the body politek

Now that the long election season is behind us, surely people of all political stripes can agree on one thing: At last we’ll get a respite from the bombardment of attack ads, lies, and slimeball nastiness that poured out of too many campaigns.

The worst ad that I saw was not one of those awful screeds claiming that “Barack Obama Is Secretly A Muslim Terrorist.” Instead, the winner of the 2008 Worst Award goes to a local candidate here in my city of Austin, Texas.

He’s a Republican who ran against the incumbent county tax assessor on a cut-taxes platform – which he took to a gory extreme. His ad depicted a man lying in a bathtub that was filled with ice and trickles of blood. He had just cut out one of his own kidneys, explained a narrator, because high taxes left him no choice but to sell his organs. The ad’s tagline was: Stop the bleeding.”

The kidney man lost, but such political yuck made me appreciate something that happened two days after the election. Out of Sussex County in Delaware, a bright glow of political sanity and even sweetness emerged. People there have a tradition called “Return Day,” dating back to around 1792.

It’s a post-election celebration in which opposing candidates for state and local offices join the public to hear the town crier announce the official election results. The former rivals are paired up to ride to the event together in horse-drawn carriages and antique cars. After the reading of returns, Republican and Democratic leaders jointly lower a ceremonial hatchet into an ornate cabinet. This “Burial of the Tomahawk” officially ends the political season. Then everyone adjourns to a big festival, with food, music, and libations for all.

How civilized! Everyplace should have a Return Day. Check it out: www.returnday.org.

Good grief! Whole industries are downsizing, paychecks are shrinking, home values are dwindling, and our 401Ks are deflating to 1Ks. It can’t get any worse, can it?

Well, don’t look now, but they shrunk the toilet paper. Scott Paper is pleased to announce that its "new" toilet product has fully 1,000 sheets of tissue on each roll. Actually, so did the old rolls. What's really new and what the company didn’t announce is that each sheet has been shorted. The old version gave us 4 inches of tissue, but the new and “improved” Scotts has quietly been cut to 3.7 inches in length. That’s a decline of 300 square inches per roll! Yet the price remains the same.

All sorts of corporations are instituting stealth price increases these days by shrinking product content while holding up prices. Skippy peanut butter, for example, ought to change its name to Skimpy. The company is now providing two ounces less in each jar, but it did not lower what it charges us. Worse, Skippy is intentionally trying to hide its consumer heist by playing eye tricks on us. The new jar is the same size as the old one was, so it looks like you’re getting the same amount – unless you turn the jar upside down. Instead of a flat bottom, the jar has an inward dimple that reduces the volume inside.

Likewise, cereal makers are cutting content while maintaining prices, and also using package deception to keep consumers from knowing what’s up – and what’s down. The new cereal boxes have the same height and width, thus looking the same as the old ones on the shelf. But cereal makers cleverly reduced the depth of the packages, leaving you paying more per ounce without knowing it.

One outraged consumer has launched a website chronicling these sneak attacks on our pocketbooks. Check it out: www.mouseprint.org.

Raptors--a class that includes hawks, falcons, and eagles--are daytime predatory birds.  They migrate in windy areas where, for obvious reasons, wind turbines are best sited. 

Siting these wind turbines so that they pose the least possible threat to migrating raptors is a difficult, but worthwhile, challenge.  The potential of wind power is being evaluated in states like Montana where the wind blows almost continuously and hard in the eastern part of the state, where raptor species like the Ferruginous, Swainson’s and Red-tailed Hawks and Prairie Falcons and Golden Eagles migrate and nest.

During their migrations raptors can either fly high in huge kettles or clusters, or fly in at low altitudes, vulnerable to wind turbines.

Raptors have the tendency to fly against the wind following updrafts right into the sites of wind turbines.

These turbines are already placed where they can, and do, negatively affect raptors and other forms of wildlife. Wind energy is a viable form of alternative energy that is supported by the NRDC in its fight to curb the affects of global climate change on wildlife.

There do exist guidelines to put wind turbines in places so that the impact on raptors and other forms of wildlife is minimal to non-existent.

By heeding these guidelines and more responsibly siting wind turbines, we can protect raptors and all other birds, bats and butterflies as well as other animals as we we develop wind energy and place wind turbines to best mitigate and arrest global climate change.

[Photo from flickr user benefit of hindsight]

If the sweeping vote for change on Election Day is really to bear fruit, We The People must be the ones who nurture it. We can’t just crank back in our La-Z-Boys. That's because the business-as-usual crowd is waiting for Obama in Washington: Wall Street bankers, the war machine, 13,000 corporate lobbyists, recalcitrant Republicans, weak-kneed Democrats, the conformist media, and others. These insiders intend to shape his presidency in their image, stifling the people's demand for real change.

We have to be the counterforce pushing insistently, vociferously from the outside. Who’s “we”? You and me – determined citizens, working through our personal networks, public interest organizations, progressive media outlets, the netroots nation, unions, community groups, and other connections to grassroots activism.

The good news is that Obama intends to open a democratic channel that'll run from the countryside right into the government, using the two-way electronic pipeline of the Web to link you, me, and a mass constituency directly to Washington decision-making. He used this online relationship effectively in his campaign, turning what’s known as netroots nation into a prodigious political force that organized locally in every state, raised a massive amount of money, bypassed the conventional media, and coordinated its own actions.

This remarkable tool is now going inside. It'll allow Obama and a core list of e-activists, that already number more than 10 million people, to communicate back and forth instantly, without having to go through the filters of the media and lobbying groups. One of the top internet staffers for the president-to-be has already notified the activists that “The community we’ve built together is just the beginning.”

