feel nice to exercise our outrage about dog and cat abuse we see in the news, but when 70,000,000,000 (yes, thats billion) land animals are slaughtered globally each yearbecause our diet demands itour outrage is severely misplaced.

Mercy for Animals, an animal rights non-profit organization, is known for its undercover investigations exposing the public to what goes on behind carefully concealed slaughterhouse doors. Because of their hard work people have seen the horrors of both business-as-usual practices and horrendous abuse by workers at big names such as Perdue, Tyson, Butterball, Seaboard Foods, Maple Lodge Farms and countless others.

And the public is not liking what its seeing. The power of the documentary has shown how businesses can have the wind knocked out of their sails from customers taking a glance at whats behind the curtain. The explosive momentum of Blackfish and SeaWorlds journey from scoffing denial to announcing its end to orca breeding programs is enough to see how an informed public can create real change. Ringing Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circuses are also feeling the heat from activists and have decided to retire the elephants who have lived in abuse as entertainers (yet, some of the majestic creatures will face a future in cancer research experimentation, so we still have work to do).

The Environment

With climate change becoming harder and harder to denyeven though a few still cling desperately to their snowballs and lack of critical thinkingthe impact of animal agriculture on the planets fate can also no longer be overlooked. One report from earlier this year revealed that some of the top meat and poultry producers, including Tyson and Perdue, have a much larger pollution footprint than Exxon Mobil. The Worldwatch Institute estimates that livestock and their byproducts create 51 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. Even if those numbers are too big to fully comprehend, seeing what animal agriculture is doing to our planet with our own eyes can change hearts and minds in an instant.

Our Health

There are tiny awakenings blossoming into bigger and more impactful movements in the health and medical fields, as well. This year the first plant-based medical center opened up in Washington, D.C. and other medical programs are offering residents training to help patients treat chronic health conditions with plant-based eating.

As much as it pained bacon-loving Americans to hear it, processed meat was rightfully demonized as contributing to rising cancer rates by the World Health Organization this yearadding to the knowledge we already have about its relation to heart disease, irritable bowel syndrome and other chronic conditions. And just this month the American Osteopathic Association released a study of 1.5 million people revealing how meat-eating raises mortality rates across the board.

The Future

So, with all this knowledge about the overwhelming impact of animal product production, how much are we really changing? The word vegan has become a household name in recent years as restaurants add it to their menus, grocery stores carry more veg-friendly alternatives and web surfers Google the term more and more.

In fact, vegan meat sales, specifically, are expected to skyrocket over the next few years. The growing success of companies such as Hampton Creek and Beyond Meat (and the anxiety-laden attacks by companies afraid of losing customers) illustrate a shift toward more conscious consumerism. Other countries have also experienced a dramatic shift toward plant-based fare. Germanys vegetarian options have increased 600 percent in the last four years and one-third of Canadians now admit to eating less meat.

A Chatham House survey even found that people are open to the idea of taxing meat to combat its harmful effects on the environment and our health! In a world where mens magazine GQ named a veggie burger its best burger of the year the industries who depend on consumers buying animal products are shaking in their boots. The proliferation of ag-gag laws all over the U.S. show how insecure these industries are feeling. Not only will they advocate the criminalization of recording what goes on behind their closed doors, but industries are also releasing advice on How to Avoid Hiring an Animal Rights Activist. Seriously.

Consumers are already demanding more humane animal products, mostly by looking for labels such as cage-free, pasture-raised, grass-fed, etc. Walmart joined the ranks of Costco, Wendys, Starbucks, Dennys, andMcDonaldsby announcing its eventual switch to cage-free eggs, showing how these humane demands are reaching the mainstream.

What the public will realize in time is what the industry deems humane is far from what we may envision as causing no harm. All of these trends indicate one thing: a shift toward compassion. Rather, it is a shift back toward compassion. As we grow up we are taught that empathy is sweet and admirable if it is through a childs eyes, but weak through an adults.

By choosing foods and products that defy the status quo of violence and destruction we are casting a vote for kindness and conservation. We are reconnecting with the innate sense that all living things deserve a happy life. We are reminded to share with others, to not be mean to others, to clean up after ourselvesthe basic lessons we learn in the most early stages of our lives. Veganism is a return to these ethics. And veganism is most certainly the future.

