Ontario Trash disposed at Michigan landfills

Ontario Trash disposed at Michigan landfills

That rumble you hear is the drumbeat of Michigan lawmakers girding for yet another attempt to halt Ontario from shipping its trash over the border for disposal at Michigan landfills. And the grinding sound accompanying the rumble is Ontario politicians’ teeth gnashing as they quarrel over their failure to work out a contingency plan for disposing of the province’s waste in the event Michigan does succeed in shutting the door.

You can read the latest about the Michigan-Ontario trash flap here [the Detroit Free Press’ take], here [the Toronto Globe and Mail’s] and here [the Toronto Star’s].

Also warming back up this week -- a development for which we have the approach of Hurricane Wilma to blame -- is the debate about climate change, its root causes, and the effect it’s having or isn’t having on storms and other weather events.

The Washington Post weighs in with this piece about a study by Purdue University researchers that leans toward the It’s-Homo-Sapiens’-Fault and It’s-Gonna-Get-A-Lot-Worse-Before-It-Gets-Better schools of thinking.

Here’s another perspective on the problem. It’s a transcript of an interview of two eminent climate-change researchers that aired Tuesday on PBS’s NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. As the transcript shows, the issue really is a lot more complicated -- and, from where I sit, interesting -- than the superficial daily fare served up by the media. We badly need more evenhanded, probing reports like this one; it certainly would go a long way toward helping us understand what’s really going on beneath all the Sturm und Drang.

Also, the New York Times chimes in with this report about the imminent melting of the Arctic ice cap and the effects that change is likely to have on the environment and on global commerce, shipping in particular.

Lastly -- and thanks to our intrepid government affairs editor, Bruce Geiselman, for bringing these two items to my attention -- we have this story about a weather forecaster who’s leaving his job to pursue some, er, intriguing theories about climate change; and this new recording about global warming from Bobby Pickett, who some of you may recall graced us with the novelty hit "The Monster Mash" a few decades back. And just in time for Halloween.

Pete Fehrenbach is assistant managing editor of Waste News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive.