Car Convert

I nearly choked on my toast Thursday morning when I heard Lee Iacocca tell NPR Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep that the American auto industry needs "to learn to build more small cars, good fuel-efficient cars."

The guy who brought Chrysler back from the brink of bankruptcy in the early 1980's admitted to fighting high fuel-efficiency standards in the past. But now he's hot for hybrids. "I've become a real fan in the last year of plug-in hybrids, hybrids that can be plugged in at night," he said. "I think that's the wave of the next five years, big time: Plug-in hybrids."

Well blow me down.

The coup de grace was when Inskeep asked him what turned him around in his thinking about cars. Said Iacocca:

I hate to admit it--Al Gore did. I used to think he was nutty. He stuck with his principles, though. He'll be remembered for triggering a real look at what we're doing to the planet."

Thus I started my day with toast and a side of hope.

Green Radio

In case you missed the Earth Day special on Sierra Club Radio, have a listen. Featured guests include New York Times columnist Thomas "The World is Flat" Friedman, discussing his recent article, "The Power of Green," and Michael Muir, great-grandson of legendary conservationist and Sierra Club founder John Muir, whose life you can also explore in our new Google Earth presentation.

Sierra Club Radio brings you new guests weekly, plus regular commentary from Sierra magazine and "The Green Life" editor, Jennifer Hattam; our own Mr. Green, Bob Schildgen; and executive director Carl Pope. Hosted by Ms. Orli Cotel. Go here to find out more.

Fact Check

Thanks to some really terrible reporting from the likes of Britain's Independent and other news outlets, a story is making the rounds on the Internet that cell phones are or may be responsible for the mysterious disappearance of honey bees from their keepers' hives -- an alarming syndrome that has been dubbed Colony Collapse Disorder. The research cited in the reports however, makes no such claim. Moreover, a quote being credited to Albert Einstein and positing that, "if bees disappeared, man would have only four years of life left" appears to be apocryphal. I say appears to be, because as Mark Turner is careful to note in his blog, absence of proof is not proof. All of which is to say: Be concerned and aware, but remember to read skeptically.

Major Tom to Ground Control

Astronauts recall view before Earth Day

Public Service Announcement

Nature is good for you. The Why Files explains.

Sun, Sun, Sun, Here it Comes

The Tennesseean reports that Al Gore will have a solar array installed on the roof of his home in Belle Meade, outside Nashville, and begin reaping power from the sun in a month or so. You'll recall that Gore, who purchases green power from his utility as well as carbon offsets, was recently blasted by critics for his home's considerable energy use. As it happens, the new zoning rules allowing for the installation of solar panels in Belle Meade were only adopted on April 1. The town's zoning board gave the Gore project the go-ahead on Tuesday, with one stipulation; The 33 solar panels the vice president is installing will be required to lie flat, so that no one will have to see them. The architect on the project says the requirement will result in a 12 percent decrease in efficiency. Sigh.

Next Steps

The folks at Grist have assembled a nice lil audio slideshow featuring images and interviews from from Step it Up 2007 events in Seattle and elsewhere. You'll also find snapshots here at DailyKos and, of course, reports galore at the Step It Up homepage. When you visit, be sure to check out the Next Steps page.

God's Lap

"It is a grim situation and there is no point in pretending to Australia otherwise. We must all hope and pray there is rain." That is Australian Prime Minister John Howard speaking at a press conference in Canberra yesterday, addressing the issue of water scarcity in his country after 10 years of persistent drought. The worst dry spell in at least a century has left the Murray-Darling River Basin, which normally provides 85 percent of the country's irrigation supply and 41 percent of its agriculture, with only enough water for critical use in cities and towns. Howard said that, unless rains come soon, there will be no irrigation supply for much of the country's farmland. Many crops, including cotton and rice, have already collapsed under the strain and more sectors, such as wine grapes and dairy, face potential catastrophe. "This is very much in the lap of the gods," Mr. Howard said.

Mapping Muir

In observance of John Muir's birthday -- April 21, the day before Earth Day -- we put a together a brief Google Earth presentation highlighting some of the pivotal places and events in the great man's life. It's just a beginning. We hope to keep adding entries as we go. In the meantime, have a look. You'll need Google Earth for the full 3-D experience, but don't worry, it's a free download. And, if you prefer, just can see the text and pictures here. Enjoy.

