How do you feel?

Image source: National Museum of American History

(I will follow)

I set out to write about traveling on foot rather than by car. I had in my head the benefits to personal health and finance that come from walking the quarter-mile errand or parking once at the sprawling shopping center and walking from shop to shop. There is of course the environmental benefit that this practice uses less fuel, which reduces impacts from producing, transporting, and burning fossil fuels. And, there is a diagonal benefit for those people who would otherwise drive to a gym and spend time walking in place.
However, my son’s recent fascination with fallen leaves, a phenomenon he experiences now for the first time, uncovers some of the less tangible and perhaps more valuable benefits of walking. Walking takes us steps away from the built environment, and steps closer to our natural environment.
Thoreau writes in Walking, in his charmingly confrontational style,
“I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil--to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of that.”
Pirsig follows a related train of though in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, when he describes how different it is to travel on a bike, exposed to the elements and part of the landscape, as opposed to traveling by car, where the real world is something separate and framed like an image on television.
I think Thoreau misses (or more likely avoids) the truth that people are part of both nature and society. However, focusing on the former, he offers important insight. Hidden in buildings, riding in cars, squeezed between earphones, and blocked from the real world by television, it’s no wonder we as a society don’t understand environmental problems or why they are fundamentally important to people. The world around us changes year by year, season by season, day by day, and minute by minute. But we set the thermostat to the same number, year round. We buy grapes in the dead of winter from the same shelf we do in the height of summer, oblivious to the convoluted feat of international trade that makes this possible. We turn the tap, unaware of whether the reservoir is ready to spill its banks, or if it has receded to leave expanses of dry mud. Distracted by a television, we don’t know if the geese have yet passed for the season, or that the Eastern bluebird has come back from the edge.
Even if only for a moment, taking a step out the door pushes away the curtain of our ignorance. Walking through the neighborhood reveals some sliver of all of the natural systems upon which our lives are built. A walk in a nearby wood or farm field is an opportunity to learn. The conscious walk makes clear the habits of water and wind and begins to explain the riddles of thistle and finch.
Save some gas, open your eyes, be the solution, walk away, walk away.

Image source: ER Dunhill

The great pumpkin

Halloween was a big event at my house when I was growing up. My mother donned a tall black hat and a black cape and became a witch, attended by our two black cats. My brother and I would, weeks in advance, sketch plans for our costumes with particular attention to the faces, and get to work repairing or building moulds and pouring liquid latex. This would yield flexible scars, open wounds, heavy brows and jaws, and other ghastly bits. On the big night, we'd adhere this stuff to our faces and hands, cover it with grease paint in some putrid color, don meticulously-torn clothing amended with dirt and charcoal dust, and tour the neighborhood as zombies or ghouls.
This holiday seems to be in a state of flux, with communities pushing trick-or-treating toward more convenient days and times, many communities doing away with it all together, and people instead attending parties here and there.
I’ll put some questions to the reader and ask, “How can one be the solution for Halloween?” What are some easy ways that people can green all of the accoutrements of this most excellent holiday?

Image source: Some flickr page that I randomly looted

Redress of grievances

As the Washington Post and several other newspapers reported Thursday, the Maryland State Police recently distributed letters to 3 members of the nonprofit group, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, indicating that the state had maintained records and gathered intelligence on those 3 individuals as suspected terrorists.
This organization seeks to educate citizens and advocate for clean energy in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. It’s based just a short Metrorail ride from my home in the MD suburbs of DC. And while I’ve never been affiliated with the group, I have known several people, mostly high schoolers in need of service learning hours, who have volunteered with them. CCAN describes itself:
“The Chesapeake Climate Action Network (CCAN) is the first grassroots, nonprofit organization dedicated exclusively to fighting global warming in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Our mission is to educate and mobilize citizens of this region in a way that fosters a rapid societal switch to clean energy and energy-efficient products, thus joining similar efforts worldwide to halt the dangerous trend of global warming.”
A nonprofit group with an office in Takoma Park, MD, which recruits volunteers to write letters to the editor, send postcard mailers, hold peaceable rallies at the Statehouse during critical votes, or pass-out fliers about wind turbines and light bulbs, doesn’t seem like a terrorist breeding ground to me. Even recognizing that members of the organization engaged in an act of civil disobedience (several members were given citations for laying in a roadway to block access to a coal-fired power plant in MD), this is not the kind of organization that engages in monkeywrenching, let alone violent terrorism. The CCAN members on the list as potential violent terrorists have no criminal records.
I’m generally concerned that the state government seems to be indulging in the fiction that environmentalism is somehow intrinsically linked to terrorism. It’s not. That’s worth restating, in no uncertain terms: Environmentalism is not a fringe or radical movement and it is not a front for vandalism or domestic terrorism. Suggestion to the contrary is not only profoundly ignorant, but insults thousands of Marylanders who work or volunteer their time to improve their communities.
I’m concerned that the actions of the Maryland State Police may not have been this general or accidental. Among the Chesapeake Climate Action Network’s platforms has been opposition to the Inter-County Connector, a planned multibillion-dollar stretch of highway in the Washington, DC area. Pushing the ICC through was among the central platforms of Maryland’s former governor, who was in office during the period that the CCAN members were labeled suspected terrorists. This concern over abuses of power becomes more pronounced, in light of similar listing and surveillance of members of other groups that opposed the governor’s politics, such as anti-death penalty, anti-war, and pro-choice groups. The appearance that politics may have been the motivation behind black-listing these individuals is troubling.
I remind my government:

Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The right to peaceable assembly, the right to petition the government for a redress of grievances, and freedom from unreasonable searches are outlined in the US Constitution. I believe Maryland’s government owes its citizens an explanation.

So, where does that leave us?

Prometheus has a very thought provoking post up on Europe's approaches to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in order to avert climate change. Many climate change activists have pointed to Europe as a "laboratory" for climate change policy methods in much the same way that the US views the states (e.g. California passing a low Carbon Fuel Standard).

Yet, while the EU has taken a much more proactive stance against climate change than the US, results have been mixed thus far. The first graph shows change in emissions on a per capita basis, while the second shows total emissions, beginning in 1997.




In both cases, it is apparent that many European countries are not necessarily halting their share of emissions. In fact, many countries seem to be having a difficult time stabilizing their emission output. Even so, these graphs don't tell the whole story.

I think it is obvious that it is very difficult to create a portfolio of policies that reduce emissions while paying head to entrenched politicians and economic feasibility. It is so difficult that my entire thesis is based entirely on this issue. Yet, President Bush or no President Bush, the discussion on how to reduce emissions would still be filled with grandiose speeches of how much a lie global warming is or how those that want to reduce emissions are communists. It would still be filled with deal making and consensus policies. The policy levers used by the US may still not be "ideal" or those used by Europe. Behind the scenes, though, there is a much different narrative.

First, many European countries are taking the initiative to embrace alternative forms of energy. For instance, Germany is becoming the world capital of solar energy, even though it gets as much sun as say, Rochester, NY. Also, many of these countries will have an easier time to reduce emissions due to their smaller share of total global emissions. The US represents almost one quarter of global emissions - with those produce by just our passenger vehicles representing almost 5% themselves.

The focus on the US and its inaction is merited in that our path to a sustainable emissions level is much more difficult than most of these European countries. So, where does that leave us now?

So, what is it?

I heard a college kid explain to her father that "...sustainability is just another term for environmentalism", as I rode home on the Metro yesterday evening. The word "sustainability" has been bandied about here and there, especially since the UN's World Summit on Sustainable Development dispersed the idea in 2002. But, it seems that lots of people still don't get it.
So, what is sustainability? Is it purely an environmental idea, as our student suggests? Have sustainable ways of life ever existed? Do any exist now? If we were to shift our current way of life to a sustainable one, who would win and who would lose?

Image source: Wikipedia

On walking and chewing gum

For a number of reasons, environmental issues have enjoyed a central place in policy debates and decisions, elections, business, and the public consciousness for the last few years. With troubling economic changes afoot, particularly in the financial and housing sectors, will the environment again retire to obscurity? Should leaders and communities shift their focus away from environmental issues?