Blue Olives

Plastic Gyrations: Science Stirring Up Plastic Soup

2011-01-12T13:52:00.003-05:00

Source: PynkCelebrity.com

It's been described as "plastic soup" in a bowl twice the size of Texas and 30 feet deep. Or how about a three-story Walmart streaming from the border of Mexico up along the Rockies and out to California all the way up to Canada? Plastic soup -- the Pacific Plastic Gyre/the Garbage Patch/the Trash Vortex -- proof positive that our love affair with disposable petroleum polymers is out of control.

At least it's not being called a stew. Plastics stew implies goo, and that wouldn't be good at all. Go here to the Chic Ecologist and to the Algalita Marine Research Foundation to learn about this awesome manmade miasma. Of course, if you're a real environmentalist, I'm assuming you know all about this situation.

Source: CafeMom.com

But note something important that's just come up in the past week: recent findings by Oregon State University researcher Angel White point to the actual quantity of plastic being closer to about 1% the size of Texas. In a press release from OSU, she says, “If we were to filter the surface area of the ocean equivalent to a football field in waters having the highest concentration (of plastic) ever recorded, the amount of plastic recovered would not even extend to the 1-inch line.”

See a very interesting and detailed press release on Dr. White's research here.

Dr. White is clearly concerned about the impact of plastic in the ocean, both the positive and negative sides of the equation, but she's also helping create a bit more of a sense of reality about the "plastics problem" in our seas -- which seems kind of important, if you ask me.

As long as decision makers operate in the realm of myth and hyperbole, it's hard for good policy and practical solutions to get outside of the lunacy of politics.

Source: TreeHugger.com

Plastics in the ocean, regardless of the actual geography of the problem, are not being studied enough and may represent one of the best examples of "out of sight out of mind" we can find on this earth (don't get me started on space trash). That plastic bag or clamshell salad container you just threw away? Where is it going to be five years from now? Or, check out this wonderful book that goes on sale in the spring, "Moby Duck," that originated in an article for Harper's (January, 2007, in which we realize that Donovan Hohn is one of the best writers in America). The very indestructability and light weight of plastic is a major cause of this plastic soup problem, isn't it? Ah, the trials of ubiquity!

It's too bad the American Chemistry Council is so busy defending plastic. One of the most impressive and interesting components of this massive, floating river of random debris is that there couldn't be a better lab for understanding how plastic breaks down naturally. They may start off as whole objects, but the effect of intense solar radiation, microbial infestation and the titration effect of sea water -- along with sea life eating and picking at this flotsam -- means a gradual disintegration of the whole object into pieces and specks that can, of course, be further ingested by smaller and smaller members of the ecosystem.

It would seem, then, that perhaps there is a function of science that gets lost too often. Environmentalists attack so much with hyperbole and overstatement (not always, but far too often), and industry attacks and defends with rhetoric, data manipulation, and lobbying dollars.

Here we have science, though, looking at this problem and trying to separate out the truth from the twisted. One can only hope that all sides can work together to figure out how to deal with the reality of this situation. It's certainly not good enough to let this toxic situation fester out of sight and out of mind.

Keep Recycling!

Can Measurement Save the World?

2010-12-27T17:31:00.004-05:00

Photo Source: Boston Globe (Creative Commons registered)

I love our family Prius. It tells me in real-time what our average miles per gallon are for every tank we buy. There are other cars out there with trip computers measuring fuel efficiency, but not enough. I imagine if every car in America came with an on board metrics system gauging efficiency there would be a lot fewer muscle cars and SUVs on the road.

This measurement thing is also a big deal in the recycling world. The best recycling programs around the country tend to be those in so-called "Pay As You Throw" districts where people are charged by volume or weight for trash service. EPA has documented the effectiveness of PAYT. And the most exciting feature of RecycleBank's incentive program to folks like me (I coordinate Philadelphia's recycling efforts) is not so much the discount coupons you get for recycling but the fact that they weigh how much material you put out on the street every week. If ever there was a reason to recycle it would be to beat my family average weekly rate of 48 pounds of recyclables (and 17 pounds of trash).

The big game over the next decade in the energy world is going to be creating "smart grid"applications for home and office use that give real-time energy consumption and load data. We read all this stuff about putting lids on pots of pasta, and re-lamping with CFLs, and washing clothes in cold water, but our family has been doing those things for more than 20 years (and I bet yours has too).

What I want is an app that lets me control every outlet in my house and lets me remotely set my thermostat, turn on my dishwasher during my commute home, pre-heat the oven, and just simply know at any given moment how much electricity and natural gas we're using -- especially my kids with their video games (I want to charge them).

We hear about solar, wind, geo-thermal, biomass, and hydrogen constantly. Alternative and electric vehicles are all the rage. But what about intelligence? Measuring things -- in real-time -- and really getting detailed information is how we get smart about energy use. Using an iPhone or Droid to control appliances and electrical systems is actually cooler than solar and has more sex appeal if you ask me.

Check out this video by the CleanTech people for starters. And also this article on iPad and iPhone potentials for remote control personal energy management systems.

But note that a great deal of effort is still going into the power generation and transmission side of things (read "utilities" here) and not the end user side of the equation. See this piece from GreenBiz.com as an example. There is a movement underfoot and it's clear and obvious that iPad/iPhone apps make a helluva lot of sense once the infrastructure is in place, but the idea has to be to let consumers monitor their own usage and also to give them control over each piece of their home's energy system.

Note as well that visits to websites for the Natural Resource Defense Council, Edison Electric Institute, Rocky Mountain Institute, and Sierra Club don't point to the logic of monitoring and measurement as first priorities. They all talk about "clean energy" and demand side energy management, but there's nothing about the value of simply knowing what you need to know to make rational decisions about energy use.

Without doubt there are complications in making all of this work. For one, home circuitry is going to have to get smart, and, yes, grids will too. Likewise, industry leaders are going to need to establish standardized systems and open architecture-like protocols that allow all things electrical to talk to us on our iGadgets. All of that costs money. But the whole idea behind saving energy is saving money...isn't it?

The entrepreneurial opportunity here is phenomenal, though. And the savings could be profound. Imagine leaving your house and actually being able to check that you turned off all the lights and the stove while you buckle up for a flight to Florida. Or how about turning the lights on in the house from Florida to make people think you're home? Yes, I know that won't save energy, but what would you pay for that kind of peace of mind?

And let's take it one step further. Why are we not embedding touch screen computers (read iPad here) in refrigerator doors and kitchen cabinets? Forget the little iPad screen here. Think big and think smart: try a 20" screen and converge TV and Internet applications all in one...and let me monitor every little kilowatt in my house while I make dinner for my family.

Measurement is the first line of environmental defense.

If only Toyota built houses. If only Apple ran the nation's transmission system. If only Bill Gates was CEO of my gas company!

By the way, Keep Recycling!

Why Green Jobs Don't Count

2010-03-13T15:33:00.001-05:00

In ten years, if we're still talking about green jobs, we will have failed to transform the world economy to a more sustainable and egalitarian set of markets. For many of us who have been invested in the so-called "green revolution" for the past three decades, the fact that we're talking about jobs with special hues even today is disconcerting. As has been documented here at Blue Olives, efforts to modernize technology and establish a more democratic and benign form of productive capitalism have been in the pipeline since at least the early 1960s.

Indeed, "green jobs" should not be something special; they should simply be "good jobs" that are part of the status quo. Mining and logging jobs should long ago have given way to recycling and re-manufacturing jobs; autoworkers should be building nothing but high mpg/low emission cars and trucks; power plant operators should be managing non-fossil fuel electricity systems; and manufacturers should only be making photovoltaic panels, recycled bottles, super energy efficient appliances, and recycled content building materials. Dinosaur products and technologies that harm the environment, contribute to climate change, and support special interests (rather than global villages) should be relegated to the trash bin of history -- lobbyists and major advertising campaigns notwithstanding.

