If the entire state of New York were flooded, then about as many people would be displaced as the current flooding in South Asia.  In India, Bangladesh, and Nepal, about 20 million have been uprooted from their homes, and the death toll is now approaching 200.

At first, this looked looked like a severe weather event not too out-of-the-ordinary for the monsoon season.  After all, a third of Bangladesh is usually under water at this time every year (CIA World Factbook).  But as the rainy day streak has now stretched to 20, the descriptions have turned dire:

"some of the worst floods for years"

"In some areas, the floods are being called the worst in living memory." [BBC, first link]

They might as well get used to them, because, unless things change, the world won't be able to reach the emissions targets necessary to render unlikely the increases in flooding climate change models suggest for the low-lying areas of South Asia.

It is a natural tendency among activists and concerned citizens to always feel as if the issue(s) we have committed our time and mental anguish to is/are reaching a defining moment -- a tipping point, climax -- whether or not it is actually true.  We can get so immersed in the issue that we forget its real magnitude in our overall social context.

Still, given the recent convergence of events and trends, it's hard to argue that the state of the American food system is not in the midst of one of those defining moments -- one that could lead either to a nation caught off guard by emerging realities or to a nation that has transformed its food system into one that respects land, water, soil, local economies, families, and health.

It's time the Democrats in Congress realized how dangerous anti-environmental congressmen like John Dingell (D-MI), Rick Boucher (D-VA), and Nick Rahall (D-WV) are to the future of the party.  To have such prominently anti-environmental behavior from three powerful congressmen at a time when the American public is yearning for environmental leadership is blatantly unacceptable and a peril to the party's political future.  It is also a roadblock to our efforts to transitition to an energy-scarce future and mitigate global warming while incurring as little hardship and suffering as possible.

x-posts: Brudaimonia, The Proving Ground

George Will has a keen ability to package ill-informed nonsense in a shiny wrap of apparent erudition.

Not that I disagree with all of the points in his recent article on traffic congestion entitled "Fighting the Real Gridlock."  I am in favor, for example, of dynamic tolling on highways and reforming transportation pork.  It's just that the spirit of the whole article contradicts itself by reaffirming the status quo it purports to shatter.

Nearly 100 third party certifiers do the leg work behind that familiar green seal on the organic food you buy.  They are farmers' associations, nonprofits, state departments of agriculture, businesses, and other organizations.  They are accredited to certify different steps of the organic food production process.

Each organization is different.  Their job qua certifier is to ensure that growers and producers stay chemical fertilizer- and pesticide-free, but that doesn't necessarily say anything about their positions on other food issues: source of food, treatment of workers, and so forth.

Below the fold is an introduction to third party certifiers.

Nearly 100 third party certifiers do the leg work behind that familiar green seal on the organic food you buy.  They are farmers' associations, nonprofits, state departments of agriculture, businesses, and other organizations.  They are accredited to certify different steps of the organic food production process.

Each organization is different.  Their job qua certifier is to ensure that growers and producers stay chemical fertilizer- and pesticide-free, but that doesn't necessarily say anything about their positions on other food issues: source of food, treatment of workers, and so forth.

Below the fold is an introduction to third party certifiers.

Mother whose heart hung humble as a button
On the bright splendid shroud of your son,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

--Stephen Crane, "War Is Kind"

Over and over again, I hear the same brazen, abominable lie, and I don’t mean "lie" casually as in denoting mere misleading or stretching the truth.  I mean lie, as in: one knows that something is not true, yet one says it anyway to further his or her own self-interests, at the great harm of those whose freedom is partly or fully dissolved by the liar’s maniacal pursuit of those self-interests.

I can’t speak for anyone else.  I won’t speak for those who will say I’m overreacting.  But it eats away at me.  It overwhelms me with the anger of those who get proverbial shit thrown in their face and all they can hear is laughter.  Again and again, I am filled with horrified bewilderment and wretched disbelief that those who would call themselves rational can say without trepidation that calling for our troops to come home means undercutting the troops.

On Friday morning, at approximately 7:25 AM, day will break over the small Pennsylvanian town of Punxsutawney, and the world's most famous groundhog (envied by many rivals) will be called upon to make his yearly prognostication.  Yet if Phil's great charge were retrospection, he would see his shadow just about as well as Bush saw WMDs in Iraq.  (Remember the rubric: shadow = more winter; no shadow = spring is coming.)

As many who follow global warming know, Bangladesh is one of the countries most vulnerable to the potential meteorological consequences of global warming.  There are several good reasons why, which I detail below.

