from mérida, with (wild) hopes

Exploring the mystery of Uxmal during the 9th World Wilderness Congress.

I broke the hold of my mother country this past week to attend a major gathering of some of the world’s leading conservationists dedicated to solving the most pressing international issues in wild lands management and protection.

Gathered weeks ahead of the looming climate conference in Copenhagen, delegates of the 9th World Wilderness Congress emphasized the ability of wilderness to help regulate Earth systems slipping so quickly out of balance.

My initial installments, written for the Environment News Service, are: Wilderness and Water Promises in the Land of the Maya and the Message of Mérida: Saving Wild Places Will Save the Planet.

I’ll be building on this work for a pending feature story for the SA Current. Primero, I have to figure out how to smuggle such obviously revolutionary ideas into the land of golf courses, canned hunts, and competitive food eating. Wish me luck.

nukes, nuts, news

Feeling the urge to open up, “It’s been four months since my last confession.” This space truly has been an empty hole for a good stretch. I’ve been absorbed in a finishing a series on the nuclear fuel chain, Nukes of Hazard, for the Current.

I’ve posted two worthwhile blogs since. One, Speaking from the Edge of the End, attempts to round-out my personal feelings about the series as San Antonio’s City Council reaches for another $400 mil to feed the nuke monster. Another questions our apparent inability to talk alternatives (despite MSM promises of a front-page Sunday feature weighing non-polluting options).

pause blog, cue celebrity

So HOE is in a rut. Popular (boss) demand has me scrawling all my madness (virtually) solely for the SACurrent.

Still, every once and a while a golden noodle will slip loose. Latest dangling gem is a Q&A — with me bouncing around the ‘A’ column for a change — in the latest Society of Environmental Journalists’ Journal.

How much did I pay for such dynamic exposure? How many travel-bottle shots did I inbibe to loosen up? What did it feel like to sleep my way to such heights?

Tease out the ever-squirming truth. It’s all there.

great jupiter!

Or: How I snuck aboard the USS Scripps despite erratic biorhythms.

Getting accepted into the Scripps Howard Institute on the Environment for a week of specialized enviro journalism training has got my brain humming. It’s humming early Ramones. Stuff about Chinese food and electric shock; the crackle of adrenaline and obliviousness.

Seems the neural channels this opportunity is illuminating are deep in those same pleasure centers of delinquent memory. Simple, pure, and supercharged.

proud

If you haven’t yet, read my critique of ongoing nuke industry efforts across the great state of Texas. Loving that The Daily Climate rolled it into their feed. I’d blush if all my oxygenated blood hadn’t poured into my purple prose already…

gonzalez, hardberger, ahern, femicide

Straddling my body, perfectly preserved by ocean-milled plastic, a bottle drums your heel. Imagine a message in that bottle. A warning. “Blog machine stuck on ‘hum.’ Can’t figure out how to stop this flash non-fiction train.” Omnipresent Guest, possessing my Twitter feed, you know all.

NEW POST: CPS Energy coming back for another rate increase. http://is.gd/zc8Y This one is the “good” conservation rate increase.
NEW POST: Hardberger (and others) ask Gonzalez to push for tough climate bill. http://bit.ly/puBr9
ALSO NEW POST: Millions flowing to SA for home weatherization. http://bit.ly/tY6H5

LAST WEEK:
Matt Ahern’s EchoTown rolling out Saturday. http://bit.ly/cSLBe A promising new eco-endeavor for San Antonio.
NEW POST: On the pavement for climate action. P.S. did South Texas activists find their own Joe the Plumber? http://bit.ly/uiFgk
NEW POST human-rights and legal groups are suing mexico’s federal government over juarez femicides. http://bit.ly/23wOsh
NEW POST rep. gonzalez getting hammered by green messages at home. http://bit.ly/eFmha

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protesting gonzalez

Wild in the Streets: U.S. Rep. Charlie Gonzalez got an early warning blast at the King William Fair parade this weekend from a handful of exhuberant climate activists. He must be thinking his support for giving pollution credits away to industry may not be such a sound idea.

I’ll be posting the video in the morning at Sacurrent.com.

Until then, let me just say that Charlie seemed genuinely surprised to be waylaid while a hat-wearing horse wheeled him about the delightfully quaint King William.

If he’d just play nice and support making industry pay for those pollution credits, we wouldn’t have to tell you what a louse he’s being, now would we?

[UPDATE, 04/27: Just posted video/analysis of climate protest. Enjoy!]

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read ‘em an weep

Back-to-back killer news. The EPA is triangulating on greenhouse gas with the Obama Administration, leaving business-as-usual, ‘what-me-worry?’ petro-industry vassals convulsing in their untenable position AND I get shimmery gems from the Society of Professional Journalists up in Fort Worth, the former habitue of my former n’er-do-well teenagehood.

Let’s start with me, shall we?

Yep. It was a delicious night having the opportunity to step up for my paper, the San Antonio Current, and retrieve three First Amendment Awards from SPJ’s Forth Worth chapter (Since I was here an’ all, I felt duty-bound to collect my boss’s teardrop gem, too).

global warming: slow dancing?

Even as I was filing my story on the latest from the climate-change frontier, news was pouring in.

The EPA was preparing the way for CO2 regulation by declaring greenhouse gases a danger to human health, and fascinating panels about adaptation to global warming were being held in Washington.

(And, yes, i still prefer “global warming” to the more nebulous, Republican creation, “climate change.”)

talkin’ desalination & drought

I was the pest elbowing along stretched in a bellyslide inviting junior-league ticks a chance at longevity enhancement. Nine-banded armadillo at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge hardly seemed to notice.

fall down, retch

Were I a runner, this sort of effort would have in me on the ground, cramped and retching.

But I am a writer. I sit at my desk, pick at the keys, stare across the room and mutter to myself.

Just my way of saying: Hope you enjoy some of my thoughts — and some of the well tenderized thoughts of others — about our dear San Antonio River.

Plenty of slideshows and liquid symbolism for all. Check in with San Antonio returns to its ailing Yanaguana.

what am i doing here?

It’s been another Mission Verde week.

My thoughts on Mayor Phil Hardberger’s challenges in getting community and political buy-in on his city sustainability plan are shared at the SACurrent.

Post publication, I’m studying up on water issues. Checking out the roots of San Antonio’s water quality concerns at the library today  and ran across this truly gruesome story about mad doctor who boiled down several Comanches in a soap boiler for their skeletons, flushing their liquified remains into the city’s drinking-water canal in the middle of the night.