Whither Recycling?

Recycling got it's modern start in the late 1960s and early 1970s both as a common sense New Economy idea -- mining urban ore -- and also as a practical solution to the lunacy of the "Throw Away Society." The pioneers of the early recycling movement often don't get enough credit in the annals of environmentalism. While saving spotted owls and whales has been the rage since 1970, recycling has been a center piece of the early urban environmental equation going back to the early parts of the 20th century. Unlike wildlife conservation and wilderness protection, recycling addresses the environmental impact of each and every person in a given city or town -- at home, at work and at play.

It might come as a surprise, then, that the National Recycling Coalition (NRC) -- the premiere group that spearheaded major partnerships and initiatives back in the 1980s and early 1990s including The Buy Recycled Business Coalition; The Electronics Recycling Initiative; RecycleMania; the Chicago Board of Trade Recycling Exchange; The Climate Change Initiative; and America Recycles Day -- is about to go belly up in either Chapter 11 or Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The NRC, host of the greatest recyclers' party of the year -- the annual National Recycling Congress; voice to thousands of waste reduction professionals; and long the center of national recycling policy (for better or worse), pretty much got mismanaged and mistreated into the ground by a combination of incompetence, sloth, and foolishness. Some of this may have been the result of a hands off board of directors. Some may have been an executive director with a personal agenda. And some may just be the result of too many masters with too little money.

How is it possible to run a recycling organization dedicated to reducing waste and resource efficiency with money from the trash industry, soft drink companies, and other corporate interests whose very profits depend on excess consumption and disposable products?

The story of the NRC's demise is long and rather sordid. I won't go into it here. You can get a good dose of that here and here. What is important to know is that the slack is in part being picked up by the GrassRoots Recycling Network (GRRN). Formed some 15 years ago as a direct result of the NRC's growing ineffectiveness, GRRN is focused on the concept of Zero Waste and Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR).

The struggles for the NRC, and recycling in general, might seem surprising given the nation's newfound affection for anything green and sustainable. But in a very real sense, a number of us have been warning about the demise of recycling as part of the environmental toolkit for years. As a public works principle, recycling seems to work at least on the residential level. 30% or so of this country's household garbage is either recycled or composted every year. This has been the case for well over a decade.

But recycling as a field has never adequately addressed specific structural issues that continue to make waste diversion a difficult row to how in the public policy sphere as it relates to trash economics. Most specifically, recycling calls forth the need to measure and manage waste and recovered material using high-tech scales that allow haulers to charge a certain rate per pound for trash and another charge for recycling services. Presumably, measurement along these lines would allow for truer market comparisons between disposal and recovery.

Similarly, in the mid-1990s the US EPA came out with two seminal publications that should have revolutionized recycling in America. The first was called "Full-Cost Accounting for Municipal Solid Waste Management: A Handbook." The second was a set of case studies and prescriptive rules for re-writing the rules of institutional waste management systems, moving trash companies from the job of filling landfills and feeding incinerators to making profits from total resource management systems, optimizing waste reduction and recycling, and minimizing waste. This book, called "Resource Management: Strategic Partnerships for Resource Efficiency," seems never to have been read by anyone on the commercial side of the trash equation.

Numerous other issues have not been adequately addressed over the years. Recycling markets are the key to the economic viability of materials recovery. Over the past two decades the North American recycled product industries have taken a back seat to China and other Asian nations. US bottling, plastic packaging, paper packaging and scrap steel commerce has taken a dramatic nose dive, while China's recycled products infrastructure has exploded. With relatively modest competition from domestic North American companies, China has been able to call the shots on pricing, material quality and environmental impacts.

All of which is to say, that the NRC did not do the job it needed to in order for recycling to remain the primary urban environmental initiative on every business, institution, and household's agenda. These days folks want roof gardens, solar electricity, biofuel vehicles and permeable driveways. It is a shame. State of the art recycling , composting and waste reduction systems should mean a 90% or greater level of waste diversion. Instead we get watching the demise of the National Recycling Coalition as a diversion.

Climate Change: Unskilled Rolling of the Dice?

Sunday's reporting on Friday's passage of the House climate change bill, at least in the New York Times, seemed a bit odd (check it here). The first paragraph of the article says: "Democrats...were dogged by a critical question: Has the political climate changed since 1993?" That's kind of dumb thing to write.

Regardless, Republicans appear miffed that the bill passed (I assure you there a number of liberal environmentalists who are livid as well) and were in such a tizzy that they harkened back to the BTU tax malaise Bill Clinton struggled with in 1993, which some believe backfired on the Dems, providing conservatives the political fodder they needed to jump start Newt Gingrich's 1994 "Contract with America."

Republicans are said to have chanted, "BTU, BTU, BTU" as the bill passed in Congress on Friday (ironically, I had a dinner conversation that same night about how annoying it is when inept, losing teams in Little League baseball chant nursery rhyme curses at opposing pitchers and hitters).

For more on this supposed parallel with Clinton in 1993, read (better reference material) Andrew Revkin's "Dot Earth" blog site entry dated Sunday. Revkin points out that in 1993 Clinton was simply looking to come up with revenue for a struggling federal government, whereas, here in the present, the House has proposed their legislation to begin the process of curbing climate change once and for all.

I would add that whatever bill eventually comes out of Congress, policy had better be crafted so as to once and for all shift the nation's energy economy in a direction that reduces our dependence on both foreign oil and the inherently destructive coal industry within our own country. This is no loger a moral issue or a question of values. It is about survival and meaningful economic growth into a long-term future.

President Obama, the NYTimes reported online yesterday, addressed his own concerns about the Republican's odd glee over the seeming parallels between the House climate change bill and President Cinton's energy tax of the last century. Those Republicans "are 16 years behind the times," he said. Obama also commented on an odd little piece of the bill slipped in at the last moment seeking to control U.S. economic involvement with countries that don't share our minimum standards for greenhouse gas mitigation. The Prez was none too pleased with folks messing around with import-export business policies.

On a side note, the media is a bit confused that global warming came to the fore when last week there was so much emphasis and ink spilled over health care reform. Congress, of course, is running the show right now with respect to climate initiatives, while the White House has been out in front the past few weeks on heathcare.

Whatever the issues this week, the Senate still has to grapple with their own version of climate legislation and this may take months. The gauntlet, though, has been laid down: cap and trade is the policy choice politicians think will work politically (that's why they call them politicians). They're wrong, of course. A progressive and aggressive tax on fossil fuels that cuts across the industrial, transportation, commercial, and residential energy sectors is the only way we're actually going to solve our end of this problem meaningfully. Now's the time to do it too while energy prices are down.

What matters is not that we try to do something, but that we actually succeed in doing what we've known for years we have to do. If you don't believe me, check out last week's New Yorker piece by Elizabeth Kolbert on James Hansen, the grandfather of global warming. "The Catastrophist." (you will need a subscription to read online, but you can also obviously go buy the magazine at a newstand or bookstore). Hansen continues to say over and over that we have one chance to fix this climate problem and it has to happen within the next 10-15 years. One chance. How much do you bet as a gambler if you know you're only going to get one chance?

Zero Culture: Stop Trashing the Climate and All That...

As we gear up for a new world in the war on climate change and global warming (meaning that the Obama Administration will soon provide laser-like, focused leadership for both this nation and, eventually, the global community), the idea of Zero Waste needs to have a major seat at the table. While mainstream energy and environmental policy groups talk about high-tech technology solutions not quite here yet like fuel cells, carbon sequestration, plug-in hybrids, smart transmission systems, and, of course, the magic of bio-fuels, Zero Waste solutions are fully loadable today.

Zero waste is not so much a single technology, but an approach to manufacturing and resource utilization that seeks to maximize recycling, reuse and reduced material inputs. As Philadelphia Dumpster Diver Neil Benson has said, "Waste is a failure of the imagination."

Indeed, while many people recycle most of their paper, cardboard, bottles and cans, another 70% of the nation's waste stream still gets thrown in landfills or burned in incinerators. A report published by the environmental/resource management advocacy groups Institute for Local Self-Reliance, GAIA, and Eco-Cycle, called Stop Trashing the Climate, shows that taking zero waste principles seriously can impact about a third of the nation's economy through reduced energy requirements in manufacturing, mining, and timber harvesting. The authors posit a national goal of 1% reduction in a waste generation each year up to 2050 and show that the energy use reduction effect is the equivalent of taking 20% of our coal fired power plants off line.

Important to note as well is that recycling, composting and reuse businesses create far more jobs than the trash and incineration industries. If the Obama Administration is serious about "green collar" jobs, some of that investment should go to new, regional organic waste composting systems, reuse management centers, and retooling of the nation's recycling industries so that they can use state-of-the-art manufacturing processes to compete again in the global marketplace.

See an article on this topic and others ready to publish at EzineArticles.com

New Lords of the Moving World

In May of 2007, I published an essay at GetUnderground called New Lords of the Moving World. It's worth a read even a year later now that the business community is so hopped up on Green Koolaid. In "New Lords" I add to my argument that the business and corporate sectors around the world are pulling the rest of the social institutions along in the fight against greenhouse gases. For those interested in finding out about solutions, there's a good number of resources that I offer in my essay. This is an important point as we move toward nominations in August -- and elections this fall. People who worry about which candidate has the best plan to attack global warming may be missing the point: it's not about the best plan, it's about who can work properly with the private sector. Solutions are going to come from invention, investment, and intention -- not regulation or master plans (a cap and trade system and an escalating carbon tax wouldn't hurt, though).

Two special points of note since "New Lords" was published are:

1) The Supreme Court decided that, indeed, EPA can regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobile tailpipes, and yet, bizarrely, EPA Administrator, Steve Johnson, refuses to give his approval to California's regulations -- regulations demanded as much by the private sector as environmental NGOs and public sector environmental planners;

2) The new rage in pooh poohing global warming is to claim that the costs associated with trying to mitigate the next 100 years or so of rising temperatures do not justify the price of re-tooling the global economy. A variation of this second point is that modern nations must simply adapt to changes in climate, and since changes will be fairly slow it shouldn't be hard to keep up with our problems (take New Orleans, for instance, where they're building a better levee system).

The Supreme Court's involvement with environmental policy and law, which I wrote about in another essay called "Is It Science Yet?," is a fascinating turn of events in this unfolding story about how the U.S. addresses global climate change. Many legal experts felt that the case brought by the states was really going to be kept to a narrow decision about executive branch power. Instead the Court basically said, "You have given us no credible reason for why your are not dealing with this problem, EPA. Get with the program."

There are no doubt a huge number of lobbyists and elected officials who make their money off of the fossil fuel industries gathering in closed rooms and hidden web spaces talking about their next move. The clock is ticking, of course. By this time next year people who know what they're doing will be back in power (yes, even John McCain understands you pay attention to scientists and work to solve problems rather than denying, lying, and censoring).

Which is why understanding what is now being said about adaptation and the cost-benefit problems of global warming is so important. These arguments are actually very rational and a number of folks have been debating them for quite a while. The cost-benefit issue is obviously a tough one and is really at the root of the Bush administration's foot dragging these days, but the point is that you just have to consider things like less snow in the Rockies and the Alps, a couple more Category 5 hurricanes lambasting big cities on the Eastern Seaboard, or a major long-term drought in the Midwest or Southwest. How do you do a cost-benefit analysis that makes sense of these catastrophes?

The adaptability issue, however, is definitely something to think about. Already, many of the drought-stricken Western prairie urban areas are scrambling to figure out long-term water rights issues and backup technologies such as de-salination plants. Bio-engineering firms are cutting their teeth on new drought-friendly crop hybrids. And, a lot of people just aren't moving back into New Orleans (which, sad to say, is a really smart idea).

Part of the problem with trying to adapt our way out of this mess is that we kind of need to solve the problem, not hope we can shape-shift and cope with whatever comes our way. The global community generates 7 billion metric tonnes of greenhouse gases annually (and we're on track if we do nothing for that number to rise to 10 billion metric tonnes by 2025). Another part of the problem is that adaptation after a disaster tends not to be a very rational process. It's quite possible that states or groups of states might adapt by facing off against each other in ways that are anything but conciliatory.

I could go on about how there are projections of carbon dioxide concentrations rising from 370 parts per million to 650 parts per million over the next 30-40 years. I could give you all the evidence that our current way of doing things at best, if we were to halt all CO2 emissions tomorrow, would still see the global mean atmospheric temperature rise another 3 degrees centigrade or more over that time period.

But what I really want to get at is the fact that we absolutely have to start solving this problem by investing in today's technologies and today's opportunities TODAY. That means recycling the crap out of everything at home and at the office (I'm willing to bet you don't have a very good recycling program at work). It means selling your car if it gets under 35 mpg on the highway. It means driving 55 mph even if you do use a fuel efficient car. It means doing away with incandescent lighting (now outlawed in Canada and Australia and California by 2012). It means buying green power even though it costs a lot more -- NOW! It means investing in green and clean technology companies and divesting in any stock having anything to do with the fossil fuel industries -- especially coal. It means walking to the store, buying local farm products, eating less meat (or none). It means taking vacations closer to home. It means buying your new house near public transportation or living in a city center. And it means more conference calls and fewer business trips.

In that vein it also means thinking locally again (remember that?) and voting for candidates who understand the idea of regional and local economies -- candidates who eschew large-scale, over-the-top national and international cartels and programs that leak profits out of communities.

In the end, it all means getting our shit together. Personally, I know I'm not doing the best I can, and I'm sure you aren't either. But I'm trying. And I will continue to try -- both as an example to my peers and friends, but also as a duty to my sons and my future grandchildren.

The business world has the tools right now to truly reverse the carbon economy in this century. But it also means that we all have to pay to get there. The simple life is over. Time to get real and get complicated. If you understand that and are willing to actually do something to get us beyond where we are today, then half the battle's over.

Bashing Recycling for Confusion and Profit

The following essay is a work in progress. I invite all readers to give me criticism and direction.
---------------------------------------------------------------
Recently, the ABC show, Good Morning America, ran a segment interviewing columnist and author Stephen Dubner (co-author of the book Freakonomics) on whether recycling works. You can watch it by clicking here. While Dubner's basic argument about recycling turns on the idea of market economics (which is sensible), he also says some really weird things that drew me back into the good old early 1990s when bashing recycling was the sport of kings.

In particular, Dubner says that plastic water bottle recycling doesn't make sense because it costs more to recycle water bottles (they aren't as valuable as aluminum cans) than it does to make new ones. He also says that old newspapers have such a low value that cities often simply landfill them after they go to the recycling center. He doesn't really provide us with any evidence. He just says these things as an "expert." Neither are true. Plastic bottles and newspapers have immense value these days. The real question is why they aren't being recycled more.

Bashing recycling as an odd form of entertainment and/or intellectual strutting crops up every few years. Before Dubner's mis-informed proclamations we had Penn & Teller really going to town on resource recovery in the second season of their Showtime series, Bullshit! In a nutshell, they put words in recycling experts' mouthes and then "disproved" them by having other experts say things like: "It's just not true that recycling saves money." These "experts" for the most part are funded and employed by fringe conservative think tanks who few people could call adequately informed or objective.

The episode is actually worth watching no matter what your thoughts on the matter. It is entertaining and informative in a twisted way and Penn Jillette's use of curse words is right up there with Eddie Murphy and Bob Saget. But the method they use to supposedly debunk recycling is truly bizarre.

The Mother of All Critics
Way back in 1996, columnist John Tierney published a notorious essay in the New York Times Sunday Magazine called "Recycling is Garbage." Although there have always been recycling bashers (rag picking and scrap handling used to be the job of immigrants, after all, and who better to bash than those who handle our waste and clean up after the rest of us?), Tierney's piece was seminal in that it carried the authority of the nation's top newspaper and it was highly detailed in its analysis of recycling as consumer behavior, attempting to sound as if the author was smarter than every environmentalist and do-good liberal in America.

"Recycling is Garbage" demonstrated a phenomenal lack of sophistication by its author, focusing primarily on household waste diversion in the New York City area at a time when the city had profoundly cheap landfill costs and was simply dumping its trash in the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island. Several years later the city closed Fresh Kills, trash costs tripled, and the economics of throwing things away got a bit more complicated.

Simultaneously, Tierney, like every other idiot who claims they know the "truth" about recycling, was actually only talking about residential recycling, a completely different beast than commercial and institutional recycling (read, recycling at work). Rest assured, if someone makes no distinction between recycling at home and recycling and work and says "recycling this" and "recycling that," they don't know what they're talking about. In actuality, about 60% of the trash generated in the average urban area in America is from offices, institutions, and other commercial enterprises; and much of that material is mixed paper and cardboard -- very valuable if collected properly.

An Anthropology of Waste
Tierney's, Dubner's and Penn & Teller's odd little exercises in self-appointed debunkerrhea point up a very important aspect about waste that has been at play since the beginning of this country: for the most part, human beings find it very difficult to think rationally about stuff they feel has no value.

The American way of life is based on a deep and rich value system that exalts the economy of goods and consumer satisfaction. More than any other country in the world, the U.S. social system bolsters these values -- materialism -- through the elaborate philosophies of free market enterprise and capitalism. At the core of this set of philosophies is the idea of reason and rational decision making. As such, the American economy, and by extension all of American society, can be successful if and only if the logic of the free market is allowed to prevail. The effect of these philosophies is all too apparent in every shopping mall, business district, and neighborhood of this country. Strict adherence to a rational free market may carry many unwanted side-effects, but there is no denying that it is at the center of our nation's history from start to finish...it is, indeed, the reason that we fought for our independence some 230 years ago. Life is good because of all this stuff we possess and want to possess. Our stuff is evidence of our culture, pure and simple.

What then of waste? Waste is certainly a cultural item. It is a category into which a material good is placed that renders it useless. Waste is something that an individual or group of individuals (e.g., an institution or industry) deems valueless. What we do when we take a plastic package or a used cigarette lighter or a cardboard box is "throw it away." The item goes from having use and value and meaning into a bin or black plastic bag. It has been discarded. It is trash. Rubbish. As such, by moving something from the sphere of reasoned economic utility into the land of Away, that thing moves from the realm of the rational into the realm of the irrational. Through what may essentially be called a process of negative definition, waste is something that we willingly place outside the realm of the rational free market.

Nothingness and Danger
In a very real sense, waste and garbage are part of a much broader category of things that also includes dirt, pollution, disease and putrescibles like animal feces, sewage, and -- perhaps the most abhorrent substance known to puritan America -- human waste. All of these items carry with them varying levels of aversion. Besides being outside our rational cultural classification systems, they present us with a multiplicity of emotional responses combining the notions of danger, impurity and even taboo.

In her book, Purity and Danger, the great anthropologist Mary Douglas (who died this spring) presents interesting, pan-cultural examples of these emotional responses. But she also points out that a by-product of these "impure" categories is the creation of a boundary that separates order from disorder. Of dirt, she writes: "Dirt is essentially disorder… it exists in the eye of the beholder… In chasing dirt, in papering, decorating, tidying, we are not governed by anxiety to escape disease, but are positively re-ordering our environment, making it conform to an idea." A few pages later, Douglas writes: "Reflection on dirt involves reflection on the relation of order to dis-order, form to formlessness, life to death."

The implications of all this should be self-evident. Recycling, as a system for taking stuff that has historically been deemed outside of our system of order -- stuff that is valueless and impure -- and reconstituting it into something that can be re-inserted into our system of order, runs against deep cultural constructions. Recycling in all its complicated facets, is an attempt by some of us to inject meaning, value and rationality into the realm of Nothingness and Danger that is waste. This is no easy task. It should not be surprising then that confusion and irrational responses would find their way into the public discourse on waste management options. By mandating recycling governments across the country essentially seemed to be regulating a very fundamental and personal combination of thought processes and behaviors.

And free marketeers are not the only ones guilty of irrational thinking about recycling. Environmentalists and recycling advocates can also fall into the bucket of emotion and unreasoned policy framing: issues of convenience, personal hygiene, public safety, and economic efficiency often take a back seat to recycling advocacy; proven enhancements to recycling programs like single-stream processing, incentive-based recycling systems like RecycleBank, and expanded bottle bills have all met with a great deal of skepticism and even hostility from the mainstream recycling community. In addition, within the world of environmental advocacy, large-scale media attacks on corporations like Coca-Cola, McDonalds, and Apple Computer have been successful media ploys but they often don't address underlying problems like consumer demand for cheap and convenient products -- and the broader spectrum of the complicated and crazy lives that Americans lead.

The point here is not to trash recycling advocates or opportunistic journalists and free marketeers. The point is to make clear that the cultural implications of recycling (and waste management in general) represent a dynamic and shifting boundary for what is part of our ordered existence and what we define as outside of order (disorder). We should, in fact, expect irrational discourse on both sides of this issue.

In some ways it is possible to make the claim that recycling is a major revolution in one of the more fundamental and core components of culture. What is being questioned is the very notion of what is Real and what is Not Real. We are at play with the nuts and bolts of meaning in our consumer society. Recycling represents as much an obsession with materialism as does consumer culture and the profusion of disposable products that got their start in the middle of the 20th century.

In fact, using the logic above, recycling becomes a kind of canary in the coal mine and can tell us something very important about the direction public discourse is moving with respect to environmentalism. While much of what environmentalists are concerned about is the stuff that is cognitively relegated to the realm of the impure -- disease, pollution, toxins -- environmentalists are also concerned with the notion that extracting natural resources from wilderness areas (destroying the beauty of nature in the process) in order to produce resources for manufacturing material goods is not necessary. These two realms of concern are either part of our reality or part of the nether world of danger. As a liminal concept, recyclables are actually in both worlds. Recycling is both pure and dangerous. It is part of the Real and part of the Not Real. Conceptually, then, recycling is vulnerable to critique and confusion. It also has the potential to instigate emotional and magical notions of grandeur and moral superiority.

We need to watch out when recycling is attacked. It is the easy target. Destruction of beauty, dominance of nature, and the danger of toxins, disease and pollution carry more valance and charge.

Environmentalism today is once again a goose laying golden eggs. If I use the word "sustainability," people's pleasure zones light up. If I use the words "renewable energy," readers or listeners will pay attention and nod in the affirmative. But for how long? Let's take a look at the early days of bashing recycling.

Early Signs of Castration and Magical Thinking
Taken on cultural terms, what is going on with those who seek to bash recycling (residential recycling, anyway) is not so much rational thought or even moral logic as evidence of confusion -- a challenge to what they seem to take as the common wisdom of market-speak and the hardcore reality of old-school materialism (do not forget that media is one of the biggest purveyors of meaning and order in our society and that newspapers are in many ways the heart of urban curbside recovery programs).

We first began to see signs of recycling's curious place in the American Experience during the final year of the TV show Cheers. Shelley Long, in the character of Diane, tries to explain why the novel she left Sam Malone for never got published, whining something like: "I even wrote it on recycled paper!" It was the whining -- pathetic, oozing, a combined little girl contriteness mixed with moral twittery. I remember thinking: "Okay, here we go."

Around that time, 1992, the short-lived "environmentally-friendly renaissance" was coming to an end. Folks were beginning to forget the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the Mobro trash barge, Philadephia's incinerator ash barge, the Khian Sea, and the massive environmental disasters in Bhopal, India and Chernobyl. Those few words spoken by Shelley Long on a sit-com were surely meant to illuminate Diane Chambers' effete, self-absorbed magical thought processes, but at the same time it showed that recycling had attained a level of cultural relativism, and, by association, that it had become the province of effete, self-absorbed, magical thinking liberals everywhere. (ouch!)

By the time the show aired, Reader's Digest, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal were lambasting government waste diversion programs everywhere. And as the '90s cruised along, numerous anti-environmental and anti-liberal publications and organizations went after recycling with addled glee. It was almost as if headlines like Recycling is Garbage, What a Waste, Recycler's Talking Trash, were just too enticing to not find some kind of copy for.

And there was rather deep truth to some of the criticism. Somehow recycling became for a while there the focal point of the media's idea of ecology and consumer environmental behavior. Critics charged, in essence, that recycling wasn't a panacea after all and that the religious zeal with which it was being taken had become anti-market, anti-consumer, and anti-American.

Environmental advocates were accused of acting as if recycling was going to save the world, when there was so much evidence to the contrary (i.e., it's expensive, inconvenient, creates more environmental problems than it solves, and is just plain environmentally inconsequential). The truth, of course, is that recycling is simply one new piece of a sustainable economic future (post-materialist) that we're trying to build here, and that we have a long way to go before technology, commerce, and social mores align properly for things to work efficiently.

Dusting Off Old Arguments
Since Tierney's pinnacle tirade, things have changed -- Penn, Teller, and Dubner not withstanding -- in the world of waste because of climate science. Green is back. It took a great deal of work, but through the efforts of scientists, non-American politicians (and one retired American one), some of the top economists in the world, and a few intrepid journalists and writers, the proposition that climate change is in large part out of control because of human endeavor has brought back concern for how the industrial world interacts with Nature.

Green has been a theme of media (that and the insanity going on in the Middle East) from the end of 2006 and all of 2007 so far. Energy, of course, is now the main focus, but on the grand stage where hype and sound bite govern who gets to use the megaphone, "environmental stuff" in general is all the rage.

In America, however, most everything that seems to be on the side of The Good is fair game after a year or so of worship. Additionally, with Democrats getting much of the credit for "environmental stuff," as election '08 rolls towards us, you can be sure that the anti-environmental arguments (especially against recycling) will be dusted off again and again (dare I say, they will be recycled?).

It is the dusting off thing that we need to watch out for. Most everything in the environmental world has changed in the past four to five years. If you were paying attention, you might recall that Environmentalism died in late 2004. Solar, wind, and energy conservation technologies have improved dramatically over the past decade. Even more important, with the rise in oil, natural gas and electricity costs, investment dollars are now flowing into renewable technologies. Companies like Tesla Motors, Vestas Wind Systems, and HelioVolt Corporation, are creating surprising products. And what of Wal-Mart's use of their deep pockets and negotiating savvy to push issues like compact fluorescent lighting on pretty much all shoppers in America? Environmental stuff isn't really about nature anymore, it's about life in the human world. It's not even really about solving problems, so much as coming up with better, cleaner, more effective ways to do things.

The question is whether the critics really understand these changes, or whether they are simply going to use the arguments of days gone by to make tired, old statements of disapproval about a world that inevitably must change.

It's Just Business
With all due respect to Mssrs. Tierney, Jillette, Teller, and Dubner, a decade or so ago, the economics of recovered newspaper and plastic bottles was indeed marginal and exceedingly complex. The pulp industry was very whacky back then due to foreign competition and low demand for recycled content; and plastics were extremely hard to collect and process because technology had not advanced enough. These economic equations were made all the more complicated as well because landfill prices were relatively low (in NYC especially) and oil was still relatively cheap.

But today’s world is completely different. China is driving recycling markets for practically all materials. Commodity prices for recyclables are higher and have been relatively stable for several years now. Landfill fees are also up, meaning that the cost of disposal is becoming harder and harder for municipalities and businesses to pay without seeking alternatives. And oil prices are through the roof, making energy-intensive raw material extraction and conversion more costly – and making the cost of trucking material to landfills and incinerators more expensive as well.

In addition, recycling collection and processing technologies have gone through two generations of change since Mr. Tierney’s article was first published. So-called single-stream processing is now the norm, and while not perfect, has truly reduced collection costs for municipalities and also allows processors to handle far more material at a relatively fixed cost, giving their businesses a better margin through economies of scale.

Similarly, end-use industries in North America, particularly the paper industry, have re-tooled to incorporate recycling more effectively and minimize contaminants. There have also been tremendous advances in recycled product applications over the past decade – from fleece fibers to tissue and box-board to crumb rubber, glass cullet, automobile steel, and printing and writing papers. Many recycled products are now better, cheaper, and more marketable than they were a decade ago (go check out Staples and compare the cost of their recycled copy paper to non-recycled).

Are things perfect? Of course not. The point is that this industry, if we can call it that, is still growing and changing and developing. All this despite massive subsidies and protection by federal and state government for the virgin resource extraction sectors of the economy. What we've been up to with recycling over the past 20 years is the first tentative steps toward investing in an infrastructure that reflects the ideals of efficiency and minimal harm to the planet. We have also been investing in the concrete and material representations (special trucks, blue separation bins, processing facilities, recycled products) of the belief at least some hold that discards shouldn't necessarily be relegated to the Land of Away. The operating term here is "investment" -- spending money today, committing ourselves, making the effort to bring about serious cultural change both in the real world and in the world of the mind.

When solid waste planners look at the real economics of trash vs. recycling these days they find that recycling is often the better option in many cities throughout the country. Indeed, the true and obvious arbiter in all of this is the marketplace. Paper and plastic are certainly highly sought commodities in many large urban centers and recycling companies are willing to compete to obtain this material.

In Philadelphia, for instance, the city receives $24 a ton for its paper, bottles and cans from a local processor. Factoring in the avoided disposal fee of $65 a ton, this is a swing value of $89 per ton. The main problem is collections. Single-stream makes it theoretically possible to collect recyclables at roughly the same cost as trash collection, however only about 30% of the city’s households regularly put material out for recycling. This is Philadelphia's big conundrum. With only 1 in 3 houses on any given street recycling, the cost of truck and crew time is inefficient.

There are many, many reasons for this lack of participation. One of them, of course, is people’s quick willingness to take the thoughts of anyone who says recycling isn’t cost effective (or environmentally effective) and use them as a justification for not recycling. That’s kind of what Dubner and Penn & Teller give people in their televised pulpits, and it’s certainly what Mr. Tierney did with his "Recycling is Garbage" piece. Are they pandering to cognitive dissonance, or are they looking to speak the truth? Who knows?

I’m not saying recycling is the solution to a disposable world. But without doubt, continuing to send trees, metal ore, and petroleum, etc. to landfills rather than capturing them as urban ore and reconstituting them into products that are economically sound and clearly marketable makes very little sense – especially when you take into account the future of this country’s economy ten and twenty years out as energy costs continue to rise and new landfills must be sited further and further away from urban centers.

What we’re trying to do is build a new kind of economy here. We’re trying to build it for the future. Analyzing recycling from a single frame of time (and using ideas from ten years ago) certainly isn't very thoughtful. Hopefully, over the next few years all of the big meanies out there will see that it's all just business and maybe come out and talk to those of us doing the policy, planning, and coordinating work – and those buying, processing, and selling recycled commodities. It’s a weird field, but it’s also very interesting being on the cutting edge while being so close to the beast's magnificent belly -- or should I say sphincter?

Freezing Our Asses Off at GetUnderground

A version of "Freezing Our Asses Off at the Feet of Al Gore" has been posted at GetUnderground.com. Watch out for the indie music that plays at will when you go to the site, but listen to it anyway. I've found some great stuff there. Also, if you've got a second, go check out The Formality of Occurrence for my poem on September 11th called "The New World."

Freezing Our Asses Off at the Feet of Al Gore

The last time we went out on a date was back in 1990--before $3.00 gallons of gasoline; before the Prius; before the iPod; before the World Wide Web; before frickin' Harry Potter. We saw Darkman, and Marion was so disgusted by the opening scene where the bad guy cuts off Darkman's finger with a cigar trimmer she walked out of the packed theater (I got her to come back and there were no more problems; it was a bad movie--very dark, but that's about it).

Last Friday night, sixteen years later--one boy off in Maine, one in Florida, and the youngest at his friend Charlie's for an overnight--we decided it was time to rekindle our pre-child relationship. There was only one movie to see: An Inconvenient Truth. We're so happy we went, even if it cost $19.00 to get in, the popcorn line was insanely long (we went without), and we felt lost in the Big Box suburbs of Philadelphia. The movie is fascinating, disarming, and important for everyone in this great country of ours to see at least once. I will not ruin your day by doing a review of it. By now you've read and seen enough, I'm sure (although I promise to write in here one day soon a treatise on why it is that the liberal version of apocalypse is just as weird as the fundamentalist version).

I do want to share with you a number of ironies and interesting tidbits that should at least be amusing, if not downright deep.


First of all, we were dismayed to find when we got to the theater parking lot that they did not have big Al's movie posted on the giant marquee over the theater. Such an experience with sins of omission out in the real world provided us with the opportunity to revisit our old conspiriologist days. Could Regal Cinema somehow be in league with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, ExxonMobil and the American Petroleum Institute? We didn't know, but as practiced curmudgeons and rebellious freedom fighters from the old guard, we certainly weren't going to leave blank spaces like that up to chance--nor were we going to take it lying down. Something had to be done! But what? (Later we figured that they just didn't have enough lettering for every one of their movies since they did indeed post An Inconvenient Truth on the marquee out in front of the theater plaza where all cars and trucks and SUVs are whizzing by--or sitting in traffic jams).

Secondly, An Inconvenient Truth has been running now for something like ten to twelve weeks. You'd think that on a Friday night, love birds that we are, Marion and David would be the only people in the theater (I was kind of hoping we could makeout during the boring parts). Not so. The room was at least half full, maybe more. I'd say they made about $600 bucks off of us responsible and concerned citizens. That's not bad when just down the hall Talladegha Nights was packed on it's opening night.

It may be that An Inconvenient Truth was so well-attended because of the heatwave that we recently experienced here. It sucks when your basic feeling towards the outdoors is: "Screw this 21st centurty summer crap. I'm climbing in the fridge. Let me know when it's over." In fact, two weeks ago several respectable media outlets reported that scientists feel there is a definite connection between global warming and the overwhelming heat waves we've had around the world over the past few years. Probably the most disturbing aspect of these studies is the insight that average nighttime temperatures are on the rise. A good resource for some of the new data out there is the NOAA site--especially for skeptics and nay-sayers. Real information! No bull!

The third irony here is that Gore learned that carbon dioxide traps heat in the outer reaches of the earth's atmosphere from his professor at Harvard, Roger Revelle, who had been studying carbon dioxide levels since 1958. I couldn't help thinking about the fact that there were people who knew that global warming was a real possibility while the rest of America was busy going through its hippie phase--stoned, oblivious, hooked on free love, and rebellious as hell. Imagine if we could have tapped into all that frenzied positive energy back then...

1958 was also the year I was born. In fact, the history of the planetary greenhouse effect goes back more than another 100 years.

But the most ironic experience of the night was that we froze our asses off sitting there staring up and chuckling along with our good buddy Al while he talked about how hot it was getting. The air conditioning in the theater had to be set at 68-degrees--maybe lower. I was wearing long pants for the first time in two months along with a sweater. If Marion hadn't been there to snuggle with, I would have been thrown out because my chattering teeth were violating the "silence is golden" rule they broadcast before the movie starts. My guess is the Regal spent about $100 on cooling that it didn't need...Later on we went to dinner at the UNO Chicago Bar & Grill and had the same problem. We begged the waitress to put us as far away from the air conditioning vents as possible. My guess is that whatever we paid for our dinner was used to keep everyone else there cucumber cold.

At any rate, if you haven't seen the movie, it's time to go. Take three or more people with you and make sure at least one of them is someone you've been having arguments with about global warming. We are heading back next week with both Jesse and Conor (Sam saw the movie the first week it was out) and are going to invite everyone from all three baseball teams I coached this year to meet us there.


In closing, I will note this: There should be no need to argue about whether global warming is real or not once you see this movie (yes, there are technical points that Gore probably needs to revisit, but the main ones are kind of inescapable--unless you don't understand math and science). The question now is whether you are willing to take responsibility for your 15,000 pounds a year of greenhouse gases, or whether you don't give a damn. There really isn't a middle ground. Hopefully, it's the former and not the latter.

Convenient Truth: An Atlantic Monthly Essay on Attacking Global Warming

First of all, there's hope for the world. The photo to the left is me with my oldest son Sam at his high school graduation earlier this summer. I believe in the future. I believe in Sam and his generation. I hope you do too.

Now, to the business at hand:

Gregg Easterbrook has a well argued commentary piece in the September Atlantic Monthly, entitled, "Some Convenient Truths" (you may need to register with The Atlantic to read his piece) which asks why global warming has such a negative aura surrounding it. At one point in the piece he writes:

"Yet a paralyzing negativism dominates global-warming politics. Environmentalists depict climate change as nearly unstoppable; skeptics speak of the problem as either imaginary (the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated,” in the words of Senator James Inhofe, chairman of the Senate’s environment committee) or ruinously expensive to address."

