the greener side

Climate Scoreboard

Update: Where's the new news?

I just updated this map of emerging online news sources that I made earlier this year for the Community Media Workshop. Now it includes environmental news sites such as InvestigateWest, Great Lakes Echo and Facing South.

As struggling local newspapers continue to abandon the printed page, foundations, entrepreneurs and journalists are launching "hyperlocal" and watchdog news Web sites. Where and who are they? What do they tell us about the new media landscape?

Check out the panel about nonprofit news at last weekend's conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists.

Please comment with new additions and subtractions to the international map!  

View Where's the new news? in a larger map

Al Gore talks clean tech, Copenhagen

Shortly after President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this morning, fellow laureate Al Gore spoke about the triple threats of climate change, an unraveled economy and global (in)security.

I shoved my point-and-shoot Canon at him--well, from a polite distance--in the second row of a packed crowd at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Madison, Wis.

I wanted to ask him, "Hey, where are all the green jobs?! Where's our green WPA? What would you do as president here?" Alas, other folks beat me to the microphone. (Is it worth noting that some of their questions were inane to the point of eliciting jeers from the audience? One fellow had the mic turned off and yanked from his face.)

I was hoping that Gore or some other journalist would read my mind and bring up the subject of all those green jobs that are supposed to glow on the happy horizon, but the answers to my questions remain up in the air.

Some 15 million Americans remain unemployed, among them (perhaps scores of) laid-off journalists in the room. It's been sobering during the SEJ conference to run across some of the nation's finest environmental reporters living on unemployment benefits.

Which clean technologies does the former vice president think hold the most promise? Is Gore a bore or are we a society of ADHD-riddled bimbos who fail to pay attention to well-reasoned warnings at our peril?

Check out my post at CleanTechies for more or view the videos below.

Al Gore: Clean energy to solve triple threats

Al Gore: Supergrid, energy storage to boost economy

Al Gore: Look for wave of efficiency

Al Gore: Supergrid will enhance wind power 

Al Gore: China gets urgency of climate crisis

Random snapshots in New York City

Saw old and new friends, that's all.

FotoViewr - Create your 3D photo gallery

Green Web 2.0 tools

Hoping to to green your life, your layoff or just your dog? Whether you're an Earth Day scrooge or true believer, I rounded up a bunch of resources you can use without leaving your laptop: The Social Media & Web Guide to Going Green.

News flash: EPA decides to protect environment

Wow, who knew that the Environmental Protection Agency is in the business of protecting the environment? That's due in no small part to Obama's installation of the agency's new administrator, Lisa Jackson (above).

She received standing ovations two Thursdays ago at a National Press Club event touting a two-hour Frontline documentary Poisoned Waters, which explores pollution in the Chesapeake Bay and Puget Sound. She seems like a down to earth straight talker, mentioning offhand how her mother lost a New Orleans home to Hurricane Katrina.

What's killing U.S. waterways? Farms and storms, to oversimplify it. Industrial agriculture washes pesticides into waterways, spawning six-legged frogs and fish with freakish man-eggs. Rain rinses the toxicants of the built environment off the sides of buildings on down into sewage systems and into the ground, contaminating interconnected streams, rivers, lakes, ponds, oceans.

Poisons are ubiquitous in consumer products, so who's to blame? All of us, not just the bad practices of big businesses, most of whom have long been bound by EPA restrictions. How can we improve stewardship enough to clean up our habits and our water? Frontline producer Hendrick Smith wondered if it's possible to regulate the mass use of industrial poisons in a democracy.

"Pollutants are still responsible for pollution," Jackson said, insisting that the EPA needs a law to help determine whether local folks or feds are responsible for particular waterways, which cross jurisdictions. Assigning responsibility for cleanup in any case eats 40 to 60 percent of the agency's time, she said. (Good luck. "There should be a law," often draws applause in this town.)

