Birding Babylon

The cover of Birding Babylon, a new publication from Sierra Club Books, shows a Blue-cheeked Bee-eater perched on a strand of razor-wire along the perimeter of Camp Eden, a military outpost in Iraq. It's an image that nicely captures the subject of Sargeant Jonathan Trouren-Trend's book, which the New Yorker recently described as "a slender, handsomely illustrated distillation" of the blog the National Guardsman kept during a tour of duty in Iraq.

A birder since age 12, Trouren-Trend found that Camp Anaconda, the heavily fortified encampment near the Tigris River where he was stationed, was prime birding territory, smack in the middle of a major migration route between Europe and Africa. As the binoculars-wielding sargeant added species to his "life list," he also maintained a blog that gained fairly wide readership and eventually grabbed the attention of Sierra magazine and Sierra Club Books.

Trouren-Trend told a reviewer from American Scientist that he was surprised at first by his blog's popularity, but eventually came to understand it. "To read about something as universally familiar as the migration of birds, or watching ducks in a pond, fulfilled a need to know that something worthwhile or even magical was happening, even in the midst of suicide bombings and rocket attacks."

Birding Babylon's official release date is May 1, 2006. You can order a copy here.

Wormwood Revisited

The Chernobyl accident, the greatest disaster in the history of nuclear power, occurred 20 years ago this week. The name Chernobyl comes from a Ukranian word that translates as mugwort, a species of wormwood -- the bitter ingredient used in the manufacture of absinthe. Historically, wormwood has been used to repel fleas, wean babies and de-worm intestines. Through what some scholars believe is a mis-translation of the Bible to English, it has also come to have apocalyptic associations, which seems entirely fitting.

On the twentieth anniversary of the disaster, there is much debate as to how many deaths the accident caused. The UN says 9,300 people will die of cancers related to radiation exposure from the accident, while Greenpeace puts the figure a full order of magnitude higher, at 93,000.

The argument reveals how little is understood about the health effects of low-level radiation exposure. (Researchers have had to use statistics from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings -- very different events -- as their model for assessing the health consequences of Chernobyl). The debate also reminds me of Joseph Stalin's remark that, while one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is just a statistic.

Thankfully, much of the reporting in commemoration of the event did get beyond the numbers. Some of the best coverage came from the BBC, which interviewed some of the survivors, including one of the so-called "liquidators" -- people who were conscripted to contain the contamination and hurriedly construct a giant sarcophagus over the shattered reactor. The man, named Vladimir Usatenko, who was later elected to parliament, remembers Chernobyl as a "fantastic lesson, a huge school."

In the end I understood that in reality, our world is a big supermarket where you can do what you want, if you do not stop to think that the cash register is located near the exit. It's not in vain that the sarcophagus is in fact shaped like an old shop's cash register.

Everyone should understand that everything will end with a sarcophagus just like this one - and that is the best case scenario - if we continue unthinkingly with our existing, absolutely ineffective ways of using and producing energy.

Strangely, Ukraine continues to be infatuated with nuclear power. According to the BBC, the country recently completed two new reactors has plans for 11 more by 2030. Just a month before the 20th anniversary of Chernobyl, Ukraine's Prime Minister Yuri Yekhanurov unabashedly declared: "God gave us uranium and today we should use it."

Subsidizing Our Own Exploitation

With oil selling for more than $70 a barrel and the oil companies raking in record profits, you’d think that we wouldn’t have to subsidize them to encourage production. Even President Bush is on the record saying “I will tell you with $55 oil we don’t need incentives to oil and gas companies to explore.” Yet in last year’s disastrous Energy Bill and other legislation, the royalty fees for oil and gas taken from federal lands and waters have been cut, costing the taxpayers billions of dollars in lost revenue every year. (Taxpayers interested in comparing how they're being gouged to other parts of the country can do so here. Since when was California a red state?)

Today Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) took to the floor of the Senate for over five hours in an (ultimately vain) filibuster to win an up-or-down vote on his “Wyden amendment,” which would discontinue the subsidy whenever the price of oil topped $55 a barrel. The Senate leadership is doing its best to change the subject. So instead of allowing a vote on oil-company subsidies, they’re attempting to bribe the American people by offering $100 tax rebates—but only if they get to drill the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Rather than boost conservation and energy alternatives, they’re trying to convince us that our troubles would all be gone if we had just allowed Arctic drilling ten years ago. (The convincing went a bit awry Tuesday.)

Gas prices are not, strictly speaking, an environmental issue: With cars that got 100 miles a gallon, writes Carl Pope, we wouldn’t flinch at $5 a gallon gas. But with our roads jammed instead with SUVs and monster trucks, consumer anger is going to come out somewhere, and the oil companies are doing their best to see that it’s not directed at them.

Hellbent

"Novelist scientist silenced as Harper Tories quietly axe 15 Kyoto programs."

That headline was making the rounds in the Canadian news media earlier this month. The novelist/scientist in question is one Mark Tushingham, who works for Environment Canada and has apparently penned a work of fiction called Hotter than Hell, which presents a rather dire global warming scenario set in the not-too-distant future. While the reported suppression of his work will probably only help sales, the second half of the story is a very serious matter. Indeed, it's just the kind of thing that could help turn Tushingham's fiction into reality.

As has been noted in this space before, Canada may have ratified Kyoto, but it's a long way from meeting its target under the treaty. While our neighbor to the North is committed to a six per cent cut in emissions from 1990 levels by 2012, its actual emissions have in fact risen by 30 per cent. To make matters worse, the new conservative government is opposed to Kyoto and says the targets are unattainable.

On the eve of Easter weekend, the government quietly announced that it would cut a dozen research programs related to global warming. And documents uncovered by the Globe and Mail showed that the Tories would move to cut 80 per cent of the programs at Environment Canada aimed at confronting global warming while slashing the budgets of climate change programs in other government departments by 40 per cent.

In a press release, a spokesman for the government insisted that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is serious about controlling emissions, but that "we need a new approach to addressing climate change that is effective and realistic for Canada."

Uh-huh.

The Real Deal

The selections for the Goldman Environmental Prize for 2006 have been announced. For those who were dismayed by Vanity Fair's Hollywood-skewed selection of eco-heroes (it was Vanity Fair after all), here's a proper antidote. Often called the environmental Nobel, the $125,000 award is granted each year to grassroots environmental activists from the world's six inhabited regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, Islands and Island Nations, North America, and South and Central America. This year's winners are pictured below. Rest assured, there's not a household name in the bunch.

Pulling The Plug

The sporty two-seater looked (and performed) like something out of the Jetsons. Speedy and practically silent, it used no gas or oil and required hardly any maintenance. General Motors invented it--and then almost immediately tried to conceal or destroy any evidence that the EV-1, the first modern battery-electric vehicle, ever existed.

GM wasn't the only culprit in the death of the EV-1. Director Chris Paine examines the roles of various "suspects"--including oil companies, consumers, and the federal government--in his new film, "Who Killed the Electric Car?" I got a peek at the documentary, which will be in wider release in late June, at a sold-out screening this weekend with the San Francisco International Film Festival. To my taste, the movie relied a bit too much on talking heads to be a great piece of cinema, but Paine tries to keep things lively with his "murder mystery" structure, and the rarely-told story of the EV-1's short life is certainly compelling.

Especially (and surprisingly) touching is the passion of former drivers interviewed for the film--a "funeral" staged for the car seems hokey until you realize the depths of their love for the EV-1 and the real senselessness of its demise. One of the most revealing stories, however, wasn’t even in the film: In a post-screening Q & A with members of the crew, we learned that the arrest of a couple of activists (while trying to stop GM from destroying the decommissioned cars) so incensed the judge handling their case that he sentenced them to community service--promoting electric vehicles.

(Get more ideas for living well and doing good in "The Green Life," a new section appearing in every issue of Sierra magazine.)

How Cool are You?

Honestly, I want to do the right thing when it comes to protecting the planet. And not just on Earth Day, either. I take public transportation, recycle everything I can, and vote for people who know better than to think that global warming means more nice days at the beach.

But when I took the Cool Home Tour with Sierra magazine's Mr. Green, whoa--I realized there's so much more I could do, and it wouldn't even be difficult or expensive. The tour goes through a real American house, so you can see what they're doing right (low-flow shower head, Energy Star water heater) and where they need to do better job (energy-saving lightbulbs, weather stripping on the doors).

It'll get you thinking. And while you're mulling it over, you can enter the Housecooling Sweepstakes to win a $400 basket of eco-groovy goodies. You can also find out whether your mayor is taking steps to make your city more energy efficient. Finally, you look into what it would take to make your city a "Cool City," and sign a petition to the chairs of the House and Senate energy committees, asking them to take the lead on getting Congress and, ahem, the president, on board.

From your own house to the White House, you can start making a difference. You may not think it counts for much, but multiply the changes you make by the changes thousands upon thousands of like-minded folks are making and, well, it adds up to a good day for the Earth.

Muir in the Modern World

It's John Muir's birthday.

The father of the America's national parks may have shuffled off this mortal coil on Christmas Eve, 1914, but his legacy lives on in wilderness saved, watersheds protected and species preserved. The Sierra Club, of which he was a founding member and president, carries on that work to this day.

