Latest Articles

Answers to readers’ most frequently asked questions about green dilemmas

Should I use paper or plastic bags at the grocery store? Neither one is better. Best choice: bring your own cloth bag. Should I dry my hands with paper towels or the electric blow dryer? Use the dryer if you can’t drip dry. Should I wash my dishes by hand or use the dishwasher? If […]

The built environment discriminates against those who choose not to drive

We're happy to present this guest essay from Joel S. Hirschhorn, author of Sprawl Kills: How Blandburbs Steal Your Time, Health and Money and former Director of Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources at the National Governors Association. He can be reached through SprawlKills.com.

-----

Analyses of the failure of all levels of government to prevent or effectively manage the Katrina calamity in New Orleans have generally missed a crucial point. Alongside bias against poor people and African-Americans is automobile apartheid, born of fifty years of suburban sprawl. First-class citizens drive motor vehicles, second-class Americans walk, cycle, or ride public transit. Certainly many of the latter are poor, but millions more are middle-class Americans.

When emergency response largely ignores the plight of second-class citizens, no one should be surprised.

Automobile apartheid means anyone who wants mobility through walking, cycling, or public transportation suffers discrimination in a built environment designed for automobiles. In the past 20 years, as automobile addiction has increased, sprawl has run rampant, the number of trips people take by walking has decreased by more than 42 percent, and obesity has skyrocketed.

Personal freedom and independence should mean more than the ability to go wherever one wants, whenever one wants. Americans should also have the freedom to travel how they want. When cars are the only option, freedom is diminished.

Shark-fin soup, anyone?

Somewhere off the coast of Australia, a boat filled to the gills with illegally obtained shark fins was boarded in a manner reminiscent of the good old days when pirate ships sailed the high seas. Straining the limits of the power of positive thinking, the crew used machetes and anti-boarding poles (burning ones at that) in an attempt to ward off machine gun toting enforcement officers. Life is complicated. Deep poverty in Indonesia, combined with China's growing economy, has created demand for shark-fin soup, causing an ecological disaster.

Japanese dolphins on Primetime

If you found my post about the plight of dolphins in Japan interesting upsetting, ABC News' Primetime will be covering the issue this Thursday:

[T]he popularity of dolphin parks is booming, with visitors lining up to get up close and personal with the adorable animals. But a "Primetime" investigation finds that there's a dark side to the dolphin park industry.

For more information, read the press release from the Earth Island Institute.

An elaborate proposal to raise money and spend it

Well, I managed to wade through Hillary's whole speech to the Cleantech Venture Forum, and let's just say ... she's no Barack.

The vast bulk is a fairly tepid summary of current conventional wisdom: energy crisis, get free from foreign oil (grr), promote clean energy and clean cars and energy efficiency, etc. This is all boilerplate stuff, but it's worth celebrating, I suppose, that it is conventional wisdom now. As much as environmentalists lament their own failures, it's pretty remarkable how quickly the green line on energy has taken over and become centrist -- and believe me, despite her reputation in wingnut circles, Hillary wouldn't say it if it wasn't safe and centrist.

Unfortunately, the conventional centrist wisdom is not translating into action, as illustrated by Hillary's attempt to list her accomplishments on these issues. This is typical:

Quite a few of us in Congress have worked to bridge the gap and put forward proposals for a better energy future. We passed, albeit not as much as we would have wanted, a 10 percent renewable energy standard in the Senate, but the White House rejected it.

Huzzah!

The one new, "bigger and bolder" (her words) idea is the " Strategic Energy Fund." The SEF would be funded through a tax "alternative energy development fee" on oil companies. This tripped me up:

“Foreign oil” redux

Reading Hillary Clinton's recent speech (more on that later) reminded me of an old hobbyhorse: As faithful readers will recall, the term "foreign oil" irritates me to no end. Decrying our dependence of foreign oil is just a way of decrying our dependence on oil, period -- with the extra macho credibility that comes with jingoistic, xenophobic overtones. For that reason it's probably politically necessary. But it adds nothing to our substantive understanding of America's energy situation. For a host of geological, economic, social, and environmental reasons, we could never conceivably produce enough "domestic oil" to satisfy our demand -- and anyway, what domestic oil we do produce goes out on the world market like any other oil. The problems that come with dependence on foreign oil and the problems that come with dependence on oil are one in the same. It would make as much sense to decry "liquid oil" or "underground oil."

So if you hear the term "foreign oil" from a politician, assume it's accompanied by a wink and a nod. If you hear it from a pundit, assume it's accompanied by confusion.

Update [2005-10-25 14:0:34 by David Roberts]: Oh, the whole point of this post was supposed to be: The term "foreign oil" suggests that domestic oil would be okay, and thus supports the scumbags in Congress who are trying to build new refineries on military bases and neuter environmental protections. It doesn't matter that in her speech, Clinton says "a few more refineries and drills won't solve the problem" -- the very term she's using to frame the problem works against that point. Framing, people. Look it up.

Wealthy ‘family farmers’ in California wage PR campaign to maintain their subsidies

We're happy to present this guest essay from Lloyd G. Carter, an attorney and former journalist who has written about California water issues since 1969. Carter is president of the California Save Our Streams Council.

-----

Remember the family farmer?

He was immortalized in Grant Wood's 1930 painting "American Gothic": a grim, hardscrabble stoic in overalls, grasping a pitchfork. Guess what? It wasn't really a farmer. It was Wood's dentist posing as a farmer.

Fresno County's own philosopher/farmer, Victor Davis Hanson, announced years ago that the family farmer was a figment of the urban imagination. Hanson wrote that the multi-generational family farm has all but disappeared and that soon the only thing left will be "broke serfs and thriving corporations."

But now a coalition of western San Joaquin Valley agribusiness interests have launched a multi-million dollar media blitz to convince Californians that the modern "family farmer" still exists -- and needs to keep consuming colossal amounts of California river water. The statewide ad campaign includes television spots, full page newspaper ads, bus stop billboards in big cities, and even sponsorship of the "California Report" on National Public Radio. The word "family" is repeated ad nauseum.

The Blown Star State

Texas planning massive wind-energy project off Galveston coast Texas has proposed what could become the nation’s first offshore wind farm, about seven miles off the coast of Galveston Island in the Gulf of Mexico. The massive project would involve construction of around 50 wind turbines over some five years and would be expected to generate […]

Reefer Badness

Caribbean corals bleaching at unprecedented rate This year’s notably warmer-than-usual Atlantic waters — fuel for 2005’s intense hurricane season — have been devastating some life below the waves as well. Water temperatures have remained elevated for about 15 weeks, causing coral reefs to bleach from the Florida Keys to Puerto Rico to Panama. The micro-algae […]

Ol’ Dirty Bastards

Oil companies made record profits, and all we got was this moral outrage Pity the poor oil firms: The five largest are expected to reap a record $28 billion in collective earnings this quarter, and all signs point to a lucrative six months to come, but they can’t brag about it — at least not […]