If you want to plug in to this grassroots self-government network, the digital link-up for the transition period is www.change.gov.

The Q Drum eases the task of fetching water for peoples in developing nations. Climate change has required a countless number of people all around the world to travel greater distances to retrieve water for everyday use. The Q Drum allows a child to pull the full capacity of 50 liters of water over flat terrain with comparative ease.

Typical methods of water transport include a sundry of containers that must be carried, carted, driven, or hauled by animal or bicycle to and from the water source. This can often mean unhygienic conditions with inappropriate containers and exposure to pathogens, requires high energy output, and is labor intensive and time consuming. The Q Drum was designed to be simple, cost effective, keep the weight on the ground, be durable, and to have no moving parts or handles that could break. Using rural villages throughout South Africa and Angola as their model and testing grounds Q Drum Ltd has created a coping method for the effects of desertification and water shortage so prevalent throughout Africa.

The effort required to move the Q Drum allows children to be active helpers in a very important domestic duty, which could free adults from this job, which is typically the responsibility of women. The drums are stackable, up to 40 high when filled, meaning storage space can be maximized and large scale transport possible.

 As climate change continues to affect weather patterns, vegetation, food supplies, and water supplies humans will be forced to adapt. Until we can fix some of the damage we’ve inflicted on the planet innovations like the Q Drum will be essential.

[This article was originally posted on greenUPGRADER.]

I was sitting in my son's living room in Bozeman, Montana two days ago and an adult bald eagle flew overhead, two blocks from downtown Bozeman. Ten days ago, there were eight bald eagles flying overhead and perched in the Cottonwoods nearby, offering exceptional looks at a place called Ennis Lake. In Northern Virginia I saw a bald eagle perched on a tulip tree in Potomac Overlook Regional Park near Washington D.C last year.

Forty years ago you would have been hard pressed to see such a site, even in places like Bozeman, Montana. Now eagles are nesting across the United States, even in large urban areas where they had not been seen in years. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have de-listed the bald eagle from the Endangered Species Act.

In an article published in the New York Times on 11/25/08, the bald eagle is identified as a bird that might become endangered again as toxins are more common in the eagle's food source. This is significant because the bald eagle is a symbol of our country.

The article identifies Mercury as the source of trouble, but there are many other toxins of concern in the eagle's habitat. In the early 1970's there were only one nesting pair of bald eagles in the state of New York, there are now 145 nesting pair's of eagles in New York state, according to the New York Times. That's a lot of eagles for one of the nation's most populous states.

In the early 1970s DDT was a problem for eagles as well as the endangered Peregrine Falcon, and now the successful nesting of bald eagles may in fact be slow because of Mercury contamination in places like the Catskill region of New York.

According to the article, eagles may be barometers for overall environmental health, an issue that is heavily monitored by groups like NRDC. Eagles, like all predatory species of animal, act like "canaries in a mine shaft" and in the Catskill region of New York, there are several reservoirs that provide the drinking water for several million US residents in New York City. I was not aware of that.

The Biodiversity Research Institute in Maine is studying how methyl mercury is ending up in a food chain on top of which perch Bald Eagles and human beings. The bald eagle eats fish that are contaminated with methyl Mercury. Humans drink the water that is partial habitat for the eagles and humans eat fish from the same waters.

Mercury levels in other eagle populations are rising throughout the US, according to the New York Times. There is now more scrutiny in this kind of toxin contamination and in the near future it will become a major problem for Bald Eagles and humans if nothing is done. Groups like NRDC are trying to abait toxins in the eagles environment and our environment and need to be supported in this essential work.

 Protection under the Endangered Species Act really helped the bald eagle become a success story. That protection lapsed when the eagle was delisted two years ago. Toxins have always been a problem for all raptorial birds, but now more so than ever the toxins are a real problem that has increased over many boundaries.

Eagles, which not long ago we thought were doing well, are now dying at an alarming rate from toxins they get in their food supply; like ducks with lead in them and fish and road kill with Mercury. It's hard being at the top of the food chain like the Bald Eagle when you regularly eat foods with high doses of toxins in them.

Last year I saw another type of once-beleaguered bird near Washington D.C., again in northern Virginia on a lake near Alexandria, a bird that was brought back from the brink, like the bald eagle, which also was scarce and in danger of extinction, the Peregrine Falcon.

The Peregrine species suffered, like the eagle of today, from toxins.  In the case of the peregrine, it was DDT, now banned in the US. The falcons' eggs were getting too thin for the bird to reproduce successfully--so many environmental groups went to work to bring the birds back from the brink of extinction.

Now you can see Peregrines commonly as they migrate along coastlines dive bombing shore birds from eastern North America. You can even watch them in cities like Boise, Idaho, as they harass the local pigeon population.

We have to make sure the eagle does not fly so close to the edge, the way its cousin the Peregrine Falcon did.

[Photo from flickr user island_explorer]

You don’t hear it outside the Beltway, but there’s a constant roar inside Washington these days.

With time running out on the Bush presidency, wrecking balls are swinging and bulldozers are growling at full throttle as George W and crew rip through federal agencies to knock down as many regulations as they can. At the behest of their corporate cronies, the Bushites have targeted more than 90 regulations that protect consumers, workers, and our environment from corporate greed and carelessness.

One example is a last-minute change in the Clean Air Act to benefit pollution-spewing utilities, allowing utilities to pump an additional 74-million tons of CO2 into our atmosphere. That's the equivalent amount of pollutants that 14 additional coal-fired power plants would emit.

To help rush through such industry-friendly changes, agency heads are arbitrarily curtailing public participation in the process and trying to circumvent requirements for scientific review. For example, in rigging the Clean Air Act for utilities, the scientific analysis justifying the change was so weak that the analysis was simply not put out for public comment.

