Beat And Battered

By Joseph Romm

On August 23, 2005, a tropical depression formed 175 miles southeast of Nassau. By the next day, it had grown into tropical storm Katrina and was intensifying rapidly. Early in the evening on August 25, Hurricane Katrina made landfall near North Miami Beach. Even though it was only a Category 1 storm, with sustained wind speeds of about 80 miles-per-hour, it caused significant damage and flooding, and took 14 lives.

The hurricane’s quick nighttime trip across Florida barely fazed the storm. Entering the Gulf of Mexico’s warm waters quickly kicked Katrina into overdrive like a supercharged engine on high-octane fuel. Hurricanes fuel themselves by continually sucking in and spinning up warm, moist air.

On August 28, Katrina reached Category 5 status, with sustained wind speeds of 160 mph and a pressure of 908 millibars. A few hours later, wind speeds hit 175 mph, which they maintained until the afternoon.

At 4:00 pm, the National Hurricane Center warned that local storm surges could hit 28 feet, and “Some levees in the Greater New Orleans Area could be overtopped,” a warning that was tragically ignored by federal, state, and local emergency officials. Over the next 14 hours, Katrina’s strength dropped steadily. When the hurricane’s center made landfall Monday morning, it was a strong Category 3, battering coastal Louisiana with wind speeds of about 127 mph. The central pressure of 920 millibars was the third lowest pressure every recorded for a storm hitting the U.S. mainland.

The devastation to the Gulf region was biblical. The death toll exceeded 1,300. The damage exceeded $100 billion. [Combined with the effects of Hurricane Rita] two million people were forced to leave their homes, more than were displaced during the 1930’s Dust Bowl. One of the nation’s great cities was devastated.

About 20 miles to the west of the second Gulf landfall was the small town named Pass Christian, Miss., where my brother lived with his wife and son.

Tropical cyclones in the northern hemisphere rotate counterclockwise, and so the most intense storm surge is just to the east of the eye, because the surge represents the intense winds pushing the sea against the shore. A 30-foot wall of water with waves up to 55 feet crashed over the town. Although my brother and his family lived one-mile inland, their house was ravaged with water up to 22 feet high, leaving the contents of the house looking like they had been churned “inside of a washing machine,” in my brother’s words. While they lost virtually all their possessions, they were safe in a Biloxi shelter.

Thanks to the generosity of many people, my brother’s family was able to find a temporary home in Atlanta. But like many families whose lives were ripped apart by the storm, they had difficult choices in the ensuing months. Perhaps the toughest decision was whether to rebuild their home or to uproot themselves and try to create a new life somewhere else.

I very much wanted to give my brother an expert opinion on what was likely to come in the future. After all, climate change was my field, and while my focus has been on climate solutions, I had done my Ph.D. thesis on physical oceanography.

As I listened and talked to many of the top climate experts, it quickly became clear that the climate situation was far more dire than most people — and even many scientists, myself included — realized. Almost every major climate impact was occurring faster than the computer models had suggested. Arctic sea ice was shrinking far faster than every single model had projected. And the great ice sheets of Greenland and West Antarctica were shedding ice decades earlier than the models said. Soils appear to be losing their ability to take up carbon dioxide faster than expected. At the same time, global carbon dioxide emissions and concentrations were rising faster than most had expected.

As for hurricanes, global warming had been widely projected to make them more intense and destructive, but again the recent increase in intensity was coming sooner than the computer models had suggested. Why is that a concern? Since 1970, the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean’s hurricane-forming region has risen 0.5°C (0.9°F). Over the path of a typical hurricane, this recent ocean warming added the energy equivalent of a few hundred thousand Hiroshima nuclear bombs. On our current emissions path, the Atlantic will warm twice as much, another 1°C, by mid-century, and perhaps another 2°C beyond that by century’s end. Who can even imagine the hurricane seasons such warming might bring?

This is what I ultimately told my brother, the same advice I would give anyone contemplating living near the Gulf Coast:

Only a quarter of Atlantic hurricanes make U.S. landfall, and while there is no question that the frequency of intense Atlantic hurricanes is rising, it is somewhat random as to where they will actually go any given year.

That said, the Gulf of Mexico is going to get warmer and warmer, as is the Atlantic Ocean, and so hurricanes that enter the Gulf are likely to start out and end up far more destructive than usual. I would not bet that the Mississippi Gulf Coast will get hit by a super-hurricane in any particular year, but I would certainly plan on it being hit again some time over the next ten years; I wouldn’t be surprised if it were hit by more than one.

Coastal dwellers from Houston to Miami are now playing Russian roulette with maybe two bullets in the gun chamber each year. In a couple of decades, it may be three bullets.