Improving the health of water resources is "only gonna happen if people believe the way they act and behave is integral to the preservation of the rest of life and with other living things," said Bill Ruckelshaus (below), in 1970 the first EPA head. A cultural shift must accompany any lasting political solutions, he added.

Ruckelshaus noted that there's already been a cultural shift since Nixon vetoed the Clean Water Act, which Congress then protected. He touted how the EPA has cleaned up the air, such as by ending the burning of soft coal for heat in major cities. "We had the people of Denver who wanted to see mountains again, and the people of Los Angeles who wanted to see one another," he said. "It's not as though we haven't done anything."

It's been more than 5 years since I was in D.C., and the mood on the street is palpably different. Despite our great recession, ordinary folks like cab drivers and hot dog vendors flanking the Smithsonian museums seem peppier than at the height of the G.W. Bush era. Maybe it's just springtime, which often feels tulip-tinted, but I'm not alone in this observation. A Bloomberg reporter I met at a wine bar said it's like Bambi has arrived in town, with birds alighting on the shoulders of so many regular D.C. residents.

 

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Plastic bits on the beach

This is the southwestern Michigan beach that feels like home more than anywhere. There last weekend, for the first time I noticed a thin line of plastic trash where the lake meets the shore. Up and down, as far as you can see, left to right, were bottle caps, shredded bags, broken-up styrofoam and countless nurdles, which are white pellets used in plastic manufacturing. There were no perished birds or fish this time. I haven't seen crayfish creeping from under the sand since early grammar school, but I did find fossils. I've read and written about plastic waste in waterways, but seeing the contamination in a place I love was especially saddening.

Several years ago, the family that used to own my family's cottage stopped by. In the 1950s, the ladies would hike down to the beach to collect fresh water for coffee. They caught the water from a stream that ran from the gray mud clay cliffs into the lake. When I was wee, Tracy and I named that stream Ladybug Land and built the insects shelters of rocks decorated in nail polish. I would slather my body in the mud, a naturally luxuriant skin treatment and sunscreen. Above the bluffs were 80 acres of woods. In the mid-80s, most of the trees fell for the sake of multimillion dollar lakefront properties. The homeowners above the clay cliffs and stream destroyed both with terraced landscaping.

FotoViewr - Create your 3D photo gallery

Hopping along

Here are some other stories I did, not long before joining the ranks of more than 2 million Americans laid off in 2008.

How to get thrown into a Chinese prison

Green graffiti makes paint-free protests

Gadget trade-in services that pay off

'Buy Nothing Day' a sign of the times?

Going solar? 7 sites map your plans

Hybrid makeovers help owners dump the pump

Review with video: USB Cell AA batteries

Review with video: Medis 24/7 fuel cell power pack

Video recorded live: Green-powered gadgets

Review with video: Adobe Creative Suite 4 (plus Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks)

Photos: Solar players show off their wares

Building a 'greener' flashlight with photo gallery: Let there be light off the grid

Tech companies aim to untangle power supplies

Retailers adopting renewable energy

'Green' gadgets need better labeling, report says

Solar grants sweeten San Francisco for start-ups

Better Place eyes $1 billion electric-car network for Bay Area

LCD making worse for environment than coal?

Chemists brew 'greener' fireworks

As gas costs climb, driving dwindles

In the theatre world they tell you to break a leg. But I'm in journalism, so I mixed it up and broke the left ankle instead, then shredded the ligaments in the leg for added drama. I was down for a little while, but not out. Stay tuned for updates to come.

Sustainable: single-income family?

My grandmother Elsie Louise Jacobson (nee Busching, 1910-2008) waited in a line snaking longer than a block one Chicago morning to apply to a secretarial job during the Great Depression.

She got the job, at Harry Atkinson in advertising. She's behind the table here.

In a family of six children, she was the only one to work for some time while unemployment was in the double digit percentages. Her sister, Gertrude, was accepted by the University of Chicago--as a woman, please note--but could not afford to go.

The family instead prioritized money to pay for their brother to attend the same school. Funds set aside for that purpose vanished overnight in a bank mere days after being deposited.

