The New York Times editorialized favorably
Sunday about Mayor Michael Bloomberg´s on-again, off-again,
now-back-on-again proposal to ship the city´s waste to distant landfills
via a system of marine transfer stations and barges. The Times
calls the mayor´s plan "thoughtful and forward-looking";
flays citizens groups´ efforts to thwart the proposal as shortsighted
NIMBY-ism; and warns that those efforts threaten to spoil "an excellent
opportunity to get a grip on New York´s mounting trash problem."
Meanwhile, similarly opposed groups
are mobilizing down south in an effort to derail the plan
at its other end, particularly in Virginia and North Carolina, where
most of the New York trash is expected to be landfilled.
Though Bloomberg´s plan has gained momentum of late, it´s far from a
done deal. The New York Times says the City Council´s new speaker,
Christine Quinn, hopes to move the proposal through the council by early
summer. I predict a very warm spring trashwise along the eastern
seaboard.
Next we have an update from the nation´s other most hotly
contested waste-import battle trench, the border running between
Michigan and Ontario. In an editorial, the Detroit Free Press
excoriates the Department of Homeland Security for
refusing to release any information from a study it conducted about the
makeup of the waste being shipped to Michigan landfills from Ontario.
The editorial is persuasive, and it makes one wonder --
notwithstanding the very real national security issues involved -- how
the feds can justify withholding from Michigan officials all of
the information (beyond the ridiculously terse "border improvements are
needed because inspection routines vary") they gathered about the nature
of the trash being shipped across the Detroit and St. Clair rivers every
day.
Our lungs, the polar ice caps and an array of other ecosystems
are some of the obvious things being imperiled by the pollution we
disgorge into the air every day. Another potential victim that doesn´t
get talked about so much is the science of stargazing. According
to
an article from the Minnesota Daily, "Astronomers are
predicting that ground-based telescopes could be obsolete in four
decades because of aircraft condensation trails and global warming. ...
Along similar lines, fewer stars can be seen by the naked eye because of
light pollution and increasing cloud cover resulting from global
warming."
Imagine our great-grandchildren seeing Vincent Van Gogh´s
Starry Night and wondering what all those weird blotches
in the sky are.
OK, let´s end the day with another item about climate change, this
one a little lighter than the foregoing. From the CBS Late Show With
David Letterman web site, here are
the winners of this week´s Top Ten Contest: Top Ten
Dumb-Guys´ Ways To Slow Down Global Warming.
Remarkable what a little dumbing-down can do to simplify a complex
problem. Kill some penguins, get rid of Eva Longoria, and prohibit Paris
Hilton from calling everything "hot," and we´re -- hmm, let´s see --
three-tenths of the way there.
The New York Times editorialized favorably
Sunday about Mayor Michael Bloomberg´s on-again, off-again,
now-back-on-again proposal to ship the city´s waste to distant landfills
via a system of marine transfer stations and barges. The Times
