A future of poisoned oceans, withered crops, and irate polar bears is nobody's idea of a good time. It's clear to anyone who is paying attention that our civilization is due for an upgrade. Bright Green covers the news, ideas, opinions, and trends littering the road to an environmentally sustainable future.
Starbucks to distribute billions of little plastic sticks
In an attempt to protect on-the-go caffeinistas from the drops of coffee that tend to spurt out of the hole in the lids of their cups, Seattle-based coffee behemoth Starbucks has announced that they will be redesigning their lids including a little plastic stick with each beverage.
USAToday reports the "splash sticks" -- green, mermaid-shaped plugs that snap into the hole on the lid -- will be rolled out nationally this week. The idea for the little plastic sticks, which are the perfect size for choking an albatross, came from a customer suggestion at Mystarbucksidea.com, the company's new social-networking site that allows users to collaboratively generate ideas for befouling the planet.
On the company's official blog, the announcement of the little plastic stick's debut came with a suggestion that they be washed and reused, "to help minimize waste".
Barbourula kalimantanensis, first spotted last year in Kalimantan, Indonesia, has no lungs and breathes through its skin. (AP Photo/David Bickford)
Breathless diversity
The Associated Press, along with many other outlets, reports the discovery of a lungless frog in the wilds of Borneo. And of course this poor critter, the only lungless frog known to science, is being driven to extinction by illegal logging and gold mining.
Last year, the esteemed biologist Edward O. Wilson wrote that probably 90 percent of all living species remain undiscovered. Just once, I'd like to see a biologist discover one that isn't in the slightest bit threatened by environmental degradation.
Walt Disney summed up life's astounding diversity in an uplifting quote I came across on Treehugger today.
"Landscapes of great wonder and beauty lie under our feet and all around us. They are discovered in tunnels in the ground, the heart of flowers, the hollows of trees, fresh-water ponds, seaweed jungles between tides, and even drops of water.
Life in these hidden worlds is more startling in reality than anything we can imagine. How could this earth of ours, which is only a speck in the heavens, have so much variety of life, so many curious and exciting creatures?"
I look forward to the day they let Walt out of cryogenic storage so he can continue to inspire us.
Matthew LaClair holds his American Government textbook at his home in Kearny, N.J., Tuesday. (AP Photo/Mike Derer)
High-school senior calls textbook publisher on climate denial
A New Jersey high-schooler has raised questions about politically motivated scientific inaccuracies about global warming in a popular U.S. government textbook, a charge that has been backed up by top climate scientists.
The Associated Press reported yesterday that Matthew LaClair, a high school senior in Kearny, N.J., took issue with statements in his AP Government textbook, "American Government," published by Houghton Mifflin. The book, written by James Q. Wilson and John DiIulio, presents established scientific facts, such as the existence of the greenhouse effect, as up for debate. The authors falsely claim that “the scientific community is divided" over the existence of global warming, and that "scientists do not know how large the greenhouse effect is, whether it will lead to a harmful amount of global warming, or (if it will) what should be done about it."
Mr. Wilson is the Ronald Reagan Professor for Public Policy at Pepperdine University and the chairman of the Council of Academic Advisors of the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank that has received $1,870,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998. Mr. DiIulio, a University of Pennsylvania professor and the first head of the Bush White House's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, is affiliated with the Manhattan Institute, which has received $205,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.
Mr. LaClair brought these inaccuracies, along with his concerns about the book's statements about school prayer and same-sex marriage, to the attention of The Center for Inquiry, an Amherst, N.Y., think tank that sees to debunk fringe science claims. In a blistering report, the Center concluded that the textbook could actually make students dumber:
The presence of these errors and omissions seriously risks undermining the student reader’s understanding of basic facts and principles relevant to the study of American government. In the interests of serving the educational needs of American government students and sparing the authors and publishers needless embarrassment, the errors and omissions should be corrected immediately.
These concerns also came to the attention of James Hansen, the director of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and one of the world's top climatologists. In a letter to Houghton Mifflin (PDF), he blasted the publisher's lax scientific standards.