Easterbrook points out that there is ample evidence that numerous environmental measures in our past were very successful and not nearly as costly as "experts" from the business community claimed they would be. In fact, if you're paying attention there's a lot of really amazing stuff going on out there right now--from the Tesla Roadster to advanced photovoltaics to carbon fund initiatives and regional sustainable development projects chock full of profits, beauty, and a cleaner environment.

Indeed, if you read through the postings here at Blue Olives, we give all sorts of evidence that what you are hearing from politicians and the general media is not the way it really is. "Life can be good again, Mavis! It really can!"

If you're interested, please go check out my "Green Emperor Gets Naked" series at GetUnderground.com. It was written awhile back and it has more importance today than it did a year ago.

A Review of "BE WORRIED. BE VERY WORRIED." Time's Special Report on Global Warming

The April 3, 2006 issue of Time Magazine is out just as oil prices begin to rise again. It is a special report on global warming with its cover proclaiming: "Be Worried. Be Very Worried: Climate change isn't some vague future problem--it's already damaging the planet at an alarming pace. Here's how it affects you, your kids and their kids as well."

For anyone not really following this issue closely, the articles in this McDonald's of periodicals offer a great, fairly simple foray into some of the main issues surrounding climate change and global warming.

For those of us who think we know everything (which, in this field, is impossible), reading each of these admittedly short, sound-bite-like pieces is essential. The problem of global warming is still in the "convince-the-voter-that-it's-real" phase. Reading these Time pieces will give you a good feel for what is currently being digested by lay-people. Going further, the journalists who wrote these pieces are a good example of said lay-people with enough information to be dangerous. The thrust of the information presented by Time is that global warming is here and it's going to get worse.

Heavy-handed? Yes. True? Yes. Life has never been so bafflingly interesting, has it?

VISUALIZING DISASTER
As you'd expect, Time offers some awesome photos of natural calamities: a polar bear stranded on ice floes, cattle trekking through droughtland, and a young man and girl floating on a raft in a swamped Indian village. The lead article, "The Tipping Point," provides us with all the basics: touching on the Gaia hypothesis, examples of global climate catastrophes (droughts, typhoons, hurricanes, accelerated glacier shifts, predictions of sea levels rising), and the latest poll information showing that 85% of respondents agree that global warming probably is happening (which I'm going to bet is the last straw that the editor's needed to make this project a go).

Overall, the multiple articles here are laid out well, providing excellent charts and graphs, beautiful little stories, and tidbits of information on everything from Chinese energy engineering to the disappearance of harlequin frogs, shifts in butterfly migration, food scarcity experienced by African elephants, Sweden's new Ministry of Sustainable Development, corporate America's positive approach to climate protection, some of the basic economic questions surrounding taxing carbon, the rise of eco-evangelicals, the impact of India and China on the greenhouse gas problem, and some basic information on the idea behind carbon trading organizations.

Probably the most insightful aspect of this special report is the attention the editors gave to the surprising feedback loops and interrelationships between climate phenomena that scientists are only just now beginning to see. For instance, as the poles melt they give way to heat absorbing warmer water. The less ice covering the earth, the less heat is reflected back into outerspace. And, as the northern waters of the Western Hemisphere rise in temperature, ocean currents, especially the Gulf Stream, will shift, meaning that Europe, where climate is modified by the Gulf Stream, may well experience longer and colder winters--much longer and much colder, according to some.

GROUND BASIC?
As an example of how surface-level Time's articles can be, they have a page called "The Climate Crusaders," which is a 3/4-page photo of Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, and a two paragraph, 180-word "article" on carbon trading as a concept--which he more or less gets credit for inventing. This page really does very little to educate the lay-person on the fact that there are a number of phenomenally creative entrepreneurs and investment funds out there providing a host of solutions to global warming through carbon funds and emissions trading.

In fact, if you really care about the solutions to global warming (or if you like good news), you should subscribe to In Business immediately. This month's features at their web site are on reconstituting local food networks (featuring ReVision Farm located in Boston); and on Portland, Oregon, one of the most sustainable cities in the country (a city committed to reducing GHG emissions while simultaneously building a vibrant economy). I will be doing a piece for them on carbon fund organizations over the summer.

WHAT THEY SKIPPED
Time has ignored some really big issues that are essential for everyone to understand. First, they offer us all sorts of horror-producing graphs that show projections for where we're going with sea levels, the global mean temperature, and levels of global CO2 emissions (an astounding visual). But it would really have been nice to see a graphic splitting out greenhouse gas emissions between the major end-use sectors. I mean, how much of the problem is transportation-related? How much electric power production? Industrial, commercial, etc.? (by my calculations, using data from the Energy Information Agency, the answer is: residential-21%; commercial-17%; industrial-29%; transportation-33%; electric power represents about 39% of total CO2 emissions).

Or how about a nice little list of the top-ten greenhouse gas emitting states? (Texas, California, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida, Indiana, Illinois, New York, Michigan and Louisiana--all responsible for about 50% of the nation's energy-related carbon dioxide emissions).

Secondly, providing documentation on the contributions of gases per fossil fuel and other sources (like methane from landfills) would also educate the public. The world's dependence on coal for electric power is about to increase dramatically over the next decade now that petroleum and natural gas prices are so high. Coal is a massive contributor to atmospheric CO2 emissions, contributing 32% to overall emissions and 82% to total electric power emissions.

Coal is a problem. A big problem. It is the biggest problem we have right now because world-wide policies are looking to invest heavily in coal-powered electricity for the next 10-20 years and although you hear a lot of talk about "clean coal" its debatable whether such massive investment is going to successfully make much of a dent in emissions reductions.

Time also offers nothing on fuel standards for the transportation industry, nor do they provide any information on the problem that urban sprawl creates by increasing the distances people have to drive daily (the average American commute has doubled in the last several decades). Time also doesn't delve into the politics of highway construction and the imbalance between funding fuel efficient mass transportation and the inefficiencies of automobile, truck and air travel.

Finally, on the business side of the equation, Time does not reference the turmoil that the insurance industry is going through in attempting to account for global warming and climate change catastrophes. Nor do they definitively tackle the issue of economic development and opportunity that technology innovation and new energy inventions provide the economy. The boom years of the 1990s were driven by an explosion in communications technologies (yes, folks, your computer is actually just a sophisticated multi-media communications device). Given the proper leadership, investment, and support, the next economic revolution can and will be in the energy-related fields. Just like computers, the goal is to eliminate dependence upon large-scale centralized systems and to liberate individuals, families, and businesses from today's energy networks. Time's message is Be Very Worried. How about: Be Very Bold?

I'm sure Time and Newsweek and the major broadcasters will cover these issues over the coming months, but leaving them out may well have the effect of creating blindsides for those who are concerned about the realities of our situation.

AH, MY CRITONIA!
Journalist David Ignatius called it in a January op-ed for the Washington Post. In "Is it Warm in Here," he wrote: "...we are all but ignoring the biggest story in the history of humankind." Since then, the pot has started to simmer. Some journalists, in fact, are beginning to wonder if they were taken in by the Bush Administration (and the fossil fuel industry) the same way they were taken in by those in power regarding Iraq.

Things are picking up a bit in the mainstream, however. 60 Minutes aired a feature a few months ago that provided information on the Bush Administration's muzzling of James Hansen, a NASA scientist and director of the Goddard Space Institute, one of the world's foremost experts on the science (and data, which is key) surrounding global warming. It is my guess that ABC Nightly News, Newsweek, MSNBC, among others, will turn up the heat over the next few weeks heading into the summer. Now that the basics have been regurgitated by several major broadcasters, the wannabes and contrarians are going to step up with all manner of criticism, as will intelligent and thoughtful media outlets (in print and electronia) with a variety of detailed, hopefully new and enlightening stories to tell.