Three generations of this family continued to  live together under one roof for at least three more decades. They feasted together--not hungry a single night, Gertrude said.

Fishy Fiji water

This ad, spotted on a BART train on the way to work in downtown San Francisco this morning, represents what could be one of the best examples of corporate PR BS known as "greenwashing."

How can water flown nearly 6,000 miles from a remote island, and bottled in potentially toxic plastic that can only be downcycled, be eco-friendly? It can't. Check out the Greenwash Brigade's details today, and return there for more about phony "green" claims by corporations.

Even Mayor Newsom derided the appearance of Fiji water  (which he diplomatically didn't mention by name, but was clearly referring to) at a green tech event he attended in Los Angeles a few months ago.

This reminds me of a recent Clorox "green" campaign showing smiling, sunny children on swings. Clorox has a new line of "green" cleaning products, endorsed by the Sierra Club, but chlorine bleach is a nasty thing, as its manufacture releases dioxins. OK, at least chemicals makers say they are reducing the release of dioxins.

Electric planes and superpower plants

Here's some more stuff I've been working on at work lately:

Junk journey highlights plastic soup of Pacific Ocean

Plant power to fight toxic tech

Baby cribs, computers share toxic traces

Clean tech promising but tricky in the developing world

Red tape, costs entangle fans of 'green' fuel

Your receipt is in the e-mail

Scorpion sportscar would burn gasoline and hydrogen

Carbon Belch Day' promotes un-green actions

Wind power outlook weak in Europe, report says

Will people pay more for cleaner energy? You decide

Satellite images link polluted clouds to lack of rain

Pictures: Flying on a wing and a battery
Personal, 'green' airplanes propel forward

Pictures: Measuring home energy use in dollars and trees

Pictures: Supersize solar power

Green this

In honor of Earth Day, I wrote what may start off as a pessimistic run-down of how to green your life, as well as a guide to green labels. So there. Everybody guzzle plastics! There's no escaping them. But what do they mean? Still, the planet will probably do just fine without us. Maybe we should have a "People on Earth Day," since the resources we seem to be ruining are what keep us hanging here.

Plastic oysters, housewares, and data centers

Here's some more stuff I wrote recently for work:

San Francisco's greenest home?

Killing the oyster pack: An end to 'wrap rage'? (photos)

Treasure trove for the pocket protector set

How data centers are cooling down (photos)

Mapping the U.S. carbon footprint

Shadow falls on San Francisco solar rebates

International Home & Housewares Show (photos): Housewares makers seek greener products

Tiny, greener kitchen tech

Gadgets to fight germs, fat, and frizz

Fossil fuels: forbidden fruit

So says Ray Pierrehumbert (right), professor of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago, speaking before graduate students at the Lutheran School of Theology. I'll loosely quote/paraphrase tonight's talk:

Fossil fuels have forbidden fruit written all over them.

We are basically undoing the cycle which involves the burial of carbon for hundreds of millions of years. We’re liberating that carbon. No organic process can tap into that and oxidize it. We have become more than a force of nature. We humans are nature, a force of geology...

We are literally setting the kind of climate for pretty much rest of the history of the human species. Managing these next few generations is very critical in terms of our stewardship, what kind of environment we bequeath to future generations.

This natural carbon cycle that regulates our climate…ticks along with something like 1/10 of a gigaton of carbon a year. How does human fossil fuel stack up against that?

Last year carbon coming from fossil fuel was 8 gigatons.

CO2 is not like other pollutants where you can take a wait-and-see attitude. Unlike acid rain where it wil stop within weeks of cleaning up power plants, carbon dioxide is only removed slowly.

The Northwest Passage was clear from May to September 2007 for the 1st time in known history.

There are 400 molecules per million of CO2 in atmosphere versus 200 a century ago. Things are happening in sea ice faster than models predict.

No physical theory based on the sun or volcanoes has been able to match this [warming] curve… so we know our theories are right.

