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Victoria's Dirty Secret
Did you know that Victoria's Secret mails out 1,000,000 underwear catalogs a day? Until recently, virtually all of the paper for those catalogs was coming straight from forests -- particularly the Boreal Forest in Canada. Sierra Club Radio host Orli Cotel interviewed Kristi Chester Vance of ForestEthics to learn how they convinced Limited Brands, the parent company of Victoria's Secret, to clean up its act.
You can hear the program here, or you can subscribe to the Sierra Club Radio podcast and get "green news you can use" automatically downloaded to your iPod every week.
Hurray for the Clean Energy Act of 2007
 Congressional members on both sides of the aisle moved America further along the road to cleaner, more secure energy when, by a vote of 264 to 163, the House approved the Clean Energy Act of 2007, which will repeal giveaways to Big Oil and instead invest money in the smart energy solutions that will benefit the American people.
"The new Congress took an important first step by repealing the billions of dollars in unnecessary subsidies given to outdated energy industries and redirecting the money to programs that benefit American jobs and families and help end our dangerous oil dependence," said Dave Hamilton, director of the Sierra Club's Global Warming and Energy Program.
In response, President Bush is said to be working on a State of the Union Address that will acknowledge the global warming crisis for the first time, but whether he will endorse smart energy solutions remains to be seen. If you think he should, you can still send a message to the White House from our Action Center. And don't forget to ask your Senators to follow the lead of the House of Representatives.
Let's make smart energy solutions a reality!
A Twin State Wildlands Protected
 Just before the 109th Congress adjourned on December 1 of last year, the New England Wilderness Act of 2006 was signed into law, protecting more than 75,000 acres of the Green Mountain and White Mountain National Forests as designated wilderness.
The bill combined separate Vermont and New Hampshire wilderness bills into one piece of legislation -- a move conservationists in both states had hoped for in order to put forth a strong bipartisan package. Read about it in Stories on our new Grassroots Web pages
Milestone In Madison
 In Madison, Wisconsin, Sierra Club pressure has already prompted an announcement from the city's dirtiest coal-fired power plant that it will stop burning coal by 2011. Now, a notice of intent to sue by the Club has led to a commitment from the state to study alternatives for retiring two other dirty coal plants in the city.
Learn more about what your fellow activists are up to in the Scrapbook, on the Club's new Grassroots Web pages
 Blogwatch:Mongabay.com
Mongabay is a website created by a young man named -- no kidding -- Rhett Butler, who has carved out an enviable career for himself as an Internet publisher and educator on tropical rainforests and the conservation challenges they present.
His website, Mongabay, (named for a beloved patch of forest in Borneo that would later be cut down) is blog-like but not truly a blog. While the postings are regular and frequent, they are more in the style of lengthy newspaper articles as opposed to the quick hits and off-the-cuff editorializing common to most blogs. Neither are there reader comments. Still, Mongabay does what most blogs do, only better: It synthesizes and digests information from a variety of sources in a way that enriches your understanding of a subject.
If you care about biodiversity, tropical ecology, and rainforests, be sure to bookmark Mongabay today.
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January 23, 2007