Now, however, many of the things Muir fought so hard to protect are threatened by a crisis he could not have foreseen. Global climate change threatens the very fabric of the natural world. As the world warms, glaciers are disappearing at a rate that is anything but glacial. Climate patterns are changing faster than plant and animal species can adapt. And the oceans are becoming more acidic, threatening the foundation of the marine food chain.

So, while the Sierra Club continues to defend wild places, its mission has had to expand to meet this new challenge. As Bruce Hamilton, the Club's conservation director put it in a speech in March,

It is not enough to just work for wilderness and parks and presume they will be saved for all future generations by designation. We must all work together for smart energy solutions to reverse global warming before the world we cherish is lost.

We're certain Muir would have agreed. At the foundation of his philosophy, after all, was the bedrock realization that everything is connected. As he wrote a few years before his death: "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."

Gauging Success

In January, Sierra magazine wrote about Savannah Walters, an amazing 13-year-old from Odessa, Florida. A slide show in the third grade inspired her to start a group called Pump 'em Up. Its mission: To get Americans to save energy by properly inflating their tires.

Underinflated tires wear faster and require more energy to turn. According to the Department of Energy, proper tire inflation can increase fuel mileage by 3 percent or more. As Savannah points out, the potential savings are huge: Roughly 4 million gallons of gas each day!

Impressed by the youngster's initiative, Sears, Firestone, and Goodyear donated a thousand tire gauges, and suddenly Savannah and her friends were in business, handing out gauges and flyers for free. Sierra thought it was great that someone so young was doing so much.

But that was just the beginning. NBC News saw the Sierra story and put Savannah on TV this spring. Soon her organization was getting emails from all over the country, including this one from Phillip L. Sumner, who works for Masterfoods, the company that makes Snickers and M&Ms:

Hi Savannah:

I saw about five seconds of an interview with you on the national news. I think you have great idea and I want to participate. So I found your Web site and began to implement your program.

I have installed an air hose reel with built-in pressure gauge in our main parking lot. I now have a dedicated parking space painted to represent environmental awareness. My team of volunteers has purchased 350 tire gauges to be given away on April 21. We will be checking tires and educating all associates at our facility as to the environmental impact associated with underpressurized tires.

In Savannah's honor, Sumner hung a Pump 'em Up banner over the Masterfoods parking space. If one thirteen-year-old can make all this happen, well ... I gotta go check my tires.

Dust-up in the Blogosphere

The truth was still putting its pants on this morning when the political blogs erupted with all manner of alarums and excursions about the Sierra Club’s endorsement of Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-Rhode Island). First off was the widely read Daily Kos, who was quick to discover Morons at the Sierra Club.

“[H]ow was his 20 percent rating? That's all it takes to get an endorsement these days? Are you really that easy?”

Then Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake piled on.

“I know these organizations get really excited when the GOP takes a wrecking ball to their causes because the donations come flooding in. I’m becoming exceptionally piqued that they manipulate people’s legitimate fears in order to raise cash and perpetuate themselves with little or no regard to the cause they pretend to serve.”

Uh, hello? Both hot-headed bloggers relied on a mistaken report in the Providence-based turnto10.com that “the Sierra Club only gives Lincoln Chafee a 20% approval rating for his voting record.” In fact, Chafee has an estimable 90% environmental voting record from the League of Conservation Voters; the Club itself does not rate voting records.

In any sea, there are islands of sanity. The refuge in this storm was Bradford Plummer in Mojoblog. Plummer points out that Chafee

“used his perch on the environmental committee to single-handedly hold up the Bush administration's Orwellian-titled Clear Skies Act, and has helped slow Rep. Richard Pombo's attacks on the Endangered Species Act. It's not necessarily an exaggeration to say that thanks to his rather unique position, Lincoln Chaffee has been able to do more for the environment than most Democrats.”

(By the way, the endorsement of Chafee was by the national Sierra Club, not the Rhode Island Chapter.)

The Next Big Thing

With oil topping $70 a barrel, The Washington Post reports on a surge in venture capital backing the next wave in "disruptive technologies" (a good thing, apparently); namely, alternative energy, green chemistry and sustainable industry. Like the Internet before it, some investors see so-called Greentech as the next big thing and the names the Post drops in connection with it -- Gates, Case, Allen, Doerr, McNealy, et al -- not only recalls the dot.com boom but also gives the idea some weight. Indeed, one can almost hear the cash registers ringing. At the same time, though, the article is light on substance. Aside from ethanol (a controversial technology in terms of sustainability, though not perhaps in terms of $$$, given the soaring price of crude), few specific technologies are addressed. Myself, I just want to know where I can go to get stock options.

The Trickster Returns

Another coyote in NYC!

No doubt dispirited by the death of Hal, city officials say they won't pursue this one, which was spotted on a golf course in a city park.