Photo credits: Thinkstock

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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Why Veganism is the Future

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Donald Trump and the Men’s Rights Movement: It’s Complicated

by DanStringfield Posted on May 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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At a Trump campaign rally last week in Spokane, Washington, Donald Trump slammed Hillary Clinton for “playing the women’s card” to gain campaign support. When citing Clinton’s criticisms of him, Trump mimicked the candidate, straightening his shoulders and flattening his voice to convey a cold, prim demeanor. He concluded the performance with the pronouncement: “All of the men, we’re petrified to speak to women anymore…You know what? The women get it better than we do, folks. They get it better than we do.”

The audience erupted into cheers and applause.

Moments like this one—where Trump’s unabashed political incorrectness and machismo are on display—resonate with many of his supporters. But his message in Spokane made headlines in part because the notion that men have it worse off than women echoes a central tenet of the Men’s Rights Movement (MRM), a network of activists who believe that in many contexts, men are a disadvantaged class. New York magazine even offered its readers a quiz: “Who Said It, Trump or a Men’s Rights Activist?”

It seems like a no-brainer that men’s rights activists would admire Trump’s rhetoric on gender and thus support his candidacy for president. But several leaders of the movement who spoke to Mother Jones are ambivalent about Trump, at best—one has even donated to Hillary Clinton—and say that many others in their community haven’t been won over by Trump’s bluster. But why do many members of a group that would appear to be his natural constituency not support Trump for president?

“It’s nice to hear him say” things that align with the men’s rights movement says Dean Esmay, now a contributor to and formerly the managing editor of A Voice for Men, a blog and men’s rights discussion hub, but those talking points aren’t enough. “Somebody had the guts to say that men have it tougher than women, it gives you an emotional rush,” he continues. “But when you listen, where’s the meat behind it? What’s he offering? I see nothing.” Trump isn’t offering much by way of policy substance, Esmay says, both on issues key to MRAs, such as incarceration or the treatment of fathers in family courts, or on others.

“Why do I think he would make a bad president?” asks Esmay. “Because he is a loose cannon. You don’t know what he’s going to do. We have a student loan debt bubble that’s going to burst. We have a middle class that’s imploding. And Donald Trump is going to fix it all by saying ‘Believe it, baby?’ Give me a break.”

Warren Farrell, widely-considered the father of the men’s right’s movement and the author of one of its foundational texts, The Myth of Male Power, says he’s a “very strong supporter” of Hillary Clinton. He has attended several campaign events for Clinton and donated the allowed maximum of $2700 to her primary campaign. Still, Farrell says he thinks Hillary is “the worst candidate in recent history, in my lifetime, on gender issues from the perspective of understanding and having compassion for men.” But Farrell, who has a Ph.D. in political science, still supports Hillary in part because, he says, “Even though I care about men’s issues a lot, I care about this country being led by the most competent person.”

“Its very hard for me,” he continues, “because Trump does have a clue about what’s happening with men’s issues. But Trump is the quintessential example of the immature man and men at their worst.”

Farrell falls into a more liberal faction of the men’s rights community, says Gwyneth Williams, a professor of politics at Webster University who also studies men’s movements. But some of Farrell’s more conservative colleagues also have serious concerns about Trump.

“I think Trump was right on for saying that men are afraid of upsetting women,” says Paul Elam, the CEO and founder of A Voice for Men. But Elam notes that he doesn’t buy that Trump would be “some sort of savior for” the men’s rights movement, and that there are other Trump positions he finds especially worrisome.

“Trump talks a lot about building a wall and the outlandish proposition that he’s going to stop drugs from entering the country—which is impossible” says Elam. He’s wary of a candidate who would further criminalize drugs, leading to greater incarceration of men. While Trump hasn’t directly promised this, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, one of Trump’s surrogates and a potential vice-presidential pick, has said he supports the criminalization of marijuana use. That’s why both Elam and Esmay say that the possibility that in a Trump administration Chris Christie might be elevated to a position of power might push them to vote for Hillary.

But many men’s rights activists are definitely not Clinton fans: Both Elam and Esmay referred to her as a “lizard” in speaking with Mother Jones, and men’s rights forums on Reddit and elsewhere are filled with anti-Hillary sentiments. But in spite of their Clinton scorn, many MRAs say that it’s obvious that Trump is more swagger than substance. “Trump doesn’t have the ability to successfully call out Hillary on her sexism. He is to sic crass and doesn’t grasp the issues,” writes one user on the men’s rights subreddit. Another sums things up: “Trump VS Clinton. Whoever wins, America (and the world?) loses.”