But, wait – what’s that other sound coming out of Washington? Why it’s the welcome hum of presidential transition!

While the Bushites have been frantically wrecking the regulatory structure to enhance corporate interests, President-elect Barack Obama has quietly been laying plans to restore the regulatory balance to enhance the public interest. He has pulled together a transition team of four dozen experts, and they've been studying the regulatory favors that Bush has done for his political backers. Already, the team has identified some 200 of these overtly-political regs that Obama can quickly reverse after his inauguration.

It looks like Obama and his team are going to come into office wearing tool belts and ready to get right to work repairing the wreckage.

Two years ago, OnEarth ran an interesting article and podcast on socially responsible investing. Remembrance of those pieces quickened my interest in an article in yesterday's New York Times on green investment funds; the Times story provides something of a yardstick re how socially responsible investing is evolving.

Most significant is that the institutional-investing heavyweights -- pension funds, foundations, universities and the like -- are beginning to get involved:

Until recently, green investment funds were mostly a niche for individual investors. But now investing with the idea of improving the environmental actions of corporations, not just maximizing profit, is catching on among some big pension funds and foundations, particularly in Europe and even in the United States.

It's also plain to see that at least some of these funds are today more narrowly focused on climate change and have made leaps in the sophistication with which they are using their portfolios to encourage companies to reduce carbon footprints.

The Times story notes that a lot of institutional investors remain hesitant to commit to green investment funds, for fear that doing so will hurt earnings. Here's hoping that there are now enough large investors -- among those mentioned by the article are the California State Teachers' Retirement fund and the pension funds of several EU national governments -- taking the plunge to produce empirical evidence that maximizing earnings and socially responsible investing needn't be contradictory.

It's hard to feel much love for bankers, but they're sure not helping themselves right now. Even as they've been clammoring for a massive bailout from you and me, they've been lobbying furiously in Washington to kill a bill that would make them give a small break to us.

It's called the "Credit Cardholders' Bill of Rights" and it would put a halt to some of the nastiest tactics that these credit-card hucksters use against their own customers. For example, they now jack up the interest rate on our cards whenever they feel like it – Bam! – the rate can jump from 16 percent to 21 percent overnight, and we don't even know about it. The Bill of Rights, however, would make them have the courtesy to give us a 45-day notice.

Another, especially-annoying gouge is the late-fee surprise attack. Many times, your monthly bill arrives only a few days before it's due. If you're ill, traveling, or otherwise unable to jump right on it – Bam, again! – you're socked with a hefty late fee. Rather than mailing our bills only 14 days before the due date, as banks now do, the Bill of Rights more reasonably requires that they mail bills to us 25 days before they are due.

These steps of simple fairness, do not impose any unbearable burdens on the banking behemoths, and – who knows? – the changes might even cause customers to view credit card issuers as something slightly friendlier than profit-grubbing predators.

But, oh, the bankers are in full howl against this attempt to impose even a basic level of corporate civility toward consumers. Incredibly, they've labeled the bill "unfair" – even as they count their billions in bailout funds taken from our pockets.

Despite their army of lobbyists, however, the Credit Cardholders Bill of Rights has passed the House and is pending in the Senate. For information, contact Consumer Federation of America: 202-387-6121.

What better day than Thanksgiving to celebrate our country’s food rebels!

I’m talking about the growing movement of small farmers, food artisans, local retailers, co-ops, community organizers, restaurateurs, environmentalists, consumers, and others – perhaps including you. This movement has spread the rich ideas of sustainability, organic, local economies, and the Common Good from the fringe of our food economy into the mainstream.

It began as an “upchuck rebellion” – ordinary folks rejecting the industrialized, chemicalized, corporatized, and globalized food system. Farmers wanted a more natural connection to the good earth that they were working. Meanwhile, consumers began seeking edibles that were not saturated with pesticides, injected with antibiotics, ripened with chemicals, dosed with artificial flavorings, and otherwise tortured.

These two interests began to find each other and to create an alternative way of thinking about food. Today, more than 8,000 organic farmers produce everything form wheat to meat, and organic sales top $20 billion a year. Some 4,000 vibrant farmers markets operate in practically every city and town across the land, linking farmers and food makers directly to consumers in a local, supportive economy. Restaurants, supermarkets, food wholesalers, and school districts are now buying foodstuffs that are produced sustainably and locally.

No one in a position of power – corporate or governmental – made any of these changes happen. Instead, the movement percolated up from the grassroots, and it has become a groundswell as ordinary people inform themselves, organize locally, and assert their own democratic values over those of the corporate structure.

Family by family, town by town, this movement has changed not only the market, but also the culture of food. That’s a change worthy of our thanks.

A mere few centuries after they founded Nieuw Amsterdam , (a distant settlement that came to be known as New York City); the worlds leading experts in sea-level adaptations may see their former colony drowned. But could Dutch dykes ever save its Nieuw Amsterdam?

Beginning with just over three feet of sea level rise, the impact on the US would be calamitous, having the potential to destabilize many highly populated areas of this country, according to a Coastal Impact Study published at Architecture 2030.

The study challenges the notion that has been advanced by the media that only poor nations far from us will be impacted by climate change, which has lead to complacency about the need to confront global warming.

But even three feet of sea level rise - which is on the low side of most IPPC reports - will displace not just those other far away foreigners, but that will affect most of our own coastal residents.