Eye on the Prize

The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof was awarded the Pulitzer for commentary earlier this week. In his first column since the announcement, he wrote a piece calculated to get the government to take global warming seriously. Called The Big Burp Theory of the Apocalypse (sorry: subscriber-only content), it describes a scenario in which vast stores of methane are released from the oceans. Kristof is careful to note that this not the most likely scenario, only a possible one. But for life as we know it, such an event would be the coup de grace. And that, he argues, is reason alone to stop using the inherent uncertainties in the science (everything about the future is uncertain, after all) to start taking serious steps to head off the problem before it's too late. Because while the uncertainty will persist, the stakes are also incredibly high. It's an important theme to drive home. And, while Kristof is not without his foibles as a commentator, it makes the prize seem richly deserved.

...All is Vanity

Getting back to Vanity Fair's Green Issue, the folks over at AlterNet take issue with the magazine's selection of eco-heroes and are offering people a chance to nominate their own candidates for recognition on Earth Day.

Spinmeister

Seen "Thank You for Smoking" yet? If so, you may appreciate E Magazine editor Jim Motovalli's interview with real-life Nick Naylor, Frank Maisano. Like Naylor, the "morally flexible" tobacco lobbyist in the movie, Maisano insists there are two sides to every issue, and he has made a career of arguing strenuously on the side that pays. Also like Naylor, he actually comes off as an okay guy, despite the outrageousness of his positions. It got me to wondering, is there anything we can learn from people like this?

Vanity, Vanity ...

Vanity Fair has published it's "first-ever green issue," complete with Annie Liebovitz portraits of "eco-heroes" (Julia Roberts: Who knew?) and the obligatory list of 50 things you can do to save the planet. It's good to see, and yet it's hard to look at that glossy cover and not experience a twinge of cognitive dissonance. After all, Vanity Fair, America's most literary gossip rag, has probably done more to stoke the engines of consumption and materialism in this country than most advertising agencies. Of course, the same could be said of mags like Outside and National Geographic Adventure, which railed against environmental evils even as they fed the SUV craze. Don't get me wrong. I like all these magazines. I've even written for a couple of them (and no, I didn't think twice about cashing the checks). It's just, how do we square the excesses of the Hollywood lifestyle and our consumerist culture with an earnest desire to do right by the planet? Tell me. How? But enough of my senseless nattering: Anyone out there read the latest VF? What did you think?

Talk o' the Nation

Here's a heads-up: Today on TOTN, Neal Conan talks about Earth Day and the future of environmentalism with Michael Schellenberger, one of the authors of a paper announcing the death of environmentalsm. I guess that makes the environmental movement a little like Lazarus, who was dead but got better. Anyway, if you miss the broadcast you can catch it online tonight. According to the program description, Schellenberger says enviros need an "I Have a Dream" speech, instead of "I Have a Nightmare."

Business Trends

Suddenly, organic and otherwise eco-conscious companies are hot. So hot, in fact, that they're getting snapped up by the very mega-conglomerates they once positioned themselves against. First there's Ben and Jerry's, which was bought by Unilever. More recently, Tom's of Maine was purchased by Colgate-Palmolive. And L'Oreal took over Anita Roddick's ethically-minded Body Shop. In each case, pains are taken to stress that the smaller companies will retain their independence and character. Inevitably, the founders insist it's not about selling about, but about getting their product to more consumers. Do you buy it? Is it the sudden co-opting of eco brands a positive development or just the triumph of Wall Street? Perhaps a better question: Can it be both?

Bite of the Iguana

The upscale island resort of Boca Grande, Florida -- reportedly a favorite getaway of the Bush clan -- has a lizard problem. Scientists say there are more than 12,000 iguanas on the barrier island -- ten of the buggers for every year-round resident. The exotic species (brought from Mexico by sailors, it's thought) is wreaking havoc on the native ecosystem and driving the locals to distraction. My own modest proposal for dealing with this and many other exotics? Simple: Put 'em on the menu.

What d'ya say? Anyone up for iguana burger?

Smithsonian Goes to the Arctic (Again)

The last time the Smithsonian had an Arctic exhibit, politics intervened. You may recall that in May 2003 photographer Subhankar Banerjee's photos from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge were scheduled for exhibition in the main rotunda of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. After California Senator Barbara Boxer used Banerjee's images to bolster her case against drilling, however, the display was promptly kicked downstairs to a hallway near the loading docks -- the museum equivalent of Siberia.

Now, the Museum of Natural History is back with another Arctic exhibit as part of something called the Forces of Change Program. This one is called The Arctic: A Friend Acting Strangely, and it's launched with a slew of exclamation points and one nagging question:

Earlier spring thaws! Later fall freeze-ups! Greater storm impacts! Reduced sea ice! Unfamiliar species of plants and animals! What do these changes mean for the Arctic, its wildlife, its people—and for the rest of the planet?