(This is excerpted from my book, Hell and High Water. The description of Katrina is from two terrific sources: Grauman et al., Hurricane Katrina: A Climatological Perspective [PDF], Technical Report 2005-01, NCDC, October 2005, update Jan. 06, and Richard D. Knabb, Jamie R. Rhome, and Daniel P. Brown, Tropical Cyclone Report: Hurricane Katrina, 23-30 August 2005 [PDF], National Hurricane Center 20 December 2005.)

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

By Joseph Romm

I reprint this post from TPM election central (a must-read blog for political junkies):

Priorities, priorities.

Check out this Karl Rove quote buried in a Fox News article about the threat Hurricane Gustav poses to the GOP’s convention plans:

“The Republicans can’t seem to get a break when it comes to August and when it comes to the weather,” said Rove, a FOX News analyst. “I know this is being thought a lot about in Washington and at the White House and discussed and I suspect they will monitor it carefully and figure out what to do.”

Yeah, Katrina (which hit in August 2005) was really rough on those Republicans, no question about it.

You can’t make this stuff up!

Senior Republicans said images of political celebration in the Twin Cities while thousands of Americans flee a hurricane could be dubious. “Senator McCain has always been sensitive to national crisis,” said McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds …

In fact, on the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, both Bush and McCain were AWOL. Even better:

[Former White House spokesman Scott McClellan] suggested that McCain could benefit politically from such a scenario: It would allow Bush to mount an effective GOP response to a disaster, while removing the unpopular president from the convention roster. “It could be a two-fer,” McClellan said.

When it’s a plus that your party’s President doesn’t show up — and you’re counting on confidence from that same president — you got problems.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

By Sara Barz

During a June 25, 2008, appearance on CNBC’s Kudlow & Company, Sarah Palin said, "Sen. McCain is wrong" on the issue of oil drilling.  She said, "I think he’s going to evolve into eventually supporting ANWR opening also …  I’d like the opportunity to change his mind about ANWR."  She was also asked about the possibility of being chosen as McCain’s running mate and said, "it’s really probably out of the realm of possibility to be tapped for that position, so I don’t even have to worry about it."  

Read the transcript of the interview below the fold.

Hat tip: Environmental Capital.

CNBC’s Larry Kudlow:  Sen. McCain says it’s too pristine to drill, Sen. Obama says that drilling won’t work, what is your response to this?  How do you fight back?

Palin: Well, it will work and Sen. McCain is wrong on that issue.  He’s right on a whole lot of issues though, thank goodness, and he’s understanding and evolving with his position on OCS [Outer Continential Shelf drilling], so that’s encouraging.  I think he’s going to evolve into eventually supporting ANWR opening also.  Obama is way off-base on all that.  Those politicians who don’t understand that we need more domestic supply of energy flown into our hungry markets, you know they’re living in lala land and we’re in a world of hurt if their agenda continues to be to lock up these safe, secure, domestic supplies of energy.

Kudlow: Tell me about the world of hurt, in your judgment.  The criticism of ANWR is — this is what you hear from people in both political parties — there’s not enough to matter, it will take too long, and it won’t impact the price of oil internationally or gas at the pump.  How do you respond to that?

Palin:  Well, it will impact, in a positive sense, the price of fuel eventually; we’ve got to start somewhere.  Again, we’ve got domestic supply sitting there underground the reserves are ready to be tapped, and nowhere more than Alaska, Alaskans would be impacted by development in ANWR and here in Alaska our constituents, the people who live here, want it drilled.  That tells me that we have confidence in the safety and the responsibility that we’ll see there with the development of ANWR.  Remember too, Larry, we’re talking about a sliver of the coastal plain of Alaska being explored and drilled for oil.  It’s about the footprint of a 2,000-acre plot of land that’s smaller than the footprint of LAX, for instance.  So it’s not so grandiose an acreage that it is out of the realm of possibility for others to start understanding why it is that we can do this safely, we could have a small footprint, and not adversely impact the land, the wildlife, that’s part of Alaska.

Kudlow:  What have we got up there in ANWR? Just a bunch of big fat blue flies? People say nobody goes up there. Humanoids don’t populate it.  It’s just the blue flies.  I mean I want to keep the blue flies healthy; maybe you can tell us about that.

Palin:  We want to keep the blue flies healthy also. It’s a small portion of land up there.  Alaskans understand that while we have these reserves underground ready to be tapped, we want to invite safe, responsible development.  We want those who can safely develop, we want them to compete for the right to tap these resources and start feeding these hungry markets.

Kudlow: How long will it take? Sen. Obama says this and a lot of Democrats say this, some Republicans.  How long will it take, Governor, to start lifting out of ANWR?

