seeing is believing

"I watch Bill O'Reilly every day. I love Bill O'Reilly. I'm proud to be an American. But I saw this movie, Chasing Ice, today. And it hasn't just changed me about global warming. It has changed me as a person."

And that's where I'll begin my review of the marvelous new Chasing Ice, a feature-length documentary from director Jeff Orlowski about a scientist-cum-environmental photographer who's out to change the world, one snapshot at a time. The quote is from an anonymous woman caught in the iPhone crosshairs of one Justin Kanew, a reality-TV star who recently walked out of a screening alongside this visibly moved mystery lady...

"I did not believe in global warming," she explains. "Every time someone mentioned global warming to me, I told them if they wanted to remain in my home they needed to step out. I said it was bullshit. I didn't believe it. And that is because I listened and I—this is the truth—I believed Bill O'Reilly. And I saw this movie, and I apologize to anyone I ever talked into believing there was no global warming. I have talked every friend, every person I know into believing there was no global warming. And now I have to undo my damage. And I will."

I recommend you take a moment to watch the rest of her soliloquy below.



To be sure, many global warming deniers are so deeply brainwashed entrenched on this issue that nothing save an abrupt about-face by the Faux News pundits would allow them consider otherwise. And of course, there are plenty of climate change skeptics who don't deny the existence of global warming or its effects, but who refuse to believe that the current warming trend is human-caused or that there's anything we can or should do about it. For a more comprehensive look at this cohort, you'd be better served watching Climate of Doubt, a recent Frontline documentary that deals head-on with the modern politics of climate change. In that film, viewers come to understand the anatomy of one of the biggest scientific smear campaigns of our time. It's at once eye-opening and maddening, but not surprising in the least; as with many things in life, just follow the money...

Chasing Ice takes an entirely different—and, in many ways, more powerful—appeal-to-your-gut approach. It does little to communicate the nuts-and-bolts science of our planet's rapid warming, other than to borrow a key graph from 2006's An Inconvenient Truth—the one with a carbon spike at the present day that leaves previous "natural cyclical rhythms" of atmospheric CO2 in the dust. Perhaps this is because the film's lead subject, James Balog, admits that he, too, was once skeptical about climate change's human origins...until he began to see things for himself.

At its heart, Changing Ice is a love story. It projects the passion and dedication of a small army of scientists and engineers with Balog's Extreme Ice Survey, an "arts meets science" project aimed at conveying the reality of global climate change with cold, hard, breathtaking visual evidence. The painstaking lengths this team goes to to mount and check their time-lapse cameras, to fight the often blistering elements, and to overcome severe technical and personal challenges hints at the urgency of the tale Balog and his colleagues are trying to tell.

And then there's the imagery. Jaw-dropping deep blue crevasses that seem to lead straight into the center of the Earth. A bright green aurora dancing wildly in the starry night sky above a stunningly beautiful icy scene below. A gigantic ice slab, miles long and hundreds of feet high, eviscerated in an instant as it calves off and crashes thunderously into the choppy Arctic sea.

All of which led me to ponder a familiar phrase: If a tree falls in the forest and no one's around to hear it, does it make a sound? The old adage kept popping into my mind as these incredible scenes filled the screen before me. It is clearly Balog's mission to make sure someone is present to witness and record for humanity what is happening in these glacial forests. And now, thanks to his work, a once doubting woman is starting to hear the reverberating din that these disappearing ice sheets have begun to make.

"There must be something I can do to help this, to help our children, to help my grandkids," she says, almost pleadingly, to Kanew and the phone camera in his hand. "I don't know what I can do ... But I'm gonna change it, because this movie was fantastic. Every human being in this world should watch this movie. Every one."

I could not agree more. ∞

CHASING ICE: OFFICIAL TRAILER

stuff of life: time to learn on blog action day

Today is Blog Action Day, and this year's theme is water. While there are so many issues I could focus on for this, I'm simply going to whip out one of my favorite statistics to get things going: If you fill a bucket with water and have it represent all the H₂O on the planet's surface, the percentage representing clean, safe drinking water would amount to no more than a spoonful. One spoonful!