What's most intriguing right now, however, is that after Time put out their somewhat heavy-handed and predictable set of 200-worders with fantastic photography and interesting graphics, both Robert Novak and George Will produced for the mainstream equally heavy-handed and predictable criticisms of the anti-carbon elite. Forbes publisher Rich Kaarlgard also ran a blog entry along the same lines. There will be more, I assure you.

The arguments against global warming (especially from Will) as a concept are, as far as I can tell, a rehash of Michael Chrichton's shoddy reasoning in his infamous "novel" State of Fear (I post my responses in italics):

1. Climate change isn't real; the statistical error of minus or plus one degrees in world averages is far more likely than a "real" temperature increase of one degree (which is what most climatoligists currently agree on); besides, according to Robert Novak, "...[James Hansen] energized the global warming movement by predicting a temperature rise of 0.8 degrees Fahrenheit over the [the period of 1988-1998]. When the actual rise in surface temperatures over the decade was only 0.2 degrees, Hansen stepped back from his earlier predictions." Somehow Novak (and his compadre Chrichton) don't know the real story here. Hansen had done a sensitivity analysis with various scenarios--one of which was 0.8 degrees. The history of how things got distorted has been amply described by Gavin Schmidt (I believe) at RealClimate.org.

2. Even if there is global warming, it's really not that big a deal for those of us in moderate climates because a shorter winter (and earlier spring) is good for agriculture and tourism and probably a dozen other things. Yeah, right. Tell that to Katrina refugees. Also, the ski tourism industry is beginning to see the effects of warmer temperatures on their bottomlines. It's also just begging those near the equator and those in northern latitudes to migrate into the temperate zones. With world population going the way it is, I don't think we need more people in fewer and fewer places.

3. China and India were not required to adhere to the so-called Kyoto Protocol, so it's just darned unfair and that's why we shouldn't do anything. Bill Clinton wouldn't let us sign the KyotoProtocol. Congress wouldn't pass it. George Bush is just looking out for America. The people have spoken and this proves (somehow) that the global economics of climate protection are riddled with injustice. Kyoto was a 20th century enterprise folks. We're now in the 21st century and the shit is hitting the fan in far too many ways than any of us could have imagined. As far as climate change and global warming are concerned, there's no question that China and India need to get on board with mitigation, but unless the 800-pound gorilla (U.S.) sits down at the table and acts like a mature, thoughtful giant beast, the other beasts will continue to do what they want.

4. The big Chrichton argument against global warming (in his book anyway) is that back in the 1970s scientists and environmentalists were convinced that "global cooling" was wreaking havoc on the planet; by implication this means, I think, either that scientists and environmentalists can't be trusted to give us meaningful answers on big confusing questions or that things are so complicated and hard to understand that indecision is being proferred as a virtue. I remember the media hype back in the mid-70s. That was when climate science was just picking up speed. As far as I understand it, however, the notion that scientists were in consensus about global cooling is essentially a myth. For a critique and explanation of why the myth exists, check out "The Global Cooling Myth" at RealClimate.org (by the way, for the uninitiated, this really is the mother of all websites on the science of global warming because the contributors are the top climate scientists in the world including: Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann, and Raymond Bradley, among others).

So, if you read Will, Novak, Kaarlgard and other post-Time/60 Minutes/ABC News/Ad Council nay-sayers over the summer, remember that their arguments are beginning to seem a bit anachronistic, canned, and pretty much uninformed by developments arising over the past 12-18 months. It's almost like they got together and came up with some talking points after reading Chrichton's ridiculous "novel" (I use quotes here because regardless of your politics, State of Fear is one of the most pitifully written, poorly-plotted, paper-doll best-sellers I have ever read. No self-respecting author would have let that story go to press. See my review at getunderground.com for more).

To conclude, there's a groundswell here. Maybe the 85% number in the opinion polls has tilted the media; maybe the fascinating new eco-evangelicals out there provide evidence that middle America isn't as split on the environment as we'd all assumed (back there in the old days--after the 2004 elections). Or, who knows, maybe liability insurance coordinators, risk specialists, and media industry attorneys are wondering whether it might be possible to sue the press for distorting reality by quoting "both sides" of the equation when one of the sides of the equation is generally receiving funding from various levels of the fossil fuel industry.

Whatever the case, global warming now has a bit of traction and the costs of heating oil, gasoline, electricity and natural gas continue to be a problem. My guess is that this momentum will continue at least through the summer because there tend to be a few droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods from April through September. Al Gore's got a documentary called "An Inconvenient Truth" coming to a theater near you very shortly (really!); numerous books are popping up all over; Elizabeth Kolbert is making a move towards getting a Pulitzer for her highly acclaimed New Yorker pieces on the effects of global warming; and every month two or three major new peer-reviewed scientific studies tell us something new about the world's changing climate.

But here's the obvious issue: unlike Brad and Angelina; Jennifer and Vince; or even Michael Jackson and Kobie--global warming doesn't carry with it a sexual charge and the potential for titillating innuendo. It is the Mother of All Human Problems, and as such freaks a lot of people out. How long will this issue stay in the mainstream if it has no tits and abs, no salacious mouth or sly grin, it doesn't wear sheer blouses or tight bulging briefs? How long will we care about changing our world when we've met the enemy and the enemy is us?

Many Scientists Believe...And Your Kid Sure Is Cute

The National Ad Council has teamed up with the Environmental Defense Fund to produce and air a public service campaign to educate the public about the realities of global warming and climate change. By now you should have read about this in your local paper. If you haven't, you can just Google "Ad Council Global Warming" or you can go right to the Ad Council or EDF for more information and to see the ads. I don't like the "Tick" clip, it just doesn't work--a bit heavy on the guilt-trip- through-cute-kid syndrome. But the "Train" clip is quite effective. You still get the cute kid in your face, but it says a helluva lot in 30 seconds.

There are two radio pieces as well. Like "Tick," they play to a suburban sense of guilt, but the message gets across. "There's still time. Go to fightglobalwarming.com." One very important thing to note, however, is that both radio ads refer to "greenhouse gas pollution." CO2, as most plants and trees will tell you, is not pollution. This little trick is part of the "reframing" initiative that mainstream environmental community thinks will work. It can back fire, too. Personally, I like the truth.

As you would expect, critics on both sides of the divide have weighed in on this campaign. David Roberts, an excellent blogger and editor and commentarist with Grist.org, is concerned that the pieces may freak out Ma and Pa Public. In particular, he wrote: "The public is conditioned at this point to view environmental groups as alarmists, and these ads could not possibly play more neatly into that stereotype." He offers his own script treatment as an antidote. It's more future-oriented and hopeful, but he still says global warming's "only going to get worse." Is there really something wrong with making people worry--scaring the shit out of them even? But more on that near the end of this piece.

Junkscience.com, published by Steve Milloy (a Fox News columnist and lobbyist reputedly paid by both Phillip Morris and ExxonMobil), has posted survey results by its readers showing that (as of March 27, 2006) 57.4% believe that the Ad Council campaign is "... an egregious example of eco-child abuse" Less than 1% felt the project was important. Milloy is also the head of the Free Enterprise Action Fund, the Free Enterprise Action Institute, and the Free Enterprise Education Institute...and God knows what else. All these "Free Enterprise" offspring of his have been financially linked to ExxonMobil.