Also on display is an exhibit called "Change is in the Air," which reverses the pattern; i.e., all questions and then an exclamation (in caps, no less):

What’s colorless, tasteless, and (mostly) odorless? Surrounds and protects us throughout our lives? Makes Earth habitable? Is so fragile that it needs our care and protection? OUR ATMOSPHERE!

This time, we hope, the museum will stand by its work. Robert Sullivan, the museum's associate director for public programs, certainly sounds resolute. As he told the Washington Post:

This is not a political position, it's just scientific data. ... There have been some suggestions that the data is unclear; well, the data is not unclear.

Reporter's Notebook

Over at the website of the Society of Environmental Journalists, freelance science writer Paul Thacker interviews New York Times science correspondent Andrew Revkin about the challenges of covering climate change. Revkin has been on the story for two decades and his comments provide an insider's view of the "horrible place" where science and policy (and the media) converge.

For those who are frustrated by the lack of total certainty in climate science, Revkin says, effectively, get used to it:

We have to accept the idea that whatever decisions get made, they will be made in the face of persistent uncertainty. When will we begin to apply the hedging behavior that we do routinely in our life like buying fire insurance? You don't buy fire insurance because you know your house is going to burn down. But we do it routinely and our banks require us to do it. When are we going to realize that we need to apply this to other parts of our life?

Of course, as Revkin himself points out, the case is complicated by the fact that many self-interested parties exploit the uncertainties to forestall action. The piece that follows the interview ("Has Balance Warped the Truth?" -- also by Thacker) has more to say about the topic and is also well worth reading. In that story, Thacker notes that, like the tobacco companies before it, the coal, oil and gas interests don't have to win the science debate, all they have to do is sow enough doubt to bring the policy debate to a grinding stalemate. Thacker's larger point is that the media plays into industry's hands by giving equal time to the consensus scientific view and the minority contrarians. That may work well in politics, argues Thacker, but it does readers who are trying to understand the science a profound disservice.

Revkin concedes that the climate story "doesn't fit journalism's norms," but he also insists that the problem goes deeper.

After covering it for twenty years...you can write the perfect story capturing both the gravitas and the uncertainties of human-induced climate change, perfect on every level, and it won't change things. We are not attuned to things on this time scale and with this level of uncertainty. Partly because of our political system being so short term, our business cycle being so short term, and because our concerns are focused mainly on what affects my family, then what affects my community, then what affects my state, then what affects my country, and then what affects my globe. This is last on the list. It's just not registering. And maybe it can't yet.

What do you think? Is humanity equipped to confront a global crisis with so many layers of complexity and uncertainty? In the face of that uncertainty, will we be able to effect the kind of profound change necessary to head off the worst-case scenarios? Finally, if Revkin's right and the message isn't registering yet, then what will it take for the gravity of the problem to get through to people?

A WEEE Problem With E-Waste

Belated kudos to Washington state for sticking electronics manufacturers with the cost of recycling their obsolete (and often toxic) products. The new law, which Gov. Christine Gregoire signed late last month, is the toughest e-waste legislation in the country. But don't start hauling out your old TVs, computers, and monitors just yet--it doesn't take effect until January 2009.

Maryland, Maine, and California have similar laws, though the latter two require consumers to pay small disposal fees. According to the Associated Press, 19 other states and New York City have electronic recycling bills pending this year. These local lawmakers are all following in the footsteps of the European Union, which in 2003 passed the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive requiring retailers and manufacturers to recycle their products. To promote awareness of that law, a British group is touring around that scary-looking guy in the corner--a robotic sculpture made out of the 3.6 tons of high-tech trash the average Brit discards in a lifetime.

(Get more ideas for living well and doing good in "The Green Life," a new section appearing in every issue of Sierra magazine.)

Chapter 11

Radio program Marketplace talked to Sierra Magazine staffer Marilyn Snell about her investigative report on how copper giant Asarco and other polluting corporations use bankruptcy protections to skate out on the cost of environmental clean-ups. As Snell explains, the sites in question are so toxic that clean-up is virtually guaranteed -- it's just that taxpayers are liable to pick up the tab.

Better Beef

We've written about the benefits of grassfed beef before, but readers may be interested in a new study by the Union of Concerned Scientists (see: Greener Pastures) that confirms and strengthens many of the claims made for pasture-raised beef. Not only does the practice lessen environmental damage to the land and reduce antibiotic use (or abuse as the case may be), but it is also more humane and better for you, since meat (and milk) from pasture-raised animals is higher in beneficial omega-3 fatty acids. To find producers of pasture-raised beef and milk check American Grassfed Association.