As illustrated in these interactive maps of the effects on our own coasts:

"Starting in East Boston and moving down along the East Coast, around Florida and over to the Gulf of Mexico, then up along the West Coast and ending with the city of Honolulu, Hawaii, a picture of inundation, population displacement and catastrophic property loss develops. With a business-as-usual approach, where fossil-fuel consumption and GHG emissions continue to increase, we will likely see a warming of 2 °C to 3 °C this century with a planetary energy imbalance sufficient to melt enough ice to raise sea level by several meters.Once the process of ice sheet disintegration begins, the impact on the US is unremitting, and at each additional increment, additional cities and towns will be adversely affected." If you think that bailing out Wall Street is expensive, you can imagine what its going to cost us to really bail out Wall Street.

Maybe we should just give Nieuw Amsterdam back?

From Architecture 2030
Art by Peter Kleiner

First posted at Red,Green And Blue

“We are a bank,” Vikram Pandit recently told employees of Citigroup, the Wall Street banking conglomerate that Pandit heads.

Perhaps he thought it would be comforting for employees to hear the CEO say that at least he knows what business they’re in. But then he asked, “What does a bank do?” That definitely was not a comforting question.

Indeed, Pandit’s utterances were a bizarre prelude to the real, totally-discomforting purpose of the meeting, which was to announce that 53,000 Citigroup employees were being booted out the door – the largest mass firing in American corporate history. This is on top of 23,000 Citigroupers who had already gotten pink slips this year.

Citigroup, once the most valuable financial company in the nation, became a sprawling giant through the loosy-goosy deregulation policies of the past decade, and its top executives bet heavily on the speculative racket built on risky subprime mortgages. It was an awful bet. Citigroup has lost billions of dollars in the past year, and its stock price has plummeted.

So, now, Pandit says the employees have to take the hit. He brags that such wholesale downsizing is a sign of his executive boldness, referring to it as corporate “shock therapy.” As you might expect, however, Mr. Bold himself is not going to share in the shock. He is taking no cut in his $216 million pay, nor has he even been modest enough to say that he’ll forgo any bonus this year for presiding over Citigroup’s collapse.

Perhaps Pandit feels he deserves a bonus because of his chief achievement this year: getting $25 billion in bailout money from you and me.

Despite taking public money, Citigroup still has not increased its lending to help our economy. Excuse me, but if they’re not making loans and are slashing jobs, why are we bailing them out?

I lived in India for five months last spring—a semester abroad from Columbia University. As an English major with a concentration in Sustainable Development, I believe I was fated to keep a blog while there—and that it was equally my fate to spend much of my time writing about the environmental and economic development catastrophes that went unnoticed all around me—the trash burning in piles everywhere, the complete lack of any kind of garbage collection system, the overwhelming absence of environmental knowledge. It was helpful to have my blog as a journal of sorts to write about what I saw and experienced every day. I have entries detailing the trash and dirt and filth that is everywhere; the masses of people, the likes of which only experience allows you realize what “over population” and “one in every sixth person in the world is Indian” actually mean. The images still in my head of begging children tapping on the windows of our auto-rickshaws, their fingers reaching inside, disheveled and dirtier than you can possibly image children could be; the picture of the seven year old girl wading through the piles up to her knees in plastic bottles and trash bags and human waste, carrying on her hip her own little baby brother. Images to make your heart break—even the most unsentimental, hardhearted.

While I lived perfectly comfortably, and in no ways was I even close to being among the poorest of India, I saw the poverty and the filth from the very moment I woke up (the maid who swept my room and washed my clothes arriving before sunup only to leave by 8am to get to her ‘real job’ then to return at 6pm to do night duties) to the moment I went to bed (the starving puppies that run wild even in the nicest of neighborhoods and never sleep at night, whining all night). And it was there in every moment in between: no trash cans in the whole country, people throwing every piece of waste and garbage out the train windows day and night, burning plastic and empty bags in every city, littered across the fields of my own college campus.

In describing these moments of what I saw, I felt, at least partially, successful in translating how profoundly affected I had been by my time living in India; but there is only so much I can say.  Writing about what I saw takes me far, but only so far. Pictures really are, in this case as in so many, worth a thousand, a million words. In particular, profoundly real are such pictures in motion—that is to say, movies!

Sadly, however, I feel that India has been misrepresented in the movie world. Oftentimes, India’s spirituality is idealized, as in Wes Anderson’s “Darjeeling Limited” where the colonial history is used to further the theme of the lost history of brothers. In other cases, as in many Bollywood films, it is the westernized, rich and glitzy sides of the culture that get highlighted, while the issues of poverty, population overflow, and garbage are glossed over. I had yet to feel comfortably saying of any movie, “Here is a movie that represents the India that I saw.” That is, until now.

To put it simply, if you haven't seen Danny Boyle's ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ yet, you must. There are a lot of reasons to see this movie, not the least of which is environmental—which is fitting, as this is appearing on an environmental blog. Because this is not simply a rave review of a fantastic movie that has a rich plot and solid acting (which this does have). There is a whole lot more I want to say, which has everything to do with my own understanding of the issues of the environment and economics, as they directly confront the experiences I had living in India last spring.

Probably you've heard at least a word or two about this film, but a brief synopsis will be helpful (and nothing can really be spoiled here, because the plot is pretty clear within the first 5 minutes of movie): Jamal Malik, born into the slums of Mumbai, India is one question away from winning 20 million rupees on the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." Unable to believe that the slum-raised, chai-serving orphan, now a boy of 18, could have possibly made it this far in the game without outside help, the show breaks for the night before the final question, and the Indian police arrest and interrogate (read: torture) Jamal, expecting him to confess to cheating. But Jamal sticks to his story—that he had no help from anyone. To prove his innocence, he recounts for the police through flashbacks into his childhood, the truly unbelievable episodes of his life that explain how he came to know the answer to each question.

