Plenty Magazine Issue 04 June/July 2005 by Plenty Magazine

SMART LIVING FOR A COMPLEX WORLD

PLENTY

CONTENTS MARCH 2005

Hot green getaways.

FRONT MATTER 8 . . . . FROM THE EDITOR 13 . . . . NEWS AND NOTES

Coca Cola, the “real thing” for crops; fuel cells go to war; the incredible biodegradable CD; gender-bending fish; and other updates from around the globe. 16 . . . . HOW WE LIVE From Boston to Seattle, what kind of car you drive speaks volumes about your values and your lifestyle. By E. J. Graff 22 . . . . ON TECHNOLOGY After 125 years, isn’t it time for a better light bulb? By Jim Quinn 24 . . . . BOOKS Two authors examine human choice and geological chance.

26 . . . . PAST TENSE

Reconsidering Dick Nixon, reluctant pioneer for a green America. By Richard A. Altman 28 . . . . AROUND THE NATION It’s getting hot in here: what to do about global warming. By Mark Spellun 31 . . . . GREEN GEAR Eco-friendly products, from the awesomely stylish to the humbly commonsensical.

GRAY MATTER 39 . . . . GREAT ESCAPES

Our top 10 getaways offer exotic venues, mind-blowing adventures, and a chance to save the planet, one piña colada at a time. By Nicole Davis

52 . . . . FIVE FOR THE FUTURE

Whether living high up in a tree or making calculations on a laptop, these outstanding activists are assuming the mantle of leadership for a new generation. By Sarah Rose 58 . . . . UP, UP, AND AWAY Drawing on a pool of international talent, Boeing is perfecting fuel-cell technology to reduce air-travel emissions. Before long, the friendly skies may get even friendlier. By Roxanne S. Khamsi 62 . . . . A PLAGUE FOR OUR TIMES In recent years, we have witnessed the devastation caused by AIDS, SARS, mad cow, and a handful of other diseases. Scientists are now wondering where and when the next pandemic will strike. And will we be prepared? By Madeline Drexler 66 . . . . HOUSING TO GO Using smart and practical building systems, young architects are rethinking the prefab house. Levittown was never like this. By Ann Landi 72 . . . . THE FRUSTRATED FASHIONISTA Shopping with a styleconscious vegetarian offers an entertaining exercise in selfrestraint. By Lynn Yaeger 74 . . . . POW! ZAP! BAM! Our foxy heroines fight the good fight in faux, organic, and recycled fabrics.

MATTERS OF FACT AND FANCY 80 . . . . FOOD

A meat lover parts ways with her veggie-loving beau and concludes that never the twain shall meet. By Sarah Rose

84 . . . . APPLES TO APPLES

Why that organic apple a day costs more than its conventional cousin. By Christy Harrison 86 . . . . HEALTH In mindfulness meditation, Western psychotherapy plus Eastern philosophy can add up to better mental health. By Catie Lazarus 90 . . . . ENLIGHTENED ESSENTIALS The road to Nirvana is paved with these soothing accessories. 92 . . . . MUSIC New World rhythms from two rare and brilliant talents. By Jesse Kornbluth 94 . . . . PRICELESS Cell Out, or what it costs to get around on hydrogen power. 96 . . . . THE BACK PAGE Twenty years later, reviving a highschool science project offers surprising satisfactions. By Allen Salkin PL_C1_covertest

ON THE COVER: Monica Crespo from Ford Models, New York, wears a black recycled tire corset and a pink latex mini by Gaelyn & Cianfriani. Makeup (all animal-free-tested) and hair by Tonya Noland at Mark Edward for Mac. Styling by Katya Sknarina. Illustration by R. Sikoryak.

Movers and shakers.

09:29 AM

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PLENTY SMART LIVING FOR A COMPLEX WORLD

MARCH 2005

FUTURE

ECO-LEADERS UNDER 40

GREAT ESCAPES

A PLAGUE FOR OUR TIMES? FLYING HIGH ON FUEL CELLS PREDATORS vs. GRAZERS

Photograph by Francis Murphy.

12.09.04

Putting the fab back in prefab.

FROM THE EDITOR

s most of us are well aware, the environmental movement in this country dates back to the turbulent days of the 1960s. That makes for a full generation of often heroic efforts by individuals and groups to draw attention to the endangered aspects of the world around us—whether it’s our air or water, our wildlife or wild lands. Now that we have a fully “mature” presence in the national conscience, we wondered what a younger group was bringing us by way of visionaries and leaders. And so we dispatched managing editor Sarah Rose to uncover the best and the brightest environmental activists among those under 40 who are making waves and getting under the skin of the appropriate malefactors. In “Five for the Future,” she brings us a few names that may be familiar, such as Julia “Butterfly” Hill and Jason West, the mayor of New Paltz, New York, who made headlines last summer by performing marriage ceremonies for gay couples. Three others on our list are less well known, but we believe their fame deserves to be more widely sung. Over all, their tactics range from the radical— living in a giant redwood for more than two years—to the sophisticated—using computers to predict the impact of our species on the planet. And we heartily applaud their efforts. You don’t have to go up in a tree, though, to get away from it all or to make your own contribution toward conserving precious resources. You can spend some time in a tree house, for example, and still enjoy modern plumbing and superb cuisine. The Green Magic Nature Resort in Kerala, India, an exotic retreat that offers lodgings on the ground and in giant ficus trees, is one of ten fabulous getaways travel writer Nicole Davis discovered just in time for a midwinter break. There’s no shortage of adventure at these eco-conscious retreats—from searching out exotic flora and fauna to diving in the deep blue sea. And many of these places offer all the pampering you’d expect from first-class, more traditional accommodations. The downside of winter, of course, is the ubiquitous threat of a few weeks in bed with a headbursting case of the flu. The shortage of vaccines this season hit the news in a big way, but outbreaks of virulent and contagious diseases, such as avian flu, have also had researchers worried. With AIDS and SARS still a threat to world health, many in the medical community have been wondering how to predict the next devastating pandemic—and if we’re prepared for it. Senior editor Madeline Drexler, author of Secret Agents: The Menace of Emerging Infections (Penguin Books), offers an in-depth investigation in “A Plague for Our Times?”. As in every issue we’re planning down the road, we also bring you bulletins from the cutting edge of technology: for example, why are we still living with the lightbulb, a 125-year-old invention, and what’s the future of fuel-cell powered aviation? Fashion and architecture, too, are always in mind: with many of us already yearning for summer, we dream of second homes that don’t cost the earth or do it too much damage, and we found some inventive architects who are making an old idea—prefab building systems—young again (“Housing to Go”). And as for clothes...well, you can see for yourself on page 74 the kind of statement that can be made from faux, organic, and recycled materials. Here at Plenty, we believe that “green” and “glamour” will never be on anyone’s “most endangered” list.

Ann Landi Editor

8 | PLENTY

March 2005 www.plentymag.com

PLENTY Publisher & Editor in Chief Mark Spellun Editor Ann Landi Creative Director Catherine Cole Managing Editor Sarah Rose Senior Editors Madeline Drexler, E. J. Graff, Shana Liebman, Cristina Merrill Science Editor Michael W. Robbins Technology Editor Jim Quinn Music Editor Jesse Kornbluth Staff Writer Kate Siber Associate Editors Sandra Ban, Christy Harrison Contributing Editors Forrest Church, Katherine Millett, Lynn Yaeger Staff Photographer Francis Murphy Chief Operating Officer Val Landi PLENTY Advertising, U.S. Sales Offices Eastern United States: 250 West 57th Street, Suite 1915, New York, NY 10107 Deborah Gardiner, Sales Director (Tel: 1-212-757-3794) Tracy Sheridan, Sales Director (Tel: 1-646-369-6998) Robert Rosenbaum, Regional Director (Tel: 1-914-686-0442) Midwest and Detroit: 31555 West Fourteen Mile Road, Suite 313, Farmington Hills, MI 48334 Susan L. Carey, Regional Director; Sue Maniloff, Regional Director (Tel: 1-248-539-3055) Western United States: 6 Commonwealth Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94118 Suzanne Coppola, Sales Director (Tel: 1-415-751-7201) Published by Environ Press, Inc. Chairman Arnold Spellun

PLENTY 250 West 57th Street, Suite 1915 New York, NY 10107 Tel: 1-212-757-3447 Fax: 1-212-757-3799 www.plentymag.com Unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, and other materials must be accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope. PLENTY will not be responsible for unsolicited submissions Send letters to the editor to letters@plentymag.com or to PLENTY, 250 West 57th Street, Suite 1915, New York, NY 10107. Copyright ÂŠ2004 by Environ Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without written permission is prohibited. Views expressed herein are those of the author exclusively. PLENTY (ISSN 1553-2321) is published bimonthly, six times a year, for $23.70 per year by Environ Press, Inc., 250 West 57th Street, Suite 1915, New York, NY 10107. Application to mail periodicals postage rates is pending at New York, New York, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Plenty, P.O. Box 437, Mt. Morris, IL 61054-0437 or call 1-800-316-9006. PLENTY is printed on 30% post-consumer recycled paper and manufactured with elemental chlorine-free pulp. Please recycle.

Seventh Generation. Because you shouldn’t have to choose between spotless and harmless.

In your grandmother’s generation, keeping house meant using natural potions that worked well enough, and certainly did no harm. In your mom’s generation, synthetic chemical cleaners promised to make her home as spotless as a space station. But is it really healthy to eat, sleep, and play in a household awash with harsh chemicals? Today you have a new generation to raise, and your own choices to make—the least of which should be what products are safe and effective when it comes to caring for your children and your home. Which is why there’s Seventh Generation. A family of products that—finally, reliably—offers clean without compromise. Based on natural, non-toxic ingredients perfected by the latest science and technology. Can you really get the best of both worlds with Seventh Generation? We guarantee it. And we’ll make it worth your while to try.

Save $10 now.

Visit www.seventhgeneration.com, and you can print out over $10 worth of coupons for all sorts of Seventh Generation products. From a dishwashing detergent that leaves your plates as spot-free as the leading traditional brand.To laundry detergents that remove tough stains without leaving irritating residues. Seventh Generation products. They’re safe—and they work. Prove it for yourself— and save.

A clean home. A healthy family. A safer world.™

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NEWS NOTES EDITED BY CHRISTY HARRISON

COKED-UP CROPS

ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTINA SUN

ARMERS IN INDIA have discovered a refreshing alternative to traditional pesticides: Coca-Cola. Since last October hundreds of farmers in central and southern India have reportedly been spraying their crops with Coke, apparently an effective pest killer that’s also easy on the pocketbook. Popular pesticides in India run from $55 to $220 per liter, while locally produced Coke costs around $.50 per liter. No one knows exactly how it works, but some scientists speculate that the sugar in the cola attracts red ants that feed on pests. Pepsi reportedly works just as well. Insect busting is one more item in the growing repertoire of purported uses for Coke: over the years, the soft drink has been said to work well as a cleaner, a spermicide, and when mixed with MSG, an aphrodisiac (imagine the marketing potential: Coke takes care of all your sexual needs!). But Coca-Cola spokespeople deny claims that their product acts as a less toxic pesticide. According to the “Myths and Rumors” section of the company’s Web site, “Soft drinks do not act in a similar way to pesticides when applied to the ground or crops. There is no scientific basis for this and the use of soft drinks for this purpose would be totally ineffective.” They add, “Our products are world class and safe. The treated water used to make our beverages meets the highest international standards.” The company’s haste to tout the safety of its water may have something to do with recent reports that Coke and Pepsi produced in India contain staggering amounts of pesticide residue. A 2003 report by the Centre for Science and the Environment, an Indian nonprofit, showed that Coke and Pepsi, as well as ten other soft drinks, had average pesticide concentrations between 15 and 87 times the legal limit. But this contamination may be part of a larger problem in India: in 2002, the Indian Council of Medical Research found that more than half of all food items produced in India were contaminated with pesticides. www.plentymag.com March 2005

DUDE LOOKS LIKE A LADYFISH

ale fish across the country are undergoing coerced sex changes, thanks to the high levels of estrogen in our waterways. University of Colorado researchers found that startling numbers of male fish in three Colorado waterways have developed female sex organs and are laying eggs. In Boulder Creek, female white sucker fish outnumbered males ten to one, but half of those “females” were clearly born male. And a study of the Potomac River last spring showed that almost 80 percent of male smallmouth bass had sexual abnormalities. Scientists think that waterborne estrogen creates transsexual fish by tricking the male’s endocrine system into producing female cells. When Colorado researchers replicated the Boulder Creek estrogen levels in a lab, male fish became feminized within a month, says David Norris, the study’s chief researcher. Estrogen excreted by humans and livestock is found naturally in all waterways, but man-made “estrogen mimickers”—chemical compounds lurking in products including detergent, paint, rubber, cosmetics, and plastic—could be upping the estrogen in our water to dangerous levels, scientists say.

Synthetic estrogens from birth-control pills, as well as phytoestrogens from plant products like soy and paper pulp, further compound the problem. And in a recent study of water in 30 states, government researchers found natural estrogen and estrogen mimickers in four-fifths of the streams they tested. The good news is that we have the technology to remove the hormones from our waterways: filtration by reverse osmosis— the most common way of purifying water, involving passing a solution through a semipermeable membrane to separate the water from all the other muck—does the trick. Cities often use this system to filter their water before it gets to consumers, but Norris argues that companies with high outputs of estrogen mimickers should be responsible for their own osmosis prior to dumping. The bad news is more alarming: sexual abnormalities aren’t limited to fish. In 2002 a study showed that a popular weed killer was turning frogs into hermaphrodites, animals with the reproductive organs of both sexes. Are there even more “tran-imals” out there? “No doubt about it,” says Norris. “It’s just a matter of looking.” P L E N T Y | 13

NEWS NOTES FUEL CELLS AT WAR

achters may love the fuel-cell engine because its quiet purr makes their vessels congenial places to schmooze over a glass of port (see “Cell-Out,” page 24), but now the U.S. Army may have a more pragmatic use for almost silent, hydrogen-powered motors. California-based fuel-cell manufacturer Quantum Technologies developed a new fuelcell stealth vehicle under contract with the army’s automotive-research division, unveiling the hydrogenated hunk of a car last October. When operating in “stealth mode,” the vehicle, dubbed the Aggressor, is nearly silent and emits very little heat, making it difficult to detect with infrared technology. But as its name suggests, the Aggressor does more than just sneak around: Quantum claims that the car, which looks like a skeletal Hummer, has “far superior acceleration compared to similar diesel- or gasoline-powered all-terrain vehicles.” The Aggressor can also “export power,” using surplus energy from the long-life battery to run onboard electronic equipment, including radios and surveillance devices. While California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger went tooling around Los Angeles in a new hydrogen-powered Hummer last October to promote his “hydrogen highway” program, the high prices and low availability of most fuel-cell cars keep them out of reach for the average consumer. That Hummer, manufactured especially for Schwarzenegger by General Motors and Quantum, is an experimental vehicle and not intended for mass production or sale. The “H2H” is essentially a promotional tool, and only one exists so far, though a GM spokesperson says that his company will probably make a few more. But because the army has a crack R&D team at its disposal and a larger per-vehicle budget than the average consumer, the armed forces may be quicker to adopt fuel-cell technology than the market at large. Alan P. Niedzwiecki, President and CEO of Quantum, says the Aggressor would be useful in homeland-security and border-patrol operations as well as in army stealth missions. The army has not yet committed to using Quantum’s vehicle, but it is testing and evaluating the Aggressor over the next six months, according to a Quantum spokesperson. 14 | P L E N T Y

Plenty Tip of the month: BANDWIDTH SOLUTION For those of us who don’t have a degree in climatology (and, really, in this day and age, who doesn’t?), there’s a painless and free new way to help advance our understanding of global warming. Last November IBM launched its World Community Grid (WCG), a gigantic network of regular folks’ PCs that works 24/7 to crunch scientific data and solve some of the world’s most pressing environmental, social, and health problems. Anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can donate the idle time on his or her machine to the grid; users simply download onto their computers an IBM data-gathering program and set it to run—just like a screensaver— when their machines are idle. As for the WCG’s projects, IBM is encouraging organizations to submit proposals on research they’d like to have done; the WCG advisory board—which includes representatives from the World Health Organization, Oxford University, and the U.N. Development Programme, among others—then decides which projects the grid will tackle. Now when you step out for that morning cup of fair trade certified organic joe, you can rest assured that the problems of the world are safely in the hands of your computer.

SLIPPED DISCS

HAIL A HYBRID

Instead of recycling CDs to make coasters, murals, or flashy hair accessories, ecotechies may soon be able simply to bury their unwanted discs in the ground. Last October, the R&D department of the Japanese electronics company Pioneer announced in an internal report that it had developed a non-rewritable, biodegradable 25-gigabyte disc made from 87 percent natural corn polymer. Even when burned, the disc will not emit dioxins or any other harmful chemicals, the report says. But hold the salsa: while the disc is made from edible materials, it is coated in a thick resin that makes it too hard for human consumption. A spokesperson for Pioneer in the U.S. stressed that the company is just in the earliest stages of research and has no idea when it will go to market with the new disc. Sanyo, another Japanese electronics manufacturer, created its corn-based “MildDisc” last year, but the company was reportedly forced to delay introduction of the discs on account of heat: they were melting at temperatures above 122 degrees Fahrenheit. Sanyo said last year that about 85 corn kernels were needed to make one disc, or 1 ear of corn for every 10 discs. At that rate, according to USDA and recordingindustry statistics, world demand for CDs could be satisfied using less than 0.1 percent of the world’s corn. So far, Pioneer has not reported any heat issues with its version, though the company has not formally released any information about the disc.

onsider that your average trip to the airport from a city location in a gasguzzling cab uses about one-third to onehalf gallon of gas and costs you around $40 to $60 (and let’s not even talk about sprung seats, blaring radios, and rude drivers). Now consider that in Boston, at least, you can make the same trip in a brand-new Prius, the sought-after, energy-efficient hybrid car from Toyota, for around $27 to $34. That was the thinking behind entrepreneur Seth Riney’s concept for PlanetTran (www.planettran.com), an environmentally friendly car service that operates mainly between the greater Boston area and Logan Airport. “When the new hybrids came out, I realized that the largest class of autos aside from private vehicles is taxis and limousines,” says Riney. “This seemed to me a way of using resources more efficiently.” The Yale-educated Kentucky native persuaded the city of Cambridge to break a five-year moratorium on new livery services, and his fledgling company got a serious boost from shuttling attendees to the Democratic National Convention last summer. Though the waiting list for the Prius is formidable in most areas, Riney gets his cars (the fleet now numbers four cars) from dealers in the Midwest, where the backlog is minimal or nonexistent. Licensed less than a year ago, PlanetTran has realized 20 to 30 percent growth, and Riney predicts a rosy future, with expansion into other city markets, most notably Seattle and San Francisco. March 2005 www.plentymag.com

HOW WE LIVE

YOU ARE WHERE YOU DRIVE From coast to coast, your car probably makes a bigger statement than you do. E. J. GRAFF

“T

hat car is just too small to be on the road,” said the rail-thin, cowboybelted and -booted lady in the Dallas–Fort Worth airport van. “That car” was a four-door Honda Civic sedan. Back home in New England, a Honda Civic is so far beyond unexceptional as to be standard. And yet here, in Texas, anything smaller than a half-ton pickup or a monster SUV was seen as kin to a Dixie cup. That van ride introduced what, for me, was a startling idea: you are where you drive.