The key to success for the sustainability/environmental/green movement is inevitably going to mean creativity and proactive change in every sphere of business activity, pushing the need for "revolution" out the door and initiating new perspectives and standards from the assembly line to the delivery truck to workbench to the cubicle to boardroom. One good example of this purposeful mindset would be in the world's of bookkeeping and accounting. It's very likely that climate change solutions won't work without CPA's and bean counters who know what they're doing. So far, documenting and tracking environmental costs and benefits has been the purview of activists, progressive business people, and environmental scientists. Nothing against the science side of things here, but folks in the business accounting world have a deep history of ethical practice and methodologies specifically designed to create fair, apples-to-apples comparative evaluations of financial systems. Moving from numbers with dollar signs to tons (tonnes) of chemical emissions shouldn't be that hard.

What may be hard is for business schools around the country -- and the world -- to grasp the importance of beginning the process now of developing proper environmental bookkeeping and accounting standards for future teachers and students. Once again, informed proactive thinking is dependent on seeing an established marketplace for emissions trading that is supported by a predictable regulatory environment (please read here that as long as the global community can't get it's act together on greenhouse gas emissions limits -- especially the United States and China -- then everything remains dicey and chaotic).

Make no mistake about it though, without a well-schooled and enlightened accounting community it is hard to envision an adequate mapping of emissions and emissions standards. If you can't measure it, you can't manage it.

But should we call this new breed of business professional "green accountants?" To my way of think, no. Their world should always be about the black and the red. Businesses only succeed if they're in the black. Investors really only want to see the black. Green may be the color of "feel good" corporate marketing and environmental logos, but black is the color of profits and the color of truly sustainable endeavors.

Short-Sighted Buffoonery: Send me in coach!

2010-03-02T13:03:00.005-05:00

I'm getting ready to re-enter the fray. I recently agreed to take on a job in the City of Philadelphia that I can't provide details on, but it's not soon enough apparently. Leaders in Washington and state governments all over the country are doing their best to turn solving the climate change problem into another example of oafish, mercenary, short-sighted, buffoonery. Check out the rather direct posting at the Center for American Progress today, "Facing Reality."

I'm fighting mad. You should be too. Personally, I've been on the sidelines way too long and I'm itching to get back in the game. Yesterday, I listened to the news that President Obama is authorizing $54 billion in loan guarantees for the nuclear power industry. Now, I'm not going to argue against nuclear power per se, but what I'm still waiting for is a strategic plan, a truly intelligent approach, to tackling global warming once and for all. And we're not seeing it. The approach that's being taken all throughout the country is scatter shot and smorgasbord and shows a remarkable lack of wisdom on both sides of the aisle.

The logic for this rather unorganized set of solutions is that we have to let The Market decide what technologies are going to work. However, the reason we have a planet with rising average temperatures and changing climatic conditions is that we've let The Market decide. It's failed us here. Everyone knows that. The idea of cap and trade (definitely pay attention to this link and what happens with cap and trade this week; things are getting very weird) is a compromise. Everyone knows this too. The only way the market can solve this problem (technology choices that move away from fossil fuels), is with a so-called carbon tax -- or set of fees that force the market to quantify the environmental cost of burning fossil fuels and emitting other greenhouse gases into our atmosphere. There's no way around this. If we don't get a carbon tax, we won't see climate change go away...that is, unless we develop a plan that strategically addresses all the big issues.

I'm not going to do that here. And it's so frustrating trying to argue for a carbon tax, since there are no testicles to be found in state and federal government buildings anymore.

What I am going to say is that we need to start off with two very simple investment strategies as a nation. One would be directed at energy efficiency and conservation. The other at re-tooling our industrial system to use recycled material and to capture all urban organic waste (yard debris, food scraps, wood, etc.) for conversion to soil and compost. Both of these strategies can take us a long way towards slowing greenhouse gas emissions. Both can save businesses and homeowners money in the long-term (although trash companies and utilities will suffer). And both are profound economic development opportunities that create real, lasting jobs.

Instead we get massive investments in high capital, low labor technologies like nuclear plants, biomass energy systems, and landfill gas recovery. These investments may be necessary, but they aren't going to have a real impact for years -- probably decades. We need solutions that work now. Recycling and energy efficiency measures are proven and can start working immediately -- regardless of the lunacy in the District of Columbia and out in state capitals.

This Sucks

2010-02-02T16:58:00.003-05:00

Experts have been saying it's too late to avoid climate change for some time now. Today's news (it's Groundhog Day, for goodness sake!), is kind of obvious then.

Janos Pasztor, the UN Secretary-General's point person on climate change, has come out with the not so surprising statement that: "It is likely, according to a number of analysts, that if we add up all those figures that were being discussed around Copenhagen, if they're all implemented, it will still be quite difficult to reach the two degrees."

At issue is the so-called two-degree (that's Celsius) target set at Copenhagen. If the earth's average temperature goes above this level (using pre-industrial 18th century temperatures as a baseline), we will be in deep, hot doo-doo.

Read the referenced material for the details. Suffice it to say that a botched and pathetic campaign in Massachusetts, the Haitian earthquake crisis, the health insurance reform debacle, and the coming Super Bowl are all in league to distract us (immensely) from job one which is immediate and continued reduction of fossil fuel emissions worldwide.

In the words of Ross Perot, I hear a giant sucking sound.

Who the heck is in charge here anyway? You?

Boy, You're Going to Carry That Weight

2009-12-17T08:40:00.004-05:00

Yesterday, our local paper, The Philadelphia Inquirer, reported on a little skirmish at the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen between the U.S. and China over climate change policy. In essence, the U.S. wants China to open its books in order to determine whether the world's most populous nation is adhering to the voluntary greenhouse gas reductions they are committing to (as a so-called developing nation, China is not confronted with the same requirements as the U.S., European Union countries, Japan, Australia, etc.).

According to the article, both countries are in stalemate mode with China scoffing at verification demands and the U.S. stressing the need for clear definition and an "international agreement." The face-off is about money and China's concern over international sanctions. While China is deemed a developing nation, the U.S. and other industrialized countries are not offering financial support for climate change assistance. More to the point, China's fear of penalties for not meeting it's goals is a classic case of cognitive dissonance, kind of like saying: "Yes, we agree climate change is a problem and we are planning to do something about it, but don't hold us to our plans and don't whatever you do expect us to share with you whether we're doing well or not. We don't trust you to not hold it against us -- the world's leading carbon dioxide emitter -- if we aren't successful."

Today there is no mention of this ruckus in the paper. Instead we get an article letting us know that Barack Obama, who arrives tomorrow, is the last hope for a meaningful set of agreements. Indeed, it would seem that any significant resolutions are out the window and have been since the conference opened. Binding, formal commitments are being put off until 2010. This is being called a "political agreement."

Besides the stalemate between China and the U.S., plans to slow and then stop deforestation in developing nations are still up in the air (20-percent of global carbon dioxide emissions are created when forests are clear-cut to make cattle ranches and plantations); and it's still not clear what kind of funding the U.S. is willing to pledge to developing nations in overall climate change aid -- not just for greenhouse gas reductions but for remediation and protection from the effects of climate change.

According to the Associated Press, early goals of a 50-percent reduction in deforestation by 2020 and a full end to it by 2030 have been set aside. As much forest is leveled each year as to be equal to the area of New York state (32 million acres -- that's 3,653 acres an hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week).

These are big issues with huge quantities of money at stake. Africa is asking the developed nations for $30 billion a year for now, moving up to $100 billion annually by 2020. Japan has pledged $15 billion for short-term support to developing nations. All of this makes the U.S. pledge of $1 billion for deforestation seem rather paltry, to say the least.

So, Obama arrives tomorrow with a heavy-duty job. Fred Krupp, head of the Environmental Defense Fund, said yesterday: "If the pieces are here, President Obama is the only person who can pull them together into an agreement." Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton arrives today, presumably to pave the way for her boss with negotiations. We'll see.