Palin:  It’s going to take at least five years.  And there are other areas of Alaska too that have the reserves that need to be tapped, certainly offshore, there’s trillions of cubic feet of natural gas and billions of barrels of oil there too that need to be tapped.  We also have a natural gas pipeline that is underway now, a process to get that constructed, where we can build infrastructure and allow known reserves of natural gas up on our north slope, it’s already there, it’s already proven, to be tapped and flow through our natural gas pipeline.  Our legislature is dealing with that issue right now, getting ready to license a company to build that gas line, again to feed these hungry markets.

Kudlow: So now you’ve got another case where both candidates seem to be off course.  Sen. Obama wants a windfall profits tax on oil companies and Sen. McCain talks about obscene profits, which I regard as the near cousin to the windfall profits tax.  What’s your response to these criticisms?

Palin:  Well, we just went through a process of making sure that the oil and gas resources that Alaskans own are properly taxed.  We just increased a tax on profits of oil companies up here because an earlier version of Alaska’s tax formula had been corrupted by some politicians who are now in prison for the corruption, but we had to revisit the way that we were going to tax profits on oil companies, we just got through that.  It wasn’t an obscene amount of tax placed upon them; in fact, it’s driven more desire to explore and to develop with independent companies coming into Alaska.  On a national level they’re going to have to deal with that, but we’ve just dealt with it on Alaska’s level, and we have a healthy valuation of our and gas reserves, and we’re driving healthy revenue for our state off that.

Kudlow:  Well, is “profits” a dirty word in energy or other businesses?

Palin: Well, no of course not, and low taxes we know spur the economy.  I’m a Republican, I am for low taxes.  We have to make sure that an appropriate value is placed on oil and gas resources, and that the people who own these resources are able to benefit from the development of them.  But, no, “profit” is not a dirty word.

Kudlow:  Why don’t we just liberate and decontrol and deregulate the whole bloody energy business whether it’s oil, gas, shale, nuclear, coal, natural gas, as well as wind and solar?  Why don’t we just decontrol, deregulate, go for an America First energy policy.  Get independent of Saudi Arabia. America first, create all these millions of high paying jobs, why isn’t anybody talking about that in this race?  That’s the natural Reaganesque thing to do, isn’t it?

Palin: Yeah, absolutely.  You’re hitting the nail right on the head.  That’s what so many of us normal Americans are asking, same thing, why aren’t our candidates talking like that?  Where we can secure American and we could be more independent when we talk about energy sources if we could drill domestically.  Here we sent [Energy] Secretary Bodman overseas the other day, and our President had to visit the Saudis to ask them to ramp up development.  That’s nonsense, not when you know that we have the supplies here.  You have the supplies in your sister state called Alaska where we’re ready, willing, and we’re able to pump these supplies of energy, flow them into hungry markets across the U.S.  We want it to happen, it’s Congress holding us back.

Kudlow:  I’ve got some sound from Sen. John McCain. Please take a listen:

[Questioner: Would you consider Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for a vice presidential running mate?

Sen. McCain: Could I say that this meeting is adjourned? We're still going through the process, but the Governor of Alaska is a wonderful person and very popular in her state and a very honest and straightforward one, and I think has a future in our party.]

g>Kudlow:  Governor, you probably heard Sen. McCain waltz his way through that one.  If he asked you to be his vice president, would you accept in light of your disagreement, apparently, over ANWR drilling?

Palin:  I’d like the opportunity to change his mind about ANWR, I’ll tell you that.  But, Larry I’m going to give you the same answer that any other potential VP gives you and that is I really enjoy my job here in Alaska as Governor.  I believe that there’s a lot that Alaska could be and should be doing to contribute to the rest of the U.S. and I think I can do that in my job here in Alaska.  I know that the other potential VPs are saying the same thing that they like where they are today.  I also have to say though that it’s really probably out of the realm of possibility to be tapped for that position, so I don’t even have to worry about it.

Kudlow: Well, OK, you’ve got a lot of work to do drilling up there to help to rest of America, but let me ask one final question:  In your judgment, Is it time for the Republican Party to put a woman on the ticket?

Palin:  We’re overdue for that, absolutely.  I would love to see that happen.

By Russ Walker

Some of the leading voices in the movement for a sustainable agriculture system stood together Thursday to unveil the “Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture,” a 12-point set of principles for reorienting American food away from corporate farms and long-haul delivery to local producers and land stewardship.

The luminaries, including movement bigwigs like Alice Waters, Dan Imhoff, and Marion Nestle, stood together inside San Francisco City Hall to read the declaration. The event was held on the eve of Slow Food Nation, a three-day gathering that promises to showcase talks on food policy, the food of great chefs, and the farmers who, at the end of the day, are the ones filling the country’s foodbasket.

