Why it matters:

This is our food we’re talking about here.

Recap:

“Zap it!” “Nuke it!” These sound like scary things that overzealous generals want to do to Godzilla.

But we say these things all the time. In fact, they’re all euphemisms for “Microwave it.”

Now, you wouldn’t want someone pointing at you saying “Zap him!” or “Nuke her!” would you? So why are you doing it to your food? This article from Mercola, gives some pretty convincing evidence for relegating your microwave to sponge-sanitizing duty.

Do you even know how your microwave works? “Food goes in cold, DING! Food comes out hot.” Okay, yeah, but while it’s in there it’s getting bombarded with microwaves which cause the water molecules in your food to go berserk and dance around (technical term there) effectively steaming your food.

“Great! I keep hearing from infomercials how steam locks in the goodness.” Except conventional steam (like all other forms of conventional cooking) operates in the opposite direction. Heat is transferred from the medium (the air inside your oven, the heating coils of your oven, boiling water…) to the molecules of your food, which then heat up and, finally start to, well, go berserk and dance around.

The science and research around microwaves and what they do to our food is spotty (that makes me feel better). Basically microwaves are classified as non-ionizing radiation, along with radio and light waves. Put simply, non-ionizing radiation can move atoms, but not alter their structure, composition, or properties. Whereas ionizing radiation (nuclear, x-rays, gamma rays, and the like) can make such alterations. But the article also points out that UV light, which is classified as non-ionizing, is still responsible for skin cancer.  The piecemeal research all seems to point to the “microwave effect.”

The basic premise of the “microwave effect” theory is that microwaves negatively effect organisms in ways that we don’t yet understand. Studies show that microwaves alter proteins and nutrients, sometimes converting them into carcinogens, but if they’re non-ionizing this shouldn’t be the case. The gist of the piece is this: if you are comfortable with a mysterious cooking device that may or may not be converting much of the good stuff in your food into free-radicals, then by all means, zap away.

Commentary:

I’m no scientist. I don’t know ions from my elbows. But I have to ask…If, because they are non-ionizing, microwaves aren’t supposed to break apart cells walls or viruses, but they can. And if, because they are non-ionizing, microwaves aren’t supposed to be able to convert beneficial chemical compounds into carcinogens and free-radicals, but they can. Maybe, just maybe, microwaves actually are ionizing?

The SteriPen has been the object of much hoopla in the adventure sport world the last few years. The item is basically a hand-held UV light used to sterilize water. Stick the thing in questionable water, swish it around for a bit, cross your fingers, and guzzle away. Just make sure you remembered to bring batteries. The Steripen works because UV light breaks down viruses and bacterial cell walls. So does that mean UV light is actually ionizing radiation?

I supposed that’s a question for the, I dunno, what? Physicists? What we do know is this, your microwave is very likely reducing the nutritional value of your food, and may even be turning it into a little carcinogen bomb. In fact, the only thing it sounds like you should be using your microwave for is, like we said, zapping your kitchen sponge when you’re done using it.

DING!

Creative Solutions:

• Honestly, take the microwave to your nearest e-waste recycling facility and never use it again.
• Unplug it until you do that.
• And eat organic when you can too

Why it matters:

This is the nation’s first real step toward climate action in years.

Recap:

“I’m just a climate bill. Yes, I’m just a climate bill. And I’m sitting here on Capitol Hill.”

Okay maybe it’s not as catchy as the original, but the important thing is, Senators Kerry and Lieberman have finally rolled out their long-awaited Climate Bill, and at close to 1000 pages it’s a doozy!

Page 1. Section 1. Ahem. May it come to the attention of present, that for the purposes of–

You know what? Let me sum up.

Much of the press surrounding the bill has to do with, not surprisingly given current goings-on, offshore drilling. One element of note allows coastal states to opt out of offshore drilling up to 75 miles from their shores and veto projects of neighboring states if they pose an environmental threat. However, as incentive for allowing offshore drilling, all participating states will take part in a sort of profit sharing arrangement.

On the emissions front, the bill calls for a 17 per cent reduction in 2005 emissions by 2020, and an 80% reduction by 2050.

Cap and trade is back, but in an welcome move, it’s also tightly controlled. Though the bill is an exercise in legalese, by most accounts the cap & trade program applies differently to utilities than it does to the transportation sector, with certain industries being required to purchase carbon credits, but not being permitted to sell their excess. Furthermore any cap and trade market will be confined to the businesses themselves, and outside speculation and investment will not be allowed.

Commentary:

As we’ve said here at EMD before, the real key to cap and trade is the cap, but by excluding Wall Street from the process, a cap & trade program will have a better chance at accomplishing what it’s meant to.

Environmental groups are in agreement in their support of the bill, with few exceptions or caveats. Though, coming on the heels of the wimpy Copenhagen conference, there seems to be a sense that any climate action bill is a good climate action bill.

Though it’s unlikely to get passed before the Cop15 nations reconvene this December in Mexico, this is the hope. Environmental experts seem to agree that the chances for any international climate action will be greatly improved by strong American Climate legislation.

So tell your representatives that you support the bill.

Creative Solutions:

• Green Your Business
• Go see “No Impact Man”
• Understand Climate Change through Interactive Simulations
• Write a letter
• Support the Center for Public Integrity
• Become a Member of the Rainforest Action Network, Krypotinite to Big Business

Why it matters:

Because a lot of policy makers, including our President, have proposed more offshore drilling.

Recap:

You know in movies like “There Will Be Blood” where the guy is drilling for oil and he strikes a rich, gooey pocket and a geyser of crude goes blasting into the air? Well unless you’ve been living in a cave for the past weeks, you now know that that can happen underwater to. For the cave-dwellers out there, British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon, a mobile oil derrick off the coast of Louisiana, exploded this week. Eleven workers were killed and 200,000 gallons of oil were spilled into the gulf, with another 5000 gallons coming each day.

So what’s different about this oil spill? Well, it’s not a spill. The advantage of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill (I can’t believe I just wrote that), is that the tanker had a finite capacity. Once the tanker had spilled it’s 11 million gallons of oil all over the Alaska coast line it had nothing more to give. Unfortunately, the Deepwater Horizon “spill” is actually more like the aforementioned geyser.

Think of the Deepwater Horizon as Daniel Day Lewis and the oil well as his milkshake. Daniel uses a massively long straw (18,000 feet or so) to suck up the oil. But on April 20 Daniel exploded, dropped his straw on the bottom of the gulf, and the straw – still tapped into the milkshake – is now endlessly oozing chocolately goodness to the surface. Unlike the Valdez, this leak is potentially limited only by the size of the well itself.

As the oil marches toward the Louisiana coastline, the EPA and other experts are scrambling to prevent landfall, or at best, mitigate the damage. Unlike Alaska’s rocky shoreline, Louisiana’s wetlands are comparatively harder to clean and more sensitive. As a result, cleanup crews have resigned themselves to setting the slick on fire.

The timing of the oil leak couldn’t be more poignant, coming as it does in the midst of the debate and political maneuvering around the proposed senate energy bill. In fact, as part of that maneuvering, even the White House was proposing expanded offshore drilling as recently as a few weeks ago, but the Louisiana leak has lead the Obama administration to reevaluate the proposals.

Commentary:

There’s a reason experts call our present situation an energy “crisis”. Faced with such a crippling energy deficit, it’s tempting to bridge the gap with familiar, proven – if antiquated – technology. But the last few weeks have provided us with tragic reminders of why we need to stop delving into the past when it comes to our energy future. The Upper Big Branch Mine disaster and the more recent Deepwater Horizon explosion have collectively claimed nearly 30 lives, and while the collateral fallout of the mine explosion was relatively small, the oil leak will likely go on to kill thousands of fish, birds, and marine mammals while smothering a sensitive wetland to near oblivion.

Oil spills are rare, but their effects are staggering, and far-reaching. Mine disasters are disturbingly common, yet the industry continues to fight stricter safety regulations. When the Deepwater Horizon went down, British Petroleum, who posted $6 billion in profits last year, quickly asked the fed for financial assistance in cleaning up the leak. In a refreshingly logical move, the Obama administration just as quickly declined. If the events of the last several years have shown us anything, it’s that the private sector – for all its innovation – will always put profit first.

So how do you convince the energy sector to abandon dangerous, poisonous, out-dated technology for renewable energy? You give them no other choice. The fossil fuel industry has made themselves the bratty bully on the playground, “Make me!” It’s unfortunate, but only strict regulation and crippling taxes will convince these clowns to step into the 21st century.

It took fossil fuels for the world to let go of whale blubber. Whale blubber! Unfortunately there is no one clear replacement for fossil fuels. The best renewable energy source depends on location and application, and in many cases multiple approaches will be needed. Domestic and municipal solar, wind, and geothermal will need to work in tandem to meet demand. And that demand will need to be curtailed. There are a finite number of BTUs and electrons available to us Earthlings at any given moment. We need to learn to do without on occasion or certainly do with less. There’s no point in having all the electricity you can handle when you and the planet are broiling and suffocating to death on the emissions it took to create it. But I’m a realist, so, finally, we will need new technologies and new energy sources to combat this problem.

So lets make the energy companies adapt.

Creative Solutions:

• Tell the Prez
• Change Your Oil Less Frequently
• Run Your Car With Old French Fries… Sort Of
• Promote Alternative Energy by Buying Green Power
• Trade In Your Desktop
• Unplug Appliances When Not in Use
• Line Dry Your Clothes
• Tear Yourself Away From the Tube
• Join the This is Our Moment campaign

Why it matters:

Because Blankenship is the big man on campus when it comes to coal, and it seems his disregard for the environment is rivaled only by his disregard for human life.

Recap:

From plane crashes to shootings, sudden, deadly tragedies always seem to leave people looking for answers. Who is to blame? Could it have been prevented?

The April 5th coal mine explosion in Montcoal, West Virginia is no exception.

Coal mining is an unquestionably dangerous profession, and every collapse or explosion rekindles questions of safety and diligence. But in the wake of this most recent disaster, Massey Energy, and more specifically its CEO Don Blankenship, who owns and operates the Upper Big Branch mine, has come under especially heavy fire.

If the name sounds familiar, it should. We featured Blankenship in our piece about the recent and dramatic rise in corporate lobbying against climate action. At the time he was assembling Sean Hannity, Hank Williams Jr., and Ted Nugent for his “Friends of America” music rally, and telling attendees that “environmental extremists and corporate America were trying to destroy [their] jobs.” Thank God Massey isn’t “Corporate America”, eh? Instead of throwing a music rally featuring Sean Hannity (who I hear does a mean “Pants on the Ground”) maybe Blankenship should have been rectifying the scores of safety violations the mine had been racking up.