Whatever this Nobel Prize-winning president accomplishes, real numbers for the U.S. and a serious financial mechanism to achieve them are still up to Congress. There's nothing like the American democratic process to solve a massive, incomprehensible problem like global warming and climate change. The only thing worse, possibly, is global democracy. Can someone say, "Chaos?"

The photo? Well, that's Copenhagen of course!

Ann Leonard and Karl Marx... Or Is It Frederick Engels?

2009-11-13T10:32:00.000-05:00

The following commentary piece is a welcome addition to the public discourse on our current economic malaise. All too often environmental activists and green business enthusiasts ignore the intellectual heritage from which they came.

Commentary by Neil Seldman, Institute for Local Self-Reliance

Recently on Fox News, Annie Leonard, creator of The Story of Stuff, was likened to Karl Marx with a ponytail. I do not know how Annie is wearing her hair these days, but she reminds me far more of the young Frederick Engels than of Karl Marx.

Let me explain.

Annie's widely circulated animated video makes the connections between overproduction and ecological damage as well as between sustainability and job creation. In all of this, she is following in the footsteps of Frederick Engels, not Marx.

Although Karl Marx is a household name, Engels may have played a more important historical role. Firstly, he all but invented Marx, supporting him financially, emotionally and politically, and introducing him to the dismal subject of political economy that would dominate his life. Engels was Marx's source of the historical examples that allowed Marx to create his world changing theories. Further, Engels made Marx' writing accessible.

Engels interrupted the life of Marx, an itinerant philosopher who jumped from one intellectual activity to another, and set him at his life's work. Finally, Engels was the public face of Marxism from 1873 on, as Marx battled diseases that claimed his life in 1883. Engels died in 1895, the leader of powerful national political parties and unions.

Engels was charming, good-looking, athletic, popular, and fluent in English. Marx was none of the above. Generations of students learned about Marxism from Engels' shorter, more popular works, which were more immediately understandable: they provided working people with intellectual tools to understand their historic era and the role they might play in its future developments. Always ready with a military simile, Engels likened his concise booklets to grenades thrown into the enemy camp. "Why can't you be like me?" he would exhort Marx, who struggled to write.

Of course, Marx, the brilliant intellectual and trained philosopher, added to Engels' insights his pioneering ideas about conflicting class interests, the economic interpretation of history, materialist philosophy that integrates ideas and actions, the fetishism of commodities that hides human virtue, and class struggle. Perhaps, most relevant were Marx' concepts of ideology, alienation and false consciousness, which speak to us daily in our modern predicament. Marx' vision of un-alienated labor in a modern industrial society, inspires hundreds of millions of people to this day.

It was the self-educated Engels, however, who was the first Marxist. Engels' youthful insights into burgeoning capitalism were accurate, and, he thought, could be scientifically proven as the basis for optimism for change in the near future. Engels focused on real people. As a textile mill manager and owner in Germany and England, he saw, up close and personal, the raw radical nature of industrial capitalism and the new political economy that it spawned.

He arrived in England at the age of 23 -- after a short career as a military leader against the Prussian monarchy, censorship and hatred of democracy -- to oversee his father's interests in Manchester. This city in the 1840's was perhaps the only place in the world at the time that could reveal the true promise and perils of industrial capitalism. England was at the heart of industrial capitalism. The textile industry was its heart, and Manchester was the heart of the textile industry. If one could transform Manchester, one could transform the world. And Manchester was the critical center of the Chartists, who had a valid democratic, non-violent strategy for change that would transcend the dualism posed by the creative destruction of capitalism. Engels loved the English workers, for he thought they were capable of changing the world, transforming competitive industrialization with cooperative industrialization.

As a child Engels wandered through his hometown of Bremen, dominated by his family's textile mills, built up by three previous generations. Despite the liberal views with which the family ran its mills, Engels was confronted daily by the Wuppertal River polluted by the mills' bleacheries. Nor could he ignore the workers' living conditions; warrens where human misery, crime, drugs and sexual depravity, were the only visible outlets for its inhabitants. Where the family could not be sustained. When he got to Manchester and saw even worse conditions, he feared for the future of his homeland, and for the rest of the world should this industrial system spread.

Engels introduced Marx to Manchester--to its new class of industrial workers, and to the Manchester Library, the working people's library, recently founded by Charles Dickens. Here, Engels laid in front of Marx the classical works of political economy and ordered him to study them. This ignited the decisive historical force of Marxism. Marx' and Engels' relationship developed into the most unique partnership in intellectual and political history.

All the core principles of Marxism were present in the young Engels before he ever met Marx. He marveled at the power of large-scale capitalism: how it multiplied human labor a thousand fold with its new energy forms and technology; how it created the greatest wealth in history; and how, simultaneously, it created the greatest poverty and anguish in history. How the owning class captured the state to promote its own interest and neglect all others. How the owners loved the law because it protected them. And, how the poor feared the law because it suppressed them.

Engels was the world's first industrial economist and first industrial ecologist: the first sustainability activist. He also was the most prominent student of the English Chartists, the first civil rights movement in the world that continues to inspire today's Chinese dissidents to totalitarianism.

Classical economists, reflecting the worldview of the owning class, Engels succinctly wrote, put selfish interest above those of "trees and children," or nature and people. Their ideas hid their practice of treating nature as a free warehouse for goods and a free sink for disposal of noxious byproducts. Children and families were also dispensable. Engels called out the owning class as both immoral and inefficient: immoral because trees and children are essential for human growth and happiness; and inefficient because trees and children are the most productive of resources if their inherent value is respected and accounted for in political economy.

Engels worked as a mill manager, but spent his free time with the workers, rather than the owners, who were his father's friends and partners. He recognized and provided statistical documentation of the new class of workers emerging; their conditions, fears, aspirations, democratic organizations, and how they cared for their own with the meager resources they had. He studied closely and categorized their struggles through crime, strikes and riots. Unlike other contemporary observers, he realized the potential power of democratically organized and self-aware workers, and saw it as a positive force for change. He incorrectly assessed that radical change was imminent.

Engels was a very accomplished autodidact; he had conquered Hegel and other philosophers in his teenage years. Having graduated from philosophy, he proceeded to look at the facts on the ground. Even the work Engels did while he was Marx's graduate research assistant still impacts our thought. His book on the rifle in 1864 won the prize as the best book of its kind in 1964. His military analysis of the US Civil War, written in Europe, is still studied today, as are his manuals for the defense of Paris during the 1871 Commune: Lenin and Trotsky used them in the urban warfare in Russia of 1905, the dry run for the successful revolution of 1917. Engels' inquiry into the evolutionary theories of Darwin (competitive naturalism) versus Kropotkin (cooperative naturalism) continues to inform modern scholars. The most prominent evolutionary biologist and science writer of our time, Stephen Jay Gould, considered Engels' The Part Played by Labor in the Transition from Ape to Man the most important work in rejecting the "idealistic" and "Western" prejudice regarding the primacy of the brain in human evolution. Engels' analytical writings on women and the family are also the subjects of conferences and colloquia to this day. His Origin of the Family presented evolutionary anthropology that tied family history to economic history in a linear, causal relationship. The 1884 book serves as a primer for his and Marx' theory of the family.

In some matters of deep philosophy, Engels struggled without Marx to guide him. Some historians trace the origins of Soviet Totalitarianism to Engels' concept of dialectical materialism, a term he never uttered or wrote. In fact, Engels is to Soviet Totalitarianism as Christ is to the Spanish Inquisition.

Engels understood the facts of capitalism; he even saw the basic structure of society that it created -- the state captured by the owning class. He felt unable, however, to put his ideas into a historic or scientific framework. Engels was a true heir to the Enlightenment. He needed to use science to conquer religion and bogus philosophy. Engels and Marx grew up in Westphalia in the Rhineland, the outer reaches of Napoleon's empire, as part of a generation deeply influenced by freeing intellectual influences of the Great French Revolution. Heir as he was to the Enlightenment, Engels rebelled at the overemphasis on individualism, and held community and social commitment as inalienable aspects of human happiness.

Engels needed Marx to scientifically confirm his moral insights. Marx needed Engels to be his remarkably gifted researcher. Engels would learn ancient languages so that he could detect and explain land ownership and social relations to Marx. When Marx would marvel at his ability to learn languages quickly, in the evenings after a full day's work at the mills, Engels would quip, "it is not hard work, I enjoy it." Marx also needed Engels' friendship and generosity to survive.

Few people actually read Marx: many found him too confusing. Marx's prose was often a patchwork of passages written by his current philosophical enemies. One had to be familiar with the work of these enemies in order to comprehend Marx's attacks. Marx's economic writings in Das Kapital (completed by Engels after Marx' death), were undecipherable; Das Kapital remains important today because of its brilliant and invaluable depiction and analysis of history, literature, art and psychology.

Engels' writing was clear and popular in style, where Marx's was verbose and full of vitriol. Engels wrote the first draft of The Holy Family. It was 12 pages. Marx returned to him a 300-page manuscript that bordered on diatribe. There were always contradictions to interpret within Marx's work. Scholars shied away from discussions with this mean-spirited curmudgeon; he eviscerated any who disagreed with him, including former allies and teachers.

Engels wanted an ounce of action rather than a ton of theory. In 1848, when the democratic nationalist revolutions erupted throughout Europe, Marx went to the printing press. Engels went to the front, where he fought bravely and led military actions. Engels transformed dense prose into simpler messages. His use of biological similes (such as the withering away of the state, and violence as the midwife of revolution) captivated the working public's imagination and admiration. This popularity, coupled with his cunning political skill, allowed Engels to win the 20-year struggle against Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor of Germany. In 1870, Bismarck outlawed the openly Marxist German Social Democratic Party, which had some 500,000 members. By 1890, after Bismarck's fall, the party's membership had grown to four million. With his prestige and power to persuade workers of all nations, Engels could have stopped the world war he predicted in 1888. He died in 1895, however, leaving his German Social Democratic Party and all the others (except the Danish) in the wilderness. These organizations eventually fell victim to World War I in 1914. This event caused by the combined forces of industrial capitalism and the remnants of feudal monarchies, killed a generation of Europe's working people; never before seen in history. The war unleashed technological savagery whose devastating consequences remain to this day, as we still await the end of what Engels called the prehistory of the human race and the dawning of true human history: a history in which humans are allowed, as part of nature, to achieve their full potential. The failure of leadership in the Social Democratic movement was the greatest moral failure of the left in history.

Engels' ideas are important today because the ravages of capitalism that Engels saw in 1840s Manchester are still with us. The support system of industrial capitalism is based on human and environmental exploitation around the world. This machinery now threatens to contaminate with industrial waste the very air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat beyond human capacity to survive. The system sustains itself on the joyless labor of hundreds of millions of workers living on subsistence wages.

Engels' proposed solutions, as well as his observations, are still pertinent today. Engels pointed out that productivity increases when natural resources and open space are respected, and when workers are given decent food, water, education, housing and medical care. If these conditions are not met, needless hardship will weaken the workforce physically and psychologically. Engels was a zero waste thinker. He taught that the byproduct of one factory should serve as the feedstock of another, and that organic matter must be returned to the land to preserve fertility. Small farms, he explained to Marx, are the best way to accomplish this. He advised that industry should be decentralized and integrated throughout the world, with each region capable of its own production, distribution and consumption, to the greatest extent possible.

Under capitalism, Engels believed that "women were the proletariat's proletariat," and that a society that does not protect women and the family is unworthy of survival. Women, according to Engels, hold up more than half the world. In his view, a man who did not recognize the importance of independent women could never reach his full capacity.

In an essay he sent to Marx in 1843, Engels concluded that capitalism is inefficient because it does not invest in the two most productive things on earth: trees (nature) and children (the next generation). For these reasons, he stated, capitalism is morally bankrupt. He identified unions, worker cooperatives (production and consumption), civic associations and credit unions as the institutions forming the bedrock of a cooperative industrial society.

Without the transformation of industry that he assumed was inevitable, Engels believed industrial capitalism would destroy the world, its nature and its people. He hoped working people and people with common sense could drive a stake into the heart of this monster and reform industrial production and relations for good. If not, Engels foresaw, giant corporations as the only citizens of the world.

Annie Leonard stands for, and works for, exactly these principles. She is an international organizer on environment and labor issues -- the very issues that catapulted Engels to world fame. When we put her characteristics and Engels side by side we can see that they were both self-sacrificing, both combine theory and practice and listen to and speak to regular people. Both are strategic. Both are optimistic. Both interconnect ecological and labor issues.

The Story of Stuff is radical in that it deals with the very same causes that emerged 300 years ago when unregulated capitalism first burst upon the world. Annie Leonard has identified problems of rampant consumption, and its impact on nature and people. The Story of Stuff opens the door to inquiry among people young and old. The story leads directly to the solutions that the grassroots recycling movement has found and continues to implement. These successes are being replicated throughout the US, from Hawaii to Puerto Rico, and California to Maine. Zero Waste (90% diversion from incineration and landfill disposal) is an achievable and necessary goal for the US economy and for the entire planet. Recycling and composting are the foundation of a safe and ample future for all.

Annie Leonard's goal is to change people's consciousness and promote economic investment patterns that are good for people and nature, not billionaires and concentrated corporations. Her work points out that the mundane world of garbage is a clue to, and a powerful tool for, sustainability throughout our political economy. She reflects the values of our widespread and deeply rooted US recycling movement.

Conclusion: There is no latter-day version of Karl Marx that springs immediately to mind -- but Annie Leonard could well be a latter-day Frederick Engels.

Annie Leonard is on the right course, and bringing along many others using her talent for communicating with the public, especially young people. Her message is straightforward and transparent: By using resources efficiently, we can create a new industrial economy that does not threaten the earth or its people. This is an economic argument as well as a moral argument: it is the same one presented by Engels 150 years ago, as modern capitalism first started to flex its growing muscles and implement its powers of mass persuasion.

Thanks again, Annie.

Neil Seldman is co-founder and president of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Since 1974, ILSR has developed and implemented scores of policies, programs and enterprises that promote sustainable local use of raw materials. Recycling and economic development have become standard planning tools as a result of Seldman's 35 years of work in the field. He was the first to recognize the fiscal danger of waste incineration, and he pioneered the organization of citizens, elected officials and small businesses owners to prevent their implementation, thus opening the door for more cost-effective and environmentally sound alternatives. Seldman's business experience comes from factory management and industrial training. He is also a trained political theorist who has taught university-level history and political science. He is a postdoctoral student of the history of ideas.

For references and footnotes, contact the author at nseldman@ilsr.org or go to the bibliography at the bottom of the page for this essay on the ILSR web site.

Whither Recycling?

2009-10-16T17:32:00.005-04:00

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?

2009-06-28T15:37:00.005-04:00

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...

2009-01-12T17:36:00.004-05:00

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

2008-04-25T17:05:00.002-04:00

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

2007-08-27T19:50:00.000-04:00

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

2006-09-24T18:07:00.000-04:00

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

2006-08-05T14:41:00.000-04:00

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

2006-08-02T15:37:00.000-04:00

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

2006-04-03T17:47:00.000-04:00

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

2006-03-29T09:58:00.000-05:00

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?

National Electro-Scrap Policy Heating Up Again

2006-03-16T17:30:00.000-05:00

Pay close attention to those piles of computers on your loading docks and in storage rooms at work, and in your garage, attics, and sheds at home. A number of proposals are popping up again about a national e-waste recycling policy. Maybe you'll be able to get rid of them (or the next batch) and feel confident they are being handled properly.