A heat wave near 2100 would be 35 degress Fahrenheit warmer than in the year 2000. That would be 135 degress F in Chicago. It would hit the poorest the hardest.

While there have been mass extinctions over hundreds of millions of years, now we’re at the stage where the next big crash will not be externally. It will be internally, if we let it happen.

Who is more defenseless than our descendants 1,000 yrs from now who have no say in what we do?

A person in China puts out 2/10 of a ton of carbon per year. 1/10 is too much to be sustainable but it still buys time. France: 1.6 tons/year. Average U.S. person is 5.5 tons per year.

Even if we don’t manage to get our acts together to prevent the doubling of carbon dioxide, we need to prevent the quadrupling. For the next 400 years there will still be a chance to do something to make life better for subsequent generations. There's no point at which you should despair.

A lot of things we do with energy are material substitutes for human interactions. What uses less carbon than sitting around playing guitar and singing songs?

Every pound you take out of that 5 tons will resound throughout the ages. There’s a long way to go, a lot of opportunity for virtue:

The best thing you can do to stop building of coal-fired power plants is to reduce your demand for electricity.

Like Bill McKibben says: First screw in a new lightbulb. Then screw in a new senator.

Travel could be replaced by electric trains. It’s not a matter of giving up but of doing things more intelligently.

A taxi to the airport (for him) would emit 5 pounds of carbon versus 1 pound to take the bus.

Carbon credits? Schemes that plant trees, I avoid. When trees replace prairies or agricultural land you make the land darker especially in places where it snows...and can offset their beneficial effects.

But if you can buy wind power credits that subsidize the price so that someone can afford wind power, that’s real carbon.

Reducing personal carbon emissions is almost an act of devotion. It’s like putting a brick in a cathedral. We’re working on a spiritual edifice we’re leaving for the future.

It’s not really a matter of guilt; it’s a matter of virtue.

More green stories for a sunny day

Here's some other stuff I've been working on at work:

'Green' furniture cut out from cardboard

No tech cure for oceans 'damned' by plastic (48:1 plastic to plankton ratio in Africa-sized swath of ocean)

50 minutes with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom

More coverage related to the Cleantech Forum

Q&A with Cameron Sinclair, Open Architecture Network
(Photos: Open source housing for those in need)

Ecomodders make fuel good to the last drop

Photos: Green bloggers stash trash

Ecobloggers bring the landfill home

Baking plastic from plants

Photos: A future in bioplastics

Photos: A toxic lie detector test

Software is dead; long live software

Why not having a car stinks

Car-sharing is great. I use rent-by-the-hour Zipcar and live in a small big city where I can get around on two feet or two wheels for most things.

Most Americans probably can't imagine getting by without a car in unsustainable subdivision land.

But not having a car even sucks in pedestrian-friendly 7x7-square-miles San Francisco. For nearly two years, I've bitterly missed my 1981 Mercedes 300D (so much, perhaps, that I fetishized such cars in this story).

Why?

1. Without a car, you look like you're in the fourth grade no matter where you go. That's because you have to lug a backpack around town if you're bringing simple things like lunch, a jacket for the evening, a change of shoes for work, a laptop or books for the café, an umbrella. A car is like having a closet, a desk, and a dresser on wheels--perhaps even a kitchen cabinet too. You can't really chow on chocolate in a shared Zipcar because it may fall and melt into the seat, which the next user won't appreciate.

2. Riding a bicycle in a city means taking your life into your hands, let's face it. Ditto for motorcycles and mopeds. But at least you'll probably die quickly if someone hits you, if you're not paralyzed instead. A Segway could get you killed simply because the sight of your smug, upright posture gliding uphill in a business suit can inspire murderous rage in passersby.

3. Taxis burn a hole in your pocket. They're never there when you need one. And again, there's the risk of taking your life into your hands.