BOSTON Consider the Toyota Prius, that brilliantly branded gas-electric hybrid that gets roughly 55 mpg, has a futuristic design, and is all but holy where I live, in Boston, Massachusetts. “Drive a Prius in Houston,” says Wes 16 | P L E N T Y

Brown, an analyst at the L.A.–based market-research firm Iceology, “and you would get the same reaction as you’d get driving a Hummer around Seattle.” In either case, you would be driving a vehicle whose values were hostile to the local social contract and impractical for your surroundings. You’d be announcing your willingness to turn your back on your values, whether saving the planet in Seattle or respecting your roots in Houston.

TEXAS Here’s what they’re driving in the Lone Star State: pickups. One in four vehicles sold in Texas is a pickup. The pickup is the legacy a direct descendant of the fabled vehicle that once hauled cows over muddy fields and stony streams. But since only 0.7 percent of Texans are employed in what the U.S. census categorizes as farming, fishing, and foresting, the other 24.3 percent of Texans

who drive pickups are hauling not cows or cowboys but cowboy nostalgia. Owning a pickup, says John Spong, a Texas Monthly associate editor, who recently published an article titled “The Pickup Is the New National Car of Texas,” reveals a “deep, redstate anxiety” about living low-sweat, white-collar, air-conditioned lives. What would it mean to drive a Prius in, say, San Antonio? Tellingly, Spong had never even heard of the vehicle—which, elsewhere, is so popular (and manufactured in such small numbers) that you have to get on a months-long waiting list just to buy it for above sticker price. When I explained that in the Northeast a Prius says, “I am much smarter than you,” while on the Left Coast it says, “I care about the environment much, much more than you do,” Spong replied dryly, “There’s not a lot of cash that comes with either of those two statements here.” March 2005 www.plentymag.com

HOW WE LIVE

LOS ANGELES Things look different in Los Angeles, where looking good is what matters. This is the land of the Hummer stretch limo, that hilarious vehicle that takes up nearly a city block. “It’s horrible,” says Brown. “You can’t live here if you don’t own a luxury-branded vehicle. You will feel embarrassed.” Los Angeles is also the town where Sting made news by pulling up to the Academy Awards in a Prius, wearing his environmentalism like an anti-fur coat. Brown warns that any celebrity’s Prius is just one of a fleet parked in the same driveway as the Mercedes 1600, Ferrari, and Cadillac Escalade. You wouldn’t own just one pair of shoes, would you? Here’s what you won’t see in Los Angeles: Big Three automobiles. “You don’t drive American cars in L.A. if you are in style,” explains Marcus Amick, an autoindustry consultant who focuses on the urban market. “You just don’t do American cars on Sunset. An American car in L.A. says, ‘Rental.’” Ouch.

THE URBAN MIDWEST Describing Motown, Chicago, and other urban markets, Amick says, “This is the land of Escalades, Tahoes, Yukons, H2s, Dodge Rams, F-150s.” Yes, the Lone Star pickup is in that mix, but stripped of its cowboy accent. “Here [the pickup] is not a vehicle of practicality but a vehicle of toughness, street credibility, muscle, power, and all of those things that are elements of an urban automotive lifestyle,” he explains. But that’s true only if you’re willing to personalize the vehicle. Take the Cadillac Escalade, the smooth, massive SUV trendified via MTV’s rap and hip-hop videos. Drive the Escalade through Chicago or South Central the way you bought it, says Amick, and it says that you live in the melanin-challenged ’burbs. Inside the city limits, “a young guy needs it fitted. You don’t ride in an Escalade on stock wheels and tires.”

MANUFACTURING TOWNS What are they driving in the Rust Belt, in middle-of-the-country, middle-class manufacturing America—where I grew up? Back in my 1970s youth, either you worked for the auto industry and its suppliers or your neighbors did. Driving a foreign vehicle said you were a traitor, a scab, willing to deprive good citizens of their jobs. Driving an American model meant you were a patriot. That attitude has begun to fade, according to Brown, in part because the economic

reality has changed. Honda now manufactures in Ohio, Toyota in Kentucky and Texas, Mitsubishi in Illinois, and Mercedes in Alabama; GM distributes Saabs, and Ford distributes Volvos—putting all those vehicles on the acceptable list.

THE SUBCULTURAL AGENDA America is the land of subcultures, and that includes cars. Take the lowrider, which remains an art form in states with large Latino populations, like California, New Mexico, Texas, and Florida. What started in the 1950s as an experiment in street-racing techniques became an art in itself: install an adjustable hydraulic system, cut down the roof line, tilt the seat back as far as possible so that you can barely see over the wheel, and claim your heritage, man. In Texas you can even find lowrider pickup trucks. “Supposedly, the appeal of a truck is all the practical aspects, whether you need them or not,” says Spong. “With a lowrider pickup, every practical aspect is removed. It’s so low you can’t drive it in the country. The inside is decked out, so you can’t get it dirty. I wonder if it wasn’t like when the urban kids started taking preppy clothes and oversizing them. It was y’all’s; now it’s ours. It makes our statement.”

THE FORD F-150 SUPERCREW LARIAT I find it just a little terrifying to face up to what stereotypes we mortals be, with values that are as socially inflected (or inflicted) as they are personally held. Would I have lusted after the Volvo wagon, the Subaru wagon, or my own Toyota RAV4, if I had stayed in southern Ohio or moved to Atlanta or Chicago instead of New England? Soul searching, I took a test drive in a Ford F-150 SuperCrew Lariat. A few years ago the Big Three introduced the luxury pickup. No, that’s not an oxymoron. Auto manufacturers realized their target market didn’t want the low-end, spine-jolting trucks of yore. The F-150, the best-selling vehicle in America, has a crew cab with two rows of seats, easily holding six people; a truncated truck bed; and angled shocks. It is much cushier than a cowboy pickup, especially if you order the leather interior, adjustable seats and steering wheel, and popular dropdown DVD screen for the kiddies. I knew it was a truck; I had to stretch to pull myself up into the cab. But I was surprised at how comfy it was, how easy to handle. It floated around me like a magic carpet. My only bad moment came when I nearly ran over a tiny car, the size of a bug, way below me. It was a Honda Civic. ■ March 2005 www.plentymag.com

ON TECHNOLOGY

LET IT SHINE The incandescent lightbulb is inefficient, dirty, and 125 years old. Isn’t it time for something better? JIM QUINN

ET’S DEAL WITH THE HARD PART FIRST.

Thomas Edison did not invent the electric lightbulb. As English schoolchildren know, Sir Joseph Swan invented (and patented) a perfectly wonderful incandescent lamp long before Edison’s so-called breakthrough on October 21, 1879. Edison usually gets the credit because he promoted his public image so relentlessly, inviting reporters to his lab in Menlo Park, New Jersey, where he spun fanciful tales about his grandiose plans to bestow light upon humanity. As newsprint rolled out, investors rolled in. The truth is less heroic. Edison’s real accomplishment was in building the first commercial electrical system, launching electrification. That doesn’t have the romantic appeal of inventing the bulb, but it happens to be more significant, historywise. Today we face a much more serious problem with Edison’s fact-fudging: the inventor’s bulb-promotion campaign was too successful. The incandescent lights we use now are almost identical to the ones Edison put his muscle behind 125 years ago, and it seems high time to move on to something better. From a business perspective, the lightbulb looks absolutely fabulous: cheap to manufacture, profitable to sell, low upfront costs. Best of all, there’s a perpetual demand for replacements. The only way to improve it would be to add nicotine. But, unfortunately, incandescent lights are horribly inefficient. Just 10 percent of the electricity a bulb consumes produces light; the rest is released as heat. Since 25 percent of the average home’s electric bill is for lighting, you’re looking at an enormous amount of waste. My nomination for Light of the Future is the LED, or light-emitting diode. Ordinary bulbs produce light by heating a filament enough to make it glow. An LED uses a completely different process that involves passing electricity through a semiconductor, stimulating individual atoms to release photons. Technology aside, what’s really important about LEDs is that they are way cool,

20 | P L E N T Y

literally and figuratively. LEDs are literally cool because they create little heat waste. They are figuratively cool because top industrial designers have done a great job using LEDs to boost the wow! factor of high-end products. The dashboard lights in luxury cars often have LEDs, as do flashlights, and even some of the glitzier products from The Sharper Image, like the new nose-hair trimmer. A more practical aspect of LEDs is that they use only about 15 percent as much electricity as an incandescent bulb. And they last so much longer that they seldom have to be replaced. If you need to change a burned-out bulb in a really awkward location, you should use an LED. Cities all over the world are upgrading old traffic lights with LEDs, dramatically reducing the need to replace burned-out bulbs while perched on a ladder in the middle of busy intersections. Alas, few people use LEDs for general illumination. Manufacturers are still looking for a way to make LEDs that are sufficiently bright, white, and cheap. Lots of smart people are working on the problem, and I’m optimistic they will eventually push Edison’s lamps into long-overdue retirement. Official impatience with the status quo peaked in

1998, when the U.S. Department of Energy declared war on incandescence. The DOE created an incentive program for manufacturers to produce affordable fluorescent lights that screw into Edison-style sockets. In response, 17 companies designed compact fluorescent lamps with tubes twisted or folded into shapes small enough to fit standard fixtures. Today most retailers offer these new lamps. Compact fluorescents cost more, but they are four times as efficient and last ten times longer, making them cheaper overall. Until better LEDs become available, fluorescents offer the best option to Edisonian inefficiency. But you’ve probably noticed that consumers haven’t exactly rushed to embrace energy conservation. It’s likely your local lamp merchants devote more shelf space to incandescents than fluorescents. Before you get discouraged, however, consider a few high-profile events that recently offered convincing evidence that something must be done to curb energy consumption. Californians became the poster children for energy efficiency when power shortages forced rolling blackouts from November 2000 through May 2001. At the height of the crisis, officials requested that the state’s resMarch 2005 www.plentymag.com

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ON TECHNOLOGY

idents turn off lights, air conditioners, and computers, and do whatever else they could to conserve electricity. As coverage of the crisis lingered in the news, people across the nation wondered about the vulnerability of their local power supplies. Those concerns exploded dramatically on August 14, 2003, when excess demand triggered cascading outages across the northeastern United States and eastern Canada. More than 50 million people got a chance to sit in the dark and contemplate energy issues. Most of the post-blackout media hand-wringing focused on our antiquated power grid and pathetic regulations, but the values of conservation surfaced, too. The blackout unexpectedly raised awareness of other energy-related issues as well. Some quick-thinking news editors realized they could illustrate the story with dramatic before-and-after satellite photos. Those gave many Americans an astronaut’s-eye-view of the East Coast awash in normal light and dramatically darker during the blackout. Energy experts pounced on the photos as evidence of enormous waste, talking about how much it costs to send so much light uselessly skyward. Americans spend more than $2 billion annually for light that shines upward, where there’s nothing to illuminate except bird bellies, according to the Arizonabased nonprofit International Dark Sky Association, which uses the photos to promote conservation. They endorse a range of simple steps—such as using smaller bulbs in fixtures that direct light down where it’s needed, instead of up toward outer space. Some communities now require these “full cutoff’’ fixtures. The blackout also gave scientists from the University of Maryland an unprecedented opportunity to gauge the impact of air pollution from power plants. Measurements during the blackout showed a 90 percent drop in sulfur dioxide and a 50 percent drop in ozone. Officials in states downwind of coal plants in the Ohio valley have spent years gunning for tougher emissions controls; this research gave them new ammo. Edison couldn’t have foreseen any of this when he was promoting incandescent lights. He viewed electrification as his greatest achievement. In fact, whenever Edison shifted into sales mode, he called attention to the soot and odor emitted by gas and oil lamps. Now, 125 years later, our reliance on oldfashioned, incandescent bulbs generates more dirty emissions than Edison ever imagined. Do everybody a favor. Upgrade. ■

BETTER BULBS

FIRST THERE WAS THE MOOD RING, AND NOW THERE ARE “MOOD-LIGHT” PANELS. USING AN ULTRABRIGHT LED LIGHT SOURCE, THESE PROGRAMMABLE INDOOR AND OUTDOOR FIXTURES PULSE AND SWEEP IN A VARIETY OF COLORS. THE LIGHTS PLUG INTO AN ELECTRICAL OUTLET, CAN BE USED WITH A REMOTE CONTROL, AND EVEN CHANGE COLORS ACCORDING TO THE PITCH AND RHYTHM OF VOICES AND MUSIC (WWW.MOOD-LIGHT.US). March 2005 www.plentymag.com

THE HARTS, FAMILY OF FIVE Enjoyed pure, natural taste Boosted calcium absorption Did something good for the environment Had enough yogurt for tonight’s dinner recipe, three kids snacks and one begging dog

THERE’S MORE TO LOVE IN EVERY SPOONFUL Our 32 oz. yogurt keeps everyone happy. It’s the perfect size to have on hand for snacks, breakfasts, and your family’s favorite recipes. Since our yogurt is made with all natural and organic ingredients, you can feel good about giving it to your family. And because we donate 10% of our proﬁts to environmental efforts, the earth’s happy too. For healthy recipe ideas,visit Stonyﬁeld.com.

BOOKS

N AT U R E O R N U R T U R E ? TWO AUTHORS EXAMINE HUMAN CHOICE AND GEOLOGICAL CHANCE COLLAPSE: HOW SOCIETIES CHOOSE TO FAIL OR SUCCEED BY JARED DIAMOND (VIKING, $29.95)

THE STAGGERINGLY AMBITIOUS 1997 BOOK Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies sold a million copies and won its author, the polymathic UCLA professor Jared Diamond, a Pulitzer Prize. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is Diamond’s latest massive study of the forces that have shaped world history. Synthesizing enormous amounts of archaeological research, historical facts, and educated guesswork, Diamond has written a sweeping, highly readable narrative about the impact of environmental damage, climate change, friendly or unfriendly neighbors, and bad decision-making on the fate of various ancient and modern societies, including the Maya, the Anasazi, 20th-century Rwanda, 21st-century Montana, and many others. The use of the word choose in the title is not haphazard. Diamond is especially interested in the bad choices many societies make when they’re struggling to survive in harsh environments. The collapse of Easter Island society five centuries ago was primarily the result of extreme deforestation; Diamond tries to imagine what went through the head of the islander who cut down the last standing palm tree. The demise of the Greenland Norse colony in the early 15th century was mainly caused by ecological difficulties; Diamond shows, however, that the Greenland Norse were too arrogant and conservative to learn survival techniques from their supposedly more primitive island mates, the Greenland Inuit, who have survived to this day. Implicit throughout the book is the notion that the fate of these vanished or crumbling societies might someday be our own: For the first time, humanity is facing the threat of a global collapse. Most experts agree, for example, that the world will start to run out of oil within a few decades; this shortage could drive the world into a state of perpetual war, to name just the most obvious problem that would arise. But Diamond remains “cautiously optimistic” about our planet’s fate. He writes that “the world’s 24 | P L E N T Y

environmental problems will get resolved, in one way or another, within the lifetimes of the children and young adults alive today. The only question is whether they will become resolved in pleasant ways of our own choice, or in unpleasant ways not of our choice, such as warfare, genocide, starvation, disease epidemics, and collapses of societies.” — ANDREW HEARST

EARTH: AN INTIMATE HISTORY BY RICHARD FORTEY (KNOPF, 2004, $30)

A FOUR HUNDRED–PAGE GEOLOGY TOME may not top many reading lists, especially for people with bad memories of college “rocks for jocks” courses. But Earth: An Intimate History, the latest book by the British paleontologist Richard Fortey, reads more like a W.G. Sebald novel, a compendium of curious site-specific facts that is by turns whimsical and chilling. In the same spirit as his 1999 success, Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth, Fortey’s Earth visits colorful locations, from the ocean floor to the silver mines that

brought us the first monetary systems, giving an account of the geological phenomena that made our planet what it is. Fortey’s earth science is perhaps of the “pebbles for philosophers” variety; as he puts it, “geology acts as a kind of collective unconscious for the world.” The opening chapter presents a frightening image of volcanic destruction: during the Roman Empire, Mount Vesuvius erupts in the wee hours of the morning, covering the entire city of Pompeii with burning ash and molding its sleeping residents into pathetic statues. Particularly moving is the “figure half rising from sleep, hardly stirred from private oblivion before returning to it forever.” While this and other morbidly fascinating accounts call attention to the earth’s indifference to human life, the book is also peppered with photographs and poetry that help the reader warm up to cold hard geology. And then there are the delectable food metaphors: thick Hawaiian lava rock looks like German black bread; the folded, wrinkled mountain ranges of the Alps are “badly made lasagna;” and the dauntingly named Campanian Ignimbrite rock actually has the comforting color and crumble of spiced date cake. The book is not without its snoozer moments; the geologist’s discussion of competing theories to explain strange rock formations in the Swiss Alps, for example, gets bogged down in academic history. But his larger conclusions are thought-provoking without being didactic: people love their home territories because “we respond more affectionately to landscape at the local scale, just as we register tragedies most acutely within our own family; broader issues of society do not tug at our sleeve in quite the same way, although we are reluctant to admit it.” And Fortey hesitates to aggrandize his project: “Perhaps realizing that we are all small creatures riding pick-a-back atop our own tectonic plates located within the irregular chequerboard of the earth might enforce a proper sense of humility upon our arrogant little species. Somehow, I doubt it.” Me too— humility is a hard thing to enforce—but Earth at least does its part to awaken our sense of wonder in the humble minerals that make up the most majestic mountains and the most worthless coins alike. — CHRISTY HARRISON January 2005 www.plentymag.com

PA S T T E N S E

DICK NIXON—TREE HUGGER? A backward glance at an unexpected pioneer RICHARD A. ALTMAN

he reputation of the 37th president of the United States, Richard Milhous Nixon (1969-74), has long languished in the shadow of the misdeeds that plagued his administration and brought him to the brink of impeachment. He is remembered by many as “Tricky Dick,” the leader who ordered the saturation bombing of Vietnam and surrounded himself with corrupt minions who burgled the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. “I am not a crook,” he famously thundered. But history has not exonerated him. When it came to honoring our natural resources, he was notably cynical and more than a bit of a dweeb. A photographer caught him walking along the beach at San Clemente, his presidential retreat, in a suit, a tie, socks, and lace-up dress shoes. He once declared that “in a flat choice between smoke and jobs, we’re for jobs.” Oblivious to the wasteful image projected, he kept logs burning in the White House fireplaces, even in summer, with the air-conditioning running full blast. Yet he was an astute politician who understood the temper of the times, and in the course of his abbreviated tenure in the White House, he made the greatest contribution to protecting the environment of any president in American history. How much he was motivated by real concern and how much by external events remain open to debate, but the record deserves another look. Just two weeks after Nixon’s inauguration, in January 1969, a massive underwater oil well exploded near Santa Barbara, California, releasing some 200,000 gallons of crude oil across an area of 800 square miles. The damage was enormous, its horrors reinforced by the news images of dead and dying wildlife—fish, seals, dolphins, and birds soaked in black oil. Nixon visited the site and announced, “The Santa Barbara incident has frankly touched the conscience of the American people.” (Ironically, it was his predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, who had sold federal oil leases there, thus allowing the drilling in the first place.) With this disaster, the environment became a central issue in American politics. The fragility of the planet, in a more positive sense, had already been reinforced by the 1968 Apollo 8 mission, which broadcast to the world the beautiful image of “Earthrise” and the crew’s message to all inhabitants of “the good Earth.” Sixteen months later, 20 million Americans participated in the first Earth Day, and more than 2,000 colleges and universities across the country paused their antiwar activities to protest against pollution and population growth. The times they were a-changin’, and Nixon’s antennae were on the alert. In his 1970 State of the Union Address, three months before Earth Day, he noted, “The great question of the seventies is, Shall we surrender to our surroundings, or shall we make peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land, and to our water?” Soon thereafter he announced a 37-point environmental action program, with special emphasis on strengthening federal programs for dealing with water and air pollution. When Earth Day rolled around, he had spokesmen on the case at teach-ins throughout the country to present the administration’s efforts. Within months, the president called for “a strong, independent agency,” and by the end of the year, the Environmental Protection Agency was born. The early years of that decade witnessed a slew of landmark environmental statutes: among others, the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, the Clean Air Act of 1970, and the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972. State and municipal governments responded in kind, creating their own environmental protection agencies and addressing the issues of solid waste, safe drinking water, and the need for open space. In 1999, the Sierra Club issued a list of the 12 most significant environmental initiatives of the previous century. Nixon had a role in five of them. From a legislative standpoint, the list was a landslide achievement in the nation’s efforts to protect our national resources. A landslide also brought Nixon re-election in 1972, when he easily defeated George McGovern. But a few months later, investigations into the Watergate break-in and studies by the Internal Revenue Service revealed the rampant corruption of his administration. What actual part Nixon played in the Watergate affair, and what crimes he sought to cover up, are still a matter of speculation. The unnecessary and devious highjinks are in retrospect a terrible shame, blackening a name that might more appropriately have emerged as radiantly green. ■ —Richard A. Altman is an intellectual property lawyer in New York City.