The declaration remains a draft document. The organizers are soliciting public input for 90 days, with the hope of delivering a final document to the nation’s policymakers early next year and shaping debate over the next farm bill.

Grist is in San Francisco and will be filing updates over the holiday weekend. In the meantime, here’s the full text of the declaration unveiled on Thursday:

Alice Waters signs the Slow Food Declaration.

We, the undersigned, believe that a healthy food system is necessary to meet the urgent challenges of our time. Behind us stands a half-century of industrial food production, underwritten by cheap fossil fuels, abundant land and water resources, and a drive to maximize the global harvest of cheap calories. Ahead lie rising energy and food costs, a changing climate, declining water supplies, a growing population, and the paradox of widespread hunger and obesity.

These realities call for a radically different approach to food and agriculture. We believe that the food system must be reorganized on a foundation of health: for our communities, for people, for animals, and for the natural world. The quality of food, and not just its quantity, ought to guide our agriculture. The ways we grow, distribute, and prepare food should celebrate our various cultures and our shared humanity, providing not only sustenance, but justice, beauty and pleasure.

Governments have a duty to protect people from malnutrition, unsafe food, and exploitation, and to protect the land and water on which we depend from degradation. Individuals, producers, and organizations have a duty to create regional systems that can provide healthy food for their communities. We all have a duty to respect and honor the laborers of the land without whom we could not survive. The changes we call for here have begun, but the time has come to accelerate the transformation of our food and agriculture and make its benefits available to all.

We believe that the following twelve principles should frame food and agriculture policy, to ensure that it will contribute to the health and wealth of the nation and the world. A healthy food and agriculture policy:

1. Forms the foundation of secure and prosperous societies, healthy communities, and healthy people.

2. Provides access to affordable, nutritious food to everyone.

3. Prevents the exploitation of farmers, workers, and natural resources; the domination of genomes and markets; and the cruel treatment of animals, by any nation, corporation or individual.

4. Upholds the dignity, safety, and quality of life for all who work to feed us.

5. Commits resources to teach children the skills and knowledge essential to food production, preparation, nutrition, and enjoyment.

6. Protects the finite resources of productive soils, fresh water, and biological diversity.

7. Strives to remove fossil fuel from every link in the food chain and replace it with renewable resources and energy.

8. Originates from a biological rather than an industrial framework.

9. Fosters diversity in all its relevant forms: diversity of domestic and wild species; diversity of foods, flavors and traditions; diversity of ownership.

10. Requires a national dialog concerning technologies used in production, and allows regions to adopt their own respective guidelines on such matters.

11. Enforces transparency so that citizens know how their food is produced, where it comes from, and what it contains.

12. Promotes economic structures and supports programs to nurture the development of just and sustainable regional farm and food networks.

Our pursuit of healthy food and agriculture unites us as people and as communities, across geographic boundaries, and social and economic lines. We pledge our votes, our purchases, our creativity, and our energies to this urgent cause.

By Melinda Henneberger

This is part of a series of dispatches from Melinda Henneberger, who’s talking to voters around the U.S. about their views on the environment and the election.

Stanardsville, Va. — A harvest moon is rising over the cornfields on the last night of the Greene County Fair, just hours before the carnival rides are packed up and the local politicos break down the vast GOP tent, where yard signs and balloons are being handed out, and the much smaller Democratic Party tent, where you can shake hands with the local congressional candidate.

Then again, that the Democrats even have a tent at the fair this year is a step up for them in a county that went two-to-one for George W. Bush in 2004: “This is big doin’s for the Democrats in this county,” says their competition, Republican Party Chair Gary Lowe, who wound up helping his partisan adversaries put up their tent, because they’d never done it before. “Usually, they just have a little card table stuck off somewhere.”

If you’re guessing that means this is a crowd that loves John McCain, guess again. Even Lowe, who’s flipping burgers for the South River Methodist Church tonight, assures me that’s not the case. “It’s not that people want McCain; it’s that they don’t want Obama.” Why is that? “Oh, [McCain's] liberal positions,” Lowe says. McCain “has switched — some people would say flip-flopped — on immigration, and he’s been a little soft on the judicial” appointments, too. “But,” Lowe says, heaving a sigh, “now he’s said … he’s going to be a conservative.” Asked if he believes those campaign-trail promises, Lowe doesn’t overstate his level of confidence: “I’m going to have to believe him.”

Still, Lowe’s analysis doesn’t offer much hope for Democrats who want to turn Virginia’a 13 electoral votes blue for the first time since 1964. There is a candidate who is unifying the county’s Republicans, Lowe says, and that’s Barack Obama. “They’re afraid of him, to be honest with you. Where’d he come from?”

