You Say You Want a Resolution

Well, you know, we all want to change the world. And with that in mind, here are a few ideas for your New Year's Resolution. Feel free to add your own ideas in the comments. And a Happy New Year to everyone. Let's make it a good one.

1) Read one authoritative book on global warming. Al Gore's book version of An Inconvenient Truth is excellent, but just in case you don't trust his take on things, here are some other titles to consider:

• Field Notes from a Catastrophe by New Yorker staffer Elizabeth Kolbert
• The Weather Makers by Australian scientist and Man of the Year, Tim Flannery
• The Discovery of Global Warming by Spencer Weart
• What We Know About Climate Change by MIT climate scientist Kerry Emanuel, (the shortest and most accessible of the bunch).

2) Write a letter to the editor of your newspaper or send a missive to your Senator or Congressman. Tell them what you think. They work for you.

3) Conduct a home energy audit. Find out how much power you use domestically and where you can trim it down. Pick the lowest hanging fruit first -- things like extra insulation and more efficient lighting can make a world of difference.

4) Experiment with alternatives to driving. Maybe you can telecommute to work once or twice a week. Or carpool? How about riding your bike to the store for that half gallon of milk?

5) Measure your carbon footprint and consider what it would take to become carbon-neutral.

For Comparison's Sake

Check out Grist's picks for the top environmental stories for Twenty Ought Seven.

Top Environmental Story of '07?

You decide.

Sink or Swim

The latest issue of Sierra is now online, featuring a special report on corporate America's green ambitions, survival tips from polar bears, and a look at how climate concerns will play in the 2008 elections. Also, don't miss web exclusives like Mr. Green's Mailbag and a radio dispatch from the Beaufort Sea by author Richard Nelson. You'll find it all here.

Don't want to read the magazine on the web? You don't have to. A year's subscription to award-winning Sierra magazine is just one of the perks of joining the Club.

Just Turn Off the Lights!

Australia's new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, made a big splash at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali by signing on to the Kyoto Protocol. The November election in which Rudd trounced former PM John Howard is widely seen as the first major election where global warming was the determining issue.

Hey, aren't we having an election too? Here's how we handle it in the U.S. of A.: CBS News is asking all the candidates "Is the global climate threat overblown?" There's a great rundown of the answers at Daily Kos, but the surprise winner for radical global-warming solutions is Mike Huckabee:

[W]e ought to declare that we will be free of energy consumption in this country within a decade, bold as that is.

That would do it!

How Green Can China Get? -- And How California Is Helping

All the talk seems to be about China’s leaders refusing to commit to cutting carbon emissions, but what if they did?

Could they actually make the promised cutbacks?

Robert Collier, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle, suggests that despite despite its image as an all-powerful dictatorship, with its economic boom the Chinese government has “lost so much political and regulatory power that it has been unable to force provincial and municipal authorities to obey environmental laws.”

And despite the Bush administration’s harping on China to commit to reductions, the idea that the U.S. would help China strengthen and enforce environmental laws is, as Collier says, “sheer anathema.”

But all in not bleak. Behind the scenes, scientists and policy advisors from California have been helping China learn from the state’s successes in cutting emissions despite federal inaction -- helping Chinese officials set up pro-conservation electricity rate structures, clean-energy technology tax incentives, tighter vehicle emissions regulations, and more.

Read it all here. It’s a fascinating mix of optimism, pessimism and irony.

Meatless Minimalist?

Mark Bittman has made a name for himself as The Minimalist, the New York Times' meat n' potatoes food columnist, a guy who applies Occam's razor (Occam's cleaver?) to the art of cooking. He's also known for his best-selling cookbooks, perhaps especially How to Cook Everything, which has been described as a hipper Joy of Cooking.

Now, Bittman has come out with How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. That's bound to surprise many Bittman fans, who are used to seeing the man gnawing ribs or braising lamb shanks on his PBS cooking show. So what's up? Has the Minimalist given up meat? Not so fast. As he hastens to point out in his Amazon.com blog: "I’m not a vegetarian, and I’m not an advocate of a vegetarian diet; I’m an advocate of Americans eating fewer animal products - less meat, fish, poultry, and dairy."

...what motivated me--several years ago--was seeing the handwriting on the wall: That although being a principled, all-or-nothing vegetarian was not a course of action that would ever likely inspire the majority of Americans, the days of all-meat-all-the-time (or, to be slightly less extreme, of a diet heavily dependent on meat) could not go on. Averaging a consumption of two pounds a week or more of meat (as Americans do) is not sustainable...

Hat tip: 101 Cookbooks

On to the Next Step

The House of Representatives has passed the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 by a vote of 235-181. The bill, which would significantly increase automobile fuel economy standards for the first time in 30 years while also rolling back oil industry tax breaks and encouraging the use of alternative energy, now faces tough sledding in the Senate and a threatened veto by President Bush. So, while it's a huge victory, it's still just a bill ...

We've Been Waiting

If the comic strip Pogo is remembered for only one thing, it will be the phrase "We have met the enemy and he is us." But did you know that Pogo's creator Walt Kelly first used that phrase on a poster for the original Earth Day in 1970? Neither did I, but the Internet is good at unearthing obscurities like that.

What made me think of that quote in the first place, though, was a diametrical sentiment I encountered in a column on global warming by this year's recipient of the Sierra Club's David R. Brower award, Thomas Friedman. After an ominous quote from the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Friedman offered up two slices of hope: the Google Foundation's renewable energy initiative and the Vehicle Design Summit, which was started by some students at M.I.T. Friedman describes it as

...a global, open-source, collaborative effort, managed by M.I.T. students, that has 25 college teams around the world, including in India and China, working together to build a plug-in electric hybrid within three years. Each team contributes a different set of parts or designs. I thought writing for my college newspaper was cool. These kids are building a hyper-efficient car, which, they hope, "will demonstrate a 95 percent reduction in embodied energy, materials and toxicity from cradle to cradle to grave" and provide "200 m.p.g. energy equivalency or better." The Linux of cars!

Oh, and the quote from the students that gives Friedman (and me) hope? "We are the people we have been waiting for." Wouldn't you rather see that on a poster next Earth Day?