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IT’S GETTING HOT IN HERE How to avoid getting burned in the decades ahead MARK SPELLUN

lobal warming is the greatest problem we face today. Forget terrorism. Forget momentary glitches in the economy. Don’t even talk about tax reform. There is a growing body of evidence that the climate is changing faster than we thought because of increased carbon emissions. Our government is ignoring it, and the average person on the street isn’t really thinking about it. In some ways this is understandable. The average global temperature has risen one degree over the last century, and the icecaps are melting, but life seems pretty good. We can go skiing in the winter, and most of the things we buy are reasonably priced. But the pace of climate change has started to accelerate. For the first time in the history of the planet, human impact is a measurable variable. Global warming is no longer a problem for our grandchildren and beyond, but something many of us are experiencing today. With the average temperature set to rise perhaps more than five degrees

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Fahrenheit this century, according to some estimates, our world is going to evolve radically—and not for the better. Even with just a one-degree jump, we are already seeing increased storm activity, like the wave of hurricanes that hit Florida this past summer. Glacier National Park will have to be renamed “Vanishing Glacier” by 2030 because there won’t be any glaciers left: in 1850 there were an estimated 150; while today only 35 remain. Global warming is also shifting weather patterns, and this is impacting crop yields. For the first time, the global grain harvest fell short of consumption over a four-year period (2000 to 2003) and may well fall short again in 2004, according to the Earth Policy Institute. Rising temperatures are leading to rising sea levels, which may be a meter higher by 2100, causing havoc in small island nations and coastal communities. At that level, 17.5 percent of Bangladesh would be underwater, including major portions of its arable land, infrastructure, homes and industry.

If the government is going to ignore the problem, our best chance for focusing the debate is to wake up the American people. But can these earth-altering changes become concerns of a population focused on more immediate issues? The information is out there, but at this point much of it relies heavily on the estimates and projections of experts—never a winning PR strategy. We could talk morals, just as the Republicans have done so effectively: despoliation of the planet is not only an act against the earth, but it is a sin against humanity and God. But if people don’t grasp that our world is changing, no one is going to support a dramatic shift in how we manage our finite natural resources. People usually need to see things with their own eyes to become energized and take action. Young men lined up to join the army during World War II, but only after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Before that the country mostly sat on the sidelines while war was being waged in Europe. A similar situation exists today. The European Union has embraced the Kyoto Protocol, which directs industrialized countries to reduce by 2012 their aggregate carbon emissions to 5.2 percent below 1990 levels. If the United States were to change its position and endorse Kyoto, however surprising this might be in light of our current refusal to support the treaty, it still wouldn’t be enough. The world needs to dramatically reduce its fossil-fuel consumption if we are going to prevent the forecasted increase in temperature over the next hundred years. It might at first seem a stretch to compare the response to a world war with the challenges of global warming (no one is being asked to storm beaches, after all), but it isn’t. Rapid steps today will help prevent permanent damage to our world by climate change, much as early efforts by the Allies might have prevented or shortened World War II. We need to develop an international response that would quickly move us away from fossil fuels and toward renewable sources of energy such as wind and solar. The United States has so far failed to provide the necessary leadership to control and reverse climate change. This seems unlikely to change in the near term. Individual efforts like driving hybrid cars and recycling are important first steps, because they change the public mindset and help develop coalitions of consumers and businesses that will be necessary to move the climate debate forward. Everyone is going to be an environmentalist eventually, but the sooner we start thinking and talking green, the better. ■ March 2005 www.plentymag.com

CORBIS

A R O U N D T H E N AT I O N

GREEN GEAR

ecosmart

From seat belts to street signs, savvy designers are breathing new life into humble objects and high-style accessories.

PLUG IT IN AND eGO $1,399 (egovehicles.com) The eGO Cycle2 LX is an electric bicycle that hits a top speed of 23 miles per hour and delivers big energy savings: if this were a car, it would get the equivalent of 700 miles per gallon of gas. A single battery charge has a range of 25 miles and takes only 3 hours to renew, making the eGo Cycle perfect for commuters or sport bikers in need of a little time out.

$39.95 (L. L. Bean) When the end of the world comes, you can listen to the news reports on your hand-cranked short-wave radio. Available in four cheery colors.

THE REVOLUTION WILL BE BROADCAST

O G T GE www.plentymag.com March 2005

! G IN

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GREEN GEAR

IMAGI

N AT I V

E STYL E

recycle, reuse, revive 38 SIT, DON’T WALK

$2,700 (uncommongoods.com) Retired New York City traffic signs are given a new life as cutting-edge furniture by artisan John Carter. The legs are made from reconfigured steel street-sign brackets. The lights use standard bulbs and are easy to replace. Jaywalking here is never a problem.

VINTAGE VINYL

$23.50 (greenfeet.com) Thought those old records would never come in handy? New York– based artist Jeff Davis molds real LPs into nifty bowls, clocks, and coasters. Recycled 331⁄3rds make a fabulous gift — if you can bear to part with your vinyl one more time.

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Available at Whole Foods Markets

GREEN GEAR

5,000 prototypes later 58

A CLE AN SW EEP

SUCK IT UP

$549 & $499 (dyson.com) These beautiful Dyson vacuums come with HEPA filters that eliminate the contaminants that cling to household dust. The DC 14 Animal (right, $549) is the most powerful vacuum for pet hair. All Dysons are bagless and come with a ten-year warranty, so your vacuum wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be cluttering landfills anytime soon. It wonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t clutter your house either; the DC 11 (below, $499) needs only half the storage space of other cylinder vacs.

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GREEN GEAR

SHARP

carry me home 68

STUFF

OVER THE RAINBOW $18 (momastore.com) Muji, the Japanese firm with a cult following, debuts in the United States with innovative design, simple materials, and sustainable packaging. This includes 36 vibrantly colored pencils in a handy, recycled, cardboard storage tube.

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BUCKLE UP FOR STYLE $97 (seatbeltbags.com) If need be, these bags made from sleek seatbelts could tote up to 2,000 pounds of stuff. Novel, beautiful, and— obviously—durable. When you buy the MADD model (center), $10 from the proceeds of each sale are donated to Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

HOW MUCH IS TOO MUCH? $39.99 (sales@p3international.com) The Kill-A-Watt meter measures the electricity use on any appliance you plug into it. Keep a tab on how much juice you use, and lower your electricity bills. If you’re in the habit of leaving your computer on all day, for example, you may find that you can save up to $100 a year by turning it off.

March 2005 www.plentymag.com

PHOTO TOP: Davies + Starr

GREAT ESCAPES OUR CHOICES FOR THE TOP TEN ECOLODGES RANGE FROM FABULOUS TO OUT- OF-THIS-WORLD. AT THESE “GREEN GETAWAYS,” YOU CAN STAY IN A TREEHOUSE, GO ON A CAMERA SAFARI, ENJOY WORLD-CLASS DIVING, SAMPLE EXOTIC MENUS, AND EVEN VOLUNTEER FOR A WORTHY CAUSE. BY NICOLE DAVIS

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ince a few tree-hugging luminaries sat around a table nailing down the definition of the word “ecotourism” 15 years ago, there has

been little question as to its meaning: “Responsible travel that

protects the environment and brings direct benefits to local people—

those are the two pillars upon which ecotourism exists,” says Costas Christ, a founding member of the International Ecotourism Society and one of those present at the powwow. But things get a little fuzzy when you talk about ecolodges. They’re supposed to be built upon the same lofty principles as ecotourism, but sometimes an “eco-friendly” resort is no more than a house of straw. “If you Google ecolodges,” Christ points out, “you’ll hit almost anything—some that are doing the real work, some that aren’t doing any of it.” You’ll also miss all the “green hotels” and the sustainable outfitters of the world who heat their water with solar panels and give back to the community. How to make sense of the eco-fradulent and the eco-fabulous lodges,

outfitters, and B&Bs of the world? These ten choices provide a good start.

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ROOMS AT MORGAN’S ROCK (top and middle left)—named after the Alabama senator John Tyler Morgan, who wanted Nicaragua, not Panama, to be the site of the future trans-oceanic canal—are accessible by a narrow wooden bridge (bottom left) and look out onto a private beach (below).

MORGAN’S ROCK, NICARAGUA fter trafficking in surf bums and sport fisherfolk for the past decade, Nicaragua is finally offering deluxe digs for upscale tourists—in the form of an eco-lodge. The 15 brand-new bungalows that overlook a private, crescent-shaped bay south of San Juan del Sur are part of a 4,500-acre tropical forest purchased by Clement and Claire Ponçon in 1988, when the land was used as a cattle farm. Since then the French family has planted 1.5 million trees on the property, not only to restore the land to its wild state but also so they and other Nicaraguans can harvest tropical hardwoods responsibly. Everything in the lodge’s design betrays their love for local woods: polished columns of eucalyptus support the thatched roofed bungalows, all the furniture is handcrafted by local artisans using a local dark redwood called guapinol, and living trees are left to grow among the hillside retreats. The inside-out approach is echoed in the floor plan: you can take a solar-heated shower and see the sparkling blue bay from your floor-to-ceiling window, or sit on the deck beside a private patch of “beach,” while howler monkeys perform their evening acrobatic shows in nearby trees. The owners boast almost the same amount of wildlife as nearby La Flor National Park: spider monkeys and capuchins, two- and three-toed sloths, life-list all-stars

www.plentymag.com March 2005

like the blue-crested motmot, a rare South American bird with a brilliant blue head—and from August through January, leatherback turtles, who lay their eggs on shore. (Employees will even wake you if you want to watch the late-night delivery.) Farther out, you can mountain bike to Lake Nicaragua, kayak the private estuary, go lobster fishing, or gather fruit from the organic farm (Morgan’s Rock grows 85 percent of its own food). If that sounds like adrenaline and agri-tourism overload, you can always relax in the Hacienda’s freshwater infinity pool—you’ll just have to a cross a 360-foot-long suspension bridge to get there. THE FINE PRINT Rooms start at $151, per person, per night, for a double room including all meals (www.morgansrock.com). The lodge can arrange for the two-and-a-half-hour ride from managua to Morgan’s Rock. June through December is lush, though sometimes wet; January through May is dry and hot but always sunny. HOW ECO IS IT? The water may be solar heated, but the lodge is still connected to the grid. ABOVE AND BEYOND Morgan’s Rock Organic Rum comes from their very own on-site distillery; sample some on the rooftop while watching the sugar mill at work.

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FAZENDA RIO NEGRO, PANTANAL, BRAZIL n spring the world’s largest freshwater wetlands dry up to reveal a lush patchwork quilt of grasslands, savanna, forest, snaking rivers—and a buttload of wildlife. The species count here in southern Brazil is as exhaustive as a diner menu: 650 species of birds, 500 kinds of butterflies, 75 types of mammals (and that’s just for starters). It’s the kind of fauna you’d expect to find in the Amazon—but in the Pantanal, with its wide-open spaces and abundant watering holes, you can actually see the show. For years this region has been home mainly to cowboys and cattle, but a combination of falling beef prices and fear of environmental destruction has encouraged ranchers to open up their farms to tourists, too. More good news: the Fazenda Rio Negro doubles as the Brazil headquarters of Conservation International and the Earthwatch Institute, where volunteers tag and study native critters like the caiman, a tropical version of our alligator, as well as ocelots, anteaters, jaguars, and brightly colored toucans. If you sign up for an expedition through Earthwatch (www.earthwatch.org/expeditions/pantanal.html), you can assist in the work—unless, of course, you’d rather ride horses around the 90,000-acre property, take the boat out on the coffee-stained river to fish for piranha, or relax on the veranda as hyacinth macaws—the world’s largest parrots— alight overhead. There are 28 simple but comfortable rooms in the farmhouse, whose grandeur calls to mind the TV show Dallas— not a stretch, really, when you consider that a famous Brazilian

soap opera, Pantanal, was filmed here. It’s no longer a working cattle ranch, but you will still be fed as if you were riding the range all day. The meals themselves are as extensive as the wildlife. On any given night you’ll find three types of salads, as well as arroz feijao, collard greens, stews, and barbecued meats—the habits of running a cattle ranch die hard, apparently. After dinner you can sip powerful caipirinhas—Brazilian cocktails made with tropical limes and sugarcane brandy—beside a fire, listening to the Pantenieros strum their guitars and sing traditional work songs beneath the stars. THE FINE PRINT Rooms start at $127 per person, per day to stay at the Fazenda (www.fazenarionegro.com.br for reservations), or $1,795 for an all-inclusive seven-day Earthwatch expedition (1800-776-0188 or www.earthwatch.org). Fly into São Paulo and catch a connecting flight to Camp Grande, where you’ll board a single-engine plane to the Fazenda (from $946). June through September is the high—and dry—season, which makes it easier to see animals and birds going from watering hole to watering hole in search of food. HOW ECO IS IT? Diesel generators still power the place, and sewage treatment has yet to be installed. But if the animals can live with it, so can you. ABOVE AND BEYOND Before you leave, the Fazenda’s operators often roast fresh, grass-fed beef over an open spit on the riverbank.

THE OTHER AMAZON: the Pantanal offers more than 600 species of wildlife, most in plain view.

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HOOPOE SAFARIS, EAST AFRICA

here are ecolodges in Africa—some, such as Il Ngwesi (www.lewa.org), are even run by local Maasai tribespeople. But why stay in one place when you can go on safari, particularly with one of the most conscientious companies on the continent? Run by native Kenyan Peter Lindstrom and Tanzanian Maasai Stephen Laiser, Hoopoe Safaris pampers its guides as much as its guests. Local Maasai learn everything from ecology to history before joining the staff, and after a year on board, they’re encouraged to start their own safari companies through a vehicle buy-back program Hoopoe provides (www.winstonsafaris.com is one such outfit). Moreover, 30 percent of Hoopoe’s earnings go directly back into the local Maasai communities—a windfall compared to typical 10 percent kickbacks from other companies. Now for your end of the bargain: the company offers everything from “sampler” safaris, in which you hit all of a country’s major wildlife shows, to “luxury” safaris, in which you stay and eat in private bush homes. But the most popular safari by far is the “Serengeti Shall Not Die,” timed to the famous migration of a million-plus wildebeests, 200,000 zebras, and 300,000 gazelles across the storybook grasslands. Like every Tanzanian safari, it includes a stay in a solar-heated Kirurumu tented lodge, a luxury camp where you can canoe, rock climb, and mountain bike ‘til the antelope come home. As you travel along the circuit, making stops at the flamingo-filled Ngorongoro Crater and the Olduvai Gorge, where paleontologists discovered remains of early man (at a Hoopoe-outfitted camp, no less), you’ll spend the night at their semipermanent camps, heavy canvas suites complete with verandas and ceramic-tiled bathrooms. (Don’t feel too bad: you’re given biodegradable soap, and the water is reused to irrigate the grasslands surrounding your tent.) Hoopoe also has access to a 60,000-acre private wilderness area adjacent to Serengeti National Park—which means you and your 12 other safarigoers get to eschew all the stringent park rules and roam the land on foot, spotting big game and birds like the hoopoe, the company’s namesake. Back at camp you’ll find cold beers and hors

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EASY DOES IT ON SAFARI: kicking back after a game drive (top); guide Ake Lindstrom entertains some Maasai children.

d’oeuvres like barbecued goat waiting. While the bush chef prepares dinner, you can regale everyone around the campfire with your point-and-shoot conquests. THE FINE PRINT Eight-day safaris start at $2,610 per person, including everything but airfare (www.hoopoe.com). Depending on your destination, a guide will pick you up from the local airport (Kilimanjaro is closest to the Serengeti safari). The wildlife is keen on water and migrates according to its downfall, typically between December and April. HOW ECO IS IT? Those 4WD safari vehicles do guzzle gas—but “thankfully,” says Lindstrom, “most of our clients prefer to walk rather than drive when in our private concessions.” ABOVE AND BEYOND Maasai guides are deft at turning out an afternoon tea wherever you happen to be—even beside a pool of bathing hippos.

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A GUIDE INTRODUCES GUESTS to a few of the 15,000 plant species in Ecuador's rainforests (below, right). The Pastaza River is the only way in to this southern Ecuadorian stretch of rainforest.

KAPAWI, ECUADOR t is not often that you can help prevent oil exploration and promote the longevity of an indigenous tribe in the course of a vacation, but at Kapawi Lodge, your visit does this 3-million-acre swath of Amazonian rainforest good. Twenty thatched huts line a lagoon on the ink-black Pastaza River, an area oil companies covet—much to the chagrin of the Achuar, a 5,000-member Indian tribe spread throughout the upper Amazon basin just north of Peru. Ecuadorian owner Daniel Kouperman established the lodge with the goal of handing it over to the tribe completely by 2011, though they make up the bulk of the staff now and use the proceeds to help preserve the region. Guests (like actress-activist Susan Sarandon) can take morning canoe trips in search of quetzals, rufous potoos, and tawny-throated leaftossers (three of the local feathered inhabitants); go on jungle treks with guides who can pinpoint plants that cure tuberculosis as easily as jaguar prints; or swim on their own alongside pink dolphins—let me repeat, pink dolphins—in the lagoon. The bungalows are elegantly crafted using local wood and palm fronds, and come complete with composting toilets, solar-heated showers and hammocks to hang in. With no televisions, phones, or radios to distract you, the only show in town is the jungle, and after dinner—the specialty is freshly caught catfish steamed with aromatic leaves and hearts of palm—the best seat in the house is a dugout canoe, from where, armed with a flashlight, you can peer into the yellow eyes surrounding you.

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THE FINE PRINT Packages start at $530 per person for three nights, plus $200 in transportation fees (www.kapawi.com). From Quito you’ll transfer to a single-engine plane, scoot over the Andes, and land upriver from the lodge, where a motorized dugout canoe will chug you into the heart of darkness. It’s best to go anytime but the rainy season, from May to mid July. HOW ECO IS IT? Kouperman admits the solar-battery bank could use an upgrade. An increase in reforestation of the plants used to maintain the huts’ thatched roofing would be nice too. But how much grief can you give a tribe that built a lodge without one metal nail? ABOVE AND BEYOND Treat yourself to a traditional healing from one of the resident shamans, complete with a taste of chicha—masticated and fermented yucca.