Hope for the Aral

Once the fourth-largest lake in the world, the Aral Sea was effectively killed for cotton, when short-sighted Soviet bureaucrats diverted its main tributaries for irrigation. So drastic is the Aral's demise that it has become for many the poster-child of environmental catastrophe. But now it appears that a new dam on the Aral -- a desperate last-ditch effort, to be sure -- may salvage at least a part of a place many had written off as history. According to reports, the dammed section of the Aral (smaller and less polluted than the larger section) has filled far faster than most experts expected, and the resurgence has brought many people back to fishing villages they had abandoned. Reporting for the New York Times, Ilan Greenberg writes that, "For many in the Aral region, the new water is confirmation that the Aral's past is prologue." May it be so.

Family Feud

If ExxonMobil was looking to pick a fight with Detroit, it succeeded. After the oil company ran an ad (see it here in pdf) questioning why the average fuel economy of American cars has "remained unchanged in two decades," a Chrysler spokesman countered the sucker punch with an uppercut of his own:

Despite a documented history of blowing their exorbitant profits on outlandish executive salaries and stock buybacks, and hoarding their bounty by avoiding technologies, policies and legislation that would protect the population and environment and lower fuel costs, Big Oil insists on transferring all of that responsibility on the auto companies.

As the Sierra Club's Daniel Becker tells the Detroit News, both sides in the slugfest are right (and therefore wrong):

The auto industry continues to make gas-guzzling vehicles with antiquated technology rather than using modern, fuel-efficient technology. At the same time, the oil industry is perfectly happy to have people addicted to their product.

So what triggered the skirmish? For one thing, Exxon seems desperate to deflect attention from its obscene profits. At the same time it may hope to placate shareholders and policymakers who are beginning to notice the writing on the wall with respect to climate change and Peak Oil.

Earlier this spring the oil giant ran another high-profile ad (see it here) refuting Peak Oil, claiming that that oil reserves are so vast that the peak is nowhere in sight. Moreover, the company insists it is getting better "technically and environmentally" at tapping the resource. Over at Scientific American Observations -- the magazine's blog -- staff writer Wayt Gibbs begs to differ. Rather than mere hand-waving, however, Gibbs provides real analysis, buttressing his argument with a quote from the annual outlook report of the trade journal World Oil:

2005 will go down in history books as perhaps the poorest year for exploration success for both oil and gas since World War II. This dismal success was not for lack of effort. Record amounts of funds are being plowed into E&P [exploration and production] capital spending, which is why all the world's rigs are now in use.

Gibbs notes that even Bush's Department of Energy recognizes the growing consensus that the end of cheap oil is fast approaching. Some oil companies and some automakers seem prepared to repond to that reality. For ExxonMobil and Chrysler, the response appears to be scapegoating and wishful thinking.

Subsidizing the Dead Zone

A study by the Environmental Working Group (see "Dead in the Water") shows that 70 percent of the nitrate pollution responsible for the annual dead zone that forms in the Gulf of Mexico comes from farm fertilizer. Furthermore, the study found that 80 percent of that fertilizer pollution comes from a small number of rural counties representing just 15 percent of the Mississippi River Basin. Not coincidentally those counties are some of the biggest corn producers in the nation. Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, said the findings make the Gulf dead zone problem "look very much more solvable than it was before." He noted that subsidy payments in the worst polluting counties were 500 times greater than conservation payments.

Science with a Smile?

In its "Scientist at Work" series, the New York Times turns its attention to Dr. Randy Olson, who traded an academic career in science for one in filmmaking. Olson, who blogs about the oceans at Shifting Baselines, has recently completed a documentary called "Flock of Dodos," which examines the evolution/intelligent design debate and the challenge it presents to scientists. As Cornelia Dean writes in the Times, when Olson, an evolutionary biologist who, needless to say, thinks ID is a crock, "watches the advocates of intelligent design at work, he sees pleasant people who speak plainly, convincingly and with humor. When scientists he knows talk about evolution, they can be dour, pompous and disagreeable, even with one another. His film challenges them to get off their collective high horse and make their case to ordinary people with — if they can muster it — a smile."

What do you think? Should scientists be active, civic-minded ambassadors for their own ideas? Or should they stay holed-up in their ivory towers and let the rest of us try to suss out where the truth lies based on whatever we can glean from the news media? What do they risk (or gain) by weighing in on public debate?

Nixon Goes to Chinatown

Grist's Dave Roberts talks to the New Yorker's Elizabeth Kolbert about global warming and her influential new book on the subject, Field Notes from a Catastrophe. It's a longish Q and A, but you should read it. And, in fact, you have to if you want to find out what the title of this post is about. I shouldn't have to explain everything.

In the Times book review today, by the by, Motoko Rich looks at how multiple titles on the same subject have hit bookstores at the same time. On the subject of global warming, the mob of titles includes Ms. Kolbert's, Eugene Linden's Winds of Change and Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers. (One might conceivably add Mark Bowen's Thin Ice to the list.)

