Cytotec: The Ulcer Drug Turned DIY Abortion Pill

The New York Times has a piece today on misoprostol, the FDA-approved ulcer medication that is more often used as an underground abortion pill. Ann Friedman's piece in MoJo a couple years ago about Cytotec, Pfizer's misoprostol, explored the drug's rise as a go-to abortifacent, particularly among low-income, immigrant, and Latina women. Cytotec, readily available by mail, allows women to bypass increasing abortion hurdles in their states, like parental notification and waiting periods, barriers that women in religious conservative families simply can't face. And at $2 a pill they're cheap, cheaper even than drugs from a health clinic.

The Times piece points to two new studies that suggest misoprostol's use for a DIY abortion is on the rise. As Ann wrote back in 2006, this development shouldn't come as a surprise given ever-tightening abortion restrictions. "Despite the legal and health risks, Cytotec will likely remain an attractive choice for many women—so long as it stays out of the spotlight." Perhaps the Times' story, and the new research studies, will mean a place in the spotlight's not far behind.

Forestry: Where Bush's Midnight Regs Could Backfire

The Bush Administration is pushing two last-minute decisions that could double logging on more than 2 million acres of federal forestland and make it much easier for timber companies to convert forests into subdivisions. The moves are opposed by environmentalists even as the political upside for Republicans is less clear than it would have been in the '90s, when the GOP gained traction in the West by siding with loggers against the spotted owl.

Bush's move to increase logging, which would affect 2.6 million acres in southwest Oregon, comes at a time when some large private timber farms in that area have collapsed due to over-harvesting. As a result, the battle lines of the old timber wars are being redrawn. For example, before Charles Hurwitz sold his Pacific Lumber company in June, he'd closed three of his four mills and fired 80 percent of his workers. Most locals now blame Hurwitz for the layoffs, and the new owners of the company have won support from both loggers and environmentalists by pursuing a sustainable yield and preserving old growth trees. Increasingly, loggers no longer demand pillaging harvests, while enviros support logging as a preferable alternative to development. Bush's move ignores that trend.

Which brings us to Bush's second midnight reg: allowing the Plum Creek Timber Company to pave roads through forest service land in Montana, which would open up much of the company's 1.2 million acres there to rural subdivisions. The move has incurred the ire of county governments, which worry that it could undo efforts to cluster housing in urban areas and create new burdens to provide services. During the presidential campaign, Obama shrewdly noted the the subdivisions could "cause prime hunting and fishing lands to be carved up and closed off." They'd also take the land out of timber production, reinforcing the common cause between enviros and loggers on urban sprawl.

If Bush really wanted to help out loggers, he would have curbed the housing bubble. The collapse in residential construction has slashed timber prices. But the Republicans, like Hurwitz, were more concerned with raking in the green than sustainably growing it.

Can Paving America be Eco-Friendly?

Given that Obama's economic stimulus package is likely to include billions of dollars in road projects, how will he counteract the environmental toll? One idea, supported by the steel industry, is to funnel more of that money into rail, such as the $45-billion high-speed train between Los Angeles and San Francisco that was approved by the state's voters in November.

Another idea is to build those roads greener. Two new cement companies, one in Great Britain, another in Silicon Valley, claim to have discovered a new way to produce cement that not only emits no carbon dioxide, but also sucks much of it from the atmosphere.

This is no small feat. Cement production accounts for 5 percent of the world's CO2 emissions--more than the entire aviation industry. And a recent report by the French Bank Credit Agricole estimated that demand for cement will increase 50 percent by 2020.

The Silicon Valley company, Calera Corp, was founded by Stanford professor Brent Constanz, who in 1986 invented a medical cement that revolutionized the way hospitals repaired broken bones. Unlike conventional cement, which is made by heating up limestone or clay to around 1500 degrees C, his medical cement combined carbon dioxide and magnesium to mimic the way coral reefs are formed. His new eco-cement works much the same way, except the carbon dioxide comes from power plants that would otherwise spew it into the atmosphere. The British company, Novacem, uses a similar process.

Both companies claim their products are strong enough to work in roads, buildings, and bridges and are cost-competitive with conventional cement. The hard part will be to convince customers that the cements will endure the test of time when there's no real track record. Of course, using conventional cement will also be a gamble--in the form of some 450 million tons of yearly carbon emissions.

Study: Great Barrier Reef Sees Worst Growth Rate in 400 Years

Scientists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science report that the Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest reef system (visible from space), is facing historic peril. Not that this is news. Mother Jones has reported extensively on the subject. But new research published in the journal Science includes the largest study to date about environmental damage to Australia's reefs.