The groundswell may in part be a result of Washington state's recent passage of legislation requiring the industry to implement a statewide electronics collection and recycling program beginning in 2009. The legislation establishes the Washington Materials Management and Financing Authority. Washington joins Massachusetts, California, Maryland, and Maine with such a mandate.

State mandates are what happens when the federal government does not take the lead on solving problems of national scale. If a few more states get out in front on these issues the computer industry is going to begin to taste the fruits of their indecision and allegiance to profits-without-responsibility.

Several years ago stakeholders from industry, government, environmental and consumer groups got close to an agreement with the National Electronics Product Stewardship Initiative (NEPSI), but in the final days of work electronics manufacturers were unable to agree on how to structure and finance a national program.

A new group has been meeting on and off for the past year, however, looking at certification programs for recyclers. The issue of e-waste dumping in developing countries, prison labor, and fair trade are major issues. (see the link below for information on the Basel Action Network, a group dedicated to controlling the globalization of toxic trade).

And the advocacy for some type of national recovery program now includes Wal-Mart, the National Solid Waste Management Association (although they still maintain there are no proven health hazards associated with electronics disposal), Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba (developing a product in conjunction with Wal-Mart), and Amazon.com. Even the US Postal Service is getting into the act actively seeking partners to establish a national cell phone a printer cartridge recycling program.

In the end, Electro-Scrap represents a highly complex set of issues. It's too early to tell which way the wind is going to blow, but it seems clear that this is an area where the notion of Extended Producer Responsibility will get played out once and for all. The computer and softward industries drive much of the U.S. economy and the basis for their profits is a new age version of "planned obsolescence." Lead-embedded computer monitors and television sets (many of which will become junk over the next decade as this country fades into High-Definition TV) should not be piled up in landfills or burned in incinerators. Without national standards and full, comprehensive, binding rules for the end of life for electronic components, consumers (and that includes institutions and businesses) will continue to pay the price of disposal every two years or so when it's time to upgrade technologies.

The Path to Green

2006-02-17T15:52:00.000-05:00

A January 23rd article by Usha Lee McFarling in the LA Times, "Studies Support Emissions Plans" gives the lie to the notion that mitigation of greenhouse gases will be bad for the economy. This is an extremely important issue. One study produced by the Center for Clean Air Policy says, "Based on our independent analysis of greenhouse gas mitigation (GHG) options for the State of California, we conclude that Governor Schwarzenegger's goal of reducing GHG emissions to 2000 levels by 2010 can be met at no net cost to California consumers."

Another study performed by the California Climate Center at Berkeley found that climate protection measures proposed for the state would boost economic activities, creating 20,000 new jobs and increasing gross state product by $60 billion by the end of the state's mitigation date of 2020. The executive summary for their 10-chapter report says, "Preliminary modeling indicates that just eight policies that were analyzed in detail can achieve almost half of the Governor’s 2020..."

While the Center for Clean Air Policy study only analyzed development up through 2010, the Climate Center's model attempted to extrapolate out to 2050. The report's authors wrote, "...technology innovation, spurred by a combination of regulations and incentives, will be needed to shift the economy over the long term away from carbon-based fuels and meet the 2050 targets. By acting now, California can gain a competitive advantage by becoming a leader in the new technologies and industries that will come into existence worldwide due to the common goal of reducing GHG emissions."

Why is this important? Because the prevailing "wisdom" in Washington and state houses throughout the country is a reflexive belief that attacking the greenhouse gas problem wholeheartedly through a combination of incentives for business and consumers and direct regulatory standards for emissions--along with carbon emissions trading programs--will inevitably be bad for the economy. During the early days of U.S. consideration of the Kyoto Protocol (under William Jefferson Clinton) a number of studies were published claiming that costs to American households (since all regulatory costs eventually wind their way down to consumer prices) would range anywhere from $150 a year to nearly $3,000 or more a year.

A good source on how people were thinking about these issues back there in the day is a summary Heritage Foundation did in 1998 called, "The Department of Energy's Report On the Impact of Kyoto: More Bad News For Americans". Yes, it's a bit partisan, but this was standard logic for that time period. They note that were the U.S. to implement the goals of the Kyoto Protocol gasoline prices would increase by 66 cents "from an anticipated baseline price of $1.25 without the Protocol's restrictions to $1.91 a gallon..."

As always, the Congressional Research Service provides an awesome array of references from that time period. Their Global Climate Change Briefing Book is a phenomenal portal into the last days of the 20th century.

The mother of all these studies was performed by the economic research group WEFA for the American Petroleum Institute and published in 1998. Global Warming: the cost of the Kyoto Protocol is a marvelously data-rich analysis on what the nominal goals of Kyoto would mean to the American economy. So profoundly thorough is this study that WEFA has been able to break down these economic impacts by state. They show, for instance that unemployment would increase from 3.8% in Michigan to 5.54% (nationally, the average shift would be from 5.43% to 6.45%). As of December 2005 Michigan's unemployment rate was 6.7% and this was before Ford and GM announced all their lay-offs--lay-offs due to the fact that these companies were so busy selling SUVs that they didn't realize that energy efficiency might be an important thing to invest in (the media doesn't talk about this, but the only way these companies have even been able to make any showing in the hybrid marketplace is by licensing the technologies owned by Toyota and Honda).

It should be noted that any study performed before 2005 probably means very little in today's world. Natural gas, oil, gasoline, and electricity prices have all sky-rocketed within the past several years. The premise of most of the models being deployed was based on energy cost comparisons between "conventional technologies" and new or best available technologies. Obviously, alternative energy sources and conservation are far more economical today than they were in the late 1990s and early years of the new millenium. It should be noted as well that technologies and other energy innovations have come a very long distance in the past three years: hybrid cars, wind energy, photovoltaics, cheaper compact fluorescents, energy efficient appliances, state-of-the-art home building techniques...you name it, we're moving forward fast these days.

In addition, any study that does not take into the account the costs of notaddressing global warming--ie, not factoring in catastrophic damage from hurricanes, flooding, heat deaths, and droughts (all recently occurring due in part to climate change) is now virtually meaningless. If you're having trouble still with this reality, ask the world's top insurance companies what they think of the implications and risks associated with global warming.

So, it's a new world, isn't it? I'd like to see the WEFA study revisited. I believe Mark Zandi, one of WEFA's principals, wouldn't do a stilted analysis. We know a great deal more than we did in 1998. We've grown up, haven't we?

6.4 Billion Romantic Idealists

2006-02-06T14:41:00.000-05:00

The final installment of The Green Emperor Gets Naked is posted at GetUnderground.com. Part VI, 6.4 Billion Romantic Idealists and Counting, deals with the consumer's relationship to climate change and environmental issues. Everything depends upon everyone. I believe that it's possible for people still--in this age of Fear and Death--to make the proper decision about their Eco-prints if they are provided with real leadership. All six parts may be found in the Archives.

Dead Polar Bears Floating in the Ocean

2006-01-26T16:37:00.000-05:00

Of all the stories I've read about the effects of global warming, Jane Kay's article for the San Francisco Chronicle on polar bears near Barter Island in the Beaufort Sea is the most moving and devastating (see "Polar Warning a World Warming: The Difference a Degree Makes"). I was literally brought to tears as I read this piece. I hope you will be too.

There are 22,000 of these amazing, noble beasts worldwide and 1900 reside in the southern Beaufort Sea. They live almost their entire lives on the ice. But that ice is breaking up more and more during the summer due to "Arctic melt," and forming later and later in the season. Polar bears live 95% of their lives on floating ice bergs. But with the ice breaking up, bears are forced sometimes to swim to the mainland where they effectively fast or wait for handouts of whale blubber until the ice builds up again.

At one point in her article, Ms. Kay writes: "In aerial surveys to count bowhead whales, the federal Minerals Management Service reported seeing four drowned polar bears floating in open water in 2004, apparently fatigued while trying to swim in high winds. They were seen in areas where the ice was between 125 miles and 185 miles from land. Many more bears may have drowned than they happened to spot."