4. You have to schedule a Zipcar usually days in advance, especially on weekends. You can't zip across town at night on a whim to meet friends. You get used to canceling plans and staying in your neighborhood. You miss chances to go anywhere interesting in any nearby cities, which can really screw up your job if there's a conference 30 miles away. And even if you do get a car, you have to leave it at the drop-off spot far from your house, then walk home from there on a poorly lighted street, again taking your life into your hands, when the evening's over. Every Zipcar reservation must be a round trip. Thanks for the "convenience."

5. Forget about petite shoes or pedicures. And while your seat may not spread out because you hoof it or bike so much, your lower legs start looking meaty. (This is pathetic; please pretend you didn't read such shallowness here. Scroll down to see #2 on the next list of why it's good not to have a car.)

6. Your life slows down. You wait for buses. You wait for trains. You wait at stoplights. You wait for an opening between the shoulders ahead of you on the sidewalk so you can pass dawdling walkers. If you want to call people you love in other time zones, you can usually only talk to them while you're panting on the way home because by the time you reach your couch, it's midnight on the east coast. In a car you could gab for hours, shielded from the rain.

7. In mountainous places, the bike can be painful or impossible to ride. In cities with snow, bikes are no-go half the year.

8. To jaunt off on a road trip, you'll probably have to rent a car from the airport to get a good rate. That means going to the airport. And it costs more than $60 per day to rent a car with a car sharing service. I might as well buy a couple of 1978 Volvos each month at that rate.

9. You feel like a mooch when asking a friend for a ride home--again--even if it's only 10 blocks out of their way. At the same time, you fine tune a bad attitude about drivers and start to preach to friends and family about how evil driving is, usually while they're scowling behind the wheel in rush hour during your chat. Mooching and self-righteousness are unattractive qualities, but you will learn to nurture them without a car.

10. Groceries are heavy. When will I get around to buying that backup case of Clif bars in case the Big One rocks the West Coast? And forget about picking up 50s furniture on a whim from a garage sale, once a beloved pastime. I've biked uphill from Alemany Flea Market with a folding table on my back. Won't repeat that. 

11. You don't get to listen to NPR on the way to work. Scratch that, I forgot about iPods and podcasts. But I refuse to dangle those white strings from my ears, tuning out the real world around me. It's bad enough that I'm always on the phone while walking to and from work.

Am I a total wimp? Siel of Green LA Girl/Emerald City seems to love de-caring in Los Angeles. Many other people relish their petroleum-free lifestyle. But I still want to throw things in a trunk and wear cute shoes.

On the other hand, not having a car is great because:

1. Your life slows down a bit. You smell the flowers. Your sense of smell becomes acute, especially when exhaust fumes from muscle cars leave you in the dust.

2. Exercise is built into your form of transportation. That's hot, right--defying gravity and age without going to a germy gym--even though you fantasize about foot massage? Again, shallowness: blame me for having been a scholarship kid at a private grammar school.

3. Your carbon footprint shrinks. Of course, you're not supporting the evils of Big Oil (or the Big Agra ethanol lobby, for that matter).

4. You probably save money. I'll add this up and figure it out eventually. Car sharing does include gas and insurance, but I spent nearly $400 on it last August.

5. You never have to deal with parking and parking tickets.

6. Without a car, you no longer power a weapon of mass destruction. If you're in an accident on your bike, at least you won't kill anybody (However, you'll be dead and won't know how good it feels to be the killee rather than the killer.).

7. Taxi drivers become some of your closest companions, at least for 15 minutes at a pop. Hey, they might hook you up with cousins to stay with when you travel across the globe.

8. When it comes to greener transportation, you walk the talk, or cycle the…something.

9. Without that broom closet on wheels, you have no car to wash.

10. Maybe I'll add more to this list. Trying to live a greener lifestyle is great, but mostly I'm finding that it's a pain in the rear. Call me coddled, an ugly, lazy American imperialist. I get it.

