PLENTY IT ’S EA SY BEING GREEN
EVERGLADES: THE NEXT NEW ORLEANS? THE BATTLE OVER FOOD LABELING
THERE IS A FREE LUNCH, BUT WOULD YOU WANT IT?
ECO-
ANXIETY CAN WE WORRY TOO MUCH?
AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2006 $4.95US $5.95CAN
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Photo Š Garth Lenz 2004
Our continent's Great Boreal Forest makes up one quarter of the last original forests in the world. Its ecosystem provides us with the largest source of fresh water on the planet, and its rich soil and ancient forests store vast quantities of carbon from our atmosphere, which helps stem global warming. For all these reasons and more, saving what remains of the Great Boreal Forest is everyone's business.
NRDC
T HE E ARTH’S B EST D EFENSE
PLENTY
CONTENTS AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2006
IT’S EASY BEING GREEN
FRONT MATTER 6 . . . . FROM THE EDITOR 12 . . . . LETTERS 15 . . . . NEWS AND NOTES
44
The feds opt for bio-based products; allergy-free cats are nothing to sneeze at; researchers turn Styrofoam into biodegradable plastic; the ozone layer in recovery; the high price of bottled water; keeping your house cool. 19 . . . . EVENTS CALENDAR Plenty’s roundup of eco-activities as summer comes to a close. 20 . . . . Q&A Reporter Andrew Revkin weighs in on his new children’s book and the state of the Arctic. By Erica Wetter 24 . . . . TECHNOLOGY Is fusion power heating up again? By Michael W. Robbins 28 . . . . INVESTING The latest hot commodity: clean water. By Sarah Schmidt 32 . . . . WHEELS Thanks to improved technology, the oncemaligned e-bike lets riders gain ground without breaking a sweat. By Susan Brackney 34 . . . . RETREADS Three craft-y projects give your used books new life. By Kelly Pucci 36 . . . . BOOKS William Ashworth’s Ogallala Blue explains why Americans should be worried about their water supply. By Steve Weinberg 39 . . . . GREEN GEAR Throw the best BBQ in the neighborhood with these eco-friendly add-ons.
Pedal power GRAY MATTER Top getaways for twowheeled travelers. By Matthew Kadey 55 . . . . GLOBAL WORRYING The environment is in peril, and anxiety disorders are on the rise. What’s the connection? By Liz Galst 62 . . . . FOOD FIGHT Why Congress’s push to create nationwide food-labeling standards may be bad for our health. By Richard Bradley 66 . . . . FREE LUNCH How a non-consumer group called the Freegans convinced me to eat trash. By Lisa Selin Davis 74 . . . . SAVE THE GLADES Could a hurricane turn central Florida into the next New Orleans? By Michael Grunwald
PHOTOGRAPH BY GOTT SEGEM
44 . . . . A PEDDLER’S PARADISE
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PLENTY
AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2006
81
Grenier goes green
74
Save the glades
92
MATTERS OF FACT AND FANCY 81 . . . . GREEN HOME
Adrian Grenier, star of Entourage, builds an eco-abode in Brooklyn. By Bari Nan Cohen 84 . . . . CULTURE Action sports get an eco overhaul. By Jacquelyn Lane 88 . . . . OFF THE GRID A Toronto couple builds a cozy cottage on a remote Canadian lake. By Hans Feuersinger 92 . . . . STYLE PROFILE Deborah Milner’s “Ecoture” gowns take green design to the next level. By Christine Richmond 94 . . . . GREEN STYLE Eco-friendly wallets; pure essential oils. 96 . . . . HEALTH Don’t burn out this summer—get the 411 on organic and all-natural sunscreens. By Erika Villani 98 . . . . FOOD Pig snouts and duck testicles: the new frontier in sustainable fare? Plus, a primer on spicing up your barbecues. By Christy Harrison 104 . . . THE BACK PAGE Most Wanted Activist: Laurie David.
ON THE COVER: Hopefully, polar bears won’t have to build an ark to survive global warming. Illustration for Plenty by Bill Mayer.
PHOTO UPPER LEFT BY ROLF W. HAPKE / ZEFA / CORBIS; UPPER RIGHT BY ISA BRITO; LEFT COURTESY AVEDA
Dressing up eco
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FROM THE EDITOR IN CHIEF
The Truth about CO2 WE HEAR BAD NEWS EVERY DAY. Average global temperatures are rising, polar ice caps are melting, and sea levels are getting higher. Signs of global warming are all around us. It’s hard to escape them unless you shut yourself off from the influx of information. In some ways, this pervasiveness is a good thing. Attention to environmental issues has always waxed and waned, depending on the health of the economy or the salience of other critical issues, like terrorism. But this current concern seems poised to change in the months and years ahead. Whether it is more intense hurricanes or high prices at the gas pump, there seem to be more and more reminders of our changing circumstances every day. And not surprisingly, media coverage about these issues has increased dramatically in recent months. I actually think the national media does a fairly good job covering environmental issues. The New York Times, for instance, gives significant coverage to new scientific findings and recently ran a special green business section. Other mainstream publications, including The Wall Street Journal and Time magazine, have reported extensively on the environment and global warming. Perhaps because of this coverage (and because President Bush can come out for our hydrogen future only so often—otherwise people might expect him to do something about it), the power industry has rushed in to respond. Coinciding with the release of Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth (which addresses the dangers of global warming), the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a conservative think tank, released two television commercials in May that sought to combat some of the growing public nervousness over greenhouse-gas emissions. It’s hard to convey a lot of science in a 60-second commercial, so CEI came up with a memorable catch phrase: “They call it pollution. We call it life.” The phrase refers to carbon dioxide. Apparently, since we exhale it and plants use it, it doesn’t matter how much there is in the atmosphere. These commercials (watch them online at cei.org) might be funny if they weren’t part of a broader problem. The energy industry, through its support of right-wing think tanks (CEI has received over $1 million from ExxonMobil since 1998), “researchers,” and non-tree-hugging politicians, has skewed the discussion about global warming to make it seem like there is more scientific debate than there is. There was a time when a film like An Inconvenient Truth might have been just ignored by big business. In 1989, for example, General Motors initially chose to ignore Michael Moore’s Roger & Me—it was just a documentary, and who was going to watch it? But not today, not when there are billions of dollars at stake. The worst nightmare of the energy industry is that An Inconvenient Truth or Who Killed the Electric Car? might become the environmental equivalents of Fahrenheit 9/11. Mark Spellun Editor in Chief & Publisher
6 | PLENTY
August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
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PLENTY Publisher & Editor in Chief Mark Spellun Creative Director Catherine Cole Senior Editors Christy Harrison, Sarah Schmidt, Deborah Snoonian Political Editor Richard Bradley Staff Writer Kate Siber Assistant Editor Jacquelyn Lane Copy Editors Sandra Ban, Molly Bloom, Jessica Mahler Contributing Editors Joshua M. Bernstein, Justin Tyler Clark, Bari Nan Cohen, Lisa Selin Davis Assistant Art Director Richard Gambale Editorial Interns Anngela Leone, Erika Villani
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: Joe McHugh, BreakthroughMedia 21675 Coolidge Highway, Oak Park, MI 48237 (Tel: 1-586-360-3980)
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 Subcriptions: 1-800-316-9006 or go to 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 Š2005 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. PLENTY is printed on 30% post-consumer recycled paper and manufactured with elemental chlorine-free pulp. The remaining paper is FSC certified. Please recycle.
CONTRIBUTORS BARI NAN COHEN was just embarking on her own home renovation when she started interviewing Adrian Grenier for this month’s Green Home, “A TV Star Returns to His Roots” (page 81). “From then on,” she says, “whenever I was stumped about what types of materials to use, I would ask myself, ‘What would Adrian do?’” Cohen spent almost three years as entertainment editor at SELF before trading life in New York City for skiing, hiking, and, yes, freelance writing, in the mountains of Park City, Utah. Cohen’s work has appeared in More, American Baby, Redbook, Nick Jr. Family Magazine, SELF, and Shape. This is her fourth story for Plenty.
“I’ve always been a little, well, high-strung,” says New York City–based freelance writer LIZ GALST , who wrote about her own, and the nation’s, eco-anxiety in “Global Worrying” (page 55). “But learning so much about global warming and its likely effects put me over the top.” So did becoming a parent. “Being responsible for a very small person puts one’s relationship with the future in a different light.” Galst, who participated in the first Earth Day as a child, is the former Executive Editor of MAMM, the national women’s cancer magazine. Her freelance writing has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, Ms., New York, and Mother Jones.
MICHAEL GRUNWALD , a reporter on the national staff of The Washington Post, first slogged into the Everglades during a yearlong investigation of dysfunction at the Army Corps of Engineers, which won numerous awards including the George Polk Award for national reporting. He returned to the swamp in 2002 for a series dissecting the $8 billion Everglades restoration project. Michael’s new book, The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise (Simon & Schuster), was published earlier this year. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his fiancée Cristina Dominguez and their Boston terrier Shamu.
London–based illustrator TOMER HANUKA is a regular contributor to many national magazines. His clients include Time, The New Yorker, Spin, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times. He has won multiple awards from the Society of Illustrators and the Society of Publication Designers, as well as from American Illustration and Print. Hanuka co-created an experimental comic book called Bipolar with his twin brother, Asaf, for which they were nominated for the Eisner, Harvey, and Ignatz awards. 10 | P L E N T Y
August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
“Laurel Maury said the Kombucha ‘mushroom’ is not a mushroom, but in fact a yeast. As a young biologist-intraining, I respectfully would like to point out that yeast, like mushrooms, is a fungus—a member of the genus Saccharomyces.”
LETTERS YOUR JUNE/JULY 2006 ISSUE is another
IN
fantastic production. From the electrifying cover design, to the array of substantive articles, you and your staff again have done a great job. I do, however, have one criticism, and it relates to the June/July “From the Editor in Chief ” letter. Please know, I do agree with the essential thrust of the letter. However, I take issue with the following statement: “It’s been a long time since a Hollywood celebrity has been seen driving anything but a Prius.” Mr. Spellun, in what bubble of wishful thinking are you living? If you were truly bi-coastal, you would not have written such a laughably ignorant sentence. A special program on E! recently demonstrated through a plethora of examples that Hollywood “celebrities” (your term and theirs) overwhelmingly favor BMWs, Land Rovers, and Mercedes Benzes. The Prius was not even mentioned. Your statement indicates you are living in a world of fantasy; our success at advocating “green” values depends on our ability to firmly grasp reality.
(April/May 2006, page 86), Laurel Maury said the Kombucha “mushroom” is not a mushroom, but in fact a yeast. As a young biologistin-training, I respectfully would like to point out that yeast, like mushrooms, is a fungus— a member of the genus Saccharomyces. This genus includes the famous breadmakers’ and beermakers’ friend Saccharomyces cerevisi, which ferments sugary dough into bread and sugary tea into beer and wine.
ANONYMOUS VIA E-MAIL
12 | P L E N T Y
“A
CULTURAL
AWAKENING”
GREGORY DICKINSON MISSION VIEJO, CALIFORNIA
I AM WRITING to address your recent post on the Plenty blog about Vanity Fair’s last-minute decision to print their green issue on virgin paper, instead of recycled. As former senior VP of marketing for a company that mails more than 115 million catalogs annually, I know something about printing, paper, and the process by which virgin and post-consumer recycled content (PCR) paper is made. In alignment with our corporate environmental sustainability initiative, we tested 10 percent PCR catalog paper across our three brands, partnering with Environmental Defense as their test case,
and we proved that PCR could uphold our standards for quality and still be economically sound. As a result, we switched all our paper to 10 percent PCR, and began testing 20 percent and higher depending on catalog brand and component (e.g. cover, body, order form, etc.). I’ve heard the standard arguments against using PCR for glossy magazines; they’re largely myth. Let’s eradicate the myths and misconceptions once and for all. Here are the facts we demonstrated six years ago: ● Paper with a minimum of 10 percent post–consumer content: ● Is widely available in coated grades (the paper mainstream catalogs and magazines use). ● Is priced competitively with virgin paper; with just a little effort you can get it at price parity. ● Prints just as well as virgin paper; we saw no negative sales impact in over a year of testing. ● In switching all our catalogs to 10 percent PCR, we achieved the following annual reductions: ● Wood use: 4,400 tons ● Total energy use: 20 billion BTUs August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
Solid waste: 213,000 tons, the trash generated by 100,200 households—the population of Louisville, Kentucky.
â—?
Switching to PCR is obviously great for the environment, and it can be done without added cost or compromised quality—really. And when major players like Vanity Fair blaze an earth-friendly trail, it becomes easier for the rest of the pack to follow its lead. STEVE JONES PORTLAND, OREGON
Greenhouse gases: 2,070 tons CO2 equivalents â—? Wastewater: 11.7 million gallons â—? Solid waste: 990 tons â—? Aided by Environmental Defense, we calculated that if all catalog companies switched to 10 percent PCR paper, the following reductions could have been achieved in 2001: â—? Wood use: 851,000 tons, the wood required to make copy paper for 18.2 million people. â—? Total energy use: 3.7 trillion BTUs, the residential energy used by 35,500 households. â—? Greenhouse gases: 501,100 tons of CO2 equivalents, the amount released by 87,600 cars. â—? Wastewater: 2.1 billion gallons, the wastewater discharged by 21,200 households. â—?
PLENTY looked like such fun when I picked it up yesterday at the checkout stand. I started reading from the front cover with delight, only to be disappointed by “Jumping the Shark,� in which your political editor, Richard Bradley, vilified Peter Benchley for writing a book that eventually resulted in anti-shark sentiment. Sure, Benchley enjoyed success with the novel Jaws, and worked on the screenplay for the movie. And sure, for a while everyone thought twice before swimming in the ocean. But do not downplay the fact that sharks were trophies for fishermen long before the publication of Jaws or the release of the movie. Benchley did not invent shark-fin soup, shark-tooth jewelry, or put shark steak on the menu at seafood restaurants. And, contrary to what Bradley writes in his article, Benchley did not take “every opportunity to insist that Jaws merely reflected what was known about sharks at the time.� In a documentary made for the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Benchley expresses his remorse over any role Jaws had in the destruction of the shark population. In fact, I have never encountered an interview in which Benchley makes such an excuse for Jaws as the one Bradley alleges in his article. Perhaps instead of attacking Benchley for his success, Bradley could do something constructive for sharks by writing an article in which he does more than merely mention the ongoing perils of the shark population such as drift nets, longline fishing, and the demand for shark-fin soup (and why not throw in a discussion of shark cartilage being touted as a cure for cancer while you’re at it?). Rants against a man may be amusing, but they solve no problems.
Send your letters, comments, kudos, and critiques to letters@plentymag.com www.plentymag.com August/September 2006
KATY BRIDGES VIA E-MAIL
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NEWS
NOTES
What Price Purr-fection? Many people have been concerned about the health effects of genetically tweaked fruits and veggies, but a recent advancement in genetic modification involving household pets has raised hackles for its ethical implications. The San Diego–based Allerca, Inc. has created “hypoallergenic” cats—that is, cats that don’t produce the glycoprotein responsible for inducing itchy eyes, sneezing, and hives. One of these kittens will set you back $3,950, a few hundred times more than picking up a stray at the local shelter. Like modified produce, Allerca’s cats have their undesirable genes silenced—in this case, by altering the recipe for glycoprotein normally found in fur and saliva. These cats have cells that destroy the chemical, rather than produce it. Unlike genetically modified foods, the modified cats www.plentymag.com August/September 2006
don’t affect human health—beyond the absence of sniffles and sneezes, that is. The effect on the cats is a different story, however. “Developing a hypoallergenic cat is far from a perfect science,” says Tracie Letterman, executive director of the American Anti-Vivisection Society, which opposes animal testing. “There is no guarantee that these animals will live average, healthy life spans.” In addition, she says, gene silencing is typically a trial-and-error process—some of the altered animals are likely born unhealthy or deformed, or don’t exhibit the allergy-free traits scientists seek. Each time this happens, researchers go back to the lab to tweak another part of the genetic profile, and while each failure brings them closer to success, the outlook isn’t so bright for the animals that don’t live
up to spec. Allerca’s lab practices aren’t public, but in a typical laboratory, says Letterman, “animals who do not have the ‘right’ profile are likely to be considered nothing more than by-products.” And byproducts, by and large, are destroyed. So what about the animals who turn out “right”? Allerca cats will, in theory, lead normal kitten lives: romping with yarn balls, scratching up couches, and getting checkups at the neighborhood vet. This poses another problem—as Letterman points out, “general veterinarians have no specialized training in the care of genetically altered animals, and they may not be prepared to treat ailing hypoallergenic cats.” Their owners will be similarly challenged. Maybe genetically modified pets will have some effect on humans, after all. —Erika Villani P L E N T Y | 15
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Kicking the Bottle COST PER GALLON Bottled water costs as much as 15,000 times more than tap water, and more than lots of other beverages we drink, too. But is it better for you? No, according to tests conducted by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Many bottlers just use reprocessed H2O from municipal water supplies; in fact, reprocessed water makes up as much as 40 percent of the bottled water market. (Your Aquafina might have come from the local water utility in Wichita, Kansas.) Alternatives? Use home filtration systems and buy portable stainless-steel or glass containers. You’ll save about $400 annually, reduce the 1.5 million barrels of oil used to package water each year, and keep plastic from leaching into your drinking water. Put it this way: If 10,000 Plenty readers stopped buying bottled water for a year, the oil they’d save by forgoing the plastic (not including transportation costs, energy used to refrigerate vending machines, the ink on the labels…) could fuel four cars over the same period. Going off the bottle, it seems, is one of the best things you can do for the environment. —Jen Boulden and Heather Stephenson, co-founders, Ideal Bite
Evian, $21.19
Ozone makes a comeback THE GOOD NEWS:
Corona, $12.89
In May, researchers reported in the journal Nature that ozone levels in the atmosphere have stabilized—and even increased slightly—in some regions in the past 10 years. The news comes after many previous years of ozone degradation due to chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other ozone-depleting substances in the atmosphere. WHY WE CARE:
Milk, $3.12 Coca-Cola, $2.64
tap water, $.0019 Sources: American Waterworks Association; Bureau of Labor Statistics; Natural Resources Defense Council
Gore-Clinton
Gore-Lieberman
Clinton-Gore
polar bears
penguins
Bambi
books about trash
talking trash
trashing hotel rooms
Sure, sunburn sucks. So does skin cancer. But excessive UV rays can also cause genetic damage to humans, plants, and animals. The ozone layer absorbs the most harmful UV rays, cushioning us against these ills. WHAT’S THE OUTLOOK?
Thankfully, more than 180 countries (including the U.S. and the European Union) have signed the Montreal Protocol, the international ban on CFCs and ozone-depleting substances, since it was ratified in 1987. But these chemicals aren’t completely out of the picture; the ban doesn’t go into effect until 2010 in developing nations such as China, Mexico, India, and Russia, and there’s still a thriving black market for CFC-based substances like refrigerants. Scientists also say that restoring the full health of the ozone layer will take decades, and that it may never return to its pre-CFC levels. THE PLENTY TAKEAWAY:
birding
bird flu
bird shit
Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart
Keep wearing sunscreen, but the facts here speak loud and clear—these international bans work. Do we need any further proof that a similar pact to curb global warming is a good idea? —Deborah Snoonian
16 | P L E N T Y
August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
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Feds say
yes
to bio-based products
We may not have ratified the Kyoto Protocol, but that doesn’t mean the government is totally ignoring the environment. At Congress’s request in April, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) started a program that requires federal agencies to buy bio-based products, which are made from renewable sources such as soybean oil instead of petroleum. The department says the program will help boost the industry and encourage the creation of more bio-based products. The USDA is starting slowly, and has compiled a list of petroleum-derived products that should be replaced with bio-based counterparts, including hydraulic fluids, roof and water tank coatings, diesel fuel additives, lubricants, and linens. Hand cleaners, sanitizers, and germ killers will likely be phased in over the coming months. The USDA’s Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Maryland, one of the first places to embrace bio-based products, already uses bio-diesel fuel in its tractors, soybean oil as a lubricant
for machinery, and bio-based soap in its bathrooms. Senator Tom Harkin (D) of Iowa helped get the new requirement into the 2002 Farm Security and Rural Investment Act. “If you think about replacing all the plastic cups, forks and spoons at the Department of Defense with bio-based products, you get a feel for how big this idea could be,” he says. Shri Ramaswamy, head of the bio-based products department at the University of Minnesota, says the program is much like the first President Bush’s recycling program in the early 1990s, which required federal agencies to buy products made out of recycled materials. That program, Ramaswamy says, helped popularize recycling with the general public. The government, it seems, can serve as a powerful role model, which begs the question: What would happen if it purchased military uniforms made from organic fibers, drove hybrid cars on official business, and served organic fare at state dinners? —Kimberly Palmer
Styrofoam—not just for landfills anymore Styrofoam has had a bad rap for a long time, and with good reason: Each year, Americans throw away 2.3 million tons of packing peanuts, used coffee cups, and other Styrofoam products. And once landfilled, they can take millions of years to disintegrate. But recently, scientists at University College Dublin have pioneered a new technique that could transform used Styrofoam, also known as polystyrene, into a biodegradable plastic. The process is made possible by a bacterium called Pseudomonas putida, which occurs naturally in soil. In their experiments, scientists heated polystyrene to 968 degrees Fahrenheit in an oxygen-free enviwww.plentymag.com August/September 2006
ronment (because there is no oxygen, there is no burning and therefore no emissions). This process, called pyrolysis, breaks down the chemical bonds in Styrofoam to make styrene, which is readily digestible by the bacteria. Fed styrene under proper conditions, the bacteria produce polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA), a biodegradable plastic that can be used to make disposable utensils, shampoo bottles, even medical devices like heart stents. And PHA-based products can be tossed onto your compost pile when you’re done with them. This new bacterialdigestion process might also have wider applications than recycling your office coffee cups—scientists say it could probably be
used to process plastic waste from the petrochemical industry as well. As of yet, PHA has not been commercially viable because it’s more expensive to produce than petroleum-based plastics, and the process for making it is far less energyefficient. But if scientists can use this new technique to manufacture PHA on a wider scale, the material may become more costeffective. Worldwide, the process could also save more than 15 million tons of polystyrene (about the weight of 5 million Hummer H2s) from being thrown away. Perhaps Styrofoam, the material we all love to hate, will finally acquire some eco–street cred. —Jacquelyn Lane P L E N T Y | 17
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NOTES The Plenty tip: No air conditioning? No problem!
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So the days are getting a little shorter, but at home you’re still feeling the heat—and who likes to work up a sweat when you’re relaxing on the sofa, catching up on reruns? Instead of cranking up the air conditioning (and your energy bill) to cool off, follow these strategies to keep your digs from getting too hot in the first place. —D.S. in the shade: Nearly 40 percent of â?ś Made indoor heat buildup comes in through windows. Outdoor awnings help block sunlight, especially for south-facing windows. Inside, blinds and curtains help, but special insulating shades work better. Try accordion shades that trap excess heat, like the Duette Honeycomb shades from Hunter Douglas (hunterdouglas.com). If you’re renovating, choose windows with heat-reflective coatings—check with your contractor or local hardware store. stand the heat: Use your oven âž‹ Iflessyoubycan’t cooking in quantity and freezing or refrigerating meal-sized portions, or fire up your outdoor grill instead (see “An EcoConscious Cookout,â€? page 100). out: Okay, we all know this: Deciduous ➌ Veg trees shade your home in summer, let the rays through during the winter, and add oxygen to the atmosphere. But did you know they also create microclimates that naturally lower nearby air temps by as much as nine degrees? That’s, well, cool. it off: Asphalt-shingled roofs can âž? Top absorb up to 90 percent of the sun’s radiant energy, even if they’re light in color. Use reflective roofing materials instead, or apply a special reflective coating to your roof to chase the heat away. Check out Energy Star’s website for product listings (energystar.gov).
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18 | P L E N T Y
the switch: If you havenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t traded in â&#x17E;&#x17D; Make your incandescent bulbs for compact fluorescents, do it nowâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;they give off the same amount of light while emitting 90 percent less heat and using 75 percent less energy. August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
PLENTY
event calendar
August Every year, hundreds of the world’s best athletes flock to Los Angeles to defy gravity at the X Games. See page 84 for our story about how green the X Games have become. (expn.com)
3–6
Reminiscent of Midwestern homecoming gatherings, the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) Conference in Oconomowoc, WI, features activities to help farmers, policy makers, and agribusiness professionals explore paths to more sustainable agriculture. (sare2006.org)
15 – 17
The world’s leading experts and activists for industrial hemp- and marijuana-law reform will come together at the 15th annual Seattle Hempfest. Activities include political speeches, musical performances, and the world’s largest pro-hemp rally. (hemp.net)
19 – 20
The Perseid Meteor Shower, which is visible to the Northern Hemisphere from August 10 to September 17, peaks today. (space.com)
12
First held in 1996 to commemorate the opening of Hopland’s Solar Living Center, Sol Fest is now the premier environmental festival in Northern California. This annual celebration features an electric vehicle parade, exhibits displaying the newest green technologies, and educational workshops. (solfest.org)
19 – 20
Businesses, educators, and government will join together in an informative exhibition of energy-related topics at the Energy Solutions Expo in Tivertown, Ontario. (energysolutionsexpo.com)
12 – 13
The Illinois Renewable Energy Association seeks to educate citizens about eco-lifestyle options at the annual Illinois Renewable Energy and Sustainable Lifestyle Fair in Oregon, IL. (illinoisrenew.org)
12 – 13
September Sponsored by the Organic Trade Association, Organic Harvest Month is a time for retailers to educate the public about the health and environmental benefits of organic products. Show your support by stopping by your neighborhood farmer’s market and buying direct from one of your local organic farmers. (organicconsumers.org)
1
The Dogstock Music and Camping Festival, held annually on an animal-rescue farm in Melburn, KS, raises funds for the Akita Adoption and Rescue Foundation. Visitors are encouraged to bring along their dogs and to set up camp on the 81-acre plot. (dogstock.info)
The Southern Energy & Environment Expo, held annually in Fletcher, NC, is an opportunity for the public to learn how they can make their lives greener. In addition to the usual booths and presentations, the expo features a “clean air” car fair and tours of green buildings. Attendees are also encouraged to take advantage of the on-site campgrounds. (seeexpo.com)
25 – 27
In 1994, the UN declared September 16 the International Day for Preservation of the Ozone Layer. Countries all over the world hold their own activities to promote ozone awareness. (uneptie.org/ozoneaction)
16
The Rocky Mountain Sustainable Living Fair in Fort Collins, CO, is designed to educate citizens about sustainable living practices. Kids will love the Planet Youth area, which features educational activities and crafts. Big kids will love Zen Zone, a meditation area complete with life-size zen sandbox, and the beer garden. (sustainablelivingfair.org)
16 – 17
22
1–4
Observed annually in Australia, National Threatened Species Day was first held in 1996 to commemorate the death, in 1936, of the last Tasmanian Tiger in captivity. All over the continent, organizations will use this day to help raise community awareness through exhibitions, festivals, and other educational activities. (deh.gov.au)
7
www.plentymag.com August/September 2006
World Carfree Day. Ditch the gasguzzler and hop on your bike.
Ride on the bio-diesel fueled “Jiggle Bug” train, and then enjoy some New Belgium beers and ales created with 100% wind power at the Renewable Energy Roundup and Green Living Fair in Fredericksburg, TX. (theroundup.org).
22 – 24
Members of the green building community come together for the West Coast Green conference in Los Angeles, CA. For three days, thousands of businesses network and learn about the latest advancements in green design. (westcoastgreen.com)
28 – 30
P L E N T Y | 19
Q & A
DISAPPEARING ACT: Andrew Revkin visits a melting pole.
After two decades of reporting the facts, eco-journalist Andrew Revkin speaks his mind By Erika Wetter THE NEW YORK TIMES SCIENCE REPORTER Andrew Revkin is no stranger to the environmental beat. Over the past 20 years he’s covered some of the most important stories in environmental history, including the Kyoto treaty, global climate change, and the controversy over drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR). In early 2006, he broke one of the most talked-about stories of the year: the Bush administration’s 20 | P L E N T Y
efforts to prevent NASA from releasing scientific information that might contradict the administration’s policies. Here, the veteran reporter discusses the politics of covering the environment; his new children’s book on climate change, The North Pole Was Here (Kingfisher); and the effects of global warming on the Arctic. Last winter you reported that the Bush adminis-
tration had tried to discourage NASA scientist James Hansen from speaking out about global warming.
I’ve written a bunch of stories over the last four years about instances in which scientific findings were rewritten or scientists were muzzled so that the facts were consistent with administration policies. But when Hansen made assertions that his comments had been suppressed, and then all these mid-level peoAugust/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
PHOTO BY PETER WEST/NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Covering the Planet
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
Q & A
Consumer Education and Resources.
[
]
“We’re becoming aware of how much power we have as a species.”
ple at NASA came on record confirming his statements, that was a real bursting of the bubble. A week after his story ran, I received word of all these examples of the government trying to alter scientific data that were much more disturbing—for instance, NASA press officer George Deutsch, who was appointed by President Bush, told a web designer to put the word “theory” after all big bang mentions on NASA websites. It was interesting how it ballooned. In the two decades that you’ve been working as a science reporter, how has the environmental beat changed?
www.organic.org
Global warming didn’t start to really percolate as a news story until the late 1980s, but it’s only gotten stronger with every passing year. Most reporters glaze over when they think about climate change, but to me it contains all the elements necessary to make a story powerful: it’s unexpected and it’s representative of a major turning for the human race. We’re becoming aware of how much power we have as a species. I could spend all my days writing about wolves in Yellowstone, or about how manatees are endangered—they’re great stories. But the thing about climate change and these biggerscale issues is the permanence. We’re talking about largely irreversible changes. Why write a children’s book about global warming?
There’s such a woeful lack of understanding of science these days. Most people see science as a set of facts that are just sitting on a shelf, and that’s the way science is being taught. So I’m hoping that a book like this can help the younger generation—and maybe their parents as well—understand the value of a body of knowledge accumulated through the scientific process. How do you think our ideas about the planet and our relationship to the planet might change if the North Pole melts?
Throughout history the Arctic was always untouchable—it killed everyone that tried to go there. But now, thanks to climate change, what was once impossible—drilling for oil, shipping supplies back and forth—may now become feasible. And the end result is that the Arctic will be just another humanized part of the earth. It reminds me of what Bill McKibben said: We’re endangering, not so much the polar bears, but the special nature of the place. Our whole notion of [the Arctic] is going to change. It’s interesting because people have used that argument with ANWR—“this is the last wild place”—and it doesn’t seem to have worked well.
Actually, I tend to hear the opposite. I think there is an eagerness among environmentalists to make their arguments science-based. For example, they might say, “Caribou won’t breed well with pipelines around.” But now it turns out that caribou don’t mind the pipelines so much. If you use a science-based argument and then discover that the ecological impacts aren’t there, it undermines your cause. So I think a better way to frame the fate of ANWR is to ask ourselves, “Do we want a national wildlife refuge to be industrialized?” That’s a different question than “can caribou breed there?” It’s a values question, even somewhat of an aesthetics question. And I think those things need to be part of how we make decisions. What do you think we need to do to move forward toward sustainability?
Education. People don’t always appreciate the impacts their lives have on the environment. I gave a talk at Bard College last winter to a bunch of graduate students in Environmental Studies. They were pretty energized at the end of the talk, and they kept asking, “What can we do?” And I said, well, I would start with an energy audit of this building, because there are drafts coming through the windows. Just look around you—you’ll find things to do. ■ August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
T E C H N O LO GY
MIT’s Tokamak reactor, made of superdurable molybdenum, can withstand scorching temperatures needed to create fusion reactions.
New Nukes?
tities of energy. Fusion reactions, in which hydrogen atoms fuse together to form helium, are what keeps our sun burning bright; on a hot July day at the beach, you can feel the heat and energy it creates. The process differs from nuclear fission, or the splitting of atomic nuclei (typically uranium), which also releases vast quantities of energy and forms the basis for modern-day nuclear power. For many reasons, fusion presents an attractive answer to global energy problems: It requires tiny amounts of raw material, and very cheap raw material at that—chiefly, deuterium (or “heavy hydrogen”), an isotope of hydrogen that is naturally abundant in ocean water, and tritium, another hydrogen isotope. Unlike fossil-fuel burning power plants, fusion would not pollute the air; unlike nuclear power, it poses no risk of a meltdown or other catastrophic accident. And, an added bonus in a security-conscious world: Its materials cannot be used for the renegade manufacture of weapons of mass destruction. There’s one catch, though, and it’s a big one—it’s tough to maintain a fusion reaction over a long period of time. For fusion to take place, you’ve got to squeeze enough hydrogen atoms close enough together to force the positive-charged protons (which naturally repel each other) in their nuclei to merge. And that takes a lot of energy. The sun’s fusion reactions have been sustained for eons because of the intense heat and pressure at its core, but on earth, creating and sustaining a fusion reac-
THERE’S AN OLD JOKE WITHIN THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY that fusion power is the energy source of the future—and always will be. That’s because the challenges of making it work on a commercial scale are so daunting that, to date, no one has invested enough resources to even assess whether fusion power could be cost-effective and feasible. But a major research effort into fusion’s promise is now underway in France, where a long-stalled project—an international facility known as the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER)—will be constructed. In late May, the U.S., the European Union, Japan, China, Russia, South Korea, and India signed an agreement to underwrite the ambitious project. Officials estimate that ITER will take eight to ten years to build, at a cost of $5.9 billion (of which the U.S. is funding 10 percent). Another $5 billion will be needed to operate it over the next 20 years. The hope is that ITER will help scientists and engineers get their arms around a process that is well understood theoretically, but is not commercially viable. Thermonuclear fusion is the merging of two atomic nuclei to form a heavier nucleus—a process that releases huge quan24 | P L E N T Y
August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
PHOTOGRAPH PROVIDED BY MIT’S PLASMA SCIENCE AND FUSION CENTER
A research facility will probe whether fusion power is feasible By Michael W. Robbins
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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T E C H N O LO GY
tion requires extremely high temperatures—up to 100 million degrees Fahrenheit, or about six times hotter than the inside of the sun (though it should be noted that some holdouts believe that fusion reactions can occur at much lower temperatures; see sidebar). Over the past five decades, millions have been spent by industry and governments on basic research into fusion. So far, scientists have been able to create a fusion reaction by heating gaseous forms of deuterium and tritium until they merge to form helium. The resulting plasma, or superheated gas, is contained in a vacuum that’s held in place by a colossal magnetic field—all of which is insulated by a meters-thick metal “jacket.” Several facilities around the world, including the state-of-theart Tokamak reactor housed at MIT, have succeeded in generating these reactions for brief periods. But scientists and engineers are still grappling with how to sustain the reaction without a net loss of energy— and how to harness the immense energy it releases to generate power. They’re also not sure how to control the radiation that results from fusion, nor have they identified materials that are durable enough to withstand the thermal and magnetic stresses necessary to sustain fusion reactions. ITER will have capabilities that allow many of these questions to be addressed, say researchers. It will be about ten times the size of MIT’s Tokamak reactor, and will take a crucial technological step toward creating a sustained fusion reaction by heating the plasma using excess radiation and heat from the fusion reaction itself, instead of an external heat source. “ITER won’t solve all the problems,” says Earl Marmar, the
It could take 30 to 35 years and $50 to $100 billion to attain commercial fusion power. senior research scientist in the department of physics at MIT, who runs the university’s Alcator C-Mod fusion reactor. “We’ll need a next-generation reactor after ITER, one close to commercial scale” that will be capable of producing more energy than it takes to run it. Still, the technological challenges are immense. One controversial assessment, which appeared in the March 2006 issue of Science, was penned by the late William E. Parkins, an alumnus of the Manhattan Project and former chief scientist at onetime aerospace giant Rockwell International. Parkins declared that the engineering and cost obstacles to fusion are practically insurmountable. And certainly, many scientists and engineers acknowledge this point; Marmar, for one, estimates that it could take 30 to 35 years and $75 to $100 billion to bring fusion power to commercial scale. But he’s also not willing to give up on its promise. “Right now, we’re spending about $1.5 billion per year worldwide,” he says. “We need to pick up the pace. I think we see a fairly clear path to fusion power, but the obstacles are not inexpensive.” So, fusion power may indeed be the energy source of the future. But, given the immense investments that will be required, it’s a safe bet that other sustainable energy sources will reach the marketplace long before fusion comes to fruition. ■ 26 | P L E N T Y
Left out in the cold For a brief time in the spring of 1989, it seemed that the world’s energy problems were solved. A pair of chemists at the University of Utah, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, held a press conference where they announced that after several years of experimentation, they had succeeded in achieving nuclear fusion at room temperature by electrolyzing some “heavy water” (deuterium oxide, or D2O) using electrodes made of platinum and palladium. The process gave off bursts of excess energy that could not be explained by normal chemical reactions, they said. This was electrifying news to the scientific community, and in the weeks that followed, labs around the world set out to reproduce Fleischmann and Pons’s lowenergy nuclear reaction, which came to be called cold fusion. Researchers reported widely mixed results: Some found excess heat, but only erratically and rarely; others noted anticipated fusion byproducts like bursts of neutron radiation, but again only irregularly; still others noted the appearance of an expected fusion byproduct, tritium, but in vanishingly small quantities. Many researchers found no signs of fusion whatsoever. In a matter of weeks, it became clear that the two men had made some serious procedural mistakes in their experiments— and had not been entirely forthcoming in explaining how they conducted their tests. Most of the excitement about their new “discovery” quickly died down, but some scientists continued to test room-temperature fusion, and have sometimes reported promising results. Today most scientists maintain that cold fusion is simply impossible according to the laws of nuclear physics. Nevertheless, in 2004, the Department of Energy convened a panel of 18 international scientists to review the state of knowledge on cold fusion and to assess whether it was sound science, pseudo-science, or just wishful thinking in a world that’s seeking ways to create clean energy. Ultimately, twelve of the panelists concluded that there was no real evidence that cold fusion could ever occur. But five thought that it had some promise, and one was convinced it was a real phenomenon. Though some experiments continue, the promise of cold fusion seems far more remote than it did during those fleeting weeks some 17 years ago. August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
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INVESTING
Liquid Assets Clean water makes a splash on Wall Street By Sarah Schmidt
AS LOS ANGELES BATTLES the rest of the west for water rights—and aquifers everywhere start to dry up—it’s no surprise that water is a hot commodity. But lately, experts agree, the market is especially robust. “It’s essential to human health, a safe environment and economic development—and, well, there’s no substitute, so it’s a basic supply-and-demand issue,’” says Steve Hoffman, president of WaterTech Capital, an investment firm that tracks this burgeoning sector. Why is it that water has become, as many have said, “the next oil”? Access to clean drinking water has simply failed to keep pace with population growth, especially in the developing world. “Right now, 1.2 billion people are without access to safe drinking water,” says Erik D. Olson, senior attorney and director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Drinking Water Project. The United Nations has pledged to cut that number in half by the year 2015, which will require tremendous investment by governments of developing countries, the nations that aid them, businesses that offer clean water technology, and NGOs. Furthermore, rapid development in China, India, and elsewhere is driving demand for new water infrastructures to support those emerging economies. At the same time, existing water systems in western nations are wearing out. In the U.S., nine out of ten water utilities are still using World War I–era technology, according to the NRDC, and bringing all of it up to date will cost around $500 bil28| P L E N T Y
August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
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As a member of the world’s largest and most enduring organization devoted to building tomorrow today, you will... 1. Stay on top of the trends that could change your world. 2. Participate in a network of accomplished professionals in many fields. 3. Learn from insightful articles and special reports by business and technology insiders, visionary scholars, and professional futurists. 4. Develop strategies that will make you a valued leader in your community. 5. Look at the world through a wider lens, with multiple perspectives. 6. Think more creatively, inspired by new ideas from innovative problem solvers. 7. Work more productively, using tools developed by experienced futurists and experts. 8. Discover innovations in fields you would not otherwise be exposed to. 9. Access vital resources on the future available nowhere else. 10. Receive THE FUTURIST, the Society’s premier magazine covering forecasts, trends, and ideas about the future. One-year membership in the World Future Society ($49) includes subscriptions to THE FUTURIST bimonthly magazine and Futurist Update, the monthly e-mail newsletter—and much more! Join online at www.wfs.org/member.htm, call toll-free 1-800-989-8274 Monday-Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern time, or use this form:
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INVESTING
lion, according to one estimate. Removing contaminants like arsenic and perchlorate from the domestic water supply is also emerging as an important, and costly, necessity. As a result of this pent-up demand, companies that are developing technology to treat, filter, and deliver clean water—and even water utility companies themselves—have become the latest “next big thing.” “Water is hot right now,” says Francesca McCann, a vice president at Stanford Washington Research Group who specializes in analyzing the water industry. Last year, WaterTech launched the Palisades Water Index (ticker symbol: ZWI) to track this potentially big moneymaker (it works in roughly the same way that the NASDAQ represents tech stocks). Comprising publicly traded stocks that stand to benefit from the demand for safe drinking water, sustainable use, and improved industrial processes, the Palisades Index is now up about 18 percent since its inception (compared to around three percent for the S&P 500), with companies that are developing new technology leading the way. In December, the investment firm PowerShares launched a portfolio, called Water Resources, to mirror the Palisades index so that investors can easily get in on the action (see sidebar). But is it green to invest in these companies? “It is pretty earth-friendly—and human-friendly, of course,” says Olson. “There’s no such thing as a perfect technology, but on balance, these are sustainable, and they’re likely to play a role in fixing important environmental problems. And they’re helping people—you don’t want eight million kids dying each year because they don’t have access to clean drinking water.” Doug Wheat, director of SRI World Group, an organization that provides information on socially responsible investing, agrees: “Water Resources was developed to make money, not necessarily with social and environmental factors in mind, but still, in general, it’s good for both people and the earth.” Of course the impressive growth—and considerable buzz—in water may make a person worry that it’s a little late to get in on the ground floor. But financial experts believe that this is anything but a flash in the pan. “Water is a basic, fundamental human need that’s not going to go away,” says McCann. “It’s true that people get excited over hot, new technologies, but truly, it will take several years to implement them and the need will be there for a long time, so this is the kind of investment that should be considered a longer-term hold.” Whether water is the next oil or not, putting money into clean water could be just the thing to turn your portfolio into a sea of green. ■
Tips of the trade For investors considering, uh, taking the plunge into water stocks, the Po w e r S h a r e s Wa t e r Fu n d (ticker symbol: PHO; powershares.com) gets high marks from the experts. “It’s the easiest and best choice for consumers looking to get some exposure to this sector,” says Doug Wheat. The fee is low: 0.6 percent for PHO, as opposed to the 1.5 percent that most mutual funds charge. And, just like the Palisades index that it mirrors, it’s up about 18 percent since it launched last year. Currently, the fund is made up of 37 holdings in six areas: utilities (27%), treatment (23%), resource management (17%), infrastructure (16%), multiplebusiness companies (11%) and waterquality testing (6%), and it is adjusted slightly each quarter to reflect the market. (It’s worth noting that General Electric makes up about 1 percent of the fund, which might be of concern to investors who want to steer clear of defense and nuclear power. And, though most of the utilities in the fund have contracts with U.S. municipalities, a few are involved in international privatization—a trend that has been criticized because it can encourage profiteering.) Another option is the Luxembourg– based S u s t a i n a b l e A s s e t M a n a g e m e n t ’ s Wa t e r Fu n d, a traditionally-managed SRI mutual fund that’s also focused on the water sector. It’s up about 8 percent in the past 12 months and has a 1.5 percent fee (sam-group.com). And of course, there are the individual stocks in the Palisades index. At press time, Francesca McCann named her favorites: the sewer-rehab company I n s t i t u f o r m Te c h n o l o g i e s (INSU); the resource management consultant Tetra Te c h (TTEK); U.S. water utility holding company A q u a A m e r i c a (WTR); Wa t t s Water Te c h n o l o g y (WTS), which makes water quality and conservation products; and A m e r i ca n St a t e s Wa t e r (AWR), another utility holding company.
