If you thought you liked the BP oil spill when it was just creeping across the ocean’s surface and gently moisturizing the Gulf of Mexico’s ecosystem, just wait until you see this Google Earth program that superimposes the spill onto maps of Manhattan, San Francisco, and Rome. If you don’t have it, download the Google Earth plugin and see humanity’s folly from outer space!

(Thanks, Coudal.)

Source: Paul Rademacher

Image by uscgd8, licensed under Creative Commons.

Greenpeace wants you to re-design BP’s logo, the better to represent the global energy giant’s ever-increasing control of the environmental-disaster market. Catastrophe is the new hedge fund.

(Thanks, Eyeteeth.)

Source: Greenpeace

Image by Greenpeace.

A journalist travels to Louisiana for a look at the spill and finds herself in a web of PR flacks, angry law enforcement officials, and spill workers. Oh, and that oil washing up on beaches? BP is bagging it and processing it. They've still got to make a buck, right?

God bless Mother Jones.

Source: Mother Jones

Image by uscgd8, licensed under Creative Commons.

Developments has some troubling news about women farmers in poor areas. A startling amount (upwards of 80 percent) of the food in poor countries is produced by women, but they often don't have ample resources to work with and some even starve. As farmer Rosemary Mubita told the magazine: “Poor women farmers don’t get any support. They need help with seeds, fertilizer, credit. They are the ones who are growing the crops and cooking the food to feed their families, yet often are forced to go to bed hungry.” Mubita is helping promote a report about the state of women’s hunger and food production, which was recently released by Concern Worldwide—an organization trying to raise awareness and rally support for this important, but oft-neglected workforce.

Source: Developments

Image by IRRI Images, licensed under Creative Commons.

Feministing hipped me to this amazing video from Utrecht, a city of about 300,000 in the Netherlands, where one-third of all trips are made by bicycle. The video shows a busy—but never too gummed-up!—intersection during rush hour. Utne’s hometown of Minneapolis is a great city for cycling, but this bike-happy glimpse of Utrecht made me drool:



Source: Feministing

Trader Joe’s is widely viewed as a “green” company, attracting droves of eco-minded consumers who view its cozy, Hawaiian-themed stores as a cheaper alternative to Whole Foods or the neighborhood co-op. But as Sustainable Industries points out, it’s difficult to know how sustainable its operations really are—the company is “notoriously tight-lipped” about where its store-brand products come from.

A report on organic dairies from the Cornucopia Institute, a sustainable-agriculture watchdog group, warns consumers to be vigilant about the explosive growth in these sorts of “organic” store brands. Private-label organics like those in Trader Joe’s “seem to contradict what many thought the organic movement was all about: consumers understanding where their food comes from and how it is produced,” the report states. The Trader Joe’s brand of milk, for example, claims to be organic—but it won’t disclose which dairies it buys from. Ditto for the soybeans it uses in its brands of soy milk, tofu, and other products. And a recent report found that its store brand of veggie burgers are made using hexane-extracted soy protein.

“It’s a delicate balance for Trader Joes’s,” notes Sustainable Industries, “because while its customers want low prices for ‘natural’ grub, typically part of the value customers get out of Trader Joe’s is not just that its prices are low, but that they’re low for products that are perceived to be of high value.”

On a few occasions, customers have demanded certain standards: Widespread requests for cage-free eggs and GMO-free foods have been met throughout the company’s stores—according to Trader Joe’s, at least. “Neither claim is backed by a third-party auditing mechanism,” according to Sustainable Industries.

The company did recently agree to revamp its seafood policies, after a lengthy campaign by Greenpeace to get red-list fish out of its stores (“Traitor Joe’s”). Trader Joe’s has already removed the highly endangered orange roughy and red snapper from its shelves, and promises to “phase out” other frowned-upon fish by the end of 2012.

That’s a solid sustainable step—but if Trader Joe’s is going to live up to its reputation, it’s got a lot of fancy frozen meals and bags of trail mix to account for. For now, “customers are accepting that ignorance is bliss,” writes Sustainable Industries. “After all, it’s what keeps the prices low and the Two-Buck Chuck flowing.”

Source: Sustainable Industries

A new brewery in North Carolina is attempting to turn southern-style dishes into sudsy pints. Oxford American reports that Fullsteam Brewery is experimenting with all sorts of unique regional flavors including scuppernong grapes, kudzu, pawpaws, figs, and sweet potatoes as part of their “plow-to-pint” philosophy that celebrates locally grown southern goodness.

“We’re fermentation opportunists,” the brewery’s president told the magazine. “All we’re trying to do is to ferment what we farm and forage as brewers have been doing for thousands of years and to create a new approach to a Southern beer style.”

Source: Oxford American

Image by Rachel Zack, licensed under Creative Commons.