Ms. Kay's article and all of the supplemental material at the San Francisco Chronicle's web page are well worth the time. The amazing photographs by Kat Wade are astounding as well. And Ms. Kay's online commentary can be listened to with QuickTime. Life is so heart-breakingly beautiful...

Sweden Establishes Ministry of Sustainable Development

2006-01-05T11:05:00.000-05:00

In his always wonderfully informative Salon.com column, "How the World Works," Andrew Leonard reported today on Sweden's new Ministry of Sustainable Development. So few have commented on Part V of "The Green Emperor Gets Naked" that I thought I might be off the mark or just too bufoonish for words. However, on the day GetUnderground.com posted my essay, Sweden was announcing the formation of its new ministry, proving that I may indeed have written something folks should be paying attention to.

I'll give you a few choice tidbits in a moment, but let me just say that what I wrote in Part V is extremely important. We are not going to get off the dime with creating a new economy, weaning ourselves from fossil fuels, and limiting the damage we've done to the global climate system unless sustainable development and environmental justice are merged into a new movement that is separate from--although, obviously, linked to--the environmental movement.

As usual, Sweden is far ahead of this country in meeting the challenges of democratic economic reality. Here's the lead paragraph from Leonard's article, "All Hail the Green Welfare State:"

"Sweden has a Ministry of Sustainable Development. Just stop and think about that for a second. In the United States, we have a Department of Interior and a Department of Energy, both of which are controlled by former executives of the mining, oil and gas industries that they are supposed to regulate. But in Sweden, Mona Sahlin's job, as minister of sustainable development, is to wean the entire country away from oil, gas, coal and any other non-renewable form of energy."

From the Swedish government themselves, the mission of the Ministry of Sustainable Development is:
The green welfare state - a vision for the Ministry of Sustainable Development
The Government aspires to make the idea of the green welfare state a reality. To this end, it will use new technology, construction and planning and pursue an active energy and environmental policy. The goal is to modernise Sweden so as to make our society more resource-efficient, a process of change that will drive innovation, new jobs, growth and welfare. In the green welfare state, our country will reconcile good economic progress with social justice and protection of the environment, to our own benefit and the benefit of future generations. Being at the forefront of development, we will also be in a position to succeed in the export market and support environmentally sustainable social development in countries that are now experiencing strong growth. In this way, national progress is a source of global opportunities. The modernisation of our societies has to help ensure that the resources of our planet are sufficient for us all! We must pass on to the next generation a Sweden where the major environmental problems have been solved. Welfare includes a healthy living environment with clean air and closeness to nature. This requires clear environmental objectives, effective policy instruments and international cooperation. A cohesive climate and energy policy must guarantee the future supply of energy, limit climate impact and at the same time be a motor for change in Sweden. Society must be steered towards energy efficiency and must in the long run obtain all energy from renewable sources. Sweden must have both a living countryside and healthy cities and suburbs whose development is guided by active planning. This requires a national policy for housing, construction and urban development. Everyone must have the chance to live in good and affordable homes in a secure and sustainable living environment.

Finally, in late November, the Swedish government issued this press release:

24 Nov 2005
Sweden aims to break oil dependency by 2020
STOCKHOLM, Nov 24 (AFP) Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson on Thursday announced the creation of a commission to find ways to end the country's dependence on oil by 2020. The eight-member committee consists of business executives, energy experts and professors, and includes Volvo Trucks chief executive Leif Johansson among others, a government statement said. The committee has been tasked with hammering out a strategy together with Persson, and is expected to present its first report in the first half of 2006.

When Environmentalism Overdoses on America

2006-01-02T13:59:00.000-05:00

Perhaps the environmental movement has just bitten off more than it can chew. Perhaps The Green Emperor is a bit overtaxed confronting all the "externalities" created by the American way of life.

Perhaps.

Perhaps, as my latest essay at GetUnderground.com discusses, the sustainable development and environmental justice components of the environmental "mission" should be set free. If you take sustainability and environmental justice and mix them with the organizing principle of the need to attack global warming and greenhouse gas reductions, you might well see a bit more movement on all fronts. Environmentalism can return to doing what it does best--protecting nature and fighting pollution; and the more social and economic issues of sustainability and environmental justice can be used to address the social change requirements for combatting global warming.

I would like to note here that I am highly aware of the fact that in my essay at GetUnderground, I do not offer any specifics on how this change might come about and who would lead a new movement and how we would go about educating the media that the environmental movement no longer really concerns itself with issues beyond conservation and public health. These specifics need to be worked out. I plan to provide some thoughts on these matters shortly, but I'm hoping that my essay will piss off and/or excite enough people that the failings and implications of my recommendations will get others to put their two quarters in for consideration. As I write in my essay: "Do we want to address global climate change or not? Who’s got balls here and who’s just lazy and/or greedy?"

Millie Floating

2005-12-21T11:04:00.000-05:00

Check out my short story, "Millie Floating" at my other site, The Formality of Occurrence." It was inspired by the weird things that happen in a marriage when one needs to put ones pets down.

Setting Off the Business Bomb

2005-12-02T14:09:00.000-05:00

Part IV of my essay, The Green Emperor Gets Naked, is posted now at the GetUnderground.com website. I make the case that the business sector is out in front and taking the leadership role in fighting global warming. Government leading is an oxymoron. Government should follow. Government will follow with enough pull from the business sector.

You can read parts I-IV if you go to the listings for all of my articles posted at GetUnderground.com.

-db

Facing up to facts and getting down to business

2005-11-04T10:19:00.000-05:00

There is an excellent primer-type article profiling 28 "warriors and heroes" fighting global warming in today's Salon.com. The article, titled, "Climate Warriors and Heroes" also contains a link to a special essay written by Al Gore on the importance of facing up to facts and getting down to business. If you aren't a subscriber, you can still get in by sitting through an Infiniti commercial to obtain a site pass. It's worth it just to pause for a moment and consider the notion that an automobile company is backing a global warming article.

There are many warriors and heroes left out of this piece, of course. Go to the comments section and make your voice heard. Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus were omitted, which seems a bit strange. Would have made it a perfect 30.

There are also no pioneers of waste reduction and/or recycling gurus listed in this crew. This may be a function of the diffused, regional nature of this field, but I would vote for either Neil Seldman and David Morris of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, or John Casella, President of Casella Waste Systems who has dedicated his company to high-quality recycling services in a number of strategic markets throughout the country.

Stumbling into Bethlehem

2005-11-02T20:53:00.000-05:00

The third part of the essay "The Green Emperor Gets Naked" is posted at GetUnderground.com. It takes a look at how government is failing and succeeding to deal with global climate change. Not a boring article.

Also, to find out about the wildly exciting efforts of RecycleBank, the latest and greatest innovation in the recycling world, see my article in BioCycle, Reinventing Recycling In America. An even better version of this article was published in the most recent edition of In Business, but you can only get that if you subscribe to the magazine.

Death Warmed Over

2005-10-22T16:06:00.000-04:00

A quick tip: for the latest from Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus--authors of the infamous The Death of Environmentalism--check out their "Death Warmed Over" article in The American Prospect On-line. They develop their thesis further and don't seem to be repentant one iota for pissing off the environmental elite. There is something dangerous to writing poetically in essays about world problems, but there's nothing wrong with a bit of creative insight...

GetUnderground.com

2005-10-21T17:27:00.000-04:00

For a good blast of thoughtful (and in your face) history on how the U.S. has stumbled around in the Middle East, check out the current edition of www.getunderground.com and read The House of Cards, by Dan Benbow. Near the bottom of the features section GU is still running Part II of my long essay, The Green Emperor Gets Naked. Part III will be out in early November and will deal pointedly with government's role in the environmental community--particularly with respect to Global Warming (believe it or not, there are some good things happening out there as well as the many dumb things you read about and hear in the mainstream press...it is not time yet to give up the ship).

The Best Environmental Thinking Out There...