It's no secret that the lack of potable drinking water around the globe is a ridiculously huge problem. In fact, it's so big that we in our busy lives have a tendency to pretend there's nothing wrong or otherwise ignore the issue because we think there's nothing that just one person can do about it. Well, there are things you can do! But the solutions do start with a small sacrifice: your time. To really make a difference, we all need to set aside whatever we can—a few minutes, a few hours—to learn about the water problems we face. And amidst all the gloom and doom, we need to hear about progress, too; there are a number of ingenious ways in which folks have already achieved success at helping keep our waters—and the waters halfway around the world—clean and clear.

For those of you looking for a basic background on the state of our world's drinking waters, you might enjoy my recent post on water safety. The following videos should also serve as quick, helpful primers on issues of water security, both in developing and developed nations. &infin

A friendly reminder about the world's drinking water, from Charity: water



How one man's invention could save millions, from TED.com



Why bottled water is evil—and not necessarily clean—from The Story of Stuff

trouble in the jungle

Okay, boys and girls, time for a quiz. Your question for today: What's the worst oil spill you can think of?

Did you say Exxon Valdez? Oh, sorry, no. In the grand scheme of things, the estimated 30 million gallons it released into Alaska's Prince William Sound are chump change. Try again! Okay, the Deepwater Horizon disaster must have been worse, you're thinking. And you are correct. But even this year's catastrophe—which, depending on who you ask, leaked anywhere from 206 million to 348 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico—pales in comparison to a systematic leaking of some 18 billion (with a "b!") gallons' worth of petroleum-infused toxic waste into the waterways and soils of the Ecuadorian Amazon Rainforest over the past 30-odd years.

Known to many as the Amazon Chernobyl, this horrid large-scale spill has poisoned once-pristine rivers and vegetation, killed untold millions of animals, and plagued thousands of Ecuadorian and indigenous peoples with various types of cancers, birth defects, and other ailments. Of course, with all the pollution taking place in a relatively remote jungle over several decades in a country you probably can't even place on a map, it'd be no surprise if you'd never heard of this environmental catastrophe. Well, you have now. Keep reading.

I learned about the calamity affecting the Ecuadorian region of Lago Agrio (Spanish for "sour lake") through a documentary released last year—and available now on DVD—called Crude. The film charts the struggles of some 30,000 Ecuadorians and indigenous peoples who've banded together to file a class action lawsuit against the Chevron Corporation, owners of the former Texaco, who were the initial drillers of oil in the 1,700-square-mile Lago Agrio area. The suit charges that Chevron should be forced to pay an estimated $9 billion—about two weeks' worth of their annual revenue—to clean up the contamination caused by Texaco's lingering oil pits and install new water systems.

Of course, prosecuting one of the wealthiest and most powerful companies on the face of the planet ain't easy—and Chevron is playing hardball. The script of this true-to-life drama has Michael Clayton written all over it, with corporate finger-pointing, alleged assassination attempts, and legal shenanigans the likes of which U.S. courts could only dream of (the case is being tried in the perpetually corrupt Ecuadorian legal system). At the end of the day, it's impossible not to take sides with the individuals who have no choice but to consume their polluted waters and face the consequences: a destitute mother who struggles to come up with the money to pay for cancer treatments for her teenage daughter; a baby, not two weeks old, covered head to toe with a dangerous skin rash common among those exposed to polluted waters; even a poor white goose, whose intake of oily water has clearly affected her nervous system to the point where she's paralyzed, webbed feet flailing in the air, staring at the cameraman with the look of certain death in her eyes.

The picture is grim, and it's an uphill battle for these folks, yet the film suggests some hope. One ray of light comes in the form of a Vanity Fair article, which exposes the issue, at least temporarily, in its high-profile pages. Another comes from Trudie Styler, wife of the rock star Sting, who teams up with her husband to raise awareness and money for the victims of the Lago Agrio disaster. As the film shows, their case has become a veritable David-versus-Goliath scenario, with no immediate end in sight. But with a scrappy legal team led by the feisty Ecuadorian prosecutor Pablo Fajardo and a savvy New York litigator, Steven Donzinger, it's still within the realm of possibility that David may actually win...if the trial ever ends. Anyway, check out the links below if you'd like to learn more. &infin

If you've got 10 minutes: See the 2005 New York Times op-ed about the Lago Agrio disaster and/or Trudie Styler's call-to-arms in the Huffington Post. You might also try this more recent article in the British Independent, or make a quick visit to the watchdog site ChevronToxico, which is devoted to the issue.

If you've got 15 minutes: Watch the 60 Minutes segment on the Chevron lawsuit.

