Drowning in Oil

No, really. 400,000 gallons spilled & one person dead in China:

Time to get off humanity's addiction to oil? Sen. Webb? Hello?

Looks Like Someone Didn't See "Anchorman"

I tried to get an interview, but they said, "You can't. He's a live bear. He will literally rip your face off." Hey! You're making me look stupid! Get out here! Panda jerk! -- Brian Fontana in Anchorman

Looks like someone didn't have that one on his Netflix list:

BEIJING – A college student in southern China was bitten by a panda after he broke into the bear's enclosure hoping to get a hug, state media and a park employee said Saturday. [...]

"Yang Yang was so cute and I just wanted to cuddle him. I didn't expect he would attack," the 20-year-old student, surnamed Liu, said in a local hospital, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

The best line comes from a park employee:

He said it was not clear whether the facility would add more signs around the enclosure or put more fences up.

"We cannot make it like a prison. We already have signs up warning people not to climb in," he said. "There are no fences along roads but people know not to cross if there are cars. This is basic knowledge."

He leaves us with the impression that the question isn't whether the zoo is doing enough to protect the people from the pandas -- it's whether they're doing enough to protect the pandas from the people.

Video: Veteran Olympic Journalist on the "Greyjing" Games

ESPN on the Most Polluted Olympics Ever

While China maintains the air quality in Beijing will be acceptable for the Summer Games in August, extensive environmental concerns persist. The New York Times reports, "Independent scientists who have sampled Beijing’s air have said levels of ozone and particulate matter from diesel engines remain five times as high as maximum standards set by the World Health Organization.

But a Beijing environmental official urged the reporter, "Just tell everybody they don't have to worry." OK? Everybody just calm down. China says there's nothing to worry about. (Of course, China also says this never happened.)

ESPN's "Outside the Lines" reported this week that concerns about poor performance in the polluted air are running so high, Olympic officials have taken the unusual step of informing athletes that the games are about the "spirit of competition," not breaking records.

Here's a snippet:

The High Environmental Cost of China's Economic Boom

Two recent Washington Post stories detail how China's economic growth has trumped environmental conservation. And in both cases, the United States shares part of the blame.

In yesterday's article, Corruption Stains Timber Trade, the Post reported on how furniture giant Ikea is trying to promote itself as green, but hasn't backed up its talk with action when it comes to its sources of wood:

Ikea cultivates a green image, filling its cavernous stores -- including three in the Baltimore-Washington corridor -- with signs asserting that its products are made in ways that minimize environmental harm.

But in Suifenhe, a wood-processing hub in northeastern China, workers at Yixin Wood Industry Corp. fashion 100,000 pine dining sets a year for Ikea using timber from the neighboring Russian Far East, where the World Bank says half of all logging is illegal.

"Ikea will provide some guidance, such as a list of endangered species we can't use, but they never send people to supervise the purchasing," said a factory sales manager who spoke on condition she be identified by only her family name, Wu. "Basically, they just let us pick what wood we want."

[...]

Two years ago, Ikea set a goal that by 2009, at least 30 percent of the wood for its products will be certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. But now, the company says, only 4 percent of the wood used to make its wares in China meets that grade.

And last week, the Post article Olympic Trials for Polluted Beijing detailed how the Olympics were awarded to Beijing despite its status as one of the world's most polluted cities.

When I first saw the picture on the right, I thought it must've been taken during a forest fire or something. But no, it's a satellite picture of the smog over Beijing on an ordinary day.

China is taking steps to ease the problem, but will they go far enough?

In all, by the time the Olympics begin Aug. 8, 2008, 300 million trees will have been planted, some on tops of buildings.

According to internal Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee documents described to The Washington Post, the city hopes to increase clean-energy usage in homes fivefold, make sure 80 to 90 percent of streetlights around Olympic venues are solar-powered and nearly double the capacity of the subway.

Even with the improvements, however, environmental experts say they have mixed feelings.

Some steps the city has taken are only stopgap measures, akin to hiding the dirty laundry in the closet before guests arrive. "Moving factories outside of Beijing doesn't mean much for solving China's environmental crisis," said Sun Shan, director of Conservation International in China.

Particles in Beijing's air are still 40 to 50 percent worse than in Los Angeles, the most polluted city in the United States.