I find it alarming that a widely-used textbook from a respected publisher would contain so many gross errors. I strongly urge that you update the textbook to reflect the broad consensus of the scientific community. Failure to correct the book's errors will leave students gravely misinformed about the facts and science of global warming, one of the most serious problems that we as a society and a species face.
A campaign by Friends of the Earth, a confederation of environmentalist groups, is also pressuring Houghton to correct the textbook. According to the Associated Press, Houghton will review the book, as will the College Board, which oversees AP textbooks.
This is not the first time LaClair has made headlines. In 2006, he secretly tape-recorded his public high-school teacher telling the class that those who did not accept Jesus would go to hell. (The class was on the US Constitution.) After handing the recordings to school officials, he received an anonymous death threat and an award from the ACLU.
In this 2005 photo, India's main opposition Bharatiya Janta Party workers shout slogans against the western Indian Maharashtra state government during a protest in Bombay against power shortages. (AP Photo/Rajesh Nirgude)
World Bank backs massive India coal plant, calls it "clean development"
The World Bank Group has come under fire from environmentalists for approving financing for a 4-billion-watt coal-fired power plant in Mundra, Gujarat, India, which will be funded in part by money intended to reduce carbon emissions.
On Tuesday, the board of the World Bank Group's International Finance Corporation approved $450 million in loans over 20 years for the hyperbolically named Tata Ultra Mega, a $4.14 billion power plant expected to go online in mid-2011. The plant, run by Tata, India's largest corporation, will provide electricity for five states in the north and west.
According to a press release from the IFC, the plant will be India's cleanest and most efficient:
While the plant will emit 23 million tons of CO2, its use of supercritical technology will make it India’s most efficient coal-fired plant. The intensity of the plant’s carbon emissions is expected to be 40 percent less than the average of existing coal-fired plants in India and 16 percent less than the average of coal plants in OECD countries. Its competitive tariff will also improve access to energy for many low-income people in the country.
How much is 23 million tons of CO2? According to this handy website produced by the Center for Global Development, if it were running today, the Mega Ultra would be, in absolute terms, the second highest CO2 emitting power plant in India and the 23rd highest in the world.
Despite these figures, the plant's relative per-capita efficiency qualifies as a Clean Development Mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol, which means that industrialized countries can invest in it as a low-cost alternative to reducing carbon emissions in their own country.
This has some environmentalists outraged. In a scathing commentary in Foreign Policy In Focus Daphne Wysham and Shakuntala Makhijani condemn what they call "climate profiteering" by the World Bank, Tata, and industrialized countries:
The World Bank has seized upon the immense challenges climate change poses to humanity and is now front and center in the complicated, international world of carbon finance. It can turn the dirtiest carbon credits into gold.
How exactly, does this work, you ask?
Quite simply: The Bank finances a fossil fuel project, involving oil, natural gas, or coal, in Poor Country A. Rich Country B asks the Bank to help arrange carbon credits so Country B can tell its carbon counters it’s taking serious action on climate change. The World Bank kindly obliges, offering carbon credits for a price far lower than Country B would have to pay if Country B made those cuts at home. Country A gets a share of the cash to invest in equipment to make fossil fuel project slightly more efficient, the World Bank takes its 13% cut, and everyone is happy.
Everyone, that is, who is cashing in on this deal. If you’re after a real solution to the climate crisis, these shenanigans can and should make you unhappy.
But despite the dubious environmental benefits of the Mega Ultra, the fact remains that India desperately needs reliable power. It's very easy for someone like me, sitting in a well-lit Boston office (okay, cubicle), to gloss over what it's like to live with sporadic power. According to the Mega Ultra's project description, the states that the plant would serve currently face energy shortages ranging from 7 percent to 19 percent and peak power shortages ranging from 10 percent to 30 percent. And more than half of India's rural households have no electricity. If India is ever going to lift its population out of poverty, it needs electricity.