Spring, Sprang, Sprung

Introducing BBC's Springwatch, in which readers all across the British Isles report sightings of the creatures and events that normally herald the arrival of spring -- everything from the first frog-spawn to the blossoming of hawthorn and the return of migrating swallows -- which are then mapped out on the website. The so-called phenological findings suggest that spring has sprung a full 3 weeks earlier than average in England this year, causing the Woodland Trust to declare spring 'the new summer.' Levity aside, there is some concern that Europe may be headed for a repeat of the sweltering conditions that scorched the continent last year and in 2003.

Mascots and Motor Trends

Check out Der Spiegel's shrine to Knut the polar bear cub, who shares the US cover of Vanity Fair this month with Leo DiCaprio, but who, in Germany, gets it all to his fuzzy little self. The Berlin Zoo has apparently been mobbed with folks who want to see the little guy in his (un)natural element. Indeed, he's become a sort of de facto mascot of Earth Day 2007.

But while folks in Deutschland love the little guy, they also love their cars -- emissions from which are not helping to assure the future survival of Knut's wild brethren. Not only were recent proposals to put speed limits on the famous autobahn met with heavy public resistance, but, according to Der Spiegel, SUV sales have risen by 45 percent in Germany over the last 3 years. Even putting SUVs aside, the general trend in Germany is toward higher horsepower, not higher mileage. Witness the demise of VW's 80-mpg Lupo. The company killed it after painfully slack sales.

So what gives? DaimlerChrysler CEO Dieter Zetsche calls it a case of eco-schizophrenia. Whatever the diagnosis, it's neither unique to Germany nor does not bode well for Knut's kind.

Dick Who?

A new Pew survey found that only 69% know that Dick Cheney is vice president, whereas back in 1989, 74% could identify ol' Dan what's his toes. According to this summary in Editor&Publisher:

Pew judged the levels of knowledgeability (correct answers) among those surveyed and found that those who scored the highest were regular watchers of Comedy Central's The Daily Show and Colbert Report. They tied with regular readers of major newspapers in the top spot -- with 54% of them getting 2 out of 3 questions correct. Watchers of the Lehrer News Hour on PBS followed just behind.

Virtually bringing up the rear were regular watchers of Fox News. Only 1 in 3 could answer 2 out of 3 questions correctly.

Quayle. Right?

This Moment on Comedy Central

Let the markets decide if the polar bear goes extinct.

Stephen Colbert in friendly conversation with Senator John Kerry about his new book, This Moment on Earth, co-written with wife Theresa Heinz Kerry.

Ultima Thule

Greetings from Warming Island.

Raider Nation

Care to name the greenest city government in America? Myself, I probably would have guessed Portland or San Francisco, Seattle or, maybe, Berkeley. Well, shame on me. According to a new book published by Sustainlane, it's my own city: Oakland, California. According to the book's findings, Oakland makes more use of renewable energy in city operations than any other municipality in America, with fully 17 percent of its power coming from sources like wind and solar.

It's like they say: Oaktown ain't no joke town. Aiiight?

Don't Forget ...

to step it up!

April 14th is the big day. And with nearly 1400 events in 50 states, there's bound to be one near you.

Wrong Way Fast

The White House likes to boast that it is on target to reduce greenhouse gas intensity by 18 percent by 2012. Yeah, whatever. The real issue is total emissions, not intensity, and a new report from the US Public Interest Research Group makes clear that actual emissions have increased by 18 percent over 1990 levels.

Here's the report (pdf).

Flex Appeal

Amid this whole Schwarzenegger lovefest, in which the governor is cast in the media as a kind of Jolly Green Giant out to rescue environmentalism from itself, the Los Angeles Times runs an inevitable reality check, reporting that Arnold's score with the League of Conservation Voters comes in at a lackluster 50, down 8 points from the two years previous, and well below his predecessor, Gray Davis, who racked up scores of 85 and 75 in his last two years in office. Of course, picayune criticisms like these miss the point; namely, Gray Davis is a slope-shouldered pencil-neck with zero charisma, whereas Schwarzenegger can bench press a Hummer.

Pump You Up

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the man who put the sizzle back in beefsteak, says environmentalism is where bodybuilding once was -- that is, stuck with an image problem. Before Pumping Iron, says the California Governor and former Mr. Universe, bodybuilding had a "sketchy image." As for environmentalists, Schwarzenegger says, they're "like prohibitionists at a fraternity party. We have to make it mainstream, we have to make it sexy, we have to make it attractive so everyone wants to participate." Well, just the other day, I was asked to come up with some lively Earth Day slogans. They may never see the light of day, but the Governor would probably approve. One was: Earth: Great excuse for a party! Another was simply: Come to Mama! And, my personal favorite: Forget Spring Break, girls. Go wild on Earth Day!