On the issues, Lowe sees the price of gas working to his party’s advantage, “because Republicans, of course, are, ‘Drill here, drill now, drill ANWR.’” Immigration is another major focus: “A lot of people are irritated about this immigration; my wife is from England and it took two years for her to get here legally, so it burns her up to hear about these Mexicans coming here.”

Shelly Ripa, a volunteer who’s handing out balloons in the Republican Party tent, is equally honest about her depth of feeling for the candidate she’s campaigning for: “McCain, as a Republican, we’re not too thrilled with him; he jumps the fence a little too much out of the comfort zone. You don’t want to be too nice and give conservative values away.” But, she says, “We’ll hold our nose and vote for him, because with the fight on terror, John McCain will be right there, where with Obama, who knows? People who come by here say, ‘Ah, we wish we had somebody better, but the alternative…’”

Ethyle Cole Giuseppe, who is sitting nearby listening to a bluegrass concert, says she’s not sure she’ll even vote this time, for the first time in her adult life. “McCain is over the hill,” says Giuseppe, who’ll soon be 90 herself. When I ask if she knows any Obama supporters, she mentions the Sunday school teacher at her church. “He’d vote for anyone — black, or anyone — as long as he was a Democrat.” Not that she hasn’t swung that way a time or two herself, she adds, most recently when she voted for John F. Kennedy. “My husband was Catholic,” she says, laughing.

As I wander around the fairgrounds, sidling up to folks in line for the Ferris wheel and the funnel cake stand, I never find an enthusiastic McCainiac. “I don’t like Obama; I don’t think he can take us in a better direction or keep all his promises,” says Kelly Wheeler, who’s carrying the inflatable plastic red, white, and blue guitar her daughter won — and counting the days until school starts.

Michelle Collier is wearing a “Perriello for Congress” button that was just given to her by the Democratic candidate; she says she didn’t want to hurt his feelings when he handed it to her. “I am in such a frenzy over who to vote for” for president, she says. “I don’t have a clue.” She usually votes Republican, she says, “on abortion and gay marriage and all that stuff. But I’m disappointed in McCain” over “all the mud-slinging back and forth; I’m not much on that. My husband says, ‘Michelle, it’s part of politics,’ but I don’t think it has to be.”

There are a few outspoken Democrats here at the fair, including Ada Withrow, a nurse who says she’s surprised how many of her colleagues “seem to be leaning Obama, too, on health-care issues.”

The young Democratic congressional candidate, Tom Perriello, an enviro who comes out of the nonprofit world, is shaking every hand he can, alongside his mom Linda and dad Vito, a local pediatrician. In the race for the 5th-district seat once held by Thomas Jefferson, Perriello is trailing the 12-year incumbent, Virgil Goode, a former Democrat best known nationally for his support for tobacco interests. Goode once argued that he didn’t want his elderly mom “denied the one last pleasure” of a smoke on her hospital death bed. Two years ago, Goode famously criticized Michigan Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, for using a Koran at an unofficial swearing-in ceremony, warning that “if American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration, there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office.”

Perriello — a graduate of Yale Law who did service work in Liberia and Sierra Leone and worked as a national security analyst in Darfur and Afghanistan — is running hard on energy and environmental issues. He sees a lot of interest in the local-food movement from former tobacco farmers “who got the buyout and are looking for their next crop.” And interest in energy issues is big: “The main thing I say now is, ‘Do you know the No. 1 reason gas is going down is because people are driving less?’ And they say, ‘Yeah, and the thing that makes me furious is my pickup truck gets 13 miles a gallon because it’s cheaper to buy a politician than to build me a truck that’s more fuel-efficient.’ Even very Republican people nod when you say it’s the American people that are getting it done — they say, ‘I haven’t driven my truck in a week,’ so people already know it.”

Energy was the major focus of a recent Goode-Perriello debate. Says Perriello, “His answer on everything was drill in ANWR; if you asked him about the situation in Georgia, he was like, ‘We should probably drill in ANWR.’” According to the Lynchburg News & Advance, “Perriello accused Goode of voting consistently for legislation that increased the profits of oil companies, and said Goode had $200,000 of investments in energy stocks. Perriello said energy is America’s ‘No. 1 national security threat, No. 1 environmental threat, and No. 1 economic opportunity because entrepreneurs will be seeking capital for energy companies for the next 20 years.’

