Climate Culture

From Centerfolds to 50 Cent

June is bustin’ out all over A 2007 calendar benefiting the Climate Protection Campaign will feature green models ranging from energy pushers and business owners to city councilchicks and hard-core … cyclists. Their theme? “Ecobabes … because beauty inspires life” — and because sex (no matter how green) sells. Photo: Ecobabes.org Chinese chop tix Censorship, […]

Or, why the Vanity Fair treatment doesn’t do justice to food history.

It's the 1970s in Berkeley, California, and things are getting raunchy in the kitchen of Chez Panisse, where the cooks are busy revolutionizing high-end U.S. restaurant food -- among other activities:

As dealers started showing up at the back door with regularity, [one cook] and some of his acquaintances got into increasingly harder stuff. "We were doing opium stuffing," he says. "You stick it up your ass. Just a quarter of a gram, a little ball, and you bypass the alimentary canal. You don't get nauseous -- you just absorb it."

Umbra on owning multiple cars

Dear Umbra, Your recent column suggested that the questioners sell one of their two cars, but I can’t help wondering how much good that does for the environment, especially weighed against the annoyance cost of not having a second car when two people have to be going in opposite directions at the same time. I […]

A Colorado home-builder reflects on his attempt to go green

Sunshine on my solar panels makes me happy. Photos: Daniel Shaw In and around Aspen, Colo., incorporating green into the building process usually means wondering, “How much cash can I spend on my house?” After all, this valley sports some of the most energy-sucking but least-used second, third, and fourth homes on Earth. One of […]

Umbra on recycled toilet paper

Dear Umbra, The few brands of recycled-content toilet paper available are nasty. Why is it so difficult to manufacture TP that’s not from virgin trees but doesn’t feel like bark on one’s sensitive skin? What exactly is the technological barrier the nation’s scientists must overcome in order to make a roll that’s sensitive, both against […]

From Malibu to MARTA

The OMG Environmental degradation threatens some of the world’s most fascinating creatures in their native habitats. The Amazon rainforest. The Arctic. The coastal waters of Indonesia. Malibu, Calif. This last one, home of Americanus celebritus, is of particular concern. Won’t you find it in your hearts to help? Photo: John Sciulli / WireImage.com Blew in […]

Umbra on phosphates in detergents

Dear Umbra, Why haven’t phosphates been removed from dishwashing detergents like they have been from laundry detergents? I know they make your clothing look brighter, but what do they do for dishes? Natalie Waddell-Rutter North East, Pa. Dearest Natalie, Phosphates in dish detergent do a few nice things for dishwasher-washed dishes. Their biggest contribution is […]

Don’t call me Ishmael, I’ll call you

Recently, on the prompting of our own recently wed Sarah Kraybill Burkhalter, I read Daniel Quinn's Ishmael. For those of you not familiar, Ishmael is an influential novel recounting a series of conversations between a man and, well, a telepathic gorilla. Many environmentalists consider it a formative work. (As I was reading it on the bus a girl next to me pointed wide-eyed and said, "I love that book!" Her friend nodded and murmured, "it changes your life.") There is a longstanding web community centered around it.

I want to tread somewhat carefully. In the review quoted on the book's cover, some guy says he will divide the books he's read in his life into two categories, those he read before Ishmael and those he read after. There was a time in my life when several books had that effect on me. I guess it started with the works of Tom Robbins (on which I wrote my undergrad thesis), and continued through Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. There was the Illuminatus Trilogy and other Robert Anton Wilson stuff. A bunch of stuff by the Beats. Several things by Timothy Leary. Just about everything by Alan Watts. The Tao of Physics. That kind of thing. All the hippie classics.

Seattle’s — possibly the country’s — coolest new neighborhood

This past Sunday, I went out to the Highpoint neighborhood in West Seattle to attend the Green Living Expo.

Highpoint is extraordinary (check out this map of the master plan). When it's completed (about a third is finished at this point), it will be the largest interurban redevelopment in the country. I won't get into all the details -- check out the website -- but here's the short summary:

The community will be mixed-use, mixed-income, and mixed-ethnicity. They're connecting up the streets with the surrounding grid. All the sidewalks (and one test street) are made of permeable concrete that allows rainwater through. They're reserving fully half of the (eventually) 1,600 housing units for low-income buyers and renters. They've developed a massive, award-winning drainage plan based on bioswales, to naturally clean water as it drains into the neighborhood's stream and pond. The housing units are all built to Energy Star and Built Green standards. Housing styles and colors are purposefully diverse. Walkways connect pocket parks, green space, and community gardens throughout.

This was all done with intensive community involvement. It's really a remarkable achievement.

Anyway, I took a bunch of pictures -- on, I should caveat, a very cloudy day -- some of which are below the fold.

Walton Ford brings testosterone to nature painting

Walton Ford. Photo: Jason Houston They, whoever the hell they are, say that great paintings work on many levels, and on the first, visceral level, a Walton Ford painting is gorgeous. Because his paintings are done on a large scale, it’s an in-your-face gorgeousness: You can’t miss the luster on a bison’s hoof, the plump […]