What do you think? Sexy, no?

The governor, who currently graces the cover of both Newsweek and Outside's green issues, is pushing some muscular messaging at the moment. He of the four Hummers says that climate change deniers are "fanatics" who are committing political suicide: "Your political base will melt away as surely as the polar ice caps," he said. "You will become a political penguin on a smaller and smaller ice floe that is drifting out to sea. Goodbye, my little friend!" Talking to you, Senator Inhofe. Hasta la vista, baby.

So It Goes

Kurt Vonnegut was the Mark Twain of our time, "a laughing prophet of doom" the New York Times called him, who tapped endless reserves of acerbic wit to gently skewer the conceits of humanity, a species he regarded with a mixture of sympathy and scorn. He died last night at his home in New York. In the end, it was a fall and not his unfiltered Pall Malls that killed him. Like Twain, whose last works seemed etched in acid, Vonnegut grew more and more bitter toward the end. His last work, A Man Without a Country, was a bestseller that railed against the Bush Administration, the war in Iraq and general stupidity.

Invariably, Vonnegut is characterized as a humanist, and that he most certainly was. But I'd argue for the label environmentalist as well, albeit of the darkest and most discouraging sort. He didn't see much hope for us. In grading his own works, Vonnegut gave A-pluses to only two: Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle. The latter, in which the world is destroyed by a man-made element that freezes all water on contact, can not be read as anything but a cautionary tale about man's careless tinkering with Nature. Slaughterhouse-Five was, of course, centered around the Allied fire-bombing of Dresden, which Vonnegut survived as a POW. Whenever anyone died in that novel, the passing was marked by three little words: So it goes.

Glossy Green

I was flat on my back most of the day yesterday, supine host to some mysterious bug that was rooting around in my guts. While my immune system fought the good fight, the rest of me alternated between sleeping and reading the green issue of Vanity Fair -- the one with the photo montage of a polar bear cub and Leo Dicaprio looking a little silly in jeans and crampons. Like most issues of VF, it's thick as a doorstep, plumped with page after page of high-gloss advertisements. There is, of course, no reconciling the glam lifestyles and consumption-driven culture that VF celebrates and the 'green' agenda it purports to champion, but I've learned to accept such contradictions. Furthermore, having so far read three articles in the issue -- William Langewiesche's long report on the Bleak House legal drama involving ChevronTexaco and the colonos of Ecuador's Oriente; Alex Shoumatoff's account of a fact-finding foray across the Amazon; and Michael Shnayerson's profile of professional climate change naysayer Myron Ebell -- I can tell you it's well worth the newsstand price. I still have James Wolcott's take down of Rush Limbaugh to look forward to, as well as Charles Mann on the privatization of water and E.O. Wilson on the world's inequitable consumption patterns. I just have to claw through the perfume, liqueur and SUV ads to find them. If you do get the issue, note the appearance (on page 218) of Mark Massara of our California Coastal Campaign as well as three members of the Sierra Student Coalition (page 260).

Regretfully, Christine

Christine Todd Whitman, the former EPA Administrator/Bush Administration "wind dummy" (in the words of Colin Powell) opines that the Supreme Court decision on carbon dioxide emissions was a 'welcome first step.' Writing in the Washington Post, she says the ruling, "was welcomed by all who regret that the United States has lagged far behind in addressing this serious environmental challenge."

What a deft piece of mealy-mouthedness the piece is, managing as it does to both criticize and excuse the White House (and thus herself) for doing absolutely nothing to head off what looks to be not just a 'serious environmental challenge' but the defining crisis of our time. Here's more:

Back when he was governor of Texas, President Bush enacted mandatory caps on carbon emissions in his state. During the 2000 presidential campaign, he promised to regulate carbon emissions nationwide. Shortly after taking office, though, he backed away from that pledge. There were good domestic reasons at the time, but those reasons are no longer valid.

Good domestic reasons, eh? Pray tell. Ms. Whitman then musters her courage to conclude with the obvious: "Delay is no longer an option. The president and Congress must act."

That so? Well, hey, thanks for the regrets, Ms. Whitman, but where was this conviction six years ago, when you were in a position to do something about it?

