Plenty Magazine Issue 08 Feb/Mar 2006 by Plenty Magazine

PLENTY IT ’S EA SY BEING GREEN

FEBRUARY/MARCH 2006 $4.95US $5.95CAN

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THE UNLIKELY ENVIRONMENTALISTS

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PLENTY IT’S EASY BEING GREEN

CONTENTS FEBRUARY/MARCH 2006

Extreme Relaxation

ON THE COVER: UNLIKELY ENVIRONMENTALISTS Eco-minded evangelicals—page 60 Business exec turned free-range farmer—page 66 Humble beekeepers—page 72 Green-amenity-loving luxury-apartment dwellers—page 82

6 . . . . FROM THE EDITOR 12 . . . . LETTERS 15 . . . . NEWS AND NOTES

Compostable plastic water bottles; comedians tackle global warming; scientists cross the icy Arctic; EPA updates car mileage testing standards; how to buy organic flowers. 18 . . . . EVENTS CALENDAR World Wetlands Day, art festivals, and more. 19 . . . . RETREADS The eco-artsy world of urban clothing swaps. By Joshua M. Bernstein 22 . . . . ON TECHNOLOGY How flying wind turbines could revolutionize the windmill. By David Cohn 26 . . . . WHEELS In a new television series, the Coolfuel team crosses the country in eco-powered vehicles. By Christy Harrison 28 . . . . INVESTING Venture capitalists are pouring money into green technologies. Is this just a trend, or is there a change in the air? By Amy Cortese

32 . . . . Q & A

Kerry Emanuel, professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on why hurricanes are growing more powerful. By Richard Bradley 34 . . . . BOOKS In Crunchy Cons, Rod Dreher claims that Republicans should be concerned about factory farming and urban sprawl. But will his ideas change any GOP minds? By Richard Bradley 37 . . . . GREEN GEAR Eco-camping accessories, better bikes, and more.

GRAY MATTER 46 . . . . EXTREME RELAXATION

These ten adventure spas give you access to the great outdoors—and world-class pampering. By Kathryn Shapiro 60 . . . . SAVING GRACE How an influential group of hybrid-driving evangelicals is convincing Christians— and politicians—to care about the environment. By Liz Galst

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY MIRAVAL

FRONT MATTER

4HE TEACHER SAYS YOGA IS SOMETHING POSITIVE ) DO FOR MYSELF TO CLEANSE THE MIND OF NEGATIVE THOUGHT SO ) CAN´T LET MYSELF FALL VICTIM TO THE ±MONKEY MIND ² ) HAVE TO BE AT ONE WITH MY BREATH OH 'OD ) HOPE MY BREATH ISN´T BAD ) REALLY SHOULD FLOSS MORE PEOPLE WHO FLOSS MORE ACTUALLY LIVE LONGER AND ) ALWAYS FORGET

WHICH IS SO STUPID AND THAT IS A VERY NEGATIVE THOUGHT¨/+ THEN LET NEGATIVE THOUGHTS GO 9OGA WILL MAKE ME THIN AND BEAUTIFUL ALL THE SUPERMODELS DO IT ALTHOUGH THEY ACTUALLY START OUT THIN AND BEAUTIFUL BUT STILL¨ !LSO ) READ THAT YOGA CLEANSES THE BODY OF TOXINS WHICH THE MAGAZINES ALL SAY CAUSES CELLULITE WHICH IS A TOTAL LIE #ELLULITE ISN´T CAUSED IT ISN´T EVEN A CONDITION IT´S A WORD THAT WAS INVENTED IN IN SOME MAGAZINE

AND IT IS JUST THE NATURAL FORMATION OF FEMALE FLESH EXCEPT WHY DOESN´T THAT GIRL IN THE PURPLE TANK TOP IN THE FRONT WHO CAN THROW HER LEGS BEHIND HER HEAD HAVE ANY 7HAT IS SHE DOING THAT )´M NOT DOING ) WOULD DO ANYTHING TO GET RID OF CELLULITE )F ) FOUND OUT THAT PURPLE TANK TOP GIRL IS KILLING PUPPIES TO GET RID OF CELLULITE ) WOULD TOTALLY¨WELL /+ NO ) ACTUALLY WOULDN´T DO THAT¨BUT STILL 3UPPOSEDLY IF YOU DRINK EIGHT GLASSES OF WATER A DAY YOU´LL LOOK LIKE A SUPERMODEL BUT ) AM SICK OF WATER IT´S SO BORING AND OH ) DON´T KNOW WATERY AND BESIDES )´LL NEVER BE A SUPERMODEL ) MEAN LOOK AT THE ODDS 4HERE ARE WHAT THREE BILLION WOMEN ON PLANET EARTH AND TEN OF THEM ARE SUPERMODELS 4HAT MAKES SUPERMODELS THE RAREST OF GENETIC FREAKS ) MIGHT AS WELL FEEL BAD ABOUT MYSELF FOR NOT BEING A HERMAPHRODITE THERE MUST BE LIKE HERMAPHRODITES ON EARTH AT LEAST ) HAD A SHOT AT THAT ONE /+ THAT´S PRETTY NEGATIVE THAT WAS ALL VERY MONKEY MINDISH OF ME (EY WHAT ARE THOSE MONKEYS WITH THE BIG ORANGE BUTTS /RANGUTANS ) WONDER IF ORANGUTANS WANDER AROUND THE JUNGLE ASKING THEIR MATES IF THEIR BUTT ISN´T ORANGE ENOUGH AND THE GUYS ARE ALL ±5H ) THINK YOUR BUTT IS THE PERFECT AMOUNT OF ORANGE ² AND THEN THE GIRL ORANGUTAN IS ALL ±'OD CAN´T G AND YOU KNOW DYE YOU JUST GIVE ME AN HONEST ANSWER BECAUSE SERIOUSLY IF IT´S NOT ORANGE ENOUGH )´LL JUST GO IT WITH SOME KIND OF LEAF OR BERRY WE´VE GOT LYING AROUND THE JUNGLE BECAUSE ) JUST WANT TO HAVE THE MOST PERFECTLY ORANGE BUTT FOR YOU ² /W 4HIS HURTS HOW LONG DO WE HAVE TO HOLD THIS STUPID POSE ) NEED CHOCOLATE 7HICH IS NOT REALLY THAT BAD FOR YOU BECAUSE ) READ THAT IT ACTUALLY CONTAINS A COMPOUND WHICH HELPS FIGHT TOOTH DECAY SO EATING CHOCOLATE IS PRACTICALLY THE SAME AS BRUSHING YOUR TEETH WHICH ) AM GOING TO DO A BETTER JOB OF NOW THAT )´M A POSITIVE PERSON IN YOGA GETTING IN TOUCH WITH MY BREATH WHETHER IT´S BAD OR NOT )´M NOT JUDGING EXCEPT ) AM JUDGING -ISS 0URPLE 4OP "ENDY 'IRL BECAUSE ) THINK SHE MAY HAVE SOLD HER SOUL TO BE THAT CELLULITE FREE WHICH IS A HIGH PRICE TO PAY BUT ON THE OTHER HAND NO CELLULITE¨ #ATHRYN -ICHON COMIC AND AUTHOR OF ±4HE 'RRL 'ENIUS 'UIDE TO 3EX 7ITH /THER 0EOPLE ²

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The Compassionate Carnivore

66 . . . . THE COMPASSIONATE CARNIVORE

Cisco Systems co-founder Sandy Lerner has a new project: running an organic farm in Northern Virginia. By Frances Cerra Whittelsey 72 . . . . ADVENTURES IN BEEKEEPING Hard-working honeybees—and the people who tend their hives—have a major impact on our food supply. By Susan H. Brackney 76 . . . . FAREWELL TO SUSHI? Why overfishing and fish farming are impacting your seafood choices—and how to be a smart consumer. By Michael W. Robbins

82 . . . . SHELTER

Rooftop gardens and low-flow toilets are the latest must-have amenities in luxury apartments. By Elizabeth Barker 84 . . . . STYLE PROFILE With Bono’s wife Ali Hewson at the helm, Edun clothing is creating fair-trade opportunities in developing countries. By Ann Landi 86 . . . . GREEN BLING Strut your stuff in these ecofriendly shoes. 88 . . . . INDULGENCES Organic and allnatural pizza and beer for the Super Bowl.

ON THE COVER: Illustration for Plenty by Lou Brooks.

89 . . . . FOOD

Style Profile

Berry season is over, but nutritious kale is at its peak. Here’s how to buy and cook it. 90 . . . . GREEN HOME Not all eco-friendly cleaning products are created equal, so Plenty asked green maid services for their picks. By Jennifer Odell 92 . . . . CULTURE The Sundance Film Festival has become a Hollywood scene, but perhaps that’s just what it needs. By Bari Nan Cohen 94 . . . . OFF THE GRID Set designer Ted Baumgart has built his dream home: an eco-friendly fantasy land complete with an indoor waterfall and a solar-powered model train. By Justin Tyler Clark 96 . . . . THE BACK PAGE The Top Ten Things We Hope to Find as the Glaciers Melt.

PHOTO UPPER LEFT COURTESY AYRSHIRE FARM; MIDDLE PHOTO BY ELIZABETH LIPPMAN

MATTERS OF FACT AND FANCY

FROM THE EDITOR IN CHIEF

oo often environmental news is nothing but doom and gloom. Granted, between global warming, the impending oil crisis, and rampant habitat destruction, we have some pretty apocalyptic issues to deal with these days. Yet we also have plenty of reasons to be optimistic. Creative minds are coming up with novel solutions to some of our most intractable problems—and we’ve devoted this issue to these “unlikely environmentalists.” Take plastic bottle disposal, for example: Several companies are helping to keep containers out of landfills by making compostable, biodegradable water bottles out of corn polymers (see “News and Notes,” p. 16). On a grander scale, it looks as though drivers might someday be tooling around in biomass-powered hybrid cars. Many of today’s cars are already capable of using high percentages of the biofuel ethanol—we just don’t know it, as the cars haven’t been marketed that way. According to the Center for American Progress and the Energy Future Coalition, there are currently over 5 million flexible fuel vehicles (FFVs) on the road in the United States. FFVs can run on either conventional gasoline or E85, a blend of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. All you need to do is make a simple programming change to the car’s computer (at a cost of less than $100), and you’ll be ready to cruise on corn fuel—that is, if you can find any. The U.S. Department of Energy has been putting some money into biomass research, but more work needs to be done before it’s at every pump. Ethanol made from corn is relatively inefficient, but the Natural Resources Defense Council thinks there is a real future in using fast-growing willow trees and switchgrass to power our vehicles. To find out about some of the challenges of traveling around the country on renewable energy, check out “Power Tripping” (p. 26) by Christy Harrison. There is good news on the political front as well. While former Vice President Al Gore shied away from discussing the environment in 2000 because of the potential for ridicule (think “Senator Ozone”), 2008 promises to be different. Even politicians on the red end of the spectrum may be forced to address green issues in their campaigns. Richard Bradley reviews Crunchy Cons (p. 34), a new book by Rod Dreher that offers a more eco-focused vision for the Republican Party. And in “Saving Grace” (p. 60), Liz Galst profiles Reverend Rich Cizik and his efforts to inspire evangelicals to think more about the environment. Cizik not only spearheaded the “What Would Jesus Drive?” campaign, crisscrossing the country in a Prius to preach the green gospel, but he also is one of the leading crusaders against global warming within the Republican Party, promising to turn up the heat on politicians who don’t start focusing on the issue. Business leaders are also doing their part. Cisco Systems cofounder Sandy Lerner has put some of her millions into promoting sustainable agriculture (“The Compassionate Carnivore,” p. 66). She now raises rare breeds of animals humanely on her nearly thousand-acre farm in Virginia. If you don’t have a few million bucks (or hundreds of empty acres) to spare, try urban beekeeping (“Adventures in Beekeeping,” p. 72). Bees are an increasingly rare breed of insect, and plants are suffering for lack of pollinators. So some forward-thinking (and brave) city-dwellers are stepping in and tending their own beehives. Not only are they helping revitalize a critical part of our ecosystem, but they get some pretty good honey as well. Potential breakthroughs in wind energy (“Energy Aloft,” p. 22) are on the horizon, and they could revolutionize how we produce electricity in the next decade. But in the meantime, we can follow the lead of the unlikely environmentalists in this issue and find new ways to go green. Mark Spellun Editor in Chief & Publisher

6 | PLENTY

February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

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PLENTY Publisher & Editor in Chief Mark Spellun Creative Director Catherine Cole Senior Editors Christy Harrison, Christine Richmond Political Editor Richard Bradley Staff Writer Kate Siber Assistant Editor Jacquelyn Lane Copy Editors Sandra Ban, Tim Heffernan Research Editor Karen Rose Contributing Editors Joshua M. Bernstein, Justin Tyler Clark, Lisa Selin Davis Assistant Art Director Richard Gambale Editorial Intern Anngela Leone PLENTY Advertising, 250 West 49th Street, Suite 403, New York, NY 10019 Deborah Gardiner, National Sales Director (Tel: 1-212-757-3794) 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) West Coast: 1972 Green Street, San Francisco, CA 94123 Susan M. Werner, Regional Director (Tel: 1-415-441-2762)

Published by Environ Press, Inc. Chairman Arnold Spellun

PLENTY 250 West 49th Street, Suite 403 New York, NY 10019 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 49th Street, Suite 403, New York, NY 10019. Copyright ÂŠ2005 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 has applied for membership to the Audit Bureau of Circulation. PLENTY (ISSN 1553-2321) is published bimonthly, six times a year, for $12 per year by Environ Press, Inc., 250 West 49th Street, Suite 403, New York, NY 10019. Periodical postage paid at New York, NY 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.

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CONTRIBUTORS JUSTIN TYLER CL ARK A Los Angeles-based freelance writer and a recent graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism, Justin Tyler Clark regularly pens copy for LA Weekly, Nerve, Architecture, and, yes, other publications. Both an eco-fascist and a horrific spendthrift, his latest obsession isn’t journalism, but permaculture. By building a home office from recycled straw bales, raising chickens, and cultivating an organic backyard vegetable garden, he hopes to avoid braving the I-405 freeway or his local Trader Joe’s parking lot ever again. To that end, Justin says that learning about Ted Baumgart’s DIY home building ethic was an inspiration (“Fantasy Home,” page 94). So was discovering that solar-powered train sets aren’t just for kids and billionaires anymore.

JOSHUA M. BERNSTEIN Joshua M. Bernstein is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer. He’d like you to think he spends his days crafting dazzling exposés and heartrending treatises on the human condition. However, he’s usually puttering around his apartment in boxer briefs, checking e-mail every two minutes and eating his roommate’s cold pizza. In his more adventurous moods, he rides his bike far too fast, publishes the zine Rated Rookie, gets drunk for The New York Press, eats himself into comas for Time Out New York, and attends clothing swaps (Retreads, page 19). He thoroughly enjoyed digging through the Swap-O-Rama-Rama’s garment mountains, unearthing a dashing pink sweatshirt that makes him look like human cotton candy.

LIZ GALST New York City–based freelancer Liz Galst has spent much of her career writing about the political involvement of conservative Christians. “As a journalist, one of the things that interests me most is who trusts whom and who listens to whom,” says Galst, who wrote about the recent embrace of environmentalism by evangelical Christian leaders in “Saving Grace” (page 60). Reporting the piece, she says, helped her understand the disconnect that has existed between environmentalists and evangelicals—a divide that Reverends Rich Cizik and Jim Ball, her main interview subjects, are hoping to mend. “At this time of environmental crisis and of culture clash between red and blue, it’s nice, finally, to find an issue that can unite all sides,” Galst says.

LOU BROOKS Artist and author Lou Brooks (cover illustration) is probably best known for designing the Monopoly logo character, as well as for his Time and Newsweek covers. His illustrations have appeared in practically every major publication, including The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and Vanity Fair. He also recently published a book called Skate Crazy: Amazing Graphics from the Golden Age of Roller Skating (Running Press). After residing in Manhattan for nearly two decades, he and his wife have settled in Mendocino County, California, with a dozen cats, a possum, four raccoons, and a variety of other wildlife. 10 | P L E N T Y

February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

Green. With envy.

Green.

What shade are you? Green is feeling it more, not less. Green is living a lifestyle that supports innovation. Green is never compromising.

eco travel green gadgets organic goodies fair trade fashion politics with a twist

Subscribe today and save 60% off the newsstand price. Call 1-800-316-9006 or visit www.plentymag.com

“I’ve been introducing the magazine to as many people as possible—even the non–environmentally concerned ones—and everyone absolutely loves it.”

LETTERS I’VE JUST RECEIVED the December/ January issue. Since I’m working on my thesis on sustainability in interior design, the “Paper-Thick Walls” article seemed like the best place to start devouring Plenty. I have one question: Is Barry Fuller related to Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller? If so, it’s good to see that someone is continuing his work. Many compliments on Plenty. I’ve been introducing the magazine to as many people as possible—even the non– environmentally concerned ones—and everyone absolutely loves it. You manage to cover enough topics to keep everyone interested. Congratulations on your first year, and here’s to many more! DESSI BALINOVA TORONTO, CANADA Editor’s Note: We checked in with Barry Fuller—here’s his answer to your question: “All the original Fullers came over on the Mayflower, and thus we are all distantly related. I’m not sure of any direct ties to Buckminster, but I wouldn’t be surprised.”

NOW THAT Organic Style has gone the way of 8-tracks and Roe v. Wade, what will Whole Foods–shopping BoBos browse at the checkout stand while waiting for their $12-a-pound Chilean organic raspberries to ring up? Why, Plenty of course, the magazine about environmentalism—and shopping! Who says consumerism and conservation are in conflict? Not these silver-tongued copywriters, who cite Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring right before breathlessly exclaiming that green products “are pleasing to the eye but also require no sacrifice of comfort or design.” Take that, you potato sack–wearing hippies! Not to be missed is the October/ November issue’s cover story, “Can We Buy A Healthy Planet?” Logical enough—the 12 | P L E N T Y

more you consume, the more greenhouse gases will pour into the atmosphere, the more trash will pile up in landfills, and the more jobs you’ll generate for the wee little people! Except those are all reasons not to start snapping up recycled-teak end tables at Anthropologie. At least we know who gets eaten first when the world’s food production system collapses. MR. ORANGE (AKA JARED) FIRST POSTED ON WWW.FRINKTANK.COM

IN YOUR August/September issue’s “Green Gear,” you claim the cute and sturdy travel organizer is “recyclable.” As a recycling and waste management professional, I can tell you that, in general, recycling plastic is extremely problematic, and most municipalities would not accept such an item. The best markets for plastic feedstock are #1 and #2 narrow-necked (i.e. blow molded) bottles. I’m guessing that the plastic organizer is made of a type of plastic that has a very limited market. The sad truth is that plastic recycling is mostly a public relations campaign created by the plastics industry to sell the idea that plastic is not as environmentally problematic as it is. Yes, you have a lovely, slick, attractive magazine. I applaud your mission to make environmentalism mainstream. But if you want to be taken seriously and not be demonized as “fluff ”—or even worse, considered a wolf in sheep’s clothing or yet another jump-on-the-bandwagon opportunist—you need to take a closer look at the implications and the true cost of items for sale that you’re promoting. LAURIE STOERKEL

CONGRATULATIONS on your anniversary and keep up the good work. But for next year’s holiday suggestions, please consider the following: there is absolutely nothing “green” about placing a mechanically extruded petrochemical object, probably made by slaves in China, in your living room and calling it a Christmas “tree.” Consider: Christmas tree farms provide wildlife cover. They produce oxygen. They offer a trip into the country for families whose children are increasingly suffering from what author Richard Louv calls “nature-deficit disorder.” They are sustainable—duh—the tree farmer must plant at least as many as he cuts down if he wants to stay in business. When you patronize a local tree farm each season, you are helping to preserve open space by making it possible for rural residents to make a benign living off their land. The only artificial tree that should be considered the least bit “green” is a garagesale 1950s aluminum tree, complete with rotating color spotlight. Now that would be green! MARCIA V. STUCKI GALESBURG, MICHIGAN

Send your letters, comments, kudos, and critiques to letters@plentymag.com

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

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NEWS

NOTES

Laugh, and the Earth laughs with you

reenies may have done a double-take last November when they checked their television listings and found … a two-hourlong comedy special devoted to global warming? Unbelievable as it seemed, Earth to America!—which aired on TBS and featured such star comedians as Steve Martin, Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and Will Ferrell—never strayed from its green message, hammering home the perils of warming and rampant resource use. The brainchild of eco-activist and comedy producer Laurie David, and her husband, comedian Larry David, the show

PHOTOGRAPHS MICHAEL CAULFIELD

was conceived as a way to raise environmental awareness through hilarity. Highlights included performances by Stiller, who impersonated a fair-weather environmentalist, and Black, who played a negotiator being tempted by the promises of Big Oil. In less shining moments, the show lurched into didacticism and seemed to treat its viewers like children. Still, the mere fact that Earth to America! hit the airwaves proves that eco-issues are continuing to become a mainstream concern, if not always a laughing matter. —Christy Harrison

GLOBAL GUFFAW: Ben Stiller as an ambivalent greenie (top); Jeffrey Tambor plays the imperiled planet (above); the cast of Avenue Q gets educational (left). www.plentymag.com February/March 2006

P L E N T Y | 15

NEWS

NOTES Corny plastic f you’re racked with eco-guilt every time you buy a bottle of water, an anxietyreducing solution may be coming to a store near you. BIOTA water, the first brand to use only compostable, corn-based plastic for its bottles, is expanding from its roots in the Western states this spring and will soon be available in more than 1,000 additional grocery stores on the East Coast. And a second brand, Jivita flavored water—also bottled in plant-based plastic—debuted last December in San Francisco grocery stores. Other plastic products, like garbage bags and cutlery, have already been made compostable and biodegradable, but bringing this manufacturing process to the beverage-bottle market could have significant impact. Americans drink roughly 20 billion bottles of water a year, but only 10 percent of them end up in recycling bins. Most of our discarded drink containers head to landfills or languish as litter on the streets, taking approximately 1,000 years to decompose. But BIOTA says its bottles take only 80 days to break down into compost. Does this mean they could begin dissolving on shelves, or in your satchel? Only if those storage spaces are full of compost: The company says its bottles will not degrade unless they have been emptied out and subjected to industrial compost-pile conditions of high heat, humidity, and bacteria. Of course, the majority of these bottles will still end up in landfills, but even there, the bio-bottles may break down faster than their petroleum-based brethren. (The company is currently conducting tests to determine how much faster.) Other companies that have recently begun using corn polymers in their packaging include Naturally Iowa, a dairy co-op that sells its milk in biodegradable, compostable plastic bottles, as well as bigger names like Newman’s Own Organics and even the much-decried megacorporation Coca-Cola. And the plastics producers themselves are big business, including the giants Cargill and DuPont (along with smaller companies like California-based EarthShell). Some environmentalists worry about the eco-impact of industrial corn production; still, the short decomposition time of corn-based plastics makes them a much greener option than your average bottle. —C.H.

Thawing the depths lobal warming may be destroying the world as we know it, but increasing ocean temperatures are actually opening up the polar regions so that scientists can study how exactly we’ve effed things up. Last September, two icebreaking ships from the U.S. and Sweden embarked on a U.S. National Science Foundation–sponsored oceanographic research mission to the Arctic and crossed the Canada Basin, an inhospitable ice-covered sea between Alaska and the North Pole. The ships were the first nonsubmarine vessels in history to make that voyage, thanks to warming: The 10-footthick ice floes that once covered the basin have dwindled enough in some areas to allow boats to pass (though in other places the

oceanographers were still forced to cut through frozen surfaces using the ships’ icebreaking tools). Once the least-explored ocean region on Earth, the Canada Basin may now help unlock some of the mysteries of climate change. Researchers on the Swedish ships measured the seawater’s temperature, salinity, and chemical characteristics for evidence of warming. The passage allowed them to take valuable “first-time measurements of ocean water” in the region, said lead researcher Jim Swift in a statement; these data will likely help scientists create more effective climate models. Researchers on both ships also looked at snow and ice for signs of atmospheric change. —C.H.

Green

Green with Envy

Biodiesel

Biofuels made from plant cellulose

Steam washing machines

Negative ion washing machines

Handbags made from discarded tires

Goodyear’s bioTRED tire

Low-flow toilets

McDonough’s nonstick toilet

Less junky school lunches

The Edible Schoolyard program

16 | P L E N T Y

February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

NEWS

NOTES

Want better gas mileage? Go abroad. merican drivers may have more fuelefficient options than ever before, but their choices pale in comparison to drivers overseas. At least 86 car models not sold in the U.S. get 40 miles per gallon or better in combined city/highway driving, according to a recent study by the Civil Society Institute (CSI), a nonprofit think tank. And 34 models sold outside the U.S. achieve a mindboggling 50 mpg or better, while only two models available in the States boast that kind of mileage. Nearly nine in ten Americans surveyed think that U.S. consumers should have access to these über-green autos. So why don’t we see these cars in showrooms? Many of them have diesel engines, which are more fuel-efficient than gasoline

motors but aren’t available in the U.S. because of federal and state environmental regulations. (Diesel has higher emissions of some toxic chemicals than gasoline does, though it has lower carbon dioxide emissions.) While these restrictions will likely be relaxed after this fall, when the EPA begins requiring most diesel manufacturers to produce only ultra-low-sulfur diesel, for now some states won’t even allow sales of new diesel passenger vehicles. Still, a significant 28 percent of the rides that get between 40 and 50 mpg are gasolinepowered and are made by companies with big operations in the U.S., including Toyota, DaimlerChrysler, Honda, and Volkswagen.

PHOTO UPPER LEFT COURTESY SCRIPPS INSTITUTION OF OCEANOGRAPHY/UCSD; UPPER RIGHT SMART ROADSTER COUPE COURTESY DAIMLER CRYSLER

One possible reason these gas versions aren’t available here: They tend to be small. Customers in Europe and Asia like smaller cars, says John Harman, a Ford spokesperson, “but American consumers have a history of making very small cars not very successful sales-wise; they want a little more space.” Still, Harman adds, “we do think there’s an emerging appetite [for smaller cars] that wasn’t there in the past.” No word yet on when the company’s littlest line will debut in the U.S. —C.H.

PLENTY TIP OF THE MONTH:

The Best Way to Share the Love this Valentine’s Day? BUY ORGANIC FLOWERS Of the approximately $20 billion a year Americans spend on flowers, less than one percent accounts for the sales of organic varieties. Surprisingly, in this age of booming natural-product sales, organic flowers suffer from a lack of demand. Unlike organic edibles, which have gotten a major leg up in the market thanks to public concerns over ingested pesticides, organic flowers are not demonstrably safer for the consumer than their conventionally grown counterparts. Still, if you’ve never purchased an organic bouquet before, there’s good reason to consider it for this Valentine’s Day. Organic flowers, just like organic food crops, are grown without the use of chemical pesticides. This is great news for the environment, but it’s even better news for floral workers. According to a 2002 study printed in Environmental Health Perspectives, worker exposure to pesticides is of particular concern in greenhouses, where up to 127 chemicals may be used. Also, the vast majority of flowers sold in the U.S. are grown overseas—70 percent in Columbia and Ecuador alone—where the rules regarding pesticide regulation and worker safety are more lax. In Ecuador, nearly 60 percent of floral workers www.plentymag.com February/March 2006

surveyed manifested symptoms of poisoning, including headaches, dizziness, hand trembling and blurred vision. Thankfully, purchasing organic flowers has become easier. Organic Bouquet (organicbouquet.com), established in 2001, is the world’s first online organic florist. Its owner, Gerald Prolman, saw a need for responsible standards that would help build the industry, and has since pioneered the Veriflora certification program, which, in addition to requiring growers to implement organic agricultural practices, addresses water conservation, waste management, and fair labor standards. Veriflora growers may use small amounts of low-impact chemicals, so they are not certified organic by the USDA. However, Organic Bouquet does carry USDA-certified flowers under the labels “Organic” and “Biodynamic.” Online organic flower retailers are few and far between. Organic Bouquet is the largest; others include Diamond Organics (diamondorganics.com) and CaliforniaOrganic Flowers.com. Don’t neglect your local farmers market, however: A small, but significant, percentage of organic flowers are grown on family farms in the United States. Check out LocalHarvest (localharvest.org/organic-flow-

ers.jsp), which maintains a directory of small farms in the U.S. that may sell organic blooms. Just keep in mind, if it doesn’t carry the word “Organic” on the label, it’s not certified organic by the USDA; be sure to ask how flowers are grown before you buy them. —Jacquelyn Lane P L E N T Y | 17

FEB 2006

PLENTY

event calendar

World Wetlands Day commemorates the signing of the international Convention on Wetlands in 1971 (ramsar.org).

Delhi Sustainable Development Summit (teriin.org/dsds/2006), held through February 4. Open to the public, this forum addresses the major challenges in global sustainable development.

First day of the Tropical Green conference (metropolismag.com/tropical green) held in Miami, Florida. Design luminaries will gather for panel discussions about building sustainably in hot and humid climates.

Opening ceremony for the XXth Olympic Winter Games held in Torino, Italy (torino2006.org). The planning committee was awarded the European Environmental Quality Prize for fulfillment of all certification criteria.

Start day of the Patagonia Expedition Race in Chile, South America. Competitors will face over 600 km of isolated wilderness as they trek through Chilean Patagonia (www.patagoniaexpedition race.com).

Celebrate Valentine’s Day by buying your sweetie chocolates or flowers (organic, of course).

First day of the Winter Wings Festival (winterwingsfest.org), held in Klamath Falls, Ore., through February 19th. Enjoy art sales, live music, and birdwatching classes.

First day of the Sustainable Living Festival (sustainablelivingfestival.org.au), held in Melbourne, Australia, through Feb. 19, where films and art displays celebrate life on our planet.

MAR 2006

Get amazing deals on bikes and bike accessories at the Seattle Bike Swap, sponsored by the Pazzo Velo cycling team, from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. in Magnuson Park in Seattle, Wash (pazzovelo.com/events/).

Though most states celebrate Arbor Day on the last Friday in April, California honors its state tree, the redwood, by celebrating for a full week, starting today.

Final day of the 2006 Building Energy Conference & Trade Show (www.buildingenergy. nesea.org) in Boston, Mass. Renewable energy and green building professionals convene to exhibit and share ideas.

First day of the Environmental Go “green” this St. Patrick’s Film Festival (dcenvironmental Day with an organic beer (see filmfest.org) in Washington, page 88 for suggestions). D.C. Through March 26, this event will screen films that highlight the vital connections between healthy food, fresh water, and the environment.

18 | P L E N T Y

First day of the Cleantech Venture Forum IX (cleantech.com) in San Francisco, California. Through March 23, this event keeps entrepreneurs and investors on the cutting edge of green technology.

“Water and Culture” is the theme of this year’s World Water Day (worldwater day.org). Celebrate by reaffirming your commitment to conserve the natural resource.

Attend the Hazel Wolf Environmental Film Festival (hazelfilm.org) held in Leavenworth, Wash. through March 26. This year’s theme: “Walking the Ecological Line.”

February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

PHOTO © DOUGLAS ENGLE AND MARTIN MARPEGAN, THE ISLAND EXPERIENCE

RETREADS

TRADING UP: Swappers at SORR gather ’round and jazz up their new finds.

CHANGE

IS IN THE AIR T-shirt by T-shirt, New York City’s Swap-O-Rama-Rama helps revive old clothes. JOSHUA M. BERNSTEIN LOOKING AT THE ROCKER GIRLS, giggling teens, and bed-headed boys streaming into a graffiti-covered building on a windy autumn day in downtown Manhattan, I’d swear they were runaways. Like pack mules, they arrive lugging clothing-crammed suitcases and plastic bags. But as they fork over $5 to enter the building, dump clothes at a sorting station, and then dash toward mountains of T-shirts, sweaters, and jeans, their mission becomes clear. “I could really get into shoulder pads,” declares a spiky-haired blonde,

www.plentymag.com February/March 2006

P L E N T Y | 19

[

]

“Creativity. People don’t know how to sew a button or fix a garment or embroider. Not so long ago, everything was made by us. Clothing and objects reeked of stories. I want to bring that back.”

20 | P L E N T Y

February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

PHOTO © JEREMY PASKELL

RETREADS

flaunting a puffy red cardigan. She stuffs it into her backpack and fishes for another treasure. Does her sweater fit? Probably not, but it will soon: She’s at Swap-O-Rama-Rama (SORR), the nation’s craftiest public clothing swap. The basic idea of a clothing swap is to trade in your closetdwelling garments for “new” garb, with as close to zero waste as possible. SORR expands this recycling principle by giving people the resources—sewing machines, decorations, clothing consultants—to alter and reinvent their acquisitions. While SORR is breaking new swapping ground with its focus on crafting, Americans are trading threads in vast numbers these days. On the Internet, swapstyle.com lets fashionistas exchange couture; Meetup.com enables real-life swaps. In Louisville, Kentucky, there are punk-only clothing trades, while Washington, D.C., offers children’s clothing swaps. There is even a growing nationwide trend of “naked lady parties”—that is, girls-only clothes exchanges. Combine these trades with countless private ones (the vast majority of swaps, in fact, are private), and clotheshorses may help stem a growing wave of textile waste, which rose to 10.6 million tons in 2003 from 9.4 million tons in 2000, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. That’s a lot of trashed T-shirts. “The United States is hemorrhaging excess stuff,” says SORR founder Wendy Tremayne, 38. To curtail clothing waste, she started hosting exchanges in 2003. They were packed-to-the-rafters affairs, but “you could feel that people wanted to go further than just recycling their wardrobes,” she says. So Tremayne decided to give them something more with their swaps: “Creativity. People don’t know how to sew a button or fix a garment or embroider. Not so long ago, everything was made by us. Clothing and objects reeked of stories. I want to bring that back.” Channeling her event-planning skills (she has produced parties for Lenny Kravitz and law firms alike), Tremayne held the first public SORR inside a community center that also hosts, at various times, vibrant art shows and haunted houses. Ringing the room are sewing and design stations, where swappers artistically cobble together their apparel. Garment tables stretch into the parking lot out back. Somehow I scavenge a plain pink sweatshirt, which I whisk off to a custom-lettering counter. A helper—wearing, fittingly, a Modest Mouse T-shirt adorned with an appliquéd buffalo and the word “mouse” replaced by “bison”—prints an iron-on transfer sheet featuring my chosen message. A few minutes later, my pink sweatshirt reads, “It’s not so obvious.” I’m proud of my new garment, but I’m too timid to display it at one of SORR’s innovative stations: a tiny stage doubling as a “runway.” Here, MC Viveca Gardiner, sporting a top hat, provides running commentary as “models” sashay past in their found and remodeled clothes. “She’s a ranchero!” Gardiner exclaims, as a string-beanthin brunette—her face covered with a checkered bandana—unzips a white jumpsuit to reveal a striped bikini. “Shoot ’em up!” As the models strut, an adjoining room hosts DIY workshops. These crafty classes range from Alyce Santoro’s lecture on turning old audiotape into fabric to Itsi Atkins’s tutorial on morphing bras into handbags. “It’s not about bras,” he says, holding up a tent-size number. “It’s about looking at clothes in a new way.” But do all clothes deserve a second look? Many SORR garments are closet dregs: rust-colored corduroys and sweaters that look as though they’d been knitted by blind car salesmen. “I didn’t have the www.plentymag.com February/March 2006

patience to dig,” says advertising copywriter Angela Campigotto, who brought fallen-from-favor sweaters and T-shirts but only found a Technicolor dress. “She did better,” Campigotto says, motioning to her co-worker Rosie Sharp, who brandishes a powder-blue Dukes of Hazzard T-shirt. “So awesome,” she says, looking lovingly at Sharp’s shirt. Of course, serendipity is the appeal of the public swap. What will I find? Will I get a fair trade? Another pressing question: Why am I

THE RIGHT FIT: Hunting for cast-off treasures in the SORR’s clothing bins (above); Swappers get a lesson in iron-on transferring (left).

paying to exchange my clothes? During the past seven years, producer and writer Victoria C. Rowan has hosted a dozen private swaps. About 20 friends, on average, show up, toting high-quality items like knee-high crocodile boots and fuzzy red turtlenecks. More important, she says, no one pays a cent. “There’s something about exchanging money among your friends that’s really wrong,” Rowan explains. But Tremayne scoffs at the notion that $5 is an unnecessary fee. She spent $4,500 producing SORR (largely funded by a Black Rock Arts Foundation grant). This paid for, among other things, crates of sewing supplies and yarn; $10-a-pack iron-on transfer sheets; the cost of renting the space; and a 20-member staff. “I think I made eight cents an hour,” Tremayne says, laughing. Five hundred people attended SORR, several of whom made business propositions. The Knitting Factory, a downtown Manhattan music club, offered to host the next swap; one gentleman wanted Tremayne to put on a similar event, simultaneously, in three different countries. Both possibilities are intriguing and problematic. A for-profit rock club would likely price out some SORR participants. And Tremayne is reluctant to take her idea overseas—for now, she thinks the U.S. needs her swap skills the most. She’s concentrating on throwing seasonal New York City swaps in the next year, where she feels they will be not only a success but also a catalyst for something greater. “Right now there’s a real opportunity—and need—for a cultural shift,” she says. “With SORR, we can take the consumer apart and start all over again.” ■ P L E N T Y | 21

T E C H N O LO GY

WHIRLING AWAY OUR TROUBLES: Flying electrical generators like this one—shown in an artist’s rendering—could produce some of the cheapest, cleanest electricity in the world.

ENERGY ALOFT THE ANSWERS BLOWING IN THE WIND are more than metaphorical these days. Bryan Roberts, for one, thinks he can tap into jet streams to answer the world’s growing energy needs. The 69-year-old began his career as an engineer at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. During his daily observations of weather balloons, he noticed that between 15,000 feet and 20,000 feet up, without fail, a strong wind would drag the balloons to the west. He realized that he could harness these high-altitude winds—potentially the most concentrated form of clean renewable energy on our planet—with flying wind turbines. Roberts is the father of an experimental technology known as the flying electrical generator (FEG). Today wind power accounts for less than 1 percent of the total electricity output of the United States. But one cluster of FEGs could produce three times as much energy as America’s most 22 | P L E N T Y

productive nuclear power plant. And high altitude winds could continuously provide enough energy for the entire world, say some climate scientists—even if we tapped into a mere 1 percent of jet-stream energy. Further, while grounded windmills are only about 35 percent efficient—meaning about 65 percent of the energy they capture never makes it to the grid—FEGs could have an efficiency as high as 90 percent. The energy they produce would also be extremely cheap, in large part because grounded windmills don’t always turn if there’s no wind, while at high altitudes winds often reach hurricane-like speeds of 100 mph—five to ten times faster than what we feel on the ground. A growing number of researchers are tinkering with these airborne turbines, and if they come up with the right prototype (and some venture capitalist backing), they could power the world for pennies a day.

So how exactly do you get windmills to fly? Attach them to rotorcrafts—helicopterlike aircraft with four propellers—says Roberts. These sky-high machines, powered by electricity from the grid that flows through an attached cable, need a continuous stream of 75 kilowatts of energy for two hours to get airborne. That’s about the same amount of power used by 100 air-conditioners in the same timeframe. But once soaring, the rotorcraft would be kept aloft by the violent winds whipping through its propellers. As those propellers turn, they would crank the craft’s internal wind turbines, generating clean electricity. The freshly churned energy would then shoot back down the cable to be stored in an earthbound electrical power station. Scientists could monitor the placement of FEGs using a GPS device. Roberts has successfully tested smaller FEGs at lower altitudes, so he’s not pulling February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

ILLUSTRATION © BEN SHEPARD

Flying electrical generators could solve our power woes, according to some cutting-edge researchers. DAVID COHN

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T E C H N O LO GY

his grand designs out of thin air. In the early 1980s he was able to fly kitelike devices, about the size of large dining tables, at an altitude of 60 feet, producing small amounts of electricity. The performance was “slippery” at first, Roberts admits, because the FEGs were highly unstable. Since then he and his colleagues have conducted endless wind tunnel tests to determine the most aerodynamic design for the crafts and how best to capture the onslaught of winds. When Roberts began his research in the 1970s, he was a pioneer in looking to the sky for energy; today there are a number of different proposals to reap the benefits of highaltitude winds. Dutch scientists are experimenting with generators they call Laddermills—a series of kites, connected by a cable, that form a large conveyor-like loop. As the kites tumble over one another, the cable turns a grounded turbine, producing energy. The Dutch team thinks only a few hundred Laddermills could fulfill all of the Netherlands’ energy needs; it would take some 50,000 earthbound windmills to produce the same results. Meanwhile, Roberts is teaming up with Sky WindPower, a San Diego–based alternative energy company, to test a commercialsized flying turbine in the United States. Their final goal is to build multiple clusters of 600 FEGs each, which will be housed in a restricted airspace of 200 square miles. Each FEG— roughly the size of a football field—could generate enough electricity to power two cities the size of Chicago. The Federal Aviation Administration has already suggested potential sites for the FEGs; all the company needs now is to raise $4 million to get the project, quite literally, off the ground. Because the undertaking doesn’t fit into any federal grant categories (it lies somewhere between a renewable energy project and an emerging technology), Sky WindPower has had to look to private investors for funding. But Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist who recently advised the president on technological responses to global warming, argues that the U.S. government should invest in FEG research pronto. “Our federal energy technology research program is remiss in not looking into capturing some of this energy,” says Caldeira. FEGs appear to pose no insurmountable technical difficulties, he continues, adding, “compare this with the [nuclear] fusion program, where we are spending billions of dollars and technical hurdles loom large.”

While getting the windmill into the upper troposphere is expensive, the persistence and strength of the winds captured would make for electricity as cheap as one cent per kilowatt hour— twice

as thrifty as the true cost of its closest rival, nuclear energy. Money isn’t the only reason the project could face resistance. Two hundred square miles is a pretty big chunk of sky, and the high altitude of FEGs could pose a threat to passing aircraft and migrating birds. Even with restricted airspace, the potential does exist for a midair collision or for a behemoth FEG to fall to the ground. Keeping the restricted airspace away from population centers should minimize any serious disasters, but a more pressing environmental concern is the danger to birds. Grounded windmills in California are responsible for the death of more than 1,300 birds of prey each year. While FEGs would be out of the way of low-flying raptors, they could pose a threat to migrating birds flying at higher altitudes. Sky WindPower is looking for airspace away from migration routes, but if necessary the company may install high-frequency alarms to warn birds of the deadly propellers. If researchers can overcome these environmental obstacles, though, flying turbines could generate clean electricity for as low as one cent per kilowatt hour, without any of the ecological damage that today’s cheapest energy options cause. They could create the perfect marriage: clean, affordable energy is always needed, and the wind—the wind is constant. ■ February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

How can you help protect

the prairie and the penguin?

Simple. Visit www.earthshare.org and learn how the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leading environmental groups are working together under one name. And how easy it is for you to help protect the prairies and the penguins and the planet.

www.earthshare.org

One environment. One simple way to care for it.