This diary serves to give a detailed profile of Bangladesh and what might happen if some of the events projected by climatologists due to global warming come true.  Having spent a month in Bangladesh a few years ago, having experienced the genuine kindness and hospitality of many Bangladeshis, and having several friends there now, global warming's threat to the country is somewhat personal for me.

Cross-post: Brudaimonia | Link: dKos Environmentalists

As we look back on 2006, one milestone our country reached came in October, when the US population reached 300 million.  This is a vast and beautiful country with ample room for all of us 300 million (and many more), but the milestone should remind us that we can ill afford to accomodate our future population increase with more suburban sprawl.

Fortunately, there is an alternative in urban planning that is growing in popularity.  It preserves more open space, creates cohesive neighborhoods with distinct identities and local amenities, and reduces dependence on fossil fuels, to name just a few of its benefits.  This alternative works because it combines established and time-tested principles of town planning, innovative ideas, and democratic participation in land-use decisions (i.e. people power).  It is smart growth.

* * *

From BBC News:

Greenhouse gases hit record high

The steady rise in atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gases blamed for climate change shows no signs of abating, a UN agency has announced.

The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide rose by about half a percent in 2005, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has said.

It's been a long time coming for Muhammad Yunus, the Bangladeshi awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.  I would venture to say that many people who knew about Mr. Yunus's work felt that it was only a matter of time before the Grameen Bank founder and microcredit pioneer became a Nobel Laureate.  He had already received numerous other awards, including the the 1994 World Food Prize, the 1998 Sydney (AUS) Peace Prize, the 2006 Seoul Peace Prize, and many other awards (listed on his Wikipedia entry).

Below the fold: what I think this award to Mr. Yunus means in the larger context of alleviating poverty, and also an account of my personal experience with Grameen Bank when I studied in Bangladesh a few years ago.

Do we really need a new wave of nuclear power plants in the U.S.?  Do we really need to mine and gasify coal?  The answer to these and other proposed energy crisis mitigations is clearly "No."

One of the more fallacious assumptions of our energy discourse is that our excessive energy consumption is inevitable.  A corollary of this assumption - that demand-side solutions to impending energy crises are of no more than secondary importance - has led the discourse to an undue bias towards supply-side mitigations that carry with them negative connotations for sustainability, environmental protection, and national security.

After taking over Congress in 1994 and the presidency in 2000 through strategic alliances, Machiavellian campaign tactics, Supreme Court imbalances, certainly a lot of hard work by grassroots activists, playing on Americans' fears, and other avenues, today's conservative movement - I don't have to tell any Kossacks - is showing many signs of being in jeopardy, a condition even Bob Novak would accept.

The signs are many: the right's bleak outlook for November, GOP-Joe paying the price for becoming the new Cheney, Bush's disapproval ratings over the last couple years, and many more of which we are all well aware.  Credit is also due to the resurgence of progressives through the netroots movement, which has given us the tools to hold conservatives accountable when the mainstream media shamefully won't do it.  But let me pose another hypothesis: today's conservatism is in danger because, in addition to the reasons mentioned above, it is, to a significant extent, based on the availability of cheap oil, and cheap oil is fast becoming a thing of the past.

Some still claim to this day that these atrocities were justified because they brought a hasty end to the Pacific War and prevented a U.S. ground invasion that would inevitably have resulted in hundreds of thousands of more deaths than the two bombs inflicted.  Below the fold, quotes (with emphasis added) from Howard Zinn's landmark A People's History of the United States (pp. 421-424) present evidence that both atomic bombs were unncessary in order to bring about the end of the war.

There was bad news - and potentially very bad news - for the environment and water quality on Friday.  A federal court decision (PDF) is allowing a gold mine to dump millions of tons of mine tailings into a freshwater lake just north of Juneau, Alaska.

For some background information, commentary on the court decision, and what it means for the future of mining and water quality in the U.S., see below the fold.

The group of fairies, which numbers about 1 million, made its first landing Monday in Orange County, California, where they split up and began a campaign to station magical gas pumps at cul-de-sacs throughout the county's sprawling suburbs. The pumps provide an infinite amount of gasoline at zero cost for every American's car, truck, or SUV.

From OneWorld US, via Common Dreams (though I couldn't find the original on OneWorld's site):

An internationally renowned nuclear expert is calling for nuclear reactors in the United Kingdom to be immediately shut down after government documents revealed they contain cracking in the bricks of their reactor cores.

The documents, which were obtained under Britain's Freedom of Information Act, show that the government's Nuclear Safety Directorate (NSD) has identified cracks in the cores of up to 14 UK reactors, rendering them at increased risk of a radiological accident.

In a report prepared for the environmental group Greenpeace, which has long been a critic of the continued use of nuclear energy, nuclear expert John Large called the cracked graphite cores "a central nuclear safety component."