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The Man and the bus

Well, this is sure to increase ridership on public transit!

Buy Nothing Day

It's Buy Nothing Day. So I hope all y'all are out there ... buying nothing.

Looks like I'm going to get away with buying nothing except a couple of second-run movie tickets ($3/each) and some take-out. Sorry, Earth! But my wife and I finally have a date with no kids. A guy's gotta have his priorities.

If you're looking for a way to spend all your money, read this devastating Matt Taibbi piece in Rolling Stone on the survivors of the Pakistan earthquake and their precarious situation, and then write a check to the relief organization of your choice. Check here for some ideas.

Or, per Treehugger's suggestion, buy something at GoodGifts.org.

(Speaking of Treehugger, they've got more thoughts on Buy Nothing day here, here, and here.)

Update [2005-11-27 11:36:6 by David Roberts]: See also Worldchanging on voluntary simplicity.

Thanksgiving

Giving thanks is a struggle this year.

In the past 12 months we have been struck by three body blows from Mother Nature: the South Asia tsunami, Hurricane Katrina on the U.S. Gulf Coast, and the Kashmir earthquake. In each case, the destruction wrought by nature was exacerbated by a lack of foresight and criminal negligence on the part of governments. In each case, the suffering is ongoing.

Taken individually, each is a tragedy. Taken together, they are unimaginable. Numbing.

Yet we do not have the luxury of numbness, for every day the dimensions of two interlinked crises -- the disruption of global climate and the exhaustion of the world's primary energy source -- become more clear. These crises portend disasters like those we've seen this year, ever more frequent and more severe. Still the world's governments stumble forward with shameful disregard, shackled by habit, by ignorance, by greed, content on some level that they will not have to weather the worst of it.

It is a particularly bitter year for those of us in the U.S. We continue to see our nation's reputation and credibility eroded by a series of foreign policy blunders. We are in a position to lead the word to a cleaner, healthier, more prosperous future -- yet instead we find ourselves mired in a debate about the legitimacy of torture. We spurn all efforts to address climate change. We burn heedlessly through the world's remaining oil. We wage war.

When confronted with the three epic natural disasters of the past year we have displayed a parsimony that borders on the repugnant.

In the hills and mountains of Northern Pakistan, hundreds of thousands of penniless, hungry men, women, and children sleep in tents, their houses and lives reduced to rubble, waiting the coming of a harsh winter that a horrific number of them will not survive. Yet the U.N. has been able to raise less than $300 million to help them -- as much as we spend in a few days in Iraq, a negligible rounding error in our GDP. Already they have begun to die.

On 9/11/01, one kind of malaise breached our shores; this hurricane season, another did. Our isolation from the world's struggles, our glorious island, is falling away. We will soon have to accept the challenge of forging a better, more equitable, more sustainable future, or we too will see ours sink into strife and misfortune.

So it is difficult to search our hearts for gratitude, in a season of darkness, for bearers of light that seem ever more scattered and overwhelmed. But bearers of light there always are, in governments, in businesses, in schools, in communities across the world. We all know of them. Now more than ever we are called to give thanks for them, to support them -- and to join them.

For my part, I am acutely conscious of the blessings I enjoy, my privileged place in a shrinking world. So above all I give thanks for my family, my wife and my two boys, who at the end of every day I spend studying the globe's ill health await me at home with warmth and joy.

Federal court reinstates streamlined permitting process for mountaintop mining

Grim news: Mountaintop mining is once again set to go full steam ahead.

In July of last year, a federal judge revoked 11 mountaintop mining permits issued under the Nationwide Permit 21 process by the Army Corps of Engineers. NP21 is a streamlined permitting process meant to govern activities that have minimal environmental impact. Judge Joseph R. Goodwin, being sentient and in possession of his faculties, ruled that mountaintop mining does not fall under that description and that permitting it under NP21 violates the Clean Water Act.

Environmentalists hailed Goodwin's ruling as a landmark victory.

Today, a federal appeals court overturned it.

The three judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit -- widely regarded as the most conservative of the 13 U.S. appellate courts -- unanimously ruled that the Corps had in fact acted in accordance with the Clean Water Act. Here's the ruling as HTML and here it is as a PDF.

Helluva way to head into Thanksgiving.