2005-10-18T20:37:00.000-04:00

Without doubt, the best compendium of thoughtful criticism and analysis on environmentalism, global warming, the death of environmentalism, etc. may be found at the Moving Ideas.org "The Environment: Death & Rebirth" site. Specifically, this site provides links to articles from the October issue of The American Prospect.

Prepared in collaboration with the Nathan Cummings Foundation and the Wallace Global Fund, what is wonderful about this page is that not only are there links to American Prospect articles, but there are pointers to original source documentation and resource references that may be accessed online as well.

For anyone interested in filling their head with intelligent thought on the subject of whether there will be a happy world by the year 2100, this is the place to start. Highly, highly recommended!

Green Confusion

2005-09-22T11:38:00.000-04:00

The science and technology are here. The general consensus of the population is that environmental and energy issues are important to them. Start with recycling and home energy conservation. Add the purchase of a hybrid vehicle (much more on that later). Use mass transit or ride a bike as much as possible--or walk. Buy organic food at Whole Foods. Buy organic from farmer's markets. Purchase your beer in returnable bottles (65% of the beverage bottles made in America are for beer). Explore solar electricity, composting, buying from a "green" utility. Look for a job with a company committed to sustainable development.

Pay attention to what architects are doing these days. They are fully committed to "Green Design." They have done the research over the past 35 years. They understand daylighting, solar heat gain, fresh air exchangers, workstation climate controls, ergonomic furniture, low emission textiles, and the overall aesthetic allure of buildings. Green architecture reduces employee sick time, enhances productivity, and limits a company's societal environmental impacts. Top this all off with a serious investment strategy guided by federal and local governments for pollution prevention. Pay for it by doing away with corporate welfare for the automobile, petroleum , and highway construction industries. Thanks to the global economy and efforts by EU, Canadian, and Asian firms, pollution control technologies are more formidable than ever before. Now if only we were willing to invest in American businesses seeking to solve our own problems.

More than anything, it is now time to demand that we begin to prepare as a nation not only for energy independence, but to develop the tools and technologies to go off the grid and to let gas stations fade away. The biggest technology revolution in the past fifty years was the joining of computers with software and communications technologies. The biggest revolution of the next fifty years will be the demise of the energy sectors as we know them. This is a vision, anyway. A set of values. Not everyone holds them...yet. But the science and technology are here.

There are problems though. The military-industrial complex, along with the utility and petroleum industries, is directly challenged by positive environmental values. If they weren't, they would be fools. The more energy efficient and environmentally responsible we become as a nation, the less profit available to these dinosaur companies. The more we seek to move into a cleaner and healthier future, the more we challenge short-term investments. And if this were not enough of a problem, it is now clear that a new force is entering the mix. People give this force many names: evangelical right, Christian conservatives, Bible Nazis, anti-environmentalists, the Wise Use Movement, fundamentalists, objectivists. In truth, there is a groundswell that has been forming for the past ten years of numerous highly motivated, extremely shrewd, self-righteous groups (no doubt, environmentalists are equally self-righteous) and individuals who are beginning to seriously drive the argument about nature, technology, and energy. These groups and individuals have seized the language of debate and developed extraordinarily sophisticated rhetorical methods for confusing people and manipulating the media. Environmentalists pale in comparison.

The end result of all of this is that we have the means and the goodwill to change the world for the better. The number of positive steps that you can take to reduce your environmental footprint and increase your freedom from the energy industries is truly remarkable. But there are deep, well-funded forces on the march to protect their interests either by eliminating laws and funding for research and development, or simply by confusing you. Think about it. Why are so many people buying SUVs when they could be buying hybrids? Why did John Kerry, and before him, Al Gore--and both green blood environmentalists--so blatantly refuse to make environmental issues a top priority in their campaigns?

There are phenomenal forces at work in our culture right now. Something new and dangerous is being forged. And this is happening because we are confused. There are many reasons for this, which is one of the main intents of this website, but the bottomline is that we are torn between a past that was comfortable and, quite frankly, garrish (slovenly?) and a future that is unknown. If we can keep the confusion at bay, or at least limit it, there may be hope. We may have the time and the wherewithal to summon up the courage to take control of the destiny of this human world and direct the debate beyond chaos and self-interest. Indeed, there is a city shining on a hill, the question is what will we choose to power its lights--solar? wind? hydrogen? nuclear? coal? natural gas? Who's calling the shots here?

DCB

New Avignon (and the Katrina Blame Game)

2005-09-18T09:18:00.000-04:00

Anti-environmental groups are out in full force now in a second wave of the Hurricane Katrina disaster blame game (it's kind of sad that folks of any political persuasion feel the need to hold people responsible for chaos and disaster of this proportion). A tiny "article" was posted at the LibertyMatters web site on September 16, 2005. This group is a bit edgy, to say the least. The "article" refers to two different other “articles” from FrontPageMagazine.com which seems to be another rather edgy and interesting news source, but a bit right of Rush Limbaugh (don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against the Right, I just don't understand where they're coming from).

The National Review really got the ball rolling with their piece by John Berlau dated September 8, 2005. If it's true that the Justice Department is doing some Green head-hunting these day, then we may really have a problem. Who's watching the Justice Department and the FBI? The Homeland Security folks?

Salon.com did a nice little piece on the whole rigamarole so far. They end their piece writing:

"The Justice Department won't comment on the e-mail, but the Sierra Club isn't amused. 'Why are they trying to smear us like this?' David Bookbinder, a Sierra Club attorney, asked.

We don't know if any of the local U.S. attorneys have provided the Justice Department with what it's hoping to find, but the lawsuit [by environmental groups] the National Review described isn't going to do the trick. As the Clarion-Ledger explains, that lawsuit concerned levees along the Mississippi River. 'The levees that broke causing New Orleans to flood weren't Mississippi River levees,' the paper says. 'They were levees that protected the city from Lake Pontchartrain levees on the other side of the city.'

Keep looking, Alberto."

Let's hope the blame game gets played out this week in the mainstream media. It will be interesting to see how much more finger pointing there is at enviros. The truth is, as far as I understand it, there were two major alternatives for flood management reviewed in the 1970s. Shoring up levees was one. The other was to divert floods up the Mississippi to create a new delta in Lake Borgne.

“The first proposal reroutes the Mississippi River into Breton Sound, abandoning the river's present bird-foot delta at its mouth. The new path would build a new delta into the sound, with sediment drifting north into the eroding marshes surrounding Lake Borgne. As the existing delta's sediments are reworked by wave action, a new concave barrier island will be formed, adding protection to the south of the city.

The first, the so-called "left turn" proposal, has been opposed by shipping interests concerned about the time it would take to complete such a project and its potential disruption of business.”

Times-Picayune, November 22, 2003

That's an interesting little dichotomy there: one proposal rejected by business interests, the other rejected by environmentalists. Of course, the courts were the final arbiter for this second proposal...which is democracy at work, if you ask me.

All that said, in the past few weeks I've been recommending to anyone who will listen that they read the “Atchafalaya” essay in John McPhee’s 1989 book, The Control of Nature. It is a mind blowingly prescient social history of southern Louisiana and the attempts by the Army Corps of Engineers to hold back the Mississippi so that people can live in the region. McPhee writes:

“Nowhere is New Orleans higher than the river’s natural bank. Underprivileged people live in the lower elevations, and always have. The rich—by the river—occupy the highest ground. In New Orleans, income and elevation can be correlated on a literally sliding scale: the Garden District on the highest level, Stanley Kowalski in the swamp. The Garden District and its environs are locally known as uptown.”

When I first read this piece back in the early ‘90s, it really freaked me out (I’ve never been to New Orleans). Basically what they’ve been doing in the region since the beginning of the 17th century is camping out in the middle of the Mississippi. The region in one way or another has been flooded out dozens of times. They are basically ringing walls around cities to protect them from the river.