August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
WHEELS
The Other Hybrids
E-bikes have been written off as clunky and expensive, but manufacturers say they’re getting better By Susan M. Brackney I’M NOT GOING TO LIE TO YOU. I’m a single girl who’s been around the block. Usually I don’t look back, but there’s at least one hookup I really regret: My 1998 cherry-red Jeep Cherokee. Sure, it gets me where I need to go, but I feel pretty guilty afterward. The emissions streaming out of the tailpipe wreck our air quality, and my dependence on foreign oil wrecks my conscience. I feel dirty. So I’m ready to make a clean break—well, a cleaner break anyway. Originally, I vowed to take all short, local trips on my bicycle—but it wasn’t long before I began to pine away for the gas guzzler in my garage. Scrawny asthmatic that I am, I get winded just walking to my favorite juice bar. Rather than continue to struggle up the hills of southcentral Indiana on my old Schwinn—and arrive at my destination a sweaty mess—I thought I could make things easier on myself with an electric bike. Little did I know how hard finding one would be. An electric bike (or “e-bike”) is a regular bicycle outfitted with a small motor, battery pack, throttle, and a controller that adjusts the amount of electricity supplied to the motor. An e-bike can be ridden just like a traditional bike, but if you want a little extra oomph you can switch on the motor, which then delivers power to the wheels in conjunction with your pedaling. Many of the new e-bikes offer adjustable pedal-to-motor power ratios, so riders can decide to what extent they’ll rely on an e-bike’s electric assistance. (Really lazy souls like me, for example, might choose to ride with one-quarter human power and three-quarters electric power.) Typically, though, about half of an e-bike’s energy comes from the physical work of the rider. An e-bike with a 24-volt, 12-amp-hour battery could take you 10 to 20 miles on a single charge. Not bad, but when I went to try one for myself it wasn’t exactly love 32 | P L E N T Y
Manufacturer: Giant Bicycles Model: Suede E (Complete bike includes battery, motor, throttle, and controller) Cost: $1,000 MSRP Weight: about 56 pounds Technology: pedal-activated 36-volt nickel metal hydride battery Battery life/range: about 30 miles per charge Warranty: one year for parts and electrical components Availability: check giantbicycle.com for dealer information.
at first sight. I drove up to Indianapolis to test-ride Giant Bicycle’s LAfree Lite model— only to find that its battery was dead. (“Uh, no one’s asked to ride it since October,” the shop clerk stammered.) Turns out e-bikes aren’t even close to being perfect. Largely Asian-made to capitalize on inexpensive labor, the technology isn’t cheap—an e-bike may cost between $1,000 and $1,500 (owing to factors including shipping, distribution costs, and retail markup). They weigh in at a hefty 50 pounds or more. And finally, like boyfriends, the really good ones are hard to find. Frank Jamerson, publisher of the biennial Electric Bikes Worldwide Reports and owner of the Electric Battery Bicycle Company in Naples, Florida, thinks retailers are hesitant to stock e-bikes because electric bike manufacturers had a collectively shaky start in the early ’90s: “It’s like any new industry. There were a lot of poor-quality products out there initially,” he says. Retailer Bob Nohren agrees. He tried stocking a couple of e-bikes in his Energy Conservatory Bike Shop in Dunedin, Florida, a few years back, and said the only one he sold went to a commuter: “She was in here every other week with something, practically in tears.” After getting caught a few times in the rain, her bike simply stopped working; several gratis repairs later, Nohren gave up. “On some of these electric bikes, you have to take the whole thing apart to fix it. It’s hours and hours of labor. So we said, ‘We’re going to get you a real nice mountain August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
Manufacturer: BionX Model: BionX kit (Install the battery and motor assembly on your existing bike) Cost: $1,100 MSRP Weight: ranges from 15 to 23 pounds, depending on model Technology: pedal-activated brushless motor. Nickel metal hydride or lithium ion battery options. Battery life/range: 15-20 miles per charge depending on assistance use and model Warranty: two years Availability: visit bionx.ca for a dealer locator.
bike,’ because she had just had it up to here.” But current e-bike retailers promise that things have changed. Rob Means, owner of Electro Ride Bikes and Scooters, a San Francisco Bay Area business since 1996, notes that manufacturers are responding to retailer and customer needs. For example, while an e-bike’s controller and motor often used to be packaged together, you’ll now find them separated on many models: “Now when the controller goes bad—and it still goes bad sometimes—it’s just a relatively inexpensive replacement.” Doug McKinney, an employee at NYCEWheels in New York City, has noticed the need for repairs has decreased as e-bike battery technology has improved, and lighter, more powerful e-bikes are attracting all kinds of people, from the physically disabled and the elderly to “the guys that just want to go as fast as possible.” Despite all the progress, the cost, weight, and seemingly inevitable
Manufacturer: Currie Technologies Model: iZip IQ Series Trekking bike Cost: $1,299 MSRP Weight: 48 pounds Technology: pedal-activated nickel metal hydride battery Battery life/range: up to 25 miles per charge Warranty: see currietech.com Availability: see dealer information online.
need for repairs associated with e-bikes didn’t exactly turn me on. But a heart-to-heart with Piet Canin, deputy director of the Santa Cruz Area Transportation Management Association in California, quelled my doubts: “I think the technology’s at a good place. It’s reliable enough. It works well enough. Electric bikes definitely serve a purpose.” Canin helps oversee the local Electric Bicycle Rebate Program, which affords every participant a $375 instant rebate on the purchase of an e-bike. So far, more than 1,200 Santa Cruz, residents have purchased e-bikes through the program during the last four years, and 62 percent of participants use their bikes to replace car trips. Best of all, 84 percent of the participants have been “delighted” or “satisfied” with their bikes, and a whopping 97 percent would recommend riding an e-bike. Looks like the Jeep and I are heading out again—this time to find the e-bike of my dreams. And then we’re speeding to Splitsville. ■
ONCOMING TRAFFIC: Will Cars Threaten China’s Bike Culture? When it comes to buying and using e-bikes, many areas of Europe, India, and China are way ahead of us. While not quite 100,000 e-bikes were sold in the U.S. last year, the Chinese snapped up over 10 million of them during the same period. And, according to Frank Jamerson, publisher of the biennial Electric Bikes Worldwide Reports, Chinese sales should hold steady: “We expect [e-bike] sales there will level off to the 15 million units-peryear range over the next few years.”
www.plentymag.com August/September 2006
That China is not crisscrossed with expressways certainly has helped fuel its affinity for two-wheeled transportation. Another incentive: the bulk of e-bikes are manufactured there. Riders can easily get parts and service for their bikes, which sell for about $300 on average. “That’s like a month or two month’s wages [in China], which is a reasonable percentage of your disposable income for transportation,” Jamerson added.
Still, China’s reliance on both traditional and electric bikes may be in flux, thanks to its growing economy and burgeoning love affair with the automobile. Jamerson noted that auto sales were up to nearly 3.8 million units in China last year, “but the fact is that you’ve got 1.3 billion people that need transportation, and you’re not going to have 1.3 billion cars on the road ever over there. The electric bike, just like the traditional bike, will go on forever.”
P L E N T Y | 33
RETREADS
34 | P L E N T Y
August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
Pass it on
Literary Luggage Use an old book to make a purse. Read the instructions first, then select materials according to your preferences for color and style. You’ll need:
Instructions
A used hardcover book (moldy or water-damaged pages okay) An article of used clothing A fine-point marker Glue A craft knife Beads or ribbons (optional)
1. Cut away the book’s pages with the craft knife. Recycle the pages. Lay the open book cover over the used clothing. Use the marker to draw a line 1⁄4 inch beyond the cover’s edges on all sides. Cut the fabric along the line. 2. Place the fabric over the outside of the book cover, then fold and glue the extra 1⁄4 inch of material to the inside of the cover. 3. After the glue has dried, stand the book upright with the outside of the cover facing you. Measure the space at the top of the book where the pages used to be; this will be the side of your new purse. Cut two pieces (one for each side) of fabric to this size, adding 1⁄4 inch to each side. Fold edges in and glue one piece to the top of the book and one piece to the bottom of the book. 4. If it’s a clutch-style purse you want, you’re done! If you want to attach handles, wait until the glue has dried, then place the book on its spine. Glue or sew small loops of fabric to the material on the inside of the purse, two loops per side, spaced an equal distance apart. Once glue dries, string ribbons or an old necklace through the loops to create your handles.
STASH BOX BY NICOLE DESANTIS; SCRAPBOOK BY WINGSOFWHIMSY; BOOK BAG BY MELISSA MURPHY; ALL MEMBERS OF CRAFSTER.ORG
Scrapped Book The idea is to transform an old tome into your own scrapbook, sketchbook, or photo album—or a great gift for a friend. Remove what you don’t like and add your own artwork, which can include drawings, paintings, poems, or small objects. You’ll Need:
Instructions
A used book with heavy pages A craft knife Glue Any decorative materials (acrylic or watercolor paints, photographs, dried flowers, etc.)
1. Decide on a theme for your work of art, and choose a book with complementary subject matter. For example, try using a children’s book for photos of your baby or an old atlas for vacation souvenirs. You don’t need to decorate each page; remove and recycle pages as needed. 2. Wherever you want to decorate, cover the book’s text or illustrations with paint, or glue blank paper over the pages. Allow some of the book’s original print to peek through around the edges and in between your additions. 3. If you want to include three-dimensional objects like beads or dried flowers, create little nests for them by cutting a box several pages deep with the craft knife. Glue the page edges together to ensure that your nests stay put, and glue the objects into the nests.
Storied Stash Box Keep your top-secret stuff in a classic hollowed-out book, either stealthily shelved or proudly displayed. You’ll need
Instructions
A used hardcover book A pen Glue A craft knife A ruler An article of used clothing
1. On the first page of the book, measure and draw an even rectangle (you’ll cut around this line to create the inside of the box). For a jewelry or cash box, leave a 1-inch border around the edges of your rectangle. Or customize the opening for an object such as a TV remote: Place the object on the first page and trace a line around it (leaving a little breathing room at the edges). 2. Hold the book steady and use the craft knife to cut around your line, several pages deep. Remove the cutout and trace the opening with the craft knife again. Repeat the process until the hole is deep enough to store the desired object. 3. Glue the pages together to form a solid block. When the glue is dry, cut a piece of the used clothing to cover the inside of the box, then glue the fabric down.
Tell us about your favorite vintage finds and crafty projects: retreads@plentymag.com www.plentymag.com August/September 2006
If your books are in relatively good physical condition, someone else may want them. The following organizations will help you give new life to your unwanted lit: YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY: They may not put your old books on their shelves, but many public libraries use proceeds from the sale of used books to fund operating expenses (budget cuts often make these sales a necessity). Don’t worry if your books aren’t in pristine condition. Inscriptions and a few handwritten notes are okay, but books with severe damage—did you drop it in the bathtub or spill coffee on it?—aren’t. (To find your local library, go to lists.webjunction.org/libweb) BOOKCROSSING: This global community of nearly half a million book lovers gives people a chance to track their used books as they pass from reader to reader. Members leave books in public places around the country and abroad—parks, coffee houses, train stations—for anyone to pick up, enjoy, and deposit in another likely spot. Books are “tagged” with a sticker that asks each new reader to visit BookCrossing’s Web site and let the original owner know it was picked up. Register a book with the program; when someone takes it, BookCrossing will notify you by email. (bookcrossing.com) ECO ENCORE: This Seattle-based environmental group turns donated books into cash, selling them on its own eBay store and sending the proceeds to environmental groups. Founder Jesse Putman has this tip for potential donors: “It may seem counter-intuitive, but usually the lesser-known titles sell best.” (ecoencore.org) READER TO READER: This group sends donated children’s books to needy schools around the United States. To date, the Massachusetts-based organization has shipped 350,000 books to over 300 schools. (readertoreader.org) SAFE: English-language textbooks published within the last 10 years are distributed to colleges in Sudan, where they’re used in language classes. Each year, the group collects and ships roughly 12,000 donated books. (sudan-safe.org) THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION: The group does not accept donated books for libraries, but it does maintain a list of nationwide book-donation programs. (ala.org)
P L E N T Y | 35
BOOKS
Liquid Gold A veteran enviro reporter explains why declining water reserves in eight states affect life across the U.S. OGALLALA BLUE Water and Life on the Great Plains BY WILLIAM ASHWORTH NORTON, $26.95
FOR DECADES, alarmed environmentalists have speculated that the next Civil War will be fought over water rights. Tension is especially high in the eight Plains states relying heavily on the Ogallala Aquifer, which consists of billions of gallons of water deposited underground by prehistoric rivers. The aquifer is drying up, and most of the states are seeing precipitous declines in their water reserves. But it is drying unevenly; the regions and states where development is heaviest are being hit hardest, and residents of those areas increasingly find themselves at loggerheads with their neighbors in the less-developed parts of the High Plains. In his new book, William Ashworth demonstrates the profound social and ecological consequences wrought by our heavy exploitation of water resources. Ashworth—a journalist who has written extensively on water issues and other environmental topics—intersperses his political and economic analysis with portraits of the people who are affected by the Ogallala’s depletion. And at some level, those people are all of us, no matter where we live. “It is hard to overestimate the impact that this bounty of buried water has had on American life,” Ashworth writes. “If you snack on popcorn or peanuts, you are probably eating Ogallala water; if you dress in cotton clothing, you are probably wearing it. […] If the aquifer went dry, more than $20 billion worth of food and fiber would disappear immediately from the world’s markets.” The subtle message of Ashworth’s research 36 | P L E N T Y
is that all of nature, and by extension all of human nature, is interconnected. He explores the deep animosities that water scarcity can ignite, analyzing the profiteering that has begun to occur in states like Texas, “where antiquated water laws allow well owners to suck water from beneath their neighbors’ land and sell it to the highest bidder.” Other vexing questions center around allocation: After the water is pumped from the aquifer, who receives it? Who becomes the arbiter when farmers compete with each other for water—in addition to competing with municipalities, industries, recreational users, and animals living in the wild? And some issues focus on quality: When the water table drops, will the water remain safe to drink, irrigate crops, or ready supermarket-bound livestock for the slaughterhouse? As we draw water out of the aquifer for any purpose (whether drinking, washing our cars, or filling man-made lakes), Ashworth explains, it cannot be replenished fully by rainfall or snowmelt, because too many people are using too much water too quickly. Even the biggest storms can’t recharge the Ogallala as they did in prehistoric eras, when snowmelt trickled into the aquifer from the distant Rocky Mountains: Today we’ve paved over and developed so much land that the Ogallala’s connection to those streams has been severed. Since the advent of widespread irrigation during the 1950s, 11 percent of the aquifer’s original volume has disappeared. That irrigation, of course, has been critical for the region—agriculture above the Ogallala today would not exist without it. But irrigating
becomes increasingly expensive as water becomes scarcer; as a result, Ashworth shows, many family farmers now cannot afford to pay their water bills. So they sell the farms, often to corporate owners that care little for the social fabric of the locale, and the families move to area towns, where they may live near the poverty level. What’s more, corporate farming frequently involves using pesticides and agricultural chemicals to increase crop yields—and unless they’re applied at just the right dosage, the excess chemicals seep into the aquifer, resulting in persistent, widespread groundwater pollution that can harm grasses, trees, animals—and eventually people. Is there an upside to all this doom and gloom? Ashworth does point to promising small-scale responses to the Ogallala problem that could serve as models for other communities that depend on aquifers. “We can, and should, prepare” for the Ogallala’s certain demise, he says. Water politics may change irreparably in the coming years, but with some clever management and cooperation between environmentalists and farmers, we may be able to reduce our consumption of the valuable resource—and thus learn to preserve our remaining stores of water. —Steve Weinberg August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
New and Noteworthy A KEEPER OF BEES: Notes on Hive and Home BY ALLISON WALLACE (RANDOM HOUSE, $23.95)
Wallace, an ardent beekeeper, interweaves her observations of honeybee behavior with scientific data about the tiny creatures and reflections on “the great, never fully knowable ecological dance” that governs the bees’ lives.
HEAT SIGNATURE: A Novel BY LISA TEASLEY (BLOOMSBURY, $14.95)
Teasley’s suspenseful novel follows protagonist Sam Brown on a road trip from the California desert to the lush woods of Oregon. Trying to cope with his mother’s murder, Sam finds peace for a time in the arms (and the sustainably-built home) of an arborist.
THE CREATION: A Meeting of Science and Religion BY EDWARD O. WILSON (W.W. NORTON, $21.95)
An eminent biologist and ecophile who has spoken out against intelligent design theory, Wilson now outlines how religious and scientific leaders can and must work together to protect the planet’s biodiversity.
TIGERS IN RED WEATHER: A Quest to See the Last Wild Tigers BY RUTH PADEL (WALKER & COMPANY, $26.95)
The poet Padel—who also happens to be the great-granddaughter of Charles Darwin— evokes the mysterious beauty of the vanishing animals as she explores their role over time in nature and the human imagination. www.plentymag.com August/September 2006
P L E N T Y | 37
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4RANSFORMING THE WAY THE WORLD DOES BUSINESS WWW SVN ORG
GREEN GEAR
Grillin’ Green UN O R A GE N U O L
D
1
Impress your guests at your next backyard BBQ with these functional accoutrements
SERVE IT UP $930 (patiofurnitureusa.com) It looks like wood and it feels like wood, but it’s not wood. In fact, each piece of this stylish outdoor dining set is made from over 500 plastic bottles that would’ve otherwise ended up in a landfill. And, unlike wood, recycled plastic furniture will weather the elements with essentially no upkeep.
www.plentymag.com August/September 2006
P L E N T Y | 39
H E A LT H
GREEN GEAR
2
A WARMING GLOW $296 (cozydays.com) Your friends will give this fire pit a glowing review. It’s hand made out of 100% recycled copper by artisan coppersmiths.
a feel-good
feast
5 DELICIOUS DISH $12.99 for pack of 10 small plates, 8 large plates, 8 knives, 8 forks, and 8 spoons (recycline.com) Use the same plastic servingware all summer. Preserve’s tableware is made out of 100% recycled plastic and is dishwasher-safe on low-heat cycles.
7 40 | P L E N T Y
CHEW O N THIS
GOOD WOOD $90 (totallybamboo.com) Perfect for prep and large enough for serving, this handy cutting board is made from bamboo—a quick-renewing resource.
August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
3 SMOKINâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; STYLE $30 (apronstore.com) How do you prepare your famous vegan pasta salad without splattering your clothes? By wearing this 100% organic hemp apron, of course. It comes in a variety of earthy colors; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s also chemical- and pesticide-free.
4 A GLOWING REVIEW
6
$60 (solarlightstore.com) Light your garden at night with this beautiful solar lantern. It features a superbright LED that will last for 12 hours when fully charged.
HOT HOLDERS $15 (gxonlinestore.com) Protect your hands and support fair trade by purchasing this hand-woven, naturally dyed hemp potholder/oven mitt set. Proceeds from its sales will provide income to village co-ops and communities in Northern Thailand.
8 ZAP, SIZZLE $215 (eco-gardening.com) Coal-burning grills emit lots of nasty greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxide into the atmosphere, and gas grills require us to constantly invest extra dollars for the privilege of burning a natural resource. While all grills require a lot of energy to cook the food, the electric variety is the cleanest and most efficient option. So go ahead and BBQ this summer with less guilt.
www.plentymag.com August/September 2006
P L E N T Y | 41
GREEN GEAR
9
BUG OFF $10 (gaiam.com) Don’t let the bugs drive you inside on a beautiful evening. When activated, this pocket-sized device will emit a high-frequency sound wave that repels mosquitoes. The built-in solar panels will recharge the battery in three hours of sunlight.
10 TRIM THE FAT
eco-
upkeep
$209 (sunlawn.com) You want to impress your guests with a well-groomed yard, but conventional lawn mowers emit nasty fumes and produce noise reminiscent of a jet engine. This sturdy push-reel mower is easy to maneuver and it will trim your lawn without the use of gas, oil, or electricity. It’s also noiseand emission-free.
T U O G I P
11
ROLL ’EM OVER $309 (peoplepoweredmachines.com) Thanks to the RolyPig, composting has never been cuter. Simply feed food scraps into the pig’s mouth and rotate the composter periodically to transfer waste through a series of compartments as it decomposes. In three to four months, compost can be removed from the rear end and used for gardening. Here, piggy, piggy!
42 | P L E N T Y
August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
A HEALTHY LIFESTYLE
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44 | P L E N T Y
August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
A Peddlerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Paradise PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF OFF BEAT ROADS
The successes of Lance Armstrong have helped cycling become more popular than ever, making now the perfect time to go on a low-carbon diet and see the world on two wheels. Whether you go at it on your own or use a guide, our eight eco-friendly bike destinations will make you glad you traded in those driving gloves for spandex. By Matthew Kadey The ridesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; levels of difficulty range from one bike (beginner) to four bikes (extremely advanced).
www.plentymag.com August/September 2006
P L E N T Y | 45
Belize
Temple Hopping
With its comfortably flat roads, breathtaking Mayan ruins, and gorgeous greenery, Belize is a cyclist’s dream destination. It has the lowest population density of any Central American country, so there’s untouched habitat at every turn (don’t be surprised if you catch glimpses of macaws, howler monkeys, and maybe even jaguars). For a long stretch of scenic sights, take a ride on the southern-running Hummingbird Highway, and enjoy views of broadleaved jungle vegetation and the towering Maya Mountains. As you climb slowly along the Western Highway, you’ll enter the Cayo district, which is dotted with waterfalls, 1,000-year-old ruins, and exotic flora and fauna including orchids and keel-billed toucans. If mountain biking is your thing, be sure to take the 21-mile ride down the rough-and-tumble Chiquibul road south of San Ignacio—an energetic town that plays host to Belizeans of all creeds—into the 300-square-mile Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve (40 percent of Belize is protected as nature, wildlife, or marine reserves). Here, you can stop to enjoy your lunch next to Thousand Foot Falls, the country’s tallest cascade. Further south, in the jungle of Chiquibul National Park, you can take in Caracol, Belize’s largest Mayan site, where it’s estimated that 36,000 structures lie beneath the jungle canopy. Caracol includes the towering Canaa Temple, still Belize’s tallest man-made structure.
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GUIDE: Off Beat Roads (416-928-0628, offbeatroads.com) uses local guides who are well versed in Belize’s animal and plant life, as well as Mayan history. The company fits as many temples and wildlife reserves as possible into its 11-day Belizean ride ($1,600). Perk: a side trip to Guatemala’s Tikal is included; dominated by five enormous temples—steep-sided limestone pyramids rising powerfully from the jungle floor—it’s one of the world’s most famous Mayan sites. FUEL: You won’t have to pedal very far for a taste of Belize’s most common food: rice and beans. Made with red beans, black pepper, and grated coconut, it’s the perfect dish to top off energy stores. And since you’re never more than 60 miles from the ocean, you’re guaranteed an abundance of fresh seafood as well. Try conch—a staple of the Maya for centuries. Also, if you’re looking to add a little pizzazz to your provisions, don’t leave without trying Marie Sharp’s Hot Sauce, whose fiery primary ingredients come from local farmers. OFF THE SADDLE: Based in San Ignacio, Pacz Tours (011-501-804-2667, pacztours.net) offers a great full-day walking trip ($80) exploring the remarkable cave system of Actun Tunichil Muknal. Located in the lush jungle alongside Tapir Mountain Nature Reserve, the caves still contain Mayan pottery and skeletal remains. This trip is included in Off Beat Roads’ bike tour of Belize.
August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
Thailand
The Lush North
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF OFF BEAT ROADS (LEFT PAGE); KE ADVENTURE TRAVEL (RIGHT PAGE)
A world away from the beach bums and the hustle of Bangkok, northern Thailand offers cyclists a wealth of cultural and natural wonders. The 370-mile Mae Hong Son loop, full of thick teak forest, is perfect for a two-wheel adventure— if you don’t mind tackling winding, roller-coaster roads. The first gem is 180-square-mile waterfall-laden Doi Inthanon National Park, home to Thailand’s highest peak, Doi Inthanon (8,500 feet), and the Hmong and Karen hill tribes. The park shelters flying squirrels, red-toothed shrews, and an abundance of butterflies. As you pass by “Thailand’s Grand Canyon” in Ob Luang Gorge National Park, snap a few shots of the single-tiered Mae Surin Waterfall; at 330 feet, it’s one of the country’s tallest. The lush tropical views continue along Route 1095, where a crack-of-dawn uphill slog will reward you with a picturesque sunrise over the mist at Huay Nam Dang National Park. At tour’s end, reward a job well done with a pleasantly brutal Thai massage in Chiang Mai. Then stick around for a few days to enjoy a few of the city’s 300-plus colorful temples.