In fact, in the month leading up to the disaster alone, the mine accumulated nearly 60 violations. As a general rule, Massey’s modus operandi is to contest or simply refuse to pay most of them. Massey is not alone in this approach, but one of the citations was for insufficient venting of methane gas – a very serious problem and the probable cause of the blast.

Yet Blankenship continues to sneer at the call for greater accountability and stricter safety measures, and calls the notion that the Mine Health & Safety Administration cares more about safety than he does “as silly as global warming.”

Commentary:

Who can blame Blankenship? I mean really, the guy made $34 million last year, he flies around in the company’s private jet, and he lives in a Massey-owned home that will become his when he leaves the company (no matter the circumstances). It’s not that he doesn’t care about his employees’ safety… there’s just no money left.

Besides, coal mining is a business, Blankenship’s priorities are blank ink and pleasing his shareholders. Apparently employee safety is somewhere down near making sure there’s enough ranch dressing in the mine salad bar. But Massey’s shareholders don’t share Blankenship’s misguided priorities, and went so far as to file suit against the Massey board for as a recent ABC article put it…

“‘Blatantly disregarding their fiduciary obligations,” in part because of safety violations that allowed employees to die in “preventable accidents.’”

It shouldn’t be terribly surprising that Blankenship is one of the men behind Mountain Top Removal Mining (MTR). MTR obviously has its aesthetic drawbacks… the beauty of a gutted, debris-strewn mountain is lost on most. But looks aside, MTR also means airborne carcinogens and toxic streams. So whether it’s poisoning the air and water or forcing his employees to work in a virtual powder-keg (or all three!), it’s pretty clear that Don Blankenship only cares about Don Blankenship.

This is our chance to break up with coal. To save mountains. To save forests and streams. To save lives.

Creative Solutions:

• Check out the Rainforest Action Network editorial on the subject
• Send a letter to President Obama
• Donate your Facebook Status & Tweet This: “@barackobama Mr President, please come to Appalachia & see the devastation of Mountaintop Removal for yourself www.ran.org/obamamtr #MTR”
• Sign the petition at ilovemountains.org and stopmountaintopremoval.org
• Find out your connection to MTR
• Call your representative

Why it matters:

Because just one day a week will help you stay healthier and reduce your carbon and water footprints.

Recap:

Let me start by saying, no, I don’t mean take Monday off from work. Does anyone remember that “Simpsons” where Homer was skipping work and Marge tells him the nuclear plant called and said if he didn’t come in on Friday don’t bother coming in on Monday? And Homer’s all, “Woo-Hoo! Four day weekend!”

But I digress.

I mean take Monday off from meat. John Hopkins University started the Meatless Monday campaign in an effort to reduce U.S. meat consumption by 15%, thus improving the health of Americans and reduce our impact on the environment, and many celebs, media outlets, and blogs are joining in.

The concept is simple. On Mondays? No meat. That doesn’t mean no flavor, or no excitement, just no meat.

Meat has been getting a lot of bad press lately. From battery-raised chickens to downer cows it’s pretty grim out there. Fair enough. Beyond issues of humane treatment there is the environmental impact to consider. On average, a calorie of feed-lot beef requires as much as 10 times the water of vegetables and 20 times the fossil fuels. Grazed, organic beef is better, and grazed, organic bison is better still. However, there are no good ways around the methane, and the meat industry is responsible for nearly one fifth of the world’s green house gases – Far more than transportation!

But I’d rather light a candle than curse your darkness. Many people see Meatless Monday as more of a celebration of veggies, than a condemnation of meat. Rightly so. When you’re making a meatless meal, you suddenly find yourself rediscovering vegetables, and discovering others for the first time. “Kohlrabi? What the hell?” As if you needed more incentive, diets rich in veggies are high-fiber, high-nutrient, and low fat.

Commentary:

To some people the ideal of becoming a vegetarian is a bit like becoming an astronaut. You know they exist. You know vaguely what the gig involves. But it flies in the face of human nature and the food looks awful. Hell, to some people the idea of eating a vegetarian meal sounds like lunacy. My In-Laws are of this persuasion. Pasta, sandwiches, eggs… all incomplete without a little sliced, diced, or pressed muscle. They would put Spam in cereal if it was socially acceptable.

We here at EcoMatters are a diverse bunch when it comes to food, from strict vegans to omnivores. Human teeth say “omnivore”, so why should you have to give up meat entirely? You don’t. That’s the brilliance of Meatless Mondays. No one’s asking for all or nothing. Just one night a week. Who knows, soon you might be doing meatless Mondays and Wednesdays. There’s no end to the possibilities.

And like I said, no one’s asking you to give up flavor either. This past Monday my wife and I made vegetarian thai curry from this recipe from Roy Yamaguchi of, logically, Roy’s Restaurant. “Oh my gosh, we love Roy’s, don’t we honey?” We just added onions and red bell peppers to the mix, and substituted yukon gold potatoes and pan-fried, extra-firm tofu for the chicken. Full disclosure, this meal does use fish sauce, but it’s a good way to kick things off and you could probably substitute a good soy sauce.

Creative Solutions:

• Make Meatless Mondays a part of your week
• Eat organic and grass-fed beef
• Go wild, go hunting
• Cut beef out of your diet permanently
• Go big, go vegan

Why it matters:

Because weeds and insects are becoming resistant to chemical pesticides and herbicides, but they’re still poisons and we’re still using them by the barrel.

Recap:

We here at EMD are kind of tough on the folks at Monsanto. Maybe we’re being unfair. After all, they’re only monopolizing worldwide seed stock, casually genetically modifying those seeds, turning the U.S. into a monoculture (I hope you like corn and soy, because that’s all you’re getting!), and crippling farmers who refuse to play by their rules. Wait, no, we aren’t being tough enough.

Because Monsanto’s other great contribution to mankind is Round-Up. You’ve seen the adds: Beer-gutted suburban white guy (like me!) heads out to his driveway where he encounters a posse of unsightly weeds poking up through the cracks. “Well I’ll be,” he thinks, “I reckon I have to teach these bandits a lesson.” He unholsters his Round-Up and POW! POW! POW! Dispatches the interlopers with extreme prejudice.

First of all, I’m not sure why weeds get such a bad rap. But obviously we have decided there are places where plants should be allowed to grow, and places they shouldn’t. Not only that, there are species of plants that should be allowed to grow and species that shouldn’t. Think about that. I’m not much for hyperbole (though I do enjoy the word itself) but America’s rampant mass-killings of Clover, Daises, Crabgrass, and Dandelions is tantamount to genocide. Okay, maybe not, but who decided which plants are desirable and which ones aren’t? Little kids sure love Dandelions. And Daisies? Hell, you can make wine and necklaces out of them (or so I’m told). Don’t even get me started on Clover!

Okay, you got me started on Clover. Apparently Monsanto, Ortho, and Bayer decided which plants are desirable and which ones aren’t. Clover used to make up a good portion of home and commercial grass-seed mixes. Like all legumes (another awesome word), clover draws nitrogen from the air and “fixes ” it into the soil. Cut to the mid-twentieth century, broad-spectrum herbicides are invented and clover is one of their most vulnerable victims. So, rather than try to formulate an herbicide that spares this beguiling beneficial, they took a rather more sinister approach, and marketed Clover as a weed. Back to 2010, where backyard warriors around the nation spend their Saturdays hacking and spraying at a plant their grandfathers carefully tended. Did I mention that Clover is a personal favorite of beneficial insects and pollinators, like honey bees?

Monsanto claims that Round-Up is a safe product. This based on old research that the main ingredient glyphosate is only toxic if consumed or inhaled. Like cyanide! But Round-Up and its competitors are not purely glyphosate, and more recent and thorough research has implicated these herbicides in conditions ranging from developmental to neurological disorders.

So let’s go back to the driveway. I appreciate that a lot of time, effort, and money goes in to landscaping, and that a driveway sprouting weeds doesn’t exactly scream curb appeal. So go ahead and get rid of those pesky buggers… without harmful chemicals… without paying a dime… and just as effectively.

“Don’t you dare tell me to pull them up by hand.”

Wouldn’t dream of it. Do you own a tea kettle? Do you have running water? Problem solved. Boil water, pour on weeds, weeds die. Okay, boiling water doesn’t discriminate. But think about it… no chemicals leaching into the groundwater or running into the storm drain. No kids or pets riddled with neurotoxins.

Commentary:

Weeds, check. Most residential yards look like the TV dinners. Grass goes there, path goes there, flowers go here, tree goes over there… all sprinkled with a hefty dash of garden gnomes and fiberglass flamencos… just like the one next door.

I’m a fair guy, so I’ll ease us into this. What if I told you you could have a lush, low water, low maintenance lawn and all you would have to put up with is a wave a beneficial insects and pollinators, a few flowers, and the smell of fresh herbs? We’ve mentioned ecology — or herbal — lawns here once or twice on EMD, so why not once more? Imagine a spread of grasses, clovers, herbs, and low-growing flowers where your dull, struggling patch of green (or more likely brown) once lay. Oh and feel free to take a break from mowing, this won’t need nearly the attention of all that Kentucky blue.

The added bonus? No more battles with clover, because it’s only a weed if you call it one.

Creative Solutions:

• Ditch the Round-Up
• Ditch the lawn
• Sprinkle mowed grass back on your lawn
• Water your plants sparingly

Why it matters:

Between ore mines wiping out salmon populations and blood diamonds it’s enough to make you dig up your old friendship bracelets.

Recap:

I should start by saying no, that’s not an actual quote from Zales.

A recent AP piece gives the details, but here’s the gist…

Zales, the nation’s second largest jewelry retailer has joined 29 others in opposing a massive gold and copper mine under development in Bristol Bay Alaska, “near the world’s largest remaining wild sockeye streams.” In fact the jewel giant went on to say the watershed should be permanently protected from any large-scale mining and partnered with the No Dirty Gold campaign.

With jewelry comprising over 80% of global gold market, the move is being heralded as a significant step by some. But mine-developer John Shively sees the gesture as nothing more than a temporary PR stunt, and seems to think the jewelers will change their tune once the mines come on line. In fact, the developers say the site contains “among the most significant accumulations of metal ever discovered.”

But with the salmon populations of the Sacramento, the Columbia, and the Fraser rivers all but depleted, Bristol Bay may be the last stand for these fish, and the human lives they support.

Commentary:

I’m not a big fan of jewelry. In fact, I’m a firm believer in the notion that a man is allotted only two pieces: a wedding band and a watch. For women it’s different. Regardless, it’s none of my business if someone wants to weigh themselves down like Mr. T. But I’d like to think that the interests of wildlife and the environment should trump all things fashion.