Asked how she felt about the company (and competition), Kolbert, says, "When you're claiming that something is the biggest problem facing the world, you cannot be surprised that other people are writing about the same topic. You'd be insane."

Currently, only Mr. Flannery currently makes the Times' (extended) bestseller list for hardcover nonfiction, at number 33. You can read the first chapter here.

That's no small feat. After all, as subject matter goes, it's hard to imagine material any drier or more difficult and depressing than global warming. For any book on climate change, bestsellerdom was a long shot. Having read Mr. Flannery's book, however, (though not yet Kolbert's) I can only add my own little measure of praise. Everyone should read it.

French Fried Movie

In the Coming Soon department, director Richard Linklater (Slacker, School of Rock) has teamed up with journalist Eric Schlosser to film a screen adaptation of Schlosser's bestselling book, Fast Food Nation. The film, already in post-production after reportedly being shot rather stealthily (code name: "Coyote") at locations in Colorado, Texas and Mexico, is reportedly scheduled for a 2006 release. Participant is a co-producer. Interestingly, the film will not be a documentary but a dramatic feature, focusing on the lives of people involved in the fast food industry. That sounds like a big departure from Schlosser's non-fiction expose, but it ought to be interesting.

Live and Learn ...

... or Vice Versa.

You gotta love Tom Toles.

Thus Spake Lance

In an essay for Salon called "Climate of Hope", former Patagonia exec Kevin Sweeney takes the Nietzchean view of climate change. By that I mean the attitude that anything which doesn't kill us only makes us stronger. Actually Sweeney doesn't invoke Herr Nietzche but rather Lance Armstrong, the All-American ubermensch. What's Lance got to do with it? Well, in Sweeney's view global warming is a lot like cancer -- a definite bummer. However, as the patient recieving the bad news, you can either choose to accept the diagnosis as a death sentence, go into denial, or face facts and do something about it. Writes Sweeney:

Lance Armstrong has said many times that getting cancer was the best thing that ever happened to him. The course of his recovery -- the changes he made in his lifestyle and training, the immediacy with which he approached decisions and tasks -- is what enabled him to win the Tour de France seven times. It made him a better cyclist and, he suggests, a better man. ... This illness -- climate change -- may do the same thing for America. It will test us, threaten us and scare us, but it may also transform us. If we deal with it seriously, we will be a stronger and better country.

American business, Sweeney says, should view the Kyoto accords as market research, evidence that the world wants a carbon-free future. If they're smart, they'll follow the old business adage and give the people what they want. If they're not, well ... somebody else will sell it to them. He calls it "Silicon Valley 2.0," but it's also Business 101.

Power Tool

If you're looking for a convenient way to keep transformers from drawing power even when the devices they're attached to are turned off, check this out: It's a surge protector that shuts down peripherals (printer, fax, speakers, etc.) when you shut down your computer. You just plug your PC into the "Control Outlet" and the rest into the "Automatically Switched Outlets." Then, when you power down your PC ... voila, the Smart Strip also cuts juice to the switched outlets. Don't want some things to power off with the PC. No problem. Three additional outlets maintain current for devices that need it. It's simple and it saves both money and energy. What's not to like?

Chevy No Va

We weren't the only ones who seized on Chevy's build-your-own-Tahoe-ad online campaign. Seems quite a few folks took the idea and ran with it. Not surprisingly, where GM was hoping for consumer-generated content, they mostly got consumer-generated indignation. Hopefully, they'll get the message: Folks want better, more efficient cars, rather than the same mindless fantasy presented over and over in these ads, where SUVs are improbably perched on mountain crags or parked on the edge of waterfalls. Detroit is indeed perched on the edge of a precipice but gas guzzlers like the Tahoe won't get them off.

Will-fully Ignorant

The two most recent posts at Real Climate, the excellent blog run by bona fide climate scientists, deal with two commentaries published recently in the Washington Post -- one by George Will, the other by Robert Novak, both conservative pundits, both responding to recent stories in the press about global warming.

To summarize: Will, responding to Time Magazine's special edition on global warming, attacks what he sees as "big crusading journalism" and the "science journalism complex" for stoking public fears. Novak, meanwhile, goes after NASA's James Hansen, accusing him of pretending to be muzzled by the Bush administration in order to advance his personal agenda in the press. As if those claims weren't preposterous enough, Will and Novak also trot out the usual (and easily debunked) arguments made by the "skeptics."