Biodiversivist

Carnivorous Powelliphanta snails that can grow to the size of a man's fist are being attacked by a coal mining company (note that this article was found in a business journal). What is wrong with letting a company move a colony of endangered snails? Well, first, the odds are very high that the move will fail. Secondly, if you don't draw the line here, what will stop the next person from moving them again when they want to build condos where they have just been moved? Why bother to save a snail species at all?

Green Gauge Report: Bad news

Here we are on the day before a long holiday weekend. A perfect day to bury bad news. So here goes.

The Green Gauge Report is a poll on environmental attitudes, based on 2,000 face-to-face interviews, conducted with a broad cross-section of demographics representative of the U.S. Census, undertaken by an arm of market-research outfit GfK NOP. They do it every year -- though for some reason they skipped 2004.

Joel Makower discusses this year's GGR in a post that tries -- one might say 'strains mightily' -- to put an optimistic spin on the results. But from what I've seen (and I've exchanged a few emails with Bob Pares, the guy who ran it), the results are almost uniformly discouraging. Consider this, from Joel's post:

Here's a breakdown of the study's five market segmentations for 2005 and 1995 (the numbers don't add up to 100 due to rounding):

• True-Blue Greens -- the most environmentally active segment of society: 11% of the U.S. population in 1995, 11% in 2005.
• Greenback Greens -- those most willing to pay the highest premium for green products: 7% in 1995, 8% in 2005.
• Sprouts -- fence-sitters who have embraced environmentalism more slowly: 31% in 1995, 33% in 2005.
• Grousers -- uninvolved or disinterested in environmental issues, who feel the issues are too big for them to solve: 14% in 1999, 14% in 2005.
• Apathetics -- the least engaged group who believe that environmental indifference is mainstream (referred to as "Basic Browns" in earlier Roper polls): 35% in 1995, 33% in 2005.

So: basically no change in the last decade in the number of folks genuinely concerned and engaged with environmental problems.

Obama and a bipartisan crew of colleagues unveil eco-friendly bills on energy

Caterwauling over the Iraq War last week brought Congress to a rancorous new low, drowning out calls from both sides of the aisle for a clean and sane energy future. A handful of senators and reps unveiled proposals pressing for the Bush administration and automakers to shrink America’s outsized energy demands and tackle the climate […]

Syriana and Gaghan: Two steps forward, one back

There's a short piece in the current Rolling Stone called "Hollywood vs. Big Oil" -- the piece isn't online, though a very positive review is -- about the movie Syriana. It's got some interesting background details, including a few about the financing from eBay billionaire Jeff Skoll's Participant Productions.

I'm seeing it on Friday, and I fully expect it to kick ass.

And I respect Stephen Gaghan for making it. It's a real public service. But dude ...

Despite immersing himself in the evils of the oil industry, Gaghan is not a purist. In fact, he has a confession to make. "I have to get a second car," he says quietly. "You know something? I don't like hybrids."

Look, I get that for some reason every mainstream media story about environmental issues has to include some kind of poke at the eco-messengers and how hypocritical they are for not living in huts in the woods. This is what the green movement gets for making personal environmental virtue such an obsessive focus.

But why does Gaghan have to play the game? And why a potshot at hybrids, which unlike, say, composting toilets, are perfectly accessible and practical? These little signals matter.

I'll try to get some kind of review of Syriana up over the weekend.

Update [2005-11-22 12:16:37 by David Roberts]: Well, it appears I was misled (by my own wife!). The opening this Friday is limited -- Dallas and New York, as far as I can tell (Seattle gets no love). It doesn't open wide until Dec. 9. So I guess I'll go see it then. Sigh.

A green gift-giving guide for all the folks on your holiday list

Are you the type who puts off holiday shopping until the last minute, makes a guilt-ridden and miserable foray to the mega-mall, and comes home with bags full of junk that nobody wants? Well, this year, turn over a new bough. We’ve got suggestions of eco-gewgaws for everyone on your list. The Trendy Clotheshorse Eco […]

New Wal-Mart documentary may be a sign of upheavals to come

Last week’s release of Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price — not, for the most part, in movie theaters, but rather in “churches, family businesses, schools, living rooms, community centers, and parking lots,” as the film’s website puts it — marks a high-water moment in leftist media-based organizing. Image: walmartmovie.com. Director/producer Robert Greenwald adopted […]