“Goode replied that his energy policy is ‘pro-drill, pro-conservative, and pro-alternative energy.’ Goode said he has voted for solar-energy bills, wind-energy bills, and biofuels. Boos erupted, apparently from Perriello supporter
s, when Goode said he favored drilling for oil in ANWR, the [Arctic] National Wildlife Refuge … Undaunted, Goode said at least three more times that he favored a pro-drill policy of searching for oil in the United States and offshore.”

If Perriello and Obama have any chance of winning in Virginia, it’ll be on the coattails of their party’s Senate candidate. Mark Warner, the former governor who came close to running for president this year, is heavily favored to win the Senate seat being vacated by Republican John Warner. Mark Warner’s recipe for winning in this conservative state? Hewing solidly to the center, avoiding the controversial social issues that have hurt Democrats throughout the South, and pushing a generally pro-business economic agenda, as reflected in Warner’s less-than-radical energy plan.

(Read Henneberger’s first post on Virginia.)

By Summer Rayne Oakes

As expected, we see a lot of energy on the eco-fashion front. More shows, more events, and even more awards for eco-designers. The Ecco Domani Fashion Foundation is giving out an award for sustainability and there’s also London’s RE:Fashion Award. Check out the highlighted events below the fold. I’ll be at some of them and in some of them, but I have work to do in Mozambique smack-dab in the middle of the eco-fashion extravaganza, so unfortunately I’ll have to miss a few.

See any events that I may have missed? Include them in the comments section.

Sept. 4:

AVEDA Caps Recycling Program: Rodarte, Preen, 3.1 Philip Lim, and Alexander Wang are greening it up backstage. This is the kick-it-off cocktail party. Good event to connect with friends.

BeEcoChic: Stars are out to prove something — that environment is fashionable. Good star-sighting at the show; pieces are one-of-a-kind.

Sept. 6:

Alexander Wang after-party … Beautiful people in a beautiful setting. Try as you might, you only can get in if you know someone on the inside.

Sept. 7:

Hess-Natur and Miguel Adrover show — Miguel says he is “bored of the runway,” so he’ll be providing a mixed showcase that is guaranteed to pique some curiosity.

Sept. 9:

Eko-lab and Ekovaruhuset present their highly meticulous, handmade creations. A must-see for people who appreciate beautiful, feminine designs. 3-6p.m., The Gabarron Foundation, Carriage House Center for the Arts, 149 E. 38th Street, New York, N.Y. (Lexington and 3rd Ave.)

Sept. 13-15:

Designers & Agents is at it again: Check out their New York gathering and the fresh green labels they represent.

Sept. 14-19:

London Fashion Week shows off Esthetica in its fifth season. Peruse the exhibition for the latest eco-desingers.

Sept. (TBD):

Eco-fashion Brazil is a new show discovering talented eco-fashion designers, so if you’re in South America, stop on by.

Oct. 9-12:

The Ethical Fashion Show is in its fifth year in Paris and is slated to have the same great designers from all corners of the globe.

Oct. 17:

Elephant Art “Trunk Show” at Home/Guest House will be a fun, cordial show with one-of-a-kind designer pieces created by eco-friendly designers and painted on by elephant “artists.”

Oct. 17-19:

Designers & Agents will be taking La La Land by storm with some fresh green designers and a good ol’ green after-party on Oct. 18.

By Grist

Last updated 10:29 a.m. PDT

GOP presidential candidate John McCain today announced that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will be his running mate in the race against Barack Obama and Joe Biden. McCain’s official announcement of his veep pick declares, “Governor Palin has challenged the influence of the big oil companies while fighting for the development of new energy resources. She leads a state that matters to every one of us — Alaska has significant energy resources and she has been a leader in the fight to make America energy independent.”

Here are some quick snapshots of Palin’s record on issues related to energy and the environment:

• Opposed a statewide ballot initiative to prohibit or restrict new mining operations that could affect salmon in the state’s streams and rivers
• Has pushed to build a natural-gas pipeline from Alaska’s North Slope
• Got the state legislature to pass a bill to provide each Alaskan $1,200 to help with energy costs
• Sued the Interior Department over its decision to list the polar bear as a threatened species
• Has proposed eliminating Alaska’s gas tax
• Has pushed to open Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling
• Has created a committee to forge Alaska’s climate-change strategy, and has made Alaska an observer (but not a member) of the Western Climate Initiative
• Opposes a windfall profits tax on oil companies
• Was the ethics commissioner of the Alaska Gas and Oil Conservation Commission from 2003 to 2004
• Lifelong angler and hunter
• Husband is an oil production operator for BP on Alaska’s North Slope
• Started Alaska’s Petroleum Systems Integrity Office, an oversight and maintenance agency for the state’s oil and gas equipment, facilities, and infrastructure
• Chairs the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, a multistate panel “that promotes the conservation and efficient recovery of domestic oil and natural gas resources while protecting health, safety and the environment”
• Believes intelligent design should be taught along with evolution in science classes

Quotable quotes from Palin:

When I look every day, the big oil company’s building is right out there next to me, and it’s quite a reminder that we should have mutually beneficial relationships with the oil industry.

