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Umbra on dropping out of society

Dear Umbra, Although I have always been one to conserve, recycle, etc., it is only in the last year that I have realized the extent of the catastrophe coming upon us in terms of climate change. I am 40-something, live in a city, own an older home with a sizeable mortgage that requires my husband […]

Why “the market” alone can’t save local agriculture

The local-food movement has reached an interesting juncture. Through one lens, things are looking better than ever. According to a USDA report (PDF), the number of farmers’ markets leapt 79 percent to 3,100 between 1994 and 2002. Community-supported agriculture programs — wherein consumers buy a share of a farm’s output before the season starts, sharing […]

Talking point: The environmentalist yes

Advocates of nuclear energy, coal gasification, and other hold-your-nose-and-take-your-medicine energy alternatives frequently bully opponents by saying that there's no other way to fight global warming.

If you really cared about global warming, the rhetoric goes, you'd put your effete, nitpicky objections aside for the greater good. After all, global warming is an urgent problem, and these are the only solutions we have!

This is more or less the pro-nuke line taken by James Lovelock and Stewart Brand, and the pro-gasification line taken by Montana governor Brian Schweitzer. There are plenty of other examples.

Problem is, it's not true.

Bicycling highs

You know what kills me? We have perfected a transportation technology that could make a huge dent in CO2 emissions and in liquid-fuel consumption -- and it's barely utilized. I know it gets tiresome hearing bike enthusiasts harp about their passion, but if you could eliminate most of the reasons people don't ride bikes, you would have an awful lot of bike riders.

Walking tall tale

Looking for something else, I came across a web page that makes this rather startling claim:

[W]alking actually uses more fossil energy than driving, if the calories burned from walking come from a typical American diet.

The crux of the claim is that the North American food system uses so much fossil fuel -- for manufacturing fertilizer and pesticides, running farm machinery, transporting food from farm fields to stores and homes, powering refrigerators and stoves, etc. -- that producing the food calories to power a one mile walk uses up more fossil fuel energy than a typical car burns in a one-mile drive.

That seemed counterintuitive, to be sure -- but not completely ridiculous. So I spent some time looking at the issues.

As far as I can tell, the web page is probably wrong: walking is more energy-efficient than driving.

However, they're closer than I might have thought.

Farmivores unite!

Tom's great post reminded me of this opinion piece by Tamar Haspel in yesterday's Washington Post. Having spent a fair amount of my childhood on my godfather's cattle ranch in central Texas, which because of his penny-wise ways was practically organic before organic was cool, I have a strong affection for farms, farmers, ranches, ranchers, and a good steak. Luckily for me, my part of Washington, D.C., has readily accessible organic meat and vegetables from farms in the region, so sign me up as a "farmivore." Anybody else want to join me?

Getting a toehold on your company’s climate footprint

“What’s your company’s climate footprint?” It’s a hot question these days — one being asked increasingly of companies by customers, investors, activists, regulators, and others. OK, it may not be exactly that question, but it’s probably in some form, like, “What’s your company doing to reduce its climate impacts?” Or, “How do you call yourself […]

Engineers Gone Wild

Automakers combine forces to develop new hybrid transmission Tired of getting their rear ends handed to them by the Prius, GM, BMW, and DaimlerChrysler plan to invest over $1 billion in R&D toward a new hybrid transmission that, boosters say, will leave Toyota’s market-leading hybrid in the dust. “Dual-mode” hybrid technology includes an onboard fuel-optimization […]

Spill ‘er Up!

Oil spills from Japanese and Philippine tankers It’s been an oil-spillarific few days. A Japanese tanker, en route from Jordan, collided yesterday with a distressed cargo ship and spilled about 1.4 million gallons of crude into the eastern Indian Ocean. The ship’s owner claims the spill has been contained and there’s no need to clean […]

How’s That Mars Exploration Going?

News flash: as world warms, weather gets worse As the globe warms, the risk of more frequent and severe forest fires, droughts, and floods rises. So says, well, the entire scientific community, forever. But a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is being billed as the most comprehensive look yet […]