The reef is experiencing is slowest growth rate in nearly 400 years, and gone unchecked, could lead to zero growth by 2050, says Glenn De'ath, the study's co-author. "When you disturb an ecosystem in this way, you get a cascading effect. You then get a chain reaction -- the fish habitat is lost."

What's to blame? The usual suspect: global warming. Rising sea temperatures are causing coral bleaching, in which corals release the algae which nourish them. The effect is grimly obvious underwater, where previously vibrantly colored reefs come appear like piles of bones. Without algae, corals eventually die. Says De'ath, "We may have seriously underestimated the rate of climate change and this should compel us to drastic steps to decarbonise Australian and global economic systems."

Photo used under a Creative Commons license from Leonard Low.

iBreath, Your New Year's Eve Drinking Buddy?

The newly released iBreath, an alcohol breathalyzer accessory that attaches to your iPod and iPhone, is the newest addition to the list of Apple-friendly alcohol apps and devices (you know, Drunk-Dial and Taxi Magic?) and I think it's pretty brilliant. The iBreath, created by David Steele Enterprises Inc., sells for $79. It claims it can measure your alcohol content within two seconds and within .01 percent accuracy—and it even doubles as an FM transmitter. (The marriage of personal science with FM transmission capability seems a little odd, but what the hell.) What's next: an iSugar glucose meter? Maybe an iClean personal STD test?

Laura Dean-Mooney, national president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, has come out against the iBreath, telling the Los Angeles Times that kids will just use it for drinking games and no one should drive with any alcohol in their system no matter what, and we should all just take public transportation. If you are falling down drunk, obviously calling a cab is the only thing you should be doing. But this device could be useful for those who have two glasses of wine at dinner, or two cocktails at the bar, and might not realize that even if they don't feel tipsy, it's not too hard to surpass .08 percent blood-alcohol content. And until public transportation in many cities is more widely available after last call, and kids start thinking that Monopoly is more fun than drinking (i.e., never), iBreath fills an intereresting gap.

—Kathleen Flynn

Pickens Plan Quietly Falters

So much for the vaunted Pickens Plan. Texas oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens' massively publicized scheme to build a $10 billion wind farm in West Texas has discreetly been put on hold. Pickens cites the difficulty securing financing during the credit crisis, but has also told reporters that energy prices would have to rise again before the project becomes economically viable. This underscores the myth about Pickens' supposedly altruistic motives. The media has often portrayed him as an aging robber baron (and former Swift Boater) reborn as an idealistic green crusader--what use does an octogenarian have for greed, the thinking goes (He's even a finalist now for Dallas Morning News' "Person of the Year"). But I've argued that Pickens' real motive--getting even richer--is exposed by his plays for water rights in West Texas and public subsidies for natural gas in California--two moves adamantly opposed by environmentalists. Perhaps most telling, Pickens recently slashed $10 million from the media campaign he started to promote wind and natural gas. If Pickens himself isn't going to peddle wind right away, it seems there's less incentive for him to get everybody else on the wagon.

Remember Those Urban Myths About Waking Up In a Tub of Ice, Sans Kidney?

Well, here's the 2009 version: Waking up with your head shaved, a chip implanted in your brain, and hornier than David Duchovny. With your guilty Significant Other leering at you. Yup, now there's a 'sex' chip ready to be soldered into your brain. From the Daily Telegraph:

Monitor Your Health With A Cell Phone

Here's the house call of the future. A prototype cell phone that monitors HIV and malaria patients and tests water quality in undeveloped areas or disaster sites. Data is then be sent via the cell phone to a hospital for analysis and diagnosis.

The imaging platform is already here. It's called LUCAS and has been experimentally installed in a cell phone and a webcam, each of which then takes an image of blood, saliva or other fluids using short-wavelength blue light. LUCAS can identify and count the microparticles instantly by using a decision algorithm to compare the captured images to a library of images.

The technology is the brainchild of electrical engineer Aydogan Ozcan of UCLA. His latest version, called holographic LUCAS, is described in the journal Lab On A Chip. Holographic LUCAS can identify smaller particles than before, such as E. coli. Ozcan's next step is to build a handheld device for people in remote areas to use to monitor the spread of disease, allowing doctors to know where they're most needed fast.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the PEN USA Literary Award, the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal.