“Tell that to minks and sables.”

Fair enough. Fashion doesn’t exactly have a great environmental record. Everglades National Park was at least partly established to protect the birds from poaching. The 1920s marked the high-water mark for feathered hats and bird populations were suffering accordingly. Hell, cotton is one of the most pesticide intensive crops on the planet.

At best a piece of jewelry expresses your religion, your marital status, or whether or not you are “Juicy.” But for the most part jewelry is just that… jewelry. Ornamentation. Let’s be honest, there are better uses for a few hundred dollars, but like I said, I’m not here to put a limit on your bedazzling.

But at the very least, throw your support behind Zales and the other supporters of No Dirty Gold. Ensure that your jewelry does not mean sacrificing rivers and wildlife.

Creative Solutions:

• Support NoDirtyGold
• Read the awesome “Outside” article about Bristol Bay
• Stop buying so much stuff you don’t need
• Watch Blood Diamond

Why it matters:

Because Americans drinks 400 million cups of coffee a day and that coffee has a serious impact, from seed to mug.

Recap:

When I was a kid, my parents had a very difficult decision to make… Folgers in a giant can, or Maxwell House is a giant can? A couple decades later it’s whole bean or ground? Tall, Grande, Venti, or SuperBigGulp? Sumatra or Verona? Organic? Fair Trade? Espresso, drip, or french press?

How you brew your coffee has more implications than just taste. I can’t argue with the convenience of a drip brewer on a timer. There’s a lot to be said for trudging into the kitchen and having a pot of steaming-hot joe waiting for you.

But let’s think about this. It takes, what, ten minutes to brew a pot of coffee? But unless you’re a fan of resetting the clock and timer every night, chances are you leave the machine plugged in all day. For 23 hours and 50 minutes of every day your coffee machine is an oversized clock. Then there’s the matter of filters. Unless you roll your own cigarettes and use phrases “I reckon”, I’m pretty sure you filter your coffee. Even if you select the unbleached variety, that’s a new paper filter every day.

In the plus column, you can compost used coffee grounds, paper filter and all. (You do compost, right?) But why even compost a paper filter when you can avoid them altogether? There are no shortage of reusable coffee filters floating around out there (some are even made of gold!), and I’ve never heard anyone say, “This coffee’s pretty good, but it would be better if you had poured it through a piece of paper.” In fact, if you’re willing to give up both your timer and your paper filters, you should consider a french press. Coffee experts (yes, they exist) agree… this is the way to brew coffee. As an added bonus the entire press is about the size of a coffee pot, which means you can stash it in a cupboard and free up some counter-space.

Now that you’ve got your new french press in front of you, it’s time to decide what the heck to put in it.

Despite its price, and its world-wide popularity, coffee is primarily grown in developing nations. Brazil, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Columbia were the world’s leading producers in 2009. Which brings us to two of the latest movements in coffee production: organic and fair trade.

Organic coffee is probably a fairly simple concept to grasp. It’s coffee that’s grown without the use of pesticides or fossil-fuel-based fertilizers. It’s worth noting that unless it’s grown in accordance with the USDA’s National Organic Program and bears the “USDA Organic” label, “Organic” can mean a lot of things. The benefits of truly organic coffee are also fairly simple to grasp: healthier soil and (because herbicides, pesticides, and other nasty chemicals are left out of the equation) presumably, healthier you.

Fair Trade, is slightly more nebulous. According to Transfair USA, a member of the Fairtrade Labeling Organizations network, Fair Trade products must meet standards of fair price, fair labor conditions, direct trade, democratic and transparent organizations, community development, and environmental sustainability. But don’t bother calling your congressperson to find our what those standards are. While applauded by many governments, Fair Trade standards are not set or enforced by any government, but are instead set by the Fairtrade Labeling Organizations network. Whereas certified organic agriculture begins and ends with the tools and techniques used, fair trade relaxes some of the environmental standards in exchange for elements of social justice.

Commentary:

As we discussed in our Whole Foods follow-up, making the most sustainable choice is sometimes complicated. Budgetary and philosophical decisions are often at play, and who knows? Sometimes the “greenest” choice might mean humanitarian disaster. Who wants to drink Certified Organic coffee from a plantation that’s operated like the mines in “Temple of Doom” (complete with the sadistic tween-age prince and his voodoo doll)?!

Coffee is an intensive crop grown in developing nations. By purchasing either Certified Organic or Fair Trade, you’re taking a step in the right direction. This isn’t to say Certified Organic and Fair Trade are mutually exclusive. Ideally your coffee is both, and as a result, no average cup of joe.

Creative Solutions:

• Buy Organic Coffee
• Buy Fair Trade
• Ditch the paper cup
• Go Loose-Leaf… With your tea
• Be smart with your power
• Get Food from Essential Living Foods

Why it matters:

Because food choices matter more than most.

Recap:

Many of you read our recent post “Whole Foods: Uncertified Organic?“  We brought you a report from Washington D.C.’s local ABC affiliate WJLA that alleged a number of wrong-doings by the super-alterna-grocer, specifically with regards to its proprietary line of 365 Organic frozen vegetables.  In summary: the vegetables (even the “California Blend”) were grown in China (BUM-BUM-BWAAAAH!), China does not have the same organic standards as the U.S., Whole Foods uses California-based QAI to certify their organic operations in China, but QAI informed WJLA they “had not certified any products from China”, and instead relied on a third-party certifier at the farm.

The report was undeniably flawed, as we acknowledged in the piece.  Yes, the vegetables are from China, it says so on the back of the package.  But despite a poor food-export track record as of late, that’s not a crime. And calling vegetables “California Blend” isn’t a claim, it’s just a name.  Like I said, “I’m fairly certain my English muffins aren’t from England.”  We were also careful to acknowledge that, despite the convoluted organic certification process, “there’s nothing to say that QAI isn’t diligent about what is, in effect, their fourth-party certifiers.”

We were also careful to include Whole Foods’ response to the WJLA piece from the Whole Foods blog.  But we still had questions.  We specifically wanted to understand what seemed to be a disconnect between Whole Foods, QAI, and the certifier on the ground in China, and the qualifications of that certifier.  Visions of sugarplums and Haliburton danced in my head… mostly Haliburton.  The whole thing sounded like a sub-contracting nightmare.  Was QAI contracted to the the work for $500K and then hiring another – perhaps unscrupulous – local certifier to the actual work for $250K?

We talked to the USDA and Whole Foods.

First, Sam Jones in the USDA’s Public Affairs Department… and a correction.  Based on the information in the WJLA piece, we suggested that the USDA certifies domestic organic operations directly.  This is not the case.  The USDA relies on several accredited companies (QAI among them) to certify organic agricultural operations both at home and abroad.  So why did QAI claim they “had not certified any products from China” if Whole Foods had the QAI-certified label on their frozen vegetables from China?  Simple… they aren’t the certifiers for Whole Foods’ suppliers in China, they’re the certifiers for the broader 365 Organic line of products.

Whole Foods sources their products from a number of different organic growers at home and abroad, all of which must answer to QAI or one of its fellow accredited agents, and all of these accredited agents must respect each others’ findings.  It’s a matter of following the paperwork.  Instead of: Farm => QAI => USDA and Whole Foods, it’s more like: Various farms => Whole Foods => QAI => USDA.

When I heard this I immediately thought “Whoah buddy!”  So this mysterious on-site certifier reported to Whole Foods?  If that didn’t seem like a conflict of interest I didn’t know what did.  But though I was not given a name, the USDA assured me both the operation and the on-site certifier would have had to meet with their approval.  So in this case, QAI acts a bit like a money manager or a CPA, Whole Foods hands over the paperwork they’ve collected from the various farms, QAI crosses the t’s and dots the i’s, and makes sure all the ducks are in a row (and on hormone-free diets) before passing along their findings to the USDA along with the metaphorical, giant, red “APPROVED” stamp.

So Whole Foods is following the letter of the law, if not the spirit.

But what about that?  When it grabbed headlines a year or so ago, consumers flocked to Sigg, believing their products to be BPA-free.  Well, it turned out Sigg bottles weren’t BPA-free, but with their market share sky-rocketing, the company did nothing to correct the misconception that their products were the BPA panacea.  Sigg had mislead its customers by omission, yes, but they were guilty of nothing in a legal sense.

Whole Foods has come under a good deal of fire recently.  CEO John Mackey wrinkled feathers when he denounced proposed heath care reforms, expressed skepticism about climate change, and referred to some Whole Foods products as “junk.”  Between the unpopular declarations of its founder and the company’s meteoric rise, many customers – some vocal in the media – are turning their backs on the chain.

“At the end of the day, we’re just a grocery store.”  This from Joe Dickson, Whole Foods’ Organic Certification Coordinator.  When I asked why they thought Whole Foods had become such a target, Dickson and his colleague Libba Letton agreed, Whole Foods cannot be all things to all people.  Letton gave an example, “Many of our customers are vegans, but we sell meat at our stores.”  This philosophy also applied to my question of why the company didn’t source the frozen veggies locally, and she added, “Whole Foods’ priority is bringing organic food to as many people as possible at various price points.”  This sometimes means sourcing vegetables from across the Pacific.

That’s not to say the company’s carbon footprint is not an issue.  Despite Mackey’s skepticism about climate change, Letton says the company takes an “And, And” approach to, amongst other things, carbon emissions.  As in, Mackey is skeptical about climate change, and he thinks environmental stewardship is important, and the company takes great steps to reduce its carbon footprint.  Likewise, Whole Foods follows the letter of the law when it comes to organic certification of its products, and it regularly takes products aside to verify the findings of the accrediting agents on site, tailoring its testing for the source country. (E.G. If lead contaminated water is a common problem in Gondwanaland, they are especially diligent for lead contamination.)

Commentary:

“Whole Foods cannot be all things to all people.”

Like many EMD readers you’ve no-doubt made an above-average attempt to make your commuting, consuming, work, life, and play more sustainable.  It’s tempting to think buying special products or shopping at special stores is enough.  We’re all busy.  We have families, friends, and incredibly demanding hamsters to attend to.  Unfortunately, and at the risk of getting morbid, living sustainably is not something you can say you’ve done… until you’re dead (and even then I hope you specified a biodegradable coffin in your will).  You can’t shop at Whole Foods and call it a day any more than you can install solar panels on your roof and call it a day.