While realistically implausible that Jamal's life would coincide perfectly with these precise questions, the movie highlights a far more poignant position: that is, the emotional, social, and environmental story of an India that is darker than Wes Anderson or Bollywood has been willing to show us. In suspending our disbelief of relativity and coincidence, we realize that this movie reveals to us a true story of the Indian slums, the unbearable hardships of human existence, and the journey of children who do not give up on love and loyalty. It sounds corny and it sounds predictable—and in some ways it is just that—but on a basic level, Boyle has created a film that soars above the plot-twisters and double-crossing agents of Bond and other predictably unpredictable movies. Instead, conflated as it sounds, he has grounded a feel-good movie in the real-world horrors of the slum life of Mumbai's poorest. And in so doing he has brought to life a world that is usually neatly and quietly hidden from our view.

I lived in Hyderabad, while in India, which is located in the south of the subcontinent, landlocked in Andhra Pradesh, high on the Deccan Plateau. Hyderabad was once the seat of the Mughal Empire in India; and historically, the city has been upheld as an example of peaceful coexistence between Hindus and Muslims. In recent years Hyderabad has been affected deeply by the IT business boom that has spread across most of India; and as a result Hyderabad is best known today as the second biggest tech center in the country  (trailing Bangalore only). Hyderabad is where so many of your calls to Verizon help-lines get answered at all hours of the day and night. As a result of this influx of IT wealth Hyderabad has grown exponentially, stretching miles beyond the original city limits—city sprawl that appears to be never-ending to the naked eye. There are western clubs, nice restaurants, and an ex-pat population of at least a decent size. And yet, amid that urbanization and development, the streets are filled with dirty beggar kids, trash of all kinds, and animals everywhere. And of course, Hyderabad is no spectacular exception—much, if not all of India, has boomed in similar proportions, with similar population, poverty, environmental, and social consequences.

Of course, from a sustainability point of view, the question is how can India (and the world), provide economically and socially for the increased masses of the developing world, while still maintaining any semblance of environmental protection? This is not a new issue, of course; it is simply a restating of the problem inherent in protecting the environment while working to bring the growing populations of the world the same rights and goods that citizens of developed countries enjoy. It is the pivotal question at the heart of the study of Sustainable Development. And from the perspective of an American college student, already studying the economics of environmental change and the politics of sustainability, it was an invaluable way of seeing how profoundly interlinked and complicated the problems of development and environmental degradation actually are.

And this is where I feel the movie particularly rings true. Because it manages to present these issues, not outright, but more subtly through the very problems the character face, the ways in which they come to terms with their new life realities, and in their unflagging adherence to their own loyalties and love. The film then, is not just true to the complicated life-histories of India’s varied populations; nor is it unique only because it throws together the problems of poverty and filth with questions of justice and loyalty. Rather, it is all of these, and it is more: it shows with cinematic clarity precisely what the social, environmental, and economic trade offs actually look like of the population boom in India’s most depressed slums, for her most undervalued heroes.

So, yes I love the movie because it shows the India I at once loved and feared. But not just because it is a good story. Nor do I love it just because it brings the entire city to life, with an indiscriminating eye for the good and the evil within it—we get the slums and the pimps, the laughter and the smiles; the cool sun glasses and dictatorship and patriarchal terror over women; the human waste and piles of plastic garbage; and the saris and the silks. What the movie shows is that all aspects of India are Indian, and thus it accepts them all as realities present today. Here is a movie I can say, “Watch this. Then talk to me about India and about garbage and about too many people, about sadness and mutilation.” For here is a movie that does capture the highest and the lowest that humanity is capable of—and it was this above all else that most shocked me about India: the death right next to the life; the child’s eyes peering out of the filthy hair; the beauty of the flower amid the trash heaps burning by the side of the roads.

This is not a documentary film of the slums of India (because there have been those, too) because the points of depravity and horror are not the focus of the film—as a documentary would have it. Rather the poverty and filth are simply part of the larger story being told. As such Boyle has managed to incorporate this harshness into the world of his film in the same way that that harshness actually exists in India today. The film does not qualify or comment on the issues of trash, population overflow, and poverty. It simply states them as facts.  And it is therefore not a movie about solving the problems of India, but rather a baseline of understanding from which solutions to the fundamental issues at hand can be formulated.

Were you as impressed with George W’s Glorious Global Finance Gala as I was? What a show!

The leaders of the world’s 20 most powerful economies recently gathered in Washington to consider what to do about the spreading economic collapse. To get in the mood for addressing the topic, they started their one-day talkfest with a lavish White House dinner featuring Thyme-roasted rack of lamb. Hey – you can burn up a lot of calories grappling with economic Armageddon, so the Group of 20 needed to bulk up!

The actual grappling consisted mostly of blathering and posturing. Then they grabbed lunch, took a group picture, and left town. And what, exactly, was accomplished? Much, according to a Bush spinmeister, who insisted that average Americans should “Take comfort from what happened today.” Well, okay, but what did happen? The leaders, he said, showed that they understand “the depth of the economic problems.”

Oh, good. Wow, I feel much better now, don’t you?

In fairness, I should note that the Groupees didn’t leave us totally empty handed, for they adopted a set of principles for all nations to ponder:

• Reinforce cooperation.
• Improve regulations.
• Promote market integrity.
• Reform international financial institutions.
• Strengthen transparency.

Oh, double-wow! A high school football coach couldn’t have come up with a better list of motivational platitudes to post on the locker room walls: Reinforce! Improve! Promote! Reform! Strengthen!