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Donald Trump and the Men’s Rights Movement: It’s Complicated

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We Have Some Heartbreaking News About Leonardo DiCaprio

by ValentiKoss Posted on September 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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It sounds like a huge, flashy number: $2.6 trillion.

That’s probably why the environmental activist group 350.org used it in a headline for a press release today announcing a report on the growing movement to divest from dirty energy companies: “FOSSIL FUEL DIVESTMENT PLEDGES SURPASS $2.6 TRILLION.”

But the report itself tells a somewhat different story.

Released this morning at a New York press conference, the report tallied commitments—made by a global assortment of universities, local governments, pension funds, charitable foundations, religious institutions, and more—to sell off investments in the fossil fuel industry. The tactic has become popular with climate activists as a way to call attention to the industry’s transgressions against the climate, and maybe even to destabilize its bottom line.

On hand to trumpet the findings: Leonardo DiCaprio, along with the head of the UN climate agency (via video) and a packed room of top brass from environmental groups, clean energy companies, and major foundations. DiCaprio himself joined the list, pledging to divest his personal finances and his foundation’s holdings from fossil fuels.

“To date,” the report reads, “436 institutions and 2,040 individuals across 43 countries and representing $2.6 trillion in assets have committed to divest from fossil fuel companies.”

“That’s real money,” said Ellen Dorsey, director of the Wallace Global Fund, in announcing the number, to much applause.

And it is! Pulling that kind of cash out of the fossil fuel juggernaut could land a true financial blow, a clear victory in the global war to stop climate change.

But there’s a catch. That big number—$2.6 trillion—has nothing to do with the amount of money that is actually being pulled out of fossil fuel stocks. In fact, the investment consultancy behind today’s report has no idea how much money the institutions surveyed have invested in fossil fuels, and thus how much they have pledged to divest.

Instead, that number refers to the total size of all the assets held by those institutions—hence the word “representing” in the quote above from the report. And that’s a huge difference.

Here’s a perfect example: The report lists the University of California system as a prominent new entry into the divestment movement. Earlier this month, the UC’s chief investment officer announced that the system’s endowment would sell off its holdings in coal and tar sands oil. Those holdings were worth about $200 million. An undisclosed amount is still invested in oil and gas. But the report uses the full amount of the university’s total endowment: $98 billion. That’s 490 times higher than the amount of money actually being divested.

So what’s the exact portion of the $2.6 trillion that is being divested from fossil fuels? No one knows. Indeed, Dorsey couldn’t even confirm that all the institutions listed in the report necessarily had any fossil fuel holdings in their portfolios before they decided to divest. As for DiCaprio, when asked by reporters to clarify the exact amount of his personal stake in fossil fuels, he smiled and waved but kept mum.

“Every investment portfolio is different, and some are exceedingly complex,” Dorsey said.

Brad Goz, the director of business development for a New York consultancy that helps institutions figure out how to divest, agreed that it can be difficult to figure out how and where a fund is invested.

“Hedge funds like to keep it opaque,” he said. “But that’s becomes less challenging when CEOs demand the information.”

The best Dorsey could offer was an estimate based on the portion of the value of the S&P 500 that comes from fossil fuel companies: 3 to 7 percent. In other words, that $2.6 trillion statistic is probably much closer to $182 billion—a pretty small piece of the roughly $6 trillion value of the global market for coal, oil, and gas. Dorsey also clarified that the promised divestments are scheduled to take place over the next five years, not overnight.

To be fair, the real divestment figure isn’t nothing, and there’s some evidence that it’s growing: When this same analysis was released last year, the reported figure was just $50 billion (compared with $2.6 trillion this year). Still, it’s not clear whether any of this is enough to actually draw the notice of corporations like Exxon and Shell, and the report offered no evidence that the divestment campaign has had a specific, tangible impact on share prices.

In an interview following the announcement, May Boeve, director of the activist group 350.org, defended the framing of the announcement, saying she doesn’t “think it’s misleading.”

“The purpose of divestment is to make the point that the fossil fuel industry is losing legitimacy,” she said. “It’s about their reputation, which is less quantifiable but equally damaging.”

If she meant that the appearance of a big divestment movement can help promote more divestment, she’s probably right. Expect to see more announcements like this over the next few weeks in advance of the upcoming UN climate talks in Paris. Just make sure to read the fine print.