Sometimes making the green choice is a no-brainer: drive the 1/2 mile to the supermarket?  Or walk it?  Hmm, pump a few pounds of carbon into the atmosphere?  Or spare the atmosphere and get some exercise in the process.  Unfortunately, the tricky thing about matters of sustainability is that they often requires trade-offs.  That darn hamster’s a hungry little devil… if you only have five dollars, you may have to decide between conventionally-grown local produce, or organically grown foreign produce.  From a carbon footprint standpoint you may just be breaking even: the fossil-fuel-based fertilizers vs. the fossil-fuel required to transport the veggies across an ocean.  Then it becomes a question of where you want the carbon to end up?  In the soil and sea?  Or in the air?

There aren’t many sure bets when it comes to sustainability.  But there are a lot of better bets.  Whole Foods is “just a grocery store”, but it’s also one that purchases wind energy, composts, and some of its stores are LEED certified.  Like any business (or consumer), Whole Foods has chosen its priorities.  And just as Whole Foods can find new suppliers if the current ones don’t meet their standards, you can find a new market if Whole Foods isn’t meeting yours.  “We’re not here to tell you where to shop,” says Dickson.

That would be too easy.  Instead, you’ll have to chose your priorities.

Creative Solutions:

• Go organic with Whole Foods
• Go local at your local farmers market
• Go local and organic at Whole Foods
• Go local and organic at your local farmers market
• Go local and organic with a CSA
• Go local-est in your own back yard
• Keep tabs on the USDA National Organic Program

Why it matters:

Because if you’re like me, keeping your plants properly watered is about as simple as designing and building an intergalactic starfighter… Oh, and it saves gallons and gallons of water.

Recap:

Some radical advancements in technology turn out to be… well… stupid. Take, for instance, every piece of exercise equipment they sell on television. From the Gazelle to the Shake Weight there are no limits to the cutting edge technology we’ll employ to get ourselves in shape. But let’s be honest, all it really takes is a pair of running shoes, maybe some dumbbells, and a hell of a lot of willpower. These are highly-effective (if you actually use them) low-tech solutions that have been around since the days when gym rats had greased hair, handlebar mustaches, and wore striped singlets. In fact, the weight of choice for those fellahs, the kettlebell, is making quite the comeback.

So what else is due for a comeback? How about the olla?

“YES! Sweet! Totally! Totes-magotes. The olla definitely deserves a comeback…

What the hell is an olla?”

It’s a terra-cotta jar. Doy!

Maybe I should clarify. In the days before our current agribusiness infrastructure, farmers had to make due without damming rivers, rerouting them, and pumping that water through ham-fisted, inefficient sprinkler systems. In the best situations farmers lived in fertile valleys, and were blessed with ample rain and swollen rivers. But this was likely the exception, and throughout much of the Southwest we can be certain dry and barren were the norm. Colonization is often associated with disease and exploitation but when Spanish settlers came to the Southwest they introduced the native population to olla irrigation and life was never the same… in a good way.

The concept is simple. Bury several ollas in the ground, surround each with a few plants, and fill the ollas with water. Drip irrigation is highly praised for its efficiency. By delivering small amounts of water exclusively to the root system, you reduce water use and the incidence of evaporation. In fact, when you use a traditional sprinkler, some of the water even evaporates as it soars through the air.

But ollas do drip-irrigation one better. Terra-cotta is porous, but it doesn’t drip… Over time the plants’ roots literally envelop the olla. The plants sip nearly every last molecule of water, and because the water source is now in the ground, evaporation is almost nil. For instance, compared to another traditional watering technique, the watering can, ollas can yield vigorous veggies with as much as 70% less water.

Commentary:

Conceivably there are limitations to using ollas on a commercial scale. I haven’t priced center-pivot irrigation systems recently, but I imagine they’re still cheaper than planting terra-cotta pots in the ground every few feet… even with all the water ollas save. But what do I know?

I know that ollas are a great solution for the home gardener, especially those in arid regions. I’ve never been a fan of the lush green lawn in the desert. If mother nature had wanted moss in Scottsdale, she would have put it there. Fruits and vegetables are thirsty plants, but there’s a lot to be said for self-sufficiency. And any fruits and vegetables you can grow at home, are fruits and vegetables that don’t have to be grown using mass-market commercial techniques and technologies, then trucked from God-knows-where to your local market.

“Oh not this again!”

Okay fine, putting all matters of sustainability aside, there are a couple other good reasons to use ollas. First, because ollas are low-tech, and relatively “new” old technology, most ollas are made by artisans and in some cases even the underprivileged as a means of income (check out East Central Ministries in New Mexico). Second, if you don’t have the dough to buy ollas (they run anywhere from $10 to $25), you can make them yourself. The one thing kids love more than planting fruits and veggies and plucking that first tomato, is makin’ stuff. This is their chance to do both.

So buy or make some ollas, save gallons of water, and never over-or under-water again!

Creative Solutions:

• Buy some ollas
• Make some ollas
• Visit the Dervaes family’s olla page
• Use less water on your yard
• Water your plants sparingly and at night
• Get nuts and recycle laundry water in your garden

Why it matters:

Because this is supposed to be food.

Recap:

Joann Brusso is just like your grandma was when you were a kid, except when she buys her grand kids a Happy Meal from Mickey-D’s, she promptly puts it on the shelf in her office and leaves it there for a year.

Okay, maybe she doesn’t do that with every Happy Meal, but she did it with one, and over the past twelve months she’s been blogging about it on over at her Baby Bites website. Nonna Joann’s focus is helping parents get their young-uns – Or should I say bambinos – To eat healthier food… and without a fight at that. But as part of her mission, on March 3rd of 2009 she decided to buy a Happy Meal, throw it on the shelf, and watch…

So what did she see?

Surprisingly little, actually. In fact, the photo above is that after picture. Sure the buns a little shriveled and the patty looks like a shrunken head, but all in all it looks about like the burger you had the other day (admit it!). And the fries… my God the fries… well they truly seem to defy nature.

As Nonna Joann points out, “Food is SUPPOSED to decompose.” Any food item that attracts nary a fly or a microbe has to raise eyebrows. In fact, after weeks with no decomposition Joann began to leave windows open to make things more interesting… to no avail. Flies, yeasts, molds, they all said, “Thank you, but no.”

For Brusso all of this adds up to one conclusion:

[If] flies ignore a Happy Meal and microbes don’t decompose it, then your child’s body can’t properly metabolize it either. Now you know why it’s called “junk food.”

Commentary:

I’m not a scientist, so I can’t verify this specific conclusion. On the contrary, I think anyone can attest to the fact that if you eat a lot of junk food, you’re going to get fat. When I was a sprout, the Happy Meal was the equivalent of champagne showers in the clubhouse. After Tee-Ball games nothing declared victory (or smothered the shame of defeat) like a Happy Meal. (It’s called a Happy Meal, for God’s sake!) If Nonna Joann’s right, then worst case scenario I have about 200 Happy Meals sequestered somewhere in my guts… A virtual museum of chicken McNuggets. I might have been better off eating the toys. Then again she does say “properly metabolize”, and I think she may be on to something there.

So what does Brusso’s experiment prove? If nothing else it illustrates that mother nature doesn’t see junk food as food in the traditional sense… and your digestive track is mother nature.

Creative Solutions:

• Grow some fruits and veggies
• Get them before McDonald’s gets them: Homemade baby food
• Reduce your take-out footprint
• If you do get take out, pass on the napkins, knives, and forks. You have them at home, remember?

Why it matters:

Because none of us is as effective at sending a clear message for climate action, as all of us. (How’s that for inspiration?!)

Recap:

Today, Saturday March 27th, 2010 at 8:30 p.m. your power is going to go out.

Am I a psychic? A clairvoyant? A soothsayer? (That last one is for the benefit of any 300 year-old EMD readers out there.)

At any rate, no. I’m not. But tomorrow night marks Earth Hour 2010. Hundreds of millions of people will be powering down as part of a global plea for climate action and you should be one of them.

Looking out from your voluntarily blacked-out abode at your neighbor’s comparative supernova might make you feel a little silly, but fear not; last year nearly a billion people, in 87 different countries took part, so you won’t be alone. Better yet, recruit your neighbors to join in. Make it a Black-Out Block Party!

And it’s not just individuals, last year statues, bridges, buildings, and landmarks in more than 4000 cities were part of the event. To name a few: the Eiffel Tower, the London Eye, the Empire State Building, and even Niagara Falls. Many were the time I’ve stood at the edge of Niagara Falls and thought, “Man that waterfall is bright!” (Kidding!)

Commentary:

“No TV, no computer, no gramophone? What the heck am I supposed to do in the dark for an hour?” Really? You can’t think of a single thing that an hour of darkness might be especially good for? Um, hello… an awesome game of sardines!

What did you think I was suggesting?

Oh. That’s an even better idea.

But some of you are already saddled with young-uns. No one said you had to plunge your crib (yo!) into total darkness. Bust out some candles! (Beeswax if you’ve got ‘em!) Who doesn’t remember the joy of being a kid during power-outages and holidays, when your parents festooned the house with dozens of tiny little fires. It was magic… vaguely dangerous magic. Surely you have a deck of cards or a semi-complete Yahtzee set collecting dust in a closet somewhere. You might actually learn something about those people who live in your house and watch TV with you. The fact is, there’s more to Earth Hour than just sending a message about Climate Action, there’s family and community bonding to be had.

…And energy savings. Though the official World Wildlife Fund Earth Hour website is a little lacking in the trivia department, it is estimated that Earth Hour 2008 saw as much as a 5% drop in power usage in some cities. And in the Philippines the reduced energy demand had the equivalent effect of shutting down 12 coal-fired power plants.

So turn out the lights, light a candle, and get your Earth Hour on!

Creative Solutions:

• Pledge to take part at the official WWF Earth Hour site
• Host an Earth Hour Event
• Don’t wait until next year, make one night a month Earth Night
• While they’re out, swap out those incandescents for compact florescents.
• Reduce your energy use first, then purchase carbon offsets.

Why it matters:

Because only 3% of the world’s water is fresh water. Only about 1% is accessible fresh water. And only about .006% is fresh, accessible, and drinkable.

Recap:

Without further ado, EMD brings you our official (whatever that means) World Water Day post.

We’ll start with EMD’s greatest water hits: While Golf Nears Its Deathbed, Skiing Eyes New Horizons, Your “Safe” Drinking Water Riddled with Toxins, Pacific Ocean: Your Neighborhood Garbage Dump, Colorado River Reservoirs Going Dry and Largest Environmental Disaster in American History.

Carbon emissions, insidious chemicals, alternative fuels, these subjects all get a good deal of press. But for people in the developed world, water is often a distant after-thought. After all, most of us know that when we turn on our taps fresh, drinkable water will come out, even if we plan on using that water to water our lawns… or wash our cars… or hose off our driveways.