March 2005 www.plentymag.com

ECO-CONCORDIA TENTS, ST. JOHN, U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS

EFFICIENT RELAXATION: the fully solarpowered Concordia tents stand watch over rugged parkland and calm seas.

hen park rangers on St. John learned that a New York developer would be buying property within their national park, they figured the worst for their small slice of Bahamian heaven. But Stanley Selengut surprised them. He followed their advice not to build any new roads or chop down any trees; erected raised walkways so guests wouldn’t stomp on the fragile soil, and created the 114 tent-cottages of Maho Bay, one of the world’s pioneering ecolodges. Twenty-eight years later, he has taken the Maho Bay model and updated it in the form of Concordia Eco-Tents, a series of eleven canvas cottages overlooking Nanny Point, a green spit of parkland on the rugged, southeastern side of the island. The hightech tents give new meaning to the term “efficiency unit.” “It’s totally off the grid,” says Selengut. “Almost like a spaceship.” Meters gauge how much solar power is left in the battery cell and the amount of water in the tank, so you can decide the best time to shower or even cook in the fully equipped kitchenette. (Unlike Maho, Concordia guests cook their own meals or eat at local restaurants, ten minutes away.) Trade winds and ceiling fans help keep the tents cool, and at night you can peel away the translucent fabric to

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reveal the Caribbean sky. From your porch you can see the island’s best snorkeling beach—where waters with parrot-, angel-, and butterfly fish are in abundance—or you can get wet within steps of your tent at the freshwater pool. And if this side of the island is too relaxing, you can always make the half-hour trip to Maho, where you can blow recycled glass, work in the clay studio, or take the hike through the sugar-plantation ruins and coconut palms of Virgin Islands National Park. THE FINE PRINT Tents, which sleep six, start at $85 per night (www.maho.org). From the St. Thomas airport, take a 20-minute ferry to St. John’s Cruz Bay, where you’ll want to rent a car to get to Concordia’s remote corner of the island, a 45-minute drive over winding, hilly roads. Unless you like the heat, go any time of year but summer. HOW ECO IS IT? Only a hurricane could make this place a burden on the planet. ABOVE AND BEYOND Through Maho’s work-exchange program, you can put in four hours of work a day for a free month’s stay at either Maho Bay or Concordia.

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THE BOAT LANDING HOUSE, LUANG NAMTHA, LAOS ou could call Bill Tuffin the accidental ecotourist. While working in Thailand as a Peace Corps volunteer in the early 1990s, the Coloradoan says he “just wanted to see what was on the other side of the border.” He ended up in Laos’s Luang Namtha Province—a hidden, mountainous region nestled between China and Myanmar—where he still lives today. Unlike the typical expat turned ecolodge proprietor, however, Tuffin partnered with a Lao villager, Sompawn Khantisouk, who has an architectural degree, and they built among acacia groves six traditional bamboo thatched huts, each with a solar-heated shower and a front porch overlooking the lazy Namtha River. They hired only from within the community and served only local Lao fare, like eggplant with lemongrass and spicy noodle soups. As the restaurant and the rooms began to fill up, the government realized the potential for tourism here—and how well the Boat Landing was handling the newcomers. Encouraged in part by that success, UNESCO preserved 550,000 acres of limestone-studded tropical forest—Laos’s largest contiguous wilderness—surrounding the house and made sure only locals could lead treks through the Nam Ha protected area. Five years later, the Boat Landing is still the best guesthouse in town for travelers who’ve caught on to the hidden northwestern corner of Laos, where you can hike through forests filled with elephants and bears, bomb down virgin trails on the Boat Landing’s mountain bikes, or ride to the homes of silk weavers and bamboo-paper makers in the 20 ethnic communities scattered throughout the province. THE FINE PRINT Rooms start at $17 per night (www.theboatlanding.com).

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LAO-STYLE BUNGALOWS overlook the lazy Namtha River (above). The 288 bird species in Nam Ha's Reserve are best seen by boat.

From the capital of Vientiane, it’s a one-hour flight to Luang Namtha on Lao Airlines (about $150 round trip; www.laoairlines.com). The trip to the lodge is either a 30-cent cab ride or a 550-yard walk. The high (and dry) season is from November to March; September and October are the best wetweather months for a visit. HOW ECO IS IT? The sewage system and solar-powered hot-water heaters can use an upgrade, though Tuffin also laments the fact that the “staff is always leaving the lights burning, the computer running, and the TV on.” ABOVE AND BEYOND In addition to donating 10 percent of the the proceeds from every Wildside Tour to a fund for the endangered black-cheeked crested gibbon, and offering 10 percent of the bikerental proceeds to a community development fund, the Boat Landing also supports local craftspeople by giving each guest a complimentary handicraft.

March 2005 www.plentymag.com

MALEI ISLAND, BRITISH COLUMBIA hen you reach the boat landing on this tiny granite knob off Vancouver Island, you may be surprised to find that you have a 20-minute walk ahead of you. But instead of cursing Markus Kronwitter for making you slog three-quarters of a mile to his resort, you begin to wish you could weave around the dense firs and lichen-painted rocks just a bit longer. Then you spot his modern post-and-beam resort perched above the Pacific, and for a split second you can imagine leaving home permanently for these 35 green acres, as Kronwitter did more than a decade ago. (It took just two vacations to the British Columbia coast for the German biologist to decide to emigrate.) The Canadian INS favored entrepreneurs at the time, so Kronwitter applied his science toward building an ecologically advanced resort. All the wood in this two-story, cedar-sided lodge, for instance, came exclusively from dead (as opposed to logged) trees. Two rooftop windmills and solar panels power the resort, and the frequent precipitation provides all the water necessary to drink, shower, and soak in the claw-foot bathtub. (It helps that Kronwitter and his partner, Cecelia Mottl— Malei Island’s only permanent inhabitants—live in a rain forest). The four double rooms, decorated simply with bright colors and hardwood furniture, all feature sliding glass doors or dormer-like skylights facing the ocean, so you can respond quickly when someone yells, “Whale!” You’ll need help identifying all of them: there are orcas, minkes, humpbacks, grays—dolphins and sea lions, too. You can get within 10 feet of these creatures on one of the resort’s kayaks, or you can dive in the world-class, 50-degree waters, as Jacques Cousteau once did (look out for the 20-foot-long Pacific octopus, which can change from white to red to spotted brown before your eyes.) Afterward warm up in the hot tub Kronwitter hand-sculpted: it’s so close to the coast that you’ll feel the splash when large breakers crash onto the shore. Soak until the sun drops between a pair of uninhabited islands (you may want a waterproof camera for this). Inside, depending on your mood, Cecelia will have fresh sushi, spaetzle, or poached whitefish waiting for you. THE FINE PRINT Rooms are $233 Canadian or about U.S.$200 per person, per night, including meals. Add in unlimited diving, fishing, exploring, and access to kayaks, and each night costs $300 Canadian, or around U.S. $250 per person (250-949-8006; www.malei-island.com). To get to Malei, fly to Vancouver and hop on an hour-long flight to Port Hardy (www.pacific-coastal.com), where Kronwitter will meet you in a water taxi. Since the Pacific Northwest coastal rain forest is so temperate—mild, wet winters and cool summers—there is no bad time of year to visit. HOW ECO IS IT? You’ll only burn fossil fuels during the 35-minute boat ride from Port Hardy, or when the back-up diesel generator kicks in. ABOVE AND BEYOND Upon request Kronwitter can secure an invitation to Hope Island, recently repatriated by the Tlatlasikwala tribe, for a native feast of cedar-smoked salmon.

THE RESORT THAT KRONWITTER BUILT: everything on Malei Island-from the hot tub to the helo pad-was designed by owner Markus Kronwitter.

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FINCA ROSA BLANCA, COSTA RICA hen people land in Costa Rica’s capital, they typically make a beeline for either the Pacific or Atlantic coast, limiting their stay in the capital to a minimum—unless they know about Finca Rosa Blanca. The surreal-looking “sustainable hotel” is smack in the heart of Costa Rica’s coffee country, and though it is close to the airport, its topography keeps the sound of the 747s at bay. Still have doubts? Then consider that Costa Rica’s own ecotourism-officiating agency awarded this place its top rating—five green leaves, as many as Lapa Ríos (www.laparios.com), a traditional ecolodge in the south. Instead of thatched roofs, the Jampol family—Sylvia, son Glenn, and his wife, Terri—used recycled plastic for the tiles atop this Gaudi-inspired surreal stucco palace. Rather than right angles, curves dominate the architectural design, and rounded windows installed throughout to reduce the need for electricity. And rather than creating separate bungalows, the Jampols made each of the nine rooms in their hotel distinct: El Campo has antiques from the countryside and hand-painted murals of historic Costa Rica on its walls; Las Máscaras is decorated with masks from around the world; and La Ventana features rustic, handmade furniture and a private terrace. (The master suite, with its 360-degree views of the coffee fields and a free-form, spring-fed bathtub, is the most popular.) You may not get a stretch of coastline to yourself, but you will be within 30 minutes of Costa Rica’s largest national park, and the Jampols allow guests to ride their horses there, right to the lip of Volcàn Barva’s lagoon-filled

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crater. Though the property is only 30 acres in size, the Jampols make use of every inch: there’s a sculpted, freshwater pool, more than 300 fruit trees in the organic garden, a coffee plantation, and a psychedelic recycling center that would make the Barcelona architect proud. Much of the food is grown on the property—and 5 percent of the restaurant’s proceeds go toward funding the local school—which means you can stand to fill up on dishes like roast pork, corn, papaya, and arugula salad. THE FINE PRINT Rooms start at $160 per night ( w w w . f i n c a rblanca.co.cr), including a full breakfast. From San José, you can arrange a ride from the airport to the hotel for $20. December through April, the dry season, is typically considered the best time to visit. HOW ECO IS IT? Glenn Jampol laments that he can’t turn his sewage into irrigation water—but he plans to upgrade his current treatment system within a year. ABOVE AND BEYOND Pluck arabica beans on the resident organic coffee farm, roast them, and take them home.

THE SURREAL FINCA ROSA BLANCA peeks out of Costa Rica's coffee country (above); the most sought-after room in the house (below).

March 2005 www.plentymag.com

ORGANIC B&B, AIRLIE BEACH, AUSTRALIA irlie Beach has cultivated a serious party vibe from years of catering to backpackers on holiday. It’s also a launching pad for diving and sailing trips to the 74 Whitsunday islands sprinkled around the Great Barrier Reef. (As the locals will tell you, “We’re a drinking town with a sailing problem.”) Once you’ve had your fill of exploring uninhabited white-sand islands, diving among kaleidoscopic corals, or throwing back pints of “four X,” a popular Australian blond beer, however, this eco-ingenious inn provides the perfect crash pad. The owners, John Sergeant and Sharini Kumarage, ran an organic produce shop in Sydney before moving up the coast, and their predilection for all things natural shows in this six-room retreat overlooking the Whitsundays. Sergeant sought out the attractive but invasive camphorlaurel tree, which people are paid to slash and burn, to build everything from the house’s frame to the kitchen table. Cooking and drinking water comes from the fresh-rainwater tank, and the majority of the vegetables and fruits come from their own organic garden. You can

taste it in the food: breakfast is a delicious spread of fresh mango and guava, organic muesli, eggs, and ham; dinner, caught daily, is often prepared as one of the Sri Lankan seafood curries of Kumarage’s native home. What about the locals, you ask? The couple even pays homage to Airlie’s original inhabitants by exhibiting and selling local Aboriginal works of art at the inn. THE FINE PRINT Rooms begin at $90 per night (www.bedsandbreakfasts.com.au/whitsundayorganic). From Proserpine Airport, Airlie is 15 minutes away, by bus or car. Come anytime, though January and February can be humid. HOW ECO IS IT? They’re on the grid, but they try their best to use very little of it through water-saving toilets, an energy-saving cooling system, and solar panels. ABOVE AND BEYOND An in-house masseuse gives rubdowns on the front porch, in full view of the stunning blue Airlie Beach lagoon— with organic oils, of course.

AIRLIE BEACH offers money-shot views of the Whitsunday Islands.

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GREEN MAGIC NATURE RESORTS, KERALA, INDIA othing quite compares with watching the sun set from a bamboo suite at the top of a giant ficus tree, 90 feet above a tropical rainforest floor. Unless you count waking up in this giant tree house to watch the sun rise. Both are possible at Green Magic Nature Resort, a 500-acre fantasia in southern India, where an eco-entrepreneur named Babu Varghese decided that the traditional raised homes of Keralan tribespeople would suit tourists as well. He’s employed members of the Paniya tribe to build and maintain the bedrooms— and modern bathrooms—in the giant ficus trees, using native materials like bamboo poles, mats, and coir (rope made from the husks of coconuts). They’re not for acrophobes—the trees creak and sway in the breeze, and the way up will make your heart pound: one tree house uses a simple wicker cage and water counterweights to elevate you to your lofty digs, and the two treetop penthouses, each with two double rooms, require a walk across a 90-foot suspension bridge. (Not to worry—Varghese built four bungalows on terra firma.) You may share your bathroom with giant Malabar squirrels, but it is a small price to pay for the bird’s eye-view of parrots and Nilgiri langur monkeys, and the impressive sea of Ceylon oaks and teak trees. If you can force yourself to leave your nest, there are other distractions waiting below, like the homemade Keralan cuisine served on

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AT GREEN MAGIC, you can sleep in the trees or rest on terra firma, 100 feet below.

banana leaves, the prehistoric paintings in the Edakkal caves, or rainforest treks with Paniya guides. But that’s a big if. THE FINE PRINT $200 per night in the tree house, including all meals (www.tourindiakerala.com). Fly to Mumbai, then take a connecting flight to Calicut (www.airindia.com), where Tour India will arrange the two-hour drive to the resort ($80 round trip). Unless you want to come for the monsoon, plan your trip for anytime between August and May. HOW ECO IS IT? It’s difficult to indict these guys: the resort runs on solar power and gober gas (that’s cow dung to you and me), and no plastics or cosmetics are allowed on premises. ABOVE AND BEYOND You may be in a tree, but you’re still entitled to room service. Just call out like a cuckoo, and coffee and tea appear magically. ■ Nicole Davis is a frequent contributor to Backpacker, Popular Science, and other publications.

March 2005 www.plentymag.com

FIVE FOR THE FUTURE THESE MOVERS AND SHAKERS, ALL UNDER 40, ARE TACKLING THE CHALLENGES OF OUR TIMES.

BY SARAH ROSE

new generation of environmentalists is set to take over the reins of leadership from the movement’s founding babyboomers. PLENTY talked to five young visionaries—a sage, an organizer, a politician, a litigator, and a scientist—none of whom was born when the movement first took hold, in the 1960s. We asked tomorrow’s leaders to take stock of today’s green living. How far have we come? Where are we headed? How do we get where we’re going?

THE SAGE

ILLUSTRATIONS CATHERINE COLE

JULIA “BUTTERFLY” HILL, 30, claimed international attention for the plight of the world’s last remaining ancient forests when, in December 1997, she climbed 180 feet up into the branches of a 1,000-year-old Redwood tree and refused to come down—until two years later. She spent an historic 738 days out on that limb, living in the tree named Luna, harassed by loggers. She came down to earth only after negotiating permanent protection for the redwood and a buffer-zone around it. Now eco-warriors are training armies of “tree sitters” inspired by Butterfly to save the old-growth forests. A best-selling author, poet, and activist, Hill has become a spiritual figurehead for the environmental movement. The homeschooled daughter of a traveling evangelist, Hill came to activism at the age of 23. “I entered the ancient redwoods and was really touched and deeply moved by the beauty and power and awe of these forests,” she says. “I was opposed to the absolute devastation of the clear-cutting—over 98 percent of the original old-growth forests are gone in California. That dichotomy (between beauty and devastation) is what spurred me into activism.” Julia Hill got the nickname Butterfly while hiking when she was seven years old. A butterfly perched on her hand and followed her all day on the trail. Hill and other protesters assumed “forest names” to help conceal their identities from loggers and officials. Although many in the environmental community are discouraged by the current state of the planet, Hill is hopeful and sees victories everywhere. “Every time someone faces fear and adversity and chooses to act anyway—to me that’s a triumph,” she says. “We have millions of triumphs. When we choose love over hatred, courage over silence, sustainability over mass consumption, any of these and more, that is a triumph.” Pressed to name the failures of the environmental movement, she bridles. “Learning opportunity—not failure,” she rebukes. “It sounds like semantics, but ‘failures’ is our judgmental voice coming out. “For me the learning opportunity is in finding ways of bridging generational gaps in the movement, in the challenges we face in passing the torch. Somewhere the intergenerationality of activism fell apart. We will lose all the wisdom of the older leaders if we don’t crewww.plentymag.com March 2005

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FIVE FOR THE FUTURE ate a way to pass it on.” An accomplished and motivating speaker, Butterfly is invited to more than 500 engagements a year, tirelessly sounding the call for environmental justice. She draws a modest salary from the nonprofit foundation Circle of Life, which she started while living in the tree, but says she isn’t interested in a life complicated by consumption. “One of our biggest challenges is holding ourselves accountable to our visions for the world,” she says. Rather than setting specific goals for the coming five years,

Butterfly’s ambitions spin off into the otherworldly and the abstract. “We’ve become good at defining what we are against, and it’s beginning to define us. We need to ask, What is it that we seek? This compels us to be very creative. It focuses on solutions.” “I didn’t think it would be possible to live in a tree for two years,” she adds with some self-consciousness. “But I stepped into the realm of beyond possibility. Others stepped in with me. We created an action that had never been done before. If we all do that, we can create a whole other world.”