The Best Chocolate You've Never Heard Of

Kallari, released at Whole Foods in October, is the world's first widely-available chocolate bar made and marketed by actual cacao farmers. It also might be the best chocolate I've tasted, and I'm a big chocolate fan. It's produced with a rare, highly-celebrated bean grown in the Ecuadorian Amazon by 850 enterprising Quichua families who receive 100 percent of the profits. It probably doesn't hurt that they got a little bit of help from Robert Steinberg, the founder of Berkeley's renowned Scharffen Berger chocolate. If you're looking for a holiday gift, Kallari's 75% cacao bar might be a good bet. In these depressing times, you'll get to talk about how it was made by farmers who until recently couldn't even afford to ship their beans from the jungle to Quito but who now run the show--true role models for us children of the recession. And then you can suggest opening it right away so you can snap off a big chocolatey chunk for yourself.

Methane Leaking Into Arctic Ocean

The carbon pool beneath the Arctic Ocean is leaking. A study on the East Siberian Arctic Shelf found an increase in methane bubbles rising from chimneys on the seafloor in 2008. In fact more than 1,000 measurements registered the highest dissolved methane concentrations ever seen in the summer Arctic Ocean. Methane is a greenhouse gas 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

These new data from the International Arctic Research Center indicate the underwater permafrost is thawing in one of two (or both) ways. First, thawing permafrost initiates the decomposition of previously-frozen organic material, releasing methane and carbon dioxide. Second, ice-like methane hydrates trapped underneath the permafrost seep out when the permafrost thaws.

The East Siberian Arctic Shelf is a shallow continental shelf stretching 900 miles into the Arctic Ocean from Siberia. It's known to be a year-round source of methane to the globe’s atmosphere. But until recently scientists believed that much of its carbon pool was safely insulated by underwater permafrost. Not anymore. Now the fuse is lit on the methane time bomb. . . . And we're still talking about drilling for new sources of oil? WTF? Listen up Barack Obama: The promised change has gotta be faster than the melting methane.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the PEN USA Literary Award, the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal.

Carbon Storage Models Get Realer

Two new modeling studies are tackling simulations of long-term CO2 storage. The first examines leakage of stored CO2 from abandoned oil wells. The second attempts to simulate the big picture, starting with capture and leading to injection and storage, evaluating costs and risks of potential sites.

Both papers are published online at Environmental Science & Technology. Both simulate projects that aim to capture CO2 from power plants and store it underground in aquifers or sedimentary deposits. Pilot carbon capture and storage projects are currently underway in Germany, Norway, Canada, Algeria, and the U.S.

The first paper from the U of Bergen, Norway, and Princeton finds that abandoned wells have created a Swiss-cheese pattern of holes across North America. CO2 can escape from these wells. Undersea storage would avoid the Swiss cheese problem, the authors note. But an ocean solution is more expensive.

What Environmentalists Really Think of Ken Salazar

As you may have read, Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) has been tapped as President Obama's Secretary of the Interior. And as we've reported previously, the Interior secretary post is a major one in terms of the nation's environmental health. The Interior (and by default, its secretary) governs the management of public lands, national parks, oil and gas resources, and even the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and U.S. Geological Survey.

Environmentalists were pushing for Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), a staunch conservationist. So what's their consensus on Salazar? You can read their various statements, below. Overall, they seem cautiously optimistic. But then, it would be hard not to be buoyed by Salazar when you're comparing him to predecessors like mining advocate and former chemical company lobbyist Gale Norton.

Center for Biological Diversity: “He is a right-of-center Democrat who often favors industry and big agriculture... He is very unlikely to bring significant change to the scandal-plagued Department of Interior. It’s a very disappointing choice...” --Kieran Suckling, executive director, via New York Times.

Sierra Club: "He has been a very vocal critic of the Bush administration's reckless approach to rampant land development in the West." --Josh Dorner, a spokesman, via the UK Guardian.

Wilderness Society: "He's going to be an honest broker... He is trying to manage conflicts in a way that reaches resolution. I'm not sure he's articulated a grand vision for the public lands." --Bill Meadows, president, via Washington Post.

"On a personal level, our experience has been that there is a genuine openness to [Salazar] considering different ideas.." --David Albersworth, senior policy analyst, via Rocky Mountain News.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility: Salazar is a "sympathetic soul" who will be a refreshing change because "the past eight years with the Bush administration have felt like a battle, then it became total despair." --Karen Schambach, California coordinator, via the Los Angeles Times.

“Salazar has a disturbingly weak conservation record, particularly on energy development, global warming, endangered wildlife and protecting scientific integrity,” --Daniel R. Patterson, southwest regional director, via New York Times.