Meanwhile, corporations are shedding jobs, home foreclosures are rampant, and the economy is so poor that even Nevada brothels say they’re losing customers. And what is the Group of 20 leaders going to do about it? They say they’ll meet again in next April. Great – I hear lamb is good that time of year.

 (Photo used courtesy of PhotoA.nl @ flickr. Used under the Creative Commons lisence.)

I’d like to make a simple argument: that our world’s cities must play a vital role in the fight against climate change. Indeed, I think they already do.

But first, let’s put the progress of our world’s cities into perspective.

In 1900, only 160 million people, or one tenth of the world’s population, lived in urban areas. As of shortly after 2000, that number had grown twenty-fold to nearly half the world’s population, or 3.2 billion people.

According to UN projections, this process of urbanization is only going to accelerate. By 2025, the UN predicts 70 percent of the human population will be living in cities. By the end of this year, over half will live in urban areas for the first time in human history.

Similarly, in 1950, the only city to exceed 10 million people was New York City. By 2015, of the 44 cities with 5-10 million inhabitants, as many as 39 of them will be in developing countries – the areas most poorly equipped to handle the challenges presented by a changing climate.

In contrast, the wealthiest 25 percent of the world consume 80 percent of the world’s economic output. Of this 25 percent, more than 80 percent live in cities. And so it is that cities consume 75 per cent of the world's energy and produce 80 per cent of its greenhouse gas emissions -– most of these from the Northern Hemisphere.

This represents an enormous shift in the history of human civilization. For a majority of the 2 million year history of our species, we lived in caves, villages and suburbs. Now, for the first time, our environment will be a built, rather than an organic, environment.

What do we take from this?

Through the lens of increased urbanization, matched by increased concentrations of greenhouse gas concentrations, we see a world much as former President Bill Clinton described his vision of Rwanda, in his acceptance of the TED Prize. “We live in a world that everyone knows is interdependent but insufficient,” he said. Insufficient because it is “profoundly unequal.”

It would be easy to accept these as unavoidable conditions of urban development. Urban development has spread rapidly, population growth has continued apace and, many argue, affluence has bred consumption which has fueled degradation.

Furthermore, some will argue that global problems must be met with global solutions. They will also argue that the scope of multi-nationals and the concentrated power of federal governments mean that the emission targets of cities can be easily circumvented or easily overruled. Cities, according to this logic, are either besides or below the point.

But it this really true?

It is my belief that this position -– this conviction that cities are confined to the squalor of trash and not to the splendor of trees -- defies our better understanding of cities’ historic role. They are barometers of progress and, as such, reflect the vitality of their home country.

Consider the growing international interest in local climate networks.

In the US, for instance, there is the US Mayor’s Climate Protection Agreement. Created in 2005, more than 800 mayors have signed. Much the same is true in the UK. Since its creation in 2000, over 300 local authorities have signed the Nottingham Declaration. Ken Livingston, former Mayor of London, launched the Energy Strategy for London. Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York, has launched a similarly ambitious program.

Outside of these national networks, there are a serious of international networks as well. Included in this list is the ICLEI, as well as the CCP program, which now includes 675 local authorities. There is also C40 of global cities, representing a commitment from 40 of the world’s largest cities to tackle climate change. It is perhaps The Climate Alliance, which has more than 1,300 members in 17 European countries, that reflects the most international example of locally-based alliances.

Given the global consequence of localized environmental problems, these networks provide a multi-dimensional strategy that fills the strategic gaps left by one-dimensional regimes. At best, these networks provide effective depth and breadth – what the academics Michele Betsill and Harriet Bulkeley call “vertical tiers of government and horizontally organized form of governance.”

It comes down to a simple truth: more people are moving into ever-larger cities. For the first time, more people live in urban areas, than don’t. This presents two conflicting challenges.

One, to reduce the personal impact of urban environments on local citizens. And two, to reduce the diffuse impact of urban centers on our global environment.

This means working with environments traditionally disassociated with the natural world, and recalibrating our understanding of the locus of global influence away from the affluence of national governments to the main and often gritty streets of global cities. It is not that we need either local or national governments. We need both –- and we need both to be on their best behavior.

After casting her ballot for Barack Obama, Amanda Jones said simply, “I feel good about voting for him.”

Ms. Jones, who lives in a town just south of Austin, Texas, is African-American, and what gives her vote and comment some historic punch is that she’s 109 years old. She’s come a long way. Her father was a slave, and her mother was born right after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. She lived through Jim Crow, shameful segregation, the poll tax – and, now, at last, she got to vote for Barack Obama! The change fills her with joy, she says.

Me, too. Not that Obama is the answer to all of our country’s woes, not by any means. I know that I’ll have plenty to say about him later, but – come on, let’s wallow in the moment, let’s greet the historic symbolism of his election with all the glee it deserves, and let’s take energy from the hope that he presents to us.

I’m not just talking about the racial breakthrough that he symbolizes, but also the long, incremental, and steady advance of progressive ideals and ideas pushed by generations of Americans. So many people over so many years worked so hard, enduring so many ups and downs, to get to this day, when real change does seem possible.

Obama is part of a progressive continuum that flows from the revolutionary beginnings of America’s democratic experiment right through the young, innovative community of netroots activists who gave his campaign such vibrancy.

The thing we can celebrate on Inaugural Day is not solely that Obama is going into the Oval Office, but that We The People will carry our historic spirit of progressive activism inside with him. As Amanda Jones knows, we have made progress as a people – and we’ll make more, as long as uncelebrated legions of good people, like you, just keep pushing.