CONSENSUS FENCES
Once again the idea of "equal time" has been proferred to the shrill (and freaky) minority that, apparently, the media is afraid of these days. In a sampling of articles on the Ad Council campaign, I found a number of reporters stating something to the effect of "...many scientists believe that global warming is a reality..." It's a wishy-washy thing to say, but it panders to anyone and everyone who needs a reason to believe that there's really nothing wrong with driving their SUV fifteen miles over the speedlimit. Many scientists...?

I truly believe that journalists think they're doing themselves and their readers a favor with this "fair treatment." But the truth is that the scientific community is in full agreement on an institutional level both within this country and internationally that the global mean surface temperature is going up, that there is clear evidence that greenhouse gases are increasing annually, and that anthropomorphic contributions are creating an exceedingly difficult situation to manage.

If media is going to invoke the "equal time" rule and give folks like Milloy and the Heartland Institute's James Taylor their say, it sure would be nice if they also pointed out that these slick willies receive large amounts of money from ExxonMobil.

It just seems like there's a line that needs to be crossed and journalists haven't done it yet. Scientists are telling you it's okay. How come you can't hear them? You'd rather quote mercenary lobbyists and intellectual whores? I don't get it.

At any rate, a summation of scientific consensus on the topic may be found at: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686 . Also, of special note, the Geological Society of America is currently developing a position on climate change. For a quick look at the process of scientific consensus in action you might want to take a look at: http://www.geosociety.org/aboutus/position10.htm

To be sure, not all is lost in this land of people whose heads are in the sand (butts sticking up in the air). A report in the Detroit Free Press stated that Royal Dutch Shell and DuPont all support the Ad Council campaign. My guess is that British Petroleum, GE, ConocoPhillips and all the other massive corporations out there trying to embrace climate protection are also supportive, at least in part. Also, the Free Press says nothing about "many scientists believe..."

NOT JUST CONSUAVITIVES
Of course, the press loves to play both sides of the fence, and while they're busy quoting folks who speak with their sphincters, the media can't help but get a few licks in to keep liberal, Bush hating, Democrats happy and horny for 2008 by pointing out that the Administration is behind the times and doesn't agree that there's enough proof that climate change exists. In her close-to-excellent piece, "Turn on. Tune in. Save energy," appearing on the front page of The Philadelphia Inquirer and floating around other Knight Ridder outlets nationally, Sandy Bauers wrote: "President Bush has declined to take action on greenhouse gas emissions, saying the case is unproven."

In fact, this isn't really true. The Bush Administration has indeed admitted that global warming is real and that human beings are a big contributor. This has been true for quite a while. There's confusion, of course, in that little bunker they call 1600 PA Ave, but for all intents and purposes they ain't stupid. The big debate coming out of George's offices these days is that we just don't know enough to start trying to fix the problem with heavy policy and investment. This is, dare I say, subtle? They're basically saying, "Look, it's real, okay? But we don't feel we have enough information to be leaders here."

So, they're trying. I really believe this. They're playing games with words because the Republican Party still needs all the money that the petroleum and coal industries give them, but they also need something to fall back on if we get another major natural disaster like last year's hurricane season...or if the Arizona drought continues, or more polar bears start drowning in Alaska, or someone gets crushed in a glacier slide...

THE SLIPPERY SLOPE (Falling and Shifting Gears While We Slide)
In fact, the debate on both sides is shifting. The "conservative" argument represented by Mr. Bush and friends, is that we can't and shouldn't mandate solutions. They say we need voluntary programs and efforts by industry. This has been the best conservatives can do for the environment from Ronnie Reagan's days on. And there's something to be said for it. I mean, if everyone in business acted on principle and made intelligent, long-term, moral decisions, a lot of the environmental chaos we see going on around us might actually disappear. The technologies and science are there to turn around most of the dumb stuff people do. The only practical problem is that there isn't any leadership coming out of Washington on the environment, so there aren't real goals or tracking mechanisms or much else beyond hopeful, good will. As far as global warming goes, though, it really is a start. Regardless of how practical it is, and how much it depends on the grace of CEOs everywhere, the proclamation that voluntary measures need to be tried is proof that gone beyond the "PROVE IT!" phase...hopefully, anway. Either that or George and his buddies are cynical and mercenary and have little concern for the future of the world and are just mouthing platitudes to make it look like they care...

On the green side of the fence the debate has shifted too. A growing number of experts really do believe that a "tipping point" is close at hand (or even that we've passed it) and that global warming may just take off on its own very soon. Check out this article in The Independent (you have to register to get full access, but you get the gist), and this piece in the Washington Post.

You could put on quite a show with those who think we're already pretty much screwed debating those of us who believe there's still hope--and believe it or not, I do feel there's hope. It's like we're the Philadelphia Phillies, it's the 7th inning and we're down 16-1 to the Yankees. There's hope. There always is. Nothing's impossible. I once coached a Little League team down by that same number, and we worked to a 16-16 tie in the 6th inning. We lost in extra innings, but still...I just needed better pitching.

Things are getting more confusing though in the Green Emperor's court. I've written extensively about the Apollo Alliance and others who don't want to scare people anymore with talk about danger and death. I've spoken to a number of eco-staffers and executive directors around my neck of the woods over the past few months and it's clear folks don't want to say global warming much anymore. Some are hung up on making the discussion one of pollution technologies. "We talk about clean cars, these days, not greenhouse gases."

My admittedly overlong essay, The Green Emperor Gets Naked, does not really agree with this approach. It seems we're better off being honest and talking about the problem, but then bringing up solutions and taking a leadership role in jumpstarting the social and economic changes that need to come about if we want any fighting chance here.

Which brings us back to the Ad Council project. They're not really trying to scare so much as create a sense of guilt. But it's odd, because the dichotomy we all saw back there a couple of years ago was between a message of fear and danger and a message of hope and can-do spirit. Somehow, out of all those discussions, we get this interesting, vanilla guilt trip and a website address. I wish I could be inside the head of each American the first time they see or hear these ads.

But whatever happens, I'm hoping Tick and Train will do more good than harm. The American public is a strange and interesting beast. If anything, we are not predictable. I'm looking forward, then, to people's reactions whatever they are.

In fact, there's no question that it's time for America to really get a big dose of media hype about climate change on their beloved television sets. The Ad Council project will do that in part. But perhaps it's just the beginning. Laurie David is set on waking everyone up too...I just wish she could get on something other than HBO. And there are a number of new independent films and documentaries coming out over the summer on various big environmental topics as well. Maybe in 2008 we'll actually see a national debate on this stuff ... or maybe we'll still just be debating abortion rights and gay marriage.

To close, I just learned that Time has come out with a lengthy edition on global warming this week. I am off to a meeting with a bunch of baseball coaches (opening day here in Mt. Airy is April 8th), but I will stop by my local Borders on the way home to pick up a copy of the issue. I promise to comment on it soon. From what I've read online by bloggers in the past twenty minutes, AOL-Time-Warner is trying to wrestle our collective heads out of the sand. I'm going to bet it is a bit heavy-handed and that the solutions they offer are in the realm of plug-in hybrids, compact fluorescents, wind power purchases, and recycling. All are good, but none gets to the heart of things. We need to spend a lot of money as a society. There's no way around this. But if ever there was a reason to take out loans from Asian and Middle Eastern investors, this is it. Our children maybe could handle the debt payments much more willingly than the ones for the social experiment we're trying in Iraq. Or, does any of this really matter?