Environmental Working Group: "We're encouraged by it... he recognizes the importance of the food programs, and he's very good on conservation." --Ken Cook, president, via the Washington Post.

Environment Colorado: “We hope he continues to play a role in insuring that, as we develop our mineral rights in these incredibly sensitive areas, we require industry to put in place safeguards that protect our health, environment, water and air quality,” --Pam Kiely, program director, via New York Times.

The Gift of Nature

Walking in a park in any season or even viewing pictures of nature helps improve memory and attention by 20 percent. All it takes is 30 minutes. Even when it's cold. Even when we don't enjoy it. The study by U of Michigan researchers found that effects of interacting with nature are similar to meditating.

Participants were sent on walking routes through urban streets as well as through a botanical garden and arboretum. The city strolls provided no memory boost but the parks improved short-term memory. Interestingly, the test subjects didn't need to enjoy the walks. They received the same cognitive benefits when it was 80 degrees and sunny as when it was 25 degrees in winter.

Participants were also tested sitting inside and looking at pictures of either downtown scenes or nature scenes. The results were the same: about 20 percent improvement in memory and attention scores from looking at photos of nature.

The study appears in Psychological Science and dovetails with some of the researchers' earlier work suggesting that people will be most satisfied with their lives when their environment supports three basic needs: the ability to understand and explore; the ability to make a difference; and ability to feel competent and effective.

Best holiday present? Take someone out into nature. Truly the gift that gives forever. Or at least for 20 percent longer.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the PEN USA Literary Award, the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal.

Oceans Need a Rescue Package

"It's time for a bailout for the oceans," declared Oceana's chief scientist Michael Hirschfield at today's National Press Club press briefing. Hirschfield, along with three of the country's top marine scientists, urged the Obama administration, namely recent energy appointees Carol Browner and Lisa Jackson, to abandon the ideology of the past eight years and take science seriously.

Overfishing, climate change, pollution, and increasing acidity were cited as the most ominous threats. But these threats are hardly new. Mother Jones examined the plight, the players, and the solutions in our 2006 special report "The Last Days of the Ocean." Check it out here.

—Tay Wiles

China Jumps To Hybrid

China's first mass-produced hybrid electric car hit the market today. The car is made by BYD Auto and backed by Warren Buffett who owns 9.9 percent of the company. The F3DM (if you say so, C-3PO) can be charged from powerpoints at home or at electric car charging stations. That's a first for mass produced. The hybrid runs 62 miles on a full battery and costs under $22,000 dollars.

BYD Auto says it doesn't expect the F3DM will succeed with Chinese customers initially because of the high price, reports AFP. Instead the company is focusing on sales to company fleets. The strategy is to leapfrog past traditional cars—where Chinese technology lags badly—straight to hybrids.

Smart strategy. Remind me again why exactly we're bailing out our own loser car companies? BYD already specialized in producing rechargeable batteries and only started making cars in 2003 when it bought a bankrupt state-owned car company. Since then it's beaten Toyota and General Motors to the punch as those companies won't launch home-chargeable hybrids cars before 2009 and 2010 respectively. Can't we leapfrog past the traditional car companies straight to hyperdrive mass transit? Can't we, as the Chinese say, transform the current mass chaos into mass opportunity?

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the PEN USA Literary Award, the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal.

Post-Mortem Plastic Surgery? Yech.

According to Essence, we narcissists are now paying morticians to do plastic surgery on our corpses.

How, I wonder? Are folks leaving aside money with an attorney directing him to have our boobs lifted while we're on the slab? I can't imagine my loved ones caring enough to spend their own cash on my huge pores and even huger butt. I've often wondered about my own death, but never, until now that is, how'd I'd look when dead. Thanks Essence.

Good thing I'm going for cremation, because my kids would probably have me 'Petie-eyed' for my funeral.

Will Obama's Agriculture Pick be a Stinker?

Nicholas Kristof's Times column on Obama's potential Secretary of Agriculture picks has generated a manure storm in the blogosphere. At issue is the fact that he may pick a typical agribusiness guy like Georgia Rep. Sanford Bishop. This is ironic, and perhaps a bit duplicitous, given that Obama recently professed to reading, and being down with, Michael Pollan's sun-food agenda piece in the Times Magazine. Many liberals have not protested Obama's other less-than-progressive cabinet picks in part because they believe that Obama himself will balance them. But the problem with applying that theory to agriculture is that the Democratic Party is not really much more progressive on ag than Republicans. Indeed, opposition to the most recent farm bill was an odd coalition of California progressives and the Bush Administration. There will be so much institutional inertia to overcome on agriculture within the Democratic Party that it's hard to see how the system will ever change without a secretary who is truly committed to shaking it up. Obama might have the will, but he certainly won't have the time or energy.