THE ORGANIZER CHRISTINE AHN, 31, thinks a lot about food. At the California-based Food First, the think tank otherwise known as the Institute for Food and Development Policy, Ahn sets the agenda for its economic and human rights programs. Thoughts about how food gets to the table, where it comes from, what chemicals are used to cultivate our meals and who is doing the growing take up vast chunks of Christine Ahn’s waking hours. “The current model of our food system is devastating not just for the environment—with the use of inputs, fertilizer, and fuel—but for society,” she says. A social-justice lifer, slogging in the trenches of do-good nonprofits, Ahn has worked on community gardens for refugees in Colorado. She has also organized volunteers on the Black Mesa Navajo reservation. (Ahn says of the Navajo, “Their whole religion is environmentalism: preserve and conserve for future generations.”) And for the past two years at Food First, Ahn has directed policy that draws on the complicated links among hunger, poverty, development, and farming. But Ahn refuses to call herself an environmentalist. “I scoff at the label,” she says dismissively. “It’s a stereotype.” Food First was started by Frances Moore Lappé, the author of the best-selling ecology bible Diet for Small Planet. In its literature, the organization points out that there are 700 million people living in hunger, yet there is enough grain on the planet to feed everyone 3,500 calories a day and enough food on the earth to give 6 billion people each 4.3 pounds of food per day—with nearly a pound of that coming from high protein foods such as meat, milk and eggs. But the corporate system of distribution is so haywire that the food simply doesn’t reach the hungry. “You see, ecology is only a part of equity,” Ahn says. Ahn is one of the most optimistic faces in the progressive fight for our food, but the past few years have been hard on her. “The engine of globalization has become so powerful,” she says. “There has been such a concentration of power, of uninhibited power.” But the litany of victories that fall under Food First’s purview—such as the recent anti-GMO success in Mendocino, California, where a ballot initiative was passed to prevent farmers from growing genetically modified crops—inspire her. Ahn, who is Korean-American, will soon be working with a Minnesota-based seed scientist to help 25 cooperative farms in North Korea go organic. North Korea has had extensive food crises since the fall of the Soviet Union. “When the Soviet Union collapsed, North Korea had an energy crisis, which turned into a food crisis and an environmental disaster because they started to massively deforest for 54 | P L E N T Y

energy.” After decades of heavy use and troublesome agricultural chemicals, North Korea’s soils were a disaster. “So organic is pretty essential if they want to get back to food self-sufficiency,” Ahn says. “Food is the root of life,” Ahn says. “It’s a social justice cause and a social justice issue.” And if it has a huge environmental component? “I guess I’m an environmentalist,” Ahn allows. “Just don’t tell anyone.” March 2005 www.plentymag.com

THE POLITICIAN JASON WEST, 27, is mayor of the tiny village of New Paltz, in rural New York, about 80 miles north of New York City. A part-time housepainter—the mayor’s job pays only a small salary—West was elected on a Green Party ticket along with two other local board members. His election was the Greens’ sole major victory on the East Coast and caused a stir in progressive circles. Within months of his election, West rose to national prominence as the first official in New York State to solemnize gay marriages. He was then arrested, charged with 19 criminal counts of marrying gay couples. West’s activism is home grown. He was raised not far from New Paltz and attended college there. The environmental issues that most concern him have been with him since “playing in the woods as a kid, seeing all the woods we used to love torn up for strip malls and subdivisions, watching the devastation of that sprawl. “When I was eight years old I remember thinking, ‘I want to get rich and buy up all the land so nothing will ever get built again,’” West says. “Of course the woods were less than 30 years old, just overgrown farmland, but they are huge forests when you are eight.” As a consequence, West looks for practical answers to global concerns. He has proposed revisions to the zoning laws, seeking to concentrate development in New Paltz with density bonuses to preserve open space. Developers would pay the village a premium to build more densely on a lot, and with the revenue New Paltz could communally buy open land for preservation. Taking advantage of New York State’s deregulated energy markets, West is now looking to create a municipal power company that would be required to sell electricity at wholesale rates. If the village can make its own electricity—with water turbines for small rivers—and produce more than it consumes, it would receive a refund, and that could become an engine for revenues. New York State has a ten-year goal of getting 25 percent of its energy from renewable resources, such as solar, wind and hydro-electric power, up from 18 percent in 2004. Mayor West has already implemented an artificial reed-bed system to treat the village’s sewage. The cost of treating waste can take up a tremendous portion of a community’s municipal budget. Reeds act as dewatering devices for sewage sludge; water in sludge is taken up by the plants while oxygen is pumped into the solids through the roots. In effect, solar energy replaces the fossil fuels and electricity normally used to treat waste. Within three years New Paltz will be able to treat 100 percent of its solid waste on-site. “It’s just reeds in shit, but it’s impressive anyway,” West says.

“...THERE ARE 700 MILLION PEOPLE LIVING IN HUNGER, YET THERE IS ENOUGH GRAIN ON THE PLANET TO FEED EVERYONE 3,500 CALORIES A DAY AND ENOUGH FOOD ON THE EARTH TO GIVE 6 BILLION PEOPLE EACH 4.3 POUNDS OF FOOD PER DAY— WITH NEARLY A POUND OF THAT COMING FROM HIGH PROTEIN FOODS SUCH AS MEAT, MILK AND EGGS.” www.plentymag.com March 2005

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FIVE FOR THE FUTURE THE LITIGATOR

“WE HAVE AN INCREDIBLE ABILITY TO MAKE THE WORLD BETTER, IF ONLY WE HAVE THE VISION TO DO IT.” 56 | P L E N T Y

JOHN WALKE, 36, is widely seen as the environmental litigator to watch. Once an EPA lawyer, he grew disillusioned with the watchdog agency—whose main client is industry—and decamped in 2000 to join the National Resources Defense Council, whose client is the people. The hand-picked successor to NRDC’s legendary Clean Air Project Director, Walke makes it his job to take the government, his former employer, to court. The past four years have seen an historic political assault on the country’s environmental safeguards. Under Bush leadership, the EPA has been made more and more toothless, and has increasingly neglected the rigorous policing of polluting industries. But the story could have been so different. A few years ago, the EPA found that power companies had been on a rampage of massive, pollution-increasing construction projects to extend the lives of ancient, coal-fired power plants. The agency had planned a series of lawsuits against the power industry as sweeping as the tobacco litigation of the early 1990s. If the EPA had won, the suits would have forced the cleanup of the dirty old plants. Under Bush administration orders, environmental regulations were dialed back and the lawsuits abandoned. These power plants, now operating unchecked, are responsible for 30 to 40 percent of the most harmful air pollution in the country, including deadly soot and toxic mercury. Said President Bush at a Monroe, Michigan rally celebrating the roll-back of the government’s environmental rules, known as New Source Review: “We trust the people in this plant to make the right decisions.” “We’ve seen a failure of political leadership and political will—at both the state and local levels.” Walke says. To combat that breakdown, Walke and the NRDC are now suing the government to keep the Clean Air Act’s New Source Review regulations on the books. Signed in 1970, the law requires industrial polluters such as power plants and factories to monitor and minimize emissions of substances like lead, sulfur dioxide and mercury. “Business lobbying pressure and lack of political resolve have led to the promise of clean air being broken,” Walke says. “I saw this on a daily basis when I worked at the EPA.” Walke was only a toddler when the EPA was established and the Clean Air Act was signed, but he has made their eventual success his mission. In his lifetime, the medical community has amassed an evergrowing body of evidence testifying to the harm of emissions, from asthma to chronic bronchitis to fatal illnesses. (The NRDC estimates that particulate air pollution is responsible for approximately 64,000 premature deaths in the United States each year.) Walke grew into his environmentalism slowly. “I gained a gradual appreciation for the tensions among consumers, businesses, health, and ecological demands,” he says “But I also became fascinated by the solutions possible in environmental policy, since none of the different competing interests are illegitimate. Ultimately, I’m fascinated by the need to balance.” Walke’s brand of environmental justice takes place in the statutes of law books and in the courtroom. While litigation is not the sexiest way to save the planet, it is potentially the most effective, a nuts-andbolts administrative approach where successes and failures can be counted in the plainest of terms: how many power plants get scrubbed, how many environmental regulations are overturned? For Walke, the next big fight is against the greenhouse gases loomMarch 2005 www.plentymag.com

ing ominously overhead. “We have to become serious in this country about combating global warming,” he says. “One of the biggest challenges will be actually reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.” In the meantime, Walke forecasts a gloomy present for our lungs. “There are still close to 180 million Americans who breathe unhealthy air in this country.” That’s more than half the population. “So there’s a lot of work to be done,” he says. “I’m just trying to keep EPA and the states honest.”

THE SCIENTIST JONATHAN FOLEY, 36, a senior climatology professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is more accustomed to giving tests than to taking them. But a few years ago, on a lark, he took an online test to rate his family’s carbon dioxide emissions from energy use. Foley is generally a green guy—one—in fact, who has spent a lot of time thinking about the health of the planet. And the test told him that the emissions from his home were contributing to climate change from greenhouse gases and that he was one of the most wasteful energy users on the planet. “Not only was I one of the top emitters in the world, because I was www.plentymag.com March 2005

American, I was one of the worst Americans because I spent so much time flying to and from scientific conferences to talk about climate change.” Foley says. The airline industry, with its elephantine guzzling of fossil fuels, is a major CO2 emissions culprit. “I was setting a terrible example. Teaching about climate change by day and emitting at night. I lived a Jekyll and Hyde kind of life.” Foley and his wife agreed to make radical changes in their lifestyle. They sold their large house in the country and moved to a smaller—though by no means tiny—home closer to work. Rather than commuting in two gas-fueled cars, they bought the first Toyota Prius in the state of Wisconsin (“We got a $2,000 tax deduction—the government still offers it!”) Most days though, they get to work on public transportation or by bicycle. “We refill our gas tank about once a month. The price of gas isn’t a problem for us.” From there, the Foleys rethought everything from the ground up. Setting aside a portion on their income for improvements, over time they reinsulated their attic and basement to make heating the house more efficient. They bought all energy-star-efficient appliances, refrigerators with a freezer on the bottom because cold air sinks, and a front-loading water-conserving washing machine. (They have dispensed with a dryer in favor of clothespins and drying racks.) Their hot water is solar heated. They even bought all compact fluorescent lightbulbs—Foley is quick to point out the math: at $4 each, they last 10 years and use one-quarter the energy of incandescent bulbs. “Over time, you’ll make $20 to $25 per light bulb. Show me a mutual fund that can beat that and I’ll buy it,” Foley says enthusiastically. When the power company offered a voluntary plan in which homeowners could opt for wind power, but at a premium, the Foleys signed up. “The amount of energy we use is that of the average Swedish family, and the little energy we use is all clean.” Foley says. His lifestyle changes are just a way of practicing what he preaches, putting his emissions where his money is. “The silly little thing I did to cut my carbon dioxide emissions is just a drop in the bucket.” Foley stresses the economics of energy conservation and greenenergy sources at every possible chance, even going so far as to say that a low emissions philosophy would be good for small businesses. “Wisconsin citizens spent $9 billion in energy last year. Our local utilities buy fuels—like coal, oil, and natural gas—from somewhere else, Texas or Saudi, and those manufacturing jobs leave the state. If we could keep some of that $9 billion here rather than sending it abroad, I can’t see how that would be a bad thing. It would be like a huge tax cut.” In 1997, Bill Clinton singled Foley out for a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers for his work in computer modeling of ecosystems. Foley uses satellite measurements and advanced computers to predict the effect of human behavior—the food we eat, the water we use, and the emissions we spew—on the atmosphere. For instance, deforesting a large area for planting crops will reduce the amount of water evaporated back into the atmosphere, leaving less water and energy available to fuel weather systems. Ripple effects could extend to when spring arrives and how long our winters last. Foley is ambivalent about the future of the planet. “Every year we delay action is a year lost. Every time we increase our use of fossilfuel energy, or raise agriculture in unsustainable ways, a year is lost. In that way, it is easy to become depressed. On the other hand, we live in an incredible time: we can look at the world as a single system. We can communicate sophisticated ideas all over the world in a grassroots way like never before.” Foley pauses to take stock. “We have an incredible ability to make the world better, if only we have the vision to do it.” ■ P L E N T Y | 57

UP, UP, AND

AWAY

IN 2006,

A FUEL-CELL AIRPLANE FROM BOEING SHOULD MAKE THE FRIENDLY SKIES EVEN FRIENDLIER. BY ROXANNE KHAMSI

DOUG SWANSON LEANS BACK IN HIS CHAIR and admits that he does not know who will fly the plane. The project requires an experienced test pilot, he tells me, an aviation wiz who can manage the technical challenges that come with operating an experimental aircraft. Of course, other special conditions apply. “He or she can’t weigh very much,” he adds with a laugh. The details remain secret for now, but Swanson smiles and presents an intriguing capsule summary. The airplane in question is a compact contraption, about six feet tall, but it boasts an impressive wingspan more than nine times its height. Plainly speaking, it is a modified motor glider with long, efficient wings built to produce less drag for each bit of lift generated. Swanson emphasizes that the first test flight is not scheduled to occur until next year, and many details remain undecided. Though his smile widens slightly when asked where the initial trial will take place, he claims to know only that “it will happen in Europe.” For now the oneperson plane remains unfinished in Spain with an unassigned pilot seat. But if all goes as planned, the pilot who ends up behind the controls will cruise into aviation history on fuel-cell power. 58 | P L E N T Y

Swanson, who is deputy director of the Boeing Research and Technology Center in Madrid, describes the so-called fuel-cell demonstrator-airplane project as one of the more radical endeavors the company is pursuing. There are also investigations under way into using renewable energy on larger aircraft, including efforts to introduce fuel cells as a source of auxiliary power to run the lights, heat, and in-flight entertainment. Other researchers at Boeing are examining how commercial planes could burn less fuel by modifying the design of planes and engines. These innovative projects fall into the realm of Boeing Phantom Works, the division of the aviation giant that studies overlapping technologies to benefit both the company’s military and commercial branches. In the United States, the Boeing researchers assigned to these tasks are scattered throughout various branches of the company—hence the word “phantom” to describe the virtual aspect of the organization. But in July 2002 the company established the first physical center devoted to this special research division, located a few minutes by car from the Barajas Airport, just outside Spain’s capital. The green windows of the Madrid branch give visitors the first hint that researchers there have an environmental outlook. If Boeing succeeds in designing a manned plane to fly on hydrogen fuel, the engineering feat will present major possibilities to reduce air-travel emissions in the future. “Basically, this is the first time an aircraft with a pilot is going to fly using this technology,” says Francisco Escarti, managing director of the research center. “If you look at the flights we’re going to perMarch 2005 www.plentymag.com

form, you might say that we’re far away from a commercial product. But it will not happen unless we start.” A fuel-cell solution, when it arrives, would send spirits as well as planes soaring high. Environmentalists are especially eager to find new technologies to cut back on airplane pollution. According to scientists, air travel accounts for roughly 3 percent of global carbon emissions and ranks among their fastest-growing sources. Fuel consumption by civil aviation is expected to reach 300 million tons in 2015, more than double the amount produced in 1992. What’s more, unlike the vehicle exhaust released on the ground, passenger-airplane emissions undergo distinct chemical reactions at cruising altitudes. Each type of greenhouse gas emitted in the sky has a scientifically determined “radiative forcing” that correlates to its potential to influence the global climate. The term describes the balance between radiation entering and leaving the atmosphere, and a positive radiative forcing tends on average to warm the earth’s surface. In aviation everything from the cloudy tracks of water vapor left behind planes on a clear day (known as contrails) to the ozone produced by the flight yields a total radiative forcing that equals almost three times the effect of the carbon dioxide alone. And the heat-trapping characteristics of carbon dioxide on its own have experts worried. At ground level, the same combustion process has less potential to impact climate. “That’s the distinction between aviation and car emissions,” explains David Lee, a professor investigating global warming through the Centre for Aviation Transport and the Environment at Manchester Metropolitan University. A hydrogen fuel cell, such as the one installed on Boeing’s demonstrator aircraft, provides power without coughing up unwanted gases such as carbon dioxide. The device works by using energy from the electrochemical reaction that takes place when hydrogen and oxygen combine to form water. But while automakers have made great strides in designing fuel cells to run on the road, airplane manufacturers face trickier problems in tailoring them for flight. To present some of the practical problems specific to aviation, Swanson introduces me to the research center’s environmental team leader, Fortunato Orti, and engineer Nieves Lapeña Rey. The pair’s appearance could not be more different. Laptop at her side, Lapeña Rey represents a new generation of confident technophiles. Orti, meanwhile, exudes the air of a seasoned university professor. Through his thick-framed glasses he watches as his young team member describes the demonstrator project, and interjects only on occasion with a word of encouragement. Orti has spent years studying planes as an aeronautical engineer, but this is his first time working with fuel cells. Lapeña Rey runs through a computer slideshow and reveals the basic features of the final invention: When completed, the plane will cruise at a speed of about 60 miles per hour, powered only by the fuel cell system. It will draw on the help of lightweight lithium ion batteries during its seven-minute takeoff and climb—the segment of flight that requires the most energy. At the peak of the plane’s power demand during liftoff, its electric motor will operate on 50 kilowatts, half from the battery component and half from the fuel cell. A tank of pressurized hydrogen situated behind the pilot’s seat will provide fuel for the latter. The placement of each part involves an architectural balancing act. Preliminary designs located the fuel-cell components in the engine bay, with the controls nearby. To make space for the power system, engineers had to remove the passenger seat of the aircraft. Even with outsize wings to help carry the body of the plane, the maximum take-off weight of the plane is 1,700 pounds. “The idea is to have a flight demonstration of approximately one www.plentymag.com March 2005

hour at an altitude of 3,000 feet,” Lapeña Rey says, cautioning that further testing will determine these parameters more specifically. Why has this project landed in Madrid? Boeing came to Spain partly to draw on the environmental expertise of European engineers, but the components of this particular plane reflect a decisively international effort. Diamond Aircraft Industries, an Austrian company, supplied the demonstrator plane, which the Madrid-based Aerlyper avionics design group modified for the project. The family-owned Spanish engineering firm Sener has been brought on board to create a new-fuel cell controller unit, while London’s Intelligent Energy is responsible for the energy-capturing membrane inside the fuel cell. Back in the United States, a five-year-old Massachusetts firm named Advanced Technology Products will fit the final elements of the plane, including the master power controllers needed for the electricpropulsion system. Lapeña Rey and Orti make up half of the small Phantom Works team at the center of this web of partners. “Of course, through the collaboration we need to coordinate with all of them to make sure that they’re on schedule and everything fits in place, so we have all the systems ready for the integration at the given time and make our first flight in 2006,” Lapeña Rey explains. “This year, most of the effort is going into developing the fuel-cell system,” she adds. Only a small area can accommodate this part of the aircraft. The Boeing researchers have decided upon a setup that involves two stacks of fuel cells. To conserve resources, the arrangement takes water made by the energy-producing reaction and recycles it to cool the system. The device must also be capable of handling the vibrations encountered in flight. Orti then lists the biggest challenges the team faces in designing a hydrogen fuel-cell system to power the plane. He uses his hands to express his point. “Weight, weight, and weight,” he counts out on his fingers, adding that car makers worry less about how heavy the gear is. “But here it’s go or no go.” Each bit of equipment added for extra power chips away at the total load the plane can carry. The trick is to find the right balance between weight and energy. With too much heavy equipment, the plane cannot take off; with too little energy, it faces the same problem. This aspect of design adjustment characterizes what Lapeña Rey describes as a “chicken and egg situation.” The fuel cell now weighs about 205 pounds, not counting the water produced and used for cooling. Though hydrogen is a cleaner fuel, it’s currently missing from aviation refill stations and difficult to transport. “The common airplane fuel is kerosene, so you can imagine that to change all the infrastructure to hydrogen you need very, very good reasons,” Lapeña Rey says. Before airports consider altering their fueling scheme, the ideas must first prove feasible. The group in Madrid stresses it will take years before we see commercial aircraft that rely on fuel-cell technology for propulsion. Their primary goal is to see if it will work on an experimental basis. Will air travel produce less of an environmental burden in the foreseeable future? Will technology alone solve the problem of aviation emissions? In a report published in November 2000, analysts at the U.K.-based consulting firm Arthur D. Little forecast that fuel-efficiency improvements in the industry will lead to reductions of up to 2 percent per year of carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides, gases that contribute to global warming. But the same paper warns that these improvements will not fully offset the impact of the predicted 5 percent increase in worldwide air traffic each year until 2015. “Consequently, the net global warming potential of aviation is predicted to grow,” the writers warn. “There’s a huge gap between what technology can deliver and P L E N T Y | 59

THE GROUP IN MADRID STRESSES IT WILL

TAKE YEARS BEFORE WE SEE COMMERCIAL AIRCRAFT THAT RELY ON FUEL-CELL TECHNOLOGY FOR PROPULSION.

what we need to deal with this growth,” says Tim Johnson, director of the Aviation Environment Federation. The London-based organization has kept a watchful eye on pollution from air travel for almost 30 years. Johnson believes that the emissions dilemma can be resolved with smaller steps, taken at the individual level. He suggests that businesses try videoconferencing more often in place of sending their employees on tiresome flights. A range of new options—instant messaging, application sharing, and live Web-cam broadcasting—could allow companies to cut travel costs without compromising the speed of information exchange at a meeting. Indeed, in Madrid the Boeing engineers use videoconferencing to plan with their technology partners. Sitting in his office, just a stone’s throw from the Thames River, Johnson mentions other ways to burn less fuel. In many places, especially in Europe, it is often easier and more environmentally sound to travel by train or bus. When carrying lots of passengers, these forms of transport typically do less harm than airplanes. “It all comes down to load factors,” Johnson stresses. In other words, the percentage of seats occupied makes a difference in calculating transport efficiency: A high load translates into less 60 | P L E N T Y

pollution per passenger. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a widely respected body of scientists assembled to study our influence on the earth’s average temperature, has suggested that regulators apply more stringent aircraft engine-emissions regulations. But as some industry experts will tell you, regulation usually follows technology and rarely drives it forward. From the windows of the Boeing center, visitors can watch as a steady stream of planes arrives and leaves Barajas Airport, and the persistent layer of smog over the area makes the prospect of a cleaner way to fly seem both urgent and essential. But the enthusiasm among Boeing’s team has an uplifting effect. Fuel-cell technology will certainly hit the highway before the runway, but the researchers at Boeing Phantom Works remain patient until their innovation takes off. When it does, the plane will fly more with the spirit of the future than the ghost of the past. ■ Roxanne Khamsi reported this story from Madrid last summer and now writes for news&nature.com, an online publication. March 2005 www.plentymag.com

A PLAGUE FOR OUR TIMES? SCIENTISTS

SAY THE NUMBER OF NEW AND EMERGING DISEASES OVER THE LAST 15 YEARS HAS BEEN “EXTRAORDINARY.” NOW THEY’RE TRYING TO DETERMINE WHEN AND WHERE THE NEXT DEADLY PANDEMIC WILL STRIKE—AND IF WE’LL BE READY FOR IT.