Up until about 1990, parents around the country attempted to coerce their children into eating their broccoli with the old, “There are starving children in China” ploy. Everyone knows world hunger is a serious issue (The UN estimates that nearly a billion people are facing starvation). But just as many people lack access to clean drinking water.

Certainly many of us feel hesitant about throwing out our leftovers. Not only do we picture little dollar signs plummeting into the trash bin (or, best case scenario, the compost pile) but we know many millions of children are going to bed hungry. Yet we waste clean water as if to flaunt it. Could you imagine hosing down your driveway with baby formula (even without considering the stench after a few days in the sun)? Or what if the Bellagio replaced its famous fountain with “The Mountain of Rotting Food!” (Note: Happy Meals would not work for this.)

Bottled water, man-made lakes, lush green lawns in Phoenix… It all screams, “Oh? You drink from the same fetid pond that you and the local wildebeests bath in? I don’t give a rat’s heinie.

Commentary:

“Ah, but drinking water is a renewable resource,” you say. True… to about the same extent that food is a renewable resource. Or, more accurately, probably less so. If I grow an (open pollinated) tomato plant I’ll have tomatoes in about three months. At this point I can pick one, dry out the seeds, and plant those seeds next season. So from tomato to tomato it takes about a year.

Let’s compare that tomato seed to a single water molecule. Let’s say I hose off my driveway in Los Angeles. How long before I see that particular water molecule again? First, that molecule will likely evaporate into the atmosphere and condense back onto the ground several times before becoming part of a cloud. After about 10 days in the cloud that molecule will fall to the ground in the form of precipitation. How soon that water molecule joins the ranks of drinkable water again is highly dependent on what happens next. Conceivably you could be standing under the right cloud with your mouth open and… bam! 10 days! Cycle complete. But Los Angeles isn’t exactly the Amazon.

Let’s say the molecule lands on a mountain top as seasonal snowfall, it’s now stuck for 2 to 6 months. When spring rolls around it melts and joins a river where it has another 2 to 6 months before being reintroduced to the water supply, evaporating again, or winding up in the ocean. At this point I hope you have some time on your hands, because it’s going to be as much as 3,200 years before you see that molecule again, and even when it finally evaporates off and becomes part of a new cloud, chances are it will just fall right back into the ocean again. So we went from a highly unlikely 10 days, to a likely year, to an even more likely 3,200 years. That’s assuming it didn’t somehow find itself into deep ground water where it would be hanging out until the year 12,010.

So, yes, drinking water is a renewable resource, and it renews itself an average of once every 3,400 years or so. All of these estimates come from a Residence Time table. Water is stored on the earth in any number of ways, from the mass of ice that makes up the bulk of Antarctica to the clouds drifting by your window. Residence Time is the estimated amount of these individual “reservoirs” take to replenish themselves. Check out the table here (yes it’s Wikipedia, but it’s also accurate). You could spend hours thinking of all the different possibilities… but why.

The point is, for a seemingly abundant and technically endless resource, drinkable water is staggeringly scarce and severely limited.

Stayed tuned, for part 2, where big companies take that scarce drinkable water, put it in plastic bottles, and charge us 2000% more for it.

Creative Solutions:

• Ban BPA
• Ban phthalates
• Use a water filter
• Check out the NRDC’s drinking water FAQs
• And the USGS’s Water Quality page
• Use reusable bags
• Follow the Plastiki
• Follow the JUNKraft
• Buy less stuff!
• Support legislation banning plastic bags
• Avoid bottled water

Why it matters:

Because, depending on who you ask, Americans drink between 20 and 30 gallons of beer each year.

Recap:

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, EMD would like to raise a pint and give a rousing toast to good beer. Today, millions of you will be flocking to one (or more!) of the 50,000 bars in the U.S. to celebrate your Irish heritage… or the Irish heritage of your friends. For some inexplicable reason, most of you will be guzzling beer that’s been dyed with green food coloring.

Stop it. Now.

Bud Light and Budweiser are America’s top two beers, and will surely deliver their fair share of green dye this evening. But aren’t we going for authenticity here?! For starters, both beers are Pilsners, a Czech version of a Lager which, in turn, originated in Germany. Second, Budweiser (and Coors) is brewed with rice to supplement the more expensive barley (Miller uses corn…gyuh!). This is Ireland’s night! This is a night for ciders, ales, and stouts!

Commentary:

“Isn’t this supposed to be an environmental blog?”

Fair enough. All beer-snobbery aside, there are some very good reasons to rethink your beer choices.

Obviously beer makes the journey from field and stream (the parcel of land and the moving body of water, not the hunting and fishing magazine) to your gullet in a number of different ways. True beers are made of water, malted cereal grains, and hops.  That’s it. So of course, someone has to grow the latter two ingredients. Most U.S. barley comes from the midwest, most hops from the Northwest. Mass market beers are generally brewed regionally (Budweiser has 5 breweries around the nation) then shipped in cans, bottles, and kegs. Microbreweries or craft-breweries are much smaller, one-off operations, but operate under much the same model. Brewpubs are local watering holes that brew on site (or close by).

In short, a draft pint from a brewpub is going to have the smallest carbon footprint. You might even get to chat up the brewmeister while you sip. After that, the more local the brewery the better. If you you’re lucky enough to live in Oregon, Washington, San Francisco, San Diego, or Colorado this means craft-breweries! You can deflect any beer snobbery accusations simply by saying, with a resigned shrug, “Oh this? Yeah I prefer Natty Ice, but this is local, so it has a smaller carbon footprint. Just doing my part.” Stuck with Bud? Try to go draft. (In a glass that is, no plastic cups for classy folks like us!) And if all else fails… recycle those cups, bottles, and cans.

But carbon footprints are only part of the picture. Barley and hops are, after all, agriculture, and that means fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides. But there are a handful of organic beers and even more that feature at least some organic ingredients.

Creative Solutions:

• Go local, sip a pint from your local brewpub, or…
• Sample the selection from your local microbrewery, or…
• If you have to go mass-market, make it a draft.
• And if you can, go organic with: Wolaver’s, Butte Creek Brewing Co., Eel River Brewing Co., Goose Island Brewery, or any one of the entries at the North American Organic Brewers Festival
• Also, New Belgium beer is the best ever.

Why it matters:

Because the future is what you make it. (Inspirational enough for yah?)

Recap:

This past September, Senators John “Lightnin’” Kerry (D-MA) and Barbara “The Unifier” Boxer (D-CA) introduced Senate Bill 1733. Senate Bill 1733. That sounds awesome! What’s that? They’re calling it The Clean Energy Jobs & American Power Act? Yeah, okay, that is better.

For the banalities, check out the Pew Center for Global Climate Change’s summary of the bill, or if you’re having trouble sleeping read the entire bill in its entirety, right here. But since this is the “Recap” section, allow me to do so.

S. 1733 “Draws heavily from the climate provisions of the American Clean Energy and Security Act” but includes even loftier goals for emissions cuts than its House predecessor. At its core the bill focuses on “a market-based program” for reducing emissions (if this sounds like a potentially disastrous Cap and Trade system, it is). Luckily the bill goes further to include:

Targeted emission standards (the very critical “Cap” in Cap and Trade); support for research, development and deployment of low carbon energy alternatives; and expanded programs to increase energy and water efficiency.  Finally, the bill includes provisions intended to ease the transition to a clean energy economy by protecting consumers, workers, and energy-intensive industries from the impact of higher energy costs.

Putting the emphasis of Cap and Trade on trade is a recipe for disaster. But both the Senate and House bills set concrete, incremental emissions targets:

The Senate bill sets a more stringent 20 percent reduction target from 2005 levels in 2020 compared to the 17 percent reduction in the House bill.  The other targets are the same: a 3 percent reduction from 2005 levels in 2012; 42 percent reduction in 2030; and an 83 percent reduction in 2050.

By the way, this thing is coming up for a vote in the next few months.

Commentary:

Cap and Trade has its flaws — Specifically when it becomes, simply, a “Trade” system –but if the emissions “targets” proposed in both the House and Senate legislation become emissions “caps”, we’ll be in business. Oh, and incentivizing policy and technological innovation, green job creation, and emissions cuts above and beyond the letter of the law? That’s not too bad either.

The Natural Resources Defense Council has scooped up the proverbial red phone and called to action its full army of celebrities with their “This is Our Moment” campaign. I’m not sure where you come down on celebrity soap-boxing (Reality TV idea: Celebrity Soapbox Derby!).

To some its the best thing to happen to politics since Billy Beer, to others it’s the dumbest thing to happen to politics since, well, Billy Beer. At any rate, no one’s political philosophy should be WWLD? What would Leo do? But whether you’d rather drink from the fountain of celebrity glory, or whiz in it, join the NRDC’s This is Our Moment campaign to tell your Senators that you support the bill, and that the status quo of marching toward disaster while dumping loads of cash into OPEC doesn’t do much for you.

Creative Solutions:

• Join the This is Our Moment campaign, I said!
• Promote Alternative Energy by Buying Green Power
• Trade In Your Desktop
• Unplug Appliances When Not in Use
• Line Dry Your Clothes
• Tear Yourself Away From the Tube

Why it matters:

Finally, a way to get the nitty-gritty on your “food environment”.

Recap:

Planet Green is getting the word out, as part of the Obama administration’s Let’s Move program, the USDA has released its “Food Environment Atlas”.

The Yellow Pages this is not. The Food Atlas is a powerful tool for parents, educators, and individuals to get the details on their county’s food environment.

So, what the hell is a “Food Environment”? If you lived your entire life trapped in a Jack in the Box, your food environment would be comprised exclusively of bleached, white hamburger buns, ground beef, American “cheese product”, and large quantities of something called “Buttermilk House Dipping Sauce”. If you lived your entire life trapped at a farmer’s market, your food environment would include fresh (and ideally locally-sourced and organic) veggies, fruits, nuts, eggs, and, if you’re so inclined, you might even find some organic, grass-fed bison. Oh, and ill-fitting crocheted sweaters, but you can’t eat those.

Get it?

But if you’re like most folks, you were raised in a house or apartment and you weren’t trapped (I hope not, anyway), so your food environment probably includes restaurants of varying quality and philosophy, supermarkets, and convenience stores in addition to the fast food joints and (I hope) farmers markets. In fact, the food atlas goes beyond just telling you that you live in a fresh produce wonderland (psht, you already knew that anyway), it can tell you average food prices, restaurant density… every little detail you could possibly want to know.

