Climate Culture

I’m not sure if a rock concert is the answer …

… but I’m pretty sure “burning all the oil” isn’t.

Where are low-income and minority greens in the media?

Once again this year, the spring season brought a flood of green-themed magazines to super-market checkout stands and airport news racks all across the country.

And once again, the faces of non-white and non-affluent Americans were almost entirely missing.

Our new environmental movement is rapidly gaining visibility and momentum. That is very good news. Life-or-death ecological issues finally are starting to get the attention they so urgently deserve. And we can all celebrate that.

But now we would be wise to start paying closer attention to the kind of coverage that we as environmentalists are getting. Because I see a disturbing pattern of exclusivity that is starting to set in. And that kind of elitism can sow the seeds for a very dangerous, populist backlash, down the line.

To see what I mean, just flip through the pages of Vanity Fair's recent green issue (the one with Leo DiCaprio and that cute polar bear cub on the cover).

Is your town?

What if cities had no sidewalks and everyone walked on the road? Or, for urban recreation, they walked on a few scenic trails? What if the occasional street had a three-foot-wide "walking lane" painted on the asphalt, between the moving cars and the parked ones?

Well, for starters, no one would walk much. A hardy few might brave the streets, but most would stop at "walk?! in traffic?!"

Fortunately, this car-head vision is fiction for most pedestrians, but it's not far from nonfiction for bicyclists. Regular bikers are those too brave or foolish to be dissuaded by the prospect of playing chicken with two-ton behemoths. Other, less-ardent cyclists stick to bike paths; they ride for exercise, not transportation. Bike lanes, in communities where they exist, are simply painted beside the horsepower lanes.

People react reasonably: "bike?! in traffic?!" And they don't. "It's not safe" is what the overwhelming majority say when asked why they bike so little. (As it turns out, it's safer than most assume -- on which, more another day.)

So what would cities look like if we provided the infrastructure for safe cycling? What does "bike friendly" actually look like?

Do gas prices affect behavior or not?

Despite record-setting gas prices, U.S. drivers haven't changed their gas-guzzling habits, says AP. Not only are we consuming as much as we always have, new vehicle sales seem to be tilting even more in favor of trucks than cars.

But wait, USA Today disagrees. They say that drivers are, in fact, starting to cut back on how much they drive -- a clear sign that higher gas prices are starting to bite.

Who's right? Who cares! Either way, the consumer response to massive increases in gas prices over the last five years has been teensy-tiny.

Sundance launches TV’s first eco-centered primetime block

Your TV just got a little smarter. As Amanda mentioned last month, the Sundance Channel has launched "The Green," a weekly primetime destination that showcases original series and documentaries based on the earth's ecology and "green" concepts for living in better harmony with the planet.

I'm personally excited about this project now that my favorite Seafood Contamination Campaign spokeswoman, Amber Valletta, has her very own spot. She joins the ranks of other thespians, athletes, and supermodels using their fame for the good of the environment.

Check out this actress in action:

From Grillz to Grime

You know the grill Purists that we are, we’re so thankful that a carbon-neutral dental practice has opened in the U.K. Now we can fly across the pond to glam up our grillz, guilt-free! Photo: Corey McKrillClick to enlarge Strike a poser The Material Girl justified her love for Live Earth with a new single […]

Pictures of the world’s dirtiest cities

Ew.

And I Am a Recycled-Material Girl

Madonna releases single to support Live Earth climate efforts What is it about climate change that makes music … suck? First we had Melissa Etheridge’s “I Need to Wake Up,” the earnest, Oscar-winning Inconvenient Truth anthem. Now we have Madonna’s “Hey You,” a somnolent single released this week in conjunction with Live Earth, the continents-spanning […]

The Beak In Review

West Nile virus hitting bird populations hard, says new study The West Nile virus soldiers on, declares a report published yesterday in Nature. Eight years after the virus left the West Nile and made its way to the U.S. Northeast, chickadee populations in the region have dropped 53 percent, while Eastern bluebird populations have been […]

Circle of Blue

Check out Circle of Blue, a new initiative to coordinate journalists and educators around the mission of injecting the freshwater crisis into mainstream dialogue. Modeshift has a long and informative introduction to the project.