But there could be a better option. An analysis by David Wheeler, a former World Bank economist, shows that the Mundra region is a great candidate for thermal solar power because it's sparsely settled and gets a lot of sun. The cost of solar power, he says, would cost 8.23 cents per kilowatt-hour, versus 7.65 cents for Mega Ultra's coal. He shows that the remaining cost gap could be completely covered by financing from international clean technology funds, that is, true carbon offsets. If Mundra went solar, Wheeler argues, the project would improve the World Bank's image and help advance technology in renewable energy. Not to mention keeping Gujarat's skies free of mercury and toxic particulates.
But the check has already been signed for the Ultra Mega, so it would take tremendous public pressure to keep it from going online. Given India' acute need for electricity, those opposing the plant will need to work hard to reframe the debate away from one the environment versus prosperity.
An Inconvenient Truth II: Electric Boogaloo
The Goracle has a new slide show out, which premiered at the annual TED conference in March. Check it out when you have a free 27 minutes and 54 seconds.
Unlike the slide show in An Inconvenient Truth, whose goal was to dispel any skepticism that human activity is warming the planet, this one takes human-induced climate change as a given. It is lighter on the charts and statistics that we've come to expect from the former veep. But he still presents some surprising data. Some highlights:
• The record-breaking disappearance of Arctic sea ice.
• US consumption of gasoline compared to the rest of the world (taken from this article in Foreign Policy magazine)
• The appallingly low number of questions about climate change asked to US presidential candidates in major debates and interviews (compiled by the League of Conservation Voters)
Gore also drops some memorable one-liners. My favorite is what he has to say about oil companies who, faced with declining reserves, are now looking extracting the planet's last drops of oil from tar sands or from oil shale.
"Junkies find veins in their toes when the ones in their arms and their legs collapse," he said.
But the real point of the slide show was to inspire. At the end of his talk, he says:
I’m optimistic because I believe we have the capacity at moments of great challenge to set aside the causes of distraction and rise to the challenge that history is presenting us. Sometimes I hear people respond to the disturbing facts of the climate crisis, by saying, ‘Oh, this is so terrible, what a burden we have.’ I would like to ask you to reframe that. How many generations in all of human history have had the opportunity to rise to a challenge that is worthy of our best efforts? A challenge that can pull from us more than we knew we could do.
I think we ought to approach this challenge with a sense of profound joy and gratitude that we are the generation about which a thousand years from now philharmonic orchestras and poets and singers will celebrate by saying "They were the ones that found it within themselves to solve this crisis and lay the basis for a bright and optimistic human future."
Let’s do that.
Like his $300 million 'We Can Solve It' campaign that he launched recently, Gore makes strong appeals to American nationalism. This ad (narrated by Jerry Lundegaard!) shows clips of D-Day, the 1963 March on Washington, and the 1969 moon landing. Gore's slide show shows images of the signing of The Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation, a clip of Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima, and, again, the moon landing. By highlighting America's collective responses to challenges such as fascism, racial injustice, and the fact that the moon is very far way, it seems that Gore hopes to flip the the narrative of environmentalism away from one that blames America for its wastefulness to one that exalts America for its greatness.
But what, exactly, is Gore proposing? This: A revenue-neutral carbon tax, one that replaces employment taxes. (Here's a fairly straightforward explanation of what a carbon tax is, from a group that advocates its adoption.) Such a tax would be a hard sell in today's political climate. McCain is firmly against carbon taxes, and Clinton and Obama appear to lean toward cap-and-trade systems over carbon taxes. Then again, given what Gore has accomplished in raising awareness of climate change, I wouldn't rule his ideas out just yet.
A photo released by the "Tiergarten Nuernberg" zoo in Nuremberg shows polar bear cub Flocke during her first encounter in an open air area, while her keeper looks on, Tuesday March 11, 2008. (AP Photo/Tiergarten Nuernberg, Ralf Schedlbauer, HO)
Flocking to Flocke
Charismatic megafauna. That's the term used to describe large, popular, threatened animal species, such as the giant panda, blue whale, or polar bear, that are vital to the fundraising arms of conservation groups.