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GUIDE: From steep climbs to thrilling single-track descents through villages, KE Adventure’s 12-day, fat-tire tour in the northernmost regions of Thailand ($2,795, 800-497-9675, keadventure.com) is mountain biking at its best. Perk: A stay with a local family in a remote tribal village. FUEL: For an inexpensive energy boost, stop by one of the many roadside food stands for a plate of sticky rice or pad thai. If your inner foodie is itching to make these delicious dishes at home, hook up with Bebe’s Wok’ n’ Roll (06-114-9921) in Pai and take a Thai cooking course ($20). Included is a trip to the market where you’ll learn about the ingredients. OFF THE SADDLE: What better way to make use of a rest day than to volunteer at Joy’s Elephant Camp (011-66-5369-3273) in Pai, where you’ll have the opportunity to feed and bathe these gentle giants.
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Canada
Rocky Mountain High
Alberta’s 180-mile Icefields Parkway winds past pristine lakes and commanding mountains as it connects the villages of Jasper and Lake Louise. The challenging ride also offers ample opportunity for wildlife viewing—grizzlies, elk, and wolves all call the area home. During each lungbusting ascent, overly generous shoulders give you plenty of breathing room, and your efforts will be rewarded with postcard-perfect scenery, like the view of turquoise-colored Peyto Lake from Bow Summit. (At 6,787 feet, Bow Summit is the highest drivable—and cyclable—pass in the national parks of the Canadian Rockies.) Set below the Valley of Ten Peaks, a vast valley in Banff National Park that is crowned by, yes, ten notable peaks, is the glacial Moraine Lake, which was once featured on the Canadian twenty dollar bill. You’ll have to take an 8-mile (uphill) detour to get there, but the trip is well worth it. And when you’re ready to rest your aching muscles after a long day’s ride, spend the night under the stars at one of the 11 campgrounds located along Icefields Parkway (but keep your food under wraps—this is prime bear habitat). GUIDE: Timberline Adventures (800-417-2453, timbertours.com) offers a nine-day excursion called the Icefields Rambler ($2,595). The tour includes gems such as Moraine Lake and Crowfoot glacier within Jasper and Banff National parks, as well as three days in adjoining Kootenay and Yoho National Parks where you’ll have the opportunity to test your mettle on the breathtaking climb to Yoho’s Takakkaw Falls—one of the highest waterfalls in Canada. Perk: A night spent at Radium Hot Springs beside Kootenay National Park that is sure to soothe your sore muscles. FUEL: It seems a little wrong to observe wildlife in action during the day only to put it on your plate at night, but you can take comfort in the fact that the game served in these parts is allowed to roam free on the Alberta grasslands. Buffalo is the preferred game meat of the Canadian Rockies, and a typical buffalo burger has a fraction of the fat of its mooing counterpart. OFF THE SADDLE: While you’re in Alberta, spend some time in a canoe exploring the unspoiled mountainous waterways. Jasper Adventure Centre (800-565-7547, jasperadventurecentre.com) organizes three-hour paddling trips ($95) on picturesque Pyramid Lake, renowned for its earlymorning wildlife viewing that includes black bears, elk, and moose.
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August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
Ireland
PHOTOGRAPH BY GOTT SEGEM (LEFT PAGE); TOURISM IRELAND (RIGHT)
The Romantic West Expect to experience quiet country roads, empty beaches, misty mountains, and towering sea cliffs when you cycle the Emerald Isle’s west. Not to mention the biggest bonus of all: the hospitable Irish. Many visitors notice how clean the villages are in this area—that’s because the residents participate in the National Tidy Towns Competition where, since 1958, communities have worked to curb litter and to minimize waste. With ferries unable to transport tourists’ gas guzzlers, exploring the island of Inishmore’s historical goodies on two wheels is a delight. Sites to watch for include Dun Aengus, an ancient stone-walled fort atop a cliff, 300 feet above the tumultuous Atlantic surf, and the mainland’s Connemara peninsula and its patchwork of time-honored farms, remote beaches, and gray mountains. One of the country’s most stunning half-day rides runs through the heart of the Lough Inagh Valley in the shadow of the Twelve Bens peaks, and then steers you into Killary Harbour, Ireland’s lone majestic fjord. For an even more jaw-dropping experience, check out the Cliffs of Moher, located south of the Connemara, which boast a 650-foot vertical rock face. Then ride the five miles into Doolin, the perfect chill-out locale and the heart of traditional Irish music.
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GUIDE: The locally owned Iron Donkey (011-442890-813200, irondonkey.com) will show you the best traffic-free routes that Inishmore and Connemara have to offer (7 nights, $1,680). Perk: After each day’s pedal, you’ll enjoy comfortable accommodations at quaint inns bursting with Irish charm (all included in the price of the tour). FUEL: If the traditional Emerald Isle fare doesn’t appeal to you—delicious, but admittedly artery-clogging fry that often includes fried bacon and sausage—there are many alternatives available. Top off your carbohydrate stores with dishes like colcannon (mashed potatoes and cabbage) and champ (mashed potatoes and scallions). Also, Ireland’s farmhouse cheeses, like the pungent Ardrahan, have won many awards; the famous and very tasty yeastfree soda bread is a perfect accompaniment. OFF THE SADDLE: Connemara’s Killary Adventure Company (011-33-95-43411, killaryadventure.ie) will surely satisfy your adrenaline bug. All of their activities, which range from rock climbing to sailing, are set along Killary’s stunning fjord. For a nice cold Guinness, stop by O’Connor’s in Doolin, a bar that hosts nightly jam sessions. And if you happen to be in Inishmore, be sure to fill your belly at Man of Aran Cottage (011-353-99-61301, manofarancottage.com). Chef Maura Wolf, who returned to her native Ireland following her culinary education in London, creates her dishes using fresh greens from her husband’s organic gardens, whipping up tasty delights outdone only by the views overlooking the North Atlantic.
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Tasmania Devil of a Ride
Rides on the Aussie mainland are known for being long, hot, and dusty. Not so in Tasmania, an island south of Australia proper. Its compact size, low population density, and abundant wildlife make it especially bike-friendly. (Plus, because of the opposite seasons, you’ll be working on your tan lines while the mercury’s falling back home.) On Tasmania’s east coast, pay a visit to the historic penal settlement of Port Arthur, then travel up the Tasman Highway to Orford and catch a ferry to Maria Island, one of Tasmania’s 19 wildlife-saturated national parks. Located 10 miles from the main island, the entire Maria Island is a National Park; it’s also car-free, so bikers can easily reign as they make their way along the flat coastal road and explore its bush and secluded beaches. Back on Tasmania, when you need a break, stop to sample some of the local wine further north on the Tasman Highway near Swansea, one of Tasmania’s oldest settlements, overlooking Great Oyster Bay. Then take a dip in the Douglas Apsley National Park’s water hole, or go bushwalking in Freycinet National Park, located 20 miles north of Swansea along Coles Bay road, known for its dramatic mountain views and seascapes.
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GUIDE: Experience Plus (800-685-4565, experienceplus.com) offers an eight-day Tasmanian east-coast bike tour ($2300) that focuses on the area’s striking coastal scenery. Perk: On the final day of riding, you are rewarded with a long descent through lush forests of myrtle and eucalyptus trees. FUEL: You likely won’t be able to cycle too far before being invited to a barbie—an Aussie institution. Look for the grill master to cook up exotic meats like kangaroo and crocodile and, especially in Tasmania, heaps of fresh seafood. Also, for a tasty mid-day snack, Tasmanian apples, pears, and juicy tropical fruits are found throughout the island; Tasmania’s fertile soil makes for ideal growing conditions, a good portion of which is done organically. OFF THE SADDLE: Freycinet’s blue waters and hidden bays are best explored by sea kayak. Try the threehour twilight paddle tour ($85) offered by Freycinet Adventures (011-61-3-6257-0500, freycinetadventures.com.au), recipient of the Tasmanian Tourism Award for Ecotourism.
August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
Iceland Fire and Ice
With frequent temperamental weather, lofty prices, and an interior that’s barren and somewhat uninviting, why would any right-minded cyclist want to come to Iceland? Because of Ring Road, a 900-mile stretch of pavement that encircles the country and offers views of towering waterfalls, blue hot springs, vast lava fields, and immense glaciers along the rugged southern coastline. Begin your bike trip in Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik, and head east, taking in the 105-foothigh double cascade fittingly called the “Golden Waterfall” and the Geyser Hot Spring before connecting to the coastal Ring Road. A week of riding will take you to Skaftafell and Skaftafell National Park. This plot of land comprises half of the 3,250-square-mile Vatnajokull glacier (Iceland’s greatest icecap) and boasts a unique combination of waterfalls, green forests, and glaciers—all with Iceland’s highest peak, Hvannadalshnjukur (21,300 feet), looming in the backdrop. The area is ideal for day walks to glacier faces and waterfalls, all easily reached from the park’s large, grassy campground. Apart from reserves and a few farms, you’re free to camp anywhere along Ring Road, which will provide relief from the area’s high-priced accommodations.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF EXPERIENCEPLUS! (LEFT PAGE); FREEWHEELING ADVENTURES (RIGHT)
GUIDE: Concentrating on Iceland’s fertile south, Freewheeling (800-672-0775, freewheeling.ca) combines the area’s most scenic spots with its leastcrowded roads for eight days ($3,995) of joyful Nordic riding. Perk: A day trip to the Westman Islands—home to roughly a million puffins. FUEL: If hakarl—a putrefied shark meat that’s been buried in gravel and is a favorite treat among hardened Scandinavians—doesn’t suit your fancy, give the lamb a shot. Icelandic lamb has a distinctively wild and flavorful taste; the flocks are allowed to roam free on the interior grasslands. OFF THE SADDLE: Trade in one type of saddle for another at the Laxnes Horse Farm (011-354-5666179, laxnes.is) where you can ride horses along trails throughout the rolling countryside of the Mosfellsdalur valley and geothermal-rich lands of Pingvellir National Park. (The Icelandic horse, a purebred descendant from the Viking age, is distinctively small and easy to handle.)
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Alaska
Northern Exposure
While there are lots of spots in North America where you can cycle by mountains, glaciers, and rushing rivers, few are on the scale of those in Alaska’s interior. Ease your way into the tour on the relatively flat George Parks Highway, which will take you to Denali National park, home to Mount McKinley, the county’s tallest peak (20,320 feet). Comprising a sizeable chunk of the state’s 54 million acres of protected land, Denali sees its fair share of visitors. But while car-dependent tourists scramble for a spot on the shuttle bus, you’ll be able to head straight in on the 90mile unpaved Park Road surrounded by flower-studded tundra and rushing glacial rivers. Even these gorgeous views pale in comparison to the waterfalls, salmon-spawning rivers, and other sites along the 100-mile stretch between Gulkana and Delta Junction; with several tough climbs, you’ll need to be prepared with a good night’s sleep to tackle this stretch. Roofed digs can be few and far between along this route, so becoming one with nature is the way to go. There’s no better place to pitch your tent than Donnelly Creek State Campground ($10) and its views of the towering Alaskan Range. GUIDE: AlaskaBike (907-245-2175, alaskabike.com) will challenge your lungs and camera skills during its eight-day ride ($2,695) through the interior. Perk: A cruise along the glacier-studded Prince William Sound. FUEL: A stone’s throw from Denali National Park, Denali Salmon Bake (907-783-0014, denaliparksalmonbake.com) is the place for live music and the much-hyped salmon quesadillas, the main ingredient of which comes from a sustainable Alaskan salmon fishery. OFF THE SADDLE: Don’t forget to pack your hiking boots, as there’s no shortage of breathtaking hikes ranging from short jaunts to multi-day scrambles. Check out hikingandbackpacking.com/alaska.html for information on trails and other resources.
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August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
PHOTOGRAPH BY WALT ROWLAND (LEFT PAGE); SOUTHWIND ADVENTURES (RIGHT)
Chile/Argentina The Mighty Andes
The bottom of South America, with its quiet back roads, hospitable residents, and ancient forests, has no shortage of thrilling riding. The Lake District in the northern reaches of Patagonia stands out: the huge chunks of protected land that link Chile and Argentina are dominated by a seemingly endless collection of snow-painted mountains and stunning lakes—you’ll need a todo terreno (mountain bike) to negotiate the gravel roads and large trail network. Leave from Chile’s Puerto Varas and take the bike-boat-bike-boat Cruce de los Lagos, which will carry you through two national parks before you enter Argentina’s hamlet of Bariloche; it’s one of the world’s most spectacular border crossings. Then jump onto the Seven Lakes Route in Argentina and cut right through the thickly forested mountain valleys of Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi. Eventually you will hit Parque Nacional Lanín, where you’ll ride through indigenous Mapachu communities being watched over by the towering cone of Volcán Lanín. GUIDE: If conquering the mountain roads on your own seems overwhelming, join Southwind Adventures (800-377-9463, southwindadventures.com). Employing local guides, they’ve mapped out a stunning ten day trip ($2,425 to $2,875) through Chile’s portion of the Lake District. Perk: A hair-raising descent down the snowfrosted Osorno volcano. FUEL: Ice cream is always near and dear to a cyclist’s heart, and there’s nowhere better to give into the need for brainfreeze than at the Helados Jauga creamery in Bariloche. The wild fruit flavors, like exotic mango, are made using milk from Argentina’s grass-fed cows, and win high praises among locals and tourists alike. OFF THE SADDLE: Few rafting trips can compare with Chile’s Petrohué River, located among Vicente Perez Rosales National Park’s emerald waters and volcano vistas. AlSur Expediciones (011-53-65232300, alsurexpeditions.com) offers day trips down this Class III river, employing guides with strong knowledge of the area’s ecology and culture.
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GLoBaL W o RRYING THE ENVIRONMENT PERIL
IS IN AND ANXIETY DISORDERS ARE ON THE RISE.
WHAT’S THE
CONNECTION ? BY LIZ GALST ILLUSTRATION BY BILL MAYER
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GLoBaL WoRRYING
M
Y A N X I E T Y AT TA C K S B E G A N
two summers ago. They were mild at first, a low-level unease. But over a period of months they grew steadily worse, morphing into full-fledged fits of panic. I was a wreck. The sight of an idling car, heattrapping carbon dioxide spewing from its tailpipe, would send me into an hours-long panic, complete with shaking, the sweats, and staring off into space while others conversed around me. The same thing happened on overly warm days, like those 60-degree ones here in the Big Apple last January. The culprit, I realized, was all the reporting I’d been doing on global warming—that, and the emotional impact of becoming a first-time parent. I had come down with a severe case of eco-anxiety— a chronic fear of the environmental future. MY CONDITION ONLY GOT WORSE. To save electricity—most of which, after all, comes from the fossil fuel–burning power plants that cause 35 percent of the United States’ carbon dioxide emissions—I’d skip the elevator and walk the eight flights of stairs to my apartment. At night, I lay awake worrying about which of the myriad climate-related disasters scientists are predicting would come first—flood, famine, heat wave, drought—and how I might prevent each and every one of them. Couldn’t I win the lottery and fund a renewable energy technology to replace all those power plants? How much would it cost to run a full-page ad in The New York Times telling people how to reduce the greenhouse gases they generate? (Only $60,000—I checked.) Sure, my reaction was extreme. But it wasn’t wholly irrational either. Climatologists predict that without radical action to address climate change, civilization as we know it may end in 50 years. The world’s coastal areas, home to nearly half the Earth’s population, could well be under water.
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August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
GLoBaL WoRRYING
Severe weather will likely wreak havoc upon the delicate agricultural cycle that feeds us. (If we don’t drown, we may starve to death.) Half the world’s species could perish as their ecosystems change drastically. My little boy is three years old. Fifty years isn’t so long. Nothing I did to curtail my anxiety helped—not talking to my shrink, not switching my apartment to a greenhouse gas-free electricity supplier, not handing out cards to idling motorists telling them how much pollution they could prevent simply by turning off their engines. My girlfriend started screening the newspaper for me, like some Soviet censor, snipping away alarming news. But even with her intervention, I felt alone. Riding high in their SUVs, few people around me seemed concerned about the changing climate. Was I the only person afflicted? A little digging revealed that I was not. While few Americans report symptoms as extreme as mine, 36 percent of the U.S. population worries “a great deal” about global warming, according to a recent Gallup poll. Another 26 percent worry “a fair amount.” When asked what will be “the most important problem facing our nation 25 years from now,” Gallup respondents listed the environment third, just behind “a lack of energy sources” and Social Security, and way ahead of terrorism, education, unemployment, race relations, and the budget deficit. You can’t blame them...er, us. Forget about global warming for a minute. (At least try.) There are plenty of current environmental crises to make Americans anxious: the world’s disappearing forests, diminishing freshwater supplies, toxic nuclear wastes, over-fished oceans, vanishing species. The list goes on. These horrors flicker nonstop across our TV and computer screens. And with a White House not known for its environmentalism, it’s hard to hope that things are moving in the right direction. In fact, while I was wandering around New York in a panic about our environmental problems, I was just part of an anxious crowd. The question was what to do about it.
W
and not just about the environment. A study published in the June 2005 Archives of General Psychiatry estimates that 29 percent of American adults experience anxiety disorders—intense and often exaggerated states of apprehension—most of which begin before the sufferer’s twenty-fourth birthday. So deeply stressed have we become that “the average college student in the 1990s was more anxious than
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E ARE A NATION ON EDGE,
85 percent of the college students in the 1950s,” says San Diego State University psychology professor Jean Twenge, author of a major study on American anxiety between 1952 and 1993, and of Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled—And More Miserable Than Ever Before (Free Press). Even little kids today are far more anxious than they were in the 1950s. (Twenge doesn’t yet have data on more recent years, but suspects that anxiety levels have continued to rise.) Why do we worry so? It’s complicated: Individual anxiety appears to stem from a combination of genetics and life experiences. “There’s at least one gene that predisposes people towards anxiety, and there are probably several others that haven’t been discovered yet,” says Jack Gorman, M.D., a psychiatry professor at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. About 30 percent of a person’s anxiety level is genetically determined, Gorman says. Traumatic experiences can also predispose individuals toward anxiety, especially if they happen early in life. Beyond that, researchers aren’t entirely sure what causes anxiety. They do know that women are significantly more likely to develop anxiety than men, possibly because women and girls may undergo more traumatic experiences than do men and boys. And possibly because of—you guessed it—hormones. In any case, once an anxiety disorder emerges, it often perpetuates itself. The anxious brain can get trapped in a kind of feedback loop, says Peter Whybrow, M.D., director of UCLA’s Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior. “As the alarm bells begin to ring,” Whybrow notes, “the hormonal systems of the brain are elevated” and tend to stay that way. Anxiety becomes a vicious circle. Whybrow believes that human anxiety evolved on the prehistoric African savanna to deal with short-term threats—a hungry tiger, for example. “This system was designed for a situation where you have to run very fast, fight very hard, or die,” he says. But today’s threats, environmental and otherwise, are rarely hungry tigers. (Which, frankly, are almost extinct.) In an unintended consequence of human progress, the problems we tend to worry about aren’t short-term, but gnawing and hard to resolve. For many of us, the concern is not where our next meal is coming from, but whether the world will exist for our grandchildren. Americans have certainly faced anxiety-inducing crises in the past. During the Great Depression, many people really did worry about their next meal. World War II brought the dark cloud of fascism. The 1950s saw the prospect of another cloud—the nuclear one. So did the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. Depression, war, nuclear terror—horrific threats, all. And yet, researchers such as Twenge suggest that Americans were less anxious then than now. Why? Perhaps we felt more united in the face of war than we do today, amidst the bitter debates about climate change, Arctic drilling, and so on. Perhaps the solutions were clearer: find a job, kill the Nazis, keep the dominoes from falling in Europe and
August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
Asia. Maybe relative ignorance was bliss; Americans in 1950 weren’t bombarded with worrying news twenty-four hours a day as we are now. And possibly our leaders inspired us more then. As FDR assured the country, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Today’s problems seem beyond our individual or community control. Take global warming: sure, you can switch to a renewable energy supplier, buy a hybrid, or swap your old light bulbs and appliances for energy-efficient ones. And, though it’s unlikely under the current administration, the federal government could raise car mileage standards, eliminate tax breaks for SUVs, and fashion an energy policy that doesn’t rely on fossil fuels. But then you have India and China on the horizon, two developing nations more concerned with economic development than greenhouse-gas emissions, and you wonder: What’s the point in even trying? It’s enough to keep you up at night.
D
IN AN UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCE OF HUMAN PROGRESS, THE
PROBLEMS WE TEND TO WORRY ABOUT AREN’T SHORT-TERM, BUT GNAWING AND HARD TO RESOLVE. FOR MANY OF US, THE CONCERN IS NOT WHERE OUR NEXT MEAL IS COMING FROM, BUT WHETHER THE
WORLD WILL EXIST FOR OUR GRANDCHILDREN.
O THE TERRORS OF THE MODERN WORLD
really account for soaring anxiety rates? Los Angeles–based “ecotherapist” Linda Buzzell-Saltzman thinks so. “A lot of us have a form of secondhand trauma or post-traumatic stress disorder just from listening to the news,” she says. “I’ve worked as a therapist for over 30 years and I’ve hardly seen anyone who doesn’t have it.” People who come to Buzzell-Saltzman don’t generally volunteer that the news is stressing them out. Instead, they have the usual problems—depression, anxiety, conflicts at home and work. “But once you delve a little deeper, a lot of this begins to emerge,” she says. “People are really concerned. Almost every day people hear news about the glaciers melting—it’s upsetting.” Buzzell-Saltzman and other ecotherapists help people resolve emotional issues not only through traditional psychotherapy, but by encouraging them to reconnect with the natural world through practices such as gardening, hiking, even walking in a city park. She calls it “understanding and healing the human-nature relationship.” A little nature, Buzzell-Saltzman says, goes a long way toward improving your mental health.
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For his part, Whybrow, the UCLA doctor, believes that people are so anxious because the dangers that have arisen during recent decades are too new for us to have evolved neural processes and modes of behavior that might help us cope with constant warnings of disaster. “In our modern society, we’ve built a series of challenges that are not immediately life-threatening, but that create the same anxiety that a wild beast leaping at you would have done thousands of years ago,” he says. And because of information overflow, “everybody’s alarms are ringing all the time, but they’re not turning off.” All that ringing leaves us chronically anxious. Twenge, the San Diego professor, has attempted to explain Americans’ rising anxiety rates by looking at social factors. (After all, our gene pool hasn’t changed much in the last fifty years.) “Statistically, the best thing to do is to match [anxiety] scores with the divorce rate, the unemployment rate, the crime rate, and other [social] variables from the corresponding years,” she says. In examining data from more than 50,000 college students and children, Twenge found that increases in the anxiety rate were attributable to just two variables: The first is a decrease in what academics call social connectedness—the strength of our bonds with loved ones, friends, neighbors, fellow members of civic groups, religious congregations, and other organizations. (A similar theory was popularized by Harvard social scientist Robert Putnam in his 2000 book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American
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GLoBaL WoRRYING Community.) The second factor, is “perceived threats to people’s wellbeing…the crime rate, fear of nuclear war, AIDS.” Whether or not environmental issues compound those anxieties Twenge isn’t sure, but she thinks it’s possible. Social psychologist Shalom Schwartz, professor emeritus at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, goes further. Over the course of several international studies, Schwartz has identified one group likely to grow anxious from their awareness of environmental problems: “people concerned with the welfare of unknown others,” he says. If you care about people you don’t even know, you’re more likely to find environmental crises upsetting. By contrast, Schwartz notes, people interested in power and fame are the least concerned about the environment. In other words, if you’re losing sleep over global warming, you can at least feel good about yourself while you toss and turn.
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HERE IS ONE MORE FACTOR predisposing
individuals and societies towards anxiety, Twenge says. It’s something psychologists call “locus of control.” Having a so-called internal locus of control—“believing your actions matter and what you do makes a difference”—lowers anxiety levels. People with an external locus of control, who believe that “things like luck and powerful others determine what happens in the world,” are more likely to become anxious. If so, rising anxiety rates may result from globalization, that great autonomy-erasing, geopolitical trend of recent years. In an era when our lives are increasingly influenced by multinational corporate behemoths, powerful but remote politicians, and socioeconomic trends we don’t necessarily understand, Americans’ locus of control has shifted from internal to external. Today, “kids as young as nine are saying, ‘What I do doesn’t matter,’” Twenge reports. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, if control lies in the hands of an eco-friendly steward. Numerous polls have found, for instance, that our environmental angst decreased during the Carter and Clinton administrations. “The more people have confidence that the government is handling the problem,” says Riley Dunlap, an Oklahoma State University sociology professor who studies public attitudes about environmental issues, “the more public concern declines.” All this means that George W. Bush could do a lot more to help me and millions of others sleep better at night—and I don’t say this facetiously. The evidence suggests that a President committed to protecting the environment is seen by the public, at least in that context, as a strong and calming figure. Given Bush’s historically low poll numbers, the White House
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might like to know that going green could make Americans feel more optimistic about the future—and give the president’s ratings a muchneeded shot in the arm.
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UT BUSH isn’t about to become the eco-President, so I decided to take matters into my own hands and investigate a treatment that research suggests may be the most effective against anxiety: cognitive-behavioral therapy, or CBT. Practitioners of CBT believe that psychological distress results from “disordered thoughts” which are frequently characterized by illogic and hyperbole. (My wallet is empty at the moment. I’m going to the poorhouse forever.) Correct the thoughts, and you eliminate the stress they produce. That approach might sound Orwellian, or dismissive of people’s emotional difficulties, but it is effective: CBT produces outcomes at least as good as those experienced by individuals using anti-anxiety drugs. Perhaps the best-known CBT anxiety expert is Robert L. Leahy,
“GET INVOLVED IN RESISTING THAT WHICH ISN’T GOOD.
WORK ON THE SOLUTION.” GROWING
AN ORGANIC GARDEN, INSTALLING SOLAR PANELS, OR BECOMING A POLITICAL ACTIVIST—
“THOSE THINGS LOWER ANXIETY” ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT IN GENERAL.
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Ph.D., author of The Worry Cure: Seven Steps to Stop Worry from Stopping You (Harmony Press, 2005). The Worry Cure deals mostly with the types of everyday anxieties experienced by Leahy’s patients: the fear of financial ruin, of cancer and spousal abandonment even in the face of evidence to the contrary. Why, Leahy wondered, did his patients feel so much anxiety about things that might never come to pass? The answer, he believes, is that worriers are likely to think that worry is efficacious. And sometimes they’re right. Productive worry helps people accomplish tasks: If you’re anxious about missing your train, you can check the schedule. By contrast, unproductive worry bogs down in vague, hard-to-answer questions, such as, “What happens if the United States doesn’t sign on to Kyoto?” According to Leahy, truly anxious people worry that they can’t handle the emotions that might occur should the events they’re afraid of actually happen. (I’m anxious about global warming now because I think I might really lose it once the Atlantic floods Manhattan.) As a result, worriers try to prevent the realization of their fears through constant rumination. The problem is, that technique doesn’t work. Leahy’s description resonated with me, and recognizing that calmed me considerably. His techniques helped me relax and redirect my concerns about global warming. Instead of keeping my anxiety caged inside my small household, in the past few months I’ve begun taking small but productive steps, like helping to start a group at my synagogue to address environmental concerns. Thanks to our efforts, the synagogue and 10 percent of its member households have switched to green power. As a result, almost 200 tons of carbon dioxide that would have been released into the atmosphere next year won’t be. That won’t save the world, but it’s a start. Buzzell-Saltzman, the ecotherapist, agrees that such individual action is therapeutic. “What you want is to not feel powerless,” she explains. “Get involved in resisting that which isn’t good. Work on the solution.” Growing an organic garden, installing solar panels, or becoming a political activist—“those things lower anxiety” about the environment in general, she says. Meditation or some other spiritual path helps provide calming perspective. And finally, “get involved in a group of people for support. Because the worst feeling is that you’re all alone, having to deal with these dreadful things that are happening.”
T
Leahy and Buzzell-Saltzman, I was doing much better. But I wasn’t cured; the occasional flash of bad environmental news would still send me into a panic. I didn’t know what to do with the fact that, unlike the worries described in Leahy’s book, my fears
HANKS TO
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about global warming seemed not only plausible, but likely. So, a few weeks ago I went to see the author. I plunked myself down on the comfortable sofa in his midtown Manhattan office and told him about my eco-anxiety. Leahy sat in a big leather chair, warm and professorial in his tweed jacket and polo sweater. Pressing his index fingers together against his lips, he pondered my problem. Leahy told me that anxious people often carry unconscious beliefs about who they are and what they must do for the world to run smoothly. (“If I think I’m unlovable, I’ll try to be perfectly pleasing. If I think I’m a loser, I can try to defeat everybody.”) And if I’m worried about the environment? “That person may have a core belief that it’s all up to them.” He was exactly right: On some unconscious level, I believed just that. “With global warming,” Leahy continued, “there may be really negative consequences occurring now and in the future. The question is, would worry be the best strategy for coping with that information?” Worry isn’t pathological as long as it’s a first step in dealing with the problem, Leahy explained. “The next stage is, what can I do that’s productive?” Leahy endorses social activism, but he also recommends being realistic about what you can do. “You have to accept that you don’t know for sure what the outcome is going to be.” Try hard, Leahy said, “to appreciate what’s here.” It all sounded plausible, particularly coming from such a reassuring figure. But I had one more question: What to do when I read in the newspaper that the polar ice cap will melt in 50 years and sea levels will rise 23 feet and I start to freak? “Then watch what you’re doing,” he said calmly. “Say to yourself, ‘I’m freaking out about this.’” Taking this step, he said, might lessen the emotional punch. Leahy’s advice seemed so simple. But would it actually work? I wondered. A few weeks later, I found myself face-to-face with Time’s issue on climate change. “BE WORRIED,” the cover screamed. “BE VERY WORRIED.” The “very” was printed in fire-alarm red. You mean I wasn’t worried enough? I started to flip out. No conscious thought—just shaking and sweating. I went straight home, where my girlfriend reminded me that the article probably didn’t say anything I didn’t already know, and, besides, editors write sensational cover lines to sell magazines. True enough. But it didn’t help. Eventually, though, I thought of Leahy and his suggestion that I simply take notice of what was happening to me. I’m freaking out, I thought. That perspective had eluded me during many other moments of extreme anxiety. Just…freaking out. And somehow—not instantly, but soon enough—I calmed down. ■
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PHOTOGRAPHY BY LEVI SZEKERES
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I
T ’S A RARE THING
when one public official openly mocks another, much less calls him mindless fecal matter. That’s why the recent exchange between Michigan congressman Mike Rogers and California attorney general Bill Lockyer was so telling: Both politicians are prime movers in a vicious fight over how America’s trillion-dollar food industry warns consumers about cancer-causing chemicals. Rogers is the Republican co-sponsor of House Resolution 4167, the National Uniformity for Food Act, a controversial bill that would mandate national standards for food labeling. Supporters claim that the legislation would benefit consumers by ensuring that food labels are consistent from state to state; opponents, such as Lockyer, claim that the bill is a backdoor maneuver by the food industry to undercut tough state labeling laws that are stricter than federal regulations. Explaining the legislation in early March, Rogers said that “a pregnant woman buying peas from a shelf in Michigan has the same right to food safety information as a pregnant woman buying peas in California.” Lockyer happened to be in Washington at the time, and when asked about Rogers’s comment, said, “What a dumb shit,” and pointed out that peas carry no safety warnings in either California or Michigan. When astounded reporters followed up, Lockyer qualified his remark—perhaps, he said, he should have called Rogers “pea-brained.” The fight over food had just gotten ugly—and in the months ahead, it’s likely to grow only more so.
H.R. 4167, which the House of Representatives passed last spring by a heavily Republican vote of 283-139,, sounds like proconsumer legislation. It requires the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to create warning labels that supercede state regulations. Such labels—we’ve all seen them—could warn consumers that a food product might contain harmful substances, or that certain segments of the population (like pregnant women) should avoid certain foods because of the potential health effects. “There’s a proliferation of different standards in more and more states, and that could lead to confusion among consumers,” Cal Dooley, president of an industry lobbying group called the Food Products Association (FPA), told the Fresno Bee. As Rogers has explained, “Creating a uniform system assures Americans that no matter
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where they live or travel, they can depend on food labels to reflect the contents of food.” That sounds helpful enough. After all, while organic foods have to meet the strict standards mandated by the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990, there are no such national criteria for other foods sold in the U.S. And though organics may be the fastest-growing segment of the food market, they are still only a tiny fraction of it—$15 billion out of a $1 trillion business. The vast majority of the food Americans purchase is still produced by huge agribusinesses and food companies—ConAgra Foods, General Mills, Kraft Foods, and so on. Shouldn’t the federal government dictate what information these companies disclose about the contents of their products? But, as is so often the case in Washington, the National Uniformity for Food Act isn’t really what it sounds like. To fully understand the purpose of the bill, and why California’s attorney general claims that it’s bad for consumers in California and every other state, you have to go back 20 years to a landmark California ballot initiative known as Proposition 65. Though most people outside of California have never heard of it, Proposition 65 is one of the most important and influential state laws passed in recent decades. Written during a period of growing concern about chemicals in food, Prop 65 was passed overwhelmingly by California voters, 63 percent of whom voted for it in 1986. Put simply, the new law required companies doing business in California to warn consumers if their product contained a chemical that was carcinogenic or caused birth defects. If one of their products contained such a chemical—California now lists some 750 of them—and did not carry a warning, the companies could be sued by the state and private attorneys. Almost immediately, Prop 65 began having a dramatic effect, as companies that had no desire to add warning labels to their products quickly began to reformulate them, eliminating potentially carcinogenic or birth defect–causing substances (after all, would you buy a box of cookies if the label announced it contained a carcinogen?) Prop 65 got results: It hastened the end of lead-soldered cans; led to the removal of arsenic from bottled water; ensured the prohibition of the sale of Mexican candy containing high levels of lead; and prompted mercury warnings at fish counters across the state. And Prop 65 is part of the reason that alcoholic beverages now carry a surgeon general’s warning. In short, Prop 65 made it clear that the American public thought warning labels were a good idea. “Proponents will tell you, and it is true, that Prop 65 litigation not only has resulted in warnings, but in the reformulation of a significant number of products,” explains Rick Coffin, aa partner at the California firm of Barg Coffin Lewis & Trapp, who specializes in defending companies from Prop 65 lawsuits. Nor was Prop 65’s effect limited to California. Because the state
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FOOD FIGHT
“EVER SINCE CALIFORNIA VOTERS approved Proposition 65, the chemical, food, and other industries have been trying to take it away,” argues Jim Wheaton, an environmental attorney who files Prop 65 litigation. is the largest market in the country, food companies could not simply withdraw their products from sale there. Instead, they were faced with the choice of either selling a different product in California, or reformulating their product for uniform nationwide sale. That wasn’t really much of a choice—omitting a known carcinogen from food sold in California, while keeping it in products sold in the other 49 states, would create a massive liability problem. So they purged their products of the chemicals across the board. Big business, however, hated the law. “Ever since California voters approved Proposition 65, the chemical, food, and other industries have been trying to take it away,” argues Jim Wheaton, an environmental attorney who files Prop 65 litigation. Food industry reps, in particular, charged that the law was too broad, creating an enormous financial incentive (and little disincentive) to sue food companies even when the link between the chemicals in question and cancer was marginal. Consequently, the food industry has been trying to gut Prop 65 for decades. “They know they can’t do it with a vote [in California],” says Jim Wheaton. “So they’ve been trying to preempt it from Washington.” According to David Roe, an environmental attorney generally considered to be the principal author of Proposition 65, the industry efforts to subvert the law began during the Reagan administration, continued into the first Bush White House, and resurfaced after Republicans took control of Congress during the Clinton administration. None of them succeeded—simply, Roe claims, because the industry could not credibly argue that Prop 65 was bad for consumers or for industry. “I’ve seen these attempts in almost every Congress since before the law went into effect,” Roe says. “They’ve primarily been very highly funded [by the food industry]. The cover story is always, ‘We need one consistent food label nationwide, or consumers will be confused.’” This is where the National Uniformity for Food act comes in. No matter what its congressional advocates say, the bill is fundamentally another attempt to hobble Proposition 65. And this time, the industry has both a Republican Congress and a Republican White House on its side—along with an FDA that is probably more politicized and less enforcement-oriented than it has ever been.
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Scott Riehl, senior vice president for government affairs at the FPA, doesn’t deny that the food industry is targeting the California law. “If there is a state law out there that is based on sound science, we’re going to be supportive of that,” he says. “But you get certain things out of certain states that make no sense. Prop 65 is the best example.” Still, a straightforward case against Prop 65 isn’t easy to make: When asked by USA Today to name a single instance in which manufacturers have put different labels on a product to meet varying state requirements, FPA president Cal Dooley drew a blank. Moreover, despite their pro-consumer talking points, most of the bill’s advocates don’t seem eager to be associated with it: Neither Mike Rogers nor Brooklyn congressman Edolphus Towns, H.R. 4167’s Democratic co-sponsor, consented to interviews about the legislation. The House didn’t even hold a committee hearing before voting on the legislation, a highly unusual omission. “A bill like this cannot stand the light of day,” argues Rick Doe. Answers FPA’s Riehl, “The thinking was that the bill had so many cosponsors, it was so bipartisan, a hearing was unnecessary.” Maybe. But it is highly unusual for federalism-minded Republicans to vote for a bill replacing state regulations with federal ones. “I’m not sure how I feel about the Uniformity for Food act,” admits Gregory Conko, a senior fellow specializing in food safety issues at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington. “My general preference would be to devolve power out of Washington and toward the states. But in my gut, I’d like to think that [the new bill] will prevent stupid and ridiculous laws like Proposition 65.” Looming on the horizon is the biggest food fight Prop 65 has ever generated—the debate over whether French fries cause cancer (see opposite page). Meanwhile, in late May, the legislation was introduced in the Senate by Republicans Richard Burr of North Carolina and Pat Roberts of Kansas, as well as Nebraska’s Ben Nelson, a conservative Democrat. There’s no timetable yet for its consideration, but it’s likely that most Americans won’t hear much about it during the leadup to the fall elections—food labeling, after all, is not a high-profile or a hot-button issue, like gay marriage or flag-burning. But the act could have a profound impact on something more important: the stuff we eat every day. ■
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All Fried Out
PHOTOGRAPH BY DRAGAN SASIC
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n April 2002, a Swedish research laboratory discovered something that shocked the world of food manufacturing: When you cook starchy foods at high temperatures, they manifest a chemical called acrylamide, an organic compound used to manufacture, among other things, plastic products, contact lenses, diapers, and paper. Among its adverse health effects, like causing circulatory-system damage, acrylamide is a well-known carcinogen: The EPA regulates its content in drinking water, and the state of California has recognized it as a carcinogen since 1990. No one knows just how the cooking process produces acrylamide, but it does—in substantial quantities, and particularly in potato products such as chips and French fries. According to the California attorney general’s office, a state-sponsored study found that a large order of fast-food French fries contained levels of acrylamide that are 300 times higher than the amount that the EPA permits in drinking water. The discovery prompted the World Health Organization and the FDA to initiate studies examining whether acrylamide in food caused cancer. (So far, they’re inconclusive.) It also triggered Prop 65 litigation, first from consumer groups, then from the attorney general’s office, which in 2005 filed suit against nine manufacturers of French fries and potato chips, including McDonald’s, Burger King, Frito-Lay, and Heinz. Since no one has yet figured out how to make French fries and the like without producing acrylamide, California wants to force manufacturers and sellers of potato products to post warnings about acrylamide, as Prop 65 mandates. In return, the American Council on Science and Health, an industry-funded group known for taking probusiness positions, filed a lawsuit against Whole Foods, claiming that the chain’s baked bread also contained acrylamide—which it did, at extremely low levels. The lawsuit, an admitted attempt to gin up antiProp 65 publicity, quickly disappeared. But concern over acrylamide in cooked potatoes won’t go away so quickly, and as you might expect, the companies in question aren’t very happy about that. They say that acrylamide levels in foods are too low to cause cancer, and in any case, acrylamide has never been proven to cause cancer in humans, only lab animals. “The industry’s got a problem,” says Rick Doe. “They can’t claim that acrylamide isn’t a carcinogen. All they can claim is that there’s not enough here to worry about.” Scott Riehl, of the FPA, responds that there isn’t enough there to worry about—and besides, acrylamide has always been in food, even if we didn’t know it before the 2002 Swedish study. “We have dealt with acrylamide since the cavemen started cooking their food,” he says. “Now we are facing the possibility that every bunch of asparagus, every loaf of bread, every jar of almonds, every potato product will have to carry a label that says this product contains an ingredient that could cause cancer.” Riehl is exaggerating—but for the potato industry, at least, acrylamide is an enormous problem. Might French fries really cause cancer? That’s news that most of us wouldn’t want to hear. And if America’s food industry has anything to say about it, we won’t. —R.B.
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HOW A GROUP OF RADICAL DUMPSTER DIVERS CONVINCED ME TO QUESTION MY BUYING HABITS—AND EAT GARBAGE BY LISA SELIN DAVIS ILLUSTRATION BY TOMER HANUKA
It’s the first warmish night of the new year after a spell of frigid February cold, and I’m walking in a low-rise residential New York neighborhood where I don’t often find myself: Murray Hill. It’s a quiet sector of the city, where many recent college But a small crowd has gathbefore D’Agostino’s grograds tend to congregate. Fairly clean. Lots of restaurants and ered cery store on Third Avenue. The store workers lay out gourmet delis. A little empty on this Wednesday night. clear plastic bags of garbage, and a tall woman with long, silky brown hair raises her hand to silence the group. “A few ground rules,” she says. “Try to leave things cleaner than you found them. Don’t litter. And make sure you tie the bags back up when you’re done.” Twenty or so people (most look to be under the age of 35, a Benetton ad of ethnic diversity) start to rummage through the bags. I hang back and watch. This is a “trash tour”—a collective grocerystore dumpster-diving endeavor coordinated by the local freegans, a
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So they’re not necessarily the healthiest folks, or the best dressed. And despite the fact that they don’t always have jobs, don’t pay rent and don’t shop, they’re not lazy, either. It’s hard work circumnavigating capitalism all day.
group committed to minimizing environmental impact through boycotting the cash economy. Or, as this particular freegan collective states on its Web site (freegan.info), members employ “alternative strategies for living based on limited participation in the conventional economy and minimal consumption of resources.” Offended by the amount of waste generated in this country and inspired by the potential impact of reusing others’ castoffs, freegans partake in extra-capitalist activities like food foraging, squatting (living rent-free in abandoned buildings), swap meets, voluntary unemployment, ride sharing (yes, others call this carpooling), and even bike recycling. It’s a simple idea based on rejecting the notion that we always need new things, and on overcoming planned obsolescence (when companies consciously design products that become obsolete, forcing us to buy new ones). Freegans reject even green consumerism— your hemp pants and recycled glass tiles still require you to pay— because freeganism is not just about politics. It’s about quality of life: If you buy less, you can work less. No one knows for sure how many people take part in this movement. Freegan.info is simply the Web site of New York City–area freegans; there are other such sites in Russia, Norway, Australia, Germany, France, and all over the U.S., but the group has no institutional hierarchy or official directors. The term itself (it’s a combination of “free” and “vegan”) can be misleading; some within the vegan community take it to mean “a vegan who will eat meat if it’s free,” says Adam Weissman, 28, a spokesperson for the New York group. Weissman, who maintains the group’s Web site and helps organize activities, lives at home with his father and grandparents in suburban New Jersey in order to dedicate himself full-time to the freegan cause. “What’s wrong with living at home?” he asks. It certainly is one way to avoid New York City’s skyrocketing rent, and it’s cleaner than squatting. And freegans do take cleanliness into consideration, to a degree. Freegan.info posts food-safety tips for foragers: resist meats, sprouts, and melon, the site cautions, and “stay away from anything that someone else had started eating as one can get communicable diseases like hepatitis.” In other ways, though, members are not picky about what they salvage. “Many freegans don’t see any significant moral difference between vegan shoes produced in a sweatshop and shoes handmade out of leather,” says Weissman, who wears scavenged khakis and a less-than-handsome acrylic sweater. It’s when we purchase goods, rather than scavenging them, that we become complicit in endorsing the materials that companies use, or the way they make their products, he explains. “Tyson Chicken doesn’t care if we buy [their
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Buyer’s Rehab WHAT HAPPENS WHEN 1,000 PEOPLE STOP SHOPPING? On New Year’s Day, 2006, San Francisco resident John Perry quit shopping, cold turkey. The 42-year-old marketing and communications associate is one of roughly a thousand people around the world who kicked the habit that day as part of a non-consumer group called The Compact (sfcompact.blogspot.com). The San Francisco–based network has pledged to buy nothing for a year, except for staples like food, healthrelated products, and (reassuringly) underwear. Purchases of secondhand goods are also allowed, since they don’t add any additional clutter to the world. More orthodox Compacters refuse to dine in restaurants, believing them to be wasteful; some folks even seek out alternatives to toilet paper. The group’s founders (who include Perry, his partner, and a few friends) say their primary motivation was a desire to reduce waste. For Perry, it began when he took a good look at all the unneccessary objects in his home. Other members see the challenge as a way to save money, to protest big-box retail, and even to cure professed shopping addictions. But Compacters have found it’s not always easy being green. The group has been flamed by conservative and liberal commentators alike for, respectively, undermining the American economy and not being committed enough to their cause. Perry unapologetically drives his car, as does fellow founder Kate Boyd (who runs hers on biodiesel), both pointing out that their intention in becoming Compacters was simply to limit new purchases for a year, not to completely alter their way of living. One blogger speculated in a recent post that “the members of The Compact are safely uppermiddle-class, already own everything that they could possibly want or need, and are doing this out of a need to give meaning to their otherwise bland existence.” The group’s founders, though—most of whom are middle-class and run the gamut in terms of ethnic background—insist The Compact was not born of ideological superiority, elite degrees, or a desire to start an international movement. “We certainly aren’t trying to create a movement,” says Perry. “We never said we were perfect, we just said, ‘we’ll do our thing.’” —Tiffany Martini
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PHOTOGRAPH BY LIZ MILLER
poultry] to play volleyball with or to eat, as long as we’re giving them the money.” So they’re not necessarily the healthiest folks, or the best dressed. And despite the fact that they don’t always have jobs, don’t pay rent and don’t shop, they’re not lazy, either. It’s hard work circumnavigating capitalism all day.
DUMPSTER DINING: Two New York City freegans choose their next meal.
New Yorkers are quite accustomed to seeing trash receptacles molested on the streets. Many homeless and jobless people forage for bottles and cans to make a buck by bringing them to the recycling center, but the sight of this particular group causes some passersby to do a double take—the foragers are clean and young, and at least the newcomers are nicely dressed. Tonight, almost half of the crowd are observers, among them three guys from Swiss public radio, a journalism major from Westchester, a photojournalism student from the International Center of Photography, and an anthropology student from NYU who’s conducting a study on urban scavenging. The freegans allow us to participate in order to spread their message, but they don’t want to be misconstrued as middle-class kids dumpster diving for kicks—they’re doing it to change, and save, the world. A woman, sporting the traditional beige and gold garb and blond bleach job of certain East Side residents, stops and watches for a minute, cocking her head to the side. “Oh, they’re protesting,” she says. To a certain extent, they are: Freegans object to the infuriating
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TALKING TRASH URBAN SCAVENGERS GO HIGH TECH Last November, James Nachlin, a 34-year-old New York City resident with a computer science degree and an uncanny resemblance to Ben Stiller, quit a lucrative cyberjob and started spending more time with trash—or garbage, as he prefers to call it. To those who knew him, this wasn’t a shock. Nachlin (who has a scar on his right thigh from a leaky battery he pocketed at age four) has been a dumpster-diver for most of his life. Until recently, finding treasures in the trash was a personal pleasure. Then, after he purchased a camera phone a year ago, Nachlin had an epiphany while riding his recycled bike: garbage mapping. In a few months, garbagescout.com was up and running, rapidly disseminating the whereabouts of choice urban refuse. It works like this: You’re on your way home, and you see something interesting on the curb. After confirming that it’s free for the taking, you snap a picture and e-mail it, along with a description and the address, to garbagescout.com. Within minutes, your find appears on the site’s treasure map,
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which uses flaming trashcan icons to mark the latest discoveries—and garbage hounds are racing for the La-Z-Boy with coffee stains on Crescent and Third. The seven-month-old site now receives more than 10,000 hits per day, leading an innovative, urban recycling phenomenon. Nachlin recently added maps for the San Francisco Bay Area and Philadelphia, and he hopes to continue expanding into other U.S. cities where the conditions are right for scouting. “Places where people drive everywhere don’t work as well,” he explains. “If you’re driving, you don’t have time to look for stuff.” Nachlin believes his site addresses an annoying inefficiency in the supply chain: “In one part of the city someone is throwing something out at the exact moment someone is buying the same thing somewhere else.” He’s hoping both to help would-be dumpster-divers in their scouting efforts and to make users consider what’s in other people’s trashcans—as well as their own. —Charles Bethea
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“Banana?” she asks. But I’m paralyzed, confronted with my own culturally embedded notions of garbage: This is waste, and not to be ingested, despite the fact that thirty minutes ago those strawberries and oatmeal cookies were on the store shelf and thus perfectly good. Come on, I tell myself, it’s a banana.
incongruity between the amount of waste in this country and the number of hungry people. A 2004 University of Arizona study found that between 40 and 50 percent of all food ready for harvest gets tossed out, while more than 11 percent of American households have family members going hungry. But this particular group seems not to include the hungry or homeless. There’s a librarian, an architect, a filmmaker, and one young man who says, “I’m unemployed by choice. I live with my parents so I don’t have to pay rent.” The group’s makeup illuminates a nagging quagmire: how to apply freegan philosophies both to the average American (who dreams of newer, bigger, better) and to the hungry and homeless. The freegans can pull off these trash tours in part because of the group’s clean and educated members; it’s unlikely that either the grocery store owners or the police would be so accepting if the folks who panhandle in the subway came above ground to rifle through their refuse. “In New York City, the police are totally uninterested in what we’re doing,” says Weissman. “They’re too busy arresting bicyclists to worry about us.” (He’s referring to the crackdown on Critical Mass cyclists, reported in the October/November 2005 issue of Plenty.) They succeed because they’re clean and careful—if they leave a mess, the stores get ticketed by the sanitation department and will no longer accommodate their urban forages—and also because they’re together. “It adds a degree of legitimacy,” says Weissman. “If the community supports it, it’s a lot less weird.” When going through the trash alone, Weissman says, invariably people give him money, or sometimes buy him food. “They feel terribly insulted when I won’t take their hot dog.” Tonight we’ve excavated cupcakes, tubs of pineapple slices, whole-grain bread and many bunches of bananas, not even brown enough for baking. Reclaiming food “shouldn’t be treated as if it’s a form of pathological social failure,” says Weissman. “This supposedly radical idea of living off other people’s waste has been around as long as there’s been waste.” In some ways, it seems to work. As an elderly gentleman slips some bananas in his briefcase, I ask how he heard about the trash tour. “I just stopped because I saw the bananas,” he says. “I’m not with them.” The man represents a small victory for the freegans: When an average, well-employed New Yorker feels free to dumpsterdive, the stigma has indeed been removed. Except it doesn’t quite work for me. A freegan regular named Janet Kalish lifts a bag and holds it out to me. “Banana?” she asks. But I’m paralyzed, confronted with my own culturally embedded
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notions of garbage: This is waste, and not to be ingested, despite the fact that thirty minutes ago those strawberries and oatmeal cookies were on the store shelf and thus perfectly good. Come on, I tell myself, it’s a banana. There can hardly be anything safer to snack on, with the fruit safely tucked beneath the skin. But when it comes down to chewing on trash—even trash that’s only been trash for five minutes and isn’t soiled by coffee grinds and dirty napkins—I admit that I’m completely freaked out. I grew up wearing all hand-me-downs and shopping at the Salvation Army, long before vintage was chic. But even at our poorest, my family did not eat from garbage cans. Cindy Rosin, an environmental art teacher and seven-year veteran of freegan dumpster-diving, recognizes my reaction. “I was taught that garbage was dirty—once it’s in the garbage, you don’t touch it,” she says. “But that’s not true. It’s not dirty. It’s not garbage, and it’s not bad. It’s the same as what’s in your fridge.” It’s true that I’ll drink milk for a day or two after its expiration date and I’ll cut out the little bruised spot on the apple without a second thought. “Yeah, sure,” I say to Kalish. “Give me a banana.” “Take three,” she says. Two young women with Balenciaga bags and long cigarettes watch us. They tsk-tsk and say, “There’s just so much waste,” but decline the offer of a package of barely-wrinkled cherry tomatoes. I eat a banana—yup, tastes like a banana—and tuck the other two in my bag.
Once we’ve thoroughly exhausted the D’Agostino’s trash, we head two blocks south to Gristede’s. The pressure’s on now, as a garbage truck announces itself with a grumble. We run, trying to outpace it, but it turns out to be a recycling truck, not going for the perishable goods at all. There is, of course, far more food than any of us can carry. “We encourage people to take more than they can use and look for others who can use the food,” says Weissman. “We want to promote a culture of voluntary sharing rather than the myth of scarcity, that there’s not enough to go around for everyone.” The gentleman who’d stopped for the bananas picks up a clamshell package of oatmeal cookies, ponders them, tucks them under his arm, then changes his mind and places them back in the garbage bag. “On second thought,” he says, “they look like they’ll taste like straw.”
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I have a hard time seeing how, if so few of us are willing to groceryshop in garbage bins, the freegans will ever be able to solve the societal and environmental problems they set out to address. Weissman, however, says people will come to see freeganism as a necessity. “It may not be a matter of choosing this lifestyle,” he says. “It may be we live this way now, or find ourselves living in chaos later.” As I walk back to the subway with the two bananas stashed in my bag, I’m overwhelmed with hunger; I’d missed dinner. I could be snacking on rotisserie chicken or a Danish ring, organic salad mix or mushy avocadoes. Instead, I stop by the bodega and purchase a $1 bag of peanuts, glancing around furtively to make sure no freegans can see me. In the subway, I place my two bananas on top of the trashcan, the way I do with newspapers, in case someone else wants them. I keep walking down the platform, and then I see a homeless man rooting around in another garbage bin. Subway trash, of course, is no grocery store trash—there could be body parts in there for all we know. The trash smells like, well, trash, and the man smells worse. I retrace my steps, retrieve the bananas, and hand them to him. He’s so appreciative, smiling wide, thanking me. In a way, I’ve done what the freegans wanted, taken more than I could use and passed it on. “No problem,” I say to the man. “I wouldn’t want them to go to waste.” ■
August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
PHOTOGRAPHS: LIZ MILLER (LEFT); TRAVIS FOLCK (RIGHT).
A SCAVENGER’S SMORGASBORD: Some of the rescued foods at a recent freegan “trash tour.”
I retrace my steps, retrieve the bananas, and hand them to the man. He’s so appreciative, smiling wide, thanking me. In a way, I’ve done what the freegans wanted, taken more than I could use and passed it on.
Want to try your hand at Dumpster-diving but can’t convince your friends to take part? Check out dumpsterworld.com and dumpsterdiving.meetup.com to connect with a vast community of trash-minded folk. If you’re not quite ready for a real-world garbage hunt, try freecycle.org, a virtual scavenging site where users list items they’re giving away or request stuff they need. And if you’re not sure to do with all that trash once you’ve got it, get tips for crafting projects at goddessofgarbage.com and make-stuff.com/recycling/.
THE DIRT ON
Web Resources
FOOD WASTE 26 million tons of food waste are generated annually in the U.S.—$43 billion worth of uneaten fare. Less than 3 percent of that waste is reclaimed for uses like composting and animal feeding. The average household discards about 470 pounds of food each year, or 14 percent of all edibles brought home. An average family of four tosses out $590 per year just in meat, fruits, vegetables, and grain products. 15 percent of that waste includes unopened products that never even passed their expiration date. Reducing food waste by half could reduce landfill use, soil depletion, and agricultural chemical use by 25 percent. Statistics from Food Policy Institute and Timothy W. Jones, University of Arizona.
www.plentymag.com August/September 2006
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save the glades Will Central Floridaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Hoover Dike protect local residents in a hurricaneâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; or will the region become the next New Orleans?
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August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
AN ORBITAL VIEW OF SOUTHERN FLORIDA, looking southeast over Lake Okeechobee, the Everglades, surrounding developments, and the Atlantic Ocean.
O
By Michael Grunwald
SEPTEMBER 16, 1928—back when Florida was still the least populated state in the Southeast and the Everglades was still considered a worthless swamp—the Sunshine State and its River of Grass got hammered by an early version of Hurricane Katrina. It remains the seconddeadliest natural disaster in U.S. history, and the most important event in Florida history: bigger than the invention of air conditioning, the arrival of Disney, or the deadlocked 2000 election. The 1928 storm crashed into the coast with 140-mile-an-hour winds, like Katrina’s, then blasted Lake Okeechobee through a flimsy dike, as Katrina would do to Lake Pontchartrain and its levees. Government officials ignored dire warnings before it struck, as they would before Katrina, and most of its 2,500 fatalities were low-income blacks stranded in low-lying floodplains, like so many of Katrina’s. But today, the Okeechobee hurricane is remembered mostly for being featured in the harrowing climax of Zora Neale Hurston’s novel Their Eyes Were Watching God—that is, when it’s remembered at all. It ought to be. The U.S. government’s response to the storm—first building a massive dike around Lake Okeechobee, and eventually funding a gargantuan and complex engineering project to control all of South Florida’s water—helped transform America’s last frontier into America’s land of dreams: a retirement mecca, winter playground, and sugar bowl. Two thousand miles of levees and canals helped convert millions of acres of uninhabitable wetlands into a crowded paradise of subdivisions, strip malls, and the world’s highest concentration of golf courses. Even more than air conditioning, bug spray, or Social Security, the water-control efforts launched in the wake of the 1928 hurricane are the reason Florida became the most populated state in the Southeast. Decades later, they’ve also had a devastating side effect: They ravaged the Everglades and its ecosystem, which is now undergoing the largest environmental restoration project in history—a $10 billion taxpayer-funded rescue mission to save its 69 endangered species and recreate the natural flow of fresh water that was its lifeblood. Once reviled as a pestilential hellhole, the Everglades is now revered as an imperiled national treasure. But now experts are afraid that history is about to repeat itself. The Hoover Dike—the massive ring around Lake Okeechobee—is leaking, and an independent engineering report commissioned by the state of Florida recently declared it “a grave and imminent danger to the people and the environment of South Florida.” The April 27, 2006 report estimated a 50 percent chance of a dike failure within the next four years, and warned that the next storm could trigger a reprise of the 1928 catastrophe—this time with about 40,000 people living in the shadow of the dike and millions more in the floodplain. “It’s a scary situation,” says engineer Les Bromwell, the report’s lead author. “The more we learned, the more concerned we got.” South Florida will be the ultimate test of sustainable development— the place where we’ll figure out whether we can live in harmony with our environment. The politicians and engineers all say they’re determined to reverse the mistakes of the past, but with the entire region on the brink of an ecological disaster, Mother Nature seems poised to exact revenge for decades of abuse.
PHOTOGRAPH BY CORBIS
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Parts of this story were adapted from Grunwald’s book The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise (Simon & Schuster; $27). www.plentymag.com August/September 2006
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Together, the Hoover Dike and The Central and Southern Florida Project made the region safe for one of the biggest development booms in human history.
I
T ’S HARD TO IMAGINE
a time when South Florida wasn’t covered by tract homes, souvenir shops, and Jiffy Lubes, but not so long ago it was covered by water. The 1880 census of Dade County—which at the time included almost all of the Florida peninsula south of Lake Okeechobee—found a grand total of 257 people. As late as 1897, an explorer named Hugh Willoughby embarked on a Lewis-andClark–style journey of discovery across South Florida in a dug-out canoe. “It may seem strange,” he marveled, “for the general public to learn that in our very midst…we have a tract of land 130 miles long and 70 miles wide that is as much unknown to the white man as the heart of Africa.” That tract, of course, was the Everglades, a broad sheet of shallow water spread across a seemingly infinite prairie of serrated sawgrass. It had no canyons, cliffs, or hills, no glaciers, geysers, or craters; it looked like the world’s largest and grassiest puddle, the flattest and wettest meadow, or the widest and slowest-moving stream. It began where Lake Okeechobee spilled over its lower lip, and seeped all the way down Florida’s southern thumb to the ragged mangrove fringes of Florida Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. The Seminole Indians called it Pa-Hay-Okee, or “Grassy Water.” The bard of the Everglades, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, later dubbed it the River of Grass. It wasn’t obviously beautiful, but it was obviously unique. “No country that I have ever heard of bears any resemblance to it,” another explorer wrote. Then, as now, the Everglades was astonishingly flat. It declined less than two inches per mile, so that water lingered throughout the area during most of the year, recharging its underground aquifers. It was also an amazingly productive ecosystem, teeming with panthers, otters, orchids, and magnificent flocks of wading birds that seemed to darken the sky. It was the only place on earth where gators and crocs lived side by side, and the only place where Everglades minks, Everglade snail kites, and Cape Sable sparrows lived, period. It was home to 1,100 species of trees and plants, 350 birds, and 52 varieties of porcelain-smooth, candy-striped tree snails. Fish were so bountiful in the estuaries where freshwater from the Everglades met the salty water of the Gulf of Mexico that Native Americans formed North America’s first permanent settlement nearby, in a mosquito-choked mangrove swamp at the edge of the ecosystem. But the white men who explored the Everglades in the 19th century saw the wetlands as wastelands. They described the Everglades as a “God-
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forsaken,” “unredeemable,” “good-for-nothing” hellscape, too wet to farm but too dry to sail, swarming with snakes and bloodthirsty mosquitoes. In 1848, the first U.S. government report on the Everglades noted that “the first and most abiding impression is the utter worthlessness to civilized man,” declaring it “suitable only for the haunt of noxious vermin, or the resort of pestilential reptiles.” But the report also noted that if the swamp could be drained, it could become an agricultural empire— and that the statesman who transformed it would be a hero to posterity. The report also suggested how to accomplish this: Drain Lake Okeechobee with canals east to the St. Lucie River and west to the Caloosahatchee River, so that the lake would no longer spill into the Everglades; then drain the Everglades with more canals. Politicians, engineers, and developers followed that drainage blueprint for the next century. The most important was Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, an energetic steamboat captain who smuggled guns to Cuban revolutionaries before he was elected governor of Florida on a drain-theswamp platform in 1904. Broward declared water the enemy of the people of Florida, and vowed to create an “Empire of the Everglades.” He was a progressive and a conservationist in the mold of his friend Teddy Roosevelt; he supported the “wise use” of natural resources, and pledged in his inaugural address that his top priority would be saving the Everglades—not from drainage and development, but from oblivion. In fact, Florida’s leading conservationist of the early 20th century, John Gifford—the editor of a national magazine called Conservation—dedicated a book of Everglades essays to the governor, proclaiming Broward’s drainage scheme “the greatest conservation project in the United States.” But the Everglades turned out to be a resilient enemy, and Broward’s canals swiftly unleashed a torrent of unintended consequences. During the dry season, they shunted precious water out of the Everglades, fueling muck fires, salt water intrusion that ruined local drinking wells, and rapid subsidence of the rich black soil that had attracted settlers to the Everglades in the first place. But during the rainy season the canals were overwhelmed, and Florida swampland became a land-by-the-gallon punch line. Still, pioneers kept pouring into the Everglades, inspired by pledges of drainage and visions of prosperity. In 1928, they paid the price. After ravaging a 100-mile swath of the Florida coast, burying West Palm Beach under five feet of splintered wood and shattered glass, the hurricane steamrolled across the Everglades and whipped Lake Okeechobee into a frenzy. The lake soon blasted through its muck dike like a truck driving through pudding, sending a 15-foot tsunami through the Everglades, drowning the towns of Miami Locks, South Bay, Chosen, Pahokee, and Belle Glade. Survivors clung for life to floating fence posts, tree trunks, rooftops, chimneys and cows, avoiding swarms of cottonmouths that were just as desperate to escape the deluge. “The monstropolous beast had left his bed,” Hurston wrote. A cleanup worker named Chester Young later found bloated bodies under beds, in trees, strewn across fields, and floating in canals. Hundreds of unidentified bodies were tossed into piles, doused in oil, and burned in roadside funeral pyres. “There was so much death in so many gruesome conditions that we became somewhat immune to it,” Young wrote. August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
save The Everglades Restoration: A Model for Regions At Risk 3
4
glades
A
FTER THE STORM,
2 5
1
Restoring the Everglades to its natural condition would be like trying to unscramble the omelet you ate for breakfast and restore its eggs; millions of Floridians already live in the former Everglades, and millions more are on the way. But the Army Corps of Engineers is leading the effort to restore more natural processes in the Everglades, and the plan is serving as a blueprint for other efforts to revive ecosystems across America and around the world. Here are some of the potential imitators at home. S are disappearing at a rate 1. LOUISIANA’S COASTAL WETLANDS of nearly 25 square miles per year. They once provided natural protection to the city of New Orleans during storm surges, but they have been degraded by Army Corps levees and oil-industry canals. The Army Corps has a $14 billion plan to restore these marshes, and the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana has rebranded them as “America’s Wetland,” an homage to the Florida coalition that successfully lobbied for “America’s Everglades.” The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has increased pressure on Congress to fund the plan. 2. CHESAPEAKE BAY has been declining for years, as pollutants from farms, factories and suburbs have ravaged oyster and crab harvests. Billions of dollars in restoration funds have helped, but the estuary is still in trouble. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation is leading the fight to save the bay, and advocates warn that the cleanup could require $20 billion in public-private partnerships. 3. THE GREAT LAKES now have a Cabinet-level interagency task force, the Great Lakes Regional Collaboration, assigned with uniting the region’s states around a massive plan to combat environmental problems like invasive species and toxic pollution. Environmentalists have warned that restoring the lakes could cost as much as $20 billion; a bill pending on Capitol Hill would provide $6 billion to start, but so far Congress hasn’t passed it. 4. The SAN FRANCISCO BAY and SACRAMENTO-SAN JOAQUIN RIVER DELTA are now the subject of a restoration and watersupply plan known as CAL-FED, a massive effort to protect drinking water as well as wildlife habitat along a 1,000-squaremile estuary. The final price tag could exceed $15 billion. 5. The environmental problems of the UPPER MISSISSIPPI RIVER hadn’t gotten much attention until 2000, when the Army Corps was caught cooking the books of an economic study to justify a $1 billion navigation project in the area. The Corps was sent back to the drawing board, so now it has proposed a $7.7 billion navigation and environmental restoration project for the river. The navigation part still makes no sense, but the environmental addons could help bring back aquatic and terrestrial habitats that have been degraded by decades of man’s battles with the river.
www.plentymag.com August/September 2006
the
President Herbert Hoover—an engineer by training— ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to encircle Lake Okeechobee with a 35-foot-tall wall that would be known as the Hoover Dike. Hoover intensified America’s long-running war against nature—he spent more money on public works than all his predecessors combined, much of it on floodcontrol projects like the better-known Hoover Dam—and the Army Corps provided the shock troops, sculpting landscapes into more convenient arrangements for mankind. The Hoover Dike successfully caged the monstropolous beast, hiding the lake behind a reinforced-concrete hill twice the size of the levees that would protect New Orleans from Lake Pontchartrain, forever severing the Everglades from its wellspring. But while the Hoover Dike ended the overflow from the lake, it could not break South Florida’s cycle of floods and fires, underdrainage and overdrainage. After World War II, the Army Corps finally seized control of nearly every drop of rain that fell on South Florida when they undertook the Central and Southern Florida Project, an unprecedented latticework of more than 2,000 miles of levees and canals, along with pumps so powerful their engines had to be cannibalized from nuclear submarines. “We had to control the water—make it do our bidding,” the Army Corps boasted in a postwar propaganda film called Waters of Destiny. “Central and Southern Florida just lay there, waiting helplessly to be soaked and dried and burned out again...Something had to be done, and something was.” Together, the Hoover Dike and the Central and Southern Florida Project made the region safe for one of the biggest development booms in human history. The backwater that was once south Florida was converted into a megalopolis of 7 million residents and 50 million annual tourists. The sinuous Kissimmee River, at the headwaters of the Everglades, was wrestled into an arrow-straight ditch so that cattle could graze in its floodplain. The northern Everglades became sugar fields. The eastern Everglades was overrun by sprawling suburbs, with the Sawgrass and Palmetto Expressways replacing sawgrass and palmettos, and communities like Sunrise, Miami Springs, Miami Lakes, Weston, and Wellington invading the river of grass. The Sawgrass Mills shopping mall, Burger King’s international headquarters, Miami International Airport, and the Florida Panthers hockey arena were all built on what were once Everglades wetlands. “Central and Southern Florida,” the Waters of Destiny narrator solemnly intoned, “is no longer nature’s fool.” But again, efforts to subdue nature produced another cascade of unintended consequences. Highways, driveways, and fairways replaced marshes that once provided kitchens and nurseries for wildlife, while also storing and purifying water for human consumption. Today, half the Everglades has been drained or paved for agriculture and development, and the other half is an ecological mess—sometimes too dry, sometimes too wet, polluted by runoff from sugar fields and suburbs, dammed and diverted by flood control run amok. Ninety percent of the wading birds that once flocked to the area are now gone, and its panthers are so inbred that males have been born without testicles (and therefore unable to propagate the species). The decline has damaged people as well as critters. The extreme degradation of Everglades National Park, Lake Okeechobee, Florida Bay, P L E N T Y | 77
PHOTOGRAPH BY ROLF W. HAPKE / ZEFA / CORBIS
“The Everglades is a test,” environmentalists say. “If we pass, we may get to keep the planet.”
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August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
save and the coral reefs off the Keys have imperiled an ecotourism industry that attracts millions of bird-watchers, anglers, and divers to the region. Unchecked sprawl has endangered the aquifers that store most of South Florida’s drinking water, produced brutal traffic and overcrowded schools, and whittled away the greenery that gave South Florida its unique sense of place. In 1995, a Governor’s Commission composed of 42 South Floridians from all walks of life unanimously concluded that their paradise was going to hell. “It is easy to see that our present course in South Florida is not sustainable,” the commission warned. For the region’s water managers, the worst-case scenario is a reprise of the 1928 dike collapse. So whenever Lake Okeechobee gets high, they pump billions of gallons of water east and west through the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee canals, ravaging the delicate balance of fresh and salt water in the canals’ estuaries. Manatees and dolphins go belly up, and red tides produced by algae are so pervasive that beachgoers have developed breathing problems. And Bromwell’s new report suggests that the desperate measures undertaken when water levels get too high may not prevent another disaster. The Hoover Dike leaks whenever the lake rises to 18 feet above sea level, and the obliteration of the wetlands that once provided natural water storage during storm surges has made it almost impossible for water managers to keep the lake low. In 2004, when four hurricanes swept through the region, lake levels suddenly jumped six feet. The Army Corps will spend about $40 million this year to try to strengthen the dike, but the state is frantically devising evacuation plans for the residents of lakefront communities, and the price tag for true stability could escalate well into the billions. “We’re paying the price for what we’ve done to Mother Nature,” says Paul Gray, the Lake Okeechobee scientist for the Audubon Society. Bromwell, the lead author of the report, lives in Vero Beach, on the St. Lucie River. He’s watched it turn brown, and he’s caught trout that have the telltale lesions caused by lake releases. But he knows that for now, those environmentally disastrous releases must continue—and may not be enough to avert a more traditional disaster. “I just hope people evacuate in time,” he says. The Army Corps commander in Florida, Robert Carpenter, recently criticized the report’s tone as “downright irresponsible,” but he didn’t question the report’s findings. “The folks who brought you Katrina say ‘don’t worry,’” Bromwell says. “I worry.”
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HE STORY OF KATRINA is a similar brew of engineering hubris and unintended consequences. Army Corps levees helped protect New Orleans from the Mississippi River, but they also ravaged hundreds of square miles of coastal marshes that once served as hurricane speed bumps, helping to protect New Orleans from the Gulf of Mexico. One Army Corps project—the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet—actually intensified Katrina’s storm surge. And poorly designed Army Corps floodwalls buckled and drowned New Orleans. Today, we’ve learned the dangers of building our civilizations in floodplains: they tend to flood. The key to preventing disaster following another hurricane like Katrina or the 1928 storm in South Florida will
www.plentymag.com August/September 2006
the
glades
be to find a place to put all the water that used to sit in Everglades wetlands. The long-term hope lies with Everglades restoration, which is mostly a water-storage plan designed to replace the region’s bulldozed wetlands with a system of reservoirs and wells. The idea is to stop pumping excess water into the lake and the estuaries, and start storing it so that it can be redistributed to farms, cities, and the Everglades. Today, wetlands are recognized as wonderlands, and the Everglades is as popular as motherhood and apple pie. In 2000, President Clinton signed the restoration plan into law with Florida Governor Jeb Bush at his side on the same day the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Bush v. Gore. Florida’s political swamp was tearing the nation apart along partisan lines, but Florida’s actual swamp brought the nation together. “This is a model—not just for our country, but for projects around the world,” Governor Bush said that day. He was right. The plan to restore the Everglades has become the blueprint for multibillion-dollar efforts across the U.S. (see sidebar, previous page) and even overseas, such as in Iraq’s Garden of Eden marshes. If successful, the Everglades project could usher in a new era of ecosystem restoration that would provide many lessons on how to avoid the water wars that could dominate the twenty-first century. “The Everglades is a test,” environmentalists say. “If we pass, we may get to keep the planet.” But it’s not clear that we’ll pass. Scientists at Everglades National Park have attacked the restoration plan as a water-supply boondoggle that won’t revive the ecosystem. Water managers are losing faith in the plan’s newfangled storage technologies. And hurricane experts now believe that several billion dollars’ worth of additional reservoirs will be needed to absorb the region’s floodwaters. But Congress is already skimping on funding, and one Army Corps memo complained that the project is already behind schedule and over budget—and that it isn’t restoration at all. Meanwhile, unregulated sprawl is still whittling away the Everglades; we’re asking the Army Corps to paint a restoration masterpiece, but the canvas is shrinking every day. The first lesson of the Everglades and the 1928 hurricane is to try to not mess too much with nature in the first place—even aside from the environmental consequences, fixing faulty engineering is not coming cheap. The Army Corps spent $50 million turning the Kissimmee River into a glorified sewer pipe; now it’s spending $800 million to restore one third of the river. Now that humans are getting out of Mother Nature’s way, the river’s health is returning, along with its fish, birds, gators, and 30,000 acres of its wetlands. Which leads to the second lesson: The abuse of nature does not have to be a permanent condition. The third lesson is that the health of communities—and the lives of their residents—depend on the health of ecosystems. The Everglades will be the test of those lessons. It will be a test of our engineering prowess, our scientific knowledge, our planning ability, and our political will. If we can’t pass that test in South Florida—with the world’s most beloved wetland, with an extraordinary commitment across the political spectrum, and with thousands of lives in the balance—it’s hard to see where we can pass. But if we do pass, we may deserve to keep the planet. ■
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NOW WEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;RE EVEN GREENER!
HAS GONE DIGITAL!
Subscribers now have free access to back issues of Plenty at plentymag.com Want to save paper AND keep up with the buzz in the green community? Read Digital Plenty! This new format allows you to easily flip through the pages of Plenty right on your computer screen. The current issue and all back issues are included. There is also a digital-only subscription rate of just $10/year.
PHOTOGRAPH BY ISA BRITO
GREEN HOME
A TV star returns to his roots www.plentymag.com August/September 2006
ADRIAN GRENIER, the star of HBO’s hit comedy Entourage and this summer’s film adaptation of The Devil Wears Prada, is relaxing in Brooklyn, tossing around phrases like “off the grid” and “r-value,” the term that identifies insulation’s resistance to heat flow. His Prius is parked in Hollywood, but his biggest commitment to environmental conservation is in the heart of Brooklyn, where he’s building a sustainable home. At this moment, he’s the opposite of his Entourage alter ego, Vinny Chase, who’s much more interested in finding off-the-hook parties than off-the-grid energy sources. By Bari Nan Cohen P L E N T Y | 81
GREEN HOME
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August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
PHOTOGRAPH BY ISA BRITO
“I WAS BROUGHT UP TO BE RESPECTFUL and appreciative of the things you have,” explains Grenier, 30, who was raised in Brooklyn by his real-estate agent mom, Karesse, who is part Apache Indian. (Karesse, along with Grenier’s stepfather, Robert Sterling, also owns International Harvest, an organic foods business.) “When I was a kid, she gave me a copy of a speech by Chief Seattle— in it, he challenged the white man’s imperialistic idea of ownership, and it made me understand that caring about the earth is about respecting your friends and neighbors and environment. I have gone through stages of apathy and times of complete unhealthy obsession [about environmental issues]. Eventually I came to something of a happy medium.” Still, that happy medium has him pushing the envelope of sustainable design. The house didn’t start out as a green project, but as a light remodeling of a landmarked building. Grenier and his mother purchased the home together as an investment, with plans to lease the upstairs apartment and create a crash pad-slash-headquarters for the actor’s music and film company, Reckless Productions, on the main level. But when their contractor broke the news that the beams were rotted, and that it would be easier to demolish the house (while propping up its landmarked façade and roof ) than to rehabilitate the crumbling structure, Grenier seized upon the opportunity to go green. He noticed a nearby café powered by solar panels, and resolved to install them on his own roof. And that was just the beginning. His mother didn’t know whether to beam with pride or caution her son away from the idea, knowing that green building can sometimes drive up construction costs. “I worried it would put him in too much debt,” says Karesse, who managed the renovation while her son filmed Prada and the third season of Entourage. “Even when I told him that one day he might not be able to afford to keep the house, he said, ‘Well, at least if it goes on to the next person, I won’t have compromised the environment.’ I really couldn’t argue with that.” Finding green materials turned out to be arduous. “Renovating is daunting enough, but adding the additional research and decision-making to create a greener house makes it that much more stressful,” says Grenier. “I’ll be honest—sometimes I wanted to give up and go with the status quo.” Instead, he surfed the Internet in search of ideas, ultimately finding GreenHomeNYC (greenhomenyc.org), a volunteer organization of professional green building consultants that offers advice to New York City tenants and homeowners on greening up their living quarters. With the help of consultant Lauren Gropper, Grenier was able to direct his contractor to eco-friendly materials for practically every application in the house (see sidebar), from the radiant heating system in the floor to reclaimed oak floorboards and non toxic adhesives and paints. Grenier gets really excited when he starts riffing on the roof. “We’re painting it a light color so it reflects the sun’s heat, which might allow us to use less air conditioning in the summer,” he notes. “Plus, there’s a state rebate for using solar energy, and I’m tied into the grid—so on days when I make more energy than I use from my solar panels, my bill will get credited for the surplus.” With the project scheduled for completion in fall 2006, Grenier is already composing a wish list for future green improvements. (“I want to plant a roof garden with plants that can absorb rainwater and prevent runoff.”) He’d also like to include a rainwater collection feature that will allow him to use gray water in the house’s toilets. “You have to literally invest in your environment and in our collective future, with your time and your energy, but also with your cash,” says Grenier. “It’s about putting your money where your mouth is.” Since Grenier’s star has risen with the success of Entourage, it’s natural to wonder what his character would think of his green home. Might Vinny suddenly hop on the increasingly popular Hollywood bandwagon of environmental consciousness? Or will he continue his oblivious ride on the conspicuous consumption cycle? “Look, it’s fun to play a role,” says Grenier. “But if I have my way, in ten years Vinny will drive a Hummer hybrid.” ■ www.plentymag.com August/September 2006
“You have to literally invest in your environment and in our collective future, with your time and your energy, but also with your cash,” says Grenier. “It’s about putting your money where your mouth is.”
DECK OUT YOUR DIGS LIKE AN ECO-STAR
Plenty asked Lauren Gropper of GreenHomeNYC to recommend some resources for green buildings and renovations. The group’s website, greenhomenyc.org, offers an interactive “Ask an Expert” column, where consumers can get product referrals and other information from volunteer consultants. READ UP: Find the latest eco-friendly gear for your home in Green Building Products: The GreenSpec Guide to Residential Building Materials, published by BuildingGreen, Inc. of Vermont and available for $22 at amazon.com. BEHIND CLOSED DOORS: Eco-friendly cabinets, like those from Neil Kelly (neilkelly.com) and Humabuilt’s Wheatcore line (humabuilt.com) are manufactured without formaldehydebased resins. COME OUT ON TOP: Countertops made from recycled glass skip the damaging mining practices related to natural stones like granite. Icestone (icestone.biz) makes recycled glass countertops that look like granite. Richlite (richlite.com) offers a line of countertops made from recycled paper. STEP ON IT: Find reclaimed and other alternative flooring sources at EcoTimber (ecotimber.com) or Fine Lumber and Plywood in Brooklyn (mfinelumber.com). Warmboard is a sub-floor product that’s pre-cut with grooves for installing radiant heat tubing (warmboard.com). FINISH IT OFF: Waterlox offers a lowVOC product for finishing hardwood floors, the TB6040 formula (waterlox.com). For paints, Grenier used Benjamin Moore’s low-VOC Eco Spec line (benjaminmoore.com). WARM UP: Bonded Logic’s insulation is made from recycled denim (bondedlogic.com). “It’s so much safer to install than fiberglass,” notes Grenier. “And, hey, it looks great with a T-shirt or on the dance floor.” STICK IT: Glue tile using a non toxic adhesives like Tite bond (usahardware.com).
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C U LT U R E
84 | P L E N T Y
PHOTOGRAPH BY BRAD BURT
SKATEBOARDERS catch some air at the Hood Games, a free educational event produced by Comet Skateboards for the underserved San Francisco Bay area community. It features skateboarding demos, live music, and interactive games.
August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
The sky’ s th e lim it Acti on s port s ar By J for ae settin acqu gre g th elyn ener e sta Lane spor ndar ting d wor ld.
IF YO U watc ’VE TUN hing E since Bob D IN TO B T 2 have 004, th urnquis HE SUM M e Ga t pu featu ll a 7 ER X G mes— prov red r am 2 id a 0 va a rial t es recen inten ed by So mps ma mamm de ot o ltl s Ston ive recyc Ride, a t from F h action notice a y, you w or yf li ri -s l e skate ield Farm ng progr cked-ou est Stew ports co l the eco re proba t m a a b boar ding s, and S m, and bus equi rdship C petition friendly ly too b popu a ilk. A , p u a o l ction long list ped with uncil-ce organize dd-ons. sy few y ar that se biking, d B r o s v phot tified spor ears, urfin ut f eco by E eral c ts o has been a non-pr ompetit g, snow —an um -friendly voltaics wood, e SPN— an b le io o s b spor ting working fit called ns have oarding, rella ter ponsors d a gene ctricity m h l r i t t i a yout o a n h ab dustry, o make he Actio mes wit nd othe for stun ke Whol tor, an out t n Sp h ma e t these r and b F spo ased o or he en jo u versi ods, viron sing the events so ts Envir r TV ne rts—hav o ns of onm twor e be m a men me e k s a c t. vehic of the g ntal Coa s. And f ome so or ree lition le to (ASE the past educ nest in the ate C) www.plentymag.com August/September 2006
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C U LT U R E
Frank Scura, ASEC’s founder and director, sees today’s youth as tomorrow’s consumers. He hopes that by integrating eco-messages into the action sports culture, he can help the next generation of adults make better choices. But common sense dictates that one can’t just set up a public interest display and hope that kids will stop by and read the literature. So in the ASEC booth, kids’ skateboarding idols sign autographs, and they give out trading cards printed on 100 percent recycled paper that feature environmental quotes from top athletes and a variety of eco-facts. And X Games sponsors create interactive activities that test kids on eco-facts—and then reward correct answers with samples of their products. “We’re basically paying kids to learn about the environment,” says Scura. According to Jason Salfi, ASEC board-member and owner of Comet, which makes eco-friendly skateboards using sustainable materials and non-toxic finishes, action sports don't have a long-standing history of being eco-friendly. But for yesterday’s generation of activist skateboarders, promoting the environment is a way to reinvigorate that political unrest, and in a sense re-connects the sport with its ties to the punk, anti-conformity, and anti-consumerist movements that were once integral to skateboarding’s counterculture. “In the 1980s, skateboarding was very political. Now, these 30-something skateboarders that grew up in that era are bringing this political culture back to skateboarding. They're starting companies, working with youth.” Some of the top athletes in action sports, like skateboarders Bob Burnquist, Jen O’Brian, Cara Beth Burnside and Danny Way, have signed on, hoping 86 | P L E N T Y
to pass on a little bit of political rebellion to the next generation. Other members of the board include actress Daryl Hannah, eco-activist Julia Butterfly Hill, and Clifford Bast, a former global manager for HewlettPackard’s corporate environmental program. It only took two years for the X Games to become one of the greenest sporting events in history, thanks in large part to ASEC’s work. Now ASEC is branching out to other venues. They’ve started applying the same principles to an even bigger competition, the NBC Dew Tour, and they host several educational skateboarding events every year. At the “Recycle Your Brain” skateboarding demo held this past Earth Day at the Whole Foods in San Mateo, California, Burnquist had 150 skateboard-toting kids shouting “No Pesticides!” during an eco-trivia game. ASEC’s efforts have proven fruitful in action sports, and recently more mainstream sports have jumped on the eco bandwagon. For the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy, the planning committee made extensive efforts to adhere to EU voluntary environmental guidelines. And back in the U.S., the first-ever LEED-certified baseball stadium, which will be home to the Washington Nationals, is slated for completion in 2008. Now ASEC is setting its sights on the future: Scura wouldn’t reveal the details, but he says that ASEC is planning a huge eco-sporting event for 2007 in China, as a precursor to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. China has committed to greening the Games, and ASEC is hoping their event will show the Beijing committee how eco-friendly sports events can be. Keep watching—maybe football will be next. ■ August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRYCE KANIGHTS
ASEC honors Earth Day at the 2006 “Recycle Your Brain Tour” in San Mateo, California.
â&#x20AC;&#x153;In t poli he 198 t skat ical. No 0s, skat are eboarde w, thes eboardi b to s ringing rs that e 30-so ng was k com ateboa this po grew u methin very g p r pan ies, ding. T litical c in tha t u h wor king ey're st lture b era with artin ack you g th.â&#x20AC;? www.plentymag.com August/September 2006
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OFF THE GRID
reflecting 88 | P L E N T Y
nature August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
PHOTOGRAPH: CHRISTOPHER WADSWORTH
A CABIN NORTHEAST OF TORONTO OFFERS A UNIQUE TWIST ON BY HANS FEUERSINGER
green housing
www.plentymag.com August/September 2006
P L E N T Y | 89
OFF THE GRID INTO THE WOODS: Diane and Dan Molenaar and their dog, Nigel, arrive at Barerock on the shores of Drag Lake (below). The house features an open kitchen and living room, and is wrapped in reclaimed windows of reflective glass (photos at right).
I
uninhabited piece of real estate on the shore of isolated Drag Lake in northern Ontario, far from the nearest road, house, or store and 120 miles northeast of Toronto. Yet when they found the 7-acre plot through a real estate agent in 1999, Dan Molenaar and his wife, Diane, knew they’d finally located an affordable site for an off-the-grid cottage. “We wanted a place where we could retreat from our busy schedule,” says Dan, who, with Diane, owns Boomer, a clothing boutique on Toronto’s trendy Queen Street West. Barerock, which was completed in 2001, is named for the smooth slabs of granite surrounding Drag Lake, which ripples 100 feet downslope to the west. The 900-square-foot cabin is accessible only by boat— that is, when the lake isn’t frozen over. The Molenaars have always been recyclers, composters and city gardeners; Dan also worked as a carpenter, and took classes on renewable energy and architectural drafting at Ryerson University in Toronto. These interests and skills converged when the couple conceived Barerock. Though another buyer had shied away from building on the steep, rugged terrain, Dan teamed up with a structural engineer to design the house and obtain the necessary permits. He devised an innovative post-and-beam framing system for the site that anchors 14 cement pylons to the bedrock; it follows the contours of the hill and lets snowmelt and runoff flow underneath the house. The Molenaars also used many well-known green design principles: Rather than chopping
PHOTOGRAPHS: GEORGE WHITESIDE (THIS PAGE), CHRISTOPHER WADSWORTH (OPPOSITE)
T WAS A RUGGED,
“People who come here 90 | P L E N T Y
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down trees, for instance, they built around and between them so that the leaves could shade the house in summertime. And orienting Barerock toward the southwest allows the sun to warm the house—even in winter, when the sun sits lower in the sky. Building Barerock took two years off and on, with the help of family and friends. The couple used a barge to transport 11,000 pounds of concrete mix, dozens of fir beams and columns, and two woodstoves, as well as other materials and furnishings. They also salvaged wood from the set of the Steven Seagal flick Exit Wounds (shot in Toronto) and brought in African paduak, a decay-resistant hardwood, to make a kitchen island, dining table, and benches. In the end, their 15–by–60–foot cabin was built for less than $200,000 (U.S.). It has one bedroom, a pantry, a bathroom with a sink and shower (the composting outhouse is 60 feet away) an open kitchen/dining room and a living room. Solar chargers generate electricity; artificial heat, when needed, is provided by woodstoves rigged with warmth-propelled fans. For Barerock’s water needs, a submersible pump in Drag Lake fills a 60-gallon pressurized tank once a day, which can be heated on demand using propane; the Molenaars use a packaged system that filters out sediment and uses ultraviolet treatment to kill pathogens, making the lake water drinkable. The refrigerator and stove also run on propane, which costs around $135 every six months— about the same price as electricity (propane vaporizes rapidly, so
think it’s like camping www.plentymag.com August/September 2006
it won’t contaminate soil or groundwater). They also cook with a propane-powered barbecue and a wood-burning Dutch–style kettle stove. The house has been wired for electricity, but for now, sunlight and candles serve as its only light sources. Barerock’s most notable feature is its unique exterior, made of 30 mirrored window panels reclaimed from a Toronto office building that had been reglazed. The façade offers privacy, as well as camouflage from nature’s inhabitants. “We see deer, bald eagles, all kinds of birds,” Dan says. During mating season, the couple is often awakened in the morning by chickadees and finches preening themselves in the mirrored glass. In 2004, the Molenaars used the green appeal of Barerock to launch Mafco House (mafcohouse.com), a design firm with a simple credo: to build earth-friendly modular homes at a modest cost. “There is a lot of hype around prefab homes, but they’re still expensive,” Dan says. For now, they run the business out of their Toronto studio apartment—Dan designs the homes on his drafting table, while Diane creates perspective drawings using 3-D modeling software. They team up with registered architects and engineers to submit their designs for building permits. Besides Barerock, a second Mafco cabin has been built on Drag Lake, and their designs are also being considered for homes being built in larger developments. For the Molenaars, an off-the-grid getaway may be just the start of an entirely new lifestyle. ■
in the wilderness” P L E N T Y | 91
STYLE PROFILE
a cut above the rest
Deborah Milner’s lavish couture gowns take green design to the next level By Christine Richmond IN JULY 2005, couture designer Deborah Milner traveled to a place few people will ever see: the tiny village of Nova Esperança, perched on a sharp cliff at the edge of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. She met the indigenous Yawanawa tribe and learned about their respectful methods for harvesting urukum, a red-orange pigment derived from the colorful pods of a native tree. The visit was research for Milner’s latest project, a collection of luxurious yet eco-forward gowns called “Ecoture,” created in partnership with the green beauty company Aveda. Completed earlier this year, the line of dresses proves that high-end clothing can be made from sustainable fabrics and natural dyes. Couture has long been the domain of privileged socialites and A-list celebs—the gowns are ornate, custom-fit, and startlingly expensive. (Melania Knauss wore Dior when she wed Donald Trump last year; her gown was rumored to have cost in the hundreds of thousands.) Made with exotic fabrics and layers of beading, sequins, and other embellishments— and with no budgetary limitations—couture dresses give designers an outlet to show off their wildest, most innovative ideas. “Couture is the creative hub of the fashion industry,” says London-based Milner, 42, who developed her own eco-materials when she found they weren’t available at a couture-level quality. With the help of her design team, Milner found inventive ways to deal with the dearth of appropriate fabrics and dyes. She began by asking renowned textile mills, like Mantero in Italy, which makes silk accessories for Pucci and Chanel, for their surplus fabrics. Then, having decided that the hues of her dresses should come from plants, she recruited natural dye expert Penny Walsh. Together, they came up with a revolutionary method of extracting textile-quality dyes from the pigments in tree resins. Milner tapped Aveda for resources and plant materials, since the company has access to sustainably grown, fairtrade ingredients across the globe (like the Yawanawa’s urukum). The couturier also teamed up with artisans skilled in trades like hand-embroidering and wood carving. 92 | P L E N T Y
Milner’s experimental approach and clever use of materials are most evident in her “Bridal Lace” dress. The gown’s top layer is constructed of ordinary white plastic supermarket bags, twisted together and heated with an iron to achieve a lace-like effect. Tulle and metal boning underneath shape the dress. “It sounds like it would be really horrible, but it’s actually beautiful and fragile,” Milner says. She didn’t set out with the intention of making a wedding gown, but once she realized the design was heading in that direction, she ran with it, embellishing the dress with lightweight Swarovski crystals. Other pieces in the Ecoture collection include the “Sandalwood” dress, a breezy, floor-length silk organza gown with a bright orange hue and an exotic wooden belt along the empire waist, and the “Picture” dress, a cap sleeve, tea-length silk
August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
satin shift that features embroidered images of the Yawanawa based on Milner’s personal snapshots. This past April, Milner and Aveda displayed the gowns at the Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability festival. At press time, there were plans to bring them to Rome for July’s Alta Roma show and to Paris for October’s Ethical Fashion show. The goal of these appearances is to inspire other designers and to generate buzz about green fashion, but Milner has been approached by attendees asking if the dresses are for sale. The original set isn’t, but Milner will be making ecofriendly reproductions—tailored to each client’s exact measurements—for $7,500 to $15,000. Although the dress orders could keep her busy, Milner is already at work on her next project. She’s teaming up with Mantero in Italy to create a new line of couture-worthy ecofabrics, like shiny silk shantung blended with earthy, stiff raffia. (“You could make fantastic ball gowns with it,” Milner says excitedly.) She’s also in talks with an organic wool weaver she discovered in England. “At first, you’re stunned by the limits,” Milner says of green design. “Then you realize how much you can do within those limits.” ■
MILNER takes the hands-on approach (left and right); the Ecoture collection features flowing, sophisticated dresses in a variety of fabrics (above and opposite).
“There’s so much you can do within the limits of green design,” says Milner. www.plentymag.com August/September 2006
P L E N T Y | 93
GREEN STYLE
in the money
FARM FRESH $12 (twobusybees.com) Two Busy Bees recycles scraps of funky fabric for its accessories; this wallet is made from vintage blue corduroy adorned with farm animals.
Stash your cash in one of these eco-friendly wallets HIGH STYLE $16 (prana.com) Keep credit cards, coins, and bills under wraps with Prana’s versatile hemp wallet.
WAIST NOT $180 (tinglondon.com) London designer Inghua Ting collects trashed leather belts and transforms them into ultra-stylish wallets.
CREAM OF THE CROP $18 (copacetique.com) This limited edition “green corn” wallet makes good use of vintage 1970s fabric.
GET A CLUE $30 (junkinourtrunk.com) The artists at Junk In Our Trunk turn old game pieces, trading cards, and other kitschy finds into eye-catching money holders. 94 | P L E N T Y
WHEELS OF CHANGE $23 (veganessentials.com) This sturdy wallet—like all of Splaff’s accessories—is fashioned from discarded tires and inner tubes.
GIVE ME A SIGN $28 (vyandelle.com) Vy and Elle converts discarded vinyl billboards into functional accessories like this colorful wallet.
August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
(EALTHY 3HOES
good scents
.ATURAL 0OSTURE "URN #ALORIES "UILD %NDURANCE
These subtle and sophisticated fragrances are made with pure essential oilsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and no synthetic ingredients
Not-So-Plain Vanilla
Roll With It
A Bright Idea
$18.50 (eccobella.com) This warm vanilla perfume is less sweet than it is heady and exotic.
$12 (amritaessentials.com) Certified organic essential oils of lavender and cinnamon make this roll-on perfume light and inviting.
$23 (katesmagik.com) This refined, alluring mix of jasmine and neroli is inspired by the nocturnal firefly. 4RADITIONAL 3HOES
%ARTH .EGATIVE (EELÂ&#x161;
*UST LIKE WALKING ON A TREADMILL WITH A DEGREE INCLINE %ARTH .EGATIVE (EELÂ&#x161; TECHNOLOGY POSITIONS YOUR HEEL BELOW YOUR TOES 'ET lT FASTER IMPROVE YOUR POSTURE AND BURN CALORIES WITH EVERY STEP !ND YOU LOOK AS GOOD AS YOU FEEL
(EAD IS STRAIGHT 3HOULDERS ROLL BACK 3PINE AND 0ELVIS ALIGN "REATHING IS EFFORTLESS "ACK 0AIN DISAPPEARS
$185 (siperfumes.com) Perfumer Alexandra Balahoutis uses certifiedorganic or wild-crafted botanicals whenever possible; her â&#x20AC;&#x153;Toscaâ&#x20AC;? is an abstract blend of tobacco leaf, blood orange, and Parma violet.
www.plentymag.com August/September 2006
Sea Change Common Ground $13 (auracacia.com) Refreshing and calming, this unisex fragrance has notes of pine and wet earth.
$22 (aubrey-organics.com) For an instant pick-me-up, spritz on this fresh, lightly citrus-scented perfumeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a cool ocean breeze in a bottle.
CONSUMER TESTIMONIALS ÂĽ -$)
Natural Selection
WWW EARTH US
4RANQUIL
H E A LT H
under cover Shield your skin from the sun’s harmful rays with these ecofriendly sunscreens By Erika Villani
LAVERA SPF 20 ANTI-AGE SUNCREEN
SKINCEUTICALS SPF 30 PHYSICAL UV DEFENSE
($29.50, lavera-usa.com)
($34, skinceuticals.com)
THIS ANTI-AGING MINERAL SUNSCREEN,
ANOTHER MINERAL OPTION, SkinCeuticals’s zinc oxide and titanium
formulated for delicate facial skin, blends titanium dioxide with organic plant oils and witch hazel to hydrate and heal. Appealingly creamy out of the bottle, it absorbs perfectly and leaves behind a barely-there floral scent. Five minutes after application, we couldn’t tell where we’d put it on.
dioxide blend is invisible after application.
WE’VE ALL HEARD THE WARNINGS that we’re It’s also fragrance free, making it a good supposed to protect our skin from the sun. Still, choice for anyone who would rather not skin cancer diagnosis rates are rising among smell like fruit or flowers. The addition of young people, and one in five Americans will antioxidant green tea helps soothe and develop some form of skin cancer within his or protect sensitive skin. her lifetime, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. If you’ve started slacking on wearing sunscreen now that summer’s winding down, you may want to consider what you’re risking: The deadliest type of skin cancer, melanoma, is the most common cancer in women between the ages of 25 and 29. Statistics show that men in their 20s and 30s fare a bit better than their female counterparts, but after the age of 40, their chances of developing skin cancer skyrocket, making it the fifth most common cancer among men. Contrary to popular belief, the sun’s strength is less dependent on the season than it is on the time of day, says Martin A. Weinstock, M.D., a professor of dermatology at Brown University and chairman of the American Cancer Society’s skin cancer advisory group. He recommends following the “shadow rule”: If your shadow is shorter than you, the sun is strong enough to cause skin damage. During those hours, says Weinstock, you should double your defenses by applying sunscreen 20 minutes before you head out the door, then putting on more after you’ve been outside for 20 minutes (and then another coat every hour—especially if you go in the water). Weinstock also likes the Australian Cancer Council’s “slip, slop, slap” adage: “Slip on a shirt, slop on a sunscreen, and slap on a hat.” Tracking down a hat and shirt is easy enough, but how do you choose between the hundreds of sunscreens on store shelves? Most are chemical-based: They absorb UV rays by means of their active substances, like Avobenzone (also known as Parsol 1789). But eco-friendlier and natural options are available, including mineral-based formulas, which contain earth-derived ingredients like zinc oxide and titanium dioxide and work by reflecting rays away from the skin. Until recently, mineral sunscreens were unpopularly opaque (think white-nosed lifeguards), but they’ve come a long way. There are also sunscreens that contain organic ingredients. The most important part of sun protection is finding a product you’ll actually use, says Weinstock. Here are Plenty’s picks for year-round protection. 96 | P L E N T Y
August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
BOSCIA SPF 15 VITAL DAILY MOISTURE ($26, boscia.net)
BOSCIA’S FACIAL LOTION—a sweetly scented mix of botanical extracts—is a moisturizer and a sunscreen in one. The vegan, preservative-free formula offers broad-spectrum UV protection, and because it’s water-based, it feels fresher and lighter than any other lotion on our list, making it perfect for sweaty summer days.
JASON SPF 26 SUNBRELLAS COMPLETE SUNBLOCK SPRAY
AUBREY ORGANICS SPF 15 NATURE’S BALANCE HAND & BODY LOTION
($9.75, jason-natural.com) JASON’s all-natural, water-resistant formula
($13, aubrey-organics.com)
provides broad-spectrum protection, and the spray bottle works from almost any angle, making the ultra-light lotion easy to apply to hard-to-reach areas. Its fuss-free application will appeal to active (and okay, lazy) types.
bananas at the beach, but at the office you may not want to give off the scent of a pina colada. For everyday protection, Aubrey offers this unscented organic moisturizer. It’s a lotion first and a sunscreen second, so it goes on smoothly and absorbs quickly.
IT’S FINE TO SMELL like coconuts and
lip service Your lips are your most vulnerable facial feature: They produce very little melanin (the body’s natural UV-shielding pigment) and absolutely no oil. These SPF-fortified lip balms will protect them from the sun’s harsh rays without leaving a bad taste in your mouth.
www.plentymag.com August/September 2006
EcoLips SPF 15 Berry Lip Balm
Juice Beauty SPF 15 Tinted Lip Moisturizer
($3.49, ECOLIPS.COM) EcoLips makes petroleum-free balms, but the company’s commitment to the environment doesn’t stop there. Send them five empty tubes of any brand of lip balm to be recycled, and they’ll send you a tube of this juicy berry balm for free.
($15.00 FOR A SET OF 3, JUICEBEAUTY.COM) Juice Beauty makes three shades of mineral-tinted moisturizers, each blended with organic oils and honey. “Playful” provides a wash of sheer but deep color, and it smells like sun-ripened raspberries.
Kiss My Face SPF 15 Organic Lip Balm
Lavera SPF 15 Lip Balm
($3.50, KISSMYFACE.COM) Attention, foodies: Kiss My Face balms come in out-of-the-ordinary flavors like cranberry orange and ginger mango. And, like your favorite feasts, they’re all organic.
($10.50, LAVERA-USA.COM) This nourishing, vanilla-scented balm blends titanium dioxide with organic olive oil, shea butter, and aloe vera.
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FOOD
American chefs are serving meats that were once considered inedibleâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and ecophiles are overcoming their carnophobia to enjoy them By Christy Harrison
rough
cuts
ROAST BONE MARROW with parsley salad is one of British chef Fergus Hendersonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s signature dishes, helping to spawn offal devotees across the pond.
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August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
PHOTOGRAPHY BY PATRICIA NIVEN OF COURTESY ST. JOHN BAR AND RESTAURANT (LEFT)
IT’S A TWO-SCARVES-COLD NIGHT in February, a few days after a particularly depressing Valentine’s Day, and a friend and I meet to commiserate over indulgent fare. We don’t lounge around my apartment eating pints of ice cream, though; instead, we tuck into a small table at Craftbar, a casually elegant Manhattan restaurant known for its seasonal, sustainable ingredients. Our chosen comfort foods are a sumptuous appetizer of pan-roasted sweetbreads (the thymus gland of a calf ) and a softball-sized serving of meltingly tender braised pork belly, the fattiest part of the pig that is typically used to make bacon and was rarely served in the U.S. straight-up until a few years ago. These days, offal—the technical term for the internal organs of an animal that is also sometimes used to describe extremities and other scrap meat—is nearly as common as homemade mac-and-cheese in chic eateries, though it was once considered unhealthy or too déclassé for American appetites. (In non-American cuisines, on the other hand, offal is part of many traditional dishes: French and English peasant fare, for example, include various preparations of blood and fat; Sicilian specialties include lung and spleen sandwiches; and in China, animal parts from brain to penis show up on plates.) Green-minded chefs in particular have begun serving dishes like kidney, heart, tongue, tripe (cow stomach), and various other alternatives to steak and chops. It’s a philosophy that the unofficial father of this culinary revolution, London-based chef Fergus Henderson, calls “nose-to-tail eating”—using all parts of the animal to show respect for its life and to minimize waste (and cost), and embracing the challenge of crafting delectable cuisine from ingredients considered by many to be, well, detestable. While this whole-hog ethos has ancient roots in diverse cultures, it doesn’t jibe with some environmentalists’ concept of sustainable sustenance. In 1971, when Frances Moore Lappé’s bestseller Diet for a Small Planet inspired many environmentally aware folks to go vegetarian, the idea of eating animals—let alone their brains and blood—was often considered antithetical to the cause. Today many people are still going veggie for both environmental and animalrights reasons, but the standards for what’s considered sustainable are relaxing to include humane livestock farming. And many in the food world agree that eating “the nasty bits,” as chef Anthony Bourdain calls them, is a logical extension of good animal husbandry. “Some people may not be on board,” says chef Peter Hoffman, speaking of the offal trend, “but I just assume that it’s a matter of time—the more you think about the sustainability issues, the more you realize that it’s honoring the animal to eat every part.” It also honors the family farmer. As chef Dan Barber of New York’s two Blue Hill restaurants explains, “when you’re dealing with small hog farmers, you can’t just buy the tenderloin, loin, and rack—which is only 20 percent of the animal—and leave the rest.” Large-scale industrial farms have no problem getting rid of the other 80 percent: www.plentymag.com August/September 2006
SWEET-AND-SOUR CALF’S TONGUE Lingua in Agrodolce Makes 8 servings 2 large calf’s tongues (about 3 pounds) 1 ⁄4 cup extra-virgin olive oil 1 pound cipollini or pearl onions, cut into 1 ⁄4-inch-thick rounds 2 ribs celery, cut into 1⁄4-inch-thick slices Grated zest and juice of 3 oranges 1 ⁄4 cup red wine vinegar
1 cup basic tomato sauce (use your own favorite recipe, or visit plentymag.com to get Mario Batali’s) Salt Freshly ground black pepper 1 ⁄4 cup finely chopped Italian parsley
Place the tongues in a pot just large enough to hold them; cover them with water. Cover the pot and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer for 11⁄2 hours. Remove from heat and leave the tongues in the liquid until cool enough to handle. Remove the tongues from the pot, peel them, and remove the fatty parts at the base of each one. Slice into 1⁄2-inch slices across the grain and set aside. Reserve 11⁄2 cups of the cooking liquid; discard the remainder. In a heavy-bottomed Dutch oven, heat the olive oil over medium heat until smoking. Add the onions, carrots, and celery and cook, stirring often, until lightly browned, 8 to 10 minutes. Add the orange juice, vinegar, reserved cooking liquid, and tomato sauce; bring to a boil. Add the tongue and cook, uncovered, at a brisk simmer until the liquid has reduced by two thirds, about 30 minutes. Season the tongue with salt and pepper and turn out into a shallow platter. Sprinkle with the orange zest and parsley, and serve. Adapted from Molto Italiano: 327 Simple Italian Recipes to Cook at Home by Mario Batali (Ecco, $34.95). Photograph by Beatriz Da Costa (above).
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an eco-conscious
cookout
Plenty’s green-minded tips for the most delicious barbecue Sustainable smoking Any barbecue expert will tell you that true ’cue is smoked (never merely grilled) for hours or days, and that it takes on its deep, rich flavor from the wood’s smoke, not the sauce. But even if you’re just speed-searing some burgers on an old dometop grill (see “Green Gear,” page 41, for a better grill option), you can elevate the flavor of any backyard feast by putting the right kind of fuel on the fire. Lighter fluids and charcoal briquettes are big nono’s—they’re made with noxious chemicals, and they can add unpleasant tastes to your food. Instead, start with lump charcoal made from sustainably harvested wood, like Wicked Good Charcoal (wickedgoodcharcoal.com), or from recycled wood, like the house brand at Whole Foods. Mesquite charcoals (available at lazzari.com) are also a great choice, as they lend a light flavor to your food and are made from the fast-growing mesquite tree. Then amp up the smoky taste by throwing some wood chips on top of the charcoal; for a more oaky aroma, try Woodbridge Vintage Barrel Chips (woodbridgechips.com), or, for an intense Tex-Mex tang, use mesquite pods, which are harvested without any damage to the tree (check out mesquitemagic.com). August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRISTOPHE LIBERT (ABOVE)
They supply scrap meat to companies that turn them into hot dogs, deli meats, and pet food. But small farmers don’t produce enough volume to meet those companies’ demands, so rather than disposing of the meat trimmings at an additional expense, they sell whole animals to chefs, who butcher them in their kitchens. “These days many chefs are filling the role that butchers and small-scale slaughterhouses used to fill, because a lot of those artisans have gone out of business,” says Hoffman, who strives to always offer at least one offal item on the menu at his New York City restaurant, Savoy. And eco-friendly methods of raising animals have helped quell the perception that offal is unclean and unhealthy to eat. While some organs (such as kidneys and liver) do collect and process pollutants, sustainably raised creatures are less subject to disease, and their viscera are therefore thought to carry less risk of contamination. Moreover, animals certified as organically or humanely raised, as well as most livestock reared on small family farms, receive strictly vegetarian feed and thus are unlikely to carry “mad cow” or other prion diseases, which can be transmitted by the chicken litter and bovine blood that industrially farmed animals are fed. (In 2003, the United States Department of Agriculture banned the human consumption of cow brains, eyes, and other parts of the skull and spine, but only for cows older than 30 months; these parts on younger cows can still be eaten.) Cooking all parts of the carcass has also become a badge of honor among chefs. “There’s a distinction in being able to use the entire animal—you’re not just the chef who gets the same old vacuum-packed beef shipped in,” says Hoffman. At Oliveto restaurant in Oakland, California, the annual “Whole Hog” weekend menu allows the kitchen team to create flashy, made-for–Iron Chef dishes like bacon ice cream and “fried pork trotter and brains with bloodorange salsa.” Cooking offal allows chefs to “show off different techniques, as well as educate consumers about the unique tastes of all the cuts,” says Billy Barlow, sous-chef at The Spotted Pig in New York City. And some argue that embracing offal is a way to buck the system: Bourdain, whose Food Network show, A Cook’s Tour, documents him eating sheep testicles and snake heart, has written that Henderson’s British country cooking is “an outrageously timed head-butt to the growing hordes of politically correct [and] the PETA people.” Aside from the bravado surrounding whole-beast eating, though, dishes based on innards and extremities seem to simply make customers happy. Critics coo over celebrity chef Mario Batali’s tripe, beef cheeks, and lamb tongue; forums about offal abound on foodie Web sites like Chowhound.com and eGullet.org. And Barber sounds tickled about his latest menu success: “a whole bunch of offal on a platter, which I present between courses—I had been a little scared to do it, but I haven’t had a bad response yet.” Of course, plenty of green-leaning eaters are still content to limit their protein intake to muscle meats or plants and dairy. But if offal goes the way of other eco-eats, we might eventually start seeing sweetbreads and kidneys on the drivethru menu. Fried gizzards with that? ■
PLENTY PLENTY IT ’S EA SY BEING GREEN
IT ’S EA SY BEING GREEN
WHICH IS THE
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®,TM,© 2006 Kashi Company
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Mighty Meats Sustainably farmed veggies cook no differently than conventional ones on the grill, but grilling and smoking eco-friendly meat is another story. Farm animals that have lived on a natural diet have different amounts of fat than their factory-farmed cousins, so you may need to tweak your cooking times to compensate. Free-range and heritage pigs are plumper and have more marbling, thus their meat stands up better to long hours in the smoker. But on the grill, be careful not to overcook your pork; the folks at Niman Ranch (nimanranch.com) recommend leaving it a little pink inside. Free-range chickens also typically have more evenly distributed fat (though not necessarily more of it) than conventional chickens, which are fattened quickly and killed younger; but free-range breasts are smaller, so they cook more rapidly (see heritagefoodsusa.com for two good chicken choices). Unlike pigs, grass-fed cows are actually leaner than their corn-fed kin, so take care not to overdo your pastured-meat burgers—they’re best served medium-rare to medium (see sustainabletable.org/features for more tips). Ditto for lamb and game meats like bison, venison, and ostrich (which you can buy online at brokenarrowranch.com and blackwing.com).
GOLEAN Crunchy!® bars are crispy whole grains dipped in chocolate. Greg recommends keeping one in the glove compartment in case of hunger emergency.
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For more in-depth barbecuing and grilling instructions, look to these pitmasters. In their newest ’cue-related read, The Big Book of Outdoor Cooking & Entertaining (Morrow Cookbooks, $24.95), Cheryl and Bill Jamison explain how to prepare an astounding number of dishes—among them barbecued baby-back ribs, grilled T-bone steak, rotisserie-roasted chicken, and smoked portobello burgers—plus sauces and rubs galore. To further hone your rib skills, check out barbecue guru Steven Raichlen’s new handbook, Raichlen on Ribs, Ribs, Outrageous Ribs (Workman Publishing, $12.95). For an in-depth education on barbecue sauces and seasonings (and we’re not just talking about the sweet, tomato-based stuff here), try Raichlen’s Barbecue! Bible: Sauces, Rubs and Marinades, Bastes, Butters, and Glazes (Workman Publishing, $12.95) and Paul Kirk’s Championship Barbecue Sauces (Harvard Common Press, $18.95). If you’re into grilling out of the back of your (hybrid) car, pick up Mario Batali’s Mario Tailgates NASCAR Style (Sporting News, $19.95)—it’s peppered with racing lore, but the easy-to-follow recipes work at baseball games and beaches too. Or sift through your local used bookstore for a copy of James Beard’s Barbecue Cookbook, an out-of-print classic. —C.H. August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY NIMAN RANCH (ABOVE)
Tips from the Top
“
I hate
health food. But I love to eat.”
®,TM,© 2006 Kashi Company
Growing up, Greg’s mom gave him bran cakes as a treat. He was not about to let that happen to anyone else. So now Greg makes great tasting nutritious food from the powerful combination of seven toasty whole grains. If Greg doesn’t like it, we just don’t make it. Meet Greg at kashi.com/greg.
Kashi ® Food Developer
7 whole grains on a mission
TM
T H E B A C K PA G E
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August/September 2006 www.plentymag.com
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