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We Have Some Heartbreaking News About Leonardo DiCaprio

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These Stunning Photos of Greenland’s "Dark Snow" Should Worry You

by CaitlynEoff Posted on September 19, 2014

Mother Jones

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Isn’t ice supposed to be white? Jason Box

This story originally appeared in Slate and is republished here as part of our Climate Desk collaboration.

Jason Box knows ice. That’s why what’s happened this year concerns him so much.

Box just returned from a trip to Greenland. Right now, the ice there is…black:

Dark ice is helping Greenland’s glaciers retreat. Jason Box

Crevasses criss-cross the Greenland ice sheet, allowing melt water to descend deep beneath the ice. Jason Box

This year, Greenland’s ice was the darkest it’s ever been. Jason Box

Box and his team are trying to discover what made this year’s melt season so unusual. Jason Box

Box marks his study sites, appropriately, with black flags. Jason Box

Box’s ‘Dark Snow’ project is the first scientific expedition to Greenland to be crowdfunded. Jason Box

The ice in Greenland this year isn’t just a little dark—it’s record-setting dark. Box says he’s never seen anything like it. I spoke to Box by phone earlier this month, just days after he returned from his summer field research campaign.

“I was just stunned, really,” Box told me.

The photos he took this summer in Greenland are frightening. But their implications are even more so. Just like black cars are hotter to the touch than white ones on sunny summer days, dark ice melts much more quickly.

As a member of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, Box travels to Greenland from his home in Copenhagen to track down the source of the soot that’s speeding up the glaciers’ disappearance. He aptly calls his crowdfunded scientific survey Dark Snow.

This year was another above-average melt season in Greenland. National Snow and Ice Data Center

There are several potential explanations for what’s going on here. The most likely is that some combination of increasingly infrequent summer snowstorms, wind-blown dust, microbial activity, and forest fire soot led to this year’s exceptionally dark ice. A more ominous possibility is that what we’re seeing is the start of a cascading feedback loop tied to global warming. Box mentions this summer’s mysterious Siberian holes and offshore methane bubbles as evidence that the Arctic can quickly change in unpredictable ways.

This year, Greenland’s ice sheet was the darkest Box (or anyone else) has ever measured. Box gives the stunning stats: “In 2014 the ice sheet is precisely 5.6 percent darker, producing an additional absorption of energy equivalent with roughly twice the US annual electricity consumption.”

Perhaps coincidentally, 2014 will also be the year with the highest number of forest fires ever measured in Arctic.

Box ran these numbers exclusively for Slate, and what he found shocked him. Since comprehensive satellite measurements began in 2000, never before have Arctic wildfires been as powerful as this year. In fact, over the last two or three years, Box calculated that Arctic fires have been burning at a rate that’s double that of just a decade ago. Box felt this finding was so important that he didn’t want to wait for peer review, and instead decided to publish first on Slate. He’s planning on submitting these and other recent findings to a formal scientific journal later this year.

Arctic and sub-Arctic fires were more powerful in 2014 than ever recorded before. Jason Box/NASA

Box’s findings are in line with recent research that shows the Arctic is in the midst of dramatic change.

In total, more than 3.3 million hectares burned in Canada’s Northwest Territories alone this year—nearly 9 times the long term average—resulting in a charred area bigger than the states of Connecticut and Massachusetts combined. That figure includes the massive Birch Creek Complex, which could end up being the biggest wildfire in modern Canadian history. In July, it spread a smoke plume all the way to Portugal.

In an interview with Canada’s National Post earlier this year, NASA scientist Douglas Morton said, “It’s a major event in the life of the earth system to have a huge set of fires like what you are seeing in Western Canada.”

Box says the real challenge is to rank what fraction of the soot he finds on the Greenland ice is from forest fires, and what is from other sources, like factories. Box says the decline of snow cover in other parts of the Arctic (like Canada) is also exposing more dirt to the air, which can then be more easily transported by the wind. Regardless of their ultimate darkening effect on Greenland, this year’s vast Arctic fires have become a major new source of greenhouse gas emissions from the thawing Arctic. Last year, NASA scientists found “amazing” levels of carbon dioxide and methane emanating from Alaskan permafrost.

Earlier this year, Box made headlines for a strongly worded statement along these lines:

That tweet landed Box in a bit of hot water with his department, which he said now has to approve his media appearances. Still, Box’s sentiment is inspiring millions. His “f’d” quote is serving as the centerpiece of a massive petition (with nearly 2 million signatures at last count) that the activist organization Avaaz will deliver to “national, local, and international leaders” at this month’s global warming rally in New York City on Sept. 21.