Update: More on potential Obama picks. And this petition to encourage Obama to make a progressive Secretary of Agriculture pick has been gaining steam.

Update II: The names of possible Ag Secretary contenders keep shifting, indicating that the criticism might be having an effect. According to the AP, as of Monday December 15th the contenders are:

Dennis Wolf (PA Secretary of Agriculture)
Tom Buis (President of the National Farmers Union)
Charles Stenholm (Former West Texas Congressman and ranking member of Ag Comittee)
Stephanie Sandlin (Congresswoman from South Dakota and Ag Committee member)
Jill Long Thompson (Former Undersecretary of Ag under Clinton)

Still, none of these names are picks that have been circulated by activists in the Food Democracy petition.

Can California's Global Warming Plan Survive its Economic Crisis?

Yesterday California approved a landmark global warming plan that would cut greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, a 30 percent reduction. Meanwhile, the state is suffering through a fiscal crisis that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who supports the global warming plan, describes as "financial Armageddon." The same day that California approved the climate measure, the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle ran a giant Schwarzenegger block quote:

Every second, the state is losing $470, every minute, $28,000, and every hour $1.7 million and every day $40 million. That is approximately more than $1 billion a month if legislators don't act [to pass a new budget].

The California Air Resources Board, which approved the global warming plan, estimates that it would actually have "an overall positive effect on the economy" by spurring energy efficiency and technological innovation. However, the state's nonpartisan Legislative Analysis Office questioned that estimate, saying that the evaluation of some costs and benefits was "inconsistent and incomplete." As U.S. Congress prepares to debate its own climate bill in the near future, expect Republicans to argue that the California climate plan is a financial sink hole; in response, Democrats should note that the benefits of energy efficiency and technology investment will take awhile to materialize. The same could be said of bailing out Wall Street and the automakers, and, so far, that hasn't stopped us.

Powered By Java: Me & My Car

Looking for a spare 340 million gallons of biodiesel? Waste coffee grounds can provide a cheap, abundant, and environmentally friendly source of biodiesel fuel for cars and trucks. Spent grounds contain 11-20 percent oil by weight—about the same as rapeseed, palm, and soybean oil. Growers already produce more than 16 billion pounds of coffee yearly and the spent grounds generally wind up in the trash.

To see if that oil from those grounds is worth putting into your diesel tank, researchers from the U of Nevada collected separated the oil from the grounds and used an inexpensive process to convert 100 percent of it into biodiesel.

The result: a coffee-based fuel that actually smells like java. Mmmm. Plus it's more stable than traditional biodiesel due to the coffee's high antioxidant content. The solids left over from the conversion process can be converted to ethanol or used as compost. The researchers estimate the process could make a profit of >$8 million a year in the U.S. alone. Worldwide it could produce 340 million gallons of biodiesel annually. The team plans to develop a pilot plant in the next eight months.

The study appears in the American Chemical Society’s Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Drink it up. Wake up your car.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the PEN USA Literary Award, the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal.

Clean Coal: Caroling at a Home Near You

Everyone seems to be getting into the holiday spirit, even...lumps of coal? A coal trade group called American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) has sponsored a holiday campaign called "The Clean Coal Carolers" which features lumps of cartoon coal singing songs like "Frosty the Coalman" and "Abundant, Affordable." The website allows you to choose which hats and scarfs to dress the coal in. But all the scarves in the world can't hide the fact that "clean coal" is more a buzz word than an actual technology.

Last month Casey Miner reported for Mother Jones that:

The types of technology the industry says it will use are expensive and ineffective at best, and potentially catastrophic at worst—in other words, even if we were able to get our technology up to speed and somehow capture the carbon leaving every coal plant in the country, we wouldn't have anywhere safe to put it.

The Clean Coal Carolers also have a Facebook page with 22 fans, including one named "Asthma" and another "Black," short for Black Lung. Those are either parts of ACCCE's elaborate ruse or they are smart-ass kids who have studied Al Gore's "Reality" ad campaign, launched last week to "debunk the clean coal myth," and Mother Jones' past coverage of clean coal like "Follow The Money Deep Under Ground" by Shadi Rahimi and "Scrubbing King Coal" by James Ridgeway.

—Tay Wiles