But people's approaches to alleviating the inconveniences of daily living, without considering the ecological impacts, have led to this inconvenient truth of global warming. It needs to be easier to be eco-friendlier so we as masses can make sweeping changes in our daily habits. Otherwise, major calamities--whether economical or ecological or both--eventually will force the issue.

A better transporation situation, for me at least, would be sharing a car with a cluster of friends who live nearby.  That way, you could run household errands together, share maintenance costs, and yet never have to walk home far from where you park. If you really get along, you can go on the same road trips, or use a car sharing service in a pinch.

Alas, the era of communes is long gone, and they were a wreck anyway. People don't want to share anymore. Since nobody wants to share, would someone like to donate instead? Somebody, pretty please, gimme a car. I'd prefer leather seats and a sunroof. I'll give everybody a ride home like I used to. Thanks in advance.

By the way, I apologize for not having updated this blog in so many months. I'll blame that on not having a car as well.

Carnival of the Green # 115!

Brr. During this frosty week, it's no wonder that travel is on the brains of many bloggers at this week's Carnival of the Green.

MadEejits (What's an eejit?) hosted last week's Carnival. Step inside EcoLibertarian's tent to find the Carnival next week.

Judith of the Savvy Vegetarian longs for sunny beaches in tropical climes, but finds it a drag to fly to some third world country as a hated tourist. If you need a real reason to travel, Volunteer Latin America (VLA)  offers assistance to humanitarian volunteer travelers.

Karina of Tiny Choices recently hit the slopes at a ski resort powered partly by wind turbines.  She offers  great trips for greening your next ski trips.

Many people may not realize the polar fleece jacket keeping them toasty on that Antarctic expedition may be bad for polar bears, as polyester comes from petroleum. But as David of the Good Human notes, Patagonia's new Synchilla Marsupial polyester is a fine blend of 85 percent plastic bottles and used garments. He's psyched that the fabric is soft, and many colors are on sale. But is it better to opt for something with a smaller "travel pattern?"

If you're only going places in the bedroom, condoms can save lives. But do they help to save the planet too, or just create more litter? Beth of Fake Plastic Fish finds that regardless of the plastic waste condoms create or not, their potential for curbing the population may be ecologically beneficial overall.

In the wake of Valentine's Day, can you offset those non-green gifts and greetings? Lynn of Organic Mania likes crafting organic Valentine's Day cards with her son, but now the grown-up kindergartener is into Hot Wheels.

Don't get your panties in a bunch when there are more eco-friendly underwear options. At Life Goggles, Adam interviews the designers behind GreenKnickers. He also reviews Dr. Bronner's gel and a Minnie Meile Bag. Is The Green Book a worthwhile go-to guide? Check out a review by Joel, also of Life Googles.

When you want to go green for less, it's a bright idea to start by swapping old incandescent bulbs for compact flourescents (CFLs). But as Jean Paul notes at Green Deals Daily, new LED bulbs last five times longer, contain no mercury and they're twice as efficient. Should you switch again?

Styrofoam, aka polystyrene is evil, right? Bans have cropped up in San Francisco and elsewhere. But Joe of Eco Joe's finds that paper cups may be worse. The solution? BYOC.

Please see Treehugger for more details on the Carnival of the Green. Thanks for stopping by!

Extreme, Gaia-loving living in the Bay Area

Even around Halloween, I don't wish upon my worst enemy the hell of looking for a place to live around San Francisco. By the way, please explain how this city has an equal number of dogs as children, when landlords of overpriced properties seem to shun either creature. Good luck finding a one bedroom outside the Tenderloin for $1400, which is more than half the monthly paycheck for anyone lucky enough to have a middle-class salary here.

You might be stuck finding a place to share. This is a great way to boost your self esteem sense of humor. Many, many potential roommates specify persnickety dietary regimes you must respect to share a kitchen, from run of the mill veganism to the primal diet. If you're going to shack up with strangers, you may have to put up with a perplexing array of rules, such as only cooking fish in the iron pot on third Thursdays, or agreeing to give up the living room on Sundays so housemates can practice various rebirthing sessions or orgasmic breathing exercises from the friendly cult down the street. The challenges persist even if you move across the Bay. This is probably the most interesting Craigslist post I've seen yet:

$1250 3 joining rooms available in new Goddess Temple (oakland piedmont / montclair)


Seeking 2 women looking for a live/work spaces starting November 15th!