If you've got 30 minutes: Read Vanity Fair's tell-all article about the lawsuit, from its 2007 Green Issue.

If you've got 100 minutes: Here's the website for the Crude documentary; it's also available on Netflix or for purchase from Amazon.

Images by the Rainforest Action Network on Flickr

we are all made of corn

Last summer, a friend and I took two weeks to drive a 6,000-mile loop around the United States. We saw all sorts of terrain, from the rolling wooded hills of the Appalachians to the eroded badlands of the Dakotas to the majestic mountains of Montana and Wyoming. But there was one thing about the lay of the land that hit home above all else: corn is everywhere.

As I've mentioned in the past, I've been trying of late to educate myself about what I eat so that, when confronted with the many food options available to me, I can make healthier and environmentally friendlier choices. In the process, I've continued to learn quite a bit about the food industry and its role in our country's economic, medical, political, and environmental history. I regret to report that with every new article or book I read, and with every documentary film or television program I see on the subject, the picture only gets worse. Still, the fact that food production is even a topic of discussion at all these days gives me some semblance of hope. To that end, I wanted to give kudos to a film I recently saw that deftly gets to the root of one of the biggest problems with what we eat today: the fact that almost everything we consume comes in some way from industrial corn.

I first learned about this idea when reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, in which author Michael Pollan describes (among other things) just how ubiquitous the giant grass Zea mays has become in our food system. And it certainly hit home last summer when I experienced for the first time what thousands of miles of corn and more corn really looks and feels like. But the 2007 documentary King Corn breaks the story down even further, bringing viewers not only into the homes and offices of the people who produce all this grain and the livestock that feed on it, but into the lives of some of the people, far removed from the corn belt, who've been affected by our glut of the yellow stuff.

The film starts out with two recent college graduates, Ian and Curtis, undergoing a chemical analysis of their hair. The results indicate that the majority of the carbon in their bodies originates from corn; you are what you eat, indeed! So the duo decides to take a year out of their lives, move to a farming town in central Iowa, and try to find out how this came to be. To understand the process, they plant one acre of corn on a small patch of a willing farmer's land and interview everyone who'll talk about the life of their corn, from its planting to its harvest to the various channels it may go through after that.

One of the reasons I really liked this film is that it shows you the state of the corn industry without being preachy: This is where we're at, this is how we got here, and we'll let you draw your own conclusions. As you can imagine, there was quite a bit of watching the grass grow during the making of the film, so aside from talking to the locals and playing a lot of wiffleball, Ian and Curtis also took some time to create fun stop-motion animations as a way to explain the basic economic and political trends behind the corn industry in the United States. The film definitely misses an opportunity to discuss some of the major environmental effects that farms have had on the country since World War II. But I'd say that's probably one of the reasons why the movie doesn't feel (as others I've seen have) as though you're being clubbed over the head by an insurmountable sensation of doom and gloom.

In any case, I highly recommend putting King Corn on your Netflix queue or going out and buying it on iTunes or DVD. There are no concrete solutions offered here other than being aware of what you're eating and of how the government plays a major role in keeping the status quo. But if understanding the problem is the first step in solving it, then this film should serve as an entertaining primer. ∞

climate genie: wish list for blog action day

Today (and every October 15th) is Blog Action Day. Now in its third year, the event aims to bring worldwide attention to one critical global issue through the power of blogging. This year, that issue is climate change.

As someone who blogs fairly regularly about the human impact on our environment, I originally considered whipping out yet another issue and hammering into your brains why it's so critically important to our one shot at keeping the world habitable. But then came all the pressure of choosing the perfect topic, and, well, I blanked. So I decided that it would instead be more fun to make a list of things I'd love to see come true in the name of quelling some our climate problems. Call it my little climate genie project! But instead of the traditional three wishes, I get 10. Okay, here we go!

Wish #1: Here's where I wish for an infinite number of other wishes. Obviously.

Wish #2: I wish people would teach their kids not to keep the water running while they brush their teeth. Personally, I've never understood this phenomenon—why one would keep the water on whilst brushing one's teeth. Call me crazy, but I've never in my life kept the water running, and my teeth and I have turned out just fine, thank you. And as I now know as a grown-up, it's just a needless waste of water! And we all know how I feel about that.

Wish #3: I wish people would just recycle already. It's really not that hard, and if everyone got on board, it would decrease pollution and use of fossil fuels like nobody's business. I visited an environmentally-friendly camp in New Hampshire this weekend, and I was amazed at (okay, and a little jealous of) their recycling shed. Everything was separated into its proper place, like with like, in dozens of plastic bins. My inner "J" was off the charts! And while I admit that most city dwellers like myself don't have room for such a tidy separation depot, lots of other Americans do; simply use a corner of your garage, ladies and germs. Even if that's too advanced for you, just separating your empty bottles and used newspapers and doing what you need to do to get these items to your municipal recycling collection area would be a huge step forward.

Wish #4: I wish people would carpool more. It just makes sense. Vehicle emissions are one of the biggest contributors to global warming, and while I'm not saying we should take all cars off the streets, it behooves us to use them more wisely. Plus, it would decrease traffic! A win-win for those of you who otherwise can't use public transportation.

Wish #5: I wish major supermarkets would start restricting what foods are available at certain times of the year. The amount of money spent and carbon dioxide belched into the air trucking out-of-season foods thousands of miles across the continent is just shameful. Not only that, all the time spent in transit means the foods you buy are far from fresh, even if you eat them the day you take them home!

Wish #6: I wish people would stop watching crappy doomsday movies like The Day After Tomorrow. These over-the-top films don't do any good for the dissemination of real science. Don't get me wrong, I am a science fiction fan. But I would bet that most people who go to these slick Hollywood apocalypse flicks come out thinking that whatever the hunky actor playing a government agent just said was real science, since it sure sounded plausible. No, friends, the Statue of Liberty isn't going to be underwater anytime soon. Don't believe the hype!

Wish #7: I wish we would finally get serious about solar energy. The Chinese are starting to make it a priority, and the U.S. is painfully behind in making solar cell technology cheap enough to compete with other fuel sources. We've got another several billion years of sunlight left; let's do this!

Wish #8: Back to food: I wish people would start thinking more critically about where their food comes from. Agriculture is another one of the biggest sources of pollution in the world, whether it's in the form of the chemicals used as fertilizers and pesticides, or in the form of methane burped and tooted out of cattle. I guarantee you if you follow the trail back far enough, it'll make you sick to know what that double Whopper just did to the people, animals, plants, and soil it touched along the way to your mouth.

Wish #9: I wish someone would build a car that could drive 300+ miles on one tank and look awesome in the process. What? It's already been done? Score!

Wish #10: And finally, I wish we would really start teaching our kids what climate change is all about. Let's stop treating this like some political hot-button issue that'll offend people to high heaven and blow up in everyone's face if we actually discuss it in any meaningful way. Climate change is not made up; it is happening, and we've known about it for at least half a century. The kids of today are going to be living with our messed up world for a long time to come. The least we owe them is a basic understanding of what's going on so that they'll be equipped with, at the minimum, an accurate vocabulary with which to continue the discussion with their kids. One idea: It would be great to start some version of the TED talks (which I love dearly) specifically aimed at grades 6-12. That would be sweet! ∞

the worth of water

A famous man once quipped, "When the well's dry, we know the worth of water." That man was Benjamin Franklin, writing in his 1746 edition of Poor Richard's Almanack. For a guy who lived 260-odd years years ago, Franklin sure sounds like he knew a lot about the year 2009. That's because the state of the world's clean water supply today is so dire, it's becoming inevitable that an all-out water war is likely to come to pass very soon. You think running out of oil is going to be a crisis? Oh, it will be. But it'll be nothing compared to the very real—and already growing—problem that a lack of clean freshwater will present to the human population.

Let me make this clear: People are already dying from a lack of clean water. Roughly one-sixth of the world's population currently does not have access to safe drinking water; that's over 1 billion people today! If we don't act now, you, too, are going to be affected. Yes, you, in your luxury condo in that big American city. Yes, you, in your rural wooded town with a seemingly endless supply of nearby rivers and streams. And yes, especially you, in your 2.5-acre lot in sprawling suburbia in the middle of the desert. And I promise you, it's not going to be a matter of if, it'll simply be a matter of when.

So what is the problem, exactly? The Earth is covered with 326 million trillion gallons of water; you'd think that'd be enough to keep us all hydrated. The reality is, although dihydrogen oxide is present on our planet in copious amounts, less and less of it is available for us to drink, while more and more of it is being polluted by fat cat companies who don't give a damn about anything but the bottom line. And sadly, the governments of some the biggest polluters—China, the United States, and India come to mind—are doing precious little to combat the disastrous effects that a lack of clean water is already having on their citizens.