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These Stunning Photos of Greenland’s "Dark Snow" Should Worry You

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Your iPhone is about to get (a little) less toxic

by DesireeHoddle Posted on August 14, 2014

Your iPhone is about to get (a little) less toxic

By

Ian Higgins

Apple is upping its green game in a big way, thanks in no small part to former-EPA-chief-turned-Apple-exec Lisa Jackson. On Wednesday, the company announced an official ban of two toxins from its iPhone and iPad production lines, following a five-month-long “Bad Apple” campaign launched by China Labor Watch and Green America.

Benzene and n-hexane, used primarily to clean and polish electronics during the final stages of production, are known to cause a slew of negative health effects including leukemia and nerve damage. Activist groups harangued the company for its use of the chemicals until it conducted its own investigation of 22 of its plants.

Naturally, Apple’s internal probe found nothing of consequence (the use of the chemicals wasn’t widespread, it insists, and didn’t endanger a single worker; what little it did find fell well within the company’s existing safety standards). In true EPA style, though, Jackson and her team tightened the existing rules to explicitly prohibit the use of benzene and n-hexane in final assembly processes. Although the company will still use a tiny bit during the earlier stages of production, Apple, Jackson writes, “treats any allegations of unsafe working conditions extremely seriously.” Hmm.

From the AP:

“This is doing everything we can think of to do to crack down on chemical exposures and to be responsive to concerns,” Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environmental initiatives, said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We think it’s really important that we show some leadership and really look toward the future by trying to use greener chemistries.”

Hear, hear. And at least Apple has now released an actual list of the substances it regulates to the public, making world domination by iThings a little more transparent.


Source
Apple Bans Use of 2 Chemicals in iPhone Assembly, Associated Press

Sara Bernard is a Grist fellow, wilderness junkie, and globetrotter. Follow her on Twitter.

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Coal foes suffer setback in fight against exports

by Shicsshaw Posted on June 19, 2013

Coal foes suffer setback in fight against exports

By John Upton

Kurt Haubrich

Coal dust for everybody!

Bad news for climate hawks, coal haters, and Northwesterners who don’t like breathing coal dust: The Army Corps of Engineers says it won’t consider climate change or other big-picture issues when it reviews the environmental impacts of proposed coal export terminals.

Plans are afoot to build or expand coal export facilities at three ports in the Pacific Northwest. The governors of Oregon and Washington, other elected leaders in the states, and enviros have all been calling for the Army Corps to do a comprehensive study considering the wide-ranging, cumulative impacts of a big coal export push through the region — including coal dust, diesel exhaust, railroad and port congestion, road traffic, water pollution, and, yes, climate change.

But this week, the Army Corps said no. From the Associated Press:

[A] top agency official said Tuesday that a more sweeping study to include all three terminals and impacts further afield was not appropriate.

“Many of the activities of concern to the public, such as rail traffic, coal mining, shipping coal outside of U.S. territory, and the ultimate burning of coal overseas, are outside the Corps’ control and responsibility,” the agency’s acting chief of regulatory affairs, Jennifer Moyer, said in testimony submitted to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

It’s not like “the public” is asking for much — just for the corps to take its responsibilities under the National Environmental Policy Act seriously and review all of the impacts of the planned export rush. Instead, it’s taking a very limited view. From the McClatchy news service:

“The corps will limit its focus on emissions to those associated with construction of the facilities,” Jennifer Moyer … told lawmakers. “The effects of burning of coal in Asia or wherever it may be is too far to affect our action.”

Coal exports have become a big target for climate activists; if they can keep export terminals from being built, that will help keep coal in the ground, because domestic demand for coal has declined markedly in recent years. Activist opposition may have helped kill three of six proposed export terminal proposals in the Northwest since last year.

Why is the Army Corps refusing to do a comprehensive study? In part, it seems to be throwing its hands in the air and saying it would be just too darn hard. Again from McClatchy:

Moyer noted in her testimony that … it was beyond the realm of the agency’s expertise to judge what increased coal shipments would mean for the region.

The Corps will have to work on expanding its expertise if the White House ever actually finalizes its plan to require federal agencies to consider climate change when analyzing the environmental impacts of major projects. It couldn’t hurt the Corps to start practicing now.

Northwest political leaders and enviros plan to keep pushing for broader review. U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) is pushing too: “I think the Corps is making a big mistake,” he told Moyer, later adding, “I think you should reconsider your position.”

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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