At the moment, it's hard to find an example more charismatic than Flocke, the polar bear cub born in captivity at the Nuremburg Zoo in December who makes her first public appearance today. Like her countrybear, Knut, Flocke was rejected by her mother at birth and is now being raised by zookeepers. And, like Knut, she has quickly attained rock-star status.
The Associated Press describes the 4-month-old cub's premiere:
In her afternoon debut before television cameras, the chubby bear had to be coaxed out into the polar bear enclosure, then slowly nosed around the rocks and grass with the curiosity of a toddler – keeping close to the zookeeper with her.
But she quickly gained confidence, eventually bounding through the grass and plunging into the water; paddling about for a few minutes before climbing out to nibble on the zookeeper's shoe to the delight of the television reporters providing commentary for the national live broadcast of the event.
Nuremburg Zoo is well aware of the animal magnetism that a cuddly polar bear cub can exert. Before Flocke's debut, the zoo created a special Flocke website, where they posted almost 180 photos and 108 videos, tracing Flocke's development from a helpless infant to a bounding toddler.
Flocke's popularity will likely mean a windfall for the Nuremburg Zoo. According to a March 21 article by The Associated Press, the zoo, which normally gets thousands of visitors in a week, is expecting 25,000 visitors a day after her debut. The zoo is building a platform in front of her enclosure that will hold up to 500 people at a time. In 2007 Knut earned a profit of around $7.4 million for the Berlin Zoo.
Flocke won't remain a cub forever. What happens when the 'mega' part kicks in? Knut's story is instructive. The 309-pound adolescent bear, who as a cub shared the May 2007 cover of Vanity Fair with Leonardo DiCaprio, now attracts only a handful of visitors, who gaze at him through a pane of thick glass. According to a March 25 story on Spiegel Online, Knut "has become so used to the attention of people that he also cries when no one is standing in front of his enclosure watching him."
Flocke's handlers are well aware of the fleeting nature of celebrity. The smiling cub now graces an ad for Nuremburg's transit authority. Below her are the words "Knut is yesterday."
Automobiles wait in a traffic jam on a New York City highway. (REUTERS/Mike Segar)
Should localities be allowed to go it alone?
Over at Dot Earth, The New York Times's Andrew Revkin reacts to the collapse of Michael Bloomberg's congestion pricing scheme with a question about self-governance:
If a city that is the economic engine of a state cannot find support for its chosen path to clearing its streets of traffic estimated to cause billions of dollars in lost productivity, that doesn't bode well for a world with astonishingly variegated nations trying to find a common path to limit climate risks without harming economies.
How will we ever think (and act) globally if we can't even act locally?
We saw a similar dynamic play out recently on a much larger scale in the battle between the EPA and a group of 20 states led by California. The state had passed a law forcing automakers to cut their greenhouse emissions. The EPA stepped in, asserting that only the federal government had the right to regulate such emissions. As it happens, the federal rules are less restrictive than California's, so the state is unable to curb auto emissions within its borders as much as its legislature would like to.
Sometimes, even a nation-state finds itself struggling to exercise sovereignty in environmental issues. One example: In 1996, the Metalclad Corporation, a US waste-management company, accused the Mexican government of violating a provision in NAFTA after the governor of the state of San Luis Potosi refused to allow the company to re-open a hazardous waste landfill. The governor shut down the landfill after it was discovered that the landfill was contaminating the local drinking water supply. Metalclad claimed that this act constituted expropriation under NAFTA rules, and and successfully sued the Mexican government and won, eventually settling for $15.6 million.
For those rooting for New York, California, and Mexico to prevail in these battles, it seems like there exists a strong environmental case for political localism. But maybe not. After all, for every local government that wants to blaze an eco-friendly trail without interference from a higher authority, there's a good chance that there's another one ready to take advantage on reduced oversight. For instance, in an important 2001 ruling, the Supreme Court shortened the reach of the Clean Water Act, granting the state of Illinois had the right to build a landfill on a breeding ground for migratory birds.
As political pressure to address environmental crises grows, I expect that we're going to see a lot more of these turf wars. Is there a proper balance between self-governance and global initiatives? If so, what is it?
