Contemporary artists in Germany are showing their solidarity with Human Rights Watch by donating works for an auction in Berlin. The non-governmental organization hopes to raise upwards of €90,000 with the sale.

"Regenwald, Tropical Island" by Haubitz+Zoche is one of the works going under the hammer for a good cause. The starting price is €1,800. At the Berlin Art Fair this past September, the gliteratti were in full swing. Among the thousands of new artworks on display was a massive, wall-sized painting that showed various sized people -- modeled on photographs of African tribal figures -- inside a tiny architectural space. The painting, which was made by Jonas Burgert, 38, sold for €120,000 ($170,532).

Burgert was discovered in Berlin just over a year ago. His work is now collected throughout the world, from Denver to Dubai, making him one of the hottest young artists working in Germany today. But Burgert wants more than just fame. "I have experienced a lot of success recently," he says. "I want to give something back."

Using his little center in Oakland, Mr. [Van] Jones [who heads the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland, California] has been on a crusade to help underprivileged African-Americans and other disadvantaged communities understand why they would be the biggest beneficiaries of a greener America. It's about jobs. The more government requires buildings to be more energy efficient, the more work there will be retrofitting buildings all across America with solar panels, insulation and other weatherizing materials. Those are manual-labor jobs that can't be outsourced.

"You can't take a building you want to weatherize, put it on a ship to China and then have them do it and send it back," said Mr. Jones. "So we are going to have to put people to work in this country -- weatherizing millions of buildings, putting up solar panels, constructing wind farms. Those green-collar jobs can provide a pathway out of poverty for someone who has not gone to college." <...>

"If we can get these youth in on the ground floor of the solar industry now, where they can be installers today, they'll become managers in five years and owners in 10. And then they become inventors," said Mr. Jones. "The green economy has the power to deliver new sources of work, wealth and health to low-income people -- while honoring the Earth. If you can do that, you just wiped out a whole bunch of problems. We can make what is good for poor black kids good for the polar bears and good for the country."

A Bavarian model-car manufacturer is dreaming big, planning to put the boxy East German Trabant back on the road with a new version. But is nostalgia enough to sell one of history's most-maligned cars?

Between BMW's new Mini, the Volkswagen Bug, and the recently announced comeback of the Fiat 500, the market for underpowered classics from the past has never been hotter. But is it hot enough to bring back the most-mocked, least-loved car to ever grace the autobahns of Germany?

A model manufacturer in Bavaria thinks the answer may be yes. Herpa, better known for its 1:87 scale models of sports cars and classic autos, is hoping to take advantage of the trend with an unlikely entry: a full-sized car based on the boxy East German Trabant.

"It's catastrophic!" Duncan McFetridge flings his arms out. "Look, can't you see the change?"

Several years ago, when I last came here to the Cleveland National Forest outside of Descanso, McFetridge's cabin nestled in a deep-shaded dell. His horse, pony, and mule didn't stray, at least through the heat of the day, from the cool of his coastal live oaks' canopy.

Now the mule stands dazed in the unremitting sun. But it's not the mule we're looking at. We're looking at the skeletons rising 60, 80 feet in the air. McFetridge's oaks. Nearly all dead.

"Welcome to the new normal," says McFetridge. "This is our future, right here.

"You see that ranch?" He points across the valley. Scattered forest grows up small mountains that lead your eye to the sacred peak of Guatay. "They've lost 80 percent of their oaks. It's been a die-off. We get 30 inches of rain up here. Down on the coast you get 10. The trees aren't stupid. Summer rain is why the forest is here. We always used to get summer rain. Now we're getting none. Once this forest went clear to the ocean. Now it's retreating upslope, following the moisture."

Along the bottom of the valley below us, the Sweetwater River is just a green blush of growth. "This used to run all year round, till about five years ago," he says. "We have a drought, and yet people have been water-mining the mountains, pumping water out of places like Mount Laguna day and night [to sell to commercial water companies]. And the effect is absolutely measurable. The water table, the streams have dropped down."

McFetridge is a gangly, clean-jawed woodsman with heavy, overhanging Scottish eyebrows and a light gleaming out from his eyes that swings between engaging humor and righteous passion. He is a sought-out cabinetmaker who specializes in Chinese furniture, but he's most famous for being a pain in the butt for developers, county officials, planners, and pen pushers who want to expand exurbia into the countryside. He's also president of the never-cry-uncle organization Save Our Forests and Ranchlands.

"You just watch the trees struggle, day after day," he says. "And if you're not careful, you stop noticing. Then one day you see your animals sweating in the sun, and you know something big and bad is going on."

Some of the trees that are still alive weep a black goo, a sure sign the bark beetle and root rot are finishing them off.

The article is long but interesting, on the effects of global warming on flora and fauna in San Diego County, the cuts in water service to SD next year, and the current drought in the U.S. Southwest.

GALICE, Ore. -- A 1990s' truce that quieted the bitter wars between loggers and environmentalists in the Pacific Northwest is in danger of collapse.

With that truce, made final in 1994 by the Clinton administration, the northern spotted owl, a threatened species, seemed to be getting the breathing space it needed to regroup. While some land was opened to loggers, nearly twice as much was set aside for owls' hunting grounds. But more than a decade later, their numbers continue to decline faster than expected.

Now the truce, the Northwest Forest Plan, is in jeopardy as one of the parties to it, the Bureau of Land Management, is rethinking its participation. It is proposing a threefold increase in logging on its 2.2 million acres in western Oregon, with greater increases in the old-growth stands that are the owls' preferred territory. The land agency's action would reduce by 10 percent the territory covered by the Northwest Forest Plan.

With the agency's proposal, it seems that the timber industry, which never stopped pressing for access to more trees than the Northwest Forest Plan allowed, is getting what it had long sought in court.

[...]

But environmentalists and scientists argue that the agency's proposal will torpedo the whole Northwest Forest Plan, which encompassed 24 million acres, and damage the spotted owl's chances for survival.

Fear not, fellow Americans! In these dark days of war, pestilence and Paris Hilton, a new hero has arisen. She is none other than 75-year-old Mona "The Hammer" Shaw, who took the aforementioned implement to her local Comcast office in Manassas to settle a score, and boy, did she!

Oh. My. God.

I love this woman.

Activists arrested during an anti-terrorist sweep across New Zealand were planning a war in which white people would die, according to documents released Wednesday.

Police arrested 17 people on Monday and recovered several weapons during a series of raids targeting Maori and environmental activists.

At a bail hearing for one of the arrested men, Jamie Lockett, prosecutors said he had sent a series of text messages saying he intended to launch a war.

The messages, intercepted by police, were said to include "White men are going to die in this country" and "I'm declaring war on this country very soon."

[Prominent] Maori activist Tame Iti was also preparing to declare war, according to police documents reported in the Dominion Post newspaper.

Maori Say New Zealand Anti-Terror Raids Hinder Race Relations.

Which age are we living in?