All Aboard the Bandwagon

What does it say about the current leadership and the shifting political winds when even Newt Gingrich begins to sound reasonable? The former Speaker of the House, remembered for his "Contract with America," appears likely to join the 2008 presidential race and has written a new book called -- get this -- Contract With the Earth, in which he apparently changes his tune on global warming, now calling it an urgent issue requiring immediate action.

That's a big shift from Gingrich's last political treatise, in which the staunch Republican wrote that "the history and science of climate change is far more complex and uncertain than the politically driven mass hysteria of scientists who sign on to ads about a topic for which they have no scientific proof." In a debate with Senator John Kerry at New York University yesterday, Mr. Gingrich was asked what he would say to his brother-in-arms, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who persists in scoffing at the scientific consensus on global warming. The former speaker said, "My message is the evidence is sufficient that we should move toward the most efficient possible means to reduce carbon in the atmosphere."

Huh. The evidence is sufficient? Eighteen months ago it was politically driven hysteria from know-nothing scientists. What happened? Could it be that Gingrich has been watching the popularity ratings of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as well as those of his nemesis Al Gore? Could embracing the challenge of global warming now be considered politically expedient? It would seem so. And that can only be considered a good thing. For his part, Senator Kerry also has a book coming out, written with his wife Theresa Heinz Kerry, called This Moment on Earth. Hopefully, Al 'Ozone Man' Gore makes it into the acknowledgements of these books for having led the way. After all, Gore published his Earth in the Balance fifteen years ago, when doing so involved considerable political risk and thus required something called courage.

Cascading Effects

Fishermen in North Carolina correctly inferred a connection between diminishing shellfish catches and exploding numbers of cownose rays, which turn out to be voracious consumers of scallops and clams. But what explained the booming ray population? Just keep going up the food chain. As Ransom Myers and colleagues found, the great sharks, which prey on rays and other 'meso-predators', have seen their populations crash precipitously in recent decades, to the point where they are no longer a major ecological force. That's not only bad news for bi-valves and those who love them, but also a prime illustration of how the impacts of overfishing can trickle down through the food chain in what scientists call a "trophic cascade."

Catalytic Perverter?

The remote region surrounding the Siberian city of Norilsk is home to nearly half the world's supply of palladium, which is used in the manufacture of catalytic converters, which reduce noxious pollution from car tailpipes. Thanks to its massively polluting smelters, Norilsk also happens to be the world's largest producer of acid rain. This latest helping of irony comes courtesy of the BBC.

Of course, Norilsk's smokestack emissions could, in turn, be greatly reduced -- and the government swears up and down they will be -- but it points up some of the unavoidable realities of the world we live in; namely, there's always some kind of trade-off somewhere.

In the case of catalytic converters, which have helped to greatly reduce smog in American cities and also hastened the removal of lead from gasoline, the trade-offs go deeper. To wit, by catalyzing poisonous carbon monoxide into climate-forcing carbon dioxide, and by producing roughly half of the world's nitrous oxide emissions (NOx is pound for pound, a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2), and by decreasing fuel efficiency.

I want to stress that this is not an argument against catalytic converters. Honestly, I don't know enough about the subject to say how it all comes out in the wash; that is to say, whether or not the trade-off was worth it. Having been in some horribly polluted cities in the world where catalytic converters were non-existent, I suspect it was. The point, if there is one, is simply that we have to recognize that there are not liable to be any perfect solutions and that, when it comes to technological progress, trade-offs are the name of the game.

Word Processing

If you read any of the news last week about Ms. Julie MacDonald, the Interior Department bureaucrat and enthusiastic gamer who made headlines for runnning roughshod over the opinions of biologists at the Fish and Wildlife Service and for sharing internal government documents with industry lobbyists, you may be interested in seeing some of her handiwork firsthand. Documents obtained by the Center for Biological Diversity and highlighted in the March/April edition of Sierra magazine clearly demonstrate Ms. MacDonald's talent for altering conclusions and transforming meanings, such that a species on the verge of extinction can be rescued from the brink with a few strokes of the pen, just like that.

Pass the Tahini

Mark Bittman, aka "The Minimalist," demonstrates how to make falafel -- "the North African, Eastern Mediterranean, dare I say it, Israeli-Arab dish" -- from scratch. Not the kind of thing I normally highlight here, but I figured what the heck, man, they're vegan. Enjoy.