We are in the beginning stages of creating a Mother Earth Temple in the Piedmont area of Oakland. We have secured a very large house on Oakland Ave. that is beautiful.
...
The Vision: The temple will be a sacred space and a community of individuals who have a strong commitment to the celebration and honoring of the Earth Mother in all her forms. Included in her many names are Gaia, Danu, Pacha Mama, Bhumidevi, Chibirias, Cybele, Terra Mater, Hu-Tu, Changing Woman, Demeter, Sita, Tlazolteotl.
...
If you are interested, please write us telling us a bit about yourself, including your relationship with the Earth Mother...

Like it's not bad enough that you already have to sign a blood-ink contract bequeathing your firstborn daughter to the property deities to get a room. Didn't anybody watch "Pursuit of Happyness" or read this article?

Speeding in Saigon

Update: I finally uploaded video stuff to this post. Home now, but connectivity was too spotty where I traveled in Vietnam.

This is not speeding, actually, since Bao Anh is a cautious driver as far as Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City goes. You may feel that crossing the street is a game of roulette. Step into the flow of traffic, maybe with a hand outstretched, and it magically parts for you. Helmet laws are coming into effect by the year's end (see the billboard, right? I wish I could buy one).

By all accounts, traffic and air pollution in urban Vietnam have worsened as more cars have taken to the road since the nation's acceptance into the World Trade Organization in November dropped prices. Vietnam's GDP is growing at the second-fastest rate in Asia, just behind China. People are earning more money. Those who can afford cars and new cell phones every month will splurge. Cars cost double their sticker price due to taxes. Four wheels may be a show-off status symbol, but motorbikes are faster for most commutes.

Nobody here is pedaling to work out of any desire to be "green" and save the planet. They're just getting around the best way they can afford. Bicycles are still widespread, used by students and by workers to deliver perilously-balanced loads you'd be arrested for in North America, from bananas to bricks to granite for countertops for so much new construction (Think San Francisco's insane? Real estate here rises about a percent a day). You'll see the occasional electric bicycle, but forget about biofuels. You might spot the rare Segway every few months; a few are parked in front of Nguyen Kim electronics megastore, which is making a gazillionaire out of its 30something namesake.

Typing with green fingers

Updated Jan. 11, 2008--Usually I share stories that I write for work only with family and friends who care (or pretend to, politely). Now that I'm trying to get organized, I'll fling at you some of those stories that have a greenish tinge:

Vietnam:
Vietnam a crouching tech tiger
Gadget-hungry Vietnam at a crossroads
Vietnam confabs mix tech fever with restraint

Green culture & stuff:
Tech for the rest of the world
Solar festival as green as it gets
How green was Burning Man?
Dealers hold the keys to biodiesel cars (with photos)

Green building:
Chicago's supersize green buildings
Extreme tree houses
Does that house come in green? (with photos)
Special delivery: your house in a box
PCBC: Building a greener future
Adobe's green office space

Just for fun:
Believe it or not: ghost hunting goes high tech (with photos)
Where the menu is an appetizer
Synthetic diamonds still a rough cut (with photos)
Stanford's x-ray vision
Shutterfly's secret workshop
Plane recycling takes off

Interviews:
Van Jones: Green jobs will clean up economy, communities
Dean Kamen: Segway inventor scoots to bigger matters
Helen Caldicott: Nuclear power not so clean or green

How-to (older):
Shrink your next energy bill
Trash your old tech
Greenlight: Autumn adjustments
Greenlight: Reinventing summer
Greenlight: No-brainer choices

(Who knew it would be so hard to find pictures online of green fingers? No Star Trek fandom implied.)