From all I've been learning over the past few weeks on this topic, I could literally write a book about what's wrong with our water today—and why you should care. Instead, I'm going to make three simple recommendations for how you can do your part. I strongly suggest you comply with at least one of these; otherwise, I just might have to get all Erin Brokovitch on your ass!

1. Get Smart, Part 1: Watch a Movie! If you don't see another film for the rest of the year, do yourself and the world a favor and rent 2008's Flow, directed by Irena Salina. By doing so, you'll get to see with your own two eyes what the major threats to the world's clean water supply are. Most jaw-dropping to me was discovering how companies that want to treat water as a commodity are, in collusion with the World Bank, screwing people the world over by taking over previously communal freshwater supplies and selling that water back—often polluted, no less!—at exorbitant markups. And they do it with a smile, too. It's disgusting.

2. Stop buying bottled water. Sounds simple, and really, it is. It's not just a matter of saving all that wasted plastic—not to mention the thousands of tons of fossil fuels spent trucking and shipping very heavy water from far reaches of the globe (ahem, Fiji Water) to your nearest supermarket or corner bodega. You should also keep in mind that the companies that package and sell water are making gobs of money off of something you can get for free just by turning on the tap or using a water fountain. What's more, most of the water you get in bottled water is simply tap water anyway—it's not any safer or tastier! Do you really want to help giants like Coke (Dasani), Pepsi (Aquafina), and Nestle (Poland Spring, Deer Park, San Pellegrino, and Perrier, among others) line their pockets with more of your money at the expense of the environment? I didn't think so. Instead, just buy a safe (BPA-free) washable, reusable water bottle and bring it with you to the gym or wherever you need portable water. See? Easy. It'll save you a few bucks in the process, too.

3. Get Smart, Part 2: Read! I won't bother mentioning some of the great books on water consumption, pollution, and misuse that are already out there. If you've read down this far, I'm simply going to reward you with a much quicker tip: Pick up the Summer 2009 issue of Good magazine and read it cover to cover. In this issue you'll find an excellent explanation of why dams are so bad for us; a look ahead at how drinking pee may be in our future; an illustrated listing of all major models of water gun ever produced (yes, I'm talking Super Soakers); a step-by-step guide to reducing your water impact; a moving plea from legendary oceanographer Sylvia Earle on why we need to take care of our oceans; and much more. Alternately, pay a visit to The New York Times, which just published an important series on water pollution called Toxic Waters. Among other things, you'll read how good people are getting cancer from carcinogens in their tap water and how an unregulated farming industry has been dumping tons of pollutants into our water supply for years with nary a slap on the wrist.

The good thing to keep in mind, of course, is that all is not lost. One word of hope I've gotten from almost everything I've read and watched about our current water crisis is that with a lot of hard work, some concentrated brainpower, and some political will, we can easily solve all of our water issues before they become truly catastrophic. But you have to understand the problem before you can fix it. So get educated and spread the word, and we might not have to bear out old Ben Franklin's prediction about finding the true worth of water. &infin

oh yes, you will be mine

Living in a big city, in a neighborhood with seriously annoying parking, I really don't need a car. I've been using mass transit for over a decade now, and aside from the occasional late-night (read: early-morning) never-ending wait, you really can't complain too much about the New York City commuter system. I mean, my carbon footprint is a fraction of pretty much anyone who uses a motor vehicle, and counting traffic, the train often gets me where I want to go faster than a car anyway. So I'm good.

But you know what? Screw all that.

Starting today, I'm buying a lottery ticket every day until I win the big one. What irrational craziness has invaded my brain, you ask? Simple: I want to be one of the first people to own this pimped out green machine, the new L1 diesel bullet car from your favorite German car maker and mine, the almighty Volkswagen.

The L1 was designed with the goal of consuming as little energy as possible. And wow, they've made a few seriously funky adjustments to do just that. The most obvious are that the car seats only two people—one in front of the other, like in a fighter jet; and that the rear wheels are all but invisible, shielded to improve the car's aerodynamics. It reminds me of something out of Tron, which I have a strange itch to go watch again right this second. Oh, and the result of all this new engineering and design? The L1 can go 100 kilometers on 1 liter of diesel. That's 170 mpg, people!!