Commentary:

In fact, if there’s any criticism of the Food Atlas, it might be that it’s a little too detailed. With about 90 indicators to choose from, you can find out just how many gallons of soft drinks your county consumes per capita. But maybe it needs to be a little more Yellow Pages. When I heard about the Food Atlas I was thinking: finally a tool to easily connect people to fresh, local food, whether it be through stores, markets, or restaurants. At best it can tell you whether on not there’s a farmer’s market in your county (A note to the citizens of Harney County, Oregon… you don’t), you’ll have to figure out where to go, and when, on your own.

It’s unclear whether the USDA has any intention of supplementing the atlas with information more relevant to consumers (addresses, hours, etc.)… but they should.

Creative Solutions:

• Check out the Food Atlas
• Go Local
• Find your Farmer’s Market on LocalHarvest
• Join a CSA
• Grow Your Own

Why it matters:

Because if Whole Foods is selling products carrying a “certified organic” label, those products should be certified organic.

Recap:

According to Washington D.C.’s ABC affiliate WJLA, Whole Foods may have some ’splainin’ to do.

The expose is just another in a growing list of charges being leveled at Whole Foods, which has become the supermarket mecca for health nuts and greenies. In the past, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey has come under fire for his stances on healthcare reform and climate change. This time the target is the store’s proprietary line of 365 Organic frozen vegetables.

The charges are these. 365 Organic frozen vegetables… are from China. Even the, *GASP* “California Blend” of broccoli, carrots, and cauliflower. Okay, not a crime. but there are some legitimate concerns. Coming as it does, on the heels of several scandals related to food coming out of China, the WJLA piece asks one very important question, how can vegetables coming from China be certified organic? The packaging carries three relevant bits of labeling.

1. “USDA Certified Organic” (a label with problems of its own)

2. “QAI Certified Organic”

3. Product of China.

According to the report, the USDA does not directly certify imported vegetables. BUT it does authorize 3rd party organizations to do so– in this case, Quality Assurance International (QAI). HOWEVER, correspondence between WJLA and QAI revealed that QAI had “not certified any products from China,” but instead relies on ANOTHER certifier on the farms.

Commentary:

So, uh, what exactly  is going on here? At worst, Whole Foods is egregiously and consciously mislabeling their products as certified organic. At the very least it would seem Whole Foods is the beneficiary of labeling loopholes.

Or are they? After refusing to be interviewed for the WJLA piece, Whole Foods issued this response on their blog (Whole Foods has a blog?). Ultimately both the WJLA piece and the Whole Foods rebuttal, hinge on the validity of QAI’s certification process. But if QAI is able to certify products through “another certifier on the farms”, that process is certainly suspect.

Despite Mackey and company’s dubious reputation in the green world, the WJLA piece isn’t exactly a smoking gun. For starters I can’t believe that anyone, except for dramatic effect, would assume their “California Blend” veggies came from California. I’m fairly certain my English muffins aren’t from England, and I know for a fact my French dressing isn’t from France (no, I don’t really use French dressing). Furthermore, there’s nothing to say that QAI isn’t diligent about what is, in effect, their FOURTH party certifiers.

But it does raise questions. And it seems the only way to verify if your organic vegetables are truly organic is to…

Creative Solutions:

• Research the USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP)
• Join an organic CSA
• Interact with your food, buy from your local organic farmers
• Grow your own fruits and vegetables

Why it matters:

Because the recent record snowfalls along the Atlantic coast proves global warming is a myth, duh!

Recap:

A quick look at a certain news channel named after a notoriously sly canine is heralding the good news: It’s snowing heavily in the eastern United States thus proving that global warming is a myth! Thank God we can put that to rest, eh?

There’s at least two problems with that, the first should be fairly obvious. For everyone under the age of four and/or all you Fox News viewers here’s a little science lesson. Over the course of a year the planet actually tilts. During the winter the northern hemisphere is tilted away from the sun. Just this small shift is enough to bring cooler temperatures, snow, and even shorter days. At the same time, the southern hemisphere is correspondingly closer to the sun. So when it’s winter up here, it’s summer down there! Can you imagine?! Christmas in the summer?! Wild. Now this is gonna blow your minds: over the next few months the earth will tilt back the other way and come June the snow will be gone and summer will return. I guarantee it.

In fact, you won’t even have to wait until Summer for record HIGH temperatures, just turn on your TV and watch this year’s Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

As you know from our piece about winter sports, ski resorts around the world are feeling the sting of climate change. According to this National Geographic blurb the average temperature in Vancouver this year is 44.8 degrees Fahrenheit, up significantly from the historic average of 37.9. Added to this indignity, Vancouver is seeing its lowest snowfall accumulations in years. Proof of global warming! Checkmate.

Well no, actually. Unlike some media outlets, we like to refrain from drawing asinine conclusions from limited and dubious evidence.

There are a number of phenomena involved in Vancouver’s record highs. One of the biggest culprits is El Nino, the crown jewel of weather systems for Southern California weathermen. (”My God in heaven there is water falling from the sky! This is the time to panic, people!”) Basically a temporary warming of the Pacific, El Nino shifts the jetstream South, meaning a warmer and wetter winter for the southern US, and warmer and drier winter for the northwest. Oh, and once those weather systems have pounded the southwest they move east over the Rockies, collecting more moisture and cooling before dumping usually large amounts of snow in the midwest and east! Sound familiar?!

Commentary:

So no, stupid, record snowfall in a small area of the planet does not disprove global warming. And though El Nino is a factor in Vancouver’s unusual weather, this particular El Nino has been classified as relatively mild, which doesn’t jive with record highs and unprecedented lack of snowfall.  Oh and turn off Fox News.  It is making you dumber by the second.

Creative Solutions:

• Take your business to Sustainable Slopes like Squaw Valley (CA), Aspen Mountain Ski Resort (CO), or Sundance Resort (UT)
• Wear Eco-Friendly outerwear like Smartwool, Nau, Patagonia, and REI’s Eco-Concious line.
• Use Eco-Friendly gear like Kingswood, Movement, Karhu, and Venture
• Or, better yet, use hand-me-downs
• Skip the lodges and chair lifts and go cross-country skiing!
• Bust a wicked cossack (backside 720 for boarders)

Why it matters:

“Endocrine disruptor” and “synthetic estrogen”… that’s why.

Recap:

Unless you’ve been living under a rock– an unfairly stigmatized exercise of strength, endurance, and will-power, but sadly also a impediment to education and worldly awareness– you’ve heard all the bad news about BPA, also known as Bisphenol A.

So let’s go over it again… with a twist!

We’ll start with the basics. Bisphenol A (or BPA as the cool kids like to call it) is used in the production of plastics. Specifically polycarbonate plastics, the go-to for baby bottles and sports bottles.

No problems so far…

Except polycarbonate bottles, especially when heated, release that BPA into your beverage of choice, which will of course eventually find its way into your stomach. The human body is unarguably a feat of natural engineering. In this case, the human body is your friend, because the body sees BPA and thinks it looks just like estrogen, and reacts accordingly. Let that sink in… Your body thinks BPA is estrogen.

For infants, whose endocrine and reproductive systems are still developing this is especially troubling, and exposure to BPA has been linked to conditions ranging from sexual dysfunction to increased risk for breast and prostate cancer.

So how can you tell if you’re being exposed to BPA? In many cases the answer is simple… look at the bottom. Plastic containers have a code printed on them– a number from 1 to 7– and a classification of the plastic itself. In this case we’re on the lookout for #3s and #7s with the letters PVC and PC (respectively) underneath. That said, due to public demand, many leading manufacturers such as Camelbak and Nalgene have switched to BPA-free plastic, but because the plastics are technically polycarbonates they still carry the #7 recycling code. The upside of the recent spate of BPA press is that manufacturers are so anxious to tout their BPA-free bona fides, products often display them prominently.

“Psssht, I knew all that. I’m a BPA free brothah!”

Are you? Had a tuna sandwich lately? How about a bowl of soup?

So here’s the twist. With reusable bottle manufacturers leaving BPA in the dust, canned foods have taken their place as the worst BPA offenders. Soup cans, tuna cans, tomatoes, sauces, even pop cans are leaching BPA into your food. Oh, and take a closer look at the jug sticking out of your water cooler at work… #7 PC. If you’re using it to refill your Kleen Kanteen you’re kind of defeating the purpose. (And, if I may be so bold, skip the SIGG bottles… for good. I myself recently learned that, despite their holier-than-Nalgene posturing, SIGG bottles contained BPA until summer 2008, when they quietly reformulated the liner material. Greenwashing of the lowest sort.)

“Oh.”

Darn right, “Oh.”

Commentary:

The bad news is, unlike take-out containers and sports bottles, there’s no way to know if your pre-packaged food is being infused with synthetic estrogen. And though the FDA has finally admitted that BPA isn’t a tasty, healthy additive (or whatever the hell they used to think), and may actually be a danger, there are no plans as of yet to ban the chemical or require manufacturers to disclose its use.

The water cooler is easy. Here goes… DRINK TAP WATER. Considering our piece on the myriad chemicals in tap water, this may sound crazy, but the fact is most bottled bottled water is locally-sourced (read: its tap water) and then filtered. Okay, so get a filter (Britta, PUR, etc.). It should be noted that NO filter, will remove BPA, nor many of the 90 chemicals regulated by the EPA’s Safe Drinking Water Act (nor the many thousands NOT regulated by the EPA’s Safe Drinking Water Act).

Pop’s easy too. Stop drinking it. You read our piece on High Fructose Corn Syrup, you knew it was garbage even before that, and you’ve been trying to get yourself to quit. So quit.

The canned foods and drinks are trickier. Recent tests by Consumer Reports revealed that even canned foods calling themselves “BPA-Free” are, well, full of it (so to speak). The ideal alternative to canned soups, for so many reasons, is homemade soup: Fresher, better ingredients, you control the sodium, and really they’re not hard to make. Really. Worst case scenario, try to find prepared foods and vegetables in glass jars like those by Bionaturae.

Creative Solutions:

• Ban BPA
• Ban phthalates
• Use a water filter
• Check out the NRDC’s drinking water FAQs
• And the USGS’s Water Quality page

Why it matters:

Because bluefin tuna are rapidly facing extinction, and it may be up to the French to save them. In the meantime, put down those chopsticks.

Recap:

When we last visited the Bluefin Tuna, the EU, as part of ICCAT (the international body that regulates tuna fishing), had declined to enact even a temporary ban on Bluefin fishing. The Mediterranean fish is considered the pinnacle of Sushi-dom and prime specimens, some weighing as much as 1000 pounds, can fetch upwards of $100,000. But those prime specimens are becoming harder and harder to find, and fishermen have resorted to catching juveniles and raising them in pens until they’ve reached market weight. This deadly combination of unsustainable fishing practices has doomed one of the ocean’s most impressive inhabitants.