Alternative-energy solutions are far from imminent and would require more than 10 years to develop.

I believe in protecting Alaska’s environment through fair enforcement of our environmental laws. Having a clean record on environmental regulation is critical to getting ANWR open and maintaining our fisheries, mining, timber, and tourism industries.

I am not only a champion for Alaska?s fishing industry, but a part of it. My family is proud to be a Bristol Bay fishing family. That?s why, as Governor I will do what?s right for Alaska?s fishing communities. I know the resource must come first in our management decisions. If we manage for abundance, we should have enough fish for all our needs.

We believe that the … decision to list the polar bear was not based on the best scientific and commercial data available.

I am encouraged with [John McCain's] evolved thinking on offshore drilling, and I think he might come along on ANWR if he sees our 2,000 acres for himself.

I get frustrated with folks from outside Alaska who come up and say, “You shouldn’t develop your resources.”

We have so much potential from tapping our resources here in Alaska. And we can do this with minimum environmental impact. We have a very pro-development president in President Bush, and yet he failed to push for opening up parts of Alaska to drilling through Congress — and a Republican-controlled Congress, I might add.

I thought when we hit $100 a barrel for oil it would have been a psychological barrier that would have caused Congress to reconsider, but they didn’t. Now we are approaching $200 a barrel. It’s nonsense not to tap a safe domestic source of oil. I think Americans need to hold Congress accountable on this one.

A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I’m not one though who would attribute [global warming] to being man-made.

I beg to disagree with any candidate who would say we can’t drill our way out of our problem or that more supply won’t ultimately affect prices. Of course it will affect prices.

Reactions to the pick:

Obama campaign spokesperson Bill Burton:

Today, John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency. Governor Palin shares John McCain’s commitment to overturning Roe v. Wade, the agenda of Big Oil, and continuing George Bush’s failed economic policies — that’s not the change we need, it’s just more of the same.

Sierra Club President Carl Pope:

With the pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for his running mate, John McCain’s race towards the Bush administration’s failed energy policy is now complete.

John McCain was once willing to stand up to his own party, but now that he is running for President, he supports the same Bush policies and powerful special interests that put us in the grip of the oil companies. One of the last remaining independent policies putting him at odds with Bush was his opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, yet he has now picked a running mate who has opposed holding Big Oil accountable and been dismissive of alternative energy while focusing her work on more oil drilling in a wildlife refuge and off of our coasts.

…

Senator McCain has lost any chance of having a balanced or moderate ticket with this choice and has instead opted for the same, business-as-usual reliance on the outdated oil companies that has been the hallmark of the Bush-Cheney administration. On the third anniversary of the hurricane that knocked loose oil rigs and spilled millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf Coast that is bracing for another hit, McCain is sending a terribly indifferent message by selecting a candidate who only repeats Big Oil’s talking points.

Friends of the Earth Action President Brent Blackwelder:

Sarah Palin’s record is not extensive — just two years ago she was the mayor of a city of less than 10,000 people — but what her record indicates is troubling. This spring, she opposed the listing of polar bears as a ‘threatened’ species. She supports the brutal aerial hunting of wolves. And she has been a friend of Big Oil, opposing a windfall profits tax on the oil industry that could fund affordable clean energy for more Americans. Palin’s husband works for BP.

League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski:

Unfortunately, with her support for drilling in the Arctic Refuge and off our coasts, Governor Palin will simply continue the failed policies of the Bush-Cheney Administration and their Big Oil friends — policies that could make us even more dependent on foreign oil.

Governor Palin characterizes McCain?s flip-flop on drilling offshore as a positive step in his transformation from maverick to Big Oil’s best friend. She has implored McCain to change his position against drilling in the Arctic — something she will have plenty of opportunities to pursue as his running mate.

In addition to supporting backward-looking energy policies, Governor Palin has also opposed a crucial clean water initiative, sued the federal government for listing po
lar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, and opposed other important wildlife protection measures.

Hey folks,

here we go with post #9 of my 30 day challenge from sunny Atlanta.

one problem I often face when writing model functions is that I got to handle different ways of passing a model record. Imagine a simple Post hasMany Comment association that you are looping through and calling a function on.