But this isn't skepticism on display: This is denial buttressed by a willful misrepresentation of the facts, with a generous dose of innuendo and ad hominem thrown in for good measure. It's clearly frustrating to the Real Climate crew that they have to keep refuting such widely read media figures. The question is: How do you get through to people like Will and Novak, who seem bent on denying not just scientific theory but observable fact? What will it take to convince them that, far from being some weird conspiracy cooked up by mysterious evil geniuses, it's actually a real and pressing concern for each and every one of us -- right, left and center?

To Have and Yet Have Nought

Two stories in the papers this morning about the paradoxical resource curse that so often befalls poor countries unlucky enough to be rich in things like crude oil and precious minerals (but not rich enough to exploit those riches themselves): One is from the New York Times about mining operations in Papua; the other, from the Los Angeles Times, is set in Belize, and stars a cast of characters straight out of a Graham Greene novel. It seems a Mennonite farmer struck oil (Black Gold, Texas Tea) Jed Clampett-style, while sinking a well on his land. The discovery has brought fortune hunters out of the woodwork and with crude at $60 a barrel, many Belizeans hope the newfound wealth will help their little country prosper. They shouldn't count on it. After all, just look at countries like Nigeria, where residents of the oil-rich Niger Delta have suffered continued poverty and an environmental holocaust to boot. Old Jed may have become a millionaire, but most times the story doesn't work out that way. In Papua, tensions engendered by the resource curse have led to rioting and protests against mining conglomerates. The report says events demonstrate how "times are changing for multinational companies and governments long used to working out concessions in remote areas with a handshake, over the heads of local people." Perhaps, but the prospects for environmental justice still seem a long way off.

Uncomfortable Truths

Public opinion about global warming may or may not be nearing a tipping point, but our world certainly is. Al Gore ties all the pieces on climate change together in a new documentary called "An Inconvenient Truth."

The film follows Mr. Gore around as he takes a PowerPoint slideshow from city to city, from place to place, pointing out this not-so-palatable truth: that we Americans are largely (though not entirely) responsible for massive climate disruption, and that we, on the whole, are doing little about it.

If you follow Compass, or Real Climate, or Grist, there will be few surprises in anything that Gore presents, but the inexorable path of the data he presents leaves little room for doubt--or comfort. I felt like I knew it all as truth for the very first time. I began wondering: Should I go sign up for a degree in climate engineering? Start tinkering with car engines? Study green building?

Part of what is unexpected about the documentary is what a compelling speaker Al Gore has become. The man once derided as wooden now speaks with humor, passion, conviction, and a certain showmanship that was unimaginable in 2000. He makes the graphs and data personal, the threat real.

His warming is dire, but he is not without hope. As we know, there are smart energy solutions (and many another ideas) out there, just waiting for us to use them.

Make sure to see "An Inconvenient Truth" when it comes out in theaters in May, and tell some friends. Heck, drag 'em there if you have to. Maybe we can still tip our world toward those solutions before it's too late.

Meatrix, the Sequel

You saw the original. Now check out The Meatrix II: Revolting. It's the further adventures of Leo the enlightened porker and Moopheus, his bovine mentor. After you watch, Find out more about the reality of industrial agriculture and what choices you have as a consumer. Also find out how you can help the Sierra Club in its campaign to protect America's water from factory farms.

California Dreamin'

California, the wealthiest, most populous state in the Union, could become the first to enact legislation setting firm limits on all greenhouse gas emissions. According to the New York Times, a bill introduced in the Assembly "requires that emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases linked to global warming be reduced by 145 million tons, or 25 percent less than the current forecast, by 2020. That would bring the emissions back to the 1990 level." The legislation accompanies a separate 1,300-page report drawn up by advisors to Governor Schwarzenegger on a plan for cutting carbon dioxide emissions. While not yet clear whether the Governor is in accord with the details of the bill (or the plan of his advisors for that matter), the emissions targets match those set by Schwarzenegger in an executive decree he made last year.

The Times notes that California is a trend-setter in pollution controls, with many states tending to follow its lead. The Bush administration, by contrast, has steadfastly declined to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and has actively opposed a California law aimed at regulating carbon dioxide emissions from cars and trucks. Ten other states, however, have moved to adopt the higher standard. Environmentalists hope that California and other states will provide the leadership on global warming that the White House has abdicated.

Following in John Muir's Footsteps

After reading about Donna and Peter Thomas's plan to retrace the route of John Muir's first walk to Yosemite from San Francisco in 1868, I ventured down to the San Francisco Ferry Building to see them start their 300-mile trek with a ferry ride across the bay. Peter and Donna will face challenges (traffic, private property) that the 30-year-old Muir couldn't have envisioned, but they will have one comfort that Muir could not have carried: a ukulele (which had yet to be invented in 1868). Turns out Peter is also the president of the Ukulele Club of Santa Cruz, so this journey started with a song (Compass exclusive).

To follow Peter and Donna's progress: A Trans-California Ramble