Apple Inc. vs. the Big Apple
It looks like some lawyers will be spending the rest of the year comparing apples to apples.
On Thursday, Apple Inc. mounted a legal challenge to the logo trademark application of GreeNYC, New York City's campaign to cut carbon emissions by 30 percent by 2030. Apple Inc. and the Big Apple both used stylized apples in their emblems; Apple argues that the two images are similar enough to create confusion among shoppers.
I'd hate to see anyone accidentally confuse a computer company with a major metropolis, so, as a public service, I'm providing this guide to help you tell the difference.
| New York City | Apple Inc. |
|---|---|
| Stolen from Native Americans in 1624 | Stolen from Xerox in 1979 |
| Shocked the world by electing a mayor from Boston | Shocked the world by installing a chip from Intel |
| Home to JFK and LaGuardia | Home to Airport Extreme and Airport Express |
| Can be reached via Rte. 95 and the Lincoln and Holland tunnels | Operating system is impenetrable |
| Produced the overhyped disaster that was the '04 Yankees | Produced the overhyped disaster that was the G4 Cube |
Stuff you don't need, Vol. I
Don't get me wrong: I like civilization. I'm not one of these people who thinks that the only way to save the planet is for everyone to return to the paleolithic. Go live in the wilderness if you must, but for me there are some trappings of industrial society that I'd prefer not to go without. Pants come immediately to mind, and I'm sure there are other things.
That said, there are some consumer goods out there that are so utterly pointless and belligerently wasteful that they make me question the very notion of human progress. What sort of civilization, I find myself asking, would produce such a thing?
Take, for instance, the gasoline-powered blender.
It turns out this thing is not unique. A quick Google search reveals a number of competing purveyors of gas-powered blenders. There's a gas-powered blender industry, complete with trade shows, brochures, sales and marketing teams, the whole puréed enchilada, all devoted to ensuring that you can whip up an Orange Julius on your front lawn without an extension cord.
Anyway, I'm hoping that S.Y.D.N. will become a regular feature on this blog, but I can't do it without your help. Click here to let me know about your favorite ecologically destructive consumer product.
Pedestrians and cars mix on New York's Broadway street. (Melanie Stetson Freeman/CSM/FILE)
Why don't we do it in the road?
The New York Times ran a provocative story yesterday on redefining the street. Writer Jeff Byles interviewed a number of urban planners who want to diminish the dominance of cars transform the streets into pedestrian-and-bike-friendly public plazas.
"For decades, the Department of Transportation's job has been to move vehicles as quickly as possible," said Janette Sadik-Khan, the agency's commissioner. "We're taking a look at it a little bit differently now. There is a tremendous hunger for what we can do to make it easier for people to get around, to improve the quality of our streets and plazas, to make it easier for people to linger."
These street reformers – planners, architects and urban officials from around the globe – are questioning the conventional street-curb-sidewalk motif, challenging the dominance of cars, and devising ways to use street furniture, plants and even radical new vehicles to transform the experience of the street.
Byles then goes on to describe ten different ways in which the streets can be reworked to tame traffic. Some of these proposals already exist in some places, such as the fun-to-say woonerf, an anarchic Dutch street design that eliminates all traffic signals but gives pedestrians priority, and the separated bike lane, already in place in some parts of Manhattan, which frees cyclists from having to compete with cars for space on the road. Other ideas are more out there, such as Mitchell Joachim's vision of AI-equipped squishy cars.
The story came the day before Michael Bloomberg's much-touted congestion pricing plan imploded in the state legislature. The New York mayor's failure to get Albany on board with his plan will mean that Mr. Bloomberg, if he really wants to reduce city traffic, will be seeking alternatives that don't require approval from the state. I woonerf he has any ideas.
This is important stuff when it comes to climate change, as the car accounts for about half of the typical household's carbon emissions. Making cars more fuel-efficient is part of the solution, but we will also need to make our communities more walkable. In the United States, where far too many people can't walk to their local supermarket without crossing an interstate, redefining our roads will prove difficult. Especially since, as the Times pointed out last week, no matter how difficult you make it, some people just like driving.
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