BY MADELINE DREXLER

n 1918 a devastating flu epidemic killed more than half a million Americans and some 40 million people worldwide. In sheer numbers, nothing in history had approached its galloping mortality rate: the disease claimed most of its victims in four months. The virus mounted an appalling blitz. Its victims might suddenly experience high fever, delirium, wracking pain, and faintness in the midst of daily routines. People descended from apparently robust health to death’s door in an hour. A man would board a streetcar for work and fall dead before he’d reached his stop. Victims drowned in their own lung fluid. So rapid was the onslaught, burials could not be scheduled quickly enough; in some cities, waiting coffins were stacked like cordwood. Could a similar pandemic—or globe-girdling epidemic—strike again? Without a doubt. Its likely provenance is suggested in a report issued in 2003 by the Trust for America’s Health, the title of which can only be described as, well, rabid in tone: “Animal-Borne Epidemics Out of Control: Threatening the Nation’s Health.” Worldwide, 11 of the last 12 emerging infections jumped from animals to people. Known as zoonoses, these infections are coming at us faster and more furiously than ever, even as the tangled web of global ecology makes them harder to predict. The past five years have offered a sampler of what’s to come. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) leapt from civets—a South China culinary delicacy—to market and restaurant workers and then, via jet transport, to new human hosts on five continents, where some 800 died and 8,000 were infected. West Nile virus, which hop-

62 | P L E N T Y

scotched across the Atlantic in an infected bird, bug, or human, swept the West on the wings of crows and other domestic carriers. New variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease was served up in prion-infected mad cow meat. The towering pandemic of all time, of course, is AIDS, which first gained notice as an obscure medical puzzle in 1981, when the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) published nine brief paragraphs describing a strange cluster of fatal symptoms among five gay men in Los Angeles. Today more than 20 million people worldwide have perished, and 40 million are infected. Given the ruthlessness of these infections, researchers devote a great deal of time to predicting where, when, and how the next pandemic might strike. Some, inspired by Michael Crichton’s 1969 novel about an alien organism, envision a big, showy, Andromeda Straintype affliction: highly contagious, highly fatal. Think Ebola virus spread by a cough. Others imagine an AIDS-like infection, a slow, easily camouflaged disease that slips in under the radar as an insidious blood-borne or sexually transmitted agent. Ironically, many place their bets on the same zoonosis that traumatized our grandparents’ generation; since the 16th century, 13 flu pandemics have hit the world stage, three of them in the past 100 years. Of the more than 1,700 known viruses, bacteria, and other diseasecausing organisms that infect humans, about half come from birds and beasts. Three-quarters of today’s emerging infections vaulted the Darwinian divide. Whatever deadly pandemic next dominates headlines, it will almost surely have sprung from a tiny squatter that wandered from another species to set up home in ours. Even the pathogens most likely to be deployed in a bioterrorist attack—such as those that lead to anthrax, plague, brucellosis, and tularemia—come March 2005 www.plentymag.com

THE CARRIER of the deadly Ebola virus, hugely magnified here, kills its victims within a week or two.

all known flu strains originate in from furry creatures. migrating aquatic birds. Wild ducks, Why are animals the source of geese, terns, gulls: these winged creasuch mayhem? Because they have the tures, which have swarmed over the goods. Years ago Columbia earth for more than 100 million years, University virologist Stephen S. harbor the full spectrum of flu virusMorse, who now directs the school’s es. Domestic avian species—chicken, Center for Public Health duck, turkey, quail, pheasant—also Preparedness, coined the term maintain and acquire a large reservoir “zoonotic pool” to refer to the wealth of flu strains. When conditions are of potentially pandemic agents right, these bird strains make their among the lower Linnaean orders. way to humans. Any locale that is And why now? Because the crosshome to both wild and domestic fowl currents of modern life have left us as well as mammals (including more animal microorganisms in their humans) can breed a flu pandemic. wake, while high-speed transportation can quickly spread these agents A BLIGHT FOR THE AGES: the Old Testament theme of the plague at Ashdod Such intimate co-housing is rampant in China—where, not coincidentally, around the world. As far back as the is the subject of French artist Nicolas Poussin’s dramatic canvas from 1630. most flu pandemics have blossomed second century, the historian Plutarch since 1850. observed that new classes of disease Because of this notorious history, arise because of profound changes in you will regularly hear that the publicthe way we live. Today global change health establishment is “concerned” creates new markets for restless about new infections spotted in China. pathogens. And these organisms have Officials were initially terrified about a knack for leveraging the slimmest the 2003 SARS outbreak because it advantage. had some of the trappings of the hypoBugs, for instance, are hardy travthetical flu pandemic. They were also elers. If you were to unfold a map, thinking back to 1997, when a deadly close your eyes, and point, virtually strain of influenza spread through any place at the tip of your finger Hong Kong poultry markets and the could be reached within 36 hours. local populace. Known as H5N1, it That’s less than the incubation perirapidly evolved and was probably on od—the time between infection and the verge of adapting itself to humans. the onset of symptoms—for most That December, a massive cull of 1.5 viral or bacterial diseases. An infecmillion birds in the city’s live markets tious agent can slip in and spread likely helped avert a global epidemic. before its symptoms give it away. A few years later, I asked University Microorganisms also love crowds. of Wisconsin virologist Yoshihiro Megacities (population 10 million Kawaoka, who had been studying the plus) act as incubators for emerging strain, what he had found. “This is the zoonoses, and porous public-health most pathogenic virus that we know surveillance gives these microbes a of,” he said. He didn’t mean just free pass. Before 1950 only London among flu viruses: he meant comand New York had populations of pared with all viruses. We had just more than 7 million. By 2015, there barely missed being hit. will be a couple dozen megacities, Since then, as the virus has circumost—such as Mumbai (formerly lated and picked up new genes, it has Bombay), Dacca, and Lagos—in only grown stronger. Today’s H5N1 developing regions. Overcrowding, has spread over a vast swath of the open sewage, poor nutrition, and the Asian continent. In laboratory experiments, it savagely kills ferrets, close quartering of humans and animals make these places petri dishwhich are close biological models for scientists studying the effects of es for new infections. When economic pilgrims or war refugees flock the virus on humans. Outside the lab, it has claimed more than five to urban enclaves, they bring with them new organisms as well. times as many lives as its 1997 predecessor. Consider AIDS: probably sometime between 1910 and 1950, the As of this fall, H5N1 has only spread to people who had close conproximity of sub-Saharan Africans to chimpanzees (hunted for food tact with birds. But as the virus expands its range, it has more chances in dense forests) and sooty mangabeys (sociable, baboonlike primates it to jump to humans, adapt to our biology, and learn how to travel that were often kept as pets) enabled the spread of HIV to our species. person-to-person through the air. If it manages that giant evolutionary The dislocations and depredations of war then amplified the virus in leap, “guesses are that it would be pretty bad,” says Richard Webby, a Africa, from where it was launched globally. virologist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and a leading In a similar way, casual mingling of birds and humans is known to researcher in the field. Translation: in the United States alone, hunspark the odds-on pandemic favorite: influenza. This past year, a birddreds of thousands could die. flu epidemic in Asia riveted health officials worldwide. Here’s why:

BUGS,

FOR INSTANCE, ARE HARDY TRAVELERS. If you

were to unfold a map, close your eyes, and point, virtually any place at the tip of your finger could be reached within 36 hours. That’s less than the incubation period—the time between infection and the onset of symptoms—for most viral or bacterial diseases.

64 | P L E N T Y

March 2005 www.plentymag.com

So how do we prevent this or any other animal-borne pandemic? The conventional wisdom is that public-health programs around the world must improve surveillance, early diagnosis, and laboratory testing and turnaround. Luckily, the U.S. public-health system’s nervous bracing for bioterrorism will also help detect emerging animal-borne epidemics, since the clinical giveaways are the same for both: unexplained fevers and rashes. But standard public-health measures aren’t enough. We also need to closely monitor animal epidemics. And we need to scrutinize environments where human and animal biologies mix it up. That means not only jungles but also farms, food-processing industries, even pet stores. “The current focus of public attention on remote ‘econiches’— what might be called the ‘Ebola Mystique’—needs to be reexamined,” writes Frederick A. Murphy, dean emeritus and professor of veterinary medicine at the University of California, Davis. Mad cow disease and its incurable human variant, after all, sprang from decidedly mundane animal-husbandry practices in the United Kingdom. The 2003 monkeypox outbreak in the midwestern United States came from Gambian rats imported as exotic pets. Even the pandemic disease about which we know the most—the flu—may be smoldering in unexpected places. Jeffery Taubenberger, a respected researcher with the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, was the first scientist to decode the genetic blueprint for the 1918 flu virus and trace the virus’s family tree. What he discovered was both startling and instructive: the 1918 virus doesn’t appear to have come from any bird or animal known to harbor the flu. “In a sense,” says Taubenberger, “it came from Mars.” Put another way, today’s potentially pandemic flu viruses may be hiding somewhere out in the wild where we haven’t even looked—in waterfowl, songbirds, even mammals. And if the second-deadliest pandemic in history appears, under scientific scrutiny, to be positively Martian, then maybe some of our other assumptions are wrong as well. Taubenberger suggests, for example, that the next lethal flu pandemic might catch fire not in Asia, where everyone is looking, but in the Netherlands, where a massive bird-flu epidemic caused by an H7N7 strain erupted in 2003. At least 1,000 people were infected, including many family members of poultry workers, suggesting that the virus spread person to person: the sine qua non of a flu pandemic. “If you put blinders on and think, ‘All of our surveillance efforts have to be in China,’ you’re not paying attention to what happens in the Netherlands, or Bolivia, or anywhere else,” says Taubenberger. “I see no reason why what happened in the Netherlands in 2003 is any less scary than what’s happening right now in Asia.” In September 2004, as Asian bird flu spread, World Health Organization (WHO) officials pointedly reiterated the global threat from all animal diseases. “Animal health has not traditionally been seen as part of WHO’s mandate,” admitted Western Pacific Regional Director Shigeru Omi. “We can no longer afford to take that view.”

nce a pandemic begins to exact a human toll, we will need a stockpile of broad-spectrum antivirals and, more crucial, vaccines. But the Chiron Corporation’s October 2004 surprise—the sudden withdrawal of half of the U.S. flu vaccine supply—revealed the unreliability of drug and vaccine development, even in a ho-hum, www.plentymag.com March 2005

nonpandemic season. Vaccine manufacture, in particular, is expensive, unprofitable, and legally risky; a slew of companies have dropped out of the business in the past few years. Doubling our vulnerability, drug firms have at the same time scaled back their work on anti-infective drugs. All of which explains why, years after West Nile virus and SARS went global, there are still no therapies or vaccines for the illnesses. Clearly, we need to fortify academic, industry, and federal research. On the bright side, Project BioShield, designed to strengthen America’s defenses against bioterrorism, has shown that with enough money and political will it is possible for governments to bankroll vaccine research and development and guarantee a buyer at the end. “You can drive that sucker as fast as the technology will allow,” says Philip K. Russell, a public-health veteran who directed BioShield’s fast-track acquisition of smallpox and anthrax vaccines. If H5N1 flu or SARS or some other unforeseeable animal infection goes global, that approach could conceivably save the day. Once a zoonosis has started to spiral out of control, nations must be prepared to set politics aside and join together swiftly to rein it in. In 2003 that necessity was underscored when China grudgingly and tardily reported SARS, a cover-up that helped the lethal virus spread. Luckily, the WHO no longer has to wait for dispatches from affected nations. The agency’s Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network runs 24 hours a day, collecting data from labs, epidemiologists, nongovernmental organizations, and even from a Web-crawling tool that looks for infectious disease keywords. Beginning in 2005 the WHO will be able to act independently on that information, sending investigators to any emerging-infection hot spot. Another Internet-based reporting system on emerging human and animal diseases—ProMedmail—has since 1994 nimbly tracked new outbreaks, often posting reports to subscribers and on its Web site well before official government or WHO press releases. Despite all of these scientific and communications advances, we may still miss the next emerging zoonosis until it’s too late. “Imagination is limited by data,” says Taubenberger. “You have to wait for something to happen before you can think about it—which is really scary. There is no way we could have predicted the SARS outbreak, because until it happened, scientists had thought of coronaviruses as important animal pathogens but as kind of bland and medically unimportant human pathogens, because they merely cause colds. Nobody was studying them because they were boring.” And when a pandemic of any sort announces itself, we may once again freeze or cower or stumble—as we did with AIDS. “What do I worry about?” asks Mors. “Complacency; Ebola gets a lot of attention, even though it doesn’t spread very well, because it’s so dramatic and so highly fatal, whereas HIV got very little attention initially and continues to make inroads because of its insidious nature.” If an AIDS-like infection emerged today, Morse adds, the world might not act any more intelligently than it did in the early 1980s. “When we see HIV going into new areas—India, say, or South Africa—people go through the same denial as we did in this country. HIV succeeds in conquering new areas over and over again. And the public-health response is still, often, great delay.” Which suggests that animal infections remain ready to pounce— and Homo sapiens unready to respond. “It’s a very scary time,” says Murphy, who vividly remembers the day in October 1976 when, as a midlevel virologist at the CDC, he ferried wet prints of the newfound Ebola virus to the agency’s director. “The number of new and emerging disease episodes in the last 15 years has been extraordinary: one a year, of great significance, each so different from the next. It’s one thing to count the bodies. It’s quite another to do something about it.” ■ P L E N T Y | 65

Housing A NEW BREED OF INNOVATIVE ARCHITECTS ARCHITECT ROCIO ROMERO enjoys the view from the interior of her “weightless” LV Home.

TO GO IS PUTTING THE FAB BACK INTO PREFAB. BY ANN LANDI

D PHOTOGRAPH RICHARD SPRENGLER

EFINITELY NOT A PRETTY WORD:

prefab, short for “prefabricated.” It conjures up visions of a clunky structure atop a wide-bed truck, lumbering down the highway toward some godforsaken outpost. But that stereotype is fast fading, as some of the country’s most ingenious architects look to prefab for housing that is not only ecologically sound but also guaranteed to make your guests just a little jealous. Prefab has been around since the California gold rush in 1849, when “kit” houses were shipped by rail to settlers and prospectors out West. Nearly 50 years later, Thomas Edison turned his attention and several million dollars to developing a single-piece, cast-concrete house—one that would be fireproof and insect-proof, and could be built at a cost of $1,200 in just a few hours. The first prototypes, requiring 2,000 parts and weighing nearly half a million pounds, were an unqualified disaster. Even Sears, Roebuck & Company of Chicago got into the business. In 1908, it began selling its Readi-Cut models through regional stores and catalogues. Priced from $650 to $2,500, the package came in a wide variety of designs and included nails, shingles, windows, doors, hardware, and paint. A typical Sears house, minus the foundation, could fit into two boxcars; buyers with a good knowledge of carpentry and a few able friends could build their own dwellings in just a few days. Today many of these houses have become sought-after properties, prized for both their history and the high quality of the materials. www.plentymag.com March 2005

At the other end of the architectural spectrum, a few forward-thinking architects of the first half of the 20th century gravitated to the prefab idea. One of the leaders of European Modernism, the French architect Le Corbusier, embraced the then novel notions of logical design and function over the style (“A house is a machine for living in” was his most famous maxim). Other visionaries—such as Buckminster Fuller, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Swiss architect Albert Frey—produced startling, often one-of-a-kind houses that were intended for mass production but never made it far beyond a single building. The peak for prefab was yet to come. Developer William Levitt, taking advantage of the government’s guaranteed-mortgage program for returning veterans, lowered the costs of construction by building on a huge scale and bringing factory workers to the site. In 1945 he broke ground in the community of Levittown, Pennsylvania, producing 150 houses a week, and continued at a furious pace for the next three years, until 6,000 had been completed. While Levittown served as a model for how to provide housing for a nation eager to forget a war and the Great Depression, it was also dismissed by many as uniform and nondescript. But today prefab is losing its Levittown stigma as a younger generation of architects turns to simple and elegant solutions to create affordable houses—especially weekend or vacation retreats—that take into account energy-efficient and environmentally conscious construction. The builders featured on these pages, inspired by the flexibility and potential sophistication of the prefab notion, hark back to the aesthetic of the radical designers of the early 20th century: less is not only more, but given a contemporary awareness of diminishing resources, it’s also the most sensible answer to sheltering our families while still delighting our senses. P L E N T Y | 67

hen Michelle Kaufmann and her husband, Kevin Cullen, went shopping for affordable housing in the San Francisco Bay Area a couple of years ago, they were so dismayed at the high price of property that they decided to take matters into their own hands. After looking at $600,000 “fixer-uppers,” Kaufmann, a former student of the renowned architect Frank Gehry, started thinking along prefab lines, seeking to design a home that would be as green and sustainable as possible. “It took a while to find a factory that would even talk to us,” she recalls, but now she and her husband have the house of their dreams, and more than 30 other people have contracts for the sleek, eco-friendly structure she calls the Glidehouse. “It’s green in a number of ways,” Kaufmann explains. “All the rooms have cross-ventilation, with sliding glass doors along one side and clerestory windows all along the other side. This allows heat to go up and out the windows in summer and permits passive solar heating in winter.” Depending on its location, the house can make use of solar panels, a wind generator, or a hybrid system; and since the surfaces are washed with light, electricity for illumination is seldom needed until late in the day. Whenever possible, Kaufmann

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mkarchitecture

introduced sustainable materials—bamboo flooring; countertops made from an aggregate of fly ash, concrete, and recycled paper; and a special spray-in insulation that minimizes mold. “By virtue of the off-site technology,” Kaufmann adds, “there’s very little waste. The guys at the factory can store an extra piece of, say, the Cor-ten steel used on the exteriors. Products left over from one project get used in the next, instead of being carted to a landfill. And there’s a lot less wear and tear on the land since you don’t have workers stomping all over the place.” The Glidehouse comes in four different sizes, from 672 to 2,016 square feet, and arrives 85 to 90 percent completed in two truckloads, within six months of making a down payment; the cost is about $120 per square foot, including everything but site costs— such as shipping, the foundation, and utilities hook-ups to the house. March 2005 www.plentymag.com

PHOTOS COURTESY MK ARCHITECTURE

THE GLIDEHOUSE

THE LV HOME Rocio Romero

PHOTOGRAPHS RICHARD SPRENGLER

Architect Rocio Romero’s first venture into prefab happened after her mother requested a vacation retreat in Laguna Verde, a small town south of Valparaiso, Chile. “She wanted an inexpensive house,” Romero recalls, “and she wanted it to be low maintenance.” Thus was born the LV Home, a 1,150-square-foot dwelling whose high, wide windows were designed to frame spectacular views of the Chilean coast. “If you properly orient the house,” Romero notes, “it can be amazingly energy efficient.” The wall panels, made of a material called Galvalume, are installed on top of the structure, housing the downspouts and eliminating the need for gutters. They also give the structure its “floating” appearance and never need painting. The simple floor plan allows for a spacious living/dining room, two bedrooms, and two baths; relatively high ceilings and the large windows make the rooms feel bigger than they are. Once Romero’s firm receives an order, fabrication time is about three weeks; putting the house together, with the help of a contractor, takes one to two months. The basic price for the LV Home is $35,000; the total cost of ownership—including labor, foundation, and finish preferences—runs from $75,000 to $113,000. “This is a good time for the prefab house,” Romero says. “Companies like Target and Ikea have brought design to the forefront, and people are starting to demand sophisticated design at every level of life.”

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Brothers Peter and Mark Anderson first realized the advantages of prefab systems while working on buildings in Japan during the 1980s. “Many of the projects we did there were prefabricated offsite because labor costs are so high in Japan,” explains Peter Anderson. “So we shipped parts in containers, sometimes whole wall sections, with the carpentry taken care of beforehand.” Back in the States, the Andersons adapted that knowledge to building custom residences such as the Kennedy house, located on Fox Island in Washington State. The single-family, 956-square-foot home uses a balloon-frame panel system and was built a few miles away, then delivered to the site. “In a factory situation, you can optimize the use of wood, so that there’s less job-site waste,” says Anderson. “The more efficient working process also saves commuting time.” The house is specifically adapted to the hilly terrain common to the Pacific Northwest. The prefab, eight-foot-wide vertical panels were standardized from the main floor and up, but were lengthened or shortened to adapt to a sloping site. Though the house is relatively small, well-placed windows and high ceilings give it a sense of spaciousness—and the windows are specifically oriented to provide passive solar heating in the winter. The house also makes use of engineered wood systems—small pieces of wood 70 | P L E N T Y

fiber formed into building parts that take the place of traditional beams, studs, and joists— which, as Anderson notes, “are inherently environmentally appropriate because they’re made from new-growth trees. “We work with a wide variety of prefab systems,” Anderson says, “so every project takes a slightly different approach.” A case in point is a spectacular house built along Lake Michigan, a towering structure wrapped in recycled, translucent polyurethane slats that gather the light and color of the landscape. “Because of the harsh winters, the house had to be built in less than two months,” he says. “Working on site, we could accommodate a very fast schedule.” Anderson notes that a lot of attention has been paid to manufactured house systems like the Glidehouse and the LV Home. “That’s one interesting and useful area,” he says, “but what has been less publicized is more custom applications of prefab techniques. Some think that prefab limits choices, but that’s very much not true. You can take advantage of the efficiencies of prefabrication without having to limit design options.” March 2005 www.plentymag.com

PHOTOS COURTESY ANDERSON ANDERSON

KENNEDY RESIDENCE AndersonAnderson Architects

“THE FLYING NUN” Modern Modular The three-bedroom house pictured here, known as the Flying Nun, is not technically prefabricated but will serve as the template for future houses built in consultation with Modern Modular. Realized by architect Joseph Cincotta in the town of Wilmington, Vermont, the 2,500square-foot structure is wrapped in corrugated steel, which never needs painting; the house also incorporates passive solar concepts and double insulation in the roof to protect against fierce New England winters. “It’s a constantly changing field,” LaBonte adds, “but we’re trying to take a holistic approach to architecture, working with people who want to be smart about what they consume and what they put up on the planet.”

PHOTO COURTESY MODERN MODULAR

Peter LaBonte founded the firm Modern Modular in 2002 to help architects and their clients make the most of prefabricated methods to build customized houses. “In most cases prefab lends itself nicely to modern architecture because it’s simple and streamlined,” he says. Though not an architect himself, LaBonte partners with those he considers the “young Turks” of the business and with “people whose bread and butter is eco-sensitive building materials, heating and electrical systems and so forth.” LaBonte learned the virtues of prefab while working on two structures on the east end of Long Island. In the case of the traditional, or stick-built, house, there were 20 dumpsters filled with trash by the end of the construction process. Waste from the prefab filled only one.

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THE FRUSTRATED

FASHIONISTA

WHAT? NO LEATHER? NO FUR? HOW DOES A STYLE-LOVING VEGETARIAN SQUARE HIS SHOPPING SPREES WITH HIS CONSCIENCE?

“Oh no! This is totally tragic,” wails Mickey Boardman, downtown man-about-town. “The Prada robot key ring has leather on it!” Boardman, a.k.a. Mr. Mickey, a.k.a. the Vegetarian Fashionista (or V.F.), is a guy who loves a label, a fellow who likes to deck himself out in the next new thing—as long as it doesn’t bear a trace of leather, suede, fur, or other animal-derived product. This can be harder than you might think. “The Italians love a leather trim, a furry pom-pom,” he says mournfully as we cruise around the Rem Koolhaas-designed Prada store in New York’s SoHo. The key chain—a silly item perhaps, but a Prada must-have this season—is not the only accessory out of bounds: a promising glitzy belt is unfortunately backed in cowhide. Though Boardman briefly fondles an astrakhan cap, he knows that it is, of course, completely out of the question. “I wish it was faux,” he muses, his piercing blue eyes turning briefly sorrowful. “I could definitely feature it for, you know, sort of a Hamid Karzai kind of a look.” Two minutes later, he is delighted to find a Prada tote made of black nylon and featuring an appliquéd rocket ship, but he’s a little wary of the telltale red Prada strip. “Oh, that’s plastic,” says the saleswoman. We’re not so sure. For our downtown shopping expedition, Boardman has donned an Etro jacket with enormous blue butterflies, an abstract-print Marni shirt in one of the jolie-laide patterns that house favors, and a pair of surprisingly sober J. Crew jeans. For shoes—probably the biggest challenge facing a vegetarian fashionista—he wears a pair of glittery Chinese sandals; on his arm hangs a leopard-print nylon bag from Le Sportsac, monogrammed MM in pink (for Mr. Mickey). Over pizza—no sausage! hold the anchovies!—Boardman explains the special trials of dressing according to his principles. “I became a vegetarian 17 years ago, for health and animal-loving reasons,” he says. “I used to wear leather, and whenever I would talk to people about being a vegetarian, they’d always say, ‘But what about your own shoes?’ So finally, I thought, ‘Let me see if I really can be totally cruelty-free.’” It can be tough: that Fendi carry-on with the leather handles, a holdover from less rigorous days, now languishes at the bottom of his closet. “It hurts me not to use it,” he says, “but I just can’t throw it away.” The good news this season is the arrival of all-rubber Pucci rain boots. Mr. Mickey is wildly enthusiastic about rubber boots, even though, it is pointed out to him, rain boots do not represent the height of heavenly comfort. He shrugs philosophically. “You get used to them.” In any case, the Puccis come only in women’s sizes, but that’s OK 72 | P L E N T Y

with Boardman, who has learned that in a vegetarian-fashionista universe, you’ve got to be flexible. As a matter of fact, he already has two pairs of rubber boots, cherry red and sunshine yellow, with an impressive provenance—Chanel—that he wears all the time. We head to the ultrastylish Kirna Zabete boutique in search of these boots, but the only Puccis we find are voluptuous cashmere scarves. Knowing that some superstrict individuals have issues even with wool, I ask Boardman if he’s OK with cashmere, mohair, and angora. “As long as something didn’t die, I’m good,” he says, flinging a muffler around his neck. Our next stop is Marni, an eccentric Italian brand whose New York shop, with its undulating counters, has a fun-house ambience. Boardman loves Marni, arguably even more than Prada (though he’s still thinking about that robot bag), since Prada at this point represents the fashion establishment and Marni is a bit left of center, at least sartorially speaking. At the Marni store he heads for a tweedy overcoat (in less stylish times, this was called a car coat), blissfully free of leather buckles or toggles. He looks great in it, but it’s $1,500, so back to the rack it goes. Then we zero in on the printed totes, which are hung with a variety of buttons and badges. One particularly intriguing example is made of gray flannel strips woven together like a kid’s day-camp project. Boardman is almost visibly holding his breath with excitement. And then, alas, he sees it—the word “Marni.” Small, yes, but undeniably embossed on a piece of saddle leather. He’s so deflated, I dare to suggest he buy it anyway, take it home, and just snip off the offending strip. “I’ve actually done that if it’s a gift,” he says. “But to buy it, I don’t know.” To cheer ourselves up, we head for Bloomingdale’s new branch in SoHo. A few weeks before, Boardman had seen a pair of green plastic Pro-Keds (“sort of Wellingtons, but not exactly—more like ‘70s disco slip-ons”) that he thinks will do until the Pucci rain boots turn up. Unfortunately, the green para-Wellies have sold out (are there more V.F.s out there than we think?). “Totally tragic,” Boardman says with a sigh. Then he consoles himself at the Jack Spade counter, where a bright orange canvas messenger bag betrays nary a wisp of hide. “I can’t believe I’m sort of attracted to something simple and well made,” he says. “But you know, I’m hard on bags. It might be good to have one that’s rugged.” Well, sure, maybe. But then why are we heading back to Prada for a second look at an utterly frivolous, utterly ridiculous robot tote that may or may not sport a leather label? ■ March 2005 www.plentymag.com

ILLUSTRATION BY ROBERT DE MICHIELL

BY LYNN YAEGER

SOMETIMES IT TAKES MORE THAN MOXIE TO FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT. THINK FAUX, RECYCLED, AND ORGANIC... AND GO GET ’EM, GIRL!

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Z AP! BAM! MONICA, LEFT, IS IN A BLACK RECYCLED-TIRE CORSET AND PINK LATEX MINI BY GAELYN AND CIANFARANI; BLACK FAUX-LEATHER BOOTS BY DOLLHOUSE. NARELLE, ABOVE, WEARS AN ORGANIC SILK BOMBER JACKET BY NICHOLAS K; FAUX-LEATHER SHORTS BY CARASAN; FAUX-LEATHER BOOTS BY DOLLHOUSE; NECKLACE AGATHA.

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MONICA, THIS PAGE, IN A RED LATEX TOP BY GAELYN AND CIAFARANI; JEWELRY BY AGATHA. NARELLE, LEFT, IN A LATEX TOP AND SKIRT BY GAELYN AND CIAFARANI; METAL CHOKER BY SILVER CAGE; PLASTIC & WOOD SANDALS BY DOLLHOUSE.

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MONICA, LEFT, IN AN ORGANIC COTTON DRESS AND TOP BY NICHOLAS K; VINTAGE COTTON BOOTS BY WACOGU; KEYCHAIN & BRACELETS BY MERCADO GLOBAL. NARELLE, THIS PAGE, IN AN ORGANIC COTTON BLOUSE AND SHORTS BY NICOLE ROMANO; FAUX-FUR ACCESSORIES BY DIESEL; CHOKER BY SILVER CAGE; BEADED BELT BY AURO. OUR MODELS ARE MONICA CRESPO FROM FORD II, AND NARELLE PAYNE FROM Q. MAKEUP ALL ANIMAL-FREE TESTED FROM MAC, BY TONYA NOLAND, REPRESENTED BY MARK EDWARD. STYLING BY KATYA SKNARINA. PHOTOGRAPHS FRANCIS MURPHY.

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FOOD

PREDATORS VS. GRAZERS There will be no vegetarianism allowed at my post-breakup breakfast. “Not in my house!” bellows my high-school friend Marc from the kitchen. Hungover, I eat biscuit sandwiches with pork sausage, eggs, cheese, and avocado, and am in total heaven. Mornings—and mourning—in meat-eater land can be comforting and gratifying— feelings that a vegetarian diet fails to evoke. There is a modern-day war afoot between carnivores and herbivores. The vegetarians are gaining ground, smugly. At every dinner party, a gracious host must account for some guest’s increasingly finicky eating choices. No good can come of such considerations, protest the steak lovers; it is nothing but appeasement. All-veg entrees are the Sudetenland. The medical community takes the nearly unanimous position that a vegetable-based diet is the healthiest way to eat and that eating low on the food chain is good for one’s arteries, one’s bones, and the planet. Still, many protest that a diet just isn’t pleasurable without a little moo in it. After dating a vegetarian for nearly five years, I joined the surly ranks of the anti-plant cause and came to the following conclusions: ■ Vegetarian food is soulless and unsatisfying. ■ Vegetarians eat nothing but side dishes. 80 | P L E N T Y

■ It would take a lifetime of chopping and sautéing to wring from plants half the flavor one can get from a single animal. While embracing and celebrating my choice to eat meat, I have begun to wonder if predators and vegetarians are wholly incompatible. Maybe there is some middle ground I never explored, a place where vegetable-based entrées are sufficient. Without hope of ever winning the boy back, I began a quest for the vegetarian meal that would please a meat lover. Peter Berley is the James Beard Award-winning author of The Modern Vegetarian Kitchen and Fresh Food Fast (both from Regan Books). Berley teaches a class in vegetarian celebrations—no irony intended—at the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City. In Berley’s class we make seasonal dishes: cauliflower soup, golden lasagna, lemon poppyseed rolls, pumpkin hazelnut turnovers with spicy tomato dip, maple ice cream, and a pear-cranberry crisp. Everything is delicious, in no small part because Berley is a genius. With his taste buds and skill for divining recipes, he could make Sheetrock taste scrumptious. But lasagna? That was one of my favorite fictions while dating Vegetable Boy. I could load up a casserole with enough starch and cheese to make anyone, regardless of their dietary persuasion, feel full. Lasagna is a meat dish without the meat. And it is by no means healthy. March 2005 www.plentymag.com

ILLUSTRATION BY REBECCA GIBBON

THE WAR FOR THE DINNER TABLE SARAH ROSE

FOOD To Berley, lasagna is the perfect way to assuage a meat-fancier’s prejudice. “Start with the form,” says Berley. “A single object on a plate.” American meals are based on “The Roast,” Berley says. The perceived divide between meat-focused meals and vegetarian meals comes from a Midwestern dining culture. Our culinary forefathers had wide-open spaces, short growing seasons, and northern European roots. If our food culture had been founded on warmer norms, by people from crowded places with many micro-climates such as the Mediterranean, Mexico, or Asia, we would have a more diverse palate and would be accustomed to eating several small dishes. We are so used to meals that orbit a single object with two sides, a starch and a veg, that we are inclined to feel that vegetarian food lacks a main course. Berley suggests working within our schematic biases, using them as a tool—a taco, a wrap, a slice of lasagna. There is a strong argument for vegetarianism, of course. Factory farming and slaughtering are extraordinarily cruel. Cattle are costly to ecosystems: they require a lot of water; and bringing meat to market from distant pastures consumes fossil fuels.

“The issue isn’t vegetarianism,” says Berley. “It’s eating in a sustainable way.” In most cities, it is now possible to buy locally grown, humanely raised meat that has a lower environmental impact than conventionally grown vegetables and grains. “People are very childish about food,” Berley says. I tell him I have secretly come to suspect that vegetarianism is a socially acceptable eating disorder. “It’s really a fear of death,” he says. To Berley, vegetarian fanaticism is part of the American fetishization of youth. The nuclear family, which doesn’t have grandparents in the house, doesn’t see death and old age on a day-to-day basis, he explains. “People think ‘If we can avoid the subject of death, if we just don’t kill anything, we can glide through life without causing suffering and go to heaven.’” Berley seems to understand, as I did not for five years, that it is on the symbolic level where vegetarians and meat-lovers part ways. Maybe my relationship was doomed from the start; sometimes a celery stick is not a celery stick. ■

a vegetarian entree (almost) anyone could love SESAME NOODLES WITH TOFU STEAKS AND BABY ASIAN GREENS Reprinted from Fresh Food Fast by Peter Berley (Regan Books, 2004) 11⁄2 pounds firm or extra-firm tofu, cut into 12 equal slices 7 tablespoons soy sauce 3 tablespoons mirin (Japanese rice wine) 3 tablespoons honey 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes 2 tablespoons neutral oil such as grapeseed, canola, or sunflower 3 ⁄4 pound udon or soba noodles 2 tablespoons sesame seeds (toasted) 2 tablespoons sesame oil 1 pound baby bok choy, rinsed well but not trimmed 1 cup kimchi 1 scallion

Fill a large pot three-quarters full with water and place over high heat. Bring to a boil and keep the water at a boil while you prepare the tofu. Lay the tofu slices on one half of a clean cloth towel. Fold the other half over the tofu and gently press down to extract any excess moisture. Place 6 tablespoons of the soy sauce, the mirin, the honey and the red pepper flakes in a small bowl and whisk to combine. Warm a large nonstick skillet over high heat and add the neutral oil. Let it heat for 30 seconds. Add the tofu and fry until golden brown on the bottom, about 3 minutes. Flip the pieces over, pour on the soy mixture, and cook until the sauce has reduced and thickened, another 5 minutes. Meanwhile, add the noodles to the boiling water and cook according to the package instructions. Drain the noodles and transfer them to a large bowl. Add the sesame seeds, sesame oil, and remaining soy sauce, tossing the pasta to blend well. Return the pot to high heat and add the bok choy and 1 cup of water. Cover the pot and steam the bok choy until it is crisp-tender and bright green, about 2 minutes. Serve the noodles topped with greens and tofu, sprinkled with scallions. Accompany with kimchi. 82 | P L E N T Y

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FOOD

CONVENTIONAL APPLE

ORGANIC APPLE

$0.86

$1.06

$0.08

$0.21

$0.17

$0.02 $0.33

$0.22

$0.17

$0.11 $0.04

$0.03 $0.15

■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

$0.09

Fertilizer, chemicals Labor, picking, hauling Water, electric, equipment Tax, insurance, land cost Office management One-time startup materials Interest

$0.18

■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

$0.11

Fertilizer, chemicals Labor, picking, hauling Water, electric, equipment Tax, insurance, land cost Office management One-time startup materials Interest

APPLES TO APPLES WHY ORGANICS COST MORE CHRISTY HARRISON AS ANYONE WHO’S COMPARED PRICES on yogurt cups or cornflakes knows, organic foods come at a premium. Prices on organic crops are higher mainly because organic farmers feed their soil with poop and mulch instead of chemical fertilizers, and kill pests with predatory insects and bug traps instead of sprays—techniques that require lots of hands-on management. Because of this labor-intensiveness, organic farms tend to be smaller, family-run operations that can’t produce on the scale of larger factory-style farms; and because there are fewer of them in general, supply is limited, driving prices up. The fact that organic agriculture eschews almost all synthetic chemicals also

means that if organic crops are hit by blights or if the soil becomes depleted, producers can’t turn to quick remedies like pesticides and fertilizers, so they may find themselves with a whole lot of rot on their hands. In its organic incarnation, the apple, one of the most common fruits, can cost from 20 to 50 percent more than its conventional counterpart. What’s at the core of producing a farm-fresh Fuji, a pesticide-free Pippin, or a sustainable Suncrisp? We came up with our own homemade apple pie charts to break it down for you. Very à la mode. ■

Based on data from Reganold et al., “A Cost of Production Analysis of Conventional vs. Integrated vs. Organic apple Production Systems,” Washington State University 2002.

