Blessed are the two-wheelers What would Jesus drive? Please. Jesus would bike, bro! To vouchsafe this essential spiritual truth, New York City cyclists are gathering in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Earth Day to have their rides blessed and sprinkled with holy water, while they ring their bells and angels get their wings helmets. Photo: bicycleshows.us Yub nub! When the energy shortages hit, the world economy collapses, sea levels rise over coastal cities, and our fascist overlords send enormous war machines to round us up, we're going to need to retreat to the forests and fashion crude …

In The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, Michael Pollan diagnoses the national attitude toward food: angst. The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, by Michael Pollan, Penguin Press, 320 pgs, 2006. Channeling the modern middle-class shopper wandering vast supermarket aisles, Pollan asks: "The organic apple or the conventional? And if organic, the local or the imported? The wild fish or the farmed? The transfats or the butter or the 'not butter'? Shall I be a carnivore or a vegetarian? And if a vegetarian, a lacto-vegetarian or a vegan?" In Pollan's view, our legacy as an …

Elizabeth Kolbert. Over the past year, a perfect storm of scientific studies, dire weather events, and media coverage lifted global warming onto the mainstream national agenda. No writing had more impact than a series of closely observed pieces in The New Yorker by journalist Elizabeth Kolbert, which have now been collected and expanded into a book: Field Notes From a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change. (Read a review of the book.) While most writing on climate change has relied on dry data and statistics, Kolbert's is vivid, technicolor reportage. She went on expeditions with some of the world's top …

Singing a new song: Guster rocks out for eco-awareness. Photo: Ian B. Johnson.   After welcoming some 1,500 fans to a concert at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash., last week, Ryan Miller -- the curly haired front man of pop/rock band Guster -- asked the audience if they had noticed that he changed the lyrics in the first song from "Ramona" to "Tacoma." After a short pause, he added, "That's the kind of fucking intellectual hijinks we're gonna go with tonight." And Miller wasn't entirely joking. The Tacoma show was the first in the band's Campus Consciousness …

Taking a cue from Alex over at WorldChanging, I'd like to point out all the print pubs covering enviro issues. First, of course, is the May issue of Vanity Fair. You'd have to be living under a rock not to know that our very own Chip Giller appears in the special green edition. In addition to naked photos of Scarlett Johansson, Keira Knightley and Keri Russell, readers will find a piece by Grist contributor Mark Hertsgaard titled "While Washington Slept." This article "exposes the big-money campaign to label global warming as 'a liberal hoax', and explores the way back from …

Newton's first law of vandalism On a scale of one to WTF, we rate this a solid WTF: Greenpeace activist leaves anti-SUV sticker on random land yacht; random land yacht turns out to belong to B-list movie star Thandie Newton; Newton takes anti-SUV message to heart, buys Prius, writes impassioned letter to fellow celebs urging them to do same. What a crazy world. Photo: John Sciulli/WireImage.com All is vanity Yes, we realize this is the third time, but ... have we mentioned our Dear Leader Chip Giller is in a glossy photo spread in the latest issue of Vanity Fair? …

I have here in my hot little hands the latest issue of Vanity Fair, which, though alleged not to hit newsstands until April 11, mysteriously arrived at the Fremont PCC several days early. It's the "green" issue, with great feature pieces from Al Gore and Mark Hertsgaard, and a 20-or-so-page photo spread with environmental notables of various sorts -- including the "E-gitators," pictured above. Go e-gitators! (I guess that makes Chip's new kid an e-gitator tot.) From left to right: Graham Hill of Treehugger, Jennifer Boulden and Heather Stephenson of IdealBite, Laurie David of StopGlobalWarming, and our very own Chip …

Lately, green is the new black in the American metropolis. Here in New York City, the cabbies are driving hybrids and the fashionistas are wearing organic jeans. Even in my decidedly un-hip Brooklyn neighborhood, the corner deli sells organic milk and cookies. Green is busting out all over. Photo: iStockphoto. Green-tinted consumerism is probably gaining ground in your city too. (Is that a Whole Foods opening up downtown? A Chipotle restaurant selling free-range pork burritos in the storefront that once nurtured a Krispy Kreme?) But if your city is anything like mine, centuries of energy, habitation, waste, and other systems …

Dear Umbra, I need a good stick-it-to-ya comeback to friends who, while they acknowledge global warming and hear me rattle off all that is bad about it, are liking the direct effects, which right now are sunnier and warmer days. What can I do or say to get them to snap back into reality, especially when some of these folks are addicted to tanning and the sun? Kate Semmens Perkiomenville, Pa. Dearest Kate, What about hitting them on the head with a stick? Just kidding. Violence is never the answer. Oh Betty, isn't climate change tan-tastic? Photo: iStockphoto. I've been …

Carsten Henningsen. What work do you do? I am the cofounder of Portfolio 21, a global mutual fund investing for a sustainable future. I am also chair of Progressive Investment Management, the investment adviser to Portfolio 21. How does it relate to the environment? Portfolio 21 (the 21 is for 21st century) invests in companies from around the world that understand the ecological crisis and are implementing environmental sustainability in their business practices. These companies are developing cleaner energy sources, resource-efficient production methods, products designed to be reused and rebuilt, benign raw materials, and processes that produce little or no …