Sprig.com to Likely Close

I know many of you still haven't recovered from Domino's folding. But today brings more dispiriting news. According to an article on Ecorazzi, The Washington Post Company is likely shutting down chic, green lifestyle site Sprig.com.

Sprig has been my go-to source since starting Eco*Pretty a year-and-a-half ago, so its folding hits hard. The journalism industry has basically imploded the last several months, with lay-offs and shut-downs filtering in like body counts during war. News articles use the word "transitional" to describe its state, but for those of us in it and without jobs, it's scary. Good luck to Sprig's staff.

New Satellite Image of Brown Clouds over China

Pardon this off-topic post. I have coal-fired plants on the brain and am feeling hopelessly frustrated.

Before going to bed last night, I read an article in Time about activists protesting the construction of a new coal-fired plant in Virginia—which will emit 5.3 million more tons of carbon dioxide into the air every year. (A 2007 report from the U.S. Department of Energy listed 151 new plants in the planning stages.)  I then awoke this morning to see this awful image in the New York Times of brown smog clouds above China, which has been building two coal plants every week.

What we seem to be tortoise-slow at understanding—or we would've acted much faster; we always do when something directly affects us—is that CO2 sucks for our health. From the Times article, "U.N Sees New Pollutant Threat":

"For those who breathe the toxic mix, the impact can be deadly. Henning Rodhe, a professor of chemical meteorology at Stockholm University, estimates that 340,000 people in China and India die each year from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases that can be traced to the emissions from coal-burning factories, diesel trucks and kitchen stoves fueled by twigs."

"'The impacts on health alone is a reason to reduce these brown clouds,' he said, adding that in China, about 3.6 percent of the nation's annual gross domestic product, or $82 billion, is lost to the health effects of pollution."

Yes, the world's population is out-of-control and there's a massive demand for cheap energy. But I'm still shocked that new coal-fired plants—the dirtiest, worst polluters—continue to be built and that we've moved so slowly to mandate cleaner alternatives.

Having a new president and, hopefully, an administration, who don't pork-barrel with the energy industry should help enormously. But everyone must be a little anti-coal activist. Use natural sunlight during the day. Turn off your computer at night.  Don't buy the McMansion.  Turn down the thermostat a couple degrees. Incentive: You'll save money on your energy bill and will have more hydrated skin and hair this winter. Thanks for your help.

To learn more about the construction of coal plants in your area, visit here.

The Republican National Convention and "Drill, Baby, Drill!"

This post is 24 hours late, but I have a full-time job in addition to Eco*Pretty and can't keep quiet on this one topic.  So, it'll have to be better late than never. I know this is a touchy discussion and risk offending some readers. But journalists aren't—and shouldn't be—meek people.
  The Republican National Convention on Wednesday night made me want to drink gin out of the cat dish, as my favorite writer, Anne Lamott, would say. The pugnacious Giuliani-Palin combo and their crowds had me slumped on the couch, not knowing whether to pray or fetch a cold compress.

Republicans confound me.  And I say this as a political moderate and practicing Christian. I have a hard time understanding a people with jolly, cherubic faces and frequent invocations of God—who can hurl insults with a ferocity that would make the devil blush. 

Obviously, both political parties do their share of mug-slinging.  But comparing the speeches at the two conventions, negativities from the Democrats seemed more like rational critiques instead of mean-spirited attacks.  Palin's put-down of Obama's "community organizing" on Chicago's South Side was particularly low.  She clearly knows nothing about the neighborhood—which is more tough, diverse and populous than Wasilla and Juneau combined.

But more than any other moment during the evening, I was appalled at all the signs and chanting of "Drill, baby, drill! Drill, baby, drill!"  Maybe I'm reading the wrong articles, but every news report I've come across about drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) has said that 1) it won't lower gas prices and 2) its oil would last us a pathetically short time.  Not to mention, of course, that it would destroy wildlife. Remember 1989's Exxon Valdez oil spill?  I was only a fifth-grader when it happened but remember the images of lifeless, oil-soaked birds and otters.

Drilling in the ANWR would be like pouring vinegar on a limb that needs to be amputated; a quick fix but not even that.  We need to rapidly work to end not only foreign oil dependence but dependence on oil period.  More time, energy, and money should be spent researching and developing cleaner, lasting sources of energy.  This seems like common sense.