As Mother Jones reported last October, bisphenol A, a chemical used in the production of plastics, is under serious scrutiny for mimicking the role of estrogen. And last Monday, the government's National Toxicology Program released a damning draft brief on the potential endocrine disruptor. As a result, last week saw a number of new companies distance themselves from BPA; most notably the iconic water bottle manufacturer Nalgene will pull bottles made with the chemical. By the end of the week, Canada announced a "precautionary and prudent" ban on the sale of baby bottles with BPA.

One of the issues at hand is that the U.S. alone produces bisphenol A at a staggering rate of billions of pounds per year—2004 saw 2.3 billion pounds produced—for use in nonbiodegradable polycarbonate plastics and epoxy. So even if a few companies, or even a few countries, ban the substance, we still have to deal with an absurd amount of lingering, toxic particles. And since BPA doesn't biodegrade, where does it all go?

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Early this month Vice President Al Gore and a nonprofit climate group launched what they say will be a three-year, $300 million advertising campaign to convince the American public of the need for legislation to address climate change. The campaign, a project of the Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection, uses slick national TV ads to encourage people to sign up as online activists. So far, three ads have aired and more than one million people have joined. Mother Jones recently spoke with Alliance spokesman Brian Hardwick.

Mother Jones: How do you think the campaign can make a difference?
Brian Hardwick: This campaign is unprecedented in scale among issue advocacy efforts. In the past, this issue hasn't had the benefit of a commercial-scale campaign. The second thing is, we have available to us all the tools of mobilization that the online space also provides. So we can inspire people and connect with them emotionally though television advertisements but we also have a way to engage people in the movement that we previously didn't have. When we get people to sign up [online], then we turn them into climate activists.

MJ: Who do you hope to reach?
BH: It's really targeted at Americans from all walks of life. That's why we're doing the advertising in a mass way like this. We want to reach people who have been active already on the climate issue, and then those who maybe have changed a light bulb and are driving a hybrid car but don't know what the next step is, and then people who are just becoming aware of the issue. It really is saying to all Americans that doing those things in your personal life are important, but frankly to really solve this it is going to take enough of us coming together and demanding from leaders and business and government that they put the laws in place to ignite a new economy. We need a real shift in public opinion and activism so that we can say to our leaders: we're ready to solve it.

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Touring across Pennsylvania Monday, Barack Obama largely eschewed the daily back and forth of the campaign and refocused on the reasons he entered the presidential race over one year ago. Speaking to a small group of voters at a community college outside of Philadelphia, Obama said he decided to run because he thought the "country was ready for a different kind of politics." He talked about the obvious: the economy, the war, and the energy crisis. And he got even more detailed, discussing skyrocketing autism rates, working conditions for nurses, and net neutrality as an engine for innovation. The vagaries of the campaign season were left behind, perhaps because with one day before voters headed to the polls, the controversies and "manufactured issues" had been addressed and had taken whatever tool they would take. It was time to get back to basics.

In McKeesport, a town near Pittsburgh with a declining population and a disappearing manufacturing base, Obama reintroduced himself. "I have been running for 15 months now," he said. "When I first announced, people asked me, 'Why are you running so soon? You're a young man. You can afford to wait.' And I said, 'I'm not running because of some long-held ambition or because I think it's my turn. I'm running because of what Dr. King called the 'fierce urgency of now.'" He slammed lobbyists and special interests, saying they had a "headlock" on the nation's politics. He said he wanted to "change the culture in Washington." But for a few missing chants ("Fired up and ready to go!" has been left behind), it was the same speech he had delivered in the snowy cornfields of Iowa, home of the first primary.

Obama briefly addressed the new Hillary Clinton ad that features Osama bin Laden, dismissing it as politics as usual. But he did not bother to refer to the so-called "Bitter-gate." But at his rallies, there were voters who identified themselves as bitter. A local man named Roy Kelley who worked in a local hospital for 38 years said that he agreed with the comments that got Obama into trouble. "It is bitter," he said. "I feel bitter. I come from McKeesport here. You drive through this area, you start at Braddock, you come through McKeesport, Duquesne, Glassport, all these cities here. Presidents and Congress come through this area and make promises and nothing ever changes." Kelley felt Obama could deliver where other presidents had failed. "I drive through this town everyday, it makes me cry—what it was and what it looks like now. It pains me every day. My daughter, I mean, I want her to move out of this area. There's nothing here for her."

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It's the epic struggle of our time: Scrappy internet fair-use exploiters vs. authors and their corporate overlords. But this time, the battle has, you know, wizards and muggles or whatever. Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling appeared in a New York courtroom last week to defend copyright infringement charges against Vander Ark, the creator of the unauthorized Harry Potter Lexicon web site, after plans were revealed for a book version. While some commenters attacked the site as "something parasitic on years of hard work by Rowling," the potential publisher of the Lexicon pointed out that giving authors too much control over "books about them" is dangerous:

We would have to get approval before we could write or publish on people's work. They would control critical commentary on their work, at any time, whether it is our kind of book or an Associated Press article. It would create total chaos in the area of critical commentary. Frankly, I don't think that would be good for anyone, even the authors themselves.

Rowling herself has appeared somewhat self-contradictory on the matter, first complimenting Ark's work and insisting she "never ever once wanted to stop Mr. Vander Ark from doing his own guide," but during the trial she came close to tears, describing the book version of the Lexicon as "wholesale theft."

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