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BREATHING LESSONS IN MINDFULNESS MEDITATION, EASTERN PRACTICE MEETS WESTERN PSYCHOTHERAPY CATIE LAZARUS After bounding up three flights of stairs in a hipper-than-thou Chelsea building, I find my shrink, Marsha Leibowitz, sitting in the lotus position on a ragged taupe carpet. I peel off my flats, yank on yoga pants under my corduroy skirt, and join her on the floor. As I clasp my hands in prayer, she speaks in a soothing, raspy voice, “I am not my 86 | P L E N T Y

thoughts. I am the big blue sky.” My mind starts to wander. Do I look fat as a cloud in yoga pants and a skirt? I am slowly adjusting to the crash collision of Eastern meditation and Western psychotherapy. After two years of studying psychology at the graduate level, I have developed an ingrained skepticism toward New

Age practices. Psychic nutritionists and shrinks for your Lhasa Apso make me want to hurl myself into oncoming traffic. When Leibowitz first asked me to have a “compassionate and loving day,” I had an unsettling flashback to my zany godmother yelling at me to get my shakras in order. Still, a colleague I respected recommended that I see Leibowitz to help me cope with the stage fright I experience in my weekly gigs as a stand-up comedian. I made an appointment and was surprised to discover none of the usual trappings of a New York therapist’s office. There were no cold leather couches or faded Monet prints. Instead I found a tissue box, pink pillows, a wall clock, and Leibowitz herself, dressed in yoga pants and a blue velvet tunic. As a therapist, she was so atypical in her lack of pretense that I felt taken aback. Noticing my shoulders, neck, and back stiffen, she handed me an instructional tape on mindfulness meditation. “When one meditates, the body and mind relax,” she offered, “making one calmer.” Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), a technique that uses meditation for therapeutic purposes, was developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where in 1979 he founded the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society, as well as the Stress Reduction Clinic. In its most watered-down form, MBSR is a series of breathing exercises during which you focus on inhalation and exhalation while seated or lying down. If thoughts interrupt your focus, you’re instructed to let them pass and to bring your attention back to your breathing. The first time I used one of Leibowitz’s tapes, I sat on the wood floor of my tiny bedroom in the lotus pose, my back straight and my hands resting on my thighs. Her gentle voice on the tape was no match for the anxious thoughts that overwhelmed me. Leibowitz wanted me to concentrate on my breathing, but I was too busy imagining myself paralyzed on stage to listen. The fears kept playing in my head like a broken record, so I placed my right hand on my belly to help me refocus. I felt my stomach rise and fall and placed my left hand over my right. My attention was now more on my breathing, so when disturbing thoughts arose—and they did—I would be more adept at letting them go. I pretended they were floating down a stream while I watched them swirl away. By the end of my March 2005 www.plentymag.com

GETTY IMAGES SANNA LINDBERG

H E A LT H

It is much easier for me to swallow the notion that I make mistakes but I am not a giant mistake. Or, as the humanist psychologist Carl Rogers puts it, mindfulness meditation views people as “ultimately healthy with the capacity to heal themselves.” first meditation, I felt less controlled by these thoughts and, as a result, considerably less anxious. MBSR is not just for garden-variety neurotics. According to its Web site, (www.umassmed.edu/cfm/vision), the Center for Mindfulness has trained “more than 3,000 health care professionals. MBSR is now being utilized by health care professionals in more then 200 hospitals, clinics, and academic medical centers in the United States and other parts of the world.” “The practice is taught to people dealing with all kinds of physical and mental pain, be it breast cancer or post-traumatic stress disorder,” says Greta Schnee, clinical director of the Institute for the Arts in Psychotherapy in New York City. Dialectical behavioral therapy, created by popular psychologist Marsha Linehan, incorporates mindfulness meditation for patients suffering from borderline personality disorder or suicidal tendencies. Overwhelming evidence gleaned from qualitative studies in Canada, England, and the United States confirms that mindfulness meditation is also beneficial in treating depression. A 1995 report to the National Institutes of Health confirmed that “more than 30 years of research…suggests that meditation…can lead to better health, higher quality of life, and lowered health care costs.” The cost-effectiveness of MBSR has converted many psychologists. Some of the larger insurance companies, such as Oxford Health Plans, now partially cover for alternative treatments (which is more than they offer for long-term outpatient mental-health care). Many major corporations provide inhouse relaxation exercises to increase the productivity of their employees. Schnee says that the “practice is taught in so many capacities that it is difficult to definitively ascertain how many people opt for mindfulness meditation over traditional therapies.” It seems clear that what has prompted the surge of meditation classes offered at hospitals, clinics, yoga studios, and psychotherapy offices is based on demand. Another selling point: meditation is an exercise that is similar to many cognitive therapy exercises. While the Freudian approach of free association encourages the mind to wander, cognitive therapies ask 88 | P L E N T Y

patients to focus more on the specifics and symptoms of the problem. Schnee says that, “mindfulness meditation is about using the mind to heal the mind, heart, and body. This is essentially a cognitive approach to psychology, where clients are taught how to loosen their attachment to and identification with self-defeating thoughts.” Psychoanalytic practice encourages patients to identify themselves by their thoughts and concentrates more on their choice of words, such as the classic Freudian slip, a near miss of words that supposedly reveals unconscious thoughts. Cognitive approaches and MBSR tend to be less scrupulous about semantics, although, like psychoanalytic approaches, these also seek to understand the root cause of the problem as well as the symptoms. In mindfulness meditation, human beings are viewed as moral and decent and our failings as passing and immaterial, while in psychoanalytic theory, we are generally seen in a more conflicted, darker light. “Buddhist psychology acknowledges our disturbing emotions but sees them as covering our essential goodness,” writes Tara Bennett-Goldman in Emotional Alchemy (Harmony, 2001). It is much easier for me to swallow the notion that I make mistakes but am not a giant mistake. Or as the humanist psychologist Carl Rogers wrote, mindfulness meditation views people as “ultimately healthy with the capacity to heal themselves.” Another appealing aspect of meditation is that it taps into our often untenable desire to care about the world—not just ourselves. Meditative exercises are like prayer offering. There are mantras, such as the loving-kindness practice, that encourage the meditator to have compassion, even for her enemies. Bennett-Goleman explains, “You can direct loving-kindness [to] include… people you have difficulty with, and all beings in all directions throughout the universe.” Since, for me, psychotherapy often felt solipsistic, I appreciated being encouraged to meditate and think of others. One can practice mindfulness meditation in lieu of traditional psychotherapy or in combination with it. After all, the two are not that different. According to Andrew Olendzki, Executive Director of the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, insight-orient-

ed meditation leads to self-awareness, a goal of any psychotherapy, cognitive-behavioral, or psychodynamic approach. Schnee cautions that “it is not negating psychoanalysis and it’s compatible. It is another way of getting at psychic material that is blocking the individual.” The late Phil Aranow, a psychologist who practiced Buddhism, notes that, as in couch therapy, “very few of us get to full-scale enlightenment; most of us continue to live our neurotic lives.” Like psychotherapy, meditation requires consistent and regular practice. In fact, its repetitive and monotonous aspects are not exactly unfamiliar to those who spent the last two decades addicted to the gym. Some experts, however, caution that meditation can be harmful. One can meditate in positive or self-destructive ways, according to Jack Engler, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School and a teacher at the Insight Meditation Society. In his paper “Unconscious Motivations for Meditation,” Engler warned about fears of intimacy emerging, referring to that sense of vulnerability that stems from close connections with others. I felt anxious several times during meditation and could not refocus my attention on my breathing. When I told Leibowitz this, she decided to meditate with me and asked me to articulate out loud whatever popped into my head. Having her there helped me feel less alone, and I was then able to return to meditating on my own, recognizing that those intense feelings would subside. That said, each individual is different and should consult a guru or a teacher if she experiences discomfort or has concerns. As with psychotherapy, success rests with the individual who must ascertain if mindfulness meditation is constructive. For me it provides a time to collect myself, which can be helpful in preventing me from feeling overwhelmed by anxiety. I still get anxious, but I am less critical of myself and better able to sit with dark feelings and thoughts, knowing they are part but not all of me. Last week Leibowitz upped my dosage to twenty from five—not milligrams but minutes of mindfulness meditation. ■ Catie Lazarus is a stand-up comic in New York City. March 2005 www.plentymag.com

H E A LT H

ENLIGHTENMENT ESSENTIALS IF FOCUSING ON YOUR BREATHING OR RECITING A MANTRA ISN’T ENOUGH TO GET YOU TO NIRVANA, THESE PRODUCTS MIGHT OFFER SOME HELPFUL ENHANCEMENT TO SUCCESSFUL MEDITATION.

El-Hadra $14.99 (amazon.com) The trance music of the Sufis is keyed to the rhythm of the human pulse. This CD takes you out of your head and puts you on the path to inner harmony.

Tola Mats $64.95 (huggermugger.com) Deep plush yoga mats in bright colors lift your spirits and coddle you with comfort.

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$48 each (blissworld.com) Chill out with a do-it-yourself spa. These gel-padded socks and gloves moisturize your skin and refresh tired feet and hands.

(illuminations.com) Meditate on a candle flame, breathe deeply, and let the natural scents of aromatherapy penetrate your soul.

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$75 (momastore.org) We’re not sure we believe it either, but this bracelet, made from 67 nickel-plated rareearth magnets, could help align your inner energies. And you might garner a few compliments on your excellent taste in baubles. March 2005 www.plentymag.com

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MUSIC

BRAVE NEW WORLD RHYTHMS AN AMERICAN GUITARIST AND AN AFRICAN FARMER CUT ACROSS THE CULTURAL DIVIDE. JESSE KORNBLUTH THE

FIRST CASE THAT MANY PURISTS MAKE

is that it is beautiful and mind-altering. Yeah, but so is lots of music. For me, the primary attraction is that it’s hard to get “world music” and “the English language” into one sentence. Just as I love to travel to a country where I don’t know the language, I love music that provides an automatic experience of travel. World music rips me from my moorings, turns me for an hour into a global citizen, and returns me changed. Not a bad deal for around $15. Which isn’t to say world music is strange. The first lesson you get from listening to Ali Farka Toure, the great guitarist from Mali, is that it really is a small world after all. Mali may be landlocked in Africa, but when, at 17, Toure picked up a guitar, he listened to American blues, mostly John Lee Hooker, because he believed Hooker was playing Malian music. Toure’s lyrics are about his homeland, about water and farming and village customs. The translations aren’t catchy, but the music is. To our ears, Toure’s timing is just a bit off, which automatically gives the music tension. The guitar echoes from far away, a steam engine in the night. Meanwhile, his drummer is playing with your head. Before you know it, your feet are struggling to keep time and you’re twisting in your chair. Toure may be—at the very least—the Eric Clapton of Mali. But he is also a farmer who had to be coaxed into recording. As his reputation grew, Ry Cooder (the American musician who more or less invented the Buena Vista Social Club) showed up with his guitar and collaborated on “Talking Timbuktu,” a CD that topped the worldmusic charts for months. Fame followed. But Toure didn’t follow fame. He retreated to his rice farm. A few years ago, Toure toured America. Unknowingly, I attended what he said was his final concert. “Farming is more important,” he said in French. Then in his early fifties, Toure appeared tall and robed and regal; an audience that revered him dared not ask him to change his mind. Your impulse will be to buy “Talking Timbuktu.” But save it for later. Better to start with unvarnished, down-home Mali blues: “The River” (1990) or “The Source” (1991). FOR WORLD MUSIC

HERE’S AN ANOMALY IN WORLD MUSIC: an American, in the early 1960s, practically inventing the genre all by himself. World music? Before it existed, Sandy Bull was playing the oud, the North African cousin to the lute. Extended cuts? The first song of his first record—made when he was just 21— was 22 minutes long. Psychedelic note bending? Jimi Hendrix and Jerry Garcia went to school on him. Meanwhile, Bull retreated into obscurity until his cult grew and a new generation caught on. That, in summary, is the story of Sandy Bull, a global citizen whose guitar showed off the greatness of different cultures, one remarkable cut at a time. “Re-Inventions,” a collection pulled together from Bull’s Vanguard recordings, and released in 1999, gives us the greatest hits of his underground career and demonstrates how much astonishingly beautiful, endlessly varied music a single guitarist can produce. The CD starts with a raga. Then come a samba; the best-known melody from Carmina Burana on five-string banjo; a gospel tune played on a Fender Stratocaster; overdubbed guitars on Chuck Berry’s “Memphis, Tennessee,” turning that hit into a rumbling male meditation; a medieval ballade played on banjo and guitar instead of lute; and finally, a rhythmic drone. Bull was the ultimate loner; whenever possible, he played solo, and, except for Billy Higgins—who usually worked with jazz icon Ornette Coleman—on drums, he recorded alone as well. As with Toure, you can listen to Bull as “background” music, as “mood” music. But, again, as with Toure’s music, you just might come to love Bull’s if you sit down and actually listen. Too bad these guitarists never met—now that would have been a collaboration! ■ March 2005 www.plentymag.com

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PRICELESS

CELL OUT Hot new fuel cell products for every budget CHRISTY HARRISON THE FUEL CELL LAPTOP CHARGER: $90 Slated for release in early 2006, the charger, developed by Materials and Energy Research Institute Tokyo (Merit), is part of a new generation of slimmed-down fuel cells.

THE FUEL-CELL POWERED YACHT: $300,000–$500,000 HaveBlue, a southern California-based boat manufacturer, is releasing a limited number of these babies this year, with a larger supply to hit the market in 2006. The fuel cell runs on hydrogen extracted from purified seawater.

THE FUEL CELL THAT RUNS ON TRASH: PRICELESS Startech Environmental Corporation, a publicly held company based in Wilton, Connecticut, claims that its “Plasma Converter” can safely incinerate trash, medical, and other hazardous wastes, turning them into pure resources: “Plasma Converted Gas™,” which can be used in heating, cooling, and hydrogen production; an obsidian-like stone that can be used in construction; and recyclable metals. The converter can even be used to secure the homeland, destroying potential bio-terror weapons, including anthrax, mad cow disease, and foot-and-mouth disease, according to the company's website. 94 | P L E N T Y

March 2005 www.plentymag.com

T H E B AC K PAG E

SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION... STARTS IN HIGH-SCHOOL CHEMISTRY CLASS AND DOESN’T TAKE OFF TILL TWO DECADES LATER. ALLEN SALKIN

he class waited, tense, in the high school courtyard. It was a sunny day in spring 1982, and a solar-powered car was about to be tested. Craig Young and I, classmates and mediocre chemistry students, were attaching wires to the engine, glancing up first at the sun and then into each other’s faces. We had no idea if our creation—14 inches of balsa wood, Radio Shack solar panels, solder and random parts from Chuck’s Hobby Hangar— was going to work. For a moment the car stood still. We had fantasized about an A-plus grade. We had endured heartbreaking setbacks: solar panels crack like saltines when you accidentally sit on them. The sun shone. Our solar car’s wheels began to spin. The car moved… Backward. The class groaned. “Too bad,” said our teacher. We tried to recover, running toward the whirring car, but the class filed back inside. More than 20 years later that failure still hurts. The As we got were of the A-minus variety. It was somewhat impressive that we got our little car to move at all, but backward is almost never as good as forward. We had spent more than $200 of our parents’ money; the car itself was unceremoniously disposed of by Craig’s mother in a purge of his closet after he went off to college. But the most painful part of our optimistic experiment is that today there is still no commercially available, life-sized, solar-powered passenger car. What geeky teenager, growing up in an era of gas crises and Carter-era promises of a wind and solar future, would have predicted that? Reflecting on this recently, I realized there was something Craig and I could do to push the world, and maybe ourselves, in the right direction. We could rebuild our solar car. Craig said he was up for it. Solar car construction is now simple. Since 1990, the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory has promoted the National Junior Solar Sprint, a classroom-based program where middle schoolers can learn how to construct model solar cars and race them in 26 state competitions. Over 100,000 students have participated. There are now businesses that package solar cells and engines. Pitsco, a hobby company in Pittsburg, Kansas, sells a kit for $54.95 that includes balsa wood, wheels, axles, and instructions. I ordered one of these, along with a far more basic version from Solar World, a Colorado Springs–based company that makes solar panels for realworld applications like traffic signals and space satellites.

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The kits arrived. On the scheduled Sunday morning, Craig phoned. It was too nice a day to spend indoors, he said. “Yes,” I replied. “Sunny out. Sun is a good thing when building solar-powered vehicles.” “I have to spend time with my wife,” he said. “Rebecca is very upset about Chernobyl.” “Chernobyl,” I said. “She saw a documentary about babies being born now in the region near Chernobyl who have their brains outside their heads.” “You know,” I said, “If the world used more solar energy we could maybe stop building nuclear power plants like Chernobyl.” He said he’d call me later. I decided to hell with him and covered my kitchen table with newspaper and set out all my tools. It was soothingly transporting. In some ways I had moved back in time to a simpler era of my life, when it seemed like there were endless hours to do everything. But I was very much in the present. The experience of the project was better at my age because time for pursuits like this is so much rarer. As I attached wheels to gears and soldered wires, I thought of science-fiction futures: teleportation, time-travel, a world with no pollution, no war, no environmental problems at all, a world where we are whisked along in vehicles powered by the sun, by water, by our own thoughts… a place where we would be free to be our best creative selves. I did not like the Pitsco car. It was too easy and way, way too ugly. It took two hours to build and looked like a circuit board with wheels. It was purely utilitarian; there was no madness in it. I took the Pitsco car up to my roof and connected the wires. It moved. Yes, forward. But the car hadn’t cost me enough sweat to be satisfying. I went downstairs and sat at my kitchen table for the next 12 hours. The Solar World kit fascinated me. The gears wouldn’t fit correctly. There was no tube in which to set the axle so it would turn freely. I had to jerry build solutions—reaming a channel in some speaker-wire clips with a tiny drill bit to utilize them as axle tubes; discarding the metal engine bracket and fashioning a better fitting one out of balsa bits and hot glue; using smooth nails as hinges for a front hood. I loved it. I painted the little car lime green. It looked like a sleek sort of racing bus with an aerodynamic front hood; it had a roof made of glittering solar panels, shiny black tires, an air-cooling engine vent, and room to carry a payload. It was dark when I finished. The sun had set. I didn’t care. I could test-drive the car the next day. I knew things were moving forward. ■ March 2005 www.plentymag.com