Now for the messy details: Volkswagen says the L1 will be available next year in limited numbers. What that means in plain English is that only multibillionaires will be able to afford one. If the run is successful, consumers will have to wait until at least 2013 for the L1 to go into regular production. I'll be waiting, alright, but I'm gonna add nylottery.org to my bookmarks in the meantime. &infin

three simple things

Twenty years ago, a little book called 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth was published for the first time. I remember getting a copy shortly thereafter, around the time of the big 1990 Earth Day celebration, and I vowed to practice as many of the 50 things as humanly possible. I guess I lost track of my copy, but I've always tried to live by that vow to the best of my ability.

As luck would have it, I happened to find an old copy of 50 Simple Things on a neighborhood stoop a few weeks ago, so I of course picked it up. (By the way, the habit of leaving used books on stoops for others to take, instead of tossing them in the trash, is one of my favorite Brooklyn traditions.) I wasn't surprised to find that although 50 Simple Things was written decades before things like carbon credits and hybrid vehicles became mainstream ideas, it remains as relevant as ever. So on this Earth Day, I thought I'd pick out what I consider to be the top three truly simplest things from the book that you can do to pitch in.

Stop junk mail: According to 50 Simple Things, in the late 80s Americans received almost 2 million tons of junk mail each year, and could expect to spend eight full months of their life opening it. While these stats are now 20 years old, I can personally attest to the never-ending influx of catalogs, credit card come-ons, and other unwanted mail that continues to pour through. Indeed, the EPA estimates that the amount of junk mail Americans get today has doubled to 4 million tons. How many trees, and how much energy and money have we lost to the junk mail industry? Now that we're in the age of email and spam (which is another problem, but certainly not as detrimental environmentally), it's pretty shocking to contemplate just how much we're wasting on junk mail. The good news is, there are a number of easy things you can do to cut down on your mailings. One is to simply call the companies you regularly get mailings from and tell them to stop. But you can also get in touch with the Direct Marketing Association, which handles postal mail preferences on this handy website. Or, you can sign up with groups like 41Pounds.org, which strive to help eliminate unwanted mail from being sent. Of course, for any mail you do get, make sure you recycle it! (And if you're worried about privacy, I recommend purchasing a cheap shredder.)

Recharge your batteries: Since 50 Simple Things was published, battery technology has gotten a lot better. For one thing, the amount of toxic mercury in household batteries has decreased by some 98 percent. On the flip side, though, we're using and throwing out more batteries than ever before, what with the rapid increase in the number of electronics that now call for batteries, where electrical cords might once have been used. So the two simple things you can do to reduce the amount of toxic chemicals released into the ground and air as a result of battery use are: use rechargeable batteries and recycle the one-use batteries you do purchase. Rechargeable batteries have gotten significantly cheaper and longer-lasting than in years past, and they're really easy to use. And more and more companies are offering free recycling not only of basic alkaline batteries, but for things like cell phone and camera batteries, too. For example, many Whole Foods Markets feature battery recycling bins, where the public can drop off used batteries. If you don't have a Whole Foods in your neighborhood, go to Earth911 to find the battery recycling center nearest you. And for more on battery recycling in general, check out this page from the EPA.

Bring your own bag: Paper bags are making a comeback at some retail stores, but plastic bags are still cheaper to make, so they aren't going away anytime soon. You can recycle paper bags and reuse plastic bags for garbage or packaging, but your greenest option is to bring your own bag when you go shopping. It sounds simple, but there's one catch: you have to remember to bring your bag even when you don't anticipate going shopping! Pretty much every chain grocery store has made some money off of selling non-disposable grocery bags, which look and feel virtuous when you parade them out of the store. But so often, people forget to bring them the next time they go to buy something, which defeats the whole purpose of buying a reusable bag in the first place! So if you really want to make a difference, buy an easily collapsible canvas or sturdy plastic bag—and not one you care too much about keeping pretty—in your car or your handbag or briefcase at all times. You'll be surprised at how often you find yourself using it, and you'll feel a lot better when you get home and realize that there's no baggage to dispose of! ∞

refueling america: grasping at straws

Hello readers! Apologies for the long drought in posting. It's been a busy 6 weeks...

So, there's been a lot going on in the world since my last post. I'll start my return to the blogosphere with a piece on a new marketing strategy I've been hearing about as I watch Mets games (an activity that has become a lot more painful since I wrote last...yikes). This strategy's moniker? "Let's Refuel America."