If you were now to code the Comment::gravatarUrl function and you wanted it to be fairly flexible as to what the $comment parameter is (an array, either with or without the ‘Comment’ key included or the $id of the record), you’d have to always code something like this:

So in order to avoid duplicating this kind of logic throughout my apps, I decided to abstract it into a generic AppModel::normalize function that looks like this:

Usage is fairly simple. Applying the function to the behavior above will make the function look like this:

And as you can see there is also a 3rd parameter called $query that you can use to create more complex normalization rules if an $id is passed in instead of an array. Now of course this isn’t perfect yet. It doesn’t verify complex association structures and I spend a lot of thought on how to possibly do that. But at some point I kind of concluded that the performance implications probably wouldn’t be worth it. Another thing I’d really love is if I was able to detect the name of the class the static function was called upon inside the normalize function, but so far I think PHP simply can’t do it. What I mean is that I’d like to use Comment::normalize / Post::normalize etc. without having to re-define the function in each model, so if anybody has an idea I’d love to hear it!

Feedback as always is very welcome! Please comment!

HTH,
– Felix Geisendörfer

By Lou Bendrick

In Checkout Line, Lou Bendrick cooks up answers to reader questions about how to green their food choices and other diet-related quandaries. Lettuce know what food worries keep you up at night.

Dear Lou,

What’s the deal with freezer burn, that white discoloration that occurs when something is left in the freezer too long? What is it exactly and is there any problem with eating food that has freezer burn?

Ross Conrad

Dear Ross,

Because I know you are a beekeeper (author of Natural Beekeeping: Organic Approaches to Modern Apiculture — nothing gets by this intrepid reporter), I feel the need to say that I just adore bees! Not only do they look cute when they sleep in flowers, but they make yummy food by spitting, which is more than most of us can say.

Now on to your fine question: Freezer burn is no laughing matter (wipe those smirks off your faces — I know who you are, too). Here’s why this little oxymoronic food term is important: Many of us are eating fresh, sustainable food these days and such foods do not have the shelf life of a Marshmallow Peep. This means that we all need to know how to store “real food” (as opposed to processed food) to retain maximum flavor, texture, and all of those nutrients.

Storage know-how is especially apropos this time of year, when fresh produce is so bountiful that you might be wondering: What the heck do I do with all of this zucchini? (A: Leave it on your neighbor’s porch, ring the doorbell, and run.) What’s more, Ross, freezing also happens to be my favorite method of preserving food!

Not only do I love it because it is easy and fun, but also because to me home canning is like fugu — a culinary thrill-sport best left to the brave or the skilled. (I’m lame in other ways, too: I can neither knit nor sew an A-line skirt to save my keister.) Freezer burn is the nemesis of the home food preserver, much in the way Mothra was the nemesis of Godzilla. (OK, granted, this is a weird analogy, but I’m trying to sex up a food storage column! Go with it! Work with me, people!)

Naturally, I decided to consult a pro to tackle freezer burn so I called up Jananne Finck, a nutrition and wellness educator at the University of Illinois Extension. Finck, who teaches Master Food Preserver classes, said that freezer burn is the result of air being pulled out of the tissues of food. “Basically, it’s moisture loss,” she said.

The good news is that freezer burn doesn’t cause illness. The bad news is that freezer-burned food — which often looks whitish and a bit shriveled — tastes “off,” and makes the texture dry and tough.

Finck also explained that freezer burn is caused by either keeping food in the freezer too long or by using poor-quality packaging. (Sorry, but don’t recycle those yogurt containers for freezing your chicken stock!) So, always use containers that are meant for freezing: freezer bags (Finck advises to use these only once), freezer-specific plastic containers, or, my favorite, freezer-safe glass containers. I am also a big fan of my vacuum sealer, a gizmo which sucks the excess air out of special freezer-safe bags that come in rolls.

In addition, Finck offered these two quick tips for successful freezing:

• When you’re freezing vegetables, make sure to blanch them. “Most vegetables require blanching to inactivate the enzymes,” she says. (The naturally occurring enzymes in fresh foods hasten spoilage.)
• Make sure the temperature in your freezer is zero degrees or lower. To check, Finck recommends that you get a freezer thermometer.

How long will food stored in the freezer keep? We’re probably not talking Marshmallow Peep-style longevity here. To find out how long various foods will keep in the freezer, and for other food preservation tips, click on over to the National Center for Home Food Preservation.

Before we depart, Ross, I have a honey-related freezer tip for you, because I appreciate people who care for our wee pollinators: According to my favorite food-preservation book, Preserving Summer’s Bounty, you can keep frozen apple slices from darkening when you freeze them by dipping them in a solution of one cup of honey mixed with one cup of water and the juice of one lemon.

Bee well yourself,

Lou Bendrick

By Kate Sheppard

Here are some photos I took from the crowd at Mile High Stadium on Thursday night for Barack Obama’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention: