Plenty Magazine Issue 12 Oct/Nov 2006 by Plenty Magazine

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PLENTY IT’S EASY BEING GREEN

CONTENTS OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2006

FEATURES 40

NICARAGUA: THE NEXT COSTA RICA? Ecotourism comes to this formerly war-torn country. By Lisa Selin Davis

EARTH ‘O6: AN ELECTION GUIDE Plenty takes you through the races, the issues, and the candidates that matter. By Richard Bradley, Victoria Schlesinger, Carmen Johnson, and Alan Farago

BREATHING SPACE Policy expert Stephen M. Meyer explains why the wilderness is disappearing; environmental journalist William E. Burrows on why it’s time to head for the moon.

TEN GREAT ECO-JOBS These days, working to protect the environment isn’t just about canvassing or saving the whales. By Joshua M. Bernstein

ART FARMS A new movement aims to change how urbanites think of agriculture. By Justin Tyler Clark

70 Planting cities

ON THE COVER SPACE: THE LAST RESORT? . . .63 SAVING THE WILD . . . . . . . . .62 NICARAGUA . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 THE COOLEST ECO-JOBS . . . . 64 EARTH ‘06 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

Hum to the tune of recycling.

Even the smallest contribution makes a difference. Feeling good is easy when you recycle your used rechargeable batteries once theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve worn out. Check the rechargeable batteries in your cordless power tools, camcorders, cordless and cellular phones, laptop computers, digital cameras and two-way radios. If they no longer hold a charge, recycle them by visiting one of many collection sites nationwide, including those retailers listed below. For a complete list of rechargeable battery drop-off locations, visit www.call2recycle.org or call toll free 877-2-RECYCLE.

Recycle your rechargeable batteries.

Recycle at one of these national retailers:

ÂŠ2006 Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation. Founded in 1994, RBRC is a non-profit organization dedicated to recycling rechargeable batteries and cellular phones. For more information: www.rbrc.org or 1-800-8-BATTERY. To learn more about the animal featured in this ad, visit our web site.

PLENTY

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2006

FORWARD 15

FAST Wal-Mart’s eco-initiatives; pomegranates: should you believe the hype?; and what we’re doing with all this corn.

PEOPLE Eli Pariser of MoveOn.org speaks about eco-issues in the upcoming elections. By Kiera Butler

TECHNOLOGY Wave-power generators are churning out electricity. By Laurel Maury

BUSINESS A silicon shortage threatens to stunt the growth of solar power. By Alan Joch

MOTION Car-sharing services offer an alternative to renting or owning. By Christine Cyr

32 35

THINKING Britt Petersen on Adam Roberts’s The Wonga Coup; Bryan Kevin on Postcards from Ed. GREEN GEAR Winter gadgets and sports gear.

CHOICES 81

HOME A beverage company’s founder builds a farm; deconstructing your home; storage and shelving.

CULTURE Want to learn more about global warming? Play a video game. By Deborah Snoonian

RETREADS Bike recycling

Just push play

provides an unexpected source of energy to developing countries. By Karla Zimmerman

natural skincare remedies; crueltyfree boots.

HEALTH The link between asthma and global warming. By Sarah Bridges

FOOD Biodynamic winemaking; making your own Halloween candy.

103

PLENTYLABS/DILEMMA Eco-colas and cleaning products.

104

ON THE COVER

STYLE Kick the shampoo habit;

IN EVERY ISSUE FROM THE EDITOR . . . . 6

Illustration created for Plenty by Catherine Cole.

CONTRIBUTORS . . . . . .10 LETTERS . . . . . . . . . . . 12 CALENDAR . . . . . . . . . 20

THE LAST WORD To Be or Not. By Martha Holmes

To subscribe to

PLENTY call 800-316-9006 or log on to plentymag.com

FROM THE

EDITOR IN CHIEF

New Frontiers IT COST A LOT OF MONEY—over $100 billion in today’s dollars—to get a man on the moon. The Apollo space program could never be justified in a cost-benefit analysis, but that’s not to say nothing good came out of it. Quite simply, it cast our planet in a whole new light. The image of Earth from space captured by Apollo 17, the last of the moon missions, became an icon of the early environmental movement; photos of Earth floating in a sea of darkness appeared on posters, buttons, and banners, often bearing the tagline “It’s the only one we’ve got.” The urge to explore new frontiers is still ingrained in our culture. It wasn’t long ago that George W. Bush suggested creating a colony on Mars, and Richard Branson, owner of Virgin Atlantic Airlines, recently founded Virgin Galactic, which promises to take passengers into low earth orbit for a mere $200,000 (carbon offsets not included). But just because a lot of people like the idea of exploring the solar system, that doesn’t mean we should invest huge sums of taxpayer dollars to do it. Why not spend the money on an Apollo-style program for the environment instead? A group called the Apollo Alliance (apolloalliance.org) has already called for such an effort, arguing that a multifaceted research agenda to achieve energy independence would create three million new jobs in the U.S.; they hope to accomplish this in a decade. And recently, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman called for a “new Manhattan Project” to develop alternative fuels and subsidize mass transit. These ideas, though far-reaching, are signs that consensus is building for a large-scale national program to develop sustainable energy sources. Sobering events like Hurricane

6 | Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

Katrina and constant reminders like high gas prices have permanently changed our perspective on the natural world; these days, more and more people realize that our environmental problems aren’t going to simply disappear. A major national research effort is the most logical way to ensure that we can face future environmental challenges with confidence and an action plan, instead of resorting to fear and finger-pointing. Obviously, we will need a lasting national commitment to clear the technical hurdles that currently prevent us from developing alternative energy strategies. But, as the Apollo mission and the Manhattan Project proved, hurdles can be cleared when the desire is strong enough. There might not be any more faraway frontiers to explore now that we’ve been to the moon and Mars, but maybe that’s a good thing—there are certainly plenty of problems to solve here on Earth. Perhaps in time we can replace that earlier iconic image of astronaut Buzz Aldrin saluting the American flag on the moon—an image that became symbolic of man’s mastery over nature—with an image that indicates our respect for the earth instead (but don’t worry, we’re not saying we should plant trees on the moon, as our tongue-in-cheek cover suggests). In the long haul, making our world a sustainable place for future generations will be a more impressive and important accomplishment than walking on the moon was nearly forty years ago. —Mark Spellun Editor in Chief & Publisher

Giving Wings to Sustainability.

Domtar EarthChoice is an innovative, full line of environmentally-friendly paper that Plenty and a growing number of other magazines are now printed on. High quality is one reason. Sustainability is another. Domtar EarthChoice is certified by the internationally recognized Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and supported by leading environmental groups. Consider the possibilities of Domtar EarthChoice wherever you use paper and see how easy giving wings to sustainability can be.

1 888 EChoice www.domtarearthchoice.com SW-COC-1000 From the forest to you - the FSC logo is your assurance that a paper or wood product has come from a well-managed forest. ÂŠ 1996 Forest Stewardship Council A.C.

PLENTY Publisher & Editor in Chief Mark Spellun Creative Director Catherine Cole Editorial Senior Editors Christy Harrison, Deborah Snoonian, Sarah Schmidt Political Editor Richard Bradley Associate Editor Kiera Butler Assistant Editor Jacquelyn Lane Copy Editors Molly Bloom, Jessica Mahler Contributing Editors Joshua M. Bernstein, Justin Tyler Clark, Bari Nan Cohen, Lisa Selin Davis, Kate Siber Editorial Intern Alice Shyy Art Assistant Art Director Richard Gambale Photo Research Intern Kate Spear PLENTY Advertising 250 West 49th Street, Suite 403, New York, NY 10019 New York: Deborah Gardiner, National Sales Director (Tel: 1-212-757-3794) Morgen Wolf, Assistant Publisher (Tel: 1-212-757-0048) 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 plentymag.com Unsolicited manuscripts, photographs, and other materials must be accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope. PLENTY will not be responsible for unsolicited submissions. Send letters to the editor to letters@plentymag.com or to PLENTY, 250 West 49th Street, Suite 403, New York, NY 10019. Copyright ÂŠ2005 by Environ Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without written permission is prohibited. Views expressed herein are those of the author exclusively. PLENTY has applied for membership to the Audit Bureau of Circulation. PLENTY (ISSN 1553-2321) is published bimonthly, six times a year, for $12 per year by Environ Press, Inc., 250 West 49th Street, Suite 403, New York, NY 10019. Periodical postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Plenty, P.O. Box 437, Mt. Morris, IL 61054-0437 or call 1-800-316-9006. PLENTY is printed on 30% post-consumer recycled paper and manufactured with elemental chlorine-free pulp. The remaining paper is FSC certified. Please recycle. Plenty offsets its carbon footprint with eMission Solutions greenmountain.com

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

CONTRIBUTORS WILLIAM E. BURROWS is a professor of journalism and founder and director of New York University’s graduate science, environmental, and health reporting program. He has reported on aviation and space for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and The Richmond TimesDispatch and is the author of eleven books, including This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age, which was one of three finalists for the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for History. He is also an out-of-the-closet foodie. Having stood at his Italian-American mother’s side while she prepared lasagna and handmade ravioli, William began believing that the only way to get what he wants every time is to make it himself. Taking the cue, two of his graduate classes have given him signed aprons for Christmas. He is at his most creative with Italian opera coming out of the speakers in the “cucina.”

ELIZABETH BARKER ’s recent shift from senior staff writer at Natural Health to freelancer extraordinaire has radically altered her morning commute, replacing her 25mile drive up Los Angeles’s Highway 101 with a happy five-minute stroll down Sunset Boulevard to her favorite coffee shop. When she’s not blogging about fashion, beauty, and bands at style site NoGoodForMe.com, she pens a monthly health-news column for Whole Life Times and reviews records for Venus. A former editor at Body & Soul, her work has also appeared in Variety and on MTV.com. After profiling Guayaki founder and yerba mate fanatic David Karr for this month’s Home section, Elizabeth is considering swapping her near-daily iced soy mocha for a much greener chai mate latte.

Plenty senior editor DEBORAH SNOONIAN wrote this issue’s culture column, “Just Push Play” (page 86), about eco-themed video games. “It’s encouraging to see educators embrace gaming as a way to teach kids about complex topics like the environment,” she says, while admitting she’s partial to air hockey and Scrabble rather than vids. Snoonian, a recovering engineer and an expert on green buildings, joined Plenty after a few years as a senior editor at Architectural Record, where she covered sustainable design and wrote about the environmental impact of buildings. Since joining Plenty, she’s made several guest appearances as an eco-guru on ESPN2, Fox, and other networks. Her writing has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Worthwhile, and elsewhere.

CATHERINE COLE has brought her extensive background in art direction, as well as an international flair, to the creative direction of Plenty since its inception. She has worked at major publications all over the world, including Vogue and GQ Spain, Vogue Italia, and The New York Times, and she redesigned Ladies’ Home Journal in 2001. Her work has been exhibited in Madrid, Paris, and New York, and she has won multiple awards, including the Prix Jasmine in France for illustrations she created while art directing Angeline’s, an avant-garde fashion magazine. Catherine now lives and works in Manhattan, but takes frequent trips to upstate New York to draw inspiration from nature. Though she enjoyed creating our cover and photo montage of the eco-spaceman, she believes it serves as a reminder of the need to protect the environment so we can stay put here on earth. 10 | Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

“Anxiety related to the pending global crisis is so much more common than any of us would like to admit.”

LETTERS THANK YOU a thousand times for Liz Galst’s article, “Global Worrying” (August/September 2006). As soon as I read the first paragraph, I was in tears. Anxiety related to the pending global crisis is so much more common than any of us would like to admit. I, too, have been an absolute wreck of nerves due to fear about the forthcoming environmental “doomsday.” I won’t run the air conditioning at the office (even on 90 degree days), I’m nearly hysterical when someone leaves a light on in the house during the day, I save all the runoff from sinks and showers for the many house plants I have collected (hoping to purify the air in my home), and I freak out when someone throws any piece of plastic into the trash that could be recycled. Like Galst’s girlfriend, my roommates have blocked news sources in our home to ward off panic attacks—we don’t even have a TV anymore. Reading this article, finding that we are not alone in our debilitating fear, and that we should not succumb to it, was extremely encouraging. Anxiety can seem like the easiest way to react to all these problems that, in many ways, appear to be out of our control. Like Galst, I believe that there is a healthy amount of worry that should come from alarming statistics— worry can be a very powerful motivator. However, when we allow our worry to balloon 12 | Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

into panic, so much is wasted. We could be using that energy to volunteer, to educate others, to garden, and to care for our world, rather than to be afraid of it.

and take a listen. Environmentalism and veganism go hand in hand; as a small community, we should support each other if we are going to get anywhere.

KIM MILLER

ERIKA KILLEEN

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

VIA E-MAIL

I’M A REGULAR LISTENER of the vegan podcast Erik’s Diner, and I disagree wholeheartedly with Plenty’s comments about his show (“No Static at All,” June/July 2006). A long-time vegan, I never considered becoming an activist, thinking my eating habits alone would help decrease demand for animal products. But listening to Erik’s prodding about what we can and should do has been very inspiring and encouraging, and he has turned me and many other people into activists. I hope your magazine’s readers give him the benefit of the doubt

I WAS UPSET that you promoted the solarpowered, ultrasonic mosquito repeller (Green Gear, June/July 2006). The CDC is clear that these devices are mere gimmicks that do not work. It would be nice if Plenty investigated products before promoting them. JASON KETOLA MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA

Oops, we goofed. We’ll do better from now on. Also, see our new section, “Claim Check” (page 16), where we look deeper into product claims. Illustration by Bill Mayer

[

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

THIS IS THE SECOND TIME I have purchased Plenty and the second time I have read a substantial article discussing some way for “conscious consumers” to eat meat and to get a warm fuzzy feeling while doing it (“Summertime, and the Eating is Local,” June/July 2006) Raising animals for food (even if they’re “free range,” or “not factory farmed,” or “organic”) still requires a huge amount of resources and ultimately means killing an animal for no reason. Studies have repeatedly shown a health benefit to vegan and vegetarian diets and thus I found Lou Bendrick’s comment on the contributor’s page, “My body just rebelled,” not only frustrating but utterly irresponsible for the magazine to publish. While this sort of statement may allay her guilt, I’m sure, with her level of education about nutrition, she knows that there are no studies showing that humans need meat—just a reasonably

]

well-balanced diet. I will always be perplexed by environmentalists who eat meat; however, if someone is going to make that choice, they should at least not insult our intelligence by excusing their decision as some sort of medical “need” over which they have no control. ELISABETH BENSFIELD FOREST PARK, ILLINOIS

Corrections: In the August/September culture story, “The Sky’s the Limit” (page 84), we wrote that Comet Skateboards has been producing the Hood Games since they began. To clarify, the first Hood Games were produced by art teacher Keith Williams of Oakland High School and skateboarder Karl Watson, in collaboration with Comet Skateboards. Also, the correct website for the potholders and oven mitts shown in Green Gear (page 41) is globalexchangestore.com.

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FAST FACTS | FIGURES

BLOOMIN’ JELLIES As the world’s fish populations continue to decline, one sea-faring species, the jellyfish, is flourishing. Pretty as these creatures are, their new found abundance isn’t exactly great news—more like a globular reminder that our oceans’ ecosystems are severely out of whack. One reason is overfishing. Many fish eat jellyfish or their eggs, so when too many fish are removed by commercial fishing, the jellies have fewer predators. Another problem is pollution. Fertilizers and other pollutants will often find their way to the ocean; they provide extra nutrients to phytoplankton, causing their populations to grow rapidly. When the phytoplankton die, their decomposition depletes oxygen in the water, causing low-oxygen zones that are hazardous to most aquatic creatures— but not to jellies. And climate change is only making things worse, because longer warm seasons are giving jellyfish better conditions in which to reproduce. With all these jellies around, fish have more competition for food, making it harder for them to bounce back. It might be time to start developing a taste for invertebrates. —Jacquelyn Lane

plentymag.com Oct/Nov/06 | 15

FAST BURNING QUESTION

Claim Check: Are pomegranates really a miracle food? Thanks to POM Wonderful, the juice company that first began trumpeting the antioxidant power of pomegranates, you can’t walk through the supermarket these days without tripping over some new product touting the health benefits of this supposed super-fruit. Now other companies such as Nantucket Nectars and Starbucks are riding the wave of pomegranates’ popularity with their own products. But many of these potions are pricey—as much as $4 or $5 for a 16-ounce bottle. Is America’s latest health-food darling worth the extra coin? The claims: Pomegranate juice, super-rich in antioxidants, decreases the risk of heart attacks by promoting heart and artery health. It may also fight prostate cancer by shrinking tumors. The facts: A slew of studies support claims that antioxidants can help protect against heart attack. And pomegranates really are one of the bests sources of antioxidants. But most juices on the market are pasteurized, meaning some of those antioxidants, like vitamin C, are destroyed along with the bacteria. Others, like the polyphenols that are linked to hearthealth, do remain intact, though, and some studies (backed by the POM Wonderful folks but published in independent journals) do indeed suggest that pasteurized juice may lower blood pressure and cholesterol. As for the anti-cancer claims, that research is more preliminary. In a recent published study (also backed by a grant from POM Wonderful’s owners), researchers had 50 men with prostate cancer drink eight ounces a day and found that their diseases seemed to progress more slowly. Cancer researchers were impressed but cautioned that larger studies are needed to corroborate the findings. The conclusion: Though you shouldn’t rely on pomegranate products for your vitamin C, the polyphenols present in both the fruit and the juice may well protect your heart. As far as those anti-cancer properties, the studies look promising, but warrant further study. So, while we wouldn’t recommend that you run out and buy every pomegranate concoction on the market, drinking a glass of juice regularly may offer some excellent health benefits. Even better, enjoy a fresh pomegranate now and then. They’re cheaper and pack a bigger nutritional wallop. —Alice Shyy

Have Wal-Mart’s recent eco-initiatives changed your opinion of the company? Samuel Fromartz, Author of Organic, Inc. They need to show how their entire business model is being redesigned so that responsible sourcing and low energy use are the primary goals, rather than low cost at any price. To get away from the hype, they need transparency: Are the Chilean fish farms sustainable? Are food miles falling? Are workers fairly compensated? The proof of the vision will be in measurable results.

Marion Nestle, Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University Wal-Mart’s eco-initiatives appear as a force for good overall, but raise questions as to their true intentions. Will these new standards raise costs to the consumer too much? Will the company try to weaken the USDA standards so organics can be sold more cheaply? Will focusing on its environmental image obscure issues with its labor practices? The jury is still out.

Chris O’Brien, biobutanol

ethanol

gas

Zunafish

eBay

classifieds

Elf Power

The Dead

flexatarians

lacto-ovo-pescatarians

breatharians

reclaimed lumber

bamboo

particle board

16 | Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

Director, Responsible Purchasing Network for the Center for a New American Dream We applaud Wal-Mart’s efforts to reduce its environmental impact. As the global retail behemoth, the company wields enormous power throughout its supply chain to dramatically increase the supply and decrease the cost of environmentally preferable products. But Wal-Mart’s heavy dependence on global shipping is a huge source of greenhouse-gas emissions. Sourcing products locally may reduce the retailer’s contribution to climate change— and it is in their self-interest to do so before strict regulations emerge.

BY THE NUMBERS

$21,918,847:

Domestic gross of An Inconvenient Truth

$1,084,000:

Domestic gross of Who Killed the Electric Car?

$238,841,296: Domestic gross of Disneyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cars

The highs and lows of transportation

60,000:

Maximum number of a given hybrid model an auto maker can sell before the U.S. government reduces the hybrid car tax credit for consumers

60,000:

$52 million: Dollars that would be saved if Wal-Mart improved the fuel efficiency of its trucks by 1 MPG

800,000:

Gallons of gasoline that will be saved by Wal-Mart per year now since having replaced the packaging of four produce items with corn-based (PLA) packaging

BY THE NUMBERSâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;SOURCES Clockwise top: Movie grosses: boxofficemojo.com as of August 13. Hybrid tax credit and Prius sales numbers: The New York Times. Hybrid sales, 2006: Hybridcars.com. Toyota RAV-EV prices: greencarcongress.com. Tesla price: Tesla C.E.O. Martin Everhard. Wal-mart figures: Wal-Mart Statement; October 24, 2005

Number of Toyota Priuses sold from January 2006 to May 2006

85,513:

Number of all Toyota hybrids sold from January 2006 to May 2006

19,489:

Number of Honda hybrids sold from January 2006 to May 2006

10,111: Number of Ford hybrids sold from January 2006 to May 2006

$42,000: Original list price of the 2003 Toyota RAV4-EV $29,000: Price of the 2003 Toyota RAV4-EV after tax credits $67,300: Price paid by buyer bluesanatk for a 2003 Toyota

RAV4-EV on eBay April 30, 2006

$80,000: Minimum speculated price of the new 2007 Tesla Roadster electric car

plentymag.com Oct/Nov/06 | 17

FAST POP QUIZ

What percentage of the world’s oceans are protected?

Corny situation

Is corn ethanol going to save us from an oil crisis? Are corn-based sweeteners causing an obesity epidemic? Are farm subsidies bad for our economy? In one way or another, it seems corn is a hot topic lately, and in a speech on energy efficiency in April, President Bush gave his two cents: “You just got to recognize there are limits on how much corn can be used for ethanol. After all, we’ve got to eat some.” And so we wondered—what are we doing with all of our corn? The U.S. produces 12 billion bushels of each year, after all. Less than one percent of it is consumed directly (i.e., it still looks like corn when you eat it), but a quarter of the products in an average American supermarket contain corn in some form. How much does that leave for ethanol? And what about animal feed? Here’s the kernel-bykernel-breakdown.

18%

51%

Ethanol

Livestock feed

A. Less than 10% B. Less than 3% C. Less than 1%

18%

Answer: C. But Bush’s new ocean reserve in Hawaii, which spans over 140,000 square miles and will protect over 7,000 species of wildlife, is a step in the right direction.

QUICK TIP: SMASHING PUMPKINS? WHAT’S CREEPIER than an expertly carved jack-o’lantern? A pumpkin’s wilting, bugeaten remains left on a doorstep months after Halloween night. Yuck! Put those biodegradable decorations to good use by offering to collect your neighbors’ leftover pumpkins to feed your hungry compost pile. You’ll have yourself some excellent compost come springtime, and you’ll be saving those orange-colored remains from getting buried in a landfill. Or worse yet, rotting on a porch for all eternity. Now there’s a scary thought.

Exports

Sweeteners

High-fructose syrup

1.6%

Cereal and dry goods

Corn starch

Seed

Beverage alcohol

.2% Popcorn

18 | Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

.2%

Sweet corn (canned, frozen, and on-the-cob) Photograph by Lazlo Honti (upper left)

FAST calendar

October October is Vegetarian Awareness Month. Whether you live a meat-free life or not, you can celebrate by sending your friends Vegetarian Month e-cards (salagram.net/veg19) and swapping delicious veggie recipes. (vegkitchen.com)

Don’t you hate it when you get your birds of prey mixed up? Learn to ID different species and see the largest migration of golden eagles in North America at the Bridger Raptor Festival in Bozeman, MT. (montanaraptor.org/events.html)

1–2

Every year on World Farm Animals Day, people protest the cruel treatment and slaughter of billions of cows, pigs, turkeys, and chickens. Today is also the birthday of Gandhi, a major champion of humane farming practices. (wfad.org)

If eggplant tickles you pink, then the Loomis Eggplant Festival, held annually in Loomis, CA, will make you purple with excitement. Enjoy aubergine-based dishes, pick up some eggplant merchandise, and watch children “race” the bulbous fruits down a wooden plank in the “Egganopolis 500.” (loomischamber.com/eggplant.asp)

See renewable energy in action at the American Solar Energy Society’s National Solar Tour, which opens up thousands of solar- and wind-powered homes and buildings around the country for public viewing. (nationalsolartour.org)

Over 300 green businesses will show off their wares to the public at Green Festival 2006 in Washington, D.C. Enjoy organic food, eco-films, yoga classes, and guest speakers like author Alice Walker and science sage Dr. David Suzuki. (greenfestivals.org)

14 – 15

Communities around the world fight hunger and honor World Food Day in a host of unique ways, from raising money through art auctions to teaching about the food of different cultures. (www.worldfooddayusa.org)

20 | Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

At Clean Gulf 2006 in New Orleans, environmental, safety, and security professionals will put their heads together to try to solve the problems of chemical spills, fires, pollution, and emergency response. (www.cleangulf.org)

17 – 19

On World Water Monitoring Day, citizens all over the globe pitch in and test a body of water in their area for the four key indicators of water quality: temperature, pH, dissolved oxygen, and turbidity. The results are compiled into an annual report. Wanna lend a hand? You can order a kit from the foundation for $19.95, including shipping. (worldwatermonitoringday.org)

The Northwest Environmental Summit, held in Tacoma, WA, keeps companies up-to-date about environmental laws, regulations, and policy issues. (ecwashington.org)

18 - 19

The Climate Protection Campaign and OrganicAthlete have teamed up to sponsor the Race to Be Cool in Graton, CA—a 5k or 10k run to raise awareness about global climate change. And because they practice what they preach, the race is climate-neutral and waste-free. (racetobecool.org)

Whether you’re a veggie wannabe or an old pro, you’ll find something to enjoy at the annual Boston Vegetarian Food Festival, sponsored by the Boston Vegetarian Society. Sample delicious food, learn about the latest meatless products, and discuss veggie nutrition with a registered dietitian. (bostonveg.org/foodfest)

Americans work nine more weeks a year than their European counterparts, so Take Back Your Time Day is held today—nine weeks before the end of the year. As much as you’d like to celebrate by knocking off work a couple months early, it might be best to do as the event’s organizers suggest and take four periods of time (four Sunday afternoons, for example) between Labor Day and October 24th to enjoy a slow, quiet activity. (timeday.org)

Halloween! See page 102 for all-natural candy recipes. (No need to share with trick-ortreaters.)

November Artists question the materials and techniques used in their trade by “recycling” existing works in Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art at the CSU Long Beach University Art Museum in Long Beach, CA, through December 17. (ici-exhibitions.org)

See how filmmakers view our changing world at the Planet in Focus International Environmental Film Festival in Toronto. Showcased flicks include documentaries, animated features, dramas, shorts, and experimental works. (planetinfocus.org)

1–5

Make an online pledge to ramp up your recycling, and you can enter to win a Ford Escape Hybrid as part of the America Recycles Day campaign. Also, be sure to check listings to find a recycling event near you. (americarecyclesday.org)

Industry professionals exchange ideas, build business relationships and learn about the latest innovations in green building at the Greenbuild 2006 International 17 Conference and Expo in Denver. The event is sponsored by the U.S. Green Building Council, the organization responsible for introducing the LEED Green Building Rating System in 2000. (greenbuildexpo.org) Explore EarthWays, a Victorian home built in 1885 and renovated in 1994 to showcase modern green building techniques during EarthWays Home Public Tour Day in St. Louis. The brick house, which is owned by the Missouri Botanical Garden, may look old-fashioned, but it boasts solar power, geothermal heat, and cellulose insulation. (earthwayshome.org)

18 - 19

Actress and playwright Kaiulani Lee will portray Rachel Carson in Lee’s original play A Sense of Wonder at the Environmental Educators of North Carolina Conference in Fort Bragg, NC. Attendees can also participate in a dinner-table conversation about “nature-deficit disorder” in children and explore the unique ecosystems of Longleaf Pine Forest. (eenc.org)

2-5

23 Savvy shoppers can learn about the newest eco3–5 products at the EPIC Sustainable Living Expo (EPIC stands for "Ethical, Progressive, Intelligent Consumer”) in Vancouver, Canada. (epicvancouver.com) The effects of global warming kill 150,000 people a year, according to the Canadian enviro group ACT for the Earth. For its Stop Climate Chaos: Global Day of Action, the group will mobilize folks to take to the streets and demonstrate. (actfortheearth.org)

Green business owners come together at the Co-op America Green Business Conference in San Francisco. Highlights include speakers like tree-sitter Julia Butterfly Hill and magazine editor Nina Utne, and a tour of the San Francisco Millenium Restaurant. (coopamerica.org)

7 – 10

10 – 12

Green Festival 2006 in San Francisco. See October 1415, Green Festival D.C., for details. (greenfestivals.org)

Businesses educate consumers about the latest environmentally conscious products at eco2Oregon, the largest eco-business event in the Pacific Northwest. (ecooregon.com)

11 – 12

Thanksgiving. Pass the Tofurkey!

Originally organized in 1986 by grassroots activists to abolish the fur trade, Fur-Free Friday has become one of the most widely attended animal rights protests. Now sponsored by Last Chance for Animals, the event hits multiple venues like Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, encouraging businesses and consumers to explore alternative fashion. (furfreefriday.com)

Pack your lunch and leave your wallet at home on International Buy Nothing Day. Held the day after Thanksgiving, BND encourages people to take a pause from consumer culture and to reflect on the environmental, cultural, and political implications of constantly purchasing new stuff. (ecoplan.org/ibnd)

Experts convene at the Electric Drive Transportation Conference and Exhibition in Washington, D.C., to examine federal policy options in the hopes of accelerating the adoption of electric vehicles. (electricdrive.org/conference2006)

Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com | 21

F O R WA R D

PEOPLE director, about oil addiction, young people in politics, and how swing voters really do care about the environment. So where, exactly, does the environment rank with voters these days?

I see the crisis of global warming and the need for energy independence as two sides of the same coin. On one side you have the threat, and on the other side you have the opportunity. And together, I think they’re very high on the minds of voters. There’s this idea that Democrats who talk about environmental issues for example are appealing to their base, and that no one else cares about these issues. But in fact, if you look at the polls, not only do Democrats care about these issues, but swing voters do too. How important will the 2006 elections be for the environment?

They’re really important—we’ve seen in the last four years the consequences of having one party run our country. It means, literally, you have oil companies writing the laws regulating oil companies. Can you tell us a little more about the Campaign for an Oil-Free Congress?

It’s premised on the idea that President Bush was half right when he said that Americans are addicted to oil. But what’s even more true is that American politicians are addicted to oil money. And that stands in the way of making real progress toward a clean, sustainable, energy-independent future. So we need to embarrass politicians who take hundreds of thousands of dollars from ExxonMobil. When you say, “embarrass politicians.…”

MoveOn Maven Eli Pariser talks about why the environment will matter in the 2006 elections By Kiera Butler

IN 1998, during the Clinton impeachment, Wes Boyd and Joan Blades (the software developers responsible for After Dark’s famous “flying toasters” screensaver of the mid-nineties) started MoveOn.org to urge Americans to censure President Clinton and “move on.” Since then, the group has expanded its mission and emerged as one of the most powerful forces in 22 | Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

progressive politics today—and has lobbied enthusiastically for the environment. MoveOn’s latest effort is the Campaign for an Oil-Free Congress, a project aimed at telling the public which politicians accept money from oil companies—good information to have, with the 2006 elections fast approaching. Plenty recently spoke with 25-year-old Eli Pariser, MoveOn’s executive

Yes, they’re hard to embarrass, it’s true! We’ve been running ads that highlight the amounts of money that members of Congress have taken from oil companies and how they’ve then voted in oil companies’ favor. Those ads have been very effective. A lot of people have been saying that global warming is this big elephant in the room—that because people can’t necessarily see it, they aren’t giving it the attention it deserves.

Al Gore and some others have done an awful lot for the issue, but it’s still going to take some work to make it a presence in everyone’s lives. When An Inconvenient Truth hit theaters, you launched a campaign to encourage people to see it. Did you think that people Photograph by Matthew Peyton/Getty Images

â&#x20AC;&#x153;American politicians are addicted to oil money.â&#x20AC;? needed prompting?

We wanted to make sure our members knew the movie was coming to town and saw it, and weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re just ecstatic about the results. I think it really restarted a national conversation on the issue. Which says much more about the movie and the poignancy of the issue than it does about us, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s still very exciting to see that happen. We heard youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re the child of sixties activists.

Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s been overstated. Basically my parents went to Maine, which is where I live now, and started a school. That was interpreted as activism, and I guess it is in its own way. Environmentalists in the sixties had a very different agendaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and a different strategy for accomplishing that agendaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;from

young environmentalists now. How has the movement changed?

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m 25, so I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have a lot of direct experience with the sixties, but one difference is that people these days donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t separate the environment from many other key political issues. People donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t wake up and say, â&#x20AC;&#x153;I care about the environment, but I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t care about war or what weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re doing for the poorâ&#x20AC;?â&#x20AC;&#x201D;well, there are probably a few people like that, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not the majority. The majority of us want to see our country do right and do well in a lot of ways. Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the best way to mobilize young people in the environmental movement today?

I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think young people are a different species. And maybe thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s because I still consider myself to be relatively young. But I think what you need to mobilize young people is the same thing you need in order to mobilize anyone: a clear argument that what youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re asking them to do makes a difference and a vision about what that difference is. â&#x2013;

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F O R WA R D

TECH

ECO-COBRA: The Pelamis churns waves into energy off the coast of Portugal.

Writer BILL MCKIBBEN reviews Bruce Babbitt’s eco-memoir, exploring the former interior secretary’s enduring legacy.

[

The Limpet, the Sea Snake, and the Duck

24 | Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

Three new technologies are making wave power attractive—both to private investors and to government-run utilities. By Laurel Maury Photograph courtesy of Ocean Power Delivery Ltd

These technologies may hold the promise of greater self-sufficiency to remote coastal and island communities around the world. ON THE ISLE OF ISLAY off the coast of Scotland, where standing stones dot the landscape and Gaelic is still heard in pubs, the world’s first working wave-power device has been puttering away for roughly seven years. The Land Installed Marine Power Transformer (LIMPET), developed by the Scottish firm Wavegen, is the first wavepower station to deliver energy to a national electrical grid. As waves move in and out of the generator, they press against a compression chamber that sits at the shore’s edge. Air in the chamber moves a turbine, producing electricity. Investor interest in this form of alternative energy was sparked back in the 1970s, when University of Edinburgh scientist Stephen Salter developed a bobbing wave-power generator called “the Duck.” But at the time, the cost of constructing such a generator was prohibitively high (not to mention the expense of connecting the technology to a power grid), and the electronic parts were relatively unsophisticated. In the 1990s, though, a renewed interest in renewable energy, coupled with technological advancements and reduced costs, led to something of a renaissance for wave power. Today, LIMPET and a competing technology, Pelamis, are attracting significant investor attention. “We think the best thing to do is to start small, get generators up and running,” says David Gibb of Wavegen. So LIMPET is not a money-maker yet—but as far as proof-of-concept is concerned, the turbine is successful. It reliably delivers power to the Scottish national grid, and, despite recent near-hurricanestrength storms in the region, LIMPET has never failed. Like its namesake (a limpet is a mollusk that clings to rocks in tidal zones), the generator is holding strong. The interest in wave technology is also spreading. This year, just off the coast of the Portuguese city Povoa de Varzim, three Pelamis generators are being installed. Each Pelamis (Latin for “sea snake”) consists of a 150-meter-long set of linked, bright-red tubes that resemble tanker train cars. The system floats in the water, perpendicular to the waves,

which bend the tubes at their joints and activate hydraulic motors, creating electricity. The Pelamis’s progenitor, another Scottish company called Ocean Power Delivery, Ltd. (OPD), hopes to start making money right away. It has signed an agreement to sell wave energy to the Portuguese utility company Enersis, and the European Union has promised to buy that power (at an artificially inflated price for now, at least until they perfect the technology enough to bring costs down). “We’re doing this not only because we believe in wave power, but because we think that wave power is going to make money,” says Andrew Scott, the engineer who’s overseeing the Pelamis project for OPD. “Technology will improve, and the price will drop.” Investors and analysts seem to agree. German utility giant Voith bought Wavegen in May 2005, and General Electric and Merrill Lynch are now investing in OPD. And according to wave-power expert David Jeffrey, these technologies may hold the promise of greater self-sufficiency to remote coastal and

island communities around the world. The United Kingdom, particularly Scotland, has long been a center for wave power. “God has been very generous to Scotland with regard to renewable energy sources,” Salter muses. But Scotland (and Europe in general) isn’t the only hot spot for ocean-generated electricity: northern Canada, Australia, and the northeastern and northwestern coasts of the U.S. are also rich in wave energy because of the wind activity in these temperate zones. Studies commissioned by the city of San Francisco indicate that a wave-power generator is viable there. Under initiatives by Mayor Gavin Newsom, the city is looking seriously at wave energy; Newsom’s office believes there’s enough power offshore to enable San Francisco to shut down the city’s last conventional power plant. “There is an enormous amount of power off the coast of California,” says Jared Blumenfeld, director of San Francisco’s Department of the Environment, “and it’s all untapped.” ■

What Price Green? Energy source Nuclear Coal Wind Natural Gas Hydropower Wave power (Pelamis) Wave power (LIMPET) Solar (Stirling dish technology)

Cents per kilowatt-hour 1.8* 4.1-7.3* 4.93** 5.18-21.27 6.04 6.5-8.5 (projected) 12-14 (estimate)*** 15.37

*The real price of nuclear and coal power is obscured by government subsidies. According to a 2005 report by Public Citizen, in the U.S., nuclear power receives $12 billion per year in Federal aid, while coal receives $9 billion. Furthermore, the quoted cost of nuclear power rarely includes the projected cost of dealing with the spent fuel, which may be as high as 7.326¢ per kWh. **Price includes federal Production Tax Credit of 1.5¢ per kWh. ***LIMPET is a research power station, which adds significantly to its operating costs. A LIMPET-style device operated solely to create electricity would probably cost less. Sources: Wave power consultant Tom Thorpe; CA Energy Commission; White House Advanced Energy Initiative; Natural Resources Defense Council

plentymag.com Oct/Nov/06 | 25

F O R WA R D

BUSINESS

SCARCE STUFF: Solar companies and chip-makers all need silicon, but there’s not enough to go around.

Sand Trap

HIGH OIL PRICES, growing interest in alternative energy, and decades of R&D all mean boom times for the solar industry, right? Not quite. Just when ALAN JOCH solar-panel sales should be skyrocketing, the industry finds itself grappling with a nagging shortage of polysilicon, the key ingredient in photovoltaic solar cells. Tight supplies are frustrating panel makers and causing investors to balk at backing public companies. “Right now, I’d say we are in a correction phase for solar stocks,” says J. Peter Lynch, a private investment banker focused on renewable energy for alternative energy companies. “Wall Street said, ‘Jeez, these solar stocks have really run up,’ but then the light suddenly went on about the polysilicon shortage, and

Will the silicon shortage stunt the solar industry’s growth? BY

26 | Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

the stocks corrected by about 20 to 25 percent. The logic behind it is, ‘Whoops, we went too far.’” Ironically, polysilicon is made from one of the most common materials on earth: sand. So the problem isn’t so much a lack of raw material as a lack of production capacity for refining sand into polysilicon, the material that enables panels to capture solar photons and turn them into electricity. Burned by past downturns, polysilicon producers have been reluctant to invest in infrastructure that would increase capacity. Last year, though, convinced that long-term polysilicon orders were for real, companies like U.S.-based Hemlock Semiconductor, Norway’s Renewable Energy Corporation, and Germany’s Wacker-Chemie each committed hundreds of millions of dollars for new capacity. But with a lag time of about three to five Illustration by Koren Shadmi

years between commitment and production, the new polysilicon plants won’t impact the solar industry until 2008 and beyond. So for now, shortages are still putting the breaks on solar-industry growth and pitting the solar sector in a fight against the massive semiconductor industry, which now uses more than half of the 30,000 metric tons of polysilicon produced each year to make everything from PCs to cell phones to gaming systems. Nevertheless, the solar industry is poised to hit a significant milestone soon: sometime in the next two years, more raw silicon will be going to solar panels than to electronics chips. Even when new production capacity comes on line in 2008, analysts say polysilicon will remain very much in demand because much of the additional output is already spoken for. Solar cell maker Evergreen Solar (ticker: ESLR) recently signed a supply contract with Renewable Energy Corp. (ticker: REC) through 2014 for polysilicon from its yet-tobe-completed new facility. Other solar companies are expected to forge similar arrangements, according to analysts.

Hence, traditional solar-panel makers, such as Sharp Corporation and BP Solar, are hard at work designing thinner products that use proportionately less polysilicon; a number of smaller companies are also exploring ways to reduce—or even eliminate—the need for polysilicon. “There is a core group of firms making cells that use a fraction of the silicon needed for conventional solar cells,” says Jesse Pichel, senior technology analyst for investment-banking firm Piper Jaffray. Evergreen Solar, for example, relies on “string ribbon” technology, a manufacturing technique that creates long, 3.2-inch-wide ribbons of silicon that can be cut to shorter lengths for individual applications. Evergreen claims the process produces more than twice the solar cells per pound of silicon than traditional manufacturing techniques. And Energy Conversion Devices (ticker: ENER) says its thin sheets of solar cells also use less silicon. The manufacturing process deposits the silicon in a gas form onto slender 14-inch-wide stainless-steel sheets, which feed off a roll into the company’s solar-cell manufacturing machine.

A Solar Game Plan Solar-smitten investors don’t have to wait on the sidelines for another two years as polysilicon manufacturers ramp up production. Here are four ways to position yourself today for solar success. —A.J. Consider investing in polysilicon manufacturers:

Rather than bolting from solar because of its near-term supply problems, Jesse Pichel, senior technology analyst for investment-banking firm Piper Jaffray, recommends playing the polysilicon shortage directly. He looks for polysilicon manufacturers with attractive price-to-earnings multiples (the stock price divided by the company’s earnings per share, a good metric for looking at an individual stock’s value relative to a large index like the S&P 500.) One such example is MEMC Electronic Materials (ticker: WFR), which has sold at about 12 times its earnings. Investors who balk at supporting manufacturing companies, a segment not typically considered green, may be comforted to know that PowerShares WilderHill Clean Energy Portfolio (ticker: PBW), a diversified exchange-traded fund, includes MEMC within its portfolio of 40 clean-energy stocks. Build a diversified portfolio: Rather than gambling entirely on solar stocks, which will likely remain volatile for the foreseeable future, consider a broad mix of environmental securities. A handful of indexes now

Other companies are selling solar products using “thin-film” technologies that eschew silicon altogether. DayStar Technologies (ticker: DSTI) and the private firms Miasolé and HelioVolt Corporation combine the highspeed manufacturing advantages of thin-film techniques with solar cells created from a combination of copper, indium, gallium, and selenium (known as CIGS). Miasolé says only a fraction of this silicon alternative is needed to create the same energy-producing capacity of a conventional solar cell, saving on materials costs. (See “Ventures in the Sun,” in Plenty’s December/January 2006 issue.) This all sets the stage for intense competition that’s likely to persist long after the polysilicon shortages subside. Upstarts like Energy Conversion, Evergreen, and the CIGS backers are ramping up their capacity to compete headto-head against the established solar-cell companies. Hmm…Upstarts challenging the establishment? Sounds like just one more sign that the solar industry is well on its way to moving beyond the growing-pains stage toward becoming a mature sector with a bright future. ■

monitor the financial returns of green investments, including NASDAQ Clean Edge U.S. Index; CleanTech Index; WilderHill Clean Energy Index; and WilderHill Clean Energy Global Innovation Index. Wait until profits are on the horizon: Look for

companies that show solid financials and a clear path to profitability, says Eric Becker, Green Century Balanced Fund co-manager. “Some companies have strong environmental stories to tell,” he notes, “but the question is, are they going to pan out in one year, three years, or five years?” Becker himself follows a simple rule—he invests in companies that are already profitable or whose earnings trends over a number of years show profitability is imminent. He admits that no pure solar companies meet these criteria yet, so for now his strategy is to limit solar bets to firms included within diversified alternative energy funds, such as the PowerShares ETF. Keep an eye on companies that use less—or no— silicon: Energy Conversion Devices (ticker: ENER)

and Evergreen Solar (ticker: ESLR) use manufacturing techniques that reduce the amount of silicon needed to produce the equivalent wattages of conventional solar panels. DayStar Technologies (ticker: DSTI) is banking on a chemical-element cocktail, known as CIGS, to produce silicon-free panels. Other CIGS companies include HelioVolt Corp., Miasolé, and Nanosolar, Inc. These are all private companies with significant venture-capital backing; investors should watch for future IPOs.

plentymag.com Oct/Nov/06 | 27

F O R WA R D

MOTION

Be Nice, Share

With car sharing, you can have your cake and eat it too BY CHRISTINE CYR

WHEEL DEAL: You can tool around town in a Mini Cooper when you join Zipcar, one of the fastestgrowing car-sharing services.

YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT CARS: can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em. Insurance premiums, exponentially increasing gas prices, and that sinking feeling that you’re releasing more carbon into the air—blech. At the same time, hauling a set of bookcases home from Ikea on a city bus—also blech. That’s why a growing number of people are latching on to the latest alternative to owning a car: car sharing. For people living in cities with good public transport, it seems like the perfect compromise, so on a recent trip to Seattle I decided to give it a whirl. The concept behind the operation is simple: pay a minimal yearly membership fee, then an hourly rate for a vehicle when you 28| Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

need one. After applying online, Flexcar—one of two large car-sharing companies establishing hubs around the country—sent me a card in the mail, which I activated on their Web site. Within 24 hours I was approved to drive any of around 150 cars, trucks, and SUVs parked in neighborhoods around Seattle. I made a reservation online for a Honda Civic Hybrid parked at a coffee shop two blocks from where I was staying, a satellite communicated my reservation to the car, and two hours later I was unlocking the silver sedan by holding my card against a panel on the windshield. The keys were in the glove compartment, the interior clean, and I was soon off to get my laptop repaired. Car sharing started in Europe in the mid-

1980’s, where it’s estimated the average carsharer reduces his carbon dioxide emissions by about 40 to 50 percent. It was first embraced stateside a decade later. At first, interest in these services was tepid, but over the past few years the phenomenon has mushroomed. Membership in car-sharing services has increased 300 percent since 2003, according to Dr. Susan Shaheen, who researches transportation trends for the University of California at Berkeley. Now about 20 sharing services operate around the country. Many are small and local, but Flexcar and Zipcar—the largest companies—operate in nearly a dozen cities (Flexcar is concentrated in the West, while Zipcar has a larger presence in the East)

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F O R WA R D

MOTION

Consumer Education and Resources.

Be Green, Save Greenbacks

www.organic.org

and both are planning on expanding into new metro areas in the next year, Not only is car sharing better for the environment, thanks largely to new investment. America Online cofounder Steve Case it’s better for your bottom line. When coupled with and former Chrysler chief executive Lee using public transit, car sharing is usually much Iacocca both invested undisclosed cheaper than owning a car. If you drive less than amounts in Flexcar in 2005 and are on 10,000 miles a year, you’re generally financially the board of directors; GE Commercial better off with a combination of public transit and Financial Fleet Services invested $20 car sharing. Here’s the breakdown: million in Zipcar last May. Both companies have similar memMonthly cost of owning a car and driving bership costs, with an annual fee of 10,000 miles a year*: about $50 and an hourly rate that starts Full-coverage insurance $77 at around $8 (rates are lower if you’re on License, registration, and taxes $45 a monthly plan). Insurance and gas are Depreciation $209 included in the hourly rate, making Finance Charge $60 these cars a very economic choice for Gas, maintanance, and tires $126 town driving (see sidebar). Total: $517 The green benefits of car sharing can be huge. Not only are many of the cars Monthly cost of car sharing combined with low-emission hybrids (Flexcar has 40 percent, Zipcar 15 percent), but it’s estipublic transit in Seattle: mated that at least five private vehicles 10 hours per month using Flexcar $94 are taken off the road for every shared Two-zone, peak-hour PugetPass $72 car. Around 20 percent of car-sharing Total: $166 members choose to sell one car, and an even larger number opt not to buy a car *Source: AAA’s Your Cost of Driving 2006 they were thinking about purchasing, according to a recent report commissioned by the Transportation Research Board. Conservatively, that means 5,960 pri- maintaining a private fleet, but the majority of vate cars have been taken off the roads for the members are private households, usually single 1,192 shared cars currently around the country. or married couples with no kids. Many college Car sharers also drive about 44 percent less students have signed on, and the bulk of memthan car owners. Owners have already paid the bers are in their 30s or younger. Still, the spike in membership doesn’t necfixed costs of maintaining a vehicle, so for them, it’s no big deal to drive across town on a essarily mean thousands of people are totally whim. But because car sharers pay by the hour, ditching their cars—at least not yet. Some of there’s a financial incentive to drive less, so they the recent growth in membership has been due usually walk or take the bus to work or the cor- to what Shaheen calls “mobility insurance.” ner store, and clump their driving errands into These members already own at least one car, a few hours during the week. The average but would like to have access to another in case Flexcar member only uses a car for 10 hours theirs breaks down, or if they need a pickup truck to handle big jobs (both Flexcar and each month. Skyrocketing fuel costs are likely a factor in Zipcar offer these). But Shaheen also specuthe growth of car sharing, but Shaheen speculates that as sharing services place more cars in lates that people are also becoming more aware denser networks within cities—particularly in of services through word-of-mouth and adver- neighborhoods—members might opt to sell tising. Flexcar and Zipcar are also placing more their private vehicles. I may very well be one of them. Finished cars within cities where they already operate, making it easier for members to reserve a vehi- with my errands, I parked the car in its cle when they need one. Currently there are reserved spot at the coffee shop and locked her more than 100,000 members in different pro- with a swipe of my card. No worries. No blech. grams around the country. About 12 percent of Finally, I thought, a transportation comprothe market is business members opting out of mise we could all live with. ■ 30 | Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

F O R WA R D

THINKING

Ever Loyal to Lord Oil Greed, a botched government overthrow, and oil addiction writ large in Adam Roberts’s The Wonga Coup THE WONGA COUP: Guns, Thugs and a Ruthless Determination to Create Mayhem in an Oil-Rich Corner of Africa BY ADAM ROBERTS PUBLIC AFFAIRS BOOKS, $25.95

THE CHARACTERS in Adam Roberts’s book The Wonga Coup are as preoccupied with oil as if they’d sprung from the black stuff themselves. From corrupt West African demagogues to British and South African mercenaries, from American politicians to the son of a certain former prime minister of England, everyone in Roberts’s world craves oil—and the power and money (“wonga” is British slang for cash) it brings. Even in the chaotic history of government overthrows in Africa, the fruitless attempt in March 2004 to overthrow Obiang Nguema, the “democratically elected” president of Equatorial Guinea, stands out. Unlike other recent coups, this one was led by white Europeans and South Africans—a group of wealthy, adrenaline-addicted mercenaries who had previously rented out their private armies to fight in Angola and Sierra Leone’s civil wars. And this coup was not meant primarily to punish Obiang, or to restore democracy to a notoriously repressive society. The plotters admit that they were after Equatorial Guinea’s underwater oil reserves—a resource that nets the government over $6 billion a year, not much of which trickles down to Equatorial Guineans who are not related to Obiang. 32 | Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

In 2003, Simon Mann—an Eton alum, occasional bit actor, and commander of a private army of African soldiers—began plotting the overthrow, a process Roberts describes in precise, fascinating detail. After finding a potential puppet in Severo Moto, an eternal gadfly of Obiang’s regime who was living in exile in Spain, Mann started scouting for funding. One of his sources was former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s middleaged son, Mark Thatcher, whose eventual arrest brought an onslaught of media attention to a story that might otherwise have faded quickly from the public consciousness. Roberts’s portrait of Thatcher as a bumbling, petulant boyprince (when called upon to help a jailed

Unlike other recent coups, this one was led by white Europeans and South Africans—a group of wealthy, adrenalineaddicted mercenaries who had previously rented out their private armies to fight in Angola and Sierra Leone’s civil wars.

friend, he asks if the friend could “ring back when the Grand Prix race was over”) is a major joy of The Wonga Coup. Once Mann had hired planes, airstrips, masses of arms, and soldiers, and had lined up supporters ranging from Congolese rebels to (Roberts speculates) American CIA agents, he was ready to launch his coup. But an inability to keep his men from blabbing about their plans led to his perhaps inevitable, but nonetheless dramatic, downfall. While Mann, Thatcher, and their cohorts met with their comeuppance, the real victims, as Roberts tells it, were Mann’s dirt-poor African soldiers and their families, cast away at the end like a bad memory. Roberts presents Mann’s hubris and fall in workaday language, leaving the conclusions largely up to his readers. Still, the implications of his scrupulously researched narrative are clear. Roberts mentions without comment, for example, a South African cartoon drawn after Thatcher’s arrest, depicting George H.W. Bush on the phone with Margaret Thatcher: “Maggie, that son of yours can’t go around toppling governments just to get the oil contracts…unless he’s in office! Now my boy.…” He was referring, of course, to his own boy, current president of the United States and originator of the phrase “addicted to oil,” who is a constant, if implicit, presence in The Wonga Coup. Reading Roberts’s book, we are reminded over and over again that oil addiction affects all levels of global society, and carries bloody consequences wherever it strikes. ■ —Britt Peterson

Abbey, Straight Up The new collection of letters from incendiary environmentalist Edward Abbey is a jigger of the real stuff

POSTCARDS FROM ED: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast BY EDWARD ABBEY MILKWEED EDITIONS, $24.95

THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT boasts a strange pantheon. On this slapdash Olympus, Julia Butterfly Hill rubs shoulders with Al Gore, and Rachel Carson is quoted alongside John Denver. Green crusaders wisely gather their heroes where they may, but all that inclusivity can sometimes evoke the apologist’s tendency to gloss over disagreeable behavior and less-than-sustainable habits. Consider the wilderness defender and social provocateur Edward Abbey. Between the 1968 publication of his Walden-esque breakthrough, Desert Solitaire, and his death in 1989, the semi-reclusive Southwesterner published over twenty books. In most, Abbey uses his polemical flair and wry humor to promote wilderness and protest industrial expansion—as in The Monkey Wrench Gang, his infamous 1975 tale about a crew of unlikely construction-site saboteurs. Abbey was lambasted by the right for his outspoken aversion to the “techno-industrial-commercial slime-mold” of urban development, but often snubbed by the left for his perceived misogyny, tacit approval of eco-sabotage, and (yes) tendency to toss empty beer cans out the windows of his speeding truck. Yet Abbey’s popular legacy, rather than addressing these complexities, too often paints him simply as a loveable curmudgeon— environmentalism’s cheeky granddad, sparring with the cacti and howling at the moon. So it’s refreshing whenever a new Abbey collection emerges to reestablish the author’s not-always-good name. Postcards from Ed does exactly that, recalling Abbey’s passion and peculiarities through 45 years of collected correspondence,

curated by friend and fellow Western scribe David Petersen. A goodly number of eloquently caustic letters-to-the-editor showcase the powerful prose and righteous indignation for which “Cactus Ed” was known. With characteristic candor, Abbey discusses his disdain for engineers (“the worst vermin in modern society”), airs his seemingly reactionary views on immigration (“the Latino invasion of our country”), and scoffs at mankind’s faith in scientific progress (“the grossest superstition of this gross decade”). He waxes philosophical on solitude, women, literature, and guns. Of course, bits of black humor drift through the dispatches like desert tumbleweeds. Discussing industry and overpopulation, Abbey writes to a Utah

magazine editor, “If we must have more industry in southern Utah, I would suggest…light manufacturing: let’s say, a nice, clean, well-lighted condom factory.” Petersen disappointingly omits correspondence between Abbey and his many lovers, and aside from some noteworthy glimpses of the author at work, Abbey acolytes should expect few profound new insights here. Some may be discouraged to find the often-effusive writer limited to the confines of short correspondence. But Postcards succeeds in part because Abbey’s letters are characteristic and concise. Each provides a bracing shot of Edward Abbey as he lived and wrote—without an apologist chaser. ■ —Brian Kevin

New and Noteworthy UNBOWED A Memoir BY WANGARI MAATHAI (ALFRED A. KNOPF PUBLISHERS, $24.95)

The winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize reflects on her remarkable life, from her beginnings in a rural Kenyan village to spearheading the environmental movement across Africa.

THE END OF THE LINE How Overfishing is Changing the World and What we Eat BY CHARLES CLOVER (THE NEW PRESS, $26.95)

Pescatarians, take heed! As the fishing industry continues to expand to meet our ever-growing hunger for seafood, fragile ocean ecosystems the world over are paying the price.

FIRESTORM The Caretaker Trilogy: Book I BY DAVID KLASS (FARRAR, STRAUS, AND GIROUX, $17.00)

Jack Danielson lives the life of a normal teenage boy—until he discovers that he was actually born 1000 years in the future and has been sent back in time to save the natural world from irreversible destruction. The first novel to be endorsed by Greenpeace.

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE MICROWAVED Inside America’s Underground Food Movements BY SANDOR ELLIX KATZ (CHELSEA GREEN PUBLISHING, $20.00)

From seed saving to Dumpster diving, radical food movements are changing the way Americans think about the multi-billion-dollar food industry—and about food itself.

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New Society Publishers positive solutions for people and planet Energy Switch Proven Solutions for a Renewable Future

Rainwater Collection for the Mechanically Challenged

Craig Morris

Suzy Banks with Richard Heinichen

Declining oil supplies and the environmental impact of coal dictate a switch to renewable energy sources for a sustainable future. A renewable energy leader two decades ago, the US now lags behind Germany and Japan. Energy Switch pays special attention to Europe’s success, especially that of Germany, exploring what can be learned from their experience. It asks whether a mix of renewables is feasible as a major source of energy, at what cost, with what drawbacks, and in what time period.

The ultimate rainwater collection do-it-yourself handbook. $19.95

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Your Green Home A Guide to Planning a Healthy, Environmentally Friendly New Home

Slow Is Beautiful

Solar Water Heating

New Vision of Community, Leisure, and Joie de Vivre

A Comprehensive Guide to Solar Water and Space Heating Systems

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Whether you are working with an architect or builder, or serving as your own general contractor, this guide will help you prepare to build a new green home. A Wiser Living Series Book from Mother Earth News $17.95

■ Recover from the time poverty plague

Subtle consumer, political and corporate forces are stamping out the joy from our existence. Slow Is Beautiful provides a vision of a more fulﬁlling life through the rediscovery of caring community, unhurried leisure, and life afﬁrming joie de vivre. Offering inspiration and concrete ideas, Slow Is Beautiful will appeal to Baby Boomers nearing retirement, harried professionals with a social conscience, the one-time “middle class,” and 20-30-somethings who are now facing the sobering realities of constricted choices. $16.95

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All the basics of solar water heating, including an introduction to modern solar energy systems, energy conservation and energy economics. A Wiser Living Series Book from Mother Earth News $24.95

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ExtraVeganZa Original Recipes from Phoenix Organic Farms Laura Matthias • Foreword by John Robbins

Elevate your vegan palate to the sumptuous level with exquisite recipes that push the boundaries of vegan cuisine. The book presents over 250 tantalizing savory and sweet vegan recipes. Adding unique flair, ExtraVeganZa highlights the elegant presentation of dishes using edible flowers and fresh herbs as garnishes, as well as natural foods as alternatives for food dyes, producing some rare colored treats for the eye. Includes an edible flowers glossary and a special section on natural food dyes. $24.95

GREEN

GEAR

Snowed Out

It may be freezing outside, but that doesn’t mean you can’t break a sweat. Get your heart pumping with the hottest winter gear.

1 NEED FOR SPEED

Arbor donates a portion of its profits to an organization working to preserve the environment—this year they’re working with the Nature Conservancy. Better still, all of the wood used to create their boards— including the “Formula”— is sustainably harvested. $300, arborsports.com

KICK IT Thanks to the “Boot’r,” a “ball” designed for smooth movement on the ice, soccer junkies can pursue their passion all year round. No need for expensive equipment—all that’s required (besides the Boot’r) is a pair of sturdy winter boots, a helmet, an ice rink…and some adventurous friends to play with. $50 for adult size, icesoccer.com

G N I V O GET M

LOW IMPACT You may not be able to get your car out of the driveway, but you can still snowshoe in the winter wonderland outside your front door. The durable and affordable “Winter Walkers” are perfect for beginners. $99 for 26-inch, llbean.com

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GREEN

GEAR

BUNDLE UP You’ll stay warm (and get that warm, fuzzy feeling) whenever you wear the “Eco Torrentshell,” which has a two-layer postconsumer recycled polyester shell and a recycled polyester mesh lining. $185, patagonia.com

ILL R H T TO D E S S DRE

br-r-r!

Look good on and off the slopes with the superlight yet durable “Timba” snowboarding boots. They are 100% PVC-free and contain recycled materials. $200, tactics.com

SHOE-IN

HUG THE CURVES Not only does Ailin make chic sportswear—like these “Lech Snowboarding Pants”—out of sustainable materials, but the company also gave their office an LEED-certified green makeover. Be sure to check out their sweet eco-blog. $230, ailin.com

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JUST IN CASE You never know when you’ll have to dig yourself out of an avalanche, so the “All Purpose Survival Tool” performs the tasks of a shovel, hammer, saw, hatchet, bottle opener, nail puller, and wrench. It also has a built-in survival kit containing matches, fishhooks and line, nails, and other useful (and potentially life-saving) items. $20, gaiam.com

7 LEAD THE WAY In the ever-important quest to lower the weight of one’s hiking gear, we present to you the multi-talented “LightCap,” a water bottle and LED lantern all in one. No need for cranking, shaking, or (the horror!) carrying extra batteries— it’s solar powered! $25, sollight.com

A LI FE S AV E R

TAKE CHARGE This hand-crank–powered “6in-1” safety device contains a cell-phone charger, superbright LED flashlight, FM radio, signal flasher, siren, and compass. One minute of cranking will give you an hour of flashlight power. $40, lifegearcompany.com

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GEAR

GREEN

WEATHER THE STORM There’s something irresistible about the peaceful quiet and sparkling beauty of a fresh snow, but camping in the winter can be a chilly proposition. An igloo is warmer and sturdier than a tent, and the handy, lightweight “Ice Box” folds up for easy carrying and allows you to build an igloo in only a few hours. $176, grandshelters.com

the heat is on

OOL

TE L E H S

WARM UP

PROTECT YOUR DIGITS Whether you’re hitting the slopes or doing some winter hiking, these non-toxic, all-natural “Heat Treat” toe warmers will help you stave off frostbite. Simply open the package and expose the pouch to air. Stick it inside your shoes for several hours of toasty warmth. $2 for a pack of two, skibuckmans.com

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You know the drill: You turn down your thermostat to minimize energy costs, but then you feel like you’re living in an icebox. The ”Oil Free Console Heater” is energy efficient, and lighter than heaters that use oil. It also comes in a cool-touch housing, which means you can move it between rooms while it’s still in use. $64, greenhome.com

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The Next

Costa Rica? This formerly war-torn country has acres of virgin rain forest, miles of pristine beaches, and biodiversity galore...as well as deep-seated poverty. Can eco-tourism lend a helping hand? By Lisa Selin Davis

UNDEVELOPED—AND UNSPOILED: Much of the Nicagraguan counrtyside remains in its natural state (left); meanwhile, real estate developments like Rancho Santana are sprouting up around the country (above).

Photograph by Mark Spellun (left); courtesy Rancho Santana (above)

IN 1978, a river guide named Michael Kaye, discouraged by the damming of the Stanislaus in California, took a trip to Costa Rica and found an untapped treasure: From a train window, he saw the Class III rapids of the Reventazon River bubbling through the Turrialba Valley, and knew he had to run it. At that time, only the most intrepid of tourists made their way to Costa Rica, but Kaye knew there were others like him, who would revel in the country’s wealth of natural resources while respecting them. In 1978, he founded Costa Rica Expeditions, starting a landslide of environmentally friendly travel that boosted the country’s economy and standard of living and established the brand-new genre of travel we now call eco-tourism. Thirty years later, Costa Rica remains eco-tourism’s capital, with over a billion tourism dollars spent in 2000. Meanwhile, right next door, Nicaragua, with its active volcanoes, virgin rainforest, and seven percent of the world’s plant and animal species, has seen almost none of this action. Its history of violence and corruption kept most visitors away—until now. In 2005, positioning itself as the next Costa Rica, Nicaragua attracted $150 million in tourist dollars. But the world is a different place 30 years after the “discovery” of Costa Rica. These days, environmentalism is a marketing strategy as much as a movement—slap the word sustainable on something and you can charge three times as much. So while Costa Rica sort of happened into eco-tourism, Nicaragua is strategically embracing it. But though eco-friendly travel here is on the rise, the country has a relatively large population of over 5 million and has plenty of competition from other countries who have noticed Costa Rica’s success. Many observers wonder whether eco-tourism will be able to make a strong impact here. plentymag.com Oct/Nov/06 | 41

NIC ARAGUA Costa Rica The Next

RETURNING to Morgan’s Rock’s stables after a ride on the beach (top); a tranquil view from the eco-lodge’s terrace (bottom).

change its rough image, strike a balance between economic development and sustainability, and replace its troubled past with a bright future. Hence, the ongoing image makeover.

icaragua’s long history of violence reaches back to the 1500s, when Spanish conquerors first grabbed the land from indigenous people. Beginning in the mid-1850s, America has consistently intervened in an effort to gain control of its strategic location (it was the first chosen site for the canal which eventually ended up in Panama). Civil war scarred the country in many forms— liberals versus conservatives, communists versus capitalists—right up until 1979, when the communist-backed Sandinistas seized the government from a four-decade rule by the corrupt Somoza family. Another bloody civil war ensued, with America attempting to oust the Sandinistas’ elected president, Daniel Ortega, by way of what became the Iran-Contra scandal. In 1990, amid international pressure, the Sandinistas agreed to national elections, and the independent Violeta Barrios de Chamorro—a.k.a. Doña Violeta—took office. Since then, three peaceful presidential elections have occurred. Once the politics calmed down, though, Mother Nature boiled up: Hurricane Mitch ravaged Nicaragua in 1998, leaving in its wake reconstruction costs totaling nearly $1 billion. Since 1990, four volcanic eruptions have struck, along with a tsunami, a major earthquake, and a long drought. Thus, Nicaragua is still in relatively rough shape. Of course, that’s part of its appeal as an eco-destination. Eighty percent of its 50,000 square miles—an area roughly the size of New York State—remains undeveloped. Since 2002, the Nicaraguan government has created 76 protected areas; the country has the largest area of primary-growth rainforest north of the Amazon, hundreds of beaches, lots of surfing along the Pacific coast, two million turtles hatching on Playa La Flor, and fishing on the Rio San Juan. There are 8,000 types of plants; 50 types of coral; 200 species of mammals (including spider monkeys, margays, and two-toed sloths); 350 species of reptiles and amphibians (iguanas, spiny lizards, and red-eared sliders); and 3,000 bird species (grebes, owls, and nightjars among them). Twenty-two percent of the country is private nature reserves. Veteran travelers often remark that Nicaragua looks like Costa Rica before the tourism explosion: lots of natural beauty, with a fraction of the tourists and just a tinge of infrastructure. At the same time, the country is still working to pull itself out of deep-seated poverty. With a population of 5.57 million people, its annual growth rate is only four percent (compared to the seven or eight percent often found in China), its GDP is $16 billion (the United States is $12 trillion), and the country retains over $4 billion of debt. In other words, Nicaragua has its work cut out:

“

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he slogan of the Nicaraguan tourist board, “A country with a heart,” is meant to draw attention away from its infamous violence and toward its warm-hearted people, its cultural offerings, and, of course, its natural beauty—things that have been there all along, just under the radar. “We haven’t reinvented ourselves,” explains Maria Rivas, the Minister of Tourism. “We’re reinventing the way we portray ourselves.” Rivas herself represents this new Nicaragua—born there, educated at Harvard, and returned to redefine the world she came from. “It made a lot of sense to start promoting Nicaragua as an eco-friendly destination.” Tourism here also benefits from what one travel writer called the “low expectation factor,” meaning that its tranquil beauty comes as a pleasant surprise, considering its ominous reputation. Still, visitors who are most impressed tend to be the ones who like to go off the beaten path. “You really need to be a traveler, not a tourist,” says William MacKenzie, a retired police chief from Wenham, Massachusetts, who has visited the country twice. “If you’re expecting to go and have everything perfect, the infrastructure isn’t there yet. When that happens, it becomes another Costa Rica.” MacKenzie first came to Nicaragua on an 11-day package tour set up by Michael Kaye, who has launched an offshoot of his Costa Rican adventure travel empire called Nicaragua Expeditions. Kaye’s plan for his newer business is to promote the same values of mutually beneficial travel that made him the “godfather” of Costa Rican eco-tourism by using naturalists, artists, and political scientists as guides to help with awareness and education. Business in Nicaragua is trickling in. Kaye says he gets three or four bookings a month, whereas he can get as many as 800 in Costa Rica. MacKenzie was able to visit villages tourism hadn’t reached, unmarred trails, and islands where he was the sole American visitor. “It was like stepping back in time,” he says.

Nicaragua looks like Costa Rica before the tourism explosion: lots of natural beauty, with a fraction of the tourists and just a tinge of infrastructure.

”

Photograph by William F. MacKenzie (top); courtesy Morganâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Rock (bottom)

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NICARAGUA Costa Rica The Next

EL HOYO VOLCANO: near Leon, is majestic (though the local cattle are unimpressed).

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Eco-tourism in Nicaragua Places to Stay and Visit: Morgan’s Rock: morgansrock.com Parque Maderas: parquemaderas.com Green Hope Farm: fincaesperanzaverde.org Domitila Private Wildlife Reserve: domitila.org Los Cardones Eco-lodge: loscardones.com

This sense of virgin territory will, of course, be radically altered if and when the country becomes a favored destination. Kaye himself never intended to exploit the Costa Rican–ecoTour Companies: tourism economy, and he’s ambivalent about Nicaragua Expeditions: nicaraguaexpeditions.com Nicaragua using it as a model. He’s happy to be Tours Nicaragua: toursnicaragua.com starting slowly with his efforts. But just as Amigo Tours: amigotours.net entrepreneurs followed his lead in Costa Rica, Linblad Expeditions: expeditions.com many companies are now expanding their ecoFrontier Expeditions: frontierexpeditions.net DeTour: detour-ameriquecentrale.com tourism empires to Nicaragua, too. Lindblad Gray Line Tours: graylinenicaragua.com Expeditions will guide you through hikes, kayak trips, and snorkeling expeditions. Then General Information: there’s Gray Line’s “Granada Natural” expediplaneta.com tion, which takes you to Apoyo Lagoon, just nature.org outside Granada. Dozens of outfitters offer ecotourism.org scuba and snorkeling, surfing, canopy tours, and hiking, and there is a wealth of eco-resorts in which to stay. Perhaps the best known—and a prime example of how the future of Nicaraguan eco-tourism could potentially shape up—is Morgan’s Rock, a hacienda and eco-lodge in Playa Ocotal, the southern section of Nicaragua, 45 minutes from the Costa Rican border. On 4,400 acres, a French family by the name of Ponçon and a British architect named Matthew Falkiner have launched a concerted conservation effort while still promoting the local economy, setting aside 800 acres of primary growth forest and planting 800,000 native hardwood and fruit trees for farming and use in local crafts. “We wanted to promote nature as it is,” says Falkiner. “We don’t have to pretty it all up. We didn’t want to do anything that imposed very heavily on the area.” And, of course, they don’t have to pretty it up; the place is majestically beautiful, with tree-house–like cabins perched on a cliff, peering out over the water. The furniture is handmade by local artisans (Falkiner also owns a furniture company, Simplemente Madera) with local Forestry Stewardship Council–certified woods like eucalyptus and guapinol; chunks of volcanic rocks form the walls. But this is eco-luxury, Nicaragua style—an upgraded version of roughing it. Getting to your room at Morgan’s Rock requires a bit of hiking and climbing, so it’s not for the physically unfit. “I’m not a developer, I’m an architect and furniture maker and I care very much about where the wood comes from, who the people are who are making it, and where our energy comes from,” says Falkiner. “I can afford to do it because I’ve got a niche market of clients who appreciate that.” Morgan’s Rock’s rates range from $90 to $300 a night. They can afford, in other words, to be choosy and go slow. Elsewhere though, Nicaragua has numerous projects developing at a First-World scale and a First-World pace. These are less concerned about the environment than Morgan’s Rock, but could have a greater impact on the Nicaraguan economy overall. Rancho Santana, a private Photograph by William F. MacKenzie

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NICARAGUA Costa Rica The Next

A BIT OF EVERYTHING: (clockwise from top); a howler monkey, one of Nicaragua’s hundreds of animal species; surfing on the Pacific coast; a typical bustling street scene; a laid back bar and surf camp a stone’s throw from Rancho Santana.

residential community located on Nicaragua’s stunning Western seaboard is the furthest along of these and offers a glimpse of the type of construction to come. The beachfront spread, complete with stables and tennis courts, offers spacious houses for well-heeled Westerners who want to retire to Nicaragua or spend a few months of the year there. The homes, which start at a couple hundred thousand, are far beyond the reach of most Nicaraguans, but the development, built on former cattle land that used to employ only a handful of people, is clearly providing badly needed jobs for local people. Other projects popping up are not as high end as Rancho Santana, but are likewise aimed at attracting American retirees. These are condo developments catering to snowbirds already priced out of Mexico or Costa Rica, like Gran Pacifica, located on the southwest coast. This resort community—villas, condos, golf courses—is making a little bit of Nicaragua a lot like Florida. Or, as the company’s web site puts it, it’s “Mayberry by the beach.” The architecture is Spanish colonial-ish—their design group is also responsible for the pastel uniformity of Seaside, Florida—and they’re using some local Nicaraguan staff, but they’re shipping in most of their building materials. Promotional materials

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promise paved streets and an “enjoyable shower.” “Gran Pacifica will deliver a quality of living that most North Americans take for granted,” they boast, because the developers are putting in infrastructure, like a brand new sewage system and high-speed telecommunications. Thus, the company’s offerings seem strangely pricey for condos in a Third World country. Oceanfront dwellings start at $140,000.

co-lodges like Morgan’s Rock, and retirement villages like Gran Pacifica and Rancho Santana, will likely all coexist to bring in more tourists—and more cash. The Nicaraguan government, for its part, seems happy to welcome both approaches. According to Rivas, the tourism board and the Ministry of the Environment have worked to devise what they call an “eco-tourism tool kit”—a combination of environmental guidelines and tax incentives—to encourage the right kind of development. “We learned about what other countries were doing, and we made sure recent development was in line with environmental standards. Even if they are in the middle of the city, they have to meet some requirements,” says Rivas. For example, environmental-impact statements are required for all new buildings, a minimal hurdle to be sure, but one that not all developing countries

Photograph by Mark Spellun (left); William F. MacKenzie (top); Tyler Tibbs (bottom); Aaron Gotthardt (right)

choose to institute while trying to attract foreign investment. It makes sense: Nicaragua needs to hold on to its natural wonders if that’s what it’s going to sell. But at the same time, officials are hesitant to impose requirements strict enough to scare away the kind of developments that will attract a broad array of foreign vacationers and their money, like Gran Pacifica. “There are building codes that need to be met,” says Rivas. “But we are not stopping real estate from developing. In some areas, we don’t have restrictions on materials or property because it’s a demonstration—we want to give incentives to people; we can’t tell them that they should build using local materials only.” Of course, Nicaragua’s government isn’t the only force shaping its economic future—the country is still largely dependent on international assistance. The World Bank is funding several development initiatives, including a $44 million project to improve motorways and wire the countryside for telephone service (as well as a $9 million project to promote silviculture, the practice of caring for forests with respect to human objectives). And long-term success in meeting Nicaragua’s goals—reducing poverty, creating jobs, and attracting development—depends partially on whether it complies with an International Monetary Fund program that encourages foreign trade and requires the country to resolve property-confiscation cases left over from the Sandinista era. (Land taken by the communists is being returned to its original owners, many of whom are descendants of the Somozas.)

Nicaragua needs to hold on to its natural wonders if that’s what it’s going to sell.

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NICARAGUA Costa Rica The Next

Elsewhere in Central America SWIMMING POOLS, COASTAL VIEWS: Rancho Santana has both (below); the sun goes down over the Pacific coast (right).

In any case, the government’s approach to tourism at least seems to be working to attract some revenue. Visitor numbers have increased 170 percent since 1993, and tourism dollars increased by 500 percent, from $30 million to $150 million. Meanwhile, there are some signs of social improvement: Nicaragua’s overall poverty rate dropped 4.5 percent from 1993 to 2001, life expectancy rose from 61 years in 1985 to 68.7 in 2002, and infant mortality dropped from 52 per 1,000 births in 1990 to 32 per 1,000 in 2002. But while certain sectors of Nicaragua are improving, other areas continue to suffer. The number of poor increased by 9.1 percent in the Pacific urban region between 1993 and 2001, and the literacy rate increased by only one-tenth of one percent between 1998 and 2001. So even if eco-tourism can support a larger economy, some wonder if that alone will draw the crowds required to make a dramatic improvement—and if it’s fair to put so much emphasis on it. After all, it’s not outrageous to suggest that fighting poverty should take precedence over preserving nature. “I think tourism is fantastic for Nicaragua, but there’s lots of stuff on the way that we have to sort out,” says Falkiner, referring to the issue of pace and scale, as well as how to make the country, not just the investors, the beneficiaries. The Morgan’s Rock model might be too small and too slow for a country that’s eager to catch up. But that’s the whole point of sustainability: it’s about delayed gratification. You need to proceed with caution. In some respects, Nicaragua is quite lucky to have only recently discovered its environmental attributes, in the middle of an eco-marketing craze when people are eager to find the next big green thing. But those who wish to take in its offerings might have to jump on the bandwagon before there is one. “Now’s the time to go, while it still hasn’t been overdeveloped,” says Kaye. “[Nicaragua will] never be the next Costa Rica—it’ll be its own thing.” ■ 48 | Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

Nicaragua isn’t the only Central American country hoping to get in on the eco-tourism action. Other countries that have typically been too undeveloped or dangerous to access are now sprouting amenities for the discriminating eco-tourist. Here’s a guide to the emerging hot spots. —Kate Siber Honduras Guatemala Eco-tourism is relatively new to Tourism has become a viable Honduras, the second largest option in Guatemala since the 1996 country in Latin America after peace agreement that ended the Nicaragua, but that doesn’t mean 36-year guerrilla war, though there’s a shortage of options. You personal safety is often a more can hike in the impossibly dense pertinent concern here than rain forest at Pico Bonito National elsewhere in Latin America. Don’t Park, go horseback riding along the miss the temples, pyramids, and Caribean coast, or canoe among plazas of the Mayan ruins at Tikal, mangrove trees of the Cuero y enchantingly situated amid dense Salado Wildlife and Manatee jungle teeming with howler Refuge. Be sure to check out the monkeys and Technicolor parrots. country’s flagship high-end ecoThen hit Hacienda Tijax on the lodge, the Lodge at Pico Bonito, Caribbean coast, which has been whose owners have donated land working on local reforestation to the adjacent national park, supprograms and clean-up campaigns ported the local bird rehab center, for the local Rio Dulce. Kayaking, and built the lodge from fallen timhot springing, and horseback riding bers (doubles from $155; 888-428- are minutes away ($21-$60 for a 0221, picobonito.com). two-person cabin or bungalow; 011-502-79-30-5506, tijax.com). Belize Though barely the size of Massachusetts, Belize has been Costa Rica’s small sidekick in ecotourism since the 1980s. It hosts a smattering of every tropical natural attraction imaginable, from soaring, rain forest–covered mountains to the longest barrier reef on the continent. Head to the forested Cayo District to canoe the Macal River and hike while spotting some of the 250-plus species of birds. The Lodge at Chaa Creek is the country’s premier eco-lodge—with solar power, low-flow fixtures, and low-watt bulbs. Stay in a palmthatched cottage with a mahogany bed and original paintings ($95$150 per person; 011-501-8242037, chaacreek.com).

Panama Since overcoming its rep as a cocaine trafficking hot spot, Panama has become an appealing venue for nature-based tourism, with two long, brilliant coasts and verdant, volcanic interior. Play in the million acres of rain forest in the Parque Internacional La Aminstad, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the western province of Bocas del Toro. While hiking, keep your eyes peeled for the ubiquitous birds and elusive felines, like jaguars, pumas, and ocelots. On the province’s coast, the luxury Punta Caracol Acqua Lodge is a requisite stop, with its colorful, solar-powered bungalows with palm-leaf roofs, suspended over the Caribbean Sea (doubles from $265; 011-507-6612-1088, puntacaracol.com.pa).

Photograph courtesy Rancho Santana (upper left); Tyler Tibbs (right)

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HAT’S THE CONVENTIONAL WISDOM

about congressional midterm elections? That with rare exceptions—such as 1994, when the GOP seized control of Congress for the first time in 40 years—midterms don’t matter much, largely because voters don’t turn out in large numbers when they’re not voting for President. This year, you can throw that conventional wisdom out the window. These elections could rock the electoral landscape. With Americans displeased with President Bush—only about 40 percent of the public approves of his job performance—and increasingly concerned about the direction of the country, the 2006 midterms could well be the most traumatic for incumbents since Newt Gingrich stormed the Capitol twelve years ago. And for the environment, the stakes are high; the Bush-Cheney environmental record has been, in a word, awful. To help you prepare for November 7th, Plenty presents this guide to the issues and candidates that matter most for green voters. Since six years is a long time, there’s also a chronology of Bush’s environmental record. And to show that environmentalism doesn’t have to be a partisan passion, we sat down to speak with retiring congressman Sherwood Boehlert, one of the environment’s fiercest advocates—who just happens to be a Republican. Because the more you know, the greener you’ll vote. plentymag.com Oct/Nov/06 | 51

FROM CONNECTICUT TO CALIFORNIA, HERE ARE THE ELECTION RACES THAT MATTER THE MOST BY CARMEN JOHNSON

California 11th Congressional District JERRY MCNERNEY (D) VS. REP. RICHARD POMBO (R)

Is the House’s biggest environmental menace endangered?

Pennsylvania Senate

The Sierra Club, the League of Conservation Voters, and the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund are spending some $3 million to take down the man they consider Congress’s greatest threat to the environment: Congressman Richard Pombo. The seven-term representative from Tracy, California, is the chairman of the House Resources Committee and is moving up the ladder on the Agriculture Committee. Pombo, a rancher known for his uncompromising prodevelopment stands, pushed through the House legislation to end the offshore oil-drilling ban and wants to make mining on public lands easier. But he may be best known for weakening the Endangered Species Act of 1973 by softening restrictions on “critical habitat” land for threatened or endangered species. Pombo’s opponent, wind-energy engineer and Democrat Jerry McNerney, promises to push for investment in solar and wind energy. In a district with high rates of asthma, McNerney is also campaigning for stricter clean-air and clean-water legislation. If Pombo goes, enviros will breathe easier.

A hot-button Republican insists he has a green side

BOB CASEY JR. (D) VS. SEN. RICK SANTORUM (R)

Facing a room of 400 green activists at a dinner in early June, Republican Senator Rick Santorum called himself a “practical environmentalist.” Environmental groups, which have placed Santorum on their November hit-list, aren’t buying it. In 2005, Santorum voted against tightening the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s mercury-emission rates for power plants and against a resolution that gave global warming official Senate recognition as a real threat. Santorum’s opponent, State Treasurer Bob Casey Jr.—endorsed by the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters—opposes oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and supports the EPA’s Superfund program, which taxes polluting companies to clean up industrial sites. Environmentalists hope the green ally will replace the high-ranking Senator.

TICK, TOCK: SIX YEARS OF GEORGE W. BUSH AND THE ENVIRONMENT Griles as Deputy Secretary of the Interior, the No. 2 position in the agency that manages federally owned lands. Griles is a former employee of National Environmental Strategies, an energyconsulting firm. March 20: The EPA announces that it

2001 January 20: George W. Bush takes

office.

will not cut permissible levels of arsenic in drinking water from 50 parts per billion (ppb) to 10 ppb, in keeping with World Health Organization and European Union standards. After conducting a costbenefit analysis, the agency reverses its decision on October 31st.

February 28: New Environmental

Protection Agency (EPA) chief Christie Todd Whitman announces that the agency will continue a Clinton plan to cut the amount of sulfur and particulates in diesel fuel pollution by more than 90 percent. March 8: Bush nominates J. Steven 52 | Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

tities of Vice President Cheney’s energy task force. June 30: The Administration announces that it is reconsidering a Clinton ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park. August 17: The White House appeals a federal judge’s order to stop the drilling of new oil wells off the coast of California. September 19: The DOE announces

March 28: The White House announces

that it will not endorse the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. May 10: The Department of Energy (DOE) rejects a Freedom of Information Act request for information on the iden-

plants for ten years. Under the Clean Air Act, levels were to be lowered by more than 50 percent.

$30 million in grants to study how organic material can be turned into fuel. 2002 February 14: The Bush administration announces that it will postpone cutting the emission levels of sulfur, mercury, and nitrogen oxide produced by power

February 19: For a fifth time, the Department of the Interior (DOI) calls for public comment on banning snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. (The overwhelming consensus of the previous four comment periods: “Ban them.”) February 27: Eric Schaeffer, head of the EPA Office of Regulatory Enforcement,

Key Green Campaigns Montana Senate JON TESTER (D) VS. SEN. CONRAD BURNS (R)

Missouri Senate CLAIRE MCCASKILL (D) VS. SEN. JIM TALENT (R)

A fresh face hopes to convince Missouri voters that Washington needs new energy Green causes have never been at the forefront of Missouri elections, which may be why Senator Jim Talent got through the Senate door in a special 2002 election. Talent supports oil drilling in ANWR and says he can’t understand why anyone would want to “cut its own country off from oil.” His opponent, State Auditor Claire McCaskill, is using high gas prices to spotlight the incumbent’s hefty campaign contributions from oil companies. McCaskill advocates clean energy and says global warming is threatening Missouri sportsmen’s way of life.

Can a family farmer convince Montanans that their landscape is at risk? When it comes to global warming, Montana Senator Conrad Burns knows where he stands: “Do you remember the Ice Age? It’s been warming ever since, and there ain’t anything we can do to stop it,” he said last May. So when it comes to energy policy, Burns wants Montana to mine more coal and build more oil refineries. Meanwhile, Democratic State Senate President Jon Tester says that if he’s elected, his energy policies will concentrate on renewable energy. He’s courting rural voters by stressing preserving clean lands to hunt, fish, and camp, and not selling them to oil companies and developers. Burns recently proposed legislation to protect the Rocky Mountain Front from new oil and gas leases, but Tester says it’s too little, too late, pointing out that oil companies have contributed nearly $500,000 to Burns over the course of his 18-year Senate career.

BY VICTORIA SCHLESINGER resigns in protest of what he calls the Administration’s attempt to weaken agency rules that regulate power-plant emissions.

April 14: The DOI issues a brief addendum to its report, stressing that it is possible to drill without harming wildlife. May 3: The EPA issues a clarification of

February 28: The New York Times reports that Cheney’s energy task-force committee was advised by 18 of the energy industry’s top 25 financial backers of the Republican party, while few environmental groups had access to the task force.

the term “fill material” as it pertains to mining under the Clean Water Act. The new rule permits companies that remove mountaintops in search of coal to dump the rubble into rivers, lakes, and wetlands.

Alaska, the country’s largest national park, be opened for logging and mining. May 23: The DOE announces a new regulation that requires air conditioner manufacturers to make the machines 20 percent more energy efficient by 2006. It replaces a regulation that required energy efficiency be improved by 30 percent.

April 2: The Bush administration cuts a $10 million EPA fellowship program that supports graduate students seeking degrees in environmental science, policy, and engineering. April 7: The DOI releases results from

June 26: The administration decides to May 17: The Forest Service recom-

mends that 9 million of the 16.8 million acres of the Tongass National Forest in

2003 March 6: The DOE asks Congress to

June 3: EPA posts a report titled “U.S.

Climate Action Report 2002” on its web site. The report concludes that global warming is under way, its effects will be dire for the U.S., and that the primary culprit is man-made greenhouse-gas emissions.

its 12-year study of the impact oil drilling could have in ANWR. The study finds that drilling could harm wildlife such as caribou, polar bears, and musk oxen.

December 12: Bush announces a second round of proposals to allow the Forest Service to largely forego environmental-impact assessments before logging national forests. The studies have been required under the National Environmental Policy Act since 1970, when President Nixon signed it into law.

continue to allow snowmobiling in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks.

grant the military exemption from environmental regulations regarding sonar exercises that harm marine mammals and the disposal and cleanup of hazardous waste. June 3: The DOE

announces $270,000 in research grants to help oil companies devise schemes for using heavy drilling equipment during plentymag.com Oct/Nov/06 | 53

Minnesota Senate AMY KLOBUCHAR (D) VS. REP. MARK KENNEDY (R)

Two candidates fight to fill a vacant Senate spot

New Mexico 1st Congressional District ATTORNEY GENERAL PATRICIA MADRID (D) VS. REP. HEATHER WILSON (R)

One lawyer’s battle against the EPA prepares her to race against an industrious incumbent Enviros love New Mexico Attorney General Patricia Madrid: She, along with other state attorneys general, has twice sued the EPA over lax enforcement of anti-pollution laws. Now Madrid is taking on Republican incumbent Heather Wilson, a loyal foot-soldier in the House’s GOP anti-environmental crusade. A member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, the subcommittee on the Environment and Hazardous Materials, and the subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality, Wilson voted to open ANWR to oil drilling this year and pushed the GOP energy bill last year. Facing the toughest challenge in her four terms, Wilson points out that she has helped to protect public lands such as the Ojito Wilderness and Valles Caldera in New Mexico.

Three-term GOP representative Mark Kennedy has voted for legislation undercutting the landmark Endangered Species Act of 1973, supported George W. Bush’s Healthy Forests Initiative of 2003 (which encourages logging), and voted “yes” to the Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act of 2006 (which makes it easier for states to open their ocean waters to oil drilling). Now, Kennedy hopes to fill the Senate vacancy caused by the retirement of Minnesota Democrat Mark Dayton. But Kennedy’s voting record has earned the ire of environmental groups, and the League of Conservation Voters is stumping for Kennedy’s opponent, Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar. Greens like Klobuchar’s plan for energy independence: In a 2005 speech, Klobuchar argued that global warming gave the U.S. an opportunity to move away from dependence on fossil fuels. Klobuchar also supports initiatives to limit greenhouse-gas emissions and tax incentives for purchasers of hybrid cars.

From the chaos in Iraq to $3-a-gallon gas to rising temperatures and sea levels, the 2006 elections are all about war, energy, and the environment. TICK, TOCK... warm weather in Alaska, which is increasingly common due to global warming. The multi-ton machinery, which previously sat on thick ice packs, now routinely sinks into the slushy tundra.

September 30: The EPA announces its

new Air Quality Index, a daily prediction of the air quality in 141 U.S. cities where the air is deemed “unhealthy” at some point during the year. December 22: A federal judge overturns

August 27: The EPA

redefines the term “routine maintenance” as it pertains to power plants. If companies buy parts that are cheaper than the ones they’re replacing, the parts are not required to comply with emission standards defined in the Clean Air Act. 54 | Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

the Bush administration’s new snowmobile rule for Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, effectively halving the number of vehicles allowed in them.

February 2: The new federal budget cuts EPA funding by 7.2 percent.

2005 April 22: On Earth Day, Bush announces

February 17:

a plan to increase the acreage of protected wetlands in the U.S. by 3 million over five years.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton takes a tour of Yellowstone by snowmobile, snubbing its quieter counterpart, the snow coach. “[The snow coach] is a much more ordinary kind of experience,” she explains. “It’s not as special as a snowmobile.’’

October 27: Dr. James E. Hansen, a top

climate scientist at NASA, accuses the Bush administration of suppressing scientific evidence of global warming.

2004 January 22: Interior Secretary Gale

Norton endorses a plan permitting oil and gas development on 9 million acres of Alaska’s North Slope, a wildlife-rich area adjacent to ANWR.

his lobbying firm.

December 7: Interior Department Deputy Secretary J. Steven Griles resigns after an investigation determined that he maintained illicit dealings with former energy and mining clients from

Nevada 3rd Congressional District

Connecticut 5th Congressional District

TESSA HAFEN (D) VS. REP. JON PORTER (R)

SEN. CHRISTOPHER MURPHY (D) VS. REP. NANCY JOHNSON (R)

A novice pol eyes an incumbent Republican’s seat

A green Republican hopes to fend off a young Democrat

Twenty-nine-year-old Tessa Hafen, former press secretary for Senate minority leader Harry Reid of Nevada, is challenging Republican Jon Porter, a two-term incumbent. On environmental issues, the choice is clear: Porter supported drilling in ANWR and weakening the Endangered Species Act of 1973, while Hafen says she wants to take advantage of Nevada’s abundant solar-, wind-, and geothermal-energy sources to help solve America’s energy crisis. As Nevada faces the possibility of a nuclear-waste site at Yucca Mountain, Hafen criticizes Porter for not taking a strong stand against the dump.

Seeking her 13th House term, 71-year-old Republican Nancy Johnson faces a tough challenge from 32-year-old State Senator Christopher Murphy. Johnson’s one of a small House coalition of green Republicans: She’s worked on land preservation issues and pushed for a ban on oil drilling in ANWR. But Murphy, an Environmental Committee member in the state senate, isn’t letting Johnson take all the green glory. On Earth Day, he blasted Johnson’s environmental voting record, saying it was the worst in the Connecticut delegation. But environmental groups, such as the League of Conservation Voters, are sticking with Johnson.

Ohio 15th Congressional District MARY JO KILROY (D) VS. REP. DEBORAH PRYCE (R)

A challenger pushes eco-politics in Ohio Rep. Deborah Pryce, the fourth-highest ranking Republican in the House, is fighting for her political life. Chairman of the House Republican Conference, a group that crafts GOP campaign messages, Pryce faces Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy, a Franklin County Board commissioner. Pryce supported oil drilling in ANWR and weakening the Endangered Species Act of 1973. Kilroy, a member of the Sierra Club since 1981, successfully pushed for the county’s government cars to use biodiesel; she also supports a county plan to conserve 25,000 acres of land in the Big Darby Creek area, a favorite target of developers.

March 29: Nine states sue after a new

2006

EPA rule allows coal-fired power plants to emit ten tons more mercury pollution a year than need be, based on the best technology available.

May 25: The House of Representatives approves drilling in ANWR, but the Senate is expected to vote it down.

May 5: The Administration repeals the Roadless Area Conservation Rule, a Clinton policy that protected almost one-third of national forest lands (58.5 million acres) from logging and road building. August 8: The National Marine Fisheries Service designates the Aleutian Islands in the Gulf of Alaska a marine protected area.

than the amount budgeted for 2006.

June 15: Bush creates the Northwestern

Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument, the world’s largest protected marine area.

August 25: Hurricane Katrina hits land. In addition to the human toll, the hurricane causes at least 575 petroleum spills, more than 350,000 destroyed cars, and four disturbed Superfund sites.

January 31: “America is addicted to oil,” Bush says in his State of the Union speech. February 6: Bush’s proposed 2007 budget allots $1.2 billion toward renewable energy, a mere 0.2 percent more

June 19: The Supreme Court delivers a precariously split vote on the definition of wetlands under the Clean Water Act, an outcome many environmentalists consider a frighteningly close call. November 7: Election Day. plentymag.com Oct/Nov/06 | 55

The States of the

ENVIRONMENT

Oregon: A dead zone roughly the size of Rhode Island has reappeared off the state’s Pacific coast for the fifth year in a row; scientists link the oxygen-free phenomenon to global warming, and worry that it could devastate Oregon’s fishing and crabbing industries.

California: Climate-change models predicted bizarre weather in California, and it’s arrived: blistering heat and heavy rains. Offshore, a dramatic falloff in the levels of plankton and krill—possibly the result of elevated water temperatures—is wreaking havoc in fisheries and on bird life. Meanwhile, here and in eight other states (Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Oregon), voters will consider ballot initiatives restricting states’ rights of eminent domain: the taking of private property for public purposes. Largely backed by libertarian and prodevelopment groups, the measures are a reaction to a 2005 Supreme Court decision which okayed a Connecticut taking of private property to redevelop the city of New London.

Las Vegas: Suburban sprawl has multiplied here (and elsewhere) because of the largely unregulated market for credit derivatives, an investment tool that helps finance massive new developments regardless of their environmental impact. But if interest rates go much higher, millions of Americans might be forced to default on mortgages that they suddenly can’t afford. Fiscal policy is an environmental issue, and sprawl here and around the nation is one reason why.

Portions of Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, and South Dakota are using up the Ogallala aquifer faster than ever. The nation’s largest aquifer, which underlies more than 175,000 square miles of farmland, is used to irrigate crops, but less water means lower crop yields, which translates to higher food prices.

The Southwest: Climate change is threatening severe disruptions of water supply to already-dry states. For humans, the loss of predictable and abundant water supplies could mean that in the nottoo-distant future, some now-thriving communities like Phoenix could turn into ghost towns.

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NOW MORE THAN EVER, ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES ARE HITTING VOTERS WHERE THEY LIVE. HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING AROUND THE COUNTRY BY ALAN FARAGO The Great Lakes: Has water quality in the Great Lakes “progressively gotten better,” as Bush political appointees have claimed? Not unless you count pervasive pollution from mercury produced by electric utilities and stormwater runoff from suburbs as signs of progress.

Massachusetts: A plan to park 120 windmills off Cape Cod has sparked a fight between developers who say it will provide clean energy and locals who worry about navigation safety, the windmills’ effect upon migrating birds, and the views from their beachfront homes.

New York: Because of soil erosion from development and heavier rains due to changing weather patterns, the oncepristine upstate reservoirs that quench New York City’s thirst have become muddy with silt. The city now faces the grim prospect that its water supply needs filtration—at a cost of billions.

Florida: Development plows full steam ahead in the

Mississippi and Lousiana: Thanks to manmade changes in the Mississippi River, Louisiana has lost over 1,500 square miles of coast since the 1930s. And because of chemical runoff from farmland, the Mississippi terminates in a “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico that vacillates in size like an amoeba, sometimes growing larger than Connecticut—and utterly hostile to life.

Sunshine State, despite the increasing difficulty of coastal residents to obtain hurricane insurance. (Global warming appears to be increasing the severity of hurricanes.) Thanks to more powerful storms and rising sea levels, Florida has $2 trillion in coastal real estate at risk.

plentymag.com Oct/Nov/06 | 57

A Green’s Goodbye New York GOP congressman and longtime eco-warrior Sherwood Boehlert talks with Plenty about his impending exit from Washington, An Inconvenient Truth, and why Republicans don’t care about the environment By Richard Bradley Over 24 years in Congress, you’ve become perhaps the best-known green Republican. What made you an environmentalist?

The GOP has a bad rep when it comes to the environment, but green Republicans insist that the GOP is the original party of conservation.

When I was elected county representative back in 1979, there was one guy who had been the chairman of the board of legislators, John Plumley. John was a great outdoorsman—loved to fish, loved to hunt. And one day he was saying to me, “The Adirondacks are just beautiful,” and I said, “I know, I’ve loved them since I was a kid.” And he said, “But there are hundreds of lakes up there where fish can’t live. There’s this thing called acid rain….” So when I ran for office for the first time, one of the planks in my platform was to do something about acid rain.

Theodore Roosevelt—a Republican—was the first truly great environmentalist. Do you know how the Environmental Protection Agency came about? Because Richard Nixon created it. Republicans are prominent in environmental history. People like [former New York governor] Nelson Rockefeller—I can remember Rocky campaigning for reelection with these colorful posters that said, “If fish could vote, they’d vote for Rocky.”

What accomplishment are you most proud of?

The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, which were signed into law by George Herbert Walker Bush in November 1990, and launched the nation’s war on acid rain. That was my addition to the Clean Air Act. The second thing I’m most proud of is the coalition of Republicans who are dealing constructively with the environment. I’m privileged to be acknowledged as the Republican point person on the environment, but I’m hardly alone. You look over the past 20 years in Congress and you will see Republicans made the difference time after time.

But now green Republicans are almost extinct. What happened?

When we poll [in Congress], we ask the open-ended question, “What concerns you most?” Invariably, the environment is way, way down the list of most frequently mentioned topics. It’s the war on terrorism or the state of the economy or health care. And that’s what we concentrate on. But that doesn’t explain why the party is so hostile to environmentalism.

Let’s take a hot topic: global warming. I point out that even President Bush has acknowledged that global climate change is for real, and that man has contributed significantly to it, and we must do something about it. So we’re making progress. It’s the story of the tortoise and the hare.

Really? A lot of people would find that hard to believe.

What do you make of Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth?

Republicans are a majority in the House, but by a slight margin. So if you have a hardy band of 25 or so moderates, they have to be dealt with. Last year, we were able to do a lot of things. We were able to get ANWR [oil drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge] out of the budget last year, despite the fact that there’s a clear majority in the House that wants to drill away. Our successes have been defensive in nature, but I consider it a great success if you prevent something from happening that would do great damage to the environment. Now I will acknowledge that most people would say more in the Democratic Party are friendly to the environment than in the Republican Party. But that doesn’t mean it’s the exclusive domain of the Democratic Party.

The problem with An Inconvenient Truth is that the science is sound and the story is well-told, but a lot of people will be turned off immediately because it’s a movie featuring Al Gore. If you dislike Al Gore, you’re going to question the movie. Which is unfortunate. I applaud him for what he’s done: raised the public consciousness about the subject.

58 | Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

Whether it’s the scientific community, the American public, or leaders overseas, no one seems to doubt the existence of global warming anymore— except Republicans on Capitol Hill.

This is a clear example of an instance where the public is ahead of the legislative bodies that represent it.

Eco-Issues Every election year has intangible factors, hard-topredict phenomena that may not show up in polls but affect election results. This year, environmental issues might have a larger-than-usual impact. Here’s why.—R.B. THE DOCUMENTARY EFFECT Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, grossed about $22 million by the end of the summer. Will it change anyone’s vote? Probably not. The people seeing the film are already inclined to believe in global warming, and polls show that those people tend to vote Democratic. But midterm elections are all about turnout, and, judging by word of mouth, AIT has fired up its audiences. That bodes well for pro-environment candidates. IT’S GETTING HOT IN HERE The summer of 2006 brought heat waves across the country, making it one of the steamiest seasons since the federal government began keeping track in 1895. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, more than 50 all-time-high records were set in the central and western U.S. alone. The Midwest was hotter than it had been since the dust-bowl years of the Great Depression. Will voters make the connection between a scorcher of a summer and global warming? It sounds like it takes a lot of patience to be an environmentalist Republican.

It takes a lot of patience to be a legislator, and some people are just offended by the proposition that it takes awhile to get something done in a national legislature. There are always simple answers to complex questions, and that’s just wrong. Perhaps the most anti-environmental member of the House’s GOP is California’s Richard Pombo, who once suggested that we should sell off national parks to make up for revenue lost by not drilling in ANWR. Tell the truth— would it break your heart if Pombo lost his reelection campaign?

It would break my heart if any Republican lost a race because I want to see the Republicans retain the majority. Do I think the Republican approach to environmentalism is better than the Democratic one? That’s another question. But maintaining the majority is more important than any individual member of that majority. What sense do you get of President Bush’s feelings about the environment?

People often ask me, “How do you get along with the President on environmental issues?” I say that every time I talk to the President one-onone, I feel good after the conversation. It’s his staff that screws it up. He is surrounded by people who do not place the environment high on their agenda. Such as his vice president?

Everybody working for the executive branch is a staff member of the president. The environment needs you. Why are you leaving?

I’d rather go out when people want me to stay than stay when they want me to leave. ■

THE PRICE OF ENERGY Gas is over $3 a gallon, and that’s not the only energy source consumers are paying more for; the cost of heating and cooling their homes has also soared. The summer heat wave meant high air conditioning bills they’ve ever seen, and American consumers can look forward to the highest bills for heating their homes this winter. Meanwhile, the president still has no energy policy other than opening up all of our coastal waters and ANWR for oil drilling. Shock and awe at the pumps may translate into outrage at the ballot box. HURRICANES With memories of Katrina still fresh, what will the hurricane season of 2006 be like? According to NOAA scientists, this hurricane season—officially June 1 to November 30—will bring eight to ten hurricanes, while Hurricane.com notes that “all the predictions are higher than corresponding predictions from 2005.” But it’s not just the number of hurricanes that could get voters thinking about global warming; it’s their strength. Another Katrina-like disaster and even global warming skeptics might reconsider—and that could translate into votes against Republicans, who’ve made their doubts about global warming clear. INSURANCE CRISIS Insurance companies are dramatically raising their rates for coastal homeowners. Why? They’re signing on to the theory that global warming is causing more powerful hurricanes. And with the exception of the West Coast and New England, those coastal states—Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, etc.—typically vote Republican. If they’re upset about energy prices, insurance costs, and deadly hurricanes, could they lash out against their GOP incumbents? plentymag.com Oct/Nov/06 | 59

BREATHING

Space

It’s no secret that we humans have botched things pretty badly here on Earth. Can we change our relationship with the natural world before our wild spaces are lost forever? Or—as credible thinkers are now suggesting—will we have to leave this planet to save the human race? Two experts weigh in on humanity’s future habitat.

60 | Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

Photomontage by Catherine Cole, images courtesy NASA

Photomontage by Catherine Cole

plentymag.com Oct/Nov/06 | 61

BREATHING Space

THE LAST CALL of the Wild Sure, we’ve made a mess of things. But it’s not too late to save the planet. By Stephen M. Meyer THE QUESTION IS, CAN WE SAVE THE EARTH? In addition to the many thousands of species that are already gone, we have accumulated a mountain of extinction debt—a roster of hundreds of thousands of species that are on the verge of disappearing. We cannot possibly restore relic and ghost species to their former status, nor do we have the knowledge to pick evolutionary winners and losers. We must stop pretending that protecting some species and preserving some crippled biodiversity hot spots has any meaningful ecological value. The recovery and restoration of nature is an illusion, and we must reset our expectations of what is possible with the means and time we possess. On the other hand, doing nothing is not an option. So what should we do? First and foremost, we must come to terms with this basic fact: The end of the wild is not about this thing we call the environment. It is about us—our cultural norms, our values, our priorities. The end of the wild is a function of how we have chosen to live. Despite 150 years of conservationism and three decades of global environmentalism, people on the street remain oblivious to the fact that they are the engine of human primacy. It’s easier to blame greedy corporations and crooked politicians than it is to look in the mirror. But we are the ones who demand instant-on appliances, out-of-season vegetables, and ten-mile-per-gallon armored transports to carry our groceries home—and that means drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. People want to motor-boat, fish, and water-ski in the American southwest, and so giant reservoirs are built, siphoning off water from onceroaring rivers and turning them dry for months at a time. Desert habitats drown while riparian ecosystems are dessicated. To achieve weed-free lawns, unblemished fruits and vegetables, and mosquitoless picnics, we dump millions of tons of toxic chemicals into the soil, water, and air. Our appetites

are killing the planet. This is not just a problem caused by the world’s wealthy. Globalization is raising the economic expectations of billions of people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The only way to satisfy growing populations’ expectations is to exploit local natural resources. The poor and the hungry cannot afford the luxury of worrying about how carving a two-acre field out of a rainforest will affect global biodiversity. Governments are understandably reluctant to remove squatters from bioreserves, for fear of causing destabilizing social unrest. We already recognize the relationship we have with the wild: It provides us with natural resources. And we are beginning to understand the genetic linkages between humans and other animals. What remains is for us to wake up and see the moral links—the realities of shared existence and shared fate. If the planet is to remain viable for human life, we must develop an ecological identity that underscores the connection between how we live and what happens around us. The challenge is to shift the balance away from human primacy and back toward natural selection, and we can only do this if we move away from our anthropocentric view of the world (What can this desert/rainforest/species do for me?). Since the invention of the first stone tool, humanity has pounded the wild into a shape that fit its needs. Forests are transformed to fields. Swamps are drained. Arid landscapes are irrigated. The bounty of nature is converted into commodities: timber, food, luxuries. Coexisting with nature has always meant consuming it. Yet, though we can not restore what is lost forever, we do not have to abandon what remains. For if we give up on nature, we give up on ourselves. ■

First and foremost, we must come to terms with this basic fact: The end of the wild is not about this thing we call the environment. It is about us—our cultural norms, our values, our priorities. The end of the wild is a function of how we have chosen to live.

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Adapted from The End of the Wild by Stephen M. Meyer (MIT Press, September 2006).

The SPACE Case So you really want to help the Earth? Then it’s the moon or bust. By William E. Burrows IN BUZZ ALDRIN and John Barnes’s 1996 sci-fi novel, Encounter With Tiber, a spaceship captain named Osepok warns her crew: “There’s not a place in the universe that’s safe forever. The universe is telling us, ‘Spread out, or wait around and die.’” Almost ten years later, have we come to that? Serious thinkers, such as the brilliant physicist Stephen Hawking, are suggesting that we’ve damaged the earth so badly that we need to colonize space if we want to ensure our survival. Aldrin himself and Neil Armstrong took the first tentative step in that direction when they landed on the moon in July 1969, the first earthlings to visit another world. Of course, they weren’t on a scouting expedition for a long-term migration, they were more interested in upstaging the Soviet Union in a spectacular stunt. After six trips to the moon, the Apollo program abruptly ended and NASA set its sights closer to home. The space agency sent unmanned spacecraft into low earth orbit, where they revolutionized communication, meteorology, land use, environmental studies, astronomy, and other sciences. Communications satellites have made intercontinental cell-phone traffic possible. Earth-observation satellites monitor the breakup of the Antarctic ice floe, the expansion of deserts, and other signs of climate change. A smaller number of satellites explored the solar system. Viking landed on Mars; others have orbited Jupiter, Saturn, and the sun, returning virtual encyclopedias of space. NASA is also tracking large and potentially dangerous asteroids and comets. Spotting a big rock headed this way twenty years in advance should allow sufficient time to send a spacecraft out to meet it and nudge it off course. Meanwhile, the human spaceflight program has stagnated for lack of a compelling long-term mission. A decade passed between the last lunar mission, in December, 1972, and the beginning of space-shuttle service. The shuttle’s purpose, a noble one, was to fulfill the ancient dream of sending many people to space and helping to build a permanent space station. The station remains a work in progress. But a conundrum haunts the program. With the exception of time spent going around Earth in endless orbits in the shuttle, there are no long-term space missions. There should be. We must heed Osepok’s warning and spread out. NASA, in conjunction with the European Space Agency and other space-related organizations, must be mandated to construct a perma-

Photomontage Catherine Cole; images courtesy NASA

nent manned base on the moon, capable of becoming self-sufficient. True, ambitious plans to colonize Mars have been mulled over for decades. But the moon is the place to start: It is three or four days away, not nine or more months, making a rescue operation feasible if something goes radically wrong. Settling the moon sounds gee-whiz, but isn’t. In the 1950s, the Army and Air Force came up with detailed studies for lunar bases; they were supposed to hold missiles aimed at targets on Earth. But the subject has also been planned by civilians, both in and out of academe, for decades. A lunar base shouldn’t just be about moving people to the moon. It should also store a record of civilization. That way, if what happened to the Great Library of Alexandria happens to the whole planet, we’ll still have a body of collective knowledge—like backing up a computer’s hard drive. It’s not that Earth ought to be abandoned. The home planet remains our sole source of nourishment, and must be protected in the same way we might build a fence around a garden. For now, a lunar base is an insurance policy. An expensive insurance policy, sure. But consider the alternative. ■ William E. Burrows is the author of The Survival Imperative: Using Space to Protect Earth (Forge Books, August 2006).

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Say goodbye to stereotypes: Today’s environmental workforce is kicking the granola-crunching cliché into the recycling bin. By Joshua M. Bernstein These are not your parents’ eco-careers. It wasn’t so long ago that your typical environmentalist was a whale-saving, alfalfa-sprout–eating lefty with bumper stickers slapped on the back of her VW bus. But times have changed: As environmentalism has evolved from a grassroots movement into a lifestyle, ecorelated jobs have become more fashionable, better paying, and more mainstream. From global conglomerates to small-town shops and businesses, today’s green workforce has created more eco-professionals than ever before. To showcase this sea change, Plenty interviewed men and women who are applying their green interests to a diverse array of fields. From helping high-end audio manufacturers abandon cancer-causing lead, to turning a once-gritty Midwestern city into a green jewel, to playing the renewable-energy stock market, these professionals show that caring about the environment isn’t just a way of life—it’s a great way to make a living.

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Todd MacFadden, chemical engineer FRAMINGHAM, MASSACHUSETTS

Todd MacFadden began his environmental career in the public sector—and is now working for the type of company he used to help out. Ten years ago, while working for a state-funded assistance program, he drove 1,400-mile loops around Montana, visiting small businesses to help them find ways to reduce their waste streams through recycling and conservation. “Although we were sometimes seen as wearing the ‘black hat’ of regulators, we did our best to assist these groups,” says MacFadden, who has a degree in chemical engineering. Now he works in the private sector as an environmental compliance manager for Bose, the high-end audio manufacturer. Among other tasks, MacFadden is helping his employer meet stringent European Union guidelines banning lead from electronics— TVs, microwaves, vacuum cleaners, “anything you touch,” says MacFadden. To accomplish this, he tests non-lead component alternatives, coordinating with suppliers and grappling with the cost-benefit ratio of altering the company’s manufacturing methods. While eliminating cancer-causing lead makes sense for health reasons, other alternatives—tin and copper—require landscape-razing mining. It’s a Catch-22, especially for somebody like MacFadden, an avid hiker who bikes 22 miles to work to minimize his eco-footprint. “I’ve never been on the inside of a company to see how unrealistic my expectations once were for industries to change their practices.” Yet he’s optimistic, adding that with the electronics industry undergoing a green overhaul, it’s a vital time to be working from the inside. “We’re changing the global economy,” he says.

Kate Bakewell, landscape architect NEW YORK CITY

Kate Bakewell, who began her career as a film animator, got burnt out on transience in her late 20s. “I wanted to create something more lasting than a 30-second commercial,” she says. So she earned a master’s in landscape architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and worked for several landscape architects before landing at the international firm Hart/Howerton. Now she spends her days battling gardendesign complacency. “Ecology is integral to our work, but sometimes landscape architects and the teams we work with lack knowledge about how to use natural systems in a design,” she says. One example involves a simple concept: drainage. Though architects and engineers typically route stormwater to expensive underground pipes, “runoff can be an important landscape element to mold and to make beautiful,” by using, for instance, a type of sloped ditch called a vegetated swale, which allows runoff to seep through the soil and replenish underground aquifers. Bakewell also leads green-design seminars for coworkers and is consulting on the design of an “organic” golf course on Long Island to be planted with native species. In 2005, as part of the community-based Sustainable South Bronx initiative, she helped design a rooftop meadow that’s tended by teen horticulturalists. This begs the question: Where’s the green roof on Bakewell’s downtown Manhattan apartment building? “No comment,” she says, laughing. “It’s on the drawing board.” plentymag.com Oct/Nov/06 | 65

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Justin Law, firefighter CRAIG, COLORADO

Call Justin Law the accidental firefighter. During his senior year at the University of Kentucky, he Websurfed onto a site featuring rough-and-tumble forest firefighters in action. “I thought, ‘That’s what I want to do,’” he says. After earning a degree in forestry, Law battled infernos from Kentucky to Arizona before signing on with the Hotshots—the big leagues of wildfire fighting, where he helps preserve endangered animals and their habitats by extinguishing fires in an eco-friendly manner. During wildfire season—from May until about mid-October—Law is on call around the clock. On two hours’ notice he must be ready to spend up to 16 hours a day felling trees with a chainsaw, clearing brush, and digging trenches. The Hotshots travel hundreds of miles from their home base to places like southern Nevada, where his Colorado-based crew (one of about 90 such crews in America) saved the endangered desert tortoise’s habitat. “I love my job’s unpredictability,” Law says. Except for the odd day off, Hotshots spend every minute with their crew of 20 men, usually sleeping out under the stars because they’re too tired to pitch a tent. “Most people would give up after a week, but I can’t,” Law says, “We’re saving people’s homes and protecting the ecosystem—that’s what’s important.”

David Ansel, soup salesman AUSTIN, TEXAS

In 2001, after quitting his fluorescent-lit consulting job to teach yoga and take massage-therapy classes, a dwindling bank account forced David Ansel to reassess his life. “I thought to myself, ‘What else can I do? Well, I can cook,’” he says. The Texas resident taught himself how to make stews and soups (including pumpkin, a favorite of his), and a year later he started the Soup Peddler, a bicycle-powered delivery business. Now his home-style soups, ranging from Zimbabwean peanut stew to barley miso and using locally grown, organic vegetables like sorrel and collard greens whenever possible, make their way to Austin kitchens and dining rooms on the backs of bicyclists. “I like to use up as few resources as possible,” Ansel says. By the end of 2002 Ansel had 48 soup subscribers, or “Soupies”—people who pre-order soups for scheduled delivery. The following year he had over 200 Soupies; today the service enrolls more than 2,000 Soupies, who ordered more than 10,000 gallons of soup in 2005. Ansel, who once cooked and delivered nearly every quart of soup himself, now manages his mini-empire (which has expanded to include foods like lasagna) and writes books like The Soup Peddler’s Slow & Difficult Soups: Recipes and Reveries. With rapid growth, however, comes compromise: Refrigerated delivery trucks have joined the two-wheeled fleet, but “at least we’re not a pizza-delivery business that makes a gas-wasting roundtrip every time a customer gets hungry,” Ansel says.

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Barb Allen, regulatory advisor BOZEMAN, MONTANA

As a coordinator for the EPA’s Healthy Air Program—a gig she got through a college internship—Barb Allen keeps tabs on all the nasty, unhealthy breathables wafting through our homes. In an average day she’ll distribute radon test kits, soothe callers who are panicked about indoor mold, collect data on smoking, and—just for kicks—take a hike in Montana’s majestic mountains. “It’s always a challenge to see how many balls you can keep in the air at the same time,” Allen says. Allen has spent the last three years spearheading a pilot asthma-prevention program aimed at Native American communities for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. One in four Native children suffers from asthma, which is higher than the national rate, according to the Centers for Disease Control. For the pilot program, Allen has trekked hundreds of miles down dusty roads to visit Native reservations in Montana, providing preteens with educational activity booklets, stickers, and common sense suggestions for curbing indoor air pollution, like telling kids to ask their parents to smoke outside. Allen is hopeful that the pilot program will be implemented nationwide. Other Native communities have expressed interest, but to roll out the program nationally, she must overcome an obstacle even bigger than asthma: red tape. “It all comes down to paperwork,” she says, “but I know this project can make an impact.”

Chad Miller and Emiko Badillo, vegan grocers PORTLAND, OREGON

Mark Townsend Cox, investment banker NEW YORK CITY

Beware of crossing Mark Townsend Cox: The 49-year-old Englishman once parachuted from planes for the British Army and fought his way through the Falklands. And these days Cox is still battling for his beliefs: As the brains behind New Energy Fund, he’s trying to convince investors of environmentalism’s money-making potential. Launched in 2003, his nearly $4 million (and growing) hedge fund is based on a simple premise: The earth has reached peak oil production, so how will we power our world in the future? In a British lilt, Cox rattles off a dizzying stream of facts about energy sources: Solar panels are growing cheaper. The hydrogen in water has three million times more potential energy than oil. Wind power is the future. “You can’t deny that there are dollar signs attached to these matters,” he says. Which businesses and technologies will be most lucrative in the coming years? Cox has invested in companies like the Englandbased ITM Power, which has devised a more efficient fuel-cell vehicle, and Medis Technologies, a U.S.- and Israeli-based company that manufactures eco-friendly power packs for cell phones that keep them juiced for up to 30 hours of talk time. Researching these selections means he often works hours that make doctors look like slackers, but Cox says, “My job is about passion. Renewable energy is the key to our future.”

Seven years ago, when Chad Miller and his girlfriend, Emiko Badillo, decided to become vegans, they ran themselves ragged to find foodstuffs other than fruits, vegetables, and legumes. Finally, in 2003, the now-married couple—graphic designers who co-own a studio called Fourteen Little Men— took control of their diets by opening Food Fight!, the first all-vegan grocery store in Portland. The shelves at Food Fight! are loaded with staples like organic bread crumbs and salad dressings, not to mention unusual goods, like condoms that are free of animal products. But what sets Food Fight! apart is its stock of cruelty-free junk food. “You need not give up candy when you turn vegan,” explains Miller, who carries the overseas versions of Skittles and Starburst (the American varieties contain gelatin and other animal products). Food Fight! aspires to be more than a pit stop for munchies: It’s also a makeshift activist center, hosting movies, bands, and the occasional fundraiser for animal-rights groups. This makes for long days, especially since the couple still runs their graphic design firm. Miller and Badillo typically work 10- to 12-hour days at Food Fight!, packing orders and gabbing with customers. “People drop by and tell us their problems, like we’re on Cheers,” Miller says, laughing. How is their store faring compared to larger chains who’ve set up shop nearby? “We’re poor,” says Miller, explaining the difficulties of competing against Whole Foods and others, “but we’re paying the rent by doing something that matters to us.”

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Louis Fox and Jonah Sachs, advertising executives WASHINGTON, D.C., AND BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA

Free Range Graphics has used the Dark Side for good causes: Last year, the advertising firm released “Store Wars,” a brief animated Star Wars knockoff crafted for the Organic Trade Association, in which Chewbroccoli, Cuke Skywalker and Tofu-D2 led an “organic rebellion” against unsustainable farming practices. And that’s just one example: The seven-year-old firm (its slogan: “Creativity with a Conscience”), founded by lifelong friends Jonah Sachs and Louis Fox, has crafted many similar projects for nonprofits and environmental organizations. It’s no simple task, because “you’re asking people to take on the world’s problems,” Fox says. So Free Range uses humor and cutting-edge animation to add sugar to its medicinal messages: To tout alternatives to factory farming, Free Range and Sustainable Table created “The Meatrix” (Parts I and II), which featured—you guessed it— “Moopheus,” a cartoon cow who sports dark sunglasses. [Editor’s note: see “Just Push Play,” page 86, for one of their latest eco-projects.] Selling the public on the silver linings of eco-messages has sometimes proven tricky. “No matter what options you promote, they are only a drop in the bucket,” says Fox, who bikes to work in Berkeley. But it’s a welcome challenge, he says, because “we’re crafting messages about issues that are close to our hearts.”

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Sadhu Johnston, city manager CHICAGO

“We’re making people want to live in Chicago,” says Sadhu Johnston, who is helping a gritty industrial city create a greener future—a job he’s done elsewhere. While living in Cleveland several years ago, Johnston helped transform a gutted bank into the Cleveland Environmental Center, which sports a green roof and houses nonprofit groups. Chicago’s eco-forward mayor, Richard Daley, was so impressed that he handpicked Johnston to work for him in 2002. A year later, Johnston was named commissioner of the city’s Department of Environment. The England-born enviro-crusader, who lived in Europe and India until he was ten before moving to the U.S., is equal parts regulator, innovator, and damage controller. After riding his bike to work along six miles of Lake Michigan’s waterfront (“It’s the world’s best commute,” says Johnston, who even pedals through Chicago’s white-out blizzards), he inspects dumping grounds, scouts brownfield sites ripe for redevelopment, and designs zerowaste programs for area residents and businesses. Sometimes the city’s eco-experiments don’t go as planned, like when they used an environmentally friendly anti-icing agent that turned city streets into a sticky muddle, forcing them to reconsider its use. “Setbacks can sometimes make it an uphill battle when you’re trying to convince people to go green,” Johnston says. But he needn’t worry; Chicago’s green programs have been emulated by other cities nationwide, and with Daley’s support, Johnson has carte blanche to make the City of Big Shoulders sustainable. He dreams of creating city-sponsored composting programs in abandoned silos, as well as training ex-offenders to repair broken electronics, thereby slimming the waste stream and providing employment. “I’m excited to be a part of redefining a city,” Johnston says. “Going green can make green.”

Deb McKinley, business advisor MINNEAPOLIS

After studying environmental communications at Ohio State University, Deb McKinley’s father asked her, “How will you find a job doing that?” Her first step was to become an information manager at the Minnesota Office of Waste Management, which eventually led to a job that’s her “perfect fit”: program coordinator and communications manager for the Minnesota Technical Assistance Program (MnTAP), part of the University of Minnesota. In this role, McKinley places engineering students in internships with area businesses, such as metal finishers and medical-device manufacturers. The student interns help their employers maximize their resources, prevent pollution, and reduce energy use. “We’re helping companies in Minnesota keep environmental issues at the forefront,” she says. To ensure that proper solutions are being implemented, McKinley also acts as a liaison between interns and their employers, and entices new companies to enroll in MnTAP. Attracting businesses who might need environmental help is a challenge because “it’s difficult to put environmental issues in a business perspective,” she says. “Owners don’t understand that we’re trying to help the environment and their bottom lines.” From a numbers perspective, McKinley and MnTAP are a success. Over the last five years, Minnesota companies have cut about 5.3 million pounds of solid waste and air emissions, and saved more than $3 million in disposal and raw material costs. But for McKinley, personal stories matter most. “When a plant manager thanks me for saving him $100,000 a year, I feel like I’m making a difference,” she says. “I’m helping manufacturers appreciate pollution prevention in terms they can understand.”

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BEFORE

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AFTER

WITH AND SANS LAWN: A family in suburban Los Angeles now grows their favorite veggies at home, thanks to a makeover by eco-artist Fritz Haeg.

The eco-art movement is bringing agriculture back into urban environments By Justin Tyler Clark Photographs by Fritz Haeg

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FRUIT AS ART

LABELS ARE DECEIVING

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Photographs courtesy of Museum of Arts and Design

AG GETS ARTSY: Gallery shows like “Beyond Green” and “Hybrid Fields” examine our relationship to food and farming. The artists’ collaborative Free Soil (top row) and artist Christy Rupp (bottom, left) focus on food labeling, while Laura Parker examines soil’s connection to place (bottom, right).

RT HAS ALWAYS BEEN FOOD FOR THOUGHT,

but these days it’s also thought about food. At Northern California’s Sonoma County Museum, patrons this autumn can dispense with the usual crackers and brie; instead, they’ll head straight for the hydroponic rooftop vegetable garden set up on an adjacent building. They’ll hear the music of a “fruit-a-phone,” a xylophone that amplifies the sound of fruit falling from a tree above it. They’ll gaze at piles of fruit that go unharvested in local orchards, a vivid symbol of modern agriculture’s waste. They’ll see exhibits explaining what’s in their food—and there’s a good chance they’ll pause as they sit down to their next meal.

SOIL EXPLORATION

The museum’s “Hybrid Fields” show, which focuses on slow food, agricultural land use, and genetically modified crops, is just one of several recent and upcoming art exhibitions that give new meaning to the term “museum fare.” In Los Angeles, artist and landscape architect Fritz Haeg replaced a water-wasting suburban lawn with an “edible estate” composed of seasonal crops. Last year, New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) organized the “Groundswell” exhibition, featuring a number of large-scale, sustainable land-redevelopment projects. (One documented the transformation of a French industrial park into a botanical garden with food crops.) This past spring, MoMA’s neighbor, the Museum of Arts and Design, hosted “Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art,” which included a piece plentymag.com Oct/Nov/06 | 73

FLOATING GARDENS

LAND IMPROVEMENT: The international exhibit “Groundswell” showcased innovations in urban agriculture and eco-landscaping, including a water garden in Bordeaux, France, by Catherine Mosbach (above), and Martha Schwartz’s “Ditch Fountain” in Exchange Square in Manchester, England (right).

demonstrating how far the average orange travels from the grove to the urban consumer. Important issues, sure, but what does the journey of a piece of fruit have to do with art? Everything, says Patricia Watts, curator of “Hybrid Fields,” who left the Los Angeles art scene to work for the Topanga Department of Conservation in Southern California. She is part of a growing movement of artists and curators who defy categorization (and frustrate some in the art world) by incorporating equal parts agriculture, environmental engineering, urban planning, and good, old-fashioned aesthetics. Agriculture isn’t the eco-art movement’s only issue, but Watts suggests that it is a critical one in cities, where museums are typically concentrated. “It empowers people in urban areas to know where their

food is coming from, that they’re not completely at the hands of someone growing it hundreds or thousands of miles away,” she says. This democratic sensibility is something of a mixed bag for contemporary eco-artists, though—just ask Fritz Haeg. The artist and landscape architect taught a class at the California Institute of the Arts called “The Fine Art of Radical Gardening.” Haeg’s students spent an entire semester planting an on-campus vegetable garden that defies easy categorization. Is it installation, landscape design, or land art on a miniature scale? Does growing crops count as artistic expression? The classic American lawn, with its connotations of ’50s suburbia, might not be very revolutionary, but not even Haeg’s progressive institution is thrilled about turning the school’s courtyards into farmland. “Some of the administration is

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Photographs courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art

A CLEANER GUTTER

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NOT A CORNFIELD

NEW CROP: Last year, artist Lauren Bon created a 32-acre cornfield installation at the edge of downtown Los Angeles in a space left empty by urban decay (above and right).

scared of it because they think grass is pretty,” says Haeg. In the past, these constraints have forced many environmental artists to travel to remote regions in order to find spaces that accommodate their work. While artist Lauren Bon, one notable exception to this rule, was able to plant a 32-acre cornfield installation at the edge of downtown Los Angeles last year, relatively few art aficionados have had a chance to see some of the best-known land art sculptures, like Robert Smithson’s celebrated Spiral Jetty (a gigantic spiral rock sculpture that sits in Utah’s Great Salt Lake). But there is an important distinction between environmental art like Smithson’s and contemporary eco-art, say Watts and Amy Lipton of Ecoartspace, a bicoastal nonprofit that nurtures eco-artists. Many of today’s eco-artists are working in the opposite direction as Smithson, restoring natural spaces rather than altering them. “Smithson’s work was later questioned because it was a case of people permanently reshaping the environment,” explains Watts. “A lot of artists today are trying to reduce humanity’s impact.” “Environment” is interpreted broadly. Many eco-artists have focused on large swaths of public lands, where it is easier to get funding for reclamation and restoration. But some, like Haeg, are interested in transforming small pieces of private property. With

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Photographs by James Goodnight for Not a Cornfield LLC

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NATURE AS CLASSROOM: An eco-art installation by students at Carnegie Mellon University (right) and a “radical gardening” project by Cal-Arts students (below).

INDOOR FARMING

GREENING THE SCHOOLGROUNDS

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Edible Estates, a work that will appear at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions in the fall, Haeg will show what happened when he replaced a Los Angeles family’s front lawn with an edible garden that included everything from tomatoes to peach trees to exotic herbs. Haeg hopes to draw viewers out of the gallery and into a San Fernando Valley neighborhood where grass is considered, well, pretty. The eco-revolution, he implies, will not be gallerized. Artist Robert Bingham, who teaches a class similar to Haeg’s at Carnegie Mellon University, says that one of the most interesting parts of the movement is that it doesn’t just redefine what art is, or where it’s seen, but who makes it. “The hard part of eco-art is that it doesn’t scream of art, but it’s about creative thinking,” he says. He admits that because eco-art projects often consist of simply planting corn in vacant lots—or rolling up an entire meadow and placing it on a building’s roof, as Bingham’s mentors once did—some feel that it’s not really art at all. “The idea is everyone is an artist,” says Sam Bower of Greenmuseum.org, an online “museum” devoted to the genre. He likens eco-art to “social sculpture,” a concept developed by German artist and Green Party cofounder Joseph Beuys. “Whether you’re a school teacher or postal worker, your aesthetics shape the world,” Bower adds. Eco-art often brings together individuals with disparate talents: Bingham, for example, is collaborating with other artists and the Army Corps of Engineers to restore a stream valley outside Pittsburgh to its pre-industrial state. Watts agrees that the movement is a democratic one. “Environmental restoration is the art of this time, and artists are perfect to create those kinds of conversations,” she says. “The end result is it doesn’t have to be art at all any more—it becomes a new way of living.” At the very least, art lovers now have something to munch on at openings besides little cubes of cheese. ■ Photographs courtesy of Robert Bingham (top) and Fritz Haeg (left)

URBAN FORAGING In the neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a sweet canopy of ambrosia hovers over the landscape—fresh grapefruits, lemons, avocados, bananas, loquats, tangerines, oranges, figs, and walnuts—yet much of it goes uneaten. Now, an initiative called Fallen Fruit is proposing to reduce waste and educate city residents about the incredible resources around them. For local artist-activists Austin Young, Dave Burns, and Matias Viegener, the fruit was a symbol of many things that were wrong in their city: hunger, pollution, and social alienation. As founders of the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, they were looking for creative, positive solutions. “We all have fruit trees and we share the fruit with our friends and neighbors,” says Burns. “So it was pretty natural for us to start mapping and taking photographs of them.” “L.A. has a lot of green, but people don’t often register how much of it is fruit-bearing,” says Viegener. Part art project, part social service, Fallen Fruit is a plan for a better community—one where neighbors can interact, people can travel by foot and the Meyer lemons are free for the taking. Since last year, the group has created four maps of the city’s fruit trees and posted them on their web site, fallenfruit.org. They are currently distributing them at homeless shelters and other locations across the city. They have also partnered with a local organization, the Bicycle Kitchen, which will lead nighttime bike tours on fruit routes. Another aim is to inspire people to grow more fruit trees. Their design for a public fruit park called Endless Orchard was chosen as a finalist for a proposed development at the Civic Center Mall in downtown L.A. Other future plans include fruit swap events and a silent film documenting the project. The beauty of the idea, says Young, is its inclusiveness. “People really like the simplicity of the project. We hope to change people’s minds— and spread the wonder of fruit.” —Elisa Ludwig Photograph courtesy of Austin Young, Fallenfruit.org

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The owner of a beverage company brings his employees together on 20 acres in British Columbia BY ELIZABETH BARKER FARM LIFE: Residents take yoga at the Gatehouse (above left); the “village” is the farm’s common area (below); Jennifer and David Karr (above right).

Photographs courtesy of David Karr

TEN YEARS AGO, while surfing at Montana de Oro beach in Los Osos, California, David Karr had his first sip of yerba mate. Served by his Argentine classmate at the California Polytechnic Institute, Alex Pryor, the earthy South American supertea (rich in vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and immune-stimulating phytochemicals) filled Karr with a sublime buzz—a focus and energy he claims gave him a new lease on life. “I immediately fell in love with it. The energy lift was unlike anything I’d ever experienced,” says Karr, now 35 and cofounder of Guayaki, the premier American purveyor of yerba mate. “I thought, ‘How come I’ve never heard of this before? I’m from

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CHOICES

HOME GREEN DREAM: Veggies thrive in the greenhouse (left); Rebecca Bloch, the garden manager, on market day (inset).

California; we’re the ones who are supposed to know about this kind of stuff.’” A year later, propelled by that Californian curiosity and an entrepreneurial spirit befitting of an international business major, Karr took off for Argentina to find out more about its native yerba mate. He visited the lush rainforest plantations, where mate trees thrived beneath a canopy of hardwood trees, the cool shade helping to keep the mate leaves from turning bitter in the harsh sunlight. When the eco-conscious Karr learned that creating more of that precious shade called for amping up rainforest conservation, he was quickly sold on the prospect of turning his fledgling romance with yerba mate into a potentially lifelong commitment. “Here was a project that could integrate my goal of having a business that was socially conscious and still driven by a bottom line,” says Karr. He teamed up with Pryor in a high-energy endeavor that would ultimately land the littleknown “drink of the gods” on the shelves of natural-foods markets across the U.S., and earn the Socially Responsible Business Award twice at the Natural Products Expo. Now, eight years after Guayaki’s headquarters moved from his apartment to an office in San Luis Obispo, California, Karr runs the flourishing company remotely, from his home on an organic farm on British Columbia’s Salt Spring Island. There, Karr shares 120 acres with a community of residents assembled by his wife Jennifer, whose mother owns the 82 | Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

property. Bound by their love of the land and their involvement with an onsite wellness center called the Gatehouse, Stowel Lake Farm’s 15 residents live in five houses on the 20 acres of property that aren’t covered by forest, meadows, and sustainably harvested crops. Geothermal energy powers Stowel Lake Farm’s two largest structures: the restored barn and the Gatehouse, where visitors can take classes in yoga and capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian martial art that Karr has practiced for five years. Although Karr admits that his own house isn’t “all eco-ed out,” he’s been experimenting with solar power and capturing rainwater. “I was using solar power until last year, but it was difficult because I’m running a whole business out of my home,” he says. Karr is also helping Guayaki lower fossil-fuel use through low-impact packaging and strategies like shipping in bulk directly to customers, and is supporting reforestation of South America through a variety of means. Most of the wood used for the new buildings at Stowel Lake Farm comes directly from the property’s land—as does most of the food. “We grow about 90 percent of what we eat here,” says Karr of the five-acre organic farm. “It’s very grounding to be so connected to the earth.” That connection deepens each

Thursday morning at 8:30 A.M. sharp, when all the residents meet to determine what work needs to be done on the farm. Then they spend the day weeding, tilling, and harvesting, breaking at lunchtime for a community meal. Community is crucial to Karr; one of Guayaki’s central missions is to deliver economic independence to the Argentines, Brazilians, and Paraguayans who pluck and process the company’s mate leaves. “We go to South America and tell the farmers, ‘We’ll pay two to three times the standard price if you start to bring back the shade and go certified organic,’” says Karr. “It takes a couple of years to get going, and it costs us more money, but we’re giving farmers a fair wage and preserving biodiversity—and the quality of the product is so much higher.” Now helping to support more than 100 South American farmers and their families, Guayaki’s 30-member team has grown considerably since the 1990s, when Karr and his brother Steven painted a 32-foot RV with a rainforest mural, loaded it up with Guayaki samples, and traveled across the U.S. to hand out free yerba mate at natural-foods stores. On those excursions—as he still does today—Karr hipped first-time drinkers to a South American ritual: Everyone sits in a circle and passes a mate-filled gourd counterclockwise, with each person drinking the entire “gourdful” before passing it back to the server to be refilled. “The gourd is a sym-

“We grow about 90 percent of what we eat here,” says Karr of the fiveacre organic farm. “It’s very grounding to be so connected to the earth.” bol of hospitality,” explains Karr. “Right away, the conversation starts flowing, people start feeling good.” And when the gourd gets passed around back at Karr’s homestead, all that feel-good fellowship comes full circle. “I really value the simple things in life—good food, good people, community—and my home is a reflection of that,” says Karr. “We’re all people living together to take care of this land.” ■ Photographs courtesy of David Karr (this page)

Get organized Cut the clutter with these eco-friendly storage solutions

TILT IT UP: Add a personal touch to the chic “Full Slant” coffee table— made of eco-friendly bamboo plywood—by storing your favorite books on the angled bottom shelf. $950, Rhubarb Decor; rhubarbdecor.com

DIVIDE AND CONQUER: The free-standing “Boxer” shelf and room divider is made from recovered and recycled wood, and comes in a range of eye-popping colors. $995, Material Furniture; materialfurniture.com

HANG OUT:Keep your office mess organized with the wall-mountable “Grid” pocket system. It’s made from 100% recycled felt, and can be returned to the manufacturer for recycling if you decide to redecorate. $60, Mio; mioculture.com

STAY TOGETHER: Made from recyclable plastic using a low-energy process, the “Crease” rack is easy to clean and keeps your newspapers and magazines off the floor. Comes in red or white. $52, Eco Home Store; ecohomestore.co.uk

PLAY GAMES: The stackable blocks of the “Tetrad Mini” shelf system, inspired by the video game Tetris, are crafted from FSCcertified Baltic birch. $1,750 for this configuration, Brave Space Design; bravespacedesign.com

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Deconstruct Your House If you’re building or renovating a home, you can recycle what comes down BY JENNIFER WEEKS MANY PEOPLE LEAVE unwanted goods like furniture and books out by the curb, but Sela Barker took this strategy to a new level in 2004 when she offered her 1924 Portland, Oregon, house to anyone who would move it from her property. “I didn’t want to tear the house down, but there wasn’t much worthwhile about it,” Barker recalls. “It had become too small for my family and had no architecturally redeeming qualities.” More than 20 takers responded to Barker’s giveaway offer on Craigslist.org, but all were deterred by the cost and logistics of relocating the house. So instead of smashing a usable building to rubble, Barker hired Portland’s ReBuilding Center, the largest nonprofit source of reusable building materials in North America, to dismantle everything but the concrete foundation and preserve usable materials and fixtures. Barker donated salvaged items to the 84 | Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

Center and received a tax credit that covered 50 percent of her deconstruction costs, plus a bonus: furniture built by the center’s Refind Furniture Studios using old-growth fir recovered from her house. Home deconstruction is a growing movement in the building industry that recycles valuable materials and minimizes noise and air pollution associated with tearing down buildings. According to the National Association of Home Builders, about 245,000 homes and apartments are demolished every year, generating 74 million tons of jumbledup concrete, wood, brick, asphalt, metals, glass, and other materials. Building materials in good condition can be reused, but construction and demolition (C&D) waste typically ends up in landfills because home demolitions tend to be quick and dirty: Backhoes and excavators can crush a house into residen-

tial hash in a day or less. The best candidates for deconstruction are well-maintained properties—either older houses that contain materials like high-quality brick and old-growth lumber, or new houses with modern, high-performance materials and fixtures. “Newer is better if a house is going to be deconstructed down to the foundation, because modern lumber and double-paned windows are easiest for us to sell,” says John Grossman, manager of ReStore Home Improvement Center in Springfield, Massachusetts. “Older structures that have been updated can have both kinds of treasure in them.” Sepi Gilani of Weston, Massachusetts, hired the ReStore to do a partial deconstruction, removing valuable items and demolishing the rest, when her family decided to raze their house and rebuild on-site. Tax deduc-

Photographs courtesy Sarasotasalvage.com (above and near right); Habitat ReStores (far right)

tions and avoided disposal costs offset labor costs, says Gilani, and deconstruction took away some of the stigma associated with doing a teardown. “Environmentally, morally, and socially, if you’re going to do something as extreme as taking down a house and starting over, at least you can make sure those materials are used again,” she says. Owners can donate recovered materials to nonprofits like ReStore or the ReBuilding Center, or sell them to high-end architectural salvage dealers. Neil Seldman, president of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), estimates that a wellmaintained 4,000-square-foot house may yield

$10,000 to $20,000 of salvaged materials depending on the house’s style and contents. In many regions, there are strong local markets for signature materials in limited supply, such as Dade County Pine, a dense, strong wood that was used in many of South Florida’s oldest houses, and the light-gold “Cream City Bricks” cast from Lake Michigan clay, which were used in many buildings around Milwaukee. Home deconstruction projects typically require one contractor to manage the overall project, another to handle deconstruction, and a third specialist to remove hazardous materials such as lead paint and asbestos (some contractors handle several of these tasks). Betsy Freiburger, a project manager with Krupp General Contractors in TRASH TO TREASURE: Contractors preserve Madison, Wisconsin, recoma roof for its timber mends screening contractors (opposite page) and carefully to ensure that they save an entire use appropriate safety and window (right); old material handling practices. items can be resold Deconstruction is labor-inten(below). sive, but Freiburger says that it can be done efficiently. “Time isn’t a big constraint, but you need space for sorting. If you don’t have room for a crane to pick materials out, you need more labor,” she says. With rising energy prices driving up material costs and some states banning C&D waste from landfills, deconstruction and salvage are poised to grow. ILSR’s Seldman says that thanks to new tools and several decades of experience, deconstruction today is often as fast and affordable as conventional demolition, even without factoring in tax benefits. “If you recycle your house, you’ll probably salvage more materials at once than your family will put into curbside bins in a decade,” says Seldman. “It’s a big opportunity.” ■

With rising energy prices driving up material costs and some states banning C&D waste from landfills, deconstruction and salvage are poised to grow.

PROJECT CHECKLIST FIND A CONTRACTOR. If your general contractor can’t help, contact Habitat ReStores (habitat.org/env.restore.html), the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ilsr.org), or your local building materials recycling centers for referrals. DECIDE WHERE TO SELL OR DONATE MATERIALS. Options include nonprofits that recycle materials or private architectural salvage dealers (salvageweb.com). Specify how proceeds or tax benefits will be allocated between you and the contractor. MAKE A TARGET LIST. Walk through your house with contractors to identify elements that can be salvaged, highlighting anything you’d like to save. Study building plans and records of previous renovations for features that may be hidden. DOCUMENT THE PROJECT. Contractors should provide photographs and written inventories of recovered materials, with estimated resale values. —J.W. plentymag.com Oct/Nov/06 | 85

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Illustrations courtesy of Free Range Graphics

SUPERHEROES: Bay and Dash take gamers on virtual missions to defeat eco-threats and halt pollution.

An eco-themed video game is helping the PlayStation generation understand global warming By Deborah Snoonian

Play

“HERE’S THE DEAL: Adults are not doing enough to protect our planet. In fact, some of our worst problems are being caused by people! It’s time for kids like us to step in!” And with a wave of his arm, Dash, the animated action hero of Adventure Ecology, invites gamers to join him and his raven-haired sidekick Bay as they battle adversaries like Agent Waste, Professor Ignorance, and Miss Lies in their quest to halt pollution and defeat the ultimate enemy: the mighty, sharp-clawed Global Warming. Developed to teach Australian and U.K. students about environmental issues, Adventure Ecology is one example of a growing field of “serious” video games that raise awareness about issues like poverty and international strife, and help players assess strategies for solving them. “Video games are a mainstream form of media—they’re not just for teenage boys in basements anymore,” says Benjamin Stokes, cofounder of Games for Change, a nonprofit group that provides support to developers of serious games. “For the environmental movement, it makes perfect sense to use a video game as an educational tool.” Playing vids might even be the best way to learn about this sprawling thing we call “the environment”—a highly complex and interdependent system in which every life-form, air molecule, and pebble plays a part. “It’s tough to teach interdependencies using linear media like books,” Stokes says. “But games, by their nature, are interactive systems. Our choices have consequences, like they do in real life.” Which leads to Adventure Ecology, where students ages nine and up embark on virtual

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“It’s amazing how excited kids get when you present information in a way that’s engaging and fun.” missions instead of listening to rote lesson plans. Before starting the game, each player takes a test that assesses her learning style; the game is then tailored to her strengths (visual learners encounter more graphics, while wordsmiths get scrolling text). Activities may include preventing deforestation, scoping out alternative fuel strategies, or convincing a clothing company to sell eco-friendly duds. As they play, gamers take quizzes to demonstrate their grasp of important concepts, accumulating points that let them take on new missions with bigger challenges. The game is the brainchild of British adventurist David de Rothschild, who earlier this year traversed the North Pole to raise awareness about the effects of global warming on the Arctic. In fall 2005, just a few months before his trip began, he tapped the D.C. ad 88 | Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

agency Free Range Graphics to create a video game based on his travels, with the idea that schoolkids could play the game and track his real Arctic expedition at the same time. “We squeezed about a year’s worth of work [to develop the game] into three months,” recalls Andrew Courtney, interactive director of Free Range Graphics [see page 64 for a profile of this eco-conscious company’s founders]. His creative team worked with an educational consultant to flesh out the game’s “curriculum,” then created characters, missions, and quizzes. To help build its community of gamers, they added online discussion boards and created a virtual explorer’s club so kids could meet online to share what they learned. And, of course, there are the usual gamer faves: character profiles of heroes and foes; the ability to customize your avatar, or player profile; and a

soundtrack you can tailor. Though serious eco-games of this sophistication aren’t common, a few other developers have realized that students aren’t the only ones who can learn from them. When New York artist Lillian Ball heard that the Great Ponds Wetlands near her home in Southold, Long Island, was threatened by development, she created GO ECO!, an interactive game in which players must collaborate to protect it. “One goal of the game is to help people understand points of view different from their own,” Ball says. Though she has no plans to commercialize it, she’s bringing GO ECO! to art exhibitions and other venues to inform Long Island citizens about the wetlands, and to demonstrate how it has stimulated and even enhanced discussions among opposing groups. “Motivating people to take action is a

Nature Versus Cursor The irony of eco-inspired video games is that those who play them could be spending their time communing with nature in real life, rather than battling enviro-villains on the virtual field. But the sheer number and popularity of nature-themed games seems to indicate that protecting Gaia (after whom countless vid characters and even an entire game have been named) is a quest that gamers will never tire of (how fitting, as the environment’s actual dangers loom greater every day). Here, Plenty picks three favorites from various stages of the commercial eco-game evolution. —Alice Shyy

FORCES OF EVIL: The dreaded Global Warming (above) is aided by a gang of supporting foes (left, from left to right): Professor Ignorance, Mr. Lazy, Chairman Greed, General Fear, and Agent Waste.

real challenge, and it’s one of the best things a game can do,” says Stokes. As for Adventure Ecology, Free Range has been refining the game based on user feedback, and portions of it are available for free on the Web (game.adventureecology.com). Its biggest success so far, however, might be its refreshing tone. By clearly explaining the environmental consequences of human activity, and encouraging players to develop their own methods for curbing pollution, Adventure Ecology empowers kids to adopt earth-friendly habits and reframes environmental stewardship as an inspiring opportunity instead of a thankless chore. “I was skeptical about whether an eco-video game would be effective,” says Courtney. “But it’s amazing to see how excited kids get when you present them information in a way that’s engaging and fun.” ■

Zen: Intergalactic Ninja (Nintendo, 1993)

Harvest Moon (Super Nintendo, 1997)

Spore (PC and Wii, 2007)

Storyline: You are Zen, a blue-skinned warrior who’s been hired by the eco-conscious “Gordons” to fish Earth out of a sticky pollution situation. You must defeat evil filth monsters to give earthlings another chance to respect their planet. Our score: Zero points for graphic innovation, ten points for the villainous moniker “Lord Contaminous.” Watch for the forthcoming feature film based on the game; it may be the greatest cinematic achievement for eco-heroes since Captain Planet’s film foray went straight to VHS in 1990.

Storyline: You bought the farm! No, really: you manage and interact with livestock, crops, and townspeople on internally clocked “real time,” with the gently ambitious yet slippery goal of achieving happiness through the joys of rural life. Our score: With local festivals to attend and charming village debutantes to court for marriage, Harvest Moon is surprisingly addictive for such a simple game—and the virtual cows get cuter with every new edition. It has numerous spin-offs, including one pending for the soon-to-come Wii platform.

Storyline: You begin life as a pathetic, one-celled nothing. The game then lets you shape your own evolutionary path, with limitless creative license to craft entire planets and ecosystems. With no explicit goal, you may become a 14-armed, sixwinged triceratops who must fend off clutches of four-tailed lemurs. Our score: Spore is reaping raves at gaming conventions, and with good reason: it’s both a superbly designed game and an intriguing look at how each player’s choices affect her world, even a world inhabited by ferretbreathed mega-llamas.

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From the Junkyard to the Kitchen Ever wonder what happens to bikes when they die? A primer on how some two-wheelers end up powering blenders in Guatemala, and how to find your dream cruiser in the trash BY KARLA ZIMMERMAN A RUSTED HUFFY pokes out of the junk heap, its color unrecognizable and its frame so twisted, one shudders wondering how it got that way. Yet its new owner touches it tenderly and smiles. “We love broken bikes,” says Lee Ravenscroft, founder of Chicago-based Working Bikes Cooperative (WBC). He tosses the bashed two-wheeler in the back of his truck and takes it to headquarters, where his colleagues—all volunteers—will fix it and others like it (or at least salvage the parts). The WBC store sells about 40 percent of these bicycles and then uses the proceeds to ship the remaining bikes and parts to developing countries, where they become assets for communities in need. WBC now recycles 10,000 bikes annually; about half come from donation drives, and the rest come from the trash. In Africa, the Caribbean, and Central and South America, WBC’s local partners are developing bike-powered water pumps and other machinery in electricity-poor communities, such as Guatemala (see below), and providing AIDS orphans with vocational training to fix

bikes and modify them into cash-generating cargo carriers, as in Tanzania. Ravenscroft isn’t the only one to realize recycled bicycles are powerful tools for change. Several other U.S. organizations—like Massachusetts-based Bikes Not Bombs, New Jersey–based Pedals for Progress, and Virginia-based Bikes for the World—also ship old bikes overseas. And many other nonprofits fix and sell used bikes domestically for youth-oriented Earn-a-Bike programs. The International Bicycle Fund (ibike.org) keeps a list of such groups, including those that collect secondhand bikes. There is certainly no shortage of raw material for these groups, thanks to the glut of cheap, throwaway bicycles on the U.S. market these days—mainly Asian imports and models from big-box retailers. Ecophiles may argue that the most sustainable solution is to reduce the number of bikes made in the first place; whether or not that happens, recyclers will have the means to turn the developing world on to bike-powered technologies for many years to come. ■

SEEKING YOUR OWN SET OF WHEELS You walk down the alley and spy a glimmering green racing bike in the neighbor’s trash. Or maybe it’s a red, Pee-wee Herman–type cruiser (sans ejection seat) you see at a garage sale. How can you tell if it’s a road-worthy ride? We asked the experts for some tips. FRAME. “A bent frame means the bike is going to be an organ donor,” WBC’s Lee Ravenscroft says. Rippled or cracked paint, especially at the front where the frame meets the head tube (i.e., the part the handlebar passes through), indicates damage. REAR WHEEL. Make sure the bike has one, then spin it to check for wobbling. “If it wobbles a little, you can tighten the spokes for about $10. But if it’s a big wobble you’ll have to replace the back wheel, which is expensive,” Ravenscroft says. Back wheels cost $40 and up. Front wheels are less expensive since they don’t have to fit around the bike’s chain like back wheels do. SEAT. The saddle, as it’s called in proper parlance, is relatively low-cost and easy to replace. FIT. Sit on the bike, put the arch of your foot on the pedal, and move it to the six o’clock position. If your leg is straight (but not locked) at this point, the size is right. If not, try adjusting the seat and handlebars; a bike that’s an inherently bad fit still won’t feel right after these adjustments, so it’s better to just leave it for the next scavenger. Ambitious types who have scavenged an extra frame, stem, handlebar, fork, and wheels, in addition to their recycled bike, can build their own trailer. Follow the instructions at re-cycle.org/trailer to create a stylish carrier, capable of hauling 220 pounds. —K.Z.

GUATEMALA’S EXTRAORDINARY MACHINES Both Working Bikes Cooperative and Bikes Not Bombs have provided bicycles to Guatemala-based MayaPedal, a creative group that concocts bike-powered water pumps, grain grinders, and corn de-huskers, among other ingenious machines. Used primarily in rural communities, the appliances operate via an ongoing, reliable energy source—leg power—in places where electricity is scarce. 90 | Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

This bicycle-powered water pump helps rural dwellers access irrigation and drinking water. It pumps water at five to ten gallons per minute from depths of up to 100 feet, compared to an electric pump, which only works to depths of 40 feet.

This contraption is a simple kitchen blender powered by a stationary bicycle. It spins up to 6,400 revolutions per minute, churning out fruit smoothies, puréeing vegetables, and grinding grain, all without electricity. —K.Z. Photographs courtesy Mayapedal (above); Alan D. Lloyd (right)

WBC now recycles 10,000 bikes annually. About half come from donation drives; the rest come from the trash.

TOP OF THE HEAP: Some of the fixeruppers slated for refurbishing at the Working Bikes Cooperative.

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The Fabric of Change Designer Carol Young outfits the modern, eco-savvy urbanite BY ELIZABETH BARKER LIKE MOST CITY DWELLERS, Carol Young knows the struggle of staying stylish while navigating cramped public transportation and busy sidewalks on daily wanderings about town. So after spending the better part of the ’90s busing, biking, and riding subways through cities like New York and San Francisco, the Los Angeles native and onceagain resident decided to launch a line of clothing to outfit what she calls “the urban nomad.” “I was looking to create pieces that fit into modern life and would address movement, temperature issues, and moisture control by

incorporating new fabrics LOOKS FROM THE and plentiful resources, like LINE: C-sleeve top used clothing and post-conand patch pocket trouser (above); sumer recycled materials,” dolman curve shrug, says Young. Working with U-neck racerback, that vision, she created a and pocket skirt in clothing line for the ecovelvet denim savvy urbanite as part of her (below). master’s thesis at Cornell University. Now, eight years after wrapping up her studies, the a resilient fabric that could be worn for years 34-year-old runs Undesigned by Carol Young of car-free commuting. “Another thing I try (undesigned.com) from her studio in L.A.’s to pay attention to is the care of the garindie-friendly Echo Park neighborhood. ment,” Young adds. “If I were making someThe year-old shop showcases pieces from thing from a very refined material that was Young’s seven elegant-yet-edgy womenswear organic but had to be dry-cleaned, how does collections, including a recycled-cotton wrap that work into the cycle of things? I do have skirt, an eco-fleece bolero (made from recysome items that are dry-clean-only, but it’s cled soda bottles), and an iridescent Tencel something I’ll be thinking about when designdress. “The collections are a combination of ing my next collection.” materials that can be called eco-friendly and Of course, not all Earth-sensitive materials fun fabrics like linen and Italian microfiber,” are delicate, precious fabrics that easily get says Young. “I think it’s important to keep torn and tattered: The hemp denim in one using different materials, like a collage.” fall 2005 skirt seems far sturdier than any pair When Young first dreamed up of Levi’s, while an embellished bamboo jacket Undesigned, she aspired to integrate her Berkeley-bred sense of conscious consumerism from 2006 feels equally tough and soft. Those unique textures appear to have a steady drawinto the business. “Going into a profession ing power for Undesigned’s clientele, which that’s very wasteful, I wanted the collections includes celebs like Winona Ryder and to have some kind of eco-aspect,” she says. Emmylou Harris, but mainly consists of “But when you talk about sustainability, you graphic designers, architects, museum curahave to ask what that really means.” For Young, who continues to design for the urban tors, and other professionals in the arts. For now, Young aims to keep luring her customers nomad that originally inspired her clothing with the line’s functionality, simple silhouline, sustainability can’t ettes, and sophisticated designs instead of exist without durability. playing up any potential trendiness of ecoThe “super-drapey and fashion. “It’s important to me that people soft” French meryl-nylonactually use this stuff and keep it in their lycra microfiber used in wardrobe for a long time,” says Young. “I’d Undesigned’s Caterpillar like for them to really love a skirt or dress and and Wing series, for then realize, ‘Oh, yeah, it’s organic cotton,’— instance, isn’t renewable, recycled, or organic, but it’s then it’s like an added bonus.” ■

“I’d like customers to really love a skirt or dress and then realize, ‘Oh, yeah, it’s organic cotton,’— then it’s like an added bonus.” 92 | Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

Photographs by Katherine Tessier

Walk Proud This season’s most ethical boots are also the most aesthetically pleasing

for the girls SHUN EXCESS The Wabi’s simple design means it requires fewer materials, less manpower, and less energy to produce. It’s also completely recyclable. $150, Camper; www.camper.com

BE WILD Leather, yes, but these nature-inspired boots are created using a nontoxic tanning and dyeing process. $200, El Naturalista; elnaturalista.com

CHOOSE WISELY This sleek boot can be custom-made in a variety of non-leather fabrics, from organic cotton denim to faux suede. $345, Beyond Skin; beyondskin.co.uk

SEW IT UP Vegetable-tanned leather and recycled quilts never looked so good. $235, Terra Plana; terraplana.com

GET NOTICED These runway-ready boots are made from PVC-free plastics derived from plants. $795, Stella McCartney; stellamccartney.com

MOSEY ALONG You may look like you’ve stepped right off a ranch, but nary a cow (or any other animal for that matter) was harmed to create this boot. $125, Matt & Nat; mooshoes.com

for the guys LET’S ROLL The waterproof Roll-Top boot has a hemp upper, which can be rolled up for extra coverage or rolled down for a more casual look. $110, Timberland; timberland.com

FORGE AHEAD This lightweight yet sturdy boot includes a Cambrelle lining to wick away sweat. It’s also quick-drying and water-resistant. $129, Garmont; thevegetariansite.com

CONSOLIDATE Quite possibly the most eco-friendly boot in existence, this baby contains the recycled remains of seat cushions, file-folders, soda bottles, coffee filters, and magazines. $75, Jade Planet; jadeplanet.net

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Bubble Trouble How I freed myself from the myth that shampoo is good for hair By Traci Hukill

The problem with shampoo is that most of it contains sodium lauryl or laureth sulfate as a foaming agent. Both are detergents capable of degreasing engines. Not surprisingly, they are also skin irritants. The charge against them by the no-’pooers is that they strip the hair and scalp of natural oils, creating an artificial demand for moisture that only commercial shampoos and conditioners can fill. Bahman Karimzadeh, a Los Angeles stylist and staunch anti-shampooist, advocates a more DIY approach to conditioning. “You have to let your scalp make enough oil to bring it through to the end,” he says. “Some people say, ‘My scalp is dirty, oily, I have to wash it.’ You have to get over that feeling.” Admittedly, when I first got off shampoo there was a funk factor. Around week two, I noticed my hair felt tacky when I wet it. Not long afterward I thought, “What’s that smell?” The answer came: “Oh. It’s me.” And I hadn’t even been hitting the gym that hard. That’s when I contacted Karimzadeh, who counseled “shampooing” with conditioner once a week. That improved life dramatically. My hair was cleaner and softer, and it was starting to develop body I’d never seen. It fell in ringlets and held a style. It even stayed out of my face. I should throw in one caveat here: The anti-’poo

“My hair was cleaner and softer, and it was starting to develop body I’d never seen. It fell in ringlets and held a style. It even stayed out of my face.”

EVERY DAY I FACED OFF against lackluster tresses, while two friends of mine couldn’t stop raving about their own glossy, sexy hair. They had recently stopped shampooing—just went coldturkey—and the results were marvelous. Both are decidedly un-crunchy, so I knew they weren’t making some hippieish statement about evil soap conglomerates or shampoo pollution in our waterways; this no-suds policy, I reasoned, must actually be good for hair. What did I have to lose? I tossed out my shampoo, began simply rinsing my hair in the shower every day, and waited to be dazzled by my new chemical-free, naturally lustrous mane. The payoff was a while in coming, and I soon regretted having told everyone about my little experiment. Was it dirty, friends asked? Did it smell? Most concealed their revulsion at the idea of not shampooing, but when one involuntarily put her hand to her face in horror, it made a powerful impression. Seven months later, my hair has never looked better. It’s shinier and has more body, and my ordinarily flake-prone scalp is noticeably healthier. Plus, I get the self-righteous buzz of having beaten the system: I washed The Man right out of my hair and it stayed clean anyway. 94 | Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

DIY BEAUTY A sampling of natural cleansers and conditioners. BAKING SODA: This is the best natural cleanser I found, but don’t use it more than once every few weeks: Too-frequent use will strip away the lipids in the hair’s cuticle, says hair researcher Yash Kamath of Princetonbased TRI (formerly known as the Textiles Research Institute). Dissolve 1 teaspoon in a cup of warm water, massage through hair, and rinse. Leaves hair crazy silky and squeaky-clean. BEER: In a favorite book of mine from childhood, the heroine escapes from a Nazi concentration camp and is taken in by nuns who wash her matted hair with beer, making it lovely again. I had such high hopes as I opened the can in the shower! Instead it left a

camp is dominated by folks with wavy and curly hair. Straight-and-fines may have trouble with the shampooless lifestyle—it usually just weighs their manes down. But for everyone else, says Lorraine Massey, co-owner of Devachan Hair Salon in New York City, ditching the suds is de rigueur. Something of a demigoddess among the curly-headed set, Massey has developed a line of products called DevaCurl. I now wash with Massey’s fragrant, sudsless No Poo (think of conditioner minus the slippery element) once a week. And so here I am. There has been just one significant setback in my quest for natural hair. It happened a few days before Thanksgiving, when I decided to deep-condition using a product recommended by Karimzadeh and countless beauty magazines: mayonnaise. I wet my hair, towel-dried it, worked in about one-eighth of a cup, and rinsed a few minutes later. After it dried, I admired the shine in the mirror, but something was off. It was a little too shiny. I rinsed again. And then I understood: The stuff wasn’t coming out. Over the next two days, my hair hung in oily clumps and developed the distinct odor of rancid nut oil. Finally, on Thanksgiving morning, dinner with the in-laws just hours away, I gave in and shampooed my hair for the first time in months. It looked great that day, but my shocked scalp immediately started to shed delicate flakes, and the texture of my hair soon got weird. That was all the assurance I needed. I’m back on the ’poo-free track, and this time I’m not getting off. ■

dull residue on my hair. I’ll stick to drinking it.

The Kitchen Spa These five foods will nourish your skin from the outside in By Anngela Leone Help your skin survive unpredictable autumn weather with these two essential steps: exfoliation and moisturization. Skin-cell buildup leads to dryness, poor circulation, and blemishes. Exfoliation eliminates these dead cells, revealing fresh skin that is better able to absorb moisture. And guys, take note: While men’s skin tends to be oilier than women’s, men may be more prone to epidermal dehydration. Food Item

Purpose

Avocado

Moisturizer Loaded with vitamins A, B, C, and E, as well as potassium and fat, avocado is the perfect moisturizer. This natural soother is ideal for mature and weather-worn skin, reducing roughness, cracking, and irritation. The oil found in the peel of the avocado contains a humectant, a substance that locks in moisture.

Cucumber

Moisturizer Cucumbers contain compounds known to tighten pores and reduce inflammation, which is why they’re the classic choice for minimizing puffiness around the eyes.

Oatmeal

Exfoliant & Oats are especially soothing for windMoisturizer worn or itchy skin, due to their anti-

MAYONNAISE: The ingredients in this supposed miracle conditioner—eggs, lemon, and oil—are the holy trinity of home hair remedies, but I say leave the stuff on the sandwich. OLIVE OIL: Good for long hair that gets dry on the ends. A drop or two—no more—rubbed between the palms and applied lightly to dry hair will moisturize and add shine. —T.H.

Recipe Take a spent avocado peel and using gentle upward strokes, lightly massage your face with the inside of the peel. You can either leave on as a nighttime moisturizer or, for daytime, wash your face with it gently, rinsing three or four times with warm water; pat dry.

Puree 1 tablespoon each of cucumber and parsley. Then blend in 1 tablespoon of plain yogurt until smooth. Cover your face with this creamy masque and leave on 15-20 minutes. This will rejuvenate your skin as it moistens. Rinse off with water.

inflammatory properties. Finely ground oatmeal draws impurities from the skin, stimulates circulation, and encourages new cell growth. Oat proteins also form a protective barrier to help retain moisture and prevent water loss.

Mix 2 tablespoons each of ground oats and aloe vera with 2 teaspoons of brown sugar and 1 teaspoon of lemon juice until you have a smooth paste. Gently massage onto damp skin. Rinse off with warm water. Excellent for your face or as a smoothing body treatment.

Peach

Exfoliant

Peaches are rich sources of skinrenewing alpha-hydroxy fruit acids, which get rid of dead cells, and vitamins A and C to nourish new ones. Peach juice helps unblock pores, fight blemishes, and may even lighten age spots and minimize wrinkles. Its astringent, toning effects are especially effective for oily skin.

For a simple skin pick-me-up, cut a slice of a juicy peach and massage the flesh on your face. Leave the juice on for 20 minutes, then rinse with warm water. Or rub the inside of the skins of a peach on your face for a few minutes at bedtime and let the juice absorb overnight.

Strawberry

Exfoliant

Each strawberry packs a mighty dose of exfoliating vitamin C and alphahydroxy acids, which help remove dirt and dead skin cells. AHAs also help reduce pore size and minimize ingrown hairs due to shaving, especially important for men. Perfect for oily skin, strawberries improve texture, minimize greasiness, and encourage a healthy, radiant complexion.

With a fork, mash 8-9 strawberries into a paste. Add 3 tablespoons of honey; mix. (Be sure not to overblend or the mask will be runny.) Apply directly to your skin and let sit for a few minutes, then rinse off.

HAIRBRUSH: Brushing every single night makes my wavy hair too straight, but 100 strokes twice a week helps to distribute the natural oils evenly. LEMON JUICE: Some people swear by it as a clarifying cleanser, but after applying the juice of one lemon to my hair and rinsing, I found it lank and lifeless for a couple of days.

The Scoop

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Air Supply On top of everything else, global warming may be causing the asthma edpidemic By Sarah Bridges IF IT SEEMS LIKE EVERYONE’S wheezing these days, that’s because asthma is a growing problem. Though the disease was almost unheard of in 1900, it now affects over 15 million Americans a year and annually kills 180,000 people around the world. In the U.S., the asthma rate has increased 42 percent in the past decade alone. What’s causing this spike? Recent evidence points to the common culprit in so many major environmental woes: greenhouse gases. Global warming is not only threatening to melt the polar ice caps, trigger increasingly violent weather, and throw agriculture into a tailspin, but it’s also emerging as a major factor in the asthma epidemic in a host of surprising ways. “None of the things we used to associate with asthma, like poor indoor air quality and cockroach infestation, have increased that much—but a whole lot of things related to burning coal and oil have. That’s what’s causing this tremendous increase,” says Paul Epstein, MD, codirector of Harvard Medical School’s Center for Health and the Global Environment. Asthma occurs when the bronchial tubes routinely become so inflamed that the sufferer 96 | Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

has difficulty breathing; attacks of wheezing and coughing start in response to allergens in the immediate environment. It tends to set in around preschool-age and improves in adulthood, so children are the most affected. It’s not completely understood why some kids develop asthma and some don’t, but it’s likely a genetic predisposition set off by triggers in a child’s immediate surroundings. Exposure to high levels of some of the allergens that cause attacks—dust mites, pollen, and cockroach infestation— seems to prompt new cases. Recently, the role of immunity has also been emerging as a cause with the “hygiene hypothesis.” This asserts that in our increasingly sterile surroundings, children are exposed to fewer microbes, preventing their immune systems from maturing properly and leaving them vulnerable to both allergies and asthma. But this isn’t enough to account for the dramatic increase in asthma rates, so, in recent years, public health experts have been trying to sort out exactly how the global environment is coming into play.

Scientists first looked into vehicle emissions, since the particulates in exhaust are known to trigger asthma attacks. They found that auto emissions don’t just make kids who already have asthma more miserable; a 2002 study from researchers at the University of California at San Francisco and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), showed that diesel particles are able to alter human immune systems in ways that can actually cause new asthma cases to develop, a finding that is corroborated by epidemiological evidence of higher asthma rates along truck routes and near bus depots. (This is one factor—along with more cockroaches, mold, and mildew—that explains why poorer children, especially those in inner cities, are disproportionately affected. Their asthma rates are up to twice as high as average; in one part of Harlem in New York City, one in four children were recently found to have the disease.) For many scientists, the real surprise is how asthma rates are being driven up by a more pervasive consequence of our fossil-fuel consumption: global warming. “It appears that smog created by warmer temperatures not only triggers attacks in those who have asthma, but also causes children to develop asthma in the first place,” says Gina M. Solomon, MD, a senior scientist with the NRDC. This was first made alarmingly clear in a 2002 study from the University of Southern California School of Medicine that looked at the effects of ozone smog, which is caused by emissions from cars and industry; in a vicious circle, it’s also exacerbated by higher temperatures. In that study, researchers followed children with no history of asthma in 12 California communities for five years and found that the kids who played outdoor

“Being active outdoors in a high-ozone area is toxic to kids’ health.” sports in the communities with the highest ozone levels were three times more likely to develop asthma than the kids who didn’t play sports outside. The effect was not seen in the areas with lower ozone. “The combination of being active outdoors and being in a highozone area is toxic to kids’ health,” says Solomon. More troubling evidence came from a

major study in Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Researchers evaluated more than 650,000 children throughout Western Europe and demonstrated that those exposed to higher levels of indoor humidity— something that increases along with outdoor temperature—are more likely to develop asthma. A ten-percent humidity increase was found to cause a three-percent increase in asthma rates (most likely because of the resulting increase in mold and dust mites). And earlier this year, Epstein and his colleagues explored how pollen levels would be affected by the higher carbon dioxide expected to come along with higher temperatures. When ragweed was exposed to the CO2 levels we’re expected to hit in the next 30 to 60 years, pollen production increased 60 percent. Epstein says that other high-pollen weeds will

likely respond in similar ways. Add this all to the simple fact that warmer temperatures will cause increasingly earlier springs—which means a prolonged allergy season with more high-pollen-count days and more attacks— and you’ve got a recipe for an ever-worsening epidemic. Of course, none of this is good news—but there is hope that the more that scientists learn about how air pollution and global warming are affecting our health, the better chance that more people will be motivated to care for our environment. After all, it wasn’t until the health effects of lead became known that we saw laws banning its use in gasoline and paint. “This issue will be considerably more complicated, of course,” says Epstein, “but calling attention to health issues can drive us to healthy solutions.” ■

BATED BREATH: Vehicle emissions and smog have been linked to new cases of asthma.

CLEAR THE AIR Putting the breaks on climate change and decreasing air pollution are crucial in the fight against asthma, but there are other things you can do that will have a more immediate effect on your surroundings and your lungs. Inhalers and other prescription drugs remain important for treating attacks, but prevention involves a multi-pronged approach to boost natural immunity and reduce triggers. Here are some steps you can take to prevent attacks—and lessen the risk that your children may develop asthma in the first place. —S.B. KEEP YOUR HOME CLEAN AND FRESH Mold, mildew, dust mites, and cockroach infestations can trigger attacks and may be involved in causing asthma—so keep bathrooms and kitchens clean and well-ventilated, and consider buying a dehumidifier if you have a damp basement. A vacuum cleaner with a HEPA filter will help reduce dust when cleaning; getting rid of wall-to-wall carpet will also lessen dust accumulation inside. Don’t let people smoke in your house, and avoid using a fireplace or wood-burning stove whenever possible. Keeping windows closed during highpollen-count days will help keep indoor air fresh. And as a general strategy, many doctors recommend using HEPA-filtered air purifiers. IDENTIFY FOOD SENSITIVITIES Eliminating foods that trigger attacks can reduce the frequency and severity of episodes. Common triggers include wheat, dairy, and artificial sweeteners, but blood tests and elimination testing can help you pinpoint your own.

Get Involved The American Lung Association Action Network (lungaction.org) will update you on legislative issues involving air quality and lung health, and provides easyto-use forms for writing to Congress on specific issues. Their web site features a tool that lets you check the air quality within your zip code. The Natural Resources Defense Council’s Clean Air & Energy Campaign (nrdc.org/air/pollution) features in-depth reports on air quality, frequent news updates on pollution and clean energy issues, and an “activism toolbox.”

EAT A NUTRIENT-RICH DIET Indulge in plenty of fresh veggies and fish. In studies, antioxidants like vitamin C and selenium seem to protect against asthma; the omega-3 fatty acids found in many fish may also help reduce inflammation of the bronchial tubes. DON’T OVERUSE ANTIBIOTICS The relationship between immunity and asthma is still being explored, but studies show that antibiotic use in young children leads to higher rates of asthma, perhaps because they reduce children’s natural ability to fight allergens. Use antibiotics only when necessary, and talk to your doctor if you’re concerned about overusing them. Some day-to-day exposure to germs may also help children’s immune systems develop, so consider eliminating antibacterial products from your home. (Most experts agree that antibacterial products don’t offer extra benefit beyond soap and water anyway.) plentymag.com Oct/Nov/06 | 97

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Cosmic Thing Biodynamic viticulture is turning the wine world on its head By Traci Hukill RANDALL GRAHM, Bonny Doon Vineyard’s lanky winemaker and innovator-in-chief, delights in going against the grain. He celebrated pink wine when everyone else was shunning it, topped his bottles with screw caps, and gave his wines cheeky names like “Bouteille Call” and “Critique of Pure Riesling.” Lately, Grahm is obsessed with terroir, the French term for the sense of place expressed through a wine. “A great wine tells you where it’s from,” he says. Grahm’s quest for a wine that communicates something unique has led him, like a growing number of other American vintners, to start growing his grapes biodynamically. Biodynamic agriculture—a beyond-organic farming method developed by Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, who also founded Waldorf education—has been big among European winemakers since the late 1980s, when the lordly French estates Domaine Leroy, Domaine Leflaive, and Maison Chapoutier went biodynamic in a last-ditch bid to rescue flagging quality. But in the last 98 | Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

TERROIR-ISTES: Bonny Doon’s Randall Grahm tastes the (fermented) fruits of his labor (right); biodynamics in action at the Ceago Estate vineyards (above).

three or four years it has begun to attract intense interest among California vintners. To become certified biodynamic practitioners, growers must eschew synthetic fertilizers and pesticides; many biodynamic farms and vineyards are also certified organic. (See page 100 for more on the certification process.) Biodynamic agriculture goes well beyond prohibitions, however. It’s a holistic philosophy that views everything in nature as interconnected at subtle “energetic” levels and emphasizes the unique energies at play in each farm or vineyard—which explains why many vintners view it as a recipe for terroir. Most winemakers are eager to distinguish their brands by developing terroir, and some biodynamic practitioners believe that even bigtime grape growers will get on board for this reason. But biodynamic agriculture also encompasses rituals that some may view as oddly New Agey, if not downright bizarre. Take, for example, the fertilization methods. Biodynamic growers pour minute quantities of herbal preparations—chamomile, Photographs courtesy of Ceago and Bonny Doon Wineries

yarrow, nettle, oak bark, dandelion, valerian—into mountains of compost; the herbs are thought to focus the faint influence of the planets, which supposedly help regulate crop cycles and balance soil. On the autumnal equinox they bury cow horns filled with manure, leave them underground to absorb the hidden rhythms of the earth, then dig them up at the spring equinox. They pour a few ounces of the cow-horn manure into gallons of water and stir for an hour, reversing direction every few minutes to create “chaos,” which is thought to “dynamize” the manure. Then they spritz their fields with the diluted solution to stimulate root growth. All this raises eyebrows among conventional grape growers. But studies by University of Washington soil scientist John Reganold have shown that biodynamically farmed soil has better structure, more organic matter, and higher beneficial microbial activity than conventionally farmed soil. Scientifically proven or not, biodynamic winemaking is attracting attention. Last spring, the New York Times’ top ten California sauvignon blancs included vintages by Patianna and Ceago, both biodynamic vineyards. And in the summer of 2004, Fortune magazine, intent on

debunking biodynamics, set up a rigorous blind tasting with seven sommeliers and wine writers comparing equivalently priced biodynamic and conventionally grown wines. In eight out of ten instances, the biodynamic wines won—and the ninth was a tie. Supporters of biodynamics don’t claim it necessarily makes better wine. “No; it makes a more authentic wine,” is a typical statement. In conventional winemaking, the vintner is likely to add tartaric acid to boost the wine’s body, or use a cultured yeast, perhaps one from France, to bring out certain features (like, say, fruitiness). Biodynamic vintners, in contrast, use indigenous yeasts—those naturally occurring in the grape—and instead of adding or subtracting acid to individual wines, they might blend them to achieve balance. “Authenticity of place and vintage: I think people can gravitate toward that,” says Mike Benziger, who has farmed his Sonoma vineyard biodynamically since 1997. “What we’re looking to do is connect with a certain base of people who are looking for the authentic experience and are willing to buy products produced responsibly. And the payoff is that they get products that are real.” ■

Supporters of biodynamics don’t claim it necessarily makes better wine. “No; it makes a more authentic wine,” is a typical statement.

TILL TO TABLE: Green fields at the Benziger winery (right).

Great Glasses With all the vintners on the biodynamic scene these days, how do you choose the best bottle? We turned to sustainable grape expert Scott Pactor, who stocks roughly 250 varieties of organic and biodynamic wines at his natural wine store in New York City, Appellation (appellationnyc.com). Here are some of his favorites: Domaine Leflaive, Puligny-Montrachet Folatieres, France, 2001. From one of the

world’s great producers of white burgundy, with hints of lemon and vanilla. Terrific nuttiness, minerality, and highlights of oak. Domaine Leflaive became completely biodynamic in 1997 under the direction of Anne-Claude Leflaive. $150. Brick House, Pinot Noir, Oregon, 2004.

Bright and ruby-colored; fruity with flavors of plums, currants, and sweet earth. A firm structure, soft and round on the palate with a long finish. Pairs well with roast lamb or pork. $45. Movia, Tokai Friulano, Slovenia, 2004.

A gem with a bouquet of almonds and field flowers. Two years of aging give it depth, making it perfect as an aperitif or paired with fish or risotto. $25. Soellner, Gruner Veltliner, Austria, 2005.

A deep, vibrant wine whose crisp acidity and versatility has made it an up-and-coming favorite. A light- to medium-bodied wine produced on vineyards alive with birds, insects, and animals. Great with seafood, pasta, or alone. $14. Ona, Carmenère, Maipo Valley, Chile, 2003.

Dark, fruity, spicy, and rich with tannins, this Chilean wine comes from a grape originally found in Bordeaux, where it was nearly annihilated by phylloxera, a tiny insect related to aphids. Since then, the grape has thrived in Chile’s lush Central Valley, bordered by the Andes and mountain streams. $11. —Carol Huang Photographs courtesy of Benziger Winery (above) and Brick House (top right)

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MORE THAN A VINEYARD: Biodynamic wineries like the Ceago Estate raise animals nearby to help improve their land (below).

Kashi ® foods look like real, natural food because that’s what they're made with. Like TLC® granola bars, with roasted nuts and oats.

And TLC crackers with their hearty, whole grain texture.

Certifiably Good

And GOLEAN Crunch!® cereal with honey-toasted clusters. Jeff won’ t put anything in his food that he can’t ﬁnd in nature ﬁrst.

Want biodynamic certification for your vineyard or farm? After you’ve kicked the pesticide habit, try setting aside a wildlife refuge on your property or planting some beans near your vines. And if you don’t succeed the first time around, you’re not alone: The process can be as rigorous as the bar exam. The certifying body, the Demeter Association, gives a farm the biodynamic stamp after it has been free of prohibited chemicals for at least three years and actively managed using biodynamic methods for at least two years. (About a third of Demeter-certified farmers in the United States were wine-grape growers as of June 2006.) An evaluator assesses the land and

reviews how it is managed, examining the inputs used and the portion of these inputs that are local versus imported. Then a panel reviews the evaluator’s report. Ninety percent of the time, a vineyard or winery will be required to take additional steps before becoming certified—for example, producing a greater portion of its fertilizer on site, either by raising animals or planting nitrogen-fixing plants like legumes, and setting aside more land for wildlife to preserve the land’s natural balance. A tough row to hoe, sure. But the benefits—both to the ecosystem and the palate—are becoming clear. —Carol Huang

kashi.com

100 | Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

Photograph courtesy of Ceago vineyards

“Surﬁng changes how you

look at everything. Even oatmeal.”

JEFF JOHNSON Kashi ® Nutritionist

What the heck does surfing have to do with food? Everything. What Jeff ’s learned from surfing is to flow with nature instead of fighting it. So he makes great tasting, all natural food from seven whole grains. Food that works in harmony with your body. It makes him, and you, feel just awesome. Meet Jeff at kashi.com.

7 whole grains on a mission

CHOICES

FOOD

Trick-free Treats Whether you’re doling out candy to neighborhood kids or serving guests at a costume party, skip the packaged sweets this Halloween and try making one of these yummy, eco-friendly alternatives By Monique Cuvelier

Peanut Butter Cups Our aim was to replace the emulsifiers and preservatives in Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups with all-natural ingredients, including a luscious dark chocolate. 1 pound organic, fair-trade bittersweet, semisweet, or milk chocolate, chopped 2 cups natural or organic salted peanut butter 1/4 cup organic powdered sugar

Special equipment:

BLOOD, GUTS AND GHOULS might be the customary frights at Halloween, but the real horror is inside your plastic jack-o’-lantern. Sugar, especially the refined white sugar and high-fructose corn syrup that lurks in your treats, has been linked to health problems from obesity to osteoporosis to some cancers and heart disease. Of course, sugar isn’t the only thing to fear—a potentially scarier bogeyman is the hydrogenated oil contained in snacks from Abba-Zabas to Zagnuts. Hydrogenation is used to help solidify liquid oil; the process gives food a longer shelf life and can create a nicer texture than using natural oils. But hydrogenation also produces trans fats, which raise cholesterol and can lead to heart disease. And then there are candy’s garish colors, often made from potentially dangerous dyes. Red 3, Yellow 5, Yellow 6 and Blue 2 have been connected with cancer. Americans eat heaping helpings of these dyes; in 2005 we ate 17.8 million pounds, according to the Feingold Association, a nonprofit that aims to help people eat more healthfully. Of course, that means we’re eating even bigger heaps of candy. The US Census Bureau says Americans eat an average of 25 pounds of candy each per year (primarily from trick-ortreating!). We would never spoil Halloween by telling you to stay away from the sweet stuff, but we wanted to remove some of the frightful ingredients from a few favorites while keeping flavor and ease. Here are two Plenty-approved recipes that you can whip up in your own kitchen. ■ 102 | Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

Mini-muffin liners or petit-four cups Wire rack Candy thermometer

First, temper* the chocolate, which will give it a glossy sheen and keep it from turning white as it cools: Place 3/4 of your chopped chocolate into a bowl set over a small saucepan of barely simmering water. Bring the heat up to 113 degrees (Fahrenheit), remove the saucepan and bowl from the heat, and stir, slowly adding the reserved chocolate until it reaches anywhere between 82 and 86 degrees. Put the bowl back onto the now warm but not simmering saucepan of water and let it warm to between 88 and 91 degrees. Place a wire rack over a sheet of wax paper. Working one at a time, fill each muffin cup with melted chocolate. Then pour the chocolate back into the bowl, leaving just enough in the cups to coat the sides and bottom. Place the cups upside down on the wire rack and allow chocolate to set, about ten minutes (this will create hard shells into which you’ll pour the peanut butter mixture). Meanwhile, thoroughly mix the peanut butter and powdered sugar. Spoon the peanut butter mixture into the hardened chocolate shells almost to the top. Drizzle melted chocolate on the tops to fill and allow to set for one hour. Makes about four dozen mini cups. *Or try this quicker, alternative tempering process: Microwave the chocolate at 50 percent power until the top layer has started to melt, about 12 minutes. Let sit for 30 seconds, then stir; let sit again, and repeat this process until the chocolate is smooth and melted.

Candy Corn Brach’s candy corn contains 11 ingredients, four of them sugars. Our version requires just five ingredients and uses full-flavored honey rather than high-fructose corn syrup. 1/4 cup organic unsalted butter, softened 1/2 teaspoon organic vanilla 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt 1/3 cup organic honey 3-4 cups organic powdered sugar, plus an extra cup or so for rolling Natural food coloring (optional; the powdered kind works best)

Combine butter, vanilla, salt and honey in a food processor. With the processor running, slowly add powdered sugar until the mixture balls up and slowly turns around the processor bowl. Sprinkle a counter with powdered sugar and knead the mixture, as with bread dough, until it's no longer sticky and firm enough to hold its shape. Divide the mixture into three balls. Using a toothpick as an applicator, put a small amount of yellow food coloring into one ball. Knead the color through, adding more powdered sugar if it becomes sticky. Depending on the humidity, you may need to add up to a cup more sugar to achieve the right consistency. The dough should feel pliable, but not gooey. Repeat the process on a second ball with orange food coloring (or a mixture of yellow and red). Leave the last ball white. Working with one color at a time, break off a section of dough and roll it into a long rope about 1/4" in diameter. Line up each rope side-by-side with yellow on one end, orange in the middle and white at the top, pressing together gently to make a tricolored log. Slice into pieces about 1/8" to 1/4" thick, and use your fingers to shape into triangles. Candy corn is ready to eat immediately, but improves if allowed to set overnight. Makes about one pound.

Photograph by Kate Spear

PlentyLabs The Cola Wars

I admit it: I’m a Coke addict. I first drank Coca-Cola out of a baby bottle when I was three—my grandmother thought it would soothe a stomachache—and I’ve been hooked ever since. (Yes, I had a lot of cavities as a child….Why do you ask?) But I don’t like the “secret” part of the secret formula—who knows how many artificial ingredients it contains? So my colleagues at Plenty helped me find some healthier and tasty eco-colas. Maybe I can kick my Coke habit after all. —Deborah Snoonian

Steaz Green Tea Cola

Reed’s Original China Cola

Whole Foods 365 All Natural Cola

Boylan’s Natural Cane Cola

Fentiman’s Curiosity Cola

$1.59 for 12 oz. steaz.com

$1.19 for 12 oz. reedsgingerbrew.com

$0.49 for 12 oz. wholefoodsmarket.com

$1.39 for 11.5 oz. boylanbottling.com

$1.49 for 275 mL fentimans.com

Not surprisingly, this blended cola is the least fizzy of the five we tasted. The tea’s tannins give it a dry finish, so it’s a good choice if you like sodas that aren’t too sweet.

The most acidic brew of the bunch is also the spiciest, thanks to added nutmeg, cloves, and licorice. Serve it very cold so that the spices don’t overpower the cola taste.

Whole Foods’s house brand combines a straightforward cola taste with good carbonation, and a balanced sweetness and acidity. It almost tasted like the Real Thing.

This cola’s brisk, snappy bite, with hints of root beer and cinnamon, was a hit with our tasters. And even when it gets a little warm, the sweetness never becomes cloying.

With its deep brown color and creamy carbonation, you could almost mistake this sophisticated U.K. import for a microbrewed stout. We loved the overtones of ginger and vanilla.

Dilemma Q: I’ve decided to switch to green household cleaning products, but I still have half-used bottles of conventional cleaners. Should I keep using them until they run out?

A: This is a tough one. Switching to nontoxic cleaners is a great strategy—not only for the sake of the earth, but for your health, too. Still, dealing with the last remnants of the old stuff presents a slight problem. Cleaners that carry the words “poison” or “danger” on the label (usually heavy-duty stuff like oven cleaners and degreasers) are the most toxic. Have your municipal toxic waste management plant process these. Depending on where you live, you can usually either put them out for pick up or drop them off yourself (look under “toxic waste” in your yellow pages). Things that are labeled “warning” (like disinfectants) are moderately toxic and fall into a bit of a gray area. Some experts recom-

mend sending those to a toxic waste plant, too; others say dumping them down the drain is really a drop in the bucket—and that can be minimized by diluting the product with lots of water. Products labeled “caution” (like laundry detergent or dish soap) or those that have no designation on the label are okay to finish off. “I’d probably use it up even if it has a “caution” label just to save it from the landfills,” says green cleaning guru Annie Berthold Bond. But don’t ponder those matters too hard. Your one-time decision about whether to use or discard your conventional cleaners almost assuredly won’t condemn or conserve the environment.

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THE LAST WORD

To be or not I’m the hypocritical god of my backyard BY MARTHA HOLMES

IT SEEMS I SPEND MY TIME running between two goals: One is trying to kill things and the other is trying to keep things alive. Algae, on which all life depends, I kill. Roses, which stick me with thorns every chance they get, I sacrifice myself for. The dog and the cats are able to deprive me of my dinner by simply wishing it for themselves, while deer are forced to starve, if possible, beyond the dining room wall, where the nourishment of summer has dried up and blown away. If you’re a swan in the pond, I’ll bring you breadcrumbs. If you’re a mouse in the house, I shall pay no attention to how cute you are compared to, say, the earthworm (which I would defend at all costs) and will place a torture machine, spring-loaded and just your size, right in your path. In other words: drop dead. In my world, when it comes to man versus nature, it’s every man for herself. I’m the one who decides what lives where, or if. My head swells when I think of my powers. If I consider you cute, like a ladybug, you’re in business, but if I don’t, rest in peace. So if you were a spider I’d kill you, but if you were a spiderwort, I’d pour water on you and fertilize you once every two weeks. And if you’re a daddy longlegs, that’s a whole nother thing. You I’d carry to the door so you could get home unharmed, wherever home is. Just don’t make it to my bedroom—a capital offense. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m a dedicated greenhead. I loved An Inconvenient Truth and dragged everyone to see it, even though it was spring and there were better things to do than sit in a movie theater. I could have been reaching into my cache of poisons meant to take the lives of things I wanted to annihilate, like white flies and thrips and aphids, which I hoped to make into dead things without even knowing what they do or why they do it. There’s one poison for poison ivy, one for Japanese beetles, and one for bacteria—little beings we can’t even see. One poison is specific to the murder of yellow jackets and wasps, a far-reaching spray that can kill them in a distant tree without your having to leave your lawn chair. It’s a god’s tool, and I am the

god: I giveth and I taketh away. With yellow jackets, that decision is easy (an apology to the honeybees, who simply looked too much like the enemy). My husband and I have become so fond of the two frogs living in our fake pond that we have set aside our long-handled frog remover meant to skim them out of the water and into obscurity. Instead we bring them bugs we’ve killed and worry that they might get chilly, once the ice forms. Yet I’ve also poured salt atop an innocent slug and then watched it dehydrate to death. Slithery things gather no mercy, I guess, unless they’re frogs. One recent fall evening, on our way home from a lunch of smoked duck with brandied peaches and wild rice, we encountered a duck crossing the road. My husband, a hunter, was driving. He braked to a standstill, out of respect for the waddly bird, causing the folks traveling in the two cars behind us to slam on their brakes, all of them watching their lives flash before their eyes, each ending on a freeze-frame of a mallard duck. But it had been a great lunch. A moth has flown around the lamp and seems to be surrendering, flapping downward toward my notebook as I am writing, until it silently lands in my hair. I have nothing against moths, so I carefully help it out of its hirsute trap, hoping not to harm its fragile wings. Once it’s free, I toss it in the air, hoping it will fly off in some other direction and not pull an encore. Had it been a fly, however, that would be a different thing. I would get out of bed and seize the swatter to end the life of a single fly, if it were to make the fatal mistake of landing on my person. Ah, decisions, decisions. We poor humans must decide, again and again, what will be and what will not, and we don’t get a single day off. Why, there are still diseases to defeat, species to save, oceans to clean up. Or not. Oh, and then there are groundhogs to rescue. Or not. ■

In my world, when it comes to man versus nature, it’s every man for herself.

104 | Oct/Nov/06 plentymag.com

Martha Holmes has written for National Geographic, Yankee Magazine, The Paper, and The Independent. She reads her essays frequently on NPR.

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