The label alone makes me think of such falsely named Bushy initiatives as No Child Left Behind and Clean Skies—and for good reason. The program is run by Dodge, Chrysler, and Jeep, who have teamed up to offer customers who buy one of their vehicles a deal where they pay no more than $2.99 per gallon for gas in each of the next three years. As the program website states, after buying a car or truck, you get a special credit card that magically converts every gas or diesel gallon you purchase to $2.99. (You simply pay the initial bill if prices go back under $2.99 per gallon.) Of course, as average gas prices have recently passed the $4-mark, the deal may seem like a pretty sweet one. Here's why it's not!

For one thing, I looked into the fine print, and you can only use the card for a certain amount of gas. I don't think they're worrying about people reselling the gas—although stranger things have happened. But they preset a maximum amount of fuel that you can purchase that's based on the miles-per-gallon consumption rating of the car you buy (of course, there are other restrictions on grade of fuel you can buy, too). For instance, if you buy a Jeep Grand Cherokee, which gets a paltry 16 miles per gallon, you can buy up to 2,250 gallons of gas—which, by the way, doesn't actually need to be used in that Grand Cherokee you purchased—over three years. But if you buy a Jeep Compass, which gets a much more respectable 24 miles per gallon, you can only purchase 1,500 gallons over the three-year term. How annoying is that?

Of course, the bigger problem with this program is that it promotes our continued reliance on driving fuel-inefficient cars. Rather than following the trend of many other car companies, who of late have obviously been working much harder at building and promoting hybrid models that both use less gas and pollute less, Chrysler, Jeep, and Dodge are effectively giving a big middle finger to the environment just to make a buck. "We'll pay the oil companies off so you can use our gas-guzzling cars!" they're saying. "Who cares about cutting our dependence on oil and our emissions of noxious, polluting carbon dioxide? We've got SUVs to sell!" It's really sad. I urge anyone in the market for a new car not to fall for this horrible scheme! If you really want to save money on gas and you must get a new car, buy one with fuel economy of 40 miles per gallon or more. Here's a list of cars that get great mileage. ∞

saving the planet, one plastic bag at a time

Here we are, Earth Day 2008. It's funny, but I can't help feeling like it's the early 90s all over again. Gas guzzling is out. Recycling is in. And the Democrats are using the green vibe to their advantage (with similar results in November, I hope).

So what does it all mean? It means that we have some serious problems to face, and that at least for now, we have to cash in on this neo-eco-consciousness. It means changing your habits whenever you can. Simply holding onto that plastic water bottle you just purchased until you can get home to recycle it is a great start. So is unplugging all those appliances that use up juice just sitting there, even when they're turned off. It means voting for people who will make a commitment to a cleaner 2009 and beyond.

I know it sounds corny, people, but I for one don't want my great grandkids to be faced with the choice between moving to Mars or enduring certain death from painful cancer after the ozone is all but wiped out. And you shouldn't, either; I hear Mars is pretty chilly at night.

But seriously, the good thing about what's going on now is that it looks like big business is finally starting to listen. Who would have thought that hybrid car technology would have become so popular in a matter of just a few years? Electric cars, which were the wave of the future back in the early 90s, fizzled and died out before they ever had the chance to make it. But you can't watch a car commercial nowadays that doesn't mention the words "fuel economy," "mileage," "hydrogen," or "hybrid." (Okay, except for that silly VW one with David Hasselhoff.) So, I'm hopeful that people are starting to realize that "Earth-friendly" and "business-friendly" don't have to be polar opposites.

Anyway, my two suggestions for you on this Earth Day: Read this eye-opening series from The L Magazine writer Amanda Park Taylor on how to change your plastic-using ways (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5); and check out this set of free enviro-toons from the one, the only, BrainPOP. ∞

recycle now!

Today is America Recycles Day, so I thought I'd start by going on a bit about how ridiculous I think it is that people don't recycle more. And then I'll give you some fun stuff to listen to! First things first: The Gotham Gazette just published a very informative article on the state of waste in New York City and the U.S. as a whole—and some of the recycling stats are crazy. It made me want to look a little deeper into the issue. Here's what I found:

¤ 50 billion bottles of water are sold in the U.S. every year. That's 167 for every man, woman, and child in America! When you think about the fact that most municipal water is clean and essentially free, this kind of stat boggles the mind. (Especially when you also know that some bottled water is just tap water in fancy packaging!)