Or has it?

Yes it has. The failure of the proposed temporary ban last fall was largely blamed on Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Spain, France, and Italy, EU nations with a vested interest in the debate and powerful fishing lobbies, and of course, Japan, which consumes approximately 80% of the world’s Bluefin catch.

But there may still be hope. With France, Italy, and Spain accounting for half of the world’s allowable Bluefin catch, a bold move by just one of those nations could be enough to get a Bluefin ban on the books, and according to Reuters, France may have just made that bold move. Well let’s say bold-ish. The French government is proposing a ban on Bluefin fishing… in 18 months, perhaps pending the results of a CITE (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) study of Bluefin, and in exchange for an EU compensation package for French fishermen.

Many folks, both in France and elsewhere are crying shenanigans! Or whatever word the French use for “shenanigans.” The CITES study is due out some time before July 2011 and French officials don’t expect any ban to take effect before September 2011. In the interim, France will be holding nationwide local elections, and many are calling the French proposal nothing more than political theater, meant to appease both fishing lobbies and those supporting a ban. For his part, French president Nicolas Sarkosy favors a “clear ban on Bluefin tuna”, but for local leaders, especially in coastal areas, the issue is muddier. Environmental groups are concerned that by late 2011 the already strained Bluefin populations might already be beyond saving.

Commentary:

So no, sorry, it’s not time to jump in the Hummer and rumble over to your favorite sushi place.

Are we sensing any themes here? From the events in Copenhagen to investigations into Monsanto, government officials around the world find themselves torn between what’s best the planet and the greater good, and what’s best for their constituents, their pocketbooks, and their reelection campaigns. Recent Supreme Court decisions notwithstanding, we would like to think that politicians are free from the influence of lobbyists and corporations.

One can only hope that France is serious about the Bluefin ban, and that they act decisively (and sooner than has been proposed). Barring that, perhaps the French ban will inspire Spain or Italy to propose their own ban.

But there is something you can do to help Bluefin populations. DON’T EAT THEM. Making smart, sustainable seafood choices is easy.

Creative Solutions:

• Go veggie
• Get Monterey Aquarium’s pocket-sized safe seafood list, or download it to your smartphone
• Stay updated with Monterey Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program

Why it matters:

No bees = No fruit and no honey. And which honey-bee populations are thriving? City and suburb bees! So get a smoker and one of those radical net hats and get keepin’… bee keepin’.

Recap:

Okay, maybe you’re hip to this crazy groove and maybe you’re not, but after backyard vegetable gardens and chicken coops, the latest in backyard eco-ccol is bee keeping! (Oh and pygmy goats… and outdoor showers… and cisterns…)

But let’s stick to Bee Keeping. Perhaps you’ve heard of Colony Collapse Disorder. No this isn’t what happened to Jamestown (not to be confused with Jonestown. Mmm, Kool-Aid) after the capital was moved to Williamsburg. No, Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) is none of those things. Where to begin?

Farmers and beekeepers have a pretty sweet deal going. For many trees to set fruit (oranges, apples, almonds, etc.) they need pollen from another tree of the opposite sex (seriously). The easiest way to accomplish this is for birds (of the humming variety) and bees (hence the song) to transfer that pollen. For birds this is more of an accident, but for bees, who feed the pollen to their larvae, collecting the stuff is very important.

So farmer Joe gets his trees pollinated and beekeeper Hubert gets his bees fed. Perfect! Uh, except, over the past several years, and for reasons as yet unknown, entire colonies are simply disappearing at an alarming rate. Fruit and honey producers are feeling the sting. (Zing! Sorry, this is serious. I know.) Scientists have floated theories from the growing presence of modified genes (thank you Monsanto!) to a growing list of pesticides and herbicides (again, thank you Monsanto!), to a lack of crop diversity.

That last one is raising some eyebrows. Oddly enough, the two places where hives seem to be thriving are in cities and suburbs. I know what you’re thinking, “I live in a city or suburb!” As strange as it may sound, cities and suburbs tend to be more biologically diverse than agricultural areas. (Ask the guy who lives downstairs from me!)

And here’s the kicker… that vegetable garden you’re so proud of? Well your tomatoes may not require pollinators to set fruit, but they’ll be much healthier and productive with a few visits from the local honey bees. Think of your veggies like a royal family, they can keep inbreeding, but kids kinda look… off. So what are you waiting for? Time to suit up.

Great. Uh. Okay. Now what?

Don’t worry, I’m gonna walk you through this. First, find out if it’s even legal for you to keep bees where you live. Your local city ordinances will answer this question quickly, you might even be required to acquire permits.

Next, determine whether anyone in the family is allergic to bee stings. Then again, nothing bonds a family like a white-knuckled race to the emergency room. Okay. Legal? Check. Life-Threatening? Negative.

Now all you need is a little gear and know-how. Both can be found in the indispensable Backyard Beekeeper. A quick search for local beekeeping clubs should be relatively productive, and for your kiddos be sure to check out 4-H, an organization dedicated to keeping American kids connected to our agricultural roots (yes it’s still around).

Commentary:

“You lost me at chicken coops.” Okay, vegetable gardening is one thing, beekeeping is something else. But urban beekeeping is booming and though it might sound crazy, aficionados say it’s no more difficult than keeping those tomatoes growing (for myself, a near impossibility).

Obviously there are time constraints, and upfront costs to consider, but the benefits of beekeeping are undeniable. People sink hundreds of dollars into their vegetable gardens every year, thinking miracle grow and a lot of swearing will mean bigger, more productive plants, but a few bees might be all the doctor ordered.

And who can’t get down with pounds(!) of free honey? You may never touch a drop of High Fructose Corn Syrup again!

Creative Solutions:

• Grab a copy of Backyard Beekeeper
• Check out the latest issue of Bee Culture magazine
• Peruse their list of beekeeping clubs in your area
• Lay out a spread for your buzzing buddies by planting Nichol’s Garden Nursery’s Bee mix.

Why it matters:

Take heed, one of the first things climate change is going to wipe out is… sports?

Recap:

Eh?

Okay not all sports, not at first anyway… just golf and winter sports.

Consider this, in arid regions, it can take as much as 5000 gallons of water to support a single round of golf per player. That’s about the amount of water a family of four uses in ten days. In fact, the aquifer under California’s Coachella Valley, home to more than 120 golf courses, is under such stress that some places of the valley have sunk more than a foot over the past nine years.

Something tells me there’s a fair number of climate change deniers in the golfing community. Just a hunch. Are y’all willing to give up golf – GOLF! The sport of lords, ancient highlanders, and masochists – if you’re wrong?

Luckily course owners around the world are taking steps to change the very notion of what a golf course is supposed to look like. For millions of golfers, many of whom call Phoenix and Palm Springs home, courses like St. Andrews and Augusta are the emerald green ideal.

But St. Andrews is in Scotland, which receives as much as 200 inches of rainfall a year (by comparison, Phoenix receives somewhere around… eight). Augusta is a different animal. Each year the course hosts the Masters tournament, one of professional golfing’s premiere events, and they plant and water accordingly, creating the lush oasis we see on TV. Yet the rest of the year the course sees little play (read: upkeep) and it’s closed entirely during the summer. Some courses are taking things even further, watering only tees, fairways, and greens, often with grey and recycled water.

Hey, why are we taking about golf?!  It’s winter! Some of you poor devils have all but forgotten what grass even looks like. Well, fresh or recycled, all that water has to start someplace, and that place is the mountains!

If any sports are in jeopardy it’s winter sports, especially downhill skiing and snowboarding. These favorite winter pastimes are the canaries in the coal mine of wholesome outdoor activities. When your business is snow, and lots of it, the term “climate change” is particularly troubling.

Ski resorts, especially the biggies, are resource hogs. Sprawling remote mountain lodges, massive express chair-lifts draped from base to summit, where, chances are, you might even find another lodge. Food, water, power! It all has to come from somewhere. In the face of climate (and financial) calamity, many resorts are taking the status quo approach of blasting their groomers (ski runs, to non-Warren Miller fans) with water and power-hungry snow machines, “By gum I’m not going without a fight! I’ll make my own snow!”

Many others are seeing the crisis as a learning (and teaching) opportunity. The Aspen Skiing Company, which owns and operates facilities on four separate mountains in Aspen (go figure) has set the gold standards for eco-initiatives. In addition to purchasing wind power and off-setting 100% of its power consumption, the company has a green building policy, and will match employee contributions to green causes. Other resorts are powering their lifts (at least in part) with run-off from the slopes above, and many others (my ol’ haunt Mt. Bachelor included) are fueling their Snow Cats (massive tank-like bruisers that groom the slopes) using recycled cooking oil.

So how do your local slopes stack up? For starters, make sure they’re part of the National Ski Areas Association’s Sustainable Slopes program, then check out the Ski Area Citizen’s Coalition (SACC) report cards. If your favorite resort doesn’t make the cut or, worse yet, finds its way onto the SACC’s “Worst Ten” list, it’s time to make fresh tracks to some new powder.

But your destination is only half of the picture. Unless, that is, you’re a fan of Naked Barefoot Skiing! (Chilly, but invigorating.) Chances are you’ll be in need of some earth-friendly winter duds from the likes of Smartwool, Nau, Patagonia, and REI’s Eco-Concious line. While Kingswood, Movement, Karhu, and Venture are green options for skis and boards.

Or, better yet, if you’re like me and your elfin cousin skis like Lindsey Vonn, chances are her hand-me-downs will work perfectly for your, shall we say, less-than-aggressive style.

Commentary:

So there you have it folks. Now you can hit the slopes without the guilt. If fact, you can carve proudly, knowing that resort owners and gear manufacturers are doing everything they can to prevent global warming… because if they don’t, they’ll go out of business. Would we rather see corporations battling global warming for the principle? Maybe, but, like our last piece about the corporate fallout from Copenhagen, I’d rather see someone fighting for the planet in the name of the bottom line than not at all.

Creative Solutions:

• Take your business to Sustainable Slopes like Squaw Valley (CA), Aspen Mountain Ski Resort (CO), or Sundance Resort (UT)
• Wear Eco-Friendly outerwear like Smartwool, Nau, Patagonia, and REI’s Eco-Concious line.
• Use Eco-Friendly gear like Kingswood, Movement, Karhu, and Venture
• Or, better yet, use hand-me-downs
• Skip the lodges and chair lifts and go cross-country skiing!
• Bust a wicked cossack (backside 720 for boarders)

Why it matters:

Despite the lack of groundbreaking climate action inside the Bella Center, outside NGOs, developing nations, and (most surprisingly) corporations were putting their heads together to develop new, effective strategies in the battle against climate change.