Fuel Economy

Gas prices, as even the president knows, are up. My question is: Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

I was already planning on posing that question when I came across this passage from David Frum's The Right Man, as quoted in the LRB piece I link to below. Frum, you may remember, was Bush's speechwriter who went on to pen a bit of kiss-and-tell about his erstwhile boss. The book was mostly hagiographic in tone, but did allow as how W had a few faults; namely, "He is impatient and quick to anger; sometimes glib, even dogmatic; often uncurious (sic) and as a result ill informed; more conventional in his thinking than a leader probably should be." No! Really?

Anyway, the passage I wanted to highlight is this one in which Frum reports:

I once made the mistake of suggesting to Bush that he use the phrase cheap energy to describe the aims of his energy policy. He gave me a sharp, squinting look, as if he were trying to decide whether I was the stupidest person he’d heard from all day or only one of the top five. Cheap energy, he answered, was how we had got into this mess. Every year from the early 1970s to the mid 1990s, American cars burned less and less oil per mile travelled. Then in about 1995 that progress stopped. Why? He answered his own question: because of the gas-guzzling SUV. And what had made the SUV possible? This time I answered. ‘Um, cheap energy?’ He nodded at me. Dismissed.

Well, there's also this little thing known as CAFE standards that went years without being revised upward (and which the president pretended he didn't have the authority to revise), but the underlying point stands. Theoretically, at least, cheap energy is energy that will be wasted. So back to my question: High gas prices -- good thing or bad?

Oh Blah Dee Oh Blah Dah?

In a challenging, well-wrought piece in the London Review of Books, John Lanchester ruminates on the popular literature on global warming, including the IPCC's Fourth Assessment, and is moved to wonder why there haven't been any acts of terrorism connected to the issue.

Is it because the people who feel strongly about climate change are simply too nice, too educated, to do anything of the sort? (But terrorists are often highly educated.) Or is it that even the people who feel most strongly about climate change on some level can’t quite bring themselves to believe in it?

It's an uncomfortable framing of the question, suggesting as it does that terrorism is the only resort while also ignoring the fact that in the US, SUVs have in fact been torched in an act the Dept. of Homeland Security, at least, readily views as one of terror. Those issues aside, the question strikes a nerve. Do we really believe -- any of us -- that we are perched on the edge of global collapse? If so, why aren't we demanding actions commensurate with the crisis? Is it a case of the best lacking all conviction, and if so, why? For his part, Lanchester has this to say:

I suspect we’re reluctant to think about it because we’re worried that if we start we will have no choice but to think about nothing else.

Journal Club

Introducing my new favorite blog: Conservation magazine's Journal Watch Online. I know, I know, not the most cheerful reading or the sexiest subject matter, but still ... a relatively easy way to stay up on your peer-reviewed literature. And you do keep up with that stuff, don't you?

Land Deform

The Los Angeles Times reports that the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) -- sometimes jokingly referred to as the Farmers Retirement Plan -- is "about to shrink by millions of acres as part of the Bush administration's plans for stimulating corn production for ethanol to reduce dependence on foreign oil." Since it began in 1985, the CRP, has enrolled some 37 million acres of private land -- more land than is in the national wildlife refuge system in the Lower 48. Most of that land is either marginal for production -- i.e., steep and prone to erosion -- or important for conservation reasons -- i.e., wetlands or riparian zones. According to the article, "the Department of Agriculture recently suspended enrollment in the program for at least a year" and has also considered releasing "farmers and ranchers from existing contracts that protect land already in the program." You can't blame it all on the USDA or the ethanol boom, however. The CRP is a voluntary program and as conservation contracts expire, many farmers are being tempted not only by corn contracts but also by developers as homes and office parks continue to invade what was once called countryside.

Ransom Myers, R.I.P.

The widely published and outspoken marine biologist, Ransom Myers, died last week at age 54. Perhaps best known for a 2003 analysis of catch records showing that populations of big fish like sharks, marlin and swordfish had dropped by 90 percent in the last half-century, Dr. Myers published right up til the end, with his last paper appearing in the journal Science on March 30, 2007 -- the day before he died. In 2003, he told Science Daily:

We are in massive denial and continue to bicker over the last shrinking numbers of survivors, employing satellites and sensors to catch the last fish left. We have to understand how close to extinction some of these populations really are. And we must act now, before they have reached the point of no return. I want there to be hammerhead sharks and bluefin tuna around when my five-year-old son grows up. If present fishing levels persist, these great fish will go the way of the dinosaurs.

High Honors

Yvon Chouinard wins the American Alpine Club's David R. Brower Conservation Award.