¤ Only a quarter of those 50 billion water bottles are recycled, meaning that some 37.5 billion water bottles end up—needlessly—in landfills, where they will stay unchanged for the next million years at least. By the way, it takes about 17 million barrels of oil to produce the plastic used to make all the water bottles consumed in the U.S. each year. And the manufacturing of every ton of that plastic belches up 3 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Yum!

¤ If half of all New Yorkers would simply recycle rather than discard their junk mail, they could prevent 500,000 tons of paper waste garbage each year.

¤ In New York City, only about 50 percent of the recyclables that we get rid of are actually recycled. This is insane to me! Especially since if you live in an apartment building, where recyclables are picked up like clockwork every week, it takes almost zero effort to recycle. In more rural areas, where you might have to drive to a recycling center, I would offer this advice: Just get off your you know what and DO IT! You're already polluting the environment by having a car; you might as well pay back a little by making those wheels zoom you to the local recycling location once a month or so. (Of course, for financial reasons, not all towns recycle all materials; be sure to get the facts on what can and can't be salvaged before you dump your recyclables!)

Ultimately, recycling is only one of the three R's—which by now you should know by heart: Reuse, Reduce, Recycle. To really change the way you have an impact on our environment, you need to do all three. Reducing your use of "stuff" is of course the best conservation method of all—the fewer things we consume, the less of it will get produced, and the less pollution will be made in manufacturing. My favorite trick (though it's easy to lapse on if you don't plan ahead): bring your own bags to the grocery store. Heck, Whole Foods even made it fashionable (although I prefer my Strand bag, personally)! Another easy tip: Now that the holiday catalogue season is upon us, make a few 5-minute phone calls to get companies to stop sending you tons of catalogues and other junk mail (I'm talking to you, Capital One)! Reusing the things we do buy also prevents more "stuff" from being sold and manufactured. Just think: if all New Yorkers would refill the water bottle they puchased while walking through Central Park just three times, they could prevent 13,260 tons of plastic from ending up in a landfill. As for Recycling, it's all about attitude. You can sit around and do nothing, or you can take simple but important actions to help fix the sorry state of affairs our planet is in. What's your choice?

Okay, now for the fun—and a rewind to the happenin' year of 1991. I kind of can't believe this CD still works - it's probably one of the oldest dics I own! Anyway, first up is a stern warning from one of the queens of recycling, my girl Bette Midler (don't tempt her, man—you know she'll get on your ass if you don't do what she says!). And second is what I was hoping so dearly I could find on YouTube (it had a ridiculous video with it back in the day)...alas, no dice. The song itself is still pretty sweet, though...I mean, dude: Tone Loc is on there! And Ozzy! ∞

the beauty of our waste

I recently stumbled on the work of Chris Jordan, a Seattle-based photographer who specializes in environmental issues. Jordan's photographs are nothing short of mesmerizing.

His two latest series deal mostly with the magnitude of our waste. The photo above is just one example of various scenes he's scoped out of dumps for very specific items - this one being old cell phones. Many of the topics Jordan photographs are rather mundane - shards of glass, pieces of scrap metal - but his many shots of consumer electronics trash, such as an entire field of old circuit boards, are a sobering reminder of just how wasteful a lot we Americans have become.

Jordan's most recent series, which uses digitally enhanced photographs to show in a small space the grandiosity of many of our seemingly small actions, is a little more manipulated, but it works to great effect. The images are similar to those Chuck-Close-style photomosaics, where hundreds or thousands of different photographs are used to represent individual "pixels"... For instance, in one shot, Jordan uses exactly 106,000 aluminum soda cans to reproduce Georges Seurat's iconic Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. The 106,000 represents the number of soda cans used every 30 seconds in the United States. Most of the images in this series, though, look like white noise unless you're looking closely. But when you do look closely (Jordan provides three zooms for each shot in the series on his site), you can literally feel the enormity of the statistics his images visually convey.

Sadly, the Web isn't really the best place to view the largest of Jordan's images. To get the full scale, you have to see one of the pieces in person because most of them are actually 5 feet tall by 6 feet wide! (The second set of images here includes zooms of a 10' x 23' piece with 2.3 million prison uniforms, one for each person who was incarcerated in the U.S. in 2005.) Anyway, if you have a chance, go check out Chris Jordan's work in the flesh. But if not, his site is definitely worth a visit. In it, you'll also find some heartbreaking but astounding photos he shot of the devastation left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. ∞