Recap:

For a lot of people the COP15 conference was a lot like one of those live Fox broadcasts of scientists opening an Egyptian tomb — Weeks of dramatic build-up! Promos upon promos! Finally sweeps weeks rolls around and the big day is upon us. Hundreds of Americans tune in with baited breath (everyone else is watching “Two and a Half Men”). Then comes the big reveal… A dark, musty room with a jar lying in the corner. The reporter tries to sound excited, “A jar! My God, this could have been used by an actual Pharoah, perhaps as a bedpan!” (Nevermind that this is a TOMB!) Meanwhile the archaeologists just kind of stand around, toeing the dust with their boots, saying, “Aw, hell.”

In short, a letdown (see our wrap-up here). But in the case of COP15, a letdown with potentially disastrous consequences. (Talk about a curse! How do drought, pestilence, and war grab yah?!)

While U.S., Chinese, and Indian officials were taking bold steps to combat climate change like, “No air conditioning at all on Thursdays! Unless it’s really hot. Like, high 80’s– Wait, mid 80’s. Yeah.” Elsewhere in the Bella Center and beyond, seemingly disparate groups were finding common ground, and developing strategies for actual climate action. Friend of EcoMatters, James Hanusa, was on the ground in Copenhagen (thank you gravity!), and witnessed the fraternizing first hand.

Who were these unlikely bedfellows? Ford and Chevy drivers? Those “Tastes great! Less filling!” fellows? (Did I just date myself?) No! This climate Voltron came in the form of NGOs, developing nations, and… corporations?!

Yes, corporations. Especially the 23 members of the World Wildlife Fund’s Climate Savers program, who met for a CEO roundtable in Copenhagen to discuss big business’ role in climate action leadership. Unarguably, many companies around the globe have made sustainability a priority from their inception, from ice-creamers like Ben & Jerry to clean-freaks like Seventh Generation. From its early days making carabiners, my own personal favorite, Patagonia has vowed to put the planet first. (Just in case founder Yvon Chouinard is a reader, it gets chilly in my apartment sometimes. And I wear a large). But as companies go, Patagonia isn’t exactly a global powerhouse.

Johnson & Johnson, Nike, IBM, HP, Coca-Cola. Now, those are big companies, and all members of the WWF Climate Savers program. While the governments of rich nations take negligible steps to regulate industrial emissions, some giants of industry are happily regulating themselves. Climate Saver participants have crunched the numbers and here’s what they say: Saving the Planet is good for the bottom line, greenhouse gas emissions should be seen as a form of waste, and (as we all know) there’s no time to lose.

Commentary:

Some might say that this Climate Saving sounds a lot more like climate mitigating. (Carbon offsets, anyone?) Granted, the 23 members of the Climate Savers programs are some of the biggest corporations in America, beholden to black ink, and responsible for a ton or two… million of atmospheric carbon each year. But these corporations also understand their place in the ecosystem, or at least have decided that long term growth and success means doing their part to ensure climate stability… unlike some corporations. (It’s tough to convince people to buy radical kicks and sweet LED TVs when they’re shooting each other over who gets the last rutabaga.)

These companies have pledged to take a lead-by-example approach: cataloging the carbon footprints of their products (like *GASP* Walmart) and taking measures to reduce that footprint, stream-lining and cleaning up supply chain and production processes, and engaging and encouraging employees to integrate sustainability into their home life. WWF CS member Johnson Diversey, a giant of cleaning products, has pledge to cut emissions by 25% by 2013.

“Coca-Cola? It’s like mainlining High Fructose Corn Syrup!” All of these companies have their faults, and the government has yet to turn the screws on the corporate world. Nevertheless, these companies are taking up the torch and trying to lead their peers out of the proverbial cursed Egyptian tomb and into the light of sustainability.

And that’s what you call a bookend! Nice!

Here’s what we call…

Creative Solutions:

• See what the Climate Savers are doing to make a difference
• Join 350.org
• Green Your Business
• Go see “No Impact Man”
• Understand Climate Change through Interactive Simulations
• Write a letter
• Support the Center for Public Integrity
• Become a Member of the Rainforest Action Network, Krypotinite to Big Business

Why it matters:

Because, for some reason, chaining ourselves to mountains and singing ballads about ash-laden silt just isn’t having the desired effect.

Recap:

Frequent readers of EMD will know, all objectivity aside, we’re not fans of Mountain Top Removal Mining. Well now it seems we’re not alone.

According to a recent AP article, a group of 12 scientist from the Appalachian region (not to be confused with “Appalachian scientists”, whose idea of delicate instruments include sticks with ornery raccoons tied to ‘em) are calling on federal regulators to put a stop to Mountain Top Removal (MTR) mining.

Mountain Top Removal is no hyperbolic euphemism. The process can be summed up thusly: Blow off top of Appalachian peak, sift through rubble for coal, dump leftover mess into nearby streams.

No. Seriously.

Margaret Palmer, a University of Maryland professor, was the lead author of the original article, which appeared in the “Policy Forum” section of the journal Science. Palmer and her colleagues acknowledge the rarity of scientists taking what amounts to a political stance on an issue, but all agree the science behind the conclusion was “rigorous” (comprising nearly a dozen studies) and the evidence it uncovered “overwhelming.” (Sounds like a climate issue that’s been in the news as of late.)

Not surprisingly, the National Mining Association is incredulous. As far as NMA spokeswoman Carol Raulston is concerned the scientists have it out for the mining industry, and asserts that, while the group is entitled to its opinion, there’s nothing in the research that “points to any new conclusions.”

Commentary:

Maybe that’s because the conclusion has always been the same: destroying mountains (and the resident flora and fauna) and pouring the detritus into mountain streams is bad. In fact, almost 500 mountains have been leveled and 1500 miles of streams choked to death or rendered utterly toxic.

Ah but you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs, eh? Unfortunately the only people eating the MTR omelet are the CEOs and shareholders of the mining companies. MTR’s ham-fisted approach to mining requires fewer skilled hands, and thousands of jobs have been lost as a result.  Okay, enough with the breakfast analogies.

If the COP15 conference has taught us anything, its that politicians are often more interested in projections from economists and CEOs than irrefutable studies from scientists. The MTR announcement is encouraging nonetheless. And though the two are linked, the MTR debate is not complicated like the climate change debate. If fighting climate change is like fighting cancer, then putting a stop to MTR is removing a suspicious-looking mole: a simple and obvious procedure.

Coal has a well-deserved image problem. At best it’s dirty and dangerous to mine, and dirty and dangerous to burn. Maybe adding MTR to the mix is just par for the course. But as long as we’re stuck with such a nasty fuel for the short term, is it too much to ask that we not destroy hundreds of mountains and streams while we’re busy destroying the atmosphere?

Creative Solutions:

• Send a letter to President Obama
• Donate your Facebook Status & Tweet This: “@barackobama Mr President, please come to Appalachia & see the devastation of Mountaintop Removal for yourself www.ran.org/obamamtr #MTR”
• Sign the petition at ilovemountains.org and stopmountaintopremoval.org
• Find out your connection to MTR
• Call your representative
• Send a letter to your local representative
• Support the Clean Water Protection Act
• Support the Appalachia Restoration Act

Why it matters:

Because the E.P.A.’s “Safe Drinking Water” Act was passed in 1974 (5 years before I was born) and hasn’t been updated since the year 2000, when N’ Sync ruled the airwaves.

Recap:

A recent piece by the New York Times couldn’t be clearer: just because drinking water is considered “safe” by law, it can still contain known toxins in concentrations now considered dangerous, and any combination of tens of thousands of unregulated industrial chemicals in any concentration.

After extensive lab work, studies, and other research, the Times has laid bare the inadequacies of the nation’s regulations on drinking water. “The Safe Drinking Water Act” was a welcome breath of fresh air (or glass of fresh water, to be more precise) when it was enacted in 1974. After decades, drinking whatever swill sputtered from their faucets, lawmakers and scientists in the mid seventies asked themselves a rather poignant question, “My tap water is brown and smells like hot trash. Should I really be drinking this stuff?”

And so the “Safe Water Act” was born and water utilities around the nation were suddenly required to keep tabs on 20 chemicals. By 2000 that list had ballooned wildly to… 91 chemicals. Unfortunately, according to EPA estimates nearly 60,000 chemicals are used in the U.S. Which means the agency regulates roughly .001 percent of the chemicals that may be in our drinking water.

That’s scary.

Commentary:

What’s scarier is that science has advanced since 1974. And in much the same way that  iTunes replaced 8 Tracks and cell phones replaced… what? Walkie-Talkies? Scientists and doctors were conducting ever-advancing research on the effects of chemicals on the human body.

What they’ve found in many cases in that these 91 chemicals are much more dangerous than previously thought, and in much smaller doses than predicted. In the case of arsenic, for example, EPA scientists proposed lowering the permitted concentration to 5 parts per billion (”roughly one drop in 50 drums of water”), but extensive lobbying diluted (Hey-yo!) the new regulations to 10 parts per billion.

But while lobbyists are busy conspiring against us, some of us are conspiring against ourselves. In Los Angeles scientists discovered the presence of bromates (a carcinogen) in the tap water. Bromates are regulated by the SDWA “but officials are required to test for them only when water leaves a treatment plant.”

In the case of LA’s water supply in 2007, Bromates were somehow appearing after testing. Scientists tracked the problem to LA’s reservoirs (including Silver Lake) where exposure to the sun was causing the development of the chemical. Officials solved the problem by covering the reservoirs in billions of plastic balls (much like those found in the ball bin at Micky-D’s, and hopefully sans phthalates, BPA, and kiddie boogers). Yet, with their gorgeous man-made reservoir now covered in plastic balls to protect them from cancer, local residents unleashed on DWP officials insisting the move was a ploy to hike water rates.

So with 59,990 chemicals left to regulate, lax regulations on the 91 chemicals we do regulate, and residents cutting off their noses to spite their faces, we’re in quite a pickle.

Luckily, despite the EPA’s wimpy regulations on drinking water, many city officials are getting tough. LA DWP’s Dr. Pankaj Parekh was part of the city’s solution to the bromate problem. Under his watchful eye the city has made strides to beat the SDWA by a good margin, but LA DWP is a public utility. A full 3/4’s of water utilities are privately held and are only restricted by the decades-old science of the SDWA.

What to do, what to do…

Creative Solutions:

• Ban BPA
• Ban phthalates
• Use a water filter
• Check out the NRDC’s drinking water FAQs
• And the USGS’s Water Quality page