Climate change has become omnipresent. There are concerns of sea level rise, changing precipitation patterns, global warming, ocean acidification, species extinctions, intensity of fires and hurricanes, you've heard them all. What is the scientist's approach to study the impact of climate change? Well, there are many avenues, and as a graduate student with a high degree of interest in the sensitivity of marine animals to climate change, everyday I am refining my approach in order to contribute meaningful and sound science of how marine animals interact with their environment and how they will be impacted by anthropogenically-driven climate change.

In order to investigate the effect climate change has on marine animals, we must first have an in-depth understanding of their life history and ecology. Let's take the sand dollar as an example.

Divers along the West Coast can tell you they form dense beds along sandy bottoms. They also position themselves upright - by inundating their bottom third into the sand for support - to efficiently feed on small particles floating in the water. And of course, we can all identify this animal from the pure symmetry and beauty of its skeleton.

The life history of a sand dollar is quite complex yet fascinates the naturalist in us all. First of all, how do the sand dollar populations persist from generation to generation? In the simplest terms, adults need to survive and reproduce; the resulting individuals must grow, mature, and reproduce themselves. This sounds easy enough.

It's not. To reproduce, adults broodcast spawn - meaning males and females release sperm and egg into the water column to be fertilized, which is risky. Nearshore currents are always moving which dilutes the sperm and egg. So how will sperm and egg ever find each other? Well, this is one reason why adults aggregate, coordinate spawning events, and increase the likelihood of fertilization. In addition, the females don't just produce a few eggs, they produce hundreds of thousands, and the males don't just produce hundreds of thousands of sperm, they produce billions.

After fertilization, what's next? The resulting embryo disperses with ocean currents and develops into a form which shares no resemblance to the adult. The larval form begins to feed within days and disperses for weeks to months. This dispersal phase is very important to sand dollar populations along the west coast. Larvae produced in one location can drift with the currents, grow up, and settle into a population down the road. The settling phase is a stressful time for the sand dollar larvae; the larvae find (but not always) a suitable habitat, and initiate metamorphosis. During metamorphosis, feeding stops and morphology reorganizes to resemble the iconic adult form. A successfully metamorphed juvenile grows, matures, and must successfully spawn for populations to persist.

This is the general life history of many marine invertebrates: sea urchins, sea cucumbers, mussels, sea stars. Now that we are familiar with the basic life history patterns of coastal invertebrates, we can begin to think about what restricts their survival, and what happens when their environment starts to change.

Marine Organisms and Climate Change

The sand dollar's environment has been altered, is being altered and will be further altered by climate change. For example, sea surface warming affects adult populations, and also impacts larvae and juveniles. Furthermore, it's not just temperature, but changing ocean chemistry as well. Up to 40% of the carbon dioxide humans produce is absorbed by the ocean. The forms of carbon dioxide in seawater - carbonate, bicarbonate and carbonic acid - change proportionally as a function of the amount of carbon dioxide added. This in effect alters the pH of seawater, and the result is ocean acidification. So why is ocean acidification a concern for our sand dollar? Because its skeleton is a form of calcium carbonate, and the stability of calcium carbonate depends partially on the pH of the seawater. Thus far, laboratory experiments on calcifying species suggest that calcification rates decrease under ocean acidification scenarios.

The difficult part of science is quantifying whether a decrease in calcification of an individual will have a negative impact on the population as a whole. Furthermore, not only are we concerned about acidification for these populations, but also sea surface warming, habitat change, increased stratification, altered climatic patterns which could result in more or less rain and runoff. It seems as if this exhaustive list is discouraging, but it shouldn't be. There is a great deal of effort to answer these questions. And while there will always be uncertainty, we are learning a great deal about our coastal habitat, and how the animals within it persist from generation to generation.

Every November, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) throws their big "State of the Green Building Industry" gathering, the Greenbuild International Conference and Expo.  This week, the 25,000 or so attendees are converging on Boston, packing the local convention center to the gills for three days of speakers and panels, educational and LEED training courses, and a truly massive product and business expo.  

Let's start with the forgettable:  the Expo.  I'm sure that for the builders and architects and trade specialists (who, after all, this event is really catering to), there's plenty to be learned, scores of connections to be made, and lots of potential business to be found in the vast field of 800-plus exhibitors that coated the enormous exposition hall.  There are LEED consulting companies, builders, designers, trade groups and more building product manufacturers than you could ever digest.  The latter--which make of the lionshare--are a loose and not-particularly-well-vetted collection of building supply products, plenty of which seem to be of questionable "green" value.  A couple of exhibitors that I spoke with--one from a building firm, the other a countertop maker, neither of whom wished to be pinned to this statement--claimed that of the products shown at the Expo, about 25-percent seemed "legit," the other three-quarters representing some degree of greenwashing.  (Treehugger has an interesting post up on this.) 

It's hard to fault Greenbuild for this--and the 25-percent figure is pure conjecture--as the exhibitor fees are no insignificant chunk of the conference's income, and help the USGBC (a non-profit, it should be noted) push their vision and book some truly impressive speakers.  

On that note--this year, Greenbuild has aimed to reach outside of its trade-industry silo.  From the opening remarks, it was particular exciting to hear of the USGBC's newfound commitment (or, at least, newly annunciated commitment) to social equity.  Apparently the Council has recently added a formal plank to their governing platform and altered their mission statement to reflect the importance of an inclusive focus on social equity.  This was best reflected in Greenbuild's first day by the lineup of speakers and panel themes that prove once and for all that "green building" is in no way strictly a "white" discipline.

So after a performance by the African Children's Choir came the much-anticipated keynote address by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the South African civil rights and religious leader who helped bring about the end of apartheid in South Africa.  The Archbishop spoke of Obama's election, and the importance of remembering those less privileged--not only the world's most destitute, but those who are quietly suffering here in America, lower class, marginalized communities who couldn't care less about a LEED score, but for whom energy bills are a nightmare lived daily.  