"In the nineteen fifties, after Louisiana had been made nervous by the St. Lawrence Seaway, the Corps of Engineers built the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, a shipping canal that saves forty miles by traversing marsh country stratight from New Orleans to the Gulf. The canal is known as Mr. Go, and shipiing has largely ignored it. Mr. Go, having eroded laterally for twenty-five years [that would be forty years now], is as much as three times its original width. It has devastated twenty-four thousand acres of wetlands, replacing them with open water. A mile of marsh [read wetlands] will reduce a coastal-storm-surge wave by about one inch. Where fifty miles of marsh are gone, fifty inces of addtional water will inevitably surge. The Corps has been obliged to deal with this fact by completing the ring of levees around New Orleans, thus creating New Avignon, a walled medieval city accessed by an interstate that jumps over the walls.

'The coast is sinking out of sight,' Oliver Houck has said. 'We've reversed Mother Nature.' Hurricanes greatly advance the coastal erosion process, tearing up landscape made weak by the confinement of the river. The threat of destruction from the south is even greater than the threat from the north." --John McPhee, The Control of Nature, 1990, Noonday Press edition, pp. 62-63.

Last week's New Yorker "Talk of the Town" section, has published a lengthier excerpt from the book.

The implications of what McPhee has written, and others as well, would indicate that New Orleans is really not supposed to be sitting in the middle of the river; that, perhaps, as they look to rebuild the city, there should at least be a few rational public discussions about moving the whole community to higher ground. Otherwise, it seems like this kind of thing is going to happen again...and again...

Finally, I'd like someone to point me in the direction of city planning programs at major universities watching all of this unfold. This has to be one of the most profound educational opportunities ever conceived for city and regional planning students--and the rest of us.

The Green Emperor Gets Naked

2005-09-17T10:05:00.000-04:00

Getunderground is publishing a six-part essay that I've written called, "The Green Emperor Gets Naked." Part I starts out with a discussion of the paper "The Death of Environmentalism" submitted by a couple of whipper snappers (Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus; see the video of a panel discussion they took part in at Yale University this year, it's down in the righthand side of their website) out of California to the Environmental Grantsmakers Association last fall. Obviously they were being rhetorical, and everyone's got an opinion about what they really mean (and whether the paper itself has any intellectual merit). But they've done two very important things: 1) they point out that Global Warming requires a much more focused effort by those in the movement; 2) they call into question the notion of what it means to be an environmentalist. The main case S & N make is that we need to integrate environmental issues with those of labor, civil rights, and support of poor.

Part II will be posted in the beginning of October. This is a critique of the notion that we need to frame the global warming debate (ala George Lakoff) within the story of Western economic industrialization (for want of a better term). My main message is that we are at a turning point as a civilization and the next 10-20 years will be crucial in our development. This past five years has been devastating. I'm not sure we want this chaos to continue much longer.

Parts III through VI will come out over the rest of the autumn and deal with the varying contexts in which environmental issues (global warming in particular) are getting played out within society--government, business, the environmental professions (different than environmental groups), and, finally, the lives of good old American consumers.

Attacking the Obvious

2005-03-17T04:46:00.000-05:00

The environmental movement is being openly attacked by numerous conservative forces in this country. You have to ask yourself if you're doing something right when people marshal themselves against you in a loud and somewhat orchestrated fashion.

It is instructive to parse out the arguments and vitriol. They are bizarre at times but also vivid reflections of how environmentalists appear. I have read numerous anti-environmental essays where half-way through I realize the author is really mostly concerned with wilderness conservationists. I've also read pieces that talk about environmentalists as obstructionists and anti-business because of regulations they are trying to ram through state or federal government. Of course, one man's regulations are another man's opportunities. If, for instance, we passed a law that shut down all coal-fired power plants in the country over the next, say, ten years that didn't meet stringent emissions control requirements, you would be creating opportunities for wind, gas, hydro, energy efficiency companies, etc.

The argument I find the most interesting against environmentalists is that "greenies" treat the environment as if it were sacred. "Environmentalists have an almost religious fervor about their cause." This subject merits a book I would imagine. We know from anthropology that all human cultures seek to define their relationship to nature in a number of different ways. Some cultures are more connected than others. Historically, our own culture--American culture--has gone through a number of permutations on the man-nature scale. In our early history life was brutal and hard. Puritan values openly sought to conquer the world we lived in, seeing nature almost as an enemy, impure and dangerous. Over time, however, as industrialization got underway, our ethos changed to what is called a pastoral vision where nature was seen as a wondrous and beautiful thing--God's creation. Our greatest thinkers and writers--Whitman, Thoreau, Emerson--evolved a way of thought that yielded an almost heroic connection between man and nature, a connection that literally defined what it meant to be American. "Oh beautiful, for spacious skies; for amber waves of grain..."

In the past century or so, however, things have changed dramatically. The emphasis on materialism, wealth, and the fruits of labor has swung the pendulum back toward seeing man and nature as separate. The emphasis now is not on nature as impure or dangerous, but as objective and, simply, there for the taking. The criticism of environmentalists for being "almost religious" is a function of the fact that some of us still maintain vestiges of the old pastoral vision. Certainly, Beat and Hippie cultures of the mid-twentieth century maintained this vision. The rise of the environmental movement in the seventies and eighties carried this idea forward. Indeed, if environmentalists aren't religious per se, we are at least spiritual about our beliefs. Being an environmentalist is a value judgement. We give importance to nature in how we draw out the future of man on the earth. The criticism of environment as religion is based on the idea that, somehow, non-environmentalists are more rational and objective. But that is poppycock. Reason exists in mathematics, logic, and, to a certain extent, science. But, for the most part, all people proceed through the world with value systems--or dis-value systems. Free marketeers and anti-environmentalist "Christians" do not have a lock on reason. They simply don't value Nature much--if at all.

So, it seems to me, we live at a time where both the pastoral and the man vs. nature visions of our future co-exist. These are two very separate ways of looking at the world. It is not clear whether we are in the midst of a major cutlural upheaval or if the sturm und drang is a function of the volume of ideas that media and information technology continues to turn up. Most certainly, anti-environmentalists are in power right now. Most certainly, even with a progressive electorate, the pastoral ethic must dance carefully. Controlling and managing the onslaught of business and industry--and governments themselves--is never easy.

In his essay Why Tribe, the poet, Gary Snyder, points out that there has been an undercurrent of rebels and maverick thinkers for all of human history. Poets, philosophers, artists, and many scientists have seen the connection of man to Nature and the cosmos and sought to move culture in that direction simply because it seemed like that was a Truth worth fighting for. But the battle goes on. And I dare say, it will for all time.

Salon.com Books | America's forgotten atrocity

2005-03-01T09:47:00.000-05:00

Salon.com Books | America's forgotten atrocity

There are so many hidden stories in this country's history about multi-racial communities. One thing that seems clear is that somehow most of them managed to rise above the general pattern of survival of the fittest and the richest.

Washing In

2005-02-28T20:41:00.000-05:00

My in-box is flooded these days, just flooded, with bloody articles on global warming. There's nothing but a sea of pending catastrophe washing into my brain. There's never much data, just good choice quotes by scientists saying "...the data suggests..."

Occasionally, I am privvy to the data. It's not a pretty sight. The data is so complex and so heavily massaged and tweaked that it's enough to make you think folks are making up their own numbers--or at least that they could if they wanted to. On one scale scientists are operating on the grandest level anyone could ask for on this planet. Thinking and theorizing about the weather is on the edge of magic. But the actual measurements, the search for millimeter differences in water levels, temperature, wind patterns, etc. is on the level of minutae as to be virtually insignificant.

I'm not complaining about any of this. It's just getting rather tiresome. The point I try to make to folks is that there are so many things we can and should be doing right now to combat global warming that will actually do a great deal of good in the world, simple things like line drying the wash, driving the speed limit, taking mass transit, setting back thermostats, buying compact fluorescent lamps, watching less TV, recycling, eating organic, eating less meat. You know what you've got to do...