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WHEELS

POWER TRIPPING

A new TV series illustrates the trials and triumphs of driving across the country on green energy. CHRISTY HARRISON “I’VE NEVER HEARD ABOUT an ethanol plane before, so I’m pretty pumped about it.” Shaun Murphy is seated at the dining table of the RV that he is calling home on his eight-month road-trip across the United States, discussing the next day’s plans with his production manager and future wife, Teresa Brett. “I’m a little worried,” Brett replies, haltingly. “I don’t know a whole lot about ethanol; all I know is that when it’s cold, things don’t seem to start too well,” she continues. Later, Brett tells the camera her deeper fear: “I’m just really, really concerned and worried that this plane could possibly fall out of the sky.” On Murphy’s new reality show, Coolfuel 26 | P L E N T Y

Roadtrip (airing now through fall 2006 on select stations nationwide), high drama like this unfolds on a fairly regular basis. Murphy, a 39-year-old Australian natureshow host, set out in the summer of 2004 with a road crew and a dog named Sparky to cross the United States without using a single drop of gasoline. Instead, he vowed to make use of the indigenous alternative fuels in each part of the nation: for example, ethanol (a vegetable-derived alcohol) and switchgrass in the farmlands of Iowa; garbage in the landfill-rich New York City area; and cow pies in dairylicious Wisconsin. In all, he drove 30 different vehicles using 12 unique fuels, with his trusty crew trailing

him in the renewably-powered RV all the way. The show introduces viewers to a large number of unexpected, interesting new energy sources—but it also demonstrates that we still have a long way to go toward turning most renewable fuels into viable petroleum alternatives. The concept of the alt-powered roadtrip is not new, of course; Coolfuel is one of many similar projects to take place over roughly the last decade. Some have gone far beyond simply proving the possibility of clean cross-country journeys to become fully fledged activist groups. Joshua Tickell, a pioneer of this renewable-road-trip movement, drove across the country on biodiesel (a fuel made from veggie oil) in 1997. His Veggie Van Organization has gone on to do biodiesel advocacy work and provide biodiesel for Hurricane Katrina rescue efforts. B.I.O. Tour, another nonprofit, has put more than 25,000 miles on the odometer of its converted school bus since 2003, touring the country to host biodiesel workshops and generally spread the good green word. These groups have been successful from a public relations standpoint, garnering their share of major media attention. But none of Coolfuel’s predecessors has made such an ambitious attempt to showcase multiple weird and wacky fuels. And Murphy’s televised endeavor is a much bigger, flashier operation than most: The vehicles that he drives include a biodieselfueled drag racer, a solar-powered canoe, and an ethanol-fueled BMW Roadster. One of the highlights is a stretch Hummer powered by almost anything Murphy can get his hands on: Liquid fuels including biodiesel and ethanol are the primary power source; after the car is underway, food, cow pies, and other solid energy sources are fed through a gasifier that turns them into additional fuel sources such as hydrogen and methane. The mammoth car can reach a top speed of 75 miles per hour. In addition to the brigade of vehicles and juices, Murphy’s biodiesel-fueled RV is stocked with solar-powered appliances including a satellite dish, cell phones, and computers connected to the Internet, enabling his team to research its fueling options; and he not only has three crew members, but he also meets up with plenty of other helpers and alternative-energy experts every step of the way (many of whom lend him their cars). Celebrity ecophiles including Daryl Hannah and February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

Jackson Browne, and regional stars like Miss Iowa and Miss Texas, also make appearances on the show. But even with such impressive backing and technology, the team runs into plenty of fueling problems. The drive through Florida poses the biggest difficulty: On episode seven, the goal is to cross the state running solely on sugar power, but the Coolfuel gang arrives just as the state’s sugar harvest is ending. They’re also unable find biodiesel to refuel the RV. “We really thought we weren’t going to be able to make it,” Murphy says. Without giving away the ending, let’s just say that some clever Internet research comes into play as the team struggles to get out of its predicament. Regular folks without access to teams of researchers and helpers would have a much harder time accomplishing a trip like this. “You really have to be creative in some areas of the country because there just aren’t any renewable fuels available,” says Murphy. The average road-tripper would clearly have better luck with biodiesel and corn ethanol—which the crew used to drive between shooting locations—than with more offbeat energy sources like food, which requires an engine conversion, or methane from landfills, which is hard to come by in many parts of the country. (Of course, garbage power is not the most ecofriendly fueling option anyway; according to analysts at the Natural Resources Defense Council, landfill methane is not sustainable, although harnessing it for fuel is better than letting it escape into the atmosphere.) And even biodiesel, with just 300 fueling stations across the U.S., is not readily available everywhere. The Coolfuel RV had enough storage space to carry 250 emergency gallons of the grease—but try doing that in your old-school Mercedes. Still, regardless of the repeatability of the team’s experiment, the engaging TV show gets viewers excited about the future of transportation. And in demonstrating the problems inherent in a road trip of this kind, the show illuminates the need for more alternative-energy infrastructure in the U.S.— knowledge that could motivate some viewers to invest in renewable fuels. Coolfuel gets major props for never using a drop of gas, even in the direst of moments, and for giving us an honest portrayal of the challenges involved. “We wanted to show Americans all these great fuels,” says Murphy, “but we had to balance showing where it was difficult and where it was a good run.” ■ www.plentymag.com February/March 2006

ROAD HOUNDS: Murphy and sidekick Sparky show off their green stretch Hummer (above); other clean rides include an electric convertible, an ethanol-powered plane, and a solar canoe (all below). Sparky rides in a specially equipped backpack when he and Murphy cruise on their electric scooter (far left).

PLUG IN FOR MORE ON ALT-ENERGY ROAD TRIPS, TRY THESE HOT TIPS: Coolfuel Roadtrip is airing on many UPN stations and other select channels across the country. Check your local listings, or visit coolfuelroadtrip.com for station information and more about the show, the vehicles, and the fuels. For the latest from the Veggie Van Organization, visit veggievan.org or its sister site, biodieselamerica.org. For the B.I.O. Tour, go to biotour.org. To plan your own alt-fueled road trip in the U.S., check out the Department of Energy’s Alternative Fueling Station Route Mapper at afdcmap.nrel.gov/locator/RoutePane.asp. If you’re headed across Canada, visit oee.nrcan.gc.ca/transportation/tools/afvguide.

P L E N T Y | 27

INVESTING

CLEAN

START

Once again, the alternative fuel market is heating up. Is this another fad, or are investors finally going green? AMY CORTESE IT MAY HAVE TAKEN A STRING OF DEVASTATING HURRICANES, turmoil in the oil-rich Middle East, and sky-high prices at the pump, but renewable energy is hot again. In the wake of Katrina, Rita, Wilma, and Osama, shares of alternative-energy companies are soaring, and venture capitalists are pumping increasing amounts of money into fledgling operations that might become tomorrow’s green-energy giants. Researchers predict that the clean-energy market will grow to $92 billion by 2013, from about $13 billion today. Not since the 1970s has there been so much buzz. And there’s the rub. The alternative-energy market has gone through this before—in the 1970s, when there were lines at the gas pump and solar panels were the new thing, and again after the first Earth Day, when environmentally minded companies rode a brief wave of popularity. In both cases the market failed to live up to the hype, and many investors were burned. These examples pose the question: is the world finally serious about clean energy? Or is today’s greenfest another short-lived party? Many veteran energy watchers say that what we’re seeing today is a convergence of factors that add up to a fundamental shift and the start of a long-term trend. The 1970s energy crisis was sparked when OPEC, a cartel of eleven oil-producing nations, decided to sharply limit the amount of oil it released. In contrast, today we face a fundamental oil-supply constraint. Some oil industry analysts say that for every two barrels of oil we use, just one is discovered, and many experts warn that oil production has peaked. Then there’s the looming threat of global warming, which scientists believe is caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases created by burning fossil fuels. And demand for limited energy resources will only intensify as China and India further modernize. What’s more, renewable technology has advanced by leaps and bounds since the 1970s, and the cost of energy from wind, solar, and biomass continues to decrease. Solar photovoltaics have dropped 28 | P L E N T Y

80 percent in manufacturing costs since 1990, while wind power, at 4 to 5 cents per kilowatt hour, is cost-competitive with some conventional sources of electricity, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. That all adds up to big opportunity. The WilderHill Clean Energy Index, which consists of 37 companies in the clean-energy sector, jumped more than 15 percent, and investors poured more than $100 million into a fund that tracks the index. Venture capitalists (VCs) also see green in renewables and related technology: In 2004 VCs gave an estimated $520 million to clean-energy companies and picked up the pace in 2005, although numbers have yet to be tallied. Wind and solar, two established sources of renewable power, are showing signs of maturity. Wind-power investors, for example, have moved from funding research and development to backing actual installations, which are projected to expand to $48.1 billion in 2014 from $8 billion in 2004, according to Clean Edge, an energy research and consulting firm based in Oakland, California. As the lowest-cost renewable, “wind will be big,” says Rodrigo Prudencio, a principal at Nth Power, a venture capital firm specializing in clean technology and renewable energy. He points to such companies as Clipper Windpower, a Carpinteria, California, wind power company, as potential green-energy powerhouses. One sign of solar’s acceptance is the increasing number of companies going public. Following the debuts of solar companies QCells and ErSol in Germany (the second-largest world market for solar power after Japan), U.S. companies, including SunPower, are planning public offerings. And more technological breakthroughs may be ahead. Excitement is building for a new generation of solar companies using “thin film” in place of rigid silicon (see “Ventures in the Sun,” Plenty, December/January 2006). Clean Edge predicts that the solar market overall will grow to $39.2 billion by 2014 from $7.2 billion in 2004. February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

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INVESTING

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Is the world finally serious about clean energy? Or is today’s greenfest simply another short-lived party?

HERE ARE THREE OTHER TECHNOLOGIES BEGINNING TO CAPTURE THE INTEREST OF VCS:

]

GREENING YOUR PORTFOLIO

Biofuels

Energy Management The blackouts of recent summers have focused attention on the aging electrical grid, and entrepreneurs are coming up with ideas for modernizing it and improving reliability. In general, the concept is to decentralize power generation and supplement the grid with low-emission alternatives and backup generation. A decentralized grid, in turn, will require closer monitoring. The Center for Smart Energy, a research and consulting firm in Redmond, Washington, estimates that the opportunity to modernize the grid with “smart energy” products could be a $45 billion market. Many VCs are accustomed to investing in information technology and see a big opportunity for software that can help oversee energy use as well—whether it’s for individual households or large corporations that want to manage their power consumption the way they do other costs and assets. One successful example in this field is Itron, a Spokane Valley, Washington, maker of electric and water metering systems used by large electrical utilities, government agencies, universities, and corporations. Its stock has more than doubled during the past year.

Fuel Cells There’s a lot of talk about the hydrogen-powered future, but makers of fuel cells, which are the key to that vision, are still struggling. Fuel cells use the chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen to produce electrical power in a way that releases no emissions. While promising, this technology is for investors with a long-term outlook and deep pockets; shares of such fuel-cell companies as Capstone, Ballard Power, and Plug Power have been volatile in the past. Still, Clean Edge figures that fuel cells and distributed hydrogen will grow to $15 billion over the next decade from $900 million today—mainly for research and testing. ■ 30 | P L E N T Y

Unlike venture capitalists, most of us can’t plunk down a few million to become part of a promising start-up. And many investors don’t have time to research the renewable-energy companies that have managed to go public. But there are ways to get in on the action. One alternative is the PowerShares WilderHill Clean Energy Portfolio (symbol PBW), an exchangetraded fund (ETF) that tracks the WilderHill Clean Energy Index. ETFs are a relatively new investment vehicle. They are like mutual funds in that they include a variety of companies, yet they can be traded like stocks. The WilderHill Index (ECO) is the brainchild of Robert Wilder, a former professor of environmental policy. It consists of 37 clean-energy companies, most of them pure-play (ones that invest their resources in a single line of business, as opposed to conglomerates such as General Electric), including Distributed Energy (DESC), a group that focuses on fuel-cell technology and other renewables; Evergreen Solar (ESLR), a solar-panel producer; and Zoltek (ZOLT), a carbon-fiber company. It also includes some foreign companies, such as Kyocera Corp. (KYO), a Japanese maker of solar-powered equipment. The WilderHill Index, while down from its post-Katrina peak, has risen more than 30 percent from its debut in August 2004. Still, ETFs are not for everyone, and Wilder cautions that the energy sector can be extremely volatile. Profit-taking quickly shaved 15 percent off the index’s post-Katrina highs, for example. PowerShares, a fund company, manages the WilderHill Clean Energy Portfolio the way others do with the S&P or Dow Jones industrial average. A more conservative option might be one of the mutual funds that places a heavy emphasis on renewable energy, such as the New Alternatives Fund (NALFX). Investment pros expect more options to come to market in the coming months. February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

PHOTO © GETTY IMAGES

Although not as far along as wind and solar, biofuel—the transformation of organic matter into fuel—is the “other hot area,” says Ron Pernick, a cofounder of Clean Edge. It’s a broad category that includes ethanol, biodiesel made from plant oils or soybeans, and fuels produced from the gas released from landfills, animal sewage, and even breweries. Cargill Dow and other big corporations are experimenting with biofuels, and such upstarts as Seattle BioFuels, a refiner of fuels made from plant oil, and Panda Energy, a Dallas company that is building facilities to produce energy from cow manure, are also attracting interest.

American ingenuity is everywhere.

Just not in AmericaÕs energy policy.

TodayÕs energy policies disregard American know-how and compromise our national security. America is a nation of innovators, but youÕd never know that from the plans that Washington is cooking up. They rely on yesterdayÕs polluting technologies and do almost nothing to free us from Middle East oil or create jobs at home. ItÕs time for a real solution. American technologies exist that could save millions of barrels of oil and billions of dollars every month. Go to www.nrdc.org and learn about an energy policy that strengthens our economy, protects the environment, and actually makes us more secure. Natural Resources Defense Council

www.nrdc.org

Q AND A

RAIN MAN

Is global warming making hurricanes more powerful? Kerry Emanuel, a professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of Divine Wind: The History and Science of Hurricanes, says the answer is yes. RICHARD BRADLEY

32 | P L E N T Y

February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

[“

I don’t see any reason why the power

of hurricanes wouldn’t continue to increase

over the next 100 to 200 years.

PHOTO OF OUTER BANKS, NORTH CAROLINA BY JOHN SIEBERT, PORTRAIT OF KERRY BY DONNA COVENEY, MIT NEWS OFFICE

How did you get into the field of hurricane research? I’m an atmospheric scientist, so that’s been my profession for my entire career. But I really started getting interested in hurricanes in the mid-1980s, when I was forced to teach on the subject and realized that I didn’t know anything about it. It turns out that hurricanes involve a complex set of interactions between the atmosphere and the ocean; they’re affected by almost every atmospheric phenomenon that you can think of. You’ve argued that there’s a correlation between global warming and more powerful hurricanes. Can you lay out the relationship between the two phenomena? In the last thirty to fifty years, there’s been an increase in the duration and intensity of hurricanes. This has been very nicely correlated with sea surface temperature, which has gone up more in the last fifty years than can be explained by any natural process we’re aware of. That leads us to conclude that both the upswing in sea surface temperature and the upswing in hurricane intensity are essentially caused by global warming. You’ve also suggested that not only does climate have an impact on hurricanes, but that hurricanes have an impact on climate. This is a somewhat difficult subject, because it involves complex physics. The earth’s climate is moderated a great deal by movement of heat between the tropics and the high latitudes; the heat is carried by both the atmosphere and the ocean. If it weren’t for that, the tropics would be a whole lot hotter and the high latitudes a whole lot colder. More—and more intense— hurricanes mix the ocean, which moves the heat out of the tropics and toward higher latitudes. Taking this into account, the longer term projections are less warming for the tropics and more for the higher latitudes. Will we keep seeing increases in hurricane power? Can we expect megacanes? www.plentymag.com February/March 2006

”

]

Yes—with some caveats. The ocean is a sluggish body, and what we’re doing to it by warming the climate is too fast for the ocean to keep up with. But I don’t see any reason why the power of hurricanes wouldn’t continue to increase over the next 100 to 200 years. Might we also expect them to become more frequent, or for the hurricane season to grow longer? Hurricanes may become more frequent in certain places, but globally there’s no sign that their frequency is changing. How have your scientific peers reacted to your theory? The reaction has been mixed, because there are all sorts of problems with the hurricane data. You can’t just use the historical data without trying to adjust for the fact that techniques used to estimate wind speeds, et cetera, have changed, and there’s some question about how to do that. Still, although there are technical difficulties here and there, I have not seen anything from my fellow scientists that would change my mind. As damaging as they are in the United States, aren’t hurricanes far more devastating in places we don’t pay much attention to? It depends on what your definition of devastating is. In terms of monetary loss, it’s the United States. In terms of loss of life, hurricanes do far more of that in developing countries—in Central America, Bangladesh, places like that. Since the U.S. has traditionally been the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, which contribute to the global warming that you say strengthens hurricanes, aren’t we in a sense contributing to that loss of life? True. But for the next 50 years, India and China are going to dominate greenhouse gas emissions. Which doesn’t mean that the United States can’t influence that. The best thing the U.S. could do is develop the technology that will help to lower emissions in those countries.

Do critics call you a left-wing alarmist? They’d have a hard time doing that since I’m politically conservative. But I don’t feel tempted to get into the politics of this debate. It doesn’t interest me, and I find it distasteful when politicians try to use scientists as pawns. On the other hand, I’m opposed to scientists getting involved in policy—that’s the worst possible thing. It eliminates their effectiveness as scientists, and it almost always degrades the politics as well, because scientists aren’t policymakers. My job as a scientist is just to inform as best I can. Underlying all these issues is the question of our relationship to nature and the idea that we can not only live largely unaffected by it, but that we can control it, too. Is it time to reconsider that sense of hubris? The fact that so many people are willing to evacuate before a hurricane does betray a certain innate humility—people are becoming more humble about their relationship to the environment. I really do think so. ■ P L E N T Y | 33

BOOKS

RIGHT ANGLE?

on why Rod Dreher’s new paean to green conservatism won’t change many Republican minds. RICHARD BRADLEY

CRUNCHY CONS BY ROD DREHER CROWN, $24

FOR CONSERVATIVES, these should be glory days. Republicans hold the White House, both houses of Congress, and a majority of the country’s governorships and state legislatures. Since 2000, the U.S. has been in a red state of mind. But for honest conservatives, the mood is glum. The GOP may rule, but it’s ideologically incoherent. A party which used to rail against the federal government has given that government unprecedented power to invade the privacy of its citizens. A party that despises government spending has produced a soaring budget deficit and a federal budget bloated with billions in pork. A party that shuns entanglement with conflict abroad—“nation-building,” President Bush used to sneer—now owns a war that no one else wants. What’s a good right-winger to do? The answer, according to Rod Dreher, a writer for the Dallas Morning News, is to reconsider what it means to be conservative. Dreher is the author of the new book Crunchy Cons, a retro-manifesto for alienated conservatives. Like Christine Todd Whitman’s It’s My Party Too, Dreher’s cri de coeur argues that the party has been taken over by extremists who disregard conservatism’s true nature. And, like Whitman’s book, Crunchy Cons is a worthy contribution to the political discussion that will probably get more attention from liberals than the conservatives to whom it’s addressed. Partly that’s because so much of what Dreher advocates sounds liberal. His story begins with his leaving the office one day to pick up vegetables from an organic food coop in Brooklyn—“a left-wing cliché,” he admits. Only Dreher happened to work for National Review at the time. Naturally, his colleagues teased him for going green. But to Dreher, there’s no contradiction 34 | P L E N T Y

between being conservative and caring about where food comes from. “In a perfect world,” he writes, “lawmakers would roll back the worst excesses of factory farming ... give small farmers and producers a chance to compete fairly, and encourage through tax incentives the development of small-scale, locally based agriculture.” Sounds good, and that’s just the start of his utopian manifesto. Dreher also wants architecture that promotes tradition and community, rather than McMansions and urban sprawl. And he thinks conservatives need to restore a spiritual connection with nature. Finally, Dreher would like conservatives to become more truly devout—many conservatives talk about religion but live by the unspoken creed of materialism, he says—and to get serious about education, preferably through homeschooling. There’s a lot to like here, even—perhaps especially—for liberals. On the one hand, Dreher is mad as hell, fed up with the selfishness and commercialism of American life and the way the Republican Party promotes those trends. On the other hand, he comes across as a reasonable man. Considering whether it really does take a village to raise a child, Dreher writes that “Hillary Clinton got a bum rap” from conservatives, which will probably lead to his being exiled from his old workplace. It’s possible, reading Crunchy Cons, to imagine a new political landscape in which progressives and green-cons come together to form a new alliance that shakes up the two-party system. But then Dreher has to go and spoil it. For one thing, as if to assure his base that he hasn’t totally lost his mind, he caricatures liberals as closed-minded, intolerant, and trivial. He claims that “the sexual revolution” is “the great liberal project of the last forty years,” as if the civil rights movement never

happened. He suggests that there’s no point in George W. Bush’s going green, because liberals will never give him credit for it. (It would be nice if, just once, we could test that thesis.) To make a point about liberals’ hostility to religion, Dreher tells of one lefty who jokes about blowing up a Baptist megachurch. Granted, it’s a dumb joke. But when you think about domestic terrorism—Oklahoma City, the Atlanta Olympics, assassinations of obstetricians—don’t blame the lefties. When a liberal makes a joke about bombing something, you think it’s offensive. When a conservative does, you call Homeland Security. All of which points to a larger problem that Dreher fails to deal with: the conservative mean streak. There winds through modern conservatism a bitter thread of anger and resentment—against change, against the outside world, against women and gays and ethnic minorities—that’s been fueled and exploited by Republican politicians ever since Richard Nixon began wooing racist Dixiecrats. Angry Republicans—think Tom DeLay—are not reasonable, and they’ll cut Dreher down like an old-growth forest. I suspect that Dreher knows this, which is why his book feels less like a call to arms and more like an unintentionally ironic plea for secession. He thinks that right now, reforming the party should take a back seat to building small faith-based communities, which reproduce by home-schooling their children. But there’s a dark side here. Secessionists can turn into nutcases, like the Branch Davidians, and home-schooling can promulgate ignorance and hate, like the home-schooled girls who constitute the Neo-Nazi singing duo Prussian Blue. Truth is, minorities—blacks, Latinos, Jews—are an almost invisible presence in Crunchy Cons. Dreher is right: Our culture and our country have big problems. But much as we’d sometimes like to, we can’t retreat from our ever-shrinking globe. If Dreher could only bring himself to follow his analysis to its logical end—a profound and fundamental reorientation of the national GOP and its internal contradictions— Crunchy Cons would be an important book. In the meantime, it’s a useful piece of a larger and urgent conversation. ■ February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

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GREEN GEAR

Built to Last

These recycled and tech-forward products go the extra mile.

UNPLUGGED $199.95 (rewarestore.com) These solar-powered messenger packs, known as Juice bags, generate electricity for your iPod or PDA.

SOLAR

SURPR

ISE

2 A PIECE OF THE SUN $280 (brunton.com) This waterproof, lightweight (less than a pound), and collapsible solar sheet powers your digital camera, batteries, or cell phone, even in low-light conditions.

www.plentymag.com February/March 2006

P L E N T Y | 37

GREEN GEAR

TA K E I T OUTSIDE

DEEP SLEEP $200 (bigagnes.com) No more slipping off your mattress while you toss and turn on cold nightsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;this revolutionary Lost Ranger sleeping bag integrates your sleeping pad into its own sleeve. Big Agnes bags can also be zipped together for two sleepers if it gets really cold (or hot).

comforts for the camper

RISE AND WINE $13 (thinkgeek.com) This alarm clock generates its own electrical power when you fill the reservoir with water or any electrolytic liquid. Try a coffee, soda, or beerpowered wake-up call.

38 | P L E N T Y

WIND ME UP flashlight, $48; radio, $65 (momastore.org) In emergency situations, self-sufficiency is the name of the game. A 30-second crank of this flashlightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s handle will generate up to 20 minutes of LED light. The AM/FM wind-up radio is hand powered, too, and both work with an AC charge as well.

February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

GREEN GEAR

CARTE BLANCHE $550 (reestore.com) Perhaps the most iconic of landfill fillers, the humble shopping cart is transformed into this hip, functional chair.

creative reuse

TECHNOLOGY SHINES $48 (uncommongoods.com) Ever wonder what happens to your old computers, audio equipment, and TVs? This groovy desk lamp is made from recycled circuit boards.

40 | P L E N T Y

EN C C A HOME

THE TABLES HAVE TURNED $3,000 (uncommongoods.com) Artist Michael Maxwell rescues vintage pinball machines and then rehabs them as one-of-a-kind furniture pieces like this colorful end table.

February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

See the beauty of science at work.

For 52 years, The Nature Conservancy has raced against time to preserve the diversity of life on Earth. That’s why we make every second count. We use science-based plans and innovative tools to protect our natural world for future generations. So far, we’ve preserved 117 million acres—and counting. But there is still much more to do. Help us achieve lasting results. Visit nature.org or call 1-888-2 JOIN TNC.

GREEN GEAR

9 LUCKY BAMBOO (biomega.dk) Biomega’s recently designed Biolove bike is lightweight, sturdy, and made from a rapidly renewable, low-impact material. It also has an internally geared rear hub with a “shaft drive” that’s more efficient at transmitting energy than an old-fashioned chain.

two for the road

42 | P L E N T Y

P E DA L P OWER

RE-CYCLE-ABLE frame only, $2,999; with Shimano XTR components and disc brakes, FOX FRL-80 fork, and Mavic Crossmax SL wheels, $7,199 (merlinbike.com) Merlin, maker of high-end titanium bikes, is now participating in a bicycle recycling program. At tradeinbikes.com, you can find out how much your old two-wheeler will contribute to a down payment on their XLM mountain bike, shown.

February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

Get

PLENTY

Cool design Innovative technology Adventure travel Fine food Eco fashion Healthy living Visionary architecture to subscribe and save 50% off the newsstandprice, call toll free 1-800-316-9006 or go to www.plentymag.com

H E A LT H

GREEN GEAR

fast forward

GO SPEED RACER $10,000 (envbike.com) The good news: This hydrogen fuel-cellpowered motorbike reaches speeds of 50 mph and can travel 100 miles on one tank. Its quiet engine releases only water vapor, and most of its parts are recyclable. The not-so-good news: This is only a prototype—the actual ENV bike won’t be released until early 2007. In the meantime, visit the company’s website, where you can learn more about the bike and how to book a test-ride.

E W O P HYDRO 44 | P L E N T Y

February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

we share the sky

we share the future

Now is the time to join together to protect our world or we could lose all it gives us. To learn how you can help, order your free World Wildlife Fund Action Kit. 800.CALL.WWF

w w w. w o r l d w i l d l i f e . o r g / a c t

To g e t h e r, w e c a n b e a f o r c e f o r n a t u r e .

46 | P L E N T Y

February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

PHOTO © PURE KAUAI

It’s no surprise that spa vacations are popular and growing more so, but lately travelers have been choosing unexpected new settings for their R&R: Adventure spas. Combining rugged sports with a traditional spa experience, these programs push guests to their physical limits and then reward them with as much pampering as they can handle. We’ve chosen the cream of the adventure-spa crop from around the world to help you do some serious hiking, biking, climbing, and kayaking—without ever sacrificing your downtime.

EXTREME Relaxation

Get your game on at these ten adventure spas. BY KATHRYN SHAPIRO

www.plentymag.com February/March 2006

P L E N T Y | 47

48 | P L E N T Y

Hike a Canadian rainforest

February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

PHOTO © JOHN GRANEN (LEFT) RED MOUNTAIN SPA (RIGHT)

Clayoquot Sound

British Columbia’s alpine beauty is the backdrop for the Clayoquot Wilderness Resorts & Spa. Guests can stay either at Quait Bay Floating Resort, a 16-room lodge on stilts in the middle of the bay, or at Bedwell River Outpost, a safari-like wilderness camp comprising 16 luxury tents (with amenities including wood-burning stoves, antique dressers, and wireless Internet access). Located in the Clayoquot Sound Biosphere Reserve, one of the few intact temperate rain forests left in the world, the resort adheres to a strict program of low-impact living: recycling is a must, of course; hydropower from local waterfalls generates the resort’s electricity and hot water; and all adventure tours are nonintrusive to wildlife. Guests can hike through the verdant forest under canopies of The seven-night Eco trees, relax in Adventure Package for two waterfall-fed pools, starts at $8,527 and or explore the includes all meals, unguided activities, and unlimited spa nearby abandoned treatments. mining towns. The Tel: (888) 333-5405 resort also features Web: wildretreat.com For more information on bike, canoe, kayak, the Biosphere Reserve, see and horseback clayoquotbiosphere.org. expeditions, and guests can even learn “bear-mapping”—the art of tracking the animals to determine the overall health of the area’s ecosystem. Rustic-chic rooms are decorated with hand-carved wooden furniture and have no pesky televisions or telephones cluttering them. Foodies probably won’t spend much time in their comfy quarters, though: The restaurant serves three meals of succulent, sustainable cuisine per day, using organic and locally produced ingredients, including artisanal cheeses, free-range chicken, wild salmon and halibut, freshly picked berries, and wild herbs and mushrooms from the rain forest. Guests can even take gourmet backpack lunches on their wilderness expeditions. At the spa, Swedish, shiatsu, Thai, and hot-stone massages are performed on platforms that overlook the estuary; therapists use 100 percent organic oils. More relaxation can be found in the hot tub, which affords a view of the surrounding mountains.

Grand Canyon Climb the red rocks of Utah

The Red Mountain Spa offers an array of rock-centric adventures that include climbing, intense hiking, mountain biking, and geocaching (a type of scavenger hunt using a GPS device). Guests can design their own “boot camps” with the help of personal guides. Go from novice to expert rock climber with one-on-one instruction, or explore the natural beauty of Utah, including the Zion and Bryce Canyon national parks and the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, as you hike challenging mountain trails. The resort organizes more than 30 hikes for a range of skill levels.

www.plentymag.com February/March 2006

Named after the rust-colored terrain in which the resort is set, Red Mountain also boasts a large selection of fitness classes, lectures, and workshops. Go from a “Retro Aerobics” class (remember the Step?) to an archaeology walk, followed by a Southwestern cuisine cooking class and, finally, an acupuncture facial (yes, that means they stick needles in your face) at the resort’s spa. Of course, days don’t have to be this busy; you’re also allowed simply to lie out by the pool.

Rooms for two start at $550 per night; seven-night packages for two start at $5,810 and include all meals, activities, and seven spa treatments per person. Tel: (800) 407-3002 Web: redmountainspa.com

Spa treatments incorporate therapeutic ingredients (mineral salts, muds, herbs, and wildflowers) that are native to the Utah environment. The rooms, decorated in colorful Southwestern patterns, are inspired by the surrounding landscape. In the restaurant, tasty, wholesome cuisine (think prickly pear jam on multigrain toast; coriander-crusted chicken; molasses-glazed elk; vanilla and mascarpone custard) is served buffet style for breakfast and lunch, while dinner, served with wine, is a slightly more formal affair.

P L E N T Y | 49

New York

spiritual pursuits are where the resort shines: the Cayuga Yoga and Meditation Center holds daily classes and also offers such other forms of movement as ai chi, a combination of tai chi and synchronized swimming. New Age avoids gimmicks by going the simple route: the resort is more like a sleepaway camp than a destination spa. Wood cabins house modest rooms, and meals (cereals and baked goods for

Zen Out in the Catskills

breakfast, vegetarian dishes for lunch, and chicken or fish for dinner) are served in a communal dining area. Many of the ingredients are grown on-site in the spa’s gardens and greenhouses. The spa, like the rest of the resort, is understated, even utilitarian. Guests can enjoy a traditional, no-nonsense shiatsu massage—sure to relieve the aches and pains from one too many downward-facing dogs.

PHOTO © NEW AGE HEALTH SPA (LEFT) IHHR HOSPITALITY (RIGHT)

A giant Buddha statue might be more at home in a Balinese temple than in the exercise pavilion of a resort two hours outside New York City, but at the New Age Health Spa, it somehow makes sense. Stressed-out city folk can get centered by hiking the trails that meander through the resort’s wooded setting, venturing to the parks and preserves of the adjacent Catskill Mountains, and climbing on the alpine tower, a vertical obstacle course of ropes, ladders, and poles. And winter visitors can check out the pristine landscape on snowshoes or cross-country skis. But the

Seven-night packages for two start at $3,330 and include all meals and activities. Tel: (800) 682-4348 Web: newagehealthspa.com

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Ganges River Shoot the Rapids in India India might not immediately jump to mind as a destination for world-class white-water rafting, but adventure seekers can paddle like crazy on the sacred Ganges River at Ananda, a spa located 160 miles north of New Delhi. Numerous class IV and V rapids lurk among the soaring Himalayan rock canyons and jagged shorelines of the Ganges. After an intense day on the water, head back to the 75-room, 100-acre property that once served as a residence for the local maharaja (the palace where he lived is now the entryway of the resort). Set in a valley near the Rajaji National Park, the hotel takes full advantage of its awe-inspiring location: all of the rooms have terraces that overlook the river, palace, or

surrounding valley area. Accommodations are minimalist in decor, dominated by natural colors and materials: Wood floors, earth-hued linens, and canopied beds call to mind the sheer magnificence of the surrounding mountains. Ananda is also an authentic Ayurvedic spa, and most of the treatments at its 21,000square-foot health resort draw from this ancient Indian tradition. Mukh Lepa (a centuries-old facial regimen used by Indian women) and Udwarthana (a form of dry massage) sessions will ensure that your aches are soothed and your body is ready for another day of hurtling down the river. On the menu, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll find a combination of Eastern and Western Seven-night packages for two cuisines; meals are light start at $2,975 and include all and healthy, and dishes meals and access to all fitness classes, hiking trips, saunas, steam are often focused around baths, and Jacuzzis. organic herbs and Tel: (808) 949-4131 vegetables. Web: anandaspa.com

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Six-night packages start at $3,700 for two and include all meals, activities, and nightly massage. Tel: 347-416-6517 Web: theislandexperience.com

PHOTO © DOUGLAS ENGLE AND MARTIN MARPEGAN (LEFT) THE BODYHOLIDAY AT LESPORT (RIGHT)

Ilha Grande Detox in Brazil

A day at Brazil’s The Island Experience, located on the remote Ilha Grande, off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, goes a little something like this: 6 a.m. wake-up call; morning yoga class; 500-calorie breakfast; eight-hour kayaking and hiking trip to a remote location for a small lunch; 500-calorie dinner; evening yoga class; hourlong massage session; and a capoeira performance to round off the night. Luckily, it’s not as rigorous as it sounds. Sure, you’ll only get from 1200 to 1500 calories per day, but meals comprise hearty vegetarian dishes that keep you energized. And granted, 6 a.m. is early for a wake-up call while you’re on vacation, but seeing the sun rise over the waters surrounding the island is well worth a couple of yawns. Not to mention that any vacation 52 | P L E N T Y

that includes a daily massage can’t be all that bad. Lodges are rustic and fit beautifully into the exotic natural setting; you’ll enjoy lazy moments swaying in the hammock on your private terrace overlooking the shore. Ilha Grande features more than 100 beaches, and you’ll have the opportunity to kayak to its most secluded stretches of coast. What follows is pure magic: lunch on the sand, snorkeling through the crystal-clear waters, and hiking the rain-forest trails that sit behind the beaches. Brazil’s amazing topography is your playground, and you’ll detox and unwind in its beautiful untouched setting. Six-night packages for two start at $3,700 and include all meals, activities, and nightly massages. February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

St. Lucia Explore the Caribbean reefs

Deep-sea adventure seekers get unlimited beach dives with their rooms at BodyHoliday at LeSport. Immerse yourself in the bluegreen Caribbean waters surrounding the island of St. Lucia, and explore such notable dive sites as Virgin’s Point, an extensive coral garden that is home to a four-foot-long barracuda, and Turtle Reef, a diving area with drops of up to 150 feet. Diving isn’t the only pastime at

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BodyHoliday; guests can windsurf and water-ski, then step onshore for a round of golf, a match of tennis, or one of many fitness classes at the spa. Work with a personal trainer to create your own “BodyAware” fitness regime, or rappel from bridges and rock faces, swim in mountain pools, and hike through a verdant rain forest as part of the resort’s “Walk on the Wild Side” program. Packages include a selection of spa treatments like Swedish massages and deepcleansing facials at the very large and wellequipped Oasis Spa. The facility houses 25

therapy rooms, including several couples’ treatment rooms and a full gym. BodyHoliday’s rooms are fitting for a luxury Caribbean hotel: whitewashed walls with pastel-colored accents, wood furniture, four-poster beds, marble floors, terraces, and verandas. Diners have several options, ranging from the laid-back deli (serving salads, panini, juices, and smoothies) to the buttoned-up Tao (with dishes like tamarind lamb and olive oil–poached mahi mahi). Seven-night packages for two start at $4,870 and include all meals and activities, and nine spa treatments per person. Tel: (800) 544-2883 Web: bodyholiday.com

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Journey through the Arizona desert

If you prefer Frette linens to sleeping under the stars, try Miraval, only 20 minutes from Tucson in the foothills of Arizona’s Santa Catalina Mountains. In keeping with the resort’s luxe experience, intrepid guests of all skill levels can gear up with top-of-the-line equipment to hike, mountain bike, and rock climb in relative comfort (as much as is possible with these activities, anyway). There’s even a desert journey program,

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where would-be survivalists are faced with a variety of environmental challenges including nighttime rock-climbing and 30-foothigh rope bridges. And make sure not to miss the horseback riding: In addition to the standard lessons and trail rides, guests can sign up for the Equine Experience and care for a horse for the duration of their stay. When it’s time to come in from the barn, head to the spa for some serious pampering: The 70-plus treatments include traditional massages and facials as well as more elaborate body therapies such as hot stone treatments, mud wraps, and Thai massages. Then sip a glass of chardonnay at the Cactus Flower Restaurant or Brave Bill Lounge, and follow it with the pear-parsnip soup, sesame-seared ahi tuna, or Roquefort-studded spinach risotto. Finally, kick back in your casual room. Large in size and wellappointed, the accommodations range from the comparatively modest Deluxe Room— with wood accents, slate bathroom floors, and elegant decorations—to the more elaborate Presidential Suite, with leather sofas, Native American textiles, wroughtiron decorations, and a whirlpool tub.

PHOTO © MIRAVAL (LEFT) CHIVA SOM (UPPER RIGHT) HILLS HEALTH RANCH (BOTTOM RIGHT)

Tucson

Seven-night packages for two start at $8,700 and include all meals and activities, and $770 worth of spa/one-onone activity costs per person. Tel: (800) 232-3969 Web: miravalresort.com

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Hua Hin

Choose your own adventure in Thailand

Opened in 1995, the Chiva-Som spa, 150 miles south of Bangkok, has become internationally known for its outdoor activities and spa services. Guests can engage in “adventure training,” pushing themselves to the limit on hikes to traditional temples, bike rides through the countryside, and kayaking trips. Those looking to brush up on their martial-arts skills will enjoy muay Thai, a form of self-defense similar to kick boxing that has been practiced in Thailand for centuries. But visitors who would prefer to simply relax on the beach between their spa services certainly won’t feel left out. The hallmark of Chiva-Som, however, is the spa. In the resort’s massive wellness complex of 40 treatment rooms, guests can choose traditional services like Thai mas-

sage (the country is, after all, its birthplace), or they can opt for more unusual treatments, including chi nei tsang, an abdominal organ massage. Rooms at Chiva-Som blend Asian tradition with more modern design accents like the DVD players that sit on minimalist stands next to Thai sculptures. Guests can choose ocean-view rooms, Thai pavilions (which are built around a lake and boast beautiful views of the surrounding flora and fauna), or suites; all accommodations include outdoor terraces and butler service in their rates. The resort’s kitchen draws from worldwide traditions including

Seven-night packages for two start at $4,830 and include all meals, scheduled activities, and a nightly massage. Tel: (866) 476-1343 Website: chivasom.com

traditional Thai dishes such as berbere, a spicy curry paste that can be served with meat or vegetables.

British Columbia Race huskies in the Canadian Hinterlands

Located on 20,000 acres of land in the Caribou Mountains of British Columbia, the Hills Health Ranch is a great base for a winter spa vacation. This dude ranch-cum-destination spa is surrounded by lakes, hiking and biking trails, and a mini–ski resort with seven lighted runs. From downhill skiing to snowboarding, tubing, and dogsledding, the resort offers a roster of activities to satisfy any adventurer who loves cold weather. Race through a pine forest leading a team of huskies over the snow-covered ground, or skate over an ice-covered lake in the shadows of rows of cedar trees. Back at the ranch, you can warm up in one of 26 hotel-style rooms or one of the ranch’s chaletlike houses. Then park yourself in front of the fire at the 1871 Tea www.plentymag.com February/March 2006

Parlour and have a cup. At mealtimes, spa of 16 treatment rooms. Many of the theracuisine (healthy entrées like baked monkfish pies use homemade rose-hip oil, which the and salmon with cranberry-leek sauce) is resort extracts from the wildflowers that available at the Trail’s End Dining Room; or grow on the property (and for a sustainable try the elaborate menu options (orange-andtake-home gift, they also bottle and sell ginger-crusted their oil). Six-night packages for two start at $2,700 Cornish hen with and include all meals (at the Trail’s End apple stuffing, for Dining Room), select snow activities, example) at 1871, fitness classes, and daily massage. Tel: (800) 668-2233 the resort’s Web: spabc.com upscale restaurant. Either way, you’ll dine to the notes of a piano or clarinet played by a local musician. Next, head over to the large, barnlike spa for some pampering in one P L E N T Y | 55

Kauai Cater to your every whim on an untouched island

Seven-night packages for two start at $7,950 and include all meals and select activities and spa treatments (your choice). Tel: (866) 457-7873 Web: purekauai.com

PHOTO ÂŠ PURE KAUAI

Hawaiiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Pure Kauai is for the spoiled child in each of us. Located in the resort town of Princeville on the island of Kauai, this spa is all about customization: Guests stay in private vacation homes and create their own schedules. Surf, scuba dive, and take yoga lessons whenever you want (even at midnight), or play all day on a zip line and relax at night with a massage. Private chefs cook your meals, and personal guides direct your activities. The private villas that make up the resort are scattered throughout the island, from the bungalows in the high hills to the palatial beachfront estates that sleep eight. All are tastefully and elegantly decorated with island influences. There is no centralized spa, but massage therapists make house calls, so you can enjoy a blissful, tensionmelting deep-tissue massage and immediately slide into the comfy bed beside you.

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PLENTY EXPECTS THE UNEXPECTED

The green movement is gaining ground even in the most unlikely places, and this issue is dedicated to uncommon eco-crusaders. In the pages that follow, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll read about a beekeeper who went from being bee-curious to championing the little stingers, and about the cofounder of Cisco Systems, who is spending her fortune raising endangered farm animals. And speaking of crusades, get the scoop on evangelicals who are spreading the good word about the importance of protecting Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s green earth. Even high-end apartment-hunters are getting in on the act: By spending big bucks on greener real estate, they help pave the way for eco-friendly architecture to become the norm. We hope these stories inspire you to find creative new ways to tread lightly upon the earth.

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SAVING

Grace

BIBLE-THUMPER THAT HE IS, the Reverend Rich Cizik, tall, lanky, slightly stoop-shouldered, stood in the September heat of midtown Manhattan bellowing into a microphone. His subject was the Book of Revelation, and he was hoping to reach the ears not only of his audience but also of the unconverted who happened to wander by. “In Revelation,” he thundered against the wind, against an incredible din, “in Revelation we’re told that God—hear this,” he paused, tilting his heavy head forward. “God will destroy those who destroy the environment.” God will destroy those who destroy the environment? This was a new one for many in the crowd, a group of earnest Christian college students and others participating in a fast to help end extreme poverty around the globe. “What an amazing statement about the world that God created and cares about!” Cizik continued. “Isn’t it amazing?” Though he was sweating in a pin striped suit, Cizik (pronounced “size-ick”) is not your average street preacher. In fact, he has friends on Capitol Hill, friends in the White House. High-profile nominees for public office petition for his support. Cizik is the public-policy voice of the National Association of Evangelicals, a 30-millionmember group of born-again Christians—the type of people who voted more than 3 to 1 in favor of George Bush in the 2004 election. Cizik is a kingmaker. And in case you’re wondering whether he’s one of those progressive evangelicals like Jim Wallis, author of the New York Times 2005 bestseller God’s Politics (HarperSanFrancisco), forget about it. Cizik opposes abortion, opposes marriage for same-sex couples, opposes stem-cell research. Cizik is the deepest Republican red.

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IKE THE

And yet, he continued on that hot September afternoon, “I have told people, ‘Look, you’ve got to care about this because when you die, God is not going to ask you about how he created the earth’”— a reference to the recent public debate on so-called intelligent design. “He’s going to ask you, ‘What did you do with what I created?’” In recent years Cizik has become one of the nation’s foremost climate crusaders, urging action in Congress, the White House, and around the world to stop global warming. But in his concern about the environment and the people and animals living in it, he’s hardly alone these days. Joining him is the Reverend Jim Ball, who heads the Evangelical Environmental Network. In 2003 Ball and his wife, Kara, logged more than 4,400 miles on their blue Toyota Prius as part of their “What Would Jesus Drive?” campaign. The Academy of Evangelical Scientists and Ethicists recently joined the progressive Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life and Restoring Eden, another evangelical group, to form the Noah Alliance, which this fall filled the airwaves of Christian radio with 60-second spots in support of the politically endangered Endangered Species Act. At Eastern University, an evangelical college in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, 37 percent of the electricity is now generated by wind power, at students’ behest. Wait. Aren’t these the people who think we don’t need to care about the environment because Jesus will soon be returning (either before or after the apocalypse, depending on whom you ask)? Aren’t they the ones who are suspicious of liberal environmentalists and those creationism-denying folk in the scientific world? Apparently not. Well, at least not all of them. “In the last year and a half, there’s been substantial growth in visibility of evangelicals for the environment,” says Reverend Ron Sider, a professor of theology, February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

PHOTOGRAPH BY STUART CONWAY

HOW EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS ARE ENERGIZING THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT. BY LIZ GALST

HOLY WATER: Cizik and other green evangelicals believe we have a duty to protect the planet.

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THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL: Ball at the “What Would Jesus Drive” pledge booth (top left), and images of the crew driving the hybrid and stopping for interviews. In the center, an issue of Creation Care magazine.

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SAVING Grace holistic ministry, and public policy at Eastern’s seminary, and founder of Evangelicals for Social Action, an advocacy group. At press time, major evangelical leaders, marshaled by Cizik and Ball, were close to releasing a climate-change statement calling the problem real, urgent, and in need of constructive governmental solutions. And there’s more work to come, especially at the leadership level, where Cizik and Ball are focusing a lot of their considerable energies these days. That’s because evangelicals in the pews are pretty likely to do what their religious leaders tell them to do. Indeed, focus groups conducted for the National Association of Evangelicals and Ball’s Evangelical Environmental Network found that if churchgoers were instructed by their pastors on environmental issues, “they would change everything from the detergent they buy, the cars they drive, the politicians they vote for,” Cizik says. Given that there are between 50 and 54 million adult evangelicals in the United States, and they have the highest rates of religious service attendance in the country, green preaching could have a pretty big impact not only on the climate and the environment (which some evangelicals, preferring a term that better reflects their cosmology, refer to as “creation”) but also on the largest threat to the global environment today: the Republican Party of the United States.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF JIM BALL AND THE EVANGELICAL ENVIRONMENTAL NETWORK

there was Silent Spring, Rachel Carson’s 1962 classic about the impact of pesticides on the environment. Five years later a groundbreaking article in the journal Science, called “The Historic Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” indicted Christianity for an alleged anti-nature stance. In the 1970s came Earth Day. Such happenings didn’t provoke Americans to become environmentalists en masse. But prevalent religious groups—Catholics, Jews, mainline Christians—saw these events as a call to rethink their relationship to the natural world. Indeed, as early as 1969, Reform Judaism, one of the three major branches of the American Jewish community, spoke out against pollution, urging local, state, and federal government to “remove or ameliorate the growing threats of environmental pollution and to afford protection to the environment.” In the early 1970s, Pope Paul VI called the earth’s degradation “a wide-ranging social problem which concerns the entire human family.” And not long thereafter, the liberal Christian theologian John Cobb published the book Is it Too Late?: A Theology of Ecology (Macmillan, 1971), which “made environmentalism central to liberal Christian thinking,” says Mark Wallace, a religion professor at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. Evangelicals, however, remained largely unmoved. “There were some prophetic figures in the evangelical community,” says Paul Gorman, founder and executive director of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment. “But it was harder to move this forward organizationally or politically than with some of the other religious groups.” In their devotional life, evangelicals are characterized by literalist interpretations of scripture, a personal relationship with Jesus, and a belief that he is the one true path to the divine. None of which preN THE BEGINNING

cludes a concern for the environment. In the beginning, Genesis tells us, God called for humans to steward the whole of creation. So why haven’t evangelicals been attracted to environmentalism in large numbers? (In fact, it’s something of a truism in evangelical circles that evangelicals like the environment; it’s the environmentalists they can’t stand.) “There’s a sense that environmentalism is tied to the worship of nature,” rather than God, says Andy Crouch, a columnist for Christianity Today, the nation’s largest evangelical news magazine, with a circulation of 150,000. In Crouch’s meetings with environmentalists, he has never encountered a pantheist, Gaia worshiper, or neopagan. Nevertheless, he says, “somehow that’s the way it’s been written into the evangelical imagination.” Ditto for the idea that environmentalists are godless communists (a notion that has some currency among older evangelicals); that environmentalists are anti–free enterprise (evangelicals tend to maintain a traditional, though not theologically mandated, disposition in favor of free enterprise); and that environmentalists rely too heavily on science, which is, after all, the source of all of that anticreationist bunk. “You come out for evolution and it’s like, click, turn this guy off,” Cizik explains. Still, evangelicals are only slightly less likely to favor strict environmental regulation than the American public as a whole: 52 percent to 55 percent, according to a 2004 survey by the Bliss Institute at the University of Akron in Ohio. By contrast, in the same survey, strict environmental regulation was supported by 60 percent of Catholics, 61 percent of mainline Protestants, and 67 percent of Jews. “It’s been harder to get our community to really embrace this issue than the other three [major religious groups],” explains Sider.

“BY 2015 A MAJORITY OF EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS WILL UNDERSTAND CREATION CARE”—CARE FOR THE ENVIRONMENT—“TO BE A NATURAL PART OF BEING A DISCIPLE OF JESUS CHRIST AND WILL ACT ON THIS VISION.”

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But, apparently, not impossible. In the mid-1990s, amid American religious leaders’ growing concerns about the environment, Sider, among others, heeded a call from Gorman and helped found the Evangelical Environmental Network. Their hope was that bornagain Christians who wouldn’t listen to environmentalists would listen to information about the environment from people they trusted. Today the group has 23 partner organizations, including the Christian housing group Habitat for Humanity, Sider’s Evangelicals for Social Action, and the InterVarsity International Christian Fellowship. “Our stated purpose is to declare the lordship of Christ over all creation,” Ball explains. Their primary goal is equally robust: “By 2015 a majority of evangelical Christians will understand creation care”—care for the environment—“to be a natural part of being a disciple of Jesus Christ and will act on this vision.” P L E N T Y | 63

SAVING Grace

HRISTIANITY IS FILLED with stories of transformative personal encounters. The “doubting” disciple Thomas, having missed the appearance of the risen Christ among his fellows, encounters him a week later and cries out “My Lord and my God!” Paul, a persecutor of Christians, meets the spectral Jesus on the road and becomes Christianity’s greatest popularizer. Transformative encounters have shaped the growth of evangelical environmentalism as well. Ball had one in graduate school; prior to beginning his studies, he had no interest in ecology. He even teased a fellow student when she told him that she intended to study the relationship between Christianity and nature. The woman had a 10-yearold son, and during the conversation, Ball pointed at a bug on the sidewalk. “Do you think we should care more for this ant than we do for your son?” he asked her. His friend failed to take the bait, suggesting instead that Ball read the Bible. It worked: Ball’s 1997 dissertation explored evangelical ideas of stewardship and whether they could be applied to the current problems of pollution, global warming, and species extinction. Cizik also had a transformational encounter, abetted by Ball. In spring 2002 Ball invited Cizik to accompany him to the upcoming Forum 2002 on Global Climate Change, held at St. Anne’s College in Oxford, England. Ball hardly knew Cizik at the time. But, Ball says, “I felt he was the most strategically placed conservative evangelical on the fence on this issue.” Cizik had no previous involvement in environmental issues, and none in global warming. In the late 1990s he had persuaded the then president of the National Association of Evangelicals that the organization needn’t join other religious groups in highlighting the issue. “There was a debate raging in our community,” Cizik recalls. “I felt that absent any compelling reason, the National Association of Evangelicals shouldn’t weigh in on one side or the other.” At the forum he met Sir John Houghton, a fellow evangelical who is cochair of the Science Assessment Working Group of the United

Evangelicals] for 22 years. I became head of the [government affairs] office in ’96—so there’s a lot of sin to account for.” And account he has. He has convinced many of the people he knows to ditch their conventional cars in favor of hybrids. But more important, because of his access to Republican Party bigwigs, he may well change the course of American environmentalism.

IZIK HAS DEVELOPED A PLAN, a multipronged approach to change not only evangelicals but the Republican Party as well. “I divide things up into vision, strategy, and tactics,” he explains. The vision is an environmentally sustainable world. The strategy is to focus on the way environmental issues impact human beings, rather than plants and animals. “For millions of Americans,” he explained matter-of-factly during his September speech, “to talk about the environment just turns them off.” And his tactics? Work with the major players in the evangelical and political world—the rest will follow. In June 2004 Cizik and Ball brought together 28 church leaders, including the Reverend Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, to study scripture and the environment in context. The result was the Sandy Cove Covenant and Invitation, which reads: “We invite our brothers and sisters in Christ to engage with us the most pressing environmental questions of our day, such as health threats to families and the unborn, the negative effects of environmental degradation on the poor, God’s endangered creatures, and the important current debate about human-induced climate change.” It’s not only the leadership Cizik and Ball are hoping to reach. To build support for such positions among the laity, Cizik and Ball have been working the pews, speaking in churches, starting a creationcare newsletter, even putting together a global-warming video to show at congregations and prayer meetings. Ball’s 2003 “What Would Jesus Drive?” campaign was an eight-state, eleven-city tour, during which he met with thousands of evangelicals in churches, at Christian music festivals, and at local, state, and federal government offices. The tour’s title might sound hokey to nonevangelicals. But, explains John C. Green, a University of Akron political scientist who specializes in evangelicals’ political behavior, it was the perfect question to ask such an audience. “Evangelicals are especially concerned with Jesus as an example of correct living and as a guide to morality,” Green says. “‘What would Jesus drive’ is just the kind of question evangelicals respond to.” Ball has no hard numbers to cite, but in true evangelical fashion, the responses have come through compelling personal testimonies. Virginia Hutton, the director of children’s programming at Nicholasville, Kentucky’s public library, for instance, got a “What Would Jesus Drive?” brochure and, she says, asked herself, what would Jesus drive? “That gives you a lot to think about,” she says. Prior to the campaign, she explains, “I had never put Jesus and driving together.” But afterward she stopped driving her old pickup the ten miles to work and back and started riding her bike instead.

HE HAS CONVINCED MANY OF THE PEOPLE HE KNOWS TO DITCH THEIR CONVENTIONAL CARS IN FAVOR OF HYBRIDS. BUT MORE IMPORTANT, BECAUSE OF HIS ACCESS TO REPUBLICAN PARTY BIGWIGS, HE MAY WELL CHANGE THE COURSE OF AMERICAN ENVIRONMENTALISM. Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the group surveys and reports on the scientific and technical literature about climate change). During the conference, Cizik and Houghton “had some good talks and nice walks,” Cizik says. That Houghton was an evangelical helped Cizik trust him and his agenda. As Ball had hoped, participation in Forum 2002 transformed Cizik. “I had this incredible conviction that I had been going in the wrong direction in life and I really needed to change course,” Cizik says. “At that point I’d been with the [National Association of 64 | P L E N T Y

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Indeed, while born-again he cannot be reelected.” Christians are a bit behind the “He’s going to need every sincurve on environmentalism, gle evangelical vote in western Green says, his research shows Pennsylvania he can find,” Cizik that “slowly but surely” creation continues. “And wait until he care is “filtering down to everyfinds out that Rich Cizik has been day evangelicals.” in all those churches in western Ball’s campaign seems to have Pennsylvania, talking about crehad a similar effect on at least some ation care.” of the elected officials he visited. Little Rock mayor Jim Dailey “states that he had never considered LL OF THIS comes as a fuel economy and fleet purchases tremendous relief to environmenfrom a religious perspective,” Ball talists, who’ve been watching the wrote favorably in his “What Bush-Cheney GOP push the earth Would Jesus Drive?” tour blog and all of its inhabitants closer to (whatwouldjesusdrive.net/journal). the brink. “I’ve been doing this But his meetings with federal work for eight-plus years,” says officials have yet to substantially Reverend Sally Bingham, an change the governing party’s Episcopal priest who serves as the “what-me-worry?” consensus on executive director of The climate change. The same goes Regeneration Project, an interfaith for the meetings Cizik has had. group that works with religious The powerful Oklahoma communities and congregations Republican Jim Inhofe, head of across the country to help stop the Senate Committee on global warming. “This is the best Environment and Public Works, news I’ve heard. I think it’s very has gone so far as to accuse Cizik exciting.” Bingham hopes this will of being in bed with “wacko envigive born-again Christians someronmentalists.” thing on which to train their public Still, in the past five years DRIVING FORCE: Cizik has convinced colleagues to purchase fuel-efficient cars. policy attentions, rather than aborCizik has seen a lot of his public tion and same-sex relationships. policy agenda realized. That— “I’m delighted they’re going to and his love of Jesus—has given him a great deal of confidence. focus on something that I see as a great deal more important,” she “Changing the policy [on global warming] is not going to be very says. hard,” he said in a September interview. After Hurricane Katrina and Vicki Arroyo, director of policy analysis for the Pew Center on the continuing fiasco in Iraq, Cizik observed, “the Republican Party Global Climate Change, is similarly enthused. Like Bingham, she itself is ready for some new policies.” doesn’t share the evangelical agenda on issues like abortion. But, she As proof, he cites a conversation he had recently with the staff says, “I think they’re serving an important role in that they have director of the GOP conference committee, which sets policy in the access to people who traditional environmental groups don’t have Senate. As Cizik recalls, the staffer told him, “‘Rich, we shouldn’t be access to. They can open doors that others can’t.” attacking you. We should be thanking you. You’re an early-warning Here’s how they might go about it. First, for the near future, evansystem that something’s going wrong here.’” (An early-warning sysgelical environmentalists will probably work in some kind of distant tem would have sounded about 20 years ago. But let’s not split hairs.) coalition with environmental groups. “They’ve made it clear that Cizik plans to use his power in the art of the political game. they’ll do it themselves, in their way,” says Bingham. “The downside “Creation care isn’t as important an issue as abortion—not yet,” of that is they have to reinvent the wheel.” he says. “And I don’t even see it in ’08. But we don’t need to change But Ball sees it differently. “Eventually, we’ll probably do somethe whole Republican Party; we just need to sensitize the thing with environmentalists,” he says. “Our major goals are the leadership.” same. But it’s not the right move for us right now because of the hosThe first leader in line for Cizik’s sensitization is Pennsylvania’s tility toward environmentalists. And because we have to establish our Rick Santorum, the Republicans’ No. 3 man in the senate, who is own voice in the public arena.” up for reelection in November. At press time, Santorum was runToward that end, the second part of the creation-care agenda: the ning between ten and twenty points behind Democratic rival Bob Evangelical Environmental Network plans to continue working Casey. (Abortion is not a variable in the election, because both within its evangelical flock—religious leaders, politicians, highCasey and Santorum are against it.) In early September Santorum profile members of the business community, lay people sitting had called Cizik’s office, requesting a meeting. “He doesn’t even down in the pews. know why he needs to have a meeting with me,” Cizik asserts. “But And let’s hope it works. Because, as Cizik told his audience on I’ll make a prediction. If Rick Santorum doesn’t come forward with that sweaty September afternoon, “as evangelicals go, so goes the a good statement about what he intends to do about climate change, nation.” Or, at least, so goes the Republican Party. ■

PHOTOGRAPH BY STUART CONWAY

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ANIMAL MAGNETISM: Lerner and her Shire horses take a break from carriagedriving (above); bed-headed Highland cattle mill about on the farm (right).

The Compassionate

CARNIVORE WHY HIGH-TECH ENTREPRENEUR SANDY LERNER IS SPENDING HER FORTUNE ON LOW-TECH FARMING. BY FRANCES CERRA WHITTELSEY

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GETTY IMAGES PLEASE PUT IN PROPER CREDIT

AS I WALK TOWARD THE FENCE of one of the corrals at Ayrshire Farm in northern Virginia, dozens of foot-tall piglets come racing over, their ears flapping as they run. They push against one another, trying to shoulder closer to the fence so they can sniff my hand, making snorty noises with their tiny snouts. They are Gloucestershire Old Spots, one of the endangered breeds of farm animals that Sandy Lerner raises on nearly 1,000 acres of fields, woods, and pastures, crowned by a 42-room stone mansion. The farm is the latest venture for Lerner, a feisty woman who is using her business acumen and prodigious talents to live harmoniously with her environmental values. The 50-year-old February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

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The Compassionate CARNIVORE

Lerner is a hands-on advocate of humane and organic farming practices. She bought and rebuilt Ayrshire with part of the fortune she made as the cofounder of Cisco Systems, one of the most successful high-technology companies in the world. Objecting to the squalid indoor facilities in which most American food animals are raised today and to the unnatural food, drugs, and hormones that they receive, Lerner has made her farm a 21st-century model of centuries-old farming practices. “The farm is about slow food, about food not traveling thousands of miles,” Lerner explains. “It’s about family farms and losing about 10 percent of our farmland every year on average. I would much rather be dependent on foreign oil than foreign food.” Lerner’s philosophy is evident on my tour of Ayrshire. Piglets, baby turkeys, rare breeds of cattle, and Shire horses—the giants once bred to carry knights with their full suits of armor—forage and graze on the rambling grounds. Lerner rides the Shires for leisure and has a collection of antique carriages for them to pull. The farm itself is a manicured manor in the style of English landed estates. The animals live in spacious pastures and spotless enclosures, or, as in the case of the older pigs, in wooded areas where they can forage freely and escape bad weather in hay shelters that Lerner refers to as “hog Hyatts.” Roads wind past ancient white oaks, organic vegetable gardens, orchards protected against deer by beagle sentinels, and scientifically managed compost and animal-waste facilities. The entire operation is designed to be self-sustaining. And Lerner herself lives simply—to a point. While she could reside with her cats in the farm’s Georgian mansion, a grand affair with a columned entrance and a copper roof studded with chimneys, 68 | P L E N T Y

she prefers to make her home in a small cottage on the grounds. She uses the mansion for, among other unusual interests, candlelight balls where she and her guests, in 18th-century costumes, dance to Mozart and Haydn. Lerner has pursued her fancies ever since she and her ex-husband lost control of Cisco to venture capitalists in 1990. At age 35, she walked away with tens of millions of dollars in Cisco’s stock. Small and slender, with hazel eyes and a strong nose that turns up at the tip, the newly rich Lerner dyed her hair blue and began riding motorcycles and jousting on horseback. She also turned her fine mind and extraordinary energy to giving away her money. A devotee of the English novelist Jane Austen, she spent millions restoring Chawton, the estate of Austen’s brother, turning it into a library and center for the study of early writing by English women. She donated her collection of 10,000 rare volumes and manuscripts of women’s writing to the library. On Lerner’s 40th birthday, her aunt told her that she should “lose the jeans and T-shirt and get some make-up.” She tried department store makeup but rejected it as too stereotypically feminine and model-like. Wanting to “look like myself, only better,” she founded her own makeup company, Urban Decay, with the irreverent motto “Does Pink Make You Puke?” In 2000 she sold the company to LVMH, the French luxury-goods conglomerate. She still uses the “Storm Drain” nail polish that she formulated, insisting that it stays on “even when I screw things in with my fingernails.” These days the blue hair is a thing of the past. When we met, she wore her long, dark brown hair gathered in a blue scrunchie, but the jeans were back, more fitting now for her new career as a farmer, February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY AYRSHIRE FARM

“THE FARM IS ABOUT SLOW FOOD, FOOD NOT TRAVELING THOUSANDS OF MILES,” LERNER EXPLAINS.

along with sneakers and a blue striped and embroidered shirt. For Lerner, taking up farming was, in fact, a return to her roots. Born in Phoenix, Arizona, she was sent to live on a pear and cattle farm in California with her aunt and uncle after her parents divorced. Always spirited and unafraid of speaking her mind, she once told a 4-H judge he wasn’t qualified for the job because he didn’t recognize the breed of her shaggy steer (a Highland short-horn) and called it a yak. She saw no future in small-scale farming, however, and enrolled in college, where she discovered the new world of computers and became one of the first people ever to receive an advanced degree in statistical computing from Stanford University. It was there that she met her former husband, Leonard Bosack. When the two, who remain good friends, first launched Cisco from their home in the San Francisco Bay Area, Lerner became the business manager despite her technical expertise. “Len is a bona fide space alien,” she explains in her blunt fashion. “On Len’s scale I’m not a tech player, but to anyone else I’m a supernerd.” Like her interest in farming, Lerner’s passion for sustainable food also runs deep. She was a vegetarian for 30 years after she learned of the horrors perpetrated in factory farms, known in the industry as “concentrated animal feeding operations.” These enterprises raise large percentages of the meat and milk produced in the United States. For example, only 3 percent of hog farms produce 50 percent of all hogs, while only 3.5 percent of dairy farms—those with herds of 1,000 or HOME ON THE RANGE: Lerner’s menagerie includes rare breeds of many traditional farm animals. www.plentymag.com February/March 2006

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The Compassionate CARNIVORE

THE PUB BECAME THE FIRST RESTAURANT IN AMERICA CERTIFIED BY HUMANE FARM ANIMAL CARE AS SERVING ONLY HUMANELY RAISED FOOD.

more—produce slightly less than one-third of the milk supply. But now that Lerner raises her own cattle, she eats meat with a clear conscience, believing that those animals’ purpose is to become food, and that their breeds would become extinct if they were not commercially valuable. She even takes pleasure in discussing the different flavors of the beef she raises. She describes the meat of her Ancient White Park cattle as “very subtle. The longer you chew, the more flavor comes out, like an old Bordeaux wine.” In contrast, meat from her Scottish Highland cattle is flavorful and robust, “like 70 | P L E N T Y

a California red.” She owns one of only eight White Park bulls in the world and keeps the herd primarily to ensure survival of their gene pool. “Besides,” she adds, “I think they’re very pretty.” We stop to admire them on our way to the local pub for dinner, their white faces and bodies set off perfectly by black horns, noses, ears, and feet. The pub, Hunter’s Head Tavern, is located a few minutes from the farm; Lerner founded it in 2001. Last year the pub became the first restaurant in America certified by Humane Farm Animal Care as serving only humanely raised food, which is supplied by Lerner’s farm. She orders a hamburger made with meat from her Highland cattle, eating it with gusto. Lerner is forceful in her denunciation of factory farms. In the United States, “we have dairy cows that have never seen grass,” she says. “They have 100-pound udders because they are given bovine growth hormone, and their legs go. They die young, and the factory farms throw them away like Kleenex.” In the United States, laws that make cruelty to animals a crime do not apply to farm animals. Chris Galen, spokesperson for the National Milk Producers Federation, concedes that “there are dairy cows that don’t get to graze on grass,” and that there may be some cows whose unnaturally heavy udders bring them to an early death. But this outcome is not typical, he adds, because “prudent farmers wouldn’t want a herd that couldn’t walk and died before they fulfilled their potential for food production.” Lerner regards these large-scale operations as unsustainable. “Consumers only pay part of the cost [of factory-farmed food] at the cash register,” she insists. “The environmental costs, the cancers growing at alarming rates—all these are hidden costs.” Lerner admits that her farm is not yet profitable, largely, she says, because it was in bad condition when she bought it in 1996. But she intends to change that and expects the poultry and pig production to make money soon. Over the past ten years, Lerner has received several awards and honors for her activism and support of animal rights causes, including being named Humanitarian of the Year by and receiving the Humane Achievement Award from Friends of the Animals. Cisco Systems endowed a professorship at her alma mater, Stanford University, in her and Leonard’s names. Until her tavern was certified humane, Lerner was convinced that most Americans didn’t care about how farm animals were raised. But after the certification was publicized, she said, “people came from Iowa just to eat here, and we had a deluge of people trying to buy our meat. I was absolutely floored that anyone gave a damn. People do care.” But clearly more important to her is the pleasure she gets from preserving the traditional ways of farming, and eating. “To have produced it myself, to eat what I grew—you can tell people that this is as good as it gets,” she says. “It’s very cool.” ■ February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

SUSTAINABLE INSIDE AND OUT: Lernerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pub dishes up green grub in an old-time setting (above), while her animals enjoy the great outdoors (below, left, and opposite page).

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Adventures in

BEEKEEPING IT’S NOT JUST THE HONEY THAT MAKES TENDING A HIVE SO REWARDING. BY SUSAN M. BRACKNEY

THE TRUTH IS, I WOULDN’T BE A BEEKEEPER if it weren’t for a strange man I’d never met who fell in love with a lady who was allergic to bees. The pair got married, and, not long after, the fellow sold his hives, honey extractor, smoker, veils, gloves, and back issues of Bee Culture magazine—all easily worth thousands of dollars—to a dear friend of mine for only 250 bucks. I thought it was all rather touching, not to mention quite the haul, as my friend turned right around and gifted the equipment to me. He knew I’d always been curious about beekeeping, which, I reasoned, was surely a badass hobby, like riding motorcycles or welding. Timid and a bit mousy, I figured that beekeeping—with its mysterious veils and threats of stings—might help bolster my image. I’ve since learned that raising the insects is not so badass after all. My honeybees are, for the most part, gentle creatures, and beekeeping is about as dangerous as collecting state quarters. Far more important, honeybees are in serious trouble: They’re running out of habitat; being decimated by pesticides, parasitic mites, and disease; and losing their graying keepers, who pass away before passing on their apiculture knowledge. That honeybees are neither bald-eagle majestic nor pygmy-rabbit cute hasn’t helped their cause, either. But there is more to save in the environment than what lifts our spirits or touches our hearts, and it all needs our help. So in addition to my usual rinsing out recyclable bottles and planting only heirloom veggies in the garden, I ordered two pounds of bees and a queen from a mom-and-pop apiary in Alabama and have since done all I can to give Apis mellifera a leg up in my own backyard, in south central Indiana. At first I was pragmatic. I leafed through the old Bee Culture magazines but quickly deemed the articles much too jargony. 72 | P L E N T Y

February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

PHOTOGRAPH LEFT AND INSET BY MICHAEL WHITE; PHOTO UPPER RIGHT BY CHARLES RUSSO

BUZZ-WORTHY: Author Susan M. Brackney (left page) and San Francisco-based beekeeper Tom Chester (above) with their bees; a close-up of a busy hive (lower left).

Requeening? Reducer? Bah! Emerging badass that I was, I hurled myself into the task without instruction. But having the bees as my teachers was like being the only student in a school with 30,000 principals, each tapping a paddle in the palm of her hand. They “instructed” me with multiple stings, and, swollen and sore, I dragged myself to the library to regroup with a few beginning beekeeping books. Things are much better between us now. Before I go to the hives that I keep in my fenced-in garden, I light some dried punk wood inside a handheld contraption vaguely reminiscent of the Tin Man’s www.plentymag.com February/March 2006

head. While the wood bits cook down to glowing embers, I step into a pair of white coveralls and tape up the entryways in my sleeves and pant cuffs. Then I put on a pair of thick, rubber gloves and don a straw hat and mesh veil. Fresh punk placed on the now glowing embers and a pump of the attached bellows gets the Tin Man smoking; I use tiny puffs from this to calm the bees and direct their movements in the hive. With a small pry bar, I take the hive apart box by box to inspect each of the comb-laden frames inside. It’s a veritable city of bees here, and everyone has a job. If I’m careful, they won’t pay me much attention when I stop my own work long enough to watch theirs. Some busy themselves tending to the young. Some are chewing up wax to create new comb. Some struggle with carting off the dead. I could watch from this vantage for hours, but their patience with me is limited. The tenor of their buzzing tells me when I’m starting to press my luck; what began as a major-chord hum shifts to a louder, minor-y rumble. I finish performing maintenance or collecting honey, reassemble the hive, and retreat, sweaty from the gear but absolutely exhilarated. Still, it does hurt a little each time I harvest my bees’ honey. Just over a teaspoon represents one honeybee’s life’s work. That’s a lot of pressure! Always I thank them and tell them how proud I am of their accomplishments. And I’m careful never to take too much. In hot weather I find my bees forming a mat, or beard, on the front of the hive, beating their little wings furiously to create an air-condiP L E N T Y | 73

Adventures in BEEKEEPING

UP IN SMOKE: Brackney soothes the bees with a hypnotizing puff of smoke to prevent any harmful stings while she works (above); Chicago goes green by putting beehives and landscaping on the roofs of its city buildings (right).

tioning effect, but in the winter they depend on their honey stores. The queen bee nestles in the center of the hive, with the worker bees clustered around her in a ball. The bees along the outside of the ball eat honey to keep all the others warm. When the outlying bees need a break, they trade spots with bees closer to the center, and the cycle continues until spring. Many bees die during the process, but, with any luck, enough survive to keep the queen warm and well fed. And that’s why I’m so cautious about how much honey I take; I’d never forgive myself if they ran out of it just so I could sweeten my tea. SOMETIMES I WONDER if the bees have any idea what a big help they are to the rest of us. Bees visit flowers to gather not only nectar but also protein-packed pollen. They moisten and chew pollen grains, roll them into little balls, and expertly stash them in the baskets attached to their hind legs for safekeeping until they can deposit their “groceries” at the hive. Excess pollen often sticks to the honeybees’ tiny hairs and is invariably transferred between male and female flowers and flower parts, ensuring the production of seeds and fruit. This process translates to food for us. One of every three or four bites of food we eat is the result of the activity of pollinators. And it’s estimated that $15 billion in annual domestic agricultural production is directly dependent on hives, which pollinate about 90 different crops. 74 | P L E N T Y

But the bee population is in swift decline. Back in beekeeping’s heyday—around the end of World War II, when Uncle Sam was teaching GIs to keep bees—there were nearly 5 million honeybee colonies. But by the 1950s, the numbers began to plummet. Today it’s estimated that there are from 2 million to 2.5 million colonies in the United States. Researchers have only recently begun to create baselines from which to measure the drop, but so far, according to Matthew Shepherd, pollinator program director for the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, the news is pretty bad no matter whom you ask: “In the last couple of years, 50 percent of the hives have died off. Some people are saying more like 70 or 80 percent. That’s an incredible decline happening almost instantly.” Feral bee populations have dwindled, too. Dewey Caron, a professor of entomology and wildlife ecology at the University of Delaware, notes that along with the decline of kept hives, “we’ve also lost wild bees that were in trees, bees that were in old buildings, bees that were in the drier Southwest in rock caves.” He adds, “Most everyone will say their numbers have declined 90 to 95 percent on the West Coast and in the Southwest, Midwest, and New England states.” Only 50 years ago those wild bees were the large-and-incharge agricultural pollinators of their day. Farmers generally took natural pollination as a given. “Back then a hive was kind of considered an insurance policy if your pollination failed,” Shepherd explains. “Now the assumption is you get a honeybee hive because you have to.” Pesticide use is also a problem. Jerry Bromenshenk, a biologist and research professor at the University of Montana, has worked with bees for nearly 30 years and says he has never before seen so many reports of pesticide harm to managed bees, noting, “The problem is even worse for wild bees.” In part, Caron adds, we have mosquitoes to thank: “In the name of public health, we’ve got public agencies contracting for the spraying of large areas. That didn’t occur prior to West Nile virus.” Other possible reasons for the decline are parasitic mites, diseases like American foul brood, and Africanized bees, which have displaced their more docile European counterparts in the Southwest. Lately, finding enough hives to pollinate crops like apples, blueberries, and almonds has become increasingly tricky. And we are already seeing the effects in our local produce sections. Last year 550,000 acres of almonds were grown in California’s San Joaquin and Sacramento valleys, but there were barely enough honeybees to pollinate them, which drove the price of hives from $50 to nearly twice that. Every acre of almonds requires the pollination help of at least two honeybee hives, which comes out to 1.1 million hives and huge cost increases for farmers and, ultimately, us. “We’re going to have less of that produce available to us; the quality of that produce is probably going to drop off, and more of it will have to be imported from overseas,” Bromenshenk says. A hive shortage would “radically affect how efficient we are at producing our own fruits, nuts, and vegetables.” February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

WANT TO KEEP BEES?

PHOTOGRAPH UPPER LEFT BY MICHAEL WHITE; CENTER PHOTO COURTESY CHICAGO CITY HALL

BACK IN BEEKEEPING’S HEYDAY—AROUND THE END OF WORLD WAR II, WHEN UNCLE SAM WAS TEACHING GIS TO KEEP BEES—THERE WERE NEARLY 5 MILLION HONEYBEE COLONIES.

Before you buy your own apiculture gear and a few pounds of starter bees— and, of course, a queen—ask a local beekeeper to show you the ropes, or contact your state or county beekeeping association. For a comprehensive who’s who and some beekeeping basics, visit beeculture.com.

IF YOU’D RATHER HELP FROM A DISTANCE. . . ● Offer bees plenty of nectar and pollen, with native perennial flower

borders and restored meadows. ● Raise the height of your lawn mower to allow clover and other short flowers

to bloom, creating more forage for bees. ● Leave around a few bare soil patches so feral bees can easily nest. ● Create habitat for solitary bees by drilling holes in mounted wood blocks. ● Avoid using pesticides. If you must use something, choose an all-natural

variety with a short residue time and apply only at night when bees aren’t active. ● Buy locally produced honey at your farmers’ market or co-op. Doing so helps area beekeepers, and you may be helping yourself, too, because it’s thought that unpasteurized honey containing pollen and nectar from your local flora can aid in mitigating some allergy symptoms.

LIKE OTHER BEEKEEPERS, I have little choice but to keep the neighborhood well stocked with fresh honey. I didn’t exactly GUERILLA BEEKEEPERS ask permission to keep my bees. And though so far it’s legal in Beekeeping is illegal in New York City, but David Graves keeps 17 clandestine my small town, such cities as Dover, Delaware make it nearly hives scattered on rooftops around the Upper West and Lower East Sides, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Harlem. He amassed his empire by asking generous impossible to keep bees. Others, including Minneapolis and friends and strangers with flat roofs to share. All of Graves’s beehives are under New York City—which lumps honeybees in with the aardwolf, lock and key, and, he insists, “I’ve never gotten to the point where my bees assorted venomous spiders, dingoes, and other prohibited wild were causing a problem. If someone didn’t like them on a particular roof, I animals in its municipal health code—outlaw it altogether (see would just give them a jar of honey and remove the hive. And I wouldn’t bring “Guerilla Beekeepers,” right). attention to myself.” Each hive can produce from 80 pounds to 140 pounds of On the other hand, Chicago loves its bees. In 2000, Mayor honey, which Graves sells via the city’s farmers’ markets at Union Square and at 77th and Columbus. He says so far, so good: “Most everyone that I’ve met Richard Daley had the roof of City Hall transformed into a lush here in New York City is all for my keeping bees. I’ve never had anybody say, garden, which served to absorb rainwater and provide habitat ‘You shouldn’t do that.’” for migratory birds and butterflies. And in 2003 the rooftop In San Francisco, which allows beekeeping, Tom Chester has had as many as became home to a couple of beehives as well. When I spoke 18 hives scattered throughout the city; he has four hives in his backyard now. with the mayor about those high-rise hives, he nearly gushed: Even though he’s well within his rights, he tries to keep a low profile: “I don’t “My theory is that nature can coexist in an urban environment. work my bees on the weekend,” he says. Many people thought it couldn’t. Now you go to the roof garden and you’ll see bees, grasshoppers, birds. It’s amazing what you see on top of City Hall.” Currently, Chicago is home to more I’m lucky to have two seasoned beekeepers to consult during such than 150 green roofs, and Daley hopes to see about 130 more on pubcrises: a retired dermatologist turned gentleman farmer whom I’ve lic and private buildings around the city in the coming years—comknown since I was a girl and a white-haired octogenarian hypnotist I plete with beehives. “We hope to have more of those on rooftop garmet recently. In contrast to the efforts I make in suiting up, years of dens as people take ownership of the idea,” he says. apiculture experience have made both of them so unflappable that In my town, I try to draw little attention to myself, only suiting up they could safely work their own hives in the nude if they wished. to work my bees during weekdays when I am sure most of my neighServing as my Apis mellifera mystics, these old-fashioned beekeepbors have gone to work. Despite my best intentions, though, someers wouldn’t necessarily label themselves “environmental activists,” times I’m anything but discreet. For instance, twice this past spring but they do believe, as I do, in good stewardship of the honeybee— the bees ran out of room in the hive and the colony needed to be split and, by extension, the earth. in half. In beekeeping parlance this is called swarming. The first time From the Rhode Island Beekeepers to central California’s Delta it happened, I heard what sounded like some insectile weed whacker Bee Club, there are loose-knit groups of people a lot like us across in the sky. I remember looking up, horrified, to glimpse the errant the country. Sure, we may have our own reasons for keeping bees, honeybees in a cloud the size of a Ford F-150. After several minutes and varying degrees of environmental consciousness as well, but it’s they formed a neat ball about 20 feet up on the limb of an old maple a start. I like to think that younger beekeepers like me will help gentree. With a basket, some rope, a rickety extension ladder, and the erate a real buzz for honeybees—celebrating them for their role in patience of Job, a friend and I tried to collect the swarm. After severour food production more than for their ability to make honey. al tries we managed to brush some of the bees into the basket, but With that in mind, I’m in a hurry to keep learning all I can. And they never chose to stay there. I was convinced that the bees hated me who knows, by, say, 2045 maybe I’ll be one of those old-fashioned and the home that I had tried to make for them, but when the new beekeepers telling some young whippersnapper under my tutelage that queen led her subjects to regroup in a low bush, I took it as a sign that her bees have gotten “uppity” and it might well be time to replace the they’d decided to give me another chance. I gently shook them off the queen. Meanwhile, despite all the obstacles and, yes, occasional branch into an empty box, placed them in a new hive, and vowed stings, I want to see the honey jar as half full rather than half empty— never to let them down again. and I’ll do everything I can to make it so. ■ www.plentymag.com February/March 2006

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FAREWELL

to Sushi? ON A RECENT DRIZZLY MORNING IN THE PREDAWN DARKNESS, New York’s Fulton Fish Market looked more like an aging truck terminal or a forklift convention than a place where fresh food gets processed and sold. Stones and puddles reflected the hard blue glare of industrial lights, ice melted out of oversize cardboard boxes, and the air was layered with propane and diesel exhaust, smoke from broken wood pallets burning in rusty steel barrels, and the unmistakable scent of large numbers of expired sea creatures. Since 1822, generations of fishermen brought boatloads of fish here, to America’s largest wholesale seafood market. Fulton Market was an anachronism among the sleek glass office towers encircling it in Lower Manhattan, and it even predated the storied Brooklyn Bridge that loomed directly overhead. But this past November it closed down and relocated from its spot near the sea to what is actually a truck terminal in the Bronx. It was, without exaggeration, the end of an era, and the market’s move is emblematic of vast changes roiling the world of commercial fishing. Even before the venue change, no fish had been off-loaded from a fishing boat at Fulton in decades. All of the tuna and striped bass and scallops, all of the sole and swordfish and lobster arrived at the market via refrigerated semis, trucked on interstates from docks in Boston or New Bedford or from such major international airports as JFK and Miami. In addition, it used to be that most of the fish arriving at Fulton’s sheds and cutting tables were caught in the nearby Atlantic Ocean. Now most of them are imported from all over the world—the Nile, the Pacific, the Aleutians—or from fish farms both on the coasts and inland in unlikely places like Idaho. And the wild fish have gotten

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PHOTOGRAPH, THIS PAGE OF PIKE’S MARKET IN SEATTLE WASHINGTON BY MICHAEL SLONECKER; PHOTO OF FRESH MARKET FISH BY GAVIN KERIGAN RIGHT PAGE.

WHY THE WORLD’S FISH POPULATIONS ARE DECLINING—AND WHAT YOU CAN DO TO STEM THE TIDE. BY MICHAEL W. ROBBINS

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RUNNING ON EMPTY: Overfishing is depleting the ocean’s resources.

younger and smaller, an unmistakable sign of overfishing. “When I started here,” veteran purveyor “Joe Tuna” said, referring to his 26 years at the market and nodding at the cutting tables where men sliced silver carcasses, “it was common to see a 1,200-pound tuna on the table. Now the ones you see there, most are about 150 to 160 pounds.” The world’s seafood supply is facing major troubles, and the root of those troubles is overfishing: too many fishing boats chasing declining populations of fish (and everything else that’s edible in the seas). We used to believe that the sea’s bounty was inexhaustible, that “fish in the sea” was a solid metaphor for an infinite number. Now we know otherwise. We learned the hard way, by fishing relentlessly on an industrial scale for the past five decades, using ever larger and more efficient boats and gear until the catches began to drop precipitously. Until in some places that once had important species, there were simply no more fish to be caught. “Overfishing is the main issue,” says ecologist Carl Safina, president of the Blue Ocean Institute, a marine conservation organization, and author of a best-selling homage to the bluefin tuna, Song for the Blue Ocean (Owl Books, 1999). “Many important species are at historic population lows, and several of them face possible extinction. Cod, for instance, is still being hammered, and although there 78 | P L E N T Y

have been long closures of cod fishing off New England, the cod are not responding. They probably can’t come back.” Two influential biologists at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Ransom A. Myers and Boris Worm, spent ten years assessing the worldwide declines in large predatory fishes—shark, marlin, halibut, tuna, swordfish, and others—from the beginning of large-scale ocean fishing in the 1950s until the present. Their goal was to establish a solid baseline of data for world fish populations. Their findings? “The global ocean has lost more than 90% of large predatory fishes,” Myers and Worm concluded in their summary paper, published in 2003. Industrial fishing by the fleets of such nations as Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, and Russia, to name only a few, proved so effective that once they began working on an unexploited fishing ground anywhere in the world, the populations of the fish there typically declined by about 80 percent within 15 years. We have already caught and consumed the vast majority of the world’s great fish, with unknown consequences for the survival of marine ecosystems and the many countries that are heavily dependent on seafood. And worldwide at least a million fishing boats are now at work. Fish from the oceans supply more of the world’s animal protein than all forms of domestic beef and poultry combined, yet commerFebruary/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

FAREWELL to Sushi? cial fishing, as generally practiced, is an imprecise and wasteful industry. Fishermen don’t know what they are going to net or hook until they see it come out of the water. They may be trawling for shrimp and end up catching a lot of sharks. What do they do? They throw back the dead or dying sharks. That’s known as bycatch, and it accounts for some 25 to 30 percent of all fish caught. Drift-net fishing, the practice of scooping up fish using expansive nets, some up to 40 miles long, has been banned by many nations, but many other types of fishing gear bring in bycatch. Longliners for tuna, for example, regularly catch dolphins and even albatrosses. National governments generally regulate the fisheries and fishermen in their coastal waters (most, including the United States, claim jurisdiction out to 200 miles from their shorelines), but with limited success. Since 1976 the United States has attempted to oversee its 200 mile Exclusive Economic Zone, or EEZ, mostly by establishing seasons for catching various species, by setting overall yearly quotas, and by controlling the number of permits issued to fishing boats. The regulatory bodies, chiefly the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) and its six regional councils, have members of the commercial fishing industry on their boards. When setting their seasons and annual quotas (known as Total Allowable Catch, or TAC), they’ve been accused of being motivated more by pressure from fishermen than by credible scientific data about fish populations. Safina, for one, notes that “of the fish populations managed by the federal government, over one-third are acknowledged to be overfished” and recommends that quotas be established by independent researchers. Safina is one of many who suggest that the government tackle these problems. Two comprehensive reports on ocean fishing policy were recently issued in the United States, one by the United States Commission on Ocean Policy and the other by the Pew Oceans Commission, a privately funded group. Both call for new policies, new laws, and renewed actions by the White House and Congress to address what the commissions believe is a burgeoning environmental crisis. In December 2004, a couple of months after the United States Commission on Ocean Policy report came out, President Bush responded by creating a cabinet-level Committee on Ocean Policy that will work on implementing the report’s 200-plus recommendations. In the meantime, fishermen are required by the NMFS to maintain a paper trail tracking all fish caught, from hook or net to market. Additionally, they are subject to spot checks by the Coast Guard (extremely rare), and they may have observers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) aboard their vessels (rare, and only by invitation of the boat captain). But essentially commercial fishermen work alone on the high seas, far from land and any governmental authority. In fact, beyond any nation’s EEZ, the open ocean is scarcely regulated. Of course, there is some international law, most of it codified in the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of

the Sea. That convention makes such suggestions as science-based “conservation of the living resources of the high seas,” but practically speaking, there’s no way to enforce it. The United States never even ratified it. The World Conservation Union, an ecologically minded group that includes nearly 10,000 scientists, is working on a new proposal that would protect areas of open ocean by designating them as marine parks. The plan won’t be completed until 2008, however, and it won’t be voted on by international governments until 2012. For fishermen, nebulous rules and dwindling fish populations complicate their already risky and dangerous business. Marine biologist and retired NOAA observer Eric Nathanson describes U.S. fish-

PHOTOGRAPH BY ASIER URRESTI OF VIEW FROM THE TOP OF THE FISHING BOAT

“MANY IMPORTANT SPECIES ARE AT HISTORIC POPULATION LOWS, AND SEVERAL OF THEM FACE POSSIBLE EXTINCTION. COD, FOR INSTANCE, IS STILL BEING HAMMERED, AND ALTHOUGH THERE HAVE BEEN LONG CLOSURES OF COD FISHING OFF NEW ENGLAND, THE COD ARE NOT RESPONDING. THEY PROBABLY CAN’T COME BACK.”

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ermen as “family people” who “have to catch enough to make a living.” He adds, “They have to protect their permits, so by and large, they’re pretty responsible in the fishing.” But on such matters as bycatch and overfishing, it’s often a different story: “They know the season and the TAC, and then they have at it,” he says. “It’s a free-forall out there. It’s every man for himself.”

shopping for salmon at the corner store or ordering a tuna salad for dinner, the world’s seafood crisis seems oddly invisible. A wide variety of fish is still available from coast to coast. But the world’s diminishing fish population is creating serial shortages, distorted markets, and extirpations of specific species. Bluefin tuna is now so rare that when a large one is caught, it’s typically flown straight to Japan, where it can fetch the price of a new BMW. (The tuna you now eat in sushi bars is usually yellowfin.) Atlantic cod was once incredibly plentiful—it was the traditional anonymous “fish” of “fish and chips”—but now it’s rarely seen in the marketplace. Similarly, the once trendy redfish and orange roughy have largely disappeared thanks to fad-driven overfishing. The popular “Chilean sea bass”—which is actually a deep-sea-dwelling fish known as the Patagonian toothfish—is already getting harder to find in the waters and is becoming more expensive. Eventually, it could disappear from menus and the marketplace. Aware of its plight, many responsible retailers and chefs now refuse to sell the fish—an individual conservation choice that’s underscored by the growing popularity of seafood consumer guides (see “Green Appétit,” page 81). Another reason the world’s seafood crisis seems to be unfolding in slow motion and beneath the American public’s radar is that the shortfalls of many popular wild-caught fish are being masked by O THE AVERAGE CONSUMER

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jumps in imported seafoods and in farm-raised fish. One savvy retailer, Roger Berkowitz, president and CEO of Boston’s Legal Sea Foods, says the “U.S. marketplace is tremendously influenced by farmed fish and by imports. They’re taking a lot of pressure off the stocks of wild fish.” The farming of fish, or aquaculture, is not a new idea. Trout have been raised in domestic ponds in the United States since the mid-19th century. Industrial-scale aquaculture, however, arose first in Norway in the 1960s with Atlantic salmon and has since spread around the world. The industry doubled in size in the past 15 years and now accounts for some 25 to 30 percent of global seafood consumption. In the United States, roughly 80 percent of our seafood is imported, according to NOAA spokesperson Susan Buchanan. “And of that total,” she adds, “at least 60 percent is farm raised.” Most consumers are aware of farmed salmon and trout, but many are surprised to learn that more than 200 species of fish and shellfish are now farm raised, including not only Atlantic salmon and

“MOST CONSUMERS ARE AWARE OF FAMED SALMON AND TROUT, BUT MANY ARE SURPRISED TO LEARN THAT MORE THAN 200 SPECIES OF FISH AND SHELLFISH ARE NOW FARM RAISED”

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PHOTOGRAPHS BOTH PAGES GETTY IMAGES

FISH FARMING: A worker feeds farmed fish kept in pens (above); salmon swim in a hatchery (opposite page).

rainbow trout but also shrimp, crayfish, mussels, clams, oysters, bay scallops, catfish, striped bass, tilapia, snapper, and others. While farm raising seafood would seem to be preferable to overfishing and underregulation of the world’s oceans, the reality is more nuanced. Some fish farms, especially “open-system” pens in coastal waters, with concentrations of 50,000 or more fish per pen, can wreak havoc on local ecosystems as fish escape and interbreed with native species, compete for food supplies, and pollute waters with concentrated waste, excess feed, and antibiotics. Atlantic salmon cultivation is particularly problematic. Escapees threaten local wild salmon and pass along pen-incubated infectious diseases and deadly sea lice. And unlike many other farmed fish, cultivated Atlantic salmon are carnivores and must be fed, of all things, other fish. It can take two to four pounds of mackerel, herring, sardines, and other species—processed into fish meal or fish oil—to raise one pound of salmon. Moreover, recent research indicates that farmed salmon contain higher concentrations of toxic PCBs and other contaminants. Rainbow trout, by contrast, boast a long history of comparatively successful and ecologically responsible cultivation. For one thing, most trout are raised in closed systems—large outdoor concrete pens called “raceways”—so feed, waste, and contaminants are more easily contained. For another, trout farming depends on high-quality freshwater. “About 70 percent of the rainbow trout on the U.S. market comes from one 28-mile stretch of the Snake River valley in Idaho,” says Chris Howard, marketing director of industry giant Clear Springs Foods, which raises and sells 20 million pounds of trout per year nationwide. “It’s a unique area because of the water. It comes from the Snake Plain aquifer, from springs in the mountains, and it’s always 58 degrees and very pure.” He adds, “Our water is monitored by the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality and the EPA. We have to safeguard the water, or we’d be out of business.” Nonetheless, the Blue Ocean Institute states on its website that farmed rainbow trout’s feed “contains large amounts of fish meal and fish oil,” meaning that many other fish need to be killed in order to raise the carnivorous trout—much like farmed Atlantic salmon. Fish farming is the fastest growing segment of American agriculture, and the federal government seems determined to expand the industry, in part to redress a trade imbalance, as Americans are eating far more imported farmed seafood than domestic varieties. Some entrepreneurs in Australia and Oman are experimenting with huge open-ocean pens for raising such top-of-the-chain predators as tuna and swordfish. In the United States, NOAA recently proposed opening federal waters to similar open-ocean farming of species like cod, tuna, and halibut, reportedly with a goal of quintupling U.S. fish farming by 2025. As for wild fish, conservation and stricter regulations can still redress the effects of 50 years of global industrial fishing. Some

FAREWELL to Sushi? slow-growing and low-birth-rate fish may be hard to save, but other species have demonstrated that when relentless fishing pressure is removed, they can rebound. As the final days of the venerable Fulton Fish Market approached, purveyor Joe Tuna—bundled against the morning chill in a hooded sweatshirt and a fur-lined trooper hat and sporting two steel longshoreman’s hooks on his left shoulder— reflected on the changes he has witnessed in commercial fishing. “There’s a lot of government regulation now,” he said. “Some fish got really overfished, like the striped bass. Around this area you couldn’t catch any striped bass for years. Then it was banned and the regulations worked, and the fish came back so strong that now the striped bass are feeding on bluefish and causing problems in the bluefish fishery.” Your seafood choices will surely change in coming years, as various wild ocean fish populations decline and chefs work more with farmed fish. But order the Atlantic mackerel instead of the Chilean sea bass the next time you’re at a Japanese restaurant, and you’ll help ensure it’s not one of your last bites of sushi. ■

GREEN APPÉTIT The choices you make at the grocery store or seafood restaurant strongly impact the world’s fish populations. Take swordfish as an example: in 1998 nearly 700 chefs nationwide boycotted the fish. After two years the protest was so successful that the swordfish population was restored and the boycott was lifted. Several environmental and scientific organizations—including the Blue Ocean Institute, Environmental Defense, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium—have compiled pocket guides that specify which seafood to choose and which to avoid. (Blue Ocean Institute’s includes handy background information on each fish.) Here are some highlights, culled from the guides: ORDER WITH CONFIDENCE: Atlantic mackerel Arctic char (farmed) Catfish (farmed) Caviar (farmed) Clams and mussels (farmed) Halibut (Pacific only) Mahi mahi (Atlantic) Rainbow trout (farmed) Salmon (wild Alaskan only) Sardines Scallops (farmed) Shrimp (Northern or U.S. farmed) Striped bass Tilapia (farmed) Tuna: albacore, bigeye, yellowfin only Weakfish

CONSIDER PASSING ON: Caviar (wild) Chilean sea bass (Patagonian toothfish) Cod (Atlantic) Grouper Halibut (Atlantic) Monkfish Orange roughy Snapper Salmon (farmed) Shark Shrimp (imported) Tuna: Bluefin

As always, there are some gray areas. Maine lobster, squid, Atlantic swordfish, wild oysters, scallops, and crab can all be enjoyed in moderation. One additional cautionary note: some species are on the “pass on” list because they happen to be especially high in mercury, PCBs, pesticides, and other contaminants. These include shark, swordfish (imported), and canned albacore tuna, all of which are under EPA/FDA advisories.

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S H E LT E R

GREEN LIVING: Clockwise from top left, a look at the Solaire and Blair Towns; signage for The Blairs; interior and exterior of the Henry; and entrance to the Solaire.

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HIGHLIFE

IN JANUARY 2004, 27-year-old finance associate Michael Martinic moved into a downtown Manhattan high-rise pimped out with enough luxe features to inspire envy in the heart of any apartment dweller: floor-to-ceiling windows, swoon-worthy views of the Hudson River and city skyline, marble-clad bathrooms, even maid service. But when asked to name his favorite thing about his home, Martinic snubs the high-speed elevators, the in-house fitness center, and the valet. “The building always has this natural smell, like you’re outside in the fresh air,” he says. Martinic lives in the 27-story Solaire, one of the nation’s most environmentally responsible residential high-rises. The building’s clean scent is likely from its filtered air, which is monitored 24 hours a day for airborne pollutants. Apartments in the partially solar-powered tower were finished with sustainably harvested solid-wood cabinets and paints with low or no VOCs. “The healthy surroundings at buildings like the Solaire— the better indoor air quality, the nontoxic materials, the natural light—help you function the way you should function,” says Rick Fedrizzi, president and CEO of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). “And the people who live at the Solaire now, they don’t ever want to move out of that building.”

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WHY UPSCALE APARTMENT BUILDINGS WITH ECO AMENITIES ARE ON THE RISE. ELIZABETH BARKER

gy and 20 percent less water than a nongreen building of similar size and occupancy. The Solaire’s windows are coated to be energy efficient, and its rooftop garden is irrigated with collected storm water. Even the construction of the buildings was eco-friendly: The Henry used recycled materials, and Blair Towns was crafted with only local supplies. A growing number of high-end condos and apartment buildings are currently seeking LEED certification; Alcyone Apartments in Seattle, for example, just completed the process. Alex Wilson, president of BuildingGreen Inc., the company that publishes Environmental Building News, is noticing an increasing demand for upscale apartments and condominiums like the Solaire and the Henry. “The fact that both buildings were fully leased or sold so quickly has not gone unnoticed by other residential developers,” he says. Indeed, all 123 condos in the Henry were snatched up nine months before the building was even completed, and the Solaire

green luxury unattainable for so many within the environmental movement? “As much as I think the Solaire is great, it’s too expensive,” says Chris Benedict, a Manhattan-based architect who specializes in green multifamily projects. “If you avoid the bells and whistles, you can create buildings that use less energy and are healthy and durable at all income levels.” Most proponents of green architecture are quick to point out the cost effectiveness of green building that’s focused on integrated energy design and compact layouts rather than sexier stuff like landscaped rooftop patios. “This isn’t rocket science,” says Fedrizzi. “If you plan early enough and work with an experienced team, it shouldn’t cost a penny more than conventional construction.” As more designers wise up to the lure and value of green building, apartments like the Solaire—and its less tricked-out counterparts—should pop up in cities from coast to coast. “For a while it was just the movers and shakers who were embracing green, the early adopters,” Wilson says. “Today virtually all mainstream builders and developers are paying attention to this trend. I predict that within another five years many of the leading-edge building practices that we’ve been demanding for 15 years will become standard practice.” (He believes, for example, that standard kitchen and bath cabinets will be made without formaldehyde glues, and that energy-saving fluorescent bulbs and LEDs (lightemitting diodes) will displace at least 50% of incandescent lighting in homes.) And that could mean lower energy bills, cleaner water, and fresher air for all of us. “Soon enough it will be almost unconscionable to build any other way,” says Fedrizzi. “Green building isn’t some niche market for the rich. It needs to affect all human beings.” ■

Upscale multifamily residences across the country are painting almost every amenity a more posh shade of green.

Like the Solaire, several upscale multifamily residences across the country are painting almost every amenity a more posh shade of green. The Henry, a 15-story condo building in Portland, Oregon, that opened in spring 2004, offers both doorman service and low-flow toilets. In Silver Spring, Maryland, residents of the 78 town house–style apartments at Blair Towns can splash in the Olympic-sized pool after cruising around in a hybrid borrowed from the on-site car-sharing program. All three projects meet the USGBC’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) guidelines, with each using at least 20 percent less enerwww.plentymag.com February/March 2006

took only five months to rent its 293 apartments. Residents there weren’t deterred by another key green factor: money, and lots of it. Most units at the Solaire rent at about 4 to 5 percent above market rates, while the Henry demands up to $1.3 million for its penthouse condos. The buildings’ eco-amenities aren’t necessarily driving up prices; Solaire spokesperson Lydia Haran says that such high-end features as the health club and aerobic room raise the rent. “It’s really more like a five-star hotel,” she explains. But what about apartment hunters on a Holiday Inn budget? Are eco-responsible homes the new Lexus hybrid, a gotta-have

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STYLE PROFILE

FASHION

Rock-inspired clothing line Edun is out to make a difference in the developing world. ANN LANDI IF ROCK STAR BONO WANTS TO SAVE THE WORLD, his wife, Ali Hewson, simply hopes to salvage a few strategic parts of it. The raven-haired mother of four who has been married to the U2 rocker for 23 years is the driving force behind Edun, a line of clothing produced by small, family-run factories in developing nations, particularly in Africa and South America. “Bono was working in Africa on a macrolevel,” Hewson explains. “This was a way of working on a microlevel, really understanding how the system operates over there and creating employment through the clothing industry.” Edun (“nude” spelled backwards but also a riff on the garden of Eden) is a partnership between Hewson and Rogan Gregory, a New York–based designer who goes by the name Rogan (his other labels include Rogan jeans and the organic cotton denim line Loomstate). Three years ago, one of Bono’s stylists was choosing clothes for an upcoming tour when she got into a conversation with Rogan and his business partner about the benefits of organic fabrics. Word got back to Bono and Hewson, and in a short time the notion of building a 84 | P L E N T Y

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PHOTOGRAPH BY ELIZABETH LIPPMAN, INSET ABOVE; FASHION IMAGES COURTESY EDUN

CONSCIOUS

business based on fair-trade practices in underprivileged nations took shape. “What’s happening in clothing, in almost the last year, is that a lot of business is moving to places like China, where the labor is a lot cheaper,” Hewson points out. “There are so many factories in the developing world that are struggling.” Hewson is no stranger to activist causes. She has worked on a famine relief project in Ethiopia (where she and Bono once slept in a tent for five weeks), raised funds for the Chernobyl Children’s Project, campaigned for Greenpeace, and driven an ambulance across Belarus. But this new venture, she believes, goes beyond charitable efforts. “It’s not about aid; it’s about trade,” she says. “This is a business that can create a lot of employment.” To underline the importance of using factories in poorer nations, Hewson reels off statistics with the ease of a seasoned economist. “Rich countries subsidize their own agricultural sectors by about $1 billion per day,” she says. “They dump their excess products in international markets at artificially low prices and make it impossible for developing countries to compete.” She adds, “Africa has lost 6 percent of world trade since the 1970s. If they could regain 1 percent of that, they would earn $70 billion a year.” But Hewson also realizes that regardless of how good the intentions are, regardless of who is making the clothes and where, the whole enterprise will be a washout if the designs don’t fly. “No matter how much you might want to do this kind of thing,” she confesses, “unless the clothes are great, nobody’s going to buy them. At the end of the day, nobody wants to wear a hair shirt.” To that end, Rogan and his team have designed mostly casual wear that is youthful and hip, with an understated rock sensibility that should play in the boondocks as well as the big cities. Rogan says he draws on Art Nouveau as inspiration for the details and flourishes of, say, a drill jacket or a T-shirt; but he’s also tapping into a look that “is more nature oriented and nature based.” Though Edun does its best to work with organic fabrics, it’s not always possible to keep the clothing 100 percent ecologically correct. “You can’t have jeans that aren’t dyed with toxic dyes, because it’s the only way jeans will take color,” says Hewson. “There are always those compromises that everyone has to make along the way.” To date, the company has opened six factories in Africa, South America, Portugal, and India, each inspected regularly by a member of the Edun team. Inspectors work with a third party called Verité, which advises them on what steps to take to keep the far-flung premises safe and operative. Stores like Barneys New York and Saks Fifth Avenue carry the line, which retails between $50 and $300. Inside most of the garments are sewn the words “We carry the story of the people who made our clothes around with us.” Edun’s customers, says Hewson, “are people who want to look good and feel good about where their clothes come from, about the history of how they’re made. Ten years ago the wave was about what was in your food, what you were eating. Now it’s about who made your clothes.” ■

PICTURE PERFECT: A look from Edun’s spring line for men (this page), and a suit and blouse from the women’s line (far left). Relaxing with Bono, Hewson, and Rogan (center left).

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“Our customers want to look good and feel good about where their clothes come from.”

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GREEN BLING

GET YOUR KICKS When it comes to eco-friendly style, these twelve shoes are a big step in the right direction

FOR THE GUYS IPATH NATIVE

BLACKSPOT UNSWOOSHER $95 (adbusters.org) Designed by John Fluevog to help â&#x20AC;&#x153;kick megacorporate ass,â&#x20AC;? these high-tops boast a 100% organic hemp upper and a sole made from recycled tires.

$60 (ipath.com) These skater-friendly sneakers are crafted from renewable hemp.

SIMPLE LOAF WORN AGAIN JACK $100 (antiapathy.org/wornagain) Crafted from unsold or damaged jackets, hand towels, scrap leather from car seats, and reclaimed buttons, these shoes also feature recycled rubber soles. As you might guess, no two pairs are exactly alike.

$80 (simpleshoes.com) Part of their ambitious Green Toe line, these loafers are made from jute, natural crepe rubber, cork, and water-based glues and dyes.

ADIDAS SUPERSKATE LO $60 (adidas.com) Adidas took their original 1970s skate shoe and updated it with ecotastic hemp.

EL NATURALISTA MOAI N241 $130 (elnaturalista.com) The leather used for these shoes is tanned with vegetable extracts and ground tree bark, and the soles are 100% natural rubber. 86 | P L E N T Y

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READY FOR A TRADE-IN? As part of their Reuse-A-Shoe program, Nike has collected and recycled 16 million pairs of athletic shoesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; whether made by them or other companies. Find a drop-off location in your area by visiting nike.com/nikebiz.

FOR THE GALS

EARTH SHOES PIROUETTE 2 $100 (earth.us) The footbed of these versatile vegan flats (made with durable synthetic microfiber as opposed to cheap PVC and vinyl) promotes natural posture by positioning your heel below your toes.

INGRID $40 (shoeswithsouls.com) This elegant pump is covered in embossed, chocolate-colored faux suede and is made in a family-run, fair-labor factory in Spain. Shoes With Souls also carries a planetfriendly shoe line called Deja.

VEGAN WARES FRED 3 $150 (veganwares.com) These sneakers are made in a small factory and are built to last. When you do finally wear them out, though, you can return them to the factory for recycling.

NOVACAS AURORA BOOT $110 (mooshoes.com) These vegan microfiber boots are manufactured in European factories that meet E.U. fair labor standards.

TIMBERLAND LARKSPUR $80 (timberland.com) Part of Timberlandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ongoing commitment to the environment, these strappy sandals have a heel made from rapidly regenerative bamboo.

TSONGA SHAKA BOOT $100 (tsonga.com) Tsonga shoes are hand-stitched by Zulu women in South Africa; proceeds from sales help fund educational and other social programs in their village. www.plentymag.com February/March 2006

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INDULGENCES

CONSCIENTIOUS

CARBFEST

In preparation for the Super Bowl, Plenty sampled organic and natural pizza and beer. Here are the ones that scored big.

Bison Brewing— Organic Chocolate Stout A treat for chocoholics, this sweet, dark stout is brewed with Dutch cocoa (bisonbrew.com).

Chef Antonio— Organic Uncured Pepperoni There aren’t too many organic frozen pizzas with meat toppings on the market. Fortunately this one, with its thin, crispy crust and zesty sauce, is a winner (richelieufoods.com).

Fish Brewing Company— Organic India Pale Ale A smooth, mellow IPA with just the right amount of bitterness (fishbrewing.com).

Pinkus—Organic Hefe-weizen This unfiltered wheat ale, imported from Germany, has a clean, mild flavor (merchantduvin.com).

Foods By George—Cheese

Samuel Smith—Organic Ale

This wheat- and gluten-free personal-size pizza has a thin, soft crust and is covered with flavorful tomato sauce, a sprinkling of herbs, and a generous amount of cheese (foodsbygeorge.com).

A slightly fruity, medium-bodied golden ale with a hoppy finish (merchantduvin.com).

Eel River—Organic Amber Ale This well-balanced, versatile brew is crisp and refreshing (climaxbeer.com).

Wolaver’s— Organic Oatmeal Stout This rich, coffee-scented and flavored stout is brewed with locally grown organic rolled oats (wolavers.com).

American Flatbread— Ionian Awakening Made with organic flour, this light and chewy pizza combines tangy feta, red onions, and Kalamata olives (americanflatbread.com).

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FOOD

WHAT’S IN SEASON The Rustic Crust Company— Cheese & Vine-Ripened Tomato Soft, doughy flatbread topped with fresh herbs and cheese from small family farms. Simple and flavorful (rusticcrust.com).

In the winter months, supermarkets import much of their produce, but you can buy locally by choosing seasonal items. Right now, nutritious kale is making its way to market. WHAT IT IS: Kale is a member of the cabbage family; the most common variety has large, dark green leaves with curly edges. Rich in antioxidants like vitamin E, vitamin C, and beta-carotene, kale is also a good source of calcium and folate. In addition, kale contains phytochemicals—powerful plant compounds that may help protect against cancer, heart disease, and other illnesses.

Amy’s— Mediterranean Cornmeal Crust This pie’s crust has the added texture of cornmeal and comes piled with diced tomatoes, zucchini, mushrooms, onions, olives, capers, and three kinds of cheese. Many ingredients are organic (amys.com).

HOW TO STORE IT: Keep your kale cold; otherwise it wilts and becomes bitter. Wrap it in paper towels or a small kitchen towel and store it in a plastic bag in the crisper. Eat it within a few days of purchase, and wait to wash it until you use it. HOW TO PREPARE IT: Kale is a versatile vegetable, and its coarse leaves cook down less than other greens. It’s a main ingredient in the traditional Portuguese soup caldo verde, although in Portugal, cooks use a close cousin of kale known as Galician cabbage. Here’s how to make the hearty soup.

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PHOTOGRAPH UPPER RIGHTBY DAWN MALONE

HOW TO BUY IT: Supermarkets usually carry kale throughout the year, but the plant’s peak season is from January through April. Kale’s leaves should be crisp and deep green in color, and the smaller they are, the more tender they’ll be when cooked. Avoid plants that have yellow or brown leaves and withered or damaged stems.

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CALDO VERDE Makes 6 to 8 servings

1 large yellow onion, peeled and minced fine 1 large garlic clove, peeled and minced 4 tablespoons olive oil 6 large potatoes, peeled and sliced thin 2 quarts cold water 6 ounces chourico, chorizo, pepperoni, or other dry, garlicky sausage, sliced thin 2 1/2 teaspoons salt (about) 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1 pound kale, washed, trimmed of coarse stems and veins, then sliced filament thin (The easiest way to create thin strips of kale is to stack 6 to 8 leaves, roll crosswise into a firm, tight roll, then slice with a very sharp knife.)

Sauté the onion and garlic in 3 tablespoons of the oil in a large heavy saucepan over moderate heat 2 to 3 minutes, until they begin to color and turn glassy; do not brown or they will turn bitter. Add the potatoes and sauté, stirring constantly, 2 to 3 minutes, until they begin to color also. Add the water, cover, and boil gently over moderate heat 20 to 25 minutes, until the potatoes are soft. Meanwhile, fry the sausage in a medium-size heavy skillet over low heat 10 to 12 minutes, until most of the fat has cooked out; drain well and set aside. When the potatoes are soft, remove the pan from the stove, and with a potato masher, mash the potatoes in the pan with the soup mixture. Add the sausage, salt, and pepper, return to moderate heat, cover, and simmer 5 minutes. Add the kale and simmer uncovered 5 minutes, until tender and the color of jade. Mix in the remaining tablespoon of olive oil and add more salt and pepper to taste. Ladle into large soup plates and serve. Adapted from The Food of Portugal, by Jean Anderson; reprinted with permission of William Morrow Publishers.

P L E N T Y | 89

GREEN HOME

COME

CLEAN

Wondering which nontoxic cleaning products work best? Ask an eco-housekeeper. JENNIFER ODELL YOUR HOME SHOULD BE YOUR SANCTUARY. So when it’s time to scrub the sink or mop the floor, it makes sense to use one of the natural cleaners on the market, right? After all, conventional products often release harsh ingredients like ammonia, chlorine, and synthetic fragrances into the air. In fact, the average American house contains more than 150 chemicals that have been linked to allergies, cancer, and other ailments, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. And if traditional supermarket cleaning products are polluting your home, just imagine what they’re doing to the rest of the globe. “We use bleach because it kills bacteria and microbes,” says John Millett, a spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency. “But it does that in the environment, too, which destroys ecosystems.” Lately consumers have gotten wise to the problems caused by caustic cleaners, and eco-maid services have flourished as a

TRICKS OF THE TRADE FIVE TIPS FROM THE PROS FOR GETTING THE MOST OUT OF YOUR GREEN CLEANERS.

As a general rule, let products sit for 10 to 15 minutes after applying. To degrease a stove, mix Dr. Bronner’s Sal Suds with baking soda and let sit for 3 to 5 minutes.

Avoid Dr. Bronner’s on glass surfaces— it leaves a film. Sprinkle salt on surfaces before spraying all-purpose cleaner; then scrub with cotton cloths (old T-shirts work best). 90 | P L E N T Y

February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

PHOTO GETTY IMAGES

Apply products directly on the toilet brush—not on the toilet bowl— before scrubbing.

result. Nobody knows natural products better than a green housekeeper, so Plenty spoke to a few of them to hear their experiences and get their insider advice on how to pick and use nontoxic cleaners. Mark Sklawer founded Alok Holistic Housecleaning in 1988 after he was badly burned by Easy-Off, a heavy-duty oven cleaner, while cleaning houses part time for extra income. “The stuff is toxic,” he says, adding that although the injury didn’t send him to the hospital, “it was enough to make me wonder what it was doing to my lungs and everything else.” Today Sklawer’s Brooklyn, New York–based company relies on simple abrasives like table salt and safe disinfectants like Bon Ami powder—which contains no chlorine, perfumes, or dyes—to get rid of mold and

grease. Deb Goldberg, who co-founded W.A.G.E.S., a chain of natural co-op cleaning services on the West Coast, has heard stories similar to Sklawer’s. “One woman who joined our Oakland co-op used to clean three banks a night with chemical window cleaner,” she says. “While she was at that job, she got disoriented and lost her short-term memory.” At the very least, most conventional products have labels warning that they can cause skin and eye irritation. In addition to protecting their employees’ health, the efforts of green housekeeping services help preserve the planet. Eric Kohagen founded his Phoenix, Arizona–based business, Green Clean, specifically because he wanted to do something positive for the environment. “I used to work as a fish biologist,” he says. “I studied aquatic ecosystems and saw how industrial and commercial products pollute them.” To do his part for the earth, Kohagen developed his own line of mineral- and plant-derived cleansers.

Keeping your house green and clean doesn’t require making your own concoctions, although basic kitchen chemistry is sometimes in order. Josh Kyle of Greenway Maid in San Francisco mixes borax and baking soda to combat mold. Kohagen likes to add essential oils to his cleansers to naturally deodorize a room. And Luz Romero of Emma’s Eco-Clean, a co-op of W.A.G.E.S., combines vinegar with baking soda to clean off the mildew on windowsills. “The place looks so good when they’re done,” says Benjamin McKendall, a longtime client of Emma’s. “And you’re not left with the smell of bleach.” Ultimately, fighting dirt and germs with green cleaners takes some trial and error. Kyle says he stopped using Ecover’s Natural Floor Soap because it wasn’t cutting through dirt and his customers were complaining. The company’s laundry detergent, however, ranks high (see chart below). To help you avoid extra work, we had our panel of experts dish out advice on their favorite eco-friendly products. ■

GREEN HOUSEKEEPERS’ PRODUCT PICKS Greenway Maid

Emma’s Eco-Clean

Alok Holistic Housecleaning

Floor cleaner

Dr. Bronner’s Sal Suds (for vinyl and tile) or Bona X Hardwood Floor Cleaner (for wood)

White vinegar and water

Murphy Oil Soap (contains no ammonia, chlorine, bleach, or dyes)

Oven cleaner

Baking soda

Dr. Bronner’s liquid soap

Citra-Solv Cleaner & Degreaser

Toilet bowl cleaner

Soapworks Oxygen Bleach (chlorinefree) or Bon Ami powder

Dr. Bronner’s liquid soap

Grapefruit seed extract mixed with liquid soap

Liquid dish soap

Seventh Generation Dish Liquid

Ecover’s or Seventh Generation’s (Sklawer adds 30 to 40 drops of grapefruit seed extract to a bottle to kill bacteria)

Laundry detergent

Soapworks Oxygen Bleach and Soapworks Liquid Laundry

No suggestion—Emma’s doesn’t provide laundry services

Ecover Natural Laundry Wash

Bathroom cleaner

Bon Ami powder and Heather’s Basin Tub & Tile Cleaner (contains organic, vegan, and biodegradable ingredients)

Dr. Bronner’s liquid soap

Bon Ami powder

All-purpose cleaner

Soapworks or Simple Green AllPurpose Cleaner

Seventh Generation Free & Clear Natural All-Purpose Cleaner

Bon Ami powder or borax

Glass and surface cleaner

Seventh Generation Free & Clear Natural Glass & Surface Cleaner

White vinegar and water

Anything from Seventh Generation or Ecover

www.plentymag.com February/March 2006

P L E N T Y | 91

C U LT U R E

INDEPENDENT

SPIRIT

ics—to movie stars and journalists (yes, including this one). You won’t catch me complaining, but you will, on any given day, catch me unloading the jeans, moisturizers, and fancy bottles of water with many promises on the label from the trunk of my car. Every year there’s a bit more. The success of Sundance has also affected Park City itself. First, skiing is so beside the point to the Hollywoodites that the pristine slopes are almost empty. Second, there’s the cavalcade of no-relation-to-the-SundanceInstitute tagalong festivals that have cropped up in recent years. Slamdance (the so-called independent alternative fest), X-Dance (promoting extreme-sports indie filmmaking), SchmoozeDance (Jewish-themed films screened after Friday night services at Park City’s Temple Har Shalom, where, incidentally, this reporter is a member of the board of directors), and even LapDance (draw your own conclusions). If you know the right people, you can attend ChefDance, a kind of supper club where celebrity chefs create dinners in honor of certain filmmakers (my favorite last year was Akasha Richmond’s dinner, which featured sinfully good organic fare). It’s more than a little ironic that all of this excess surrounds a simple festival with a simple goal: bringing attention to creative, grassroots filmmaking. bringing attention to creative, But the hype may ultimately contribute to Sundance’s mission. grassroots filmmaking. Indeed, Redford’s intimations in ing puffy parkas, also usually black, gather in the press have been that the more attention front of velvet-roped bars for after-hours par- brought to independent filmmaking, the betties, and then file into line the next morning ter, so let the circus come. That line of thinkat Java Cow, a Main Street organic coffee ing seems to be effective: Festival attendance shop (which, by the way, also sells fair-trade was up almost 28 percent last year from the coffee). Some of their assistants are easily previous winter. Even the blocks of tickets recognized by their insistence on wearing set aside for locals—previously doled out by miniskirts and stilettos to navigate icy side- way of a one-day sale with a line that took on walks. Blame all the crowding on the swag- epic proportions involving camping out in gies. Those would be the folks who, for bet- subfreezing temps the night before—are now ter or worse, flock to any celeb-heavy red- distributed using a lottery system. Sundance carpet event and offer their many products— attracts people named Weinstein, the artfashion, communications devices, cosmet- house arms of blockbuster-churning studios

ON JANUARY 19, around the time this issue hits stands, the mountain town of Park City, Utah, will again host the Sundance Film Festival. During this premier celebration of independent film, festivalgoers will attend screenings and educational panels where filmmakers riff on topics like budgets, casting, and sound tracks. There’s even a music café, where Rickie Lee Jones, Suzanne Vega, and other artists play standing-room-only acoustic sets. Sounds very intimate and small, right? I think it used to be. But I only began attending five years ago, and even in that span I’ve watched the festival evolve into a Hollywood scene. Robert Redford founded the Sundance Institute in 1981; the organization states on its Web site that it is “dedicated . . . to the development of artists of independent vision and to the exhibition of their new work.” Yet in the past few years Redford has alluded in the press that the “circus” comes to town during the film festival. He hasn’t said, specifically, that Paris Hilton occupies the center ring, but this is, in fact, what has happened. Media and movie types from both coasts, dressed from head to toe in black and sport-

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It’s more than a little ironic that all of this excess surrounds a simple festival with a simple goal:

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that want to procure the next great indie hit, and A-list actors interested in the funky roles they don’t get to play in those big-budget multiplex pieces. And all of those add-on festivals get more films in front of more eyes, too. They stay so true to the indie ethic, in fact, that the seating is sometimes on the floor of a hotel room. And although celebrities and photographers may clog the streets during those two weeks in January, Sundance has managed to remain true to its ideals. Many of the films selected for the festival are rife with consciousness-raising material—especially the documentaries. In recent years, films selected for the festival have tackled issues like those surrounding the so-called DES daughters of the 1960s, whose mothers took a pregnancy drug called diethylstilbestrol, which was later found to be unsafe (A Healthy Baby Girl, 1997), and the impact of the pervasive use of plastics in everyday life (Blue Vinyl, 2002). And let’s not forget last year’s Grizzly Man, German filmmaker Werner Herzog’s look at grizzly-bear activist Timothy Treadwell and his questionable eco-ethics. Or On a Clear Day, an against-all-odds drama about one ordinary man’s attempt to swim across the English Channel. Sundance may no longer be a humble set of screenings nestled in the mountains, but it’s still the place where creativity in filmmaking is championed. ■ February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

Can Paris Hilton and free jeans actually help the Sundance Film Festival’s cause? BARI NAN COHEN

OFF THE GRID

FANTASY HOME

LEAFING THROUGH A COPY of National Geographic back in the 1950’s, nine-yearold Ted Baumgart stumbled across an advertisement for Bell Systems, the erstwhile telecom company. A hokey-looking family pointed at a gigantic monolith, which, the ad implausibly claimed, would one day power the entire world. It was Baumgart’s first glimpse of a solar array. “I went, ‘Wow,’” he recalls. “‘That is really big. That’s the future.’” Baumgart’s childhood fascination with technology didn’t stop there. He went on to a career designing special effects and sets for Hollywood acts, helping to shape innumerable concert tours, movies, and TV shows. (Among others, he has created stage designs for the musical acts Mötley Crüe, Ozzy Osbourne, and Yes; the performers Siegfried and Roy; the NBC sitcom My Name Is Earl; and The Majestic, a 2001 film starring Jim Carrey.) Locally, however, Baumgart is known for creating an even more ambitious set: his 3,000-square-foot, three-bedroom house in La Crescenta, 94 | P L E N T Y

California. The home is a striking, offbeat eco-oasis that boasts some of the most ambitious green design and landscaping in the L.A. area. Walking around the sprawling home, it’s not hard to imagine the designer as a giddy nine-year-old smitten with solar power—and Walt Disney movies. What Baumgart describes as a “Swiss-French-German mountain chalet” would likely appeal to the Seven Dwarfs—that is, if the Dwarfs were into Baumgart’s ultra-efficient radiant heating, which distributes heat directly through the flooring, and gray-water recycling system, which uses wastewater from the house to irrigate the landscaping. The visual centerpiece of the house is the thermal mass wall, a concrete slab that absorbs daytime heat, then radiates it during cool nights. Baumgart embellished his with an indoor stone and tile waterfall that spills twenty feet alongside the stairwell, beneath the gaze of a large decorative papier-mâché frog. The waterfall is able to recirculate constantly, providing a second measure of

passive cooling to beat the L.A. heat. The frog handles the bugs, jokes Baumgart’s wife, Kathy, a physical therapist. That’s just the inside. Out back, a solarpowered miniature train is equipped to carry hors d’oeuvres around waterfalls, past a solar-filtered swimming pool, and over a running stream and fish pond. Extravagant as this all sounds, Baumgart’s electricity bill is as low as $7 a month, thanks to a 2-kilowatt solar array and the shade provided by 65-year-old native drought-resistant pines. Rather than install a water-hungry lawn, Baumgart trucked in 13,000 rocks from nearby Tujunga Canyon. “I’ve never counted the hours I’ve put into this,” he says. “I’ve counted rocks.” Overlooking the idyllic landscape are gigantic tarnished copper casement windows, one of which Baumgart welded into jagged tree shapes. Hiring a contractor to build one of the windows from scratch, he says, would have cost $20,000, a prohibitive figure. Fortunately Baumgart is a skilled welder, thanks to his experience building more than February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

Indoor waterfalls and tiny solar-powered trains? Sustainability meets zaniness in this Los Angeles set designer’s eco-chalet. JUSTIN TYLER CLARK

45 Rose Parade floats. He relished doing the work himself with free materials, hauling off an entire houseful of 50-year-old windows. When he had to hire workers, Baumgart asked that they perform ecologically responsible construction. When he began working on his home in 1994, he insisted on salvaging the lumber from the existing house. His framing crew protested, but there was a happy ending. “It was first-growth Douglas Fir,” he recalls glowingly, “from trees so big you couldn’t even see the curves in the grain. By the end my framer was asking to take home the lumber.” The result, goofy but oddly charming, has been featured on home-design television programs and appears in a new book, Green Remodeling, by eco-architect Carol Venolia. It is also a favorite stop on L.A.’s annual Homes for the Future Tour. Despite Baumgart’s aversion to the Seven Dwarfs comparison, one of his most enthusiastic visitors was Ollie Johnston, the last surviving original Disney illustrator. “I put some fantasy and fun in the house. I figure it was time for me to have some of it in my own life,” says Baumgart, as if he’d ever lacked either. His father, a film and theater score composer, regularly smuggled a young Ted behind the scenes. Baumgart fell in love with special effects on those visits to the studio prop houses and OffBroadway sets. Around the same time, a friend’s uncle stoked Baumgart’s interest in technology by taking him to the premier car show of the day, Autorama. Ironically, given Baumgart’s A VISION IN WOOD AND STONE: Ted Baumgart’s eco-home in an artist’s rendering and in the flesh (right and below); the backyard of the Baugmart estate (above); the engineer cools off the natural way (opposite page).

www.plentymag.com February/March 2006

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While America grew increasingly infatuated with gas guzzlers, Baumgart’s imagination had already moved decades ahead.

enthusiasm for sustainable energy, his main influence was Harley Earl, the famous car designer who introduced chrome and fins to the automobile. Baumgart, whose family already included a violin maker and chair designer, decided to pursue design himself at the Art Center in Pasadena, but only after a stint riding boxcars up the California coast and panhandling in hippie San Francisco. But underlying his fascination with technology is a deep-rooted eco-consciousness. Growing up in Los Angeles, Baumgart watched the city dismantle its red car line, replacing the electric trolleys with diesel buses. While America grew increasingly infatuated with gas guzzlers, Baumgart’s imagination had already moved decades ahead. He credits his family, a group of “artists and scientists and seekers” that admired machinery and nature in equal measure. “We were already tuned into the pluses and minuses of oil,” he says. “We’d get stuck behind the new diesel buses on Santa Monica Boulevard and choke on the horrible

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fumes. If you took a look, it actually wasn’t too hard to see what was wrong with the technology of the day.” His family also inculcated a spiritual reverence for nature. As a child he visited his grandmother, a practitioner of theosophy (the modern Hindu-Buddhist religion dedicated to direct intuition of God), who introduced him to two prominent nature lovers: guru J. Krishnamurti and Allen Watts, the philosopher who helped popularize Zen in the U.S. Baumgart also vividly remembers listening to the radio broadcasts of his cousin, Alcoholics Anonymous founder Rev. Sam Shoemaker, who preached two values dear to conservationists: concern for the environment, and the power to change one’s habits. “These were people who felt empowered to do things,” explains Baumgart. “I guess I picked it up from them.” Now that his daughter, a fashion editor, and son, a cinema student, have fledged the nest, Baumgart feels ready to start dreaming about his next project: a retirement home. The new house will be set partially underground for thermal protection. Devoid of right angles and cast entirely in concrete, the “Dancing Rock House” will cavort among the house-sized boulders and natural caves in a piece of pine forest that Baumgart owns in Idyllwild, California. Walt would be proud. But how will Baumgart tear himself away from his toy train? “I’m going to build a monorail,” he says. ■ P L E N T Y | 95

T H E B A C K PA G E

TOP TEN THINGS WE HOPE TO FIND AS THE

GLACIERS MELT

10. Jimmy Hoffa 9. Waldo The mates to all our loose socks

7. 6.

A word that rhymes with “orange”

Dave Chapelle

5. 4. 3.

Edvard Munch’s The Scream

The Missing Link

2. 1. 96 | P L E N T Y

Bill Gates’s PIN number

The lost pieces of the ozone layer

Santa’s Workshop February/March 2006 www.plentymag.com

PHOTOGRAPH BY KATHY DE LA CRUZ

GLOBAL WARMING WE CAN. The science is documented. The threat is real. But now there is a weapon you can use to help undo global warming: undoit.org. Sign the online petition supporting vital legislation, discover a few modest lifestyle changes, and more. To learn all about global warming, and how you can help undo it, go to undoit.org