I've seen Van Jones, who spoke in an early afternoon slot, a few times now, and every time he brings the house down.  Jones is the founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and, more recently, Green For All, a "national organization dedicated to building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty."  (You can watch Jones' talk here.)

Jones took some time to diagnose the current economic problem by defining three simple fallacies that we've build our economy on:  

1. We can have an economy that can run forever based on consumption, rather than production.
2. We can have an economy powered by debt but not savings and thrift.
3. We can run the economy based on environmental destruction, rather than environmental restoration.  

Then, thankfully, he prescribed some solutions:

1. Put a cost on pollution, specifically a price on carbon.  "We need to stop paying the polluters, and start making the polluters pay."   
2. We need to retrofit America.  With this solution, Jones offered perhaps the best line of the conference (and, dare I say, the best line yet of the emerging "green collar" economic movement): "The first high tech tool of a new green economy is the caulk gun."  Energy efficiency is clearly the lowest hanging fruit in "greening" up the American built environment, but it also creates good, career-track jobs and saves homeowners money on heating and electric bills.  That's not to mention that home energy retrofits pay for themselves in a short few years. 
3. Lastly, we need a new national "smart grid."  (I wrote about the smart grid for GOOD a few weeks back.) It's the highest priority breakthrough that needs to happen--the backbone upon which a clean energy economy can grow.  We have "the Saudi Arabia of wind" in the Plains states and a "Saudi Arabia of solar power" in the Sun Belt, but the current grid can't connect those potential power sources to that urban population centers that have the highest energy demands.  Basically, Jones proposeds, we need an Apollo-scaled research and development effort to figure this smart grid out.

It's significant--and not lost on Jones--that all three of these solutions are described on the website of the President-Elect.  

Jones spent the most time on the second solution, as in the "retrofitting" of America lies the biggest potential for providing job opportunities to disadvantaged communities and helping create pathways out of poverty.  Before leaving the stage, Jones recognized the work of a number of non-profit, community organizing groups that are working to develop job training programs for underprivileged urban youth.  To train them to caulk windows, perform home energy audits, blow in non-toxic insulation, install double-paned windows, put solar panels on rooftops--to prepare them for the estimated two million jobs that are imminent as we begin the long, productive task of retrofitting America.  

Up next: Majora Carter and a panel on "The Greener Good" show more examples of the marriage between the green building movement and social equity. 

 

Yes, these are tough economic times, but when the going gets tough, the tough get going… to Neiman Marcus.

Hoping to cut through all of the doom and gloom in today’s economy, the luxury retailer has issued its annual Christmas Book, offering beaucoup gift ideas that’ll undoubtedly wipe the glum right off your face. “I think we all need a break,” says a perky Neiman executive, and what better break can you get than to buy something shiny and playful for someone on your gift list?

You might choose the very-shiny limited edition, 2009 BMW, for example. It’s listed in Neiman’s catalogue at $160,000. If you got that for me, I guarantee you my spirits would be lifted. Or how about this? If you want to turn someone from gloomy to giddy, go with Neiman’s delightful stack of hit records! You get the top 100 records from each of the past 35 years – that's 3,500 records for only $275,000.

Now here’s a selection no one would expect: a dozen Thoroughbred racehorses! They’ll be stabled and trained by a top Kentucky horse farm, and you get it all for $10 million. That might seem a little pricey, what with Wall Street wobbling, but, as the head of the stable put it, “What better time to have a little levity and fantasy?”

Now, I’m sure there are cynics and spoilsports who’ll complain that flaunting luxury in hard times is smug and insensitive. But hold your thoroughbreds right there, for Neiman has already thought of that. In recognition of financial realities, the company is also sending out a special catalogue this year featuring gifts under $300. While Neiman’s wealthy shoppers are not affected by the economic turmoil of the day, the retailer notes that it also draws some “aspirational shoppers” – those with pretensions of wealth who’re looking for just a touch of luxury.

It’s such thoughtfulness that makes Neiman’s what it is.

Once again, here comes the Monsanto Medicine Show! The corporate flimflammer is hawking yet another brand of pricey biotech snake oil, guaranteed to work miracles.

Monsanto promises that its latest high-tech hocus-pocus will allow farmers to grow crops without water. Amazing! Well, at least not much water. “More crop per drop” is the PR slogan, and the corporation is exploiting public fears about global warming and food shortages as its marketing leverage. The white-smock food manipulators in Monsanto's labs claim to have added some powerful mystery genes to the DNA of corn, forcing the plant to reconfigure its make-up so it survives in a drought.

It’s a miracle plant, bark the corporate flimflammers – a drought-tolerant crop that even Momma Nature hasn’t been able to produce in millions of years of evolution! But– shazaam – we made it in our handy gene-splicing machine in no time at all! It’s just what those poor people of Africa need, say the hucksters, so step right up and buy a ton of our magic corn seed!

Not so fast. What are these mystery genes? Monsanto won’t say. From what species of plants or animals did you take the genes? Trade secret, says Monsanto. If the pollen of this frankencorn gets loose in nature, it can have unimaginable negative impacts on our entire food supply, so what are you doing to prevent that? Trust us, says Monsanto. Why not just push for better water management practices, which is easier, more effective, less costly, and won't endanger our health? We can’t profit from that, says Monsanto. Well what about labeling this corn? No way, says Monsanto, because consumers wouldn't buy it if they know it's been genetically altered.

Like other biotech “miracles,” this one amounts to a kernel of corporate greed suspended in unexamined dangers, coated with secrecy, and tainted with deceit.