Artifacts from West Coast Green

West Coast Green last weekend was huge. Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, San Francisco. Eco-friendly everything, down to the printed programs and recycled grocery bag giveaways. See what other people wrote about it here. The mkLotus house got a lot of love.

I couldn't figure out how to work this waterproof camera. This post also protests proper layout etiquette,  benign neglect. What do you call "digititis," being fed up with all things digital? That includes my sore fingers.

My favorite vendor was Nature's Hardware, cabinet accessories billed as eco-friendly. The woman collects skipping and beach stones where she travels, and uses them as knobs. Stone, recycled glass and metal, bamboo, faux ivory too. A stunning cobalt kitchen sink. Bamboo handles.

No knobs, buttons, cables, keyboards or  (much) hardware or software for me for the next two weeks--heading to Vietnam.

A green tale: The Incredible Shrinking Woman

In 1981, the New York Times described the problem of the incredible shrinking woman:

an unusually low tolerance for the poisons contained in hair sprays, floor waxes, feminine deodorants, junk food, spaceage glues and paints, water softeners, vitamin supplements, food preservatives, artificial colorings and flavorings, plastic wrappings, nondairy creamers and air fresheners.

Doesn't that sound like any Whole Foods shopper who checks her eco-labels? However, rather than describing the chemical-sensitivities of some upwardly-mobile, post-modern working mother, this article was reviewing Lily Tomlin's vintage comedy, "The Incredible Shrinking Woman." Rober Ebert summarized the plot 26 years ago:

As Lily Tomlin slaves away in her suburban dream home, her husband (Charles Grodin) gets big raises and promotions for advertising home-care products. And eventually one of those products (was it the dye? detergent? glue?) causes Lily Tomlin to start shrinking.

Her wedding ring begins to fit differently whenever she comes into contact with a toxic puddle. Meanwhile, evil corporate powers like World Management Organization, a consortium of Third World Chemicals and other generic, Acme-sounding entities, plot to shrink lesser parts of the world.

This should be the theme film of the Environmental Working Group, which tracks the dubious chemicals in household products. Who doesn't sense their skin, hormones and very DNA recoiling from the torrent of spanking new, mundane, everyday goods and goos laden with profane pollutants like plasticizers and pesticides?

"Do we really need another cute little doll?" pleads Tomlin's character. "Do we really need another soap that eats away germs when it eats away your life?" She eventually resorts to a Barbie wardrobe and into the arms of a faux Ken doll. Her neighbors brag to TV cameras about introducing their little neighbor to EST--another jab against the coziness of commercials, brainwashing and subdivisions.

By the time the credits roll, of course, you'll see that one small person really can make a difference! "These people were so big, the only way they could get any bigger is by making the rest of us smaller," says Tomlin, victorious (or is she?) after all.

Corny but charming, the supersize sets with cotton-candy home decor to make Pedro Almodovar envious are other renting points. I still can't find it on Netflix, but luckily TISW just showed up as a freebie on Comcast cable. Plus, star Lily Tomlin doesn't get enough props anymore as the innovative, one-woman-show who helped pave the way for Tracey Ullman and others. Tomlin's SNL skits included the girl in the humungous chair and the prototypical snotty phone operator with disc earrings.

The term "Incredible shrinking woman" has been borrowed by happy weight-losers as well as by women who call diet a four-letter word, by other size fetishists, by microphilic bloggers, by magazine writers to discuss eroding abortion-rights laws  and by fans of the anime phenomenon known as koonago. Sure, feminism is implied in the flick, released during the U.S. divorce boom of all time, just before the mid-80s ubiquity of shoulder pads and red-stiletto powersuits.

Include this title in that library of mom-friendly, eco-themed films alongside, say, Blue Vinyl and Erin Brockovich or whatever. My mom bought TISW used on beta cassette, and it was one of the only movies we could both watch without yelling, crying or cringing. Moms have long gone green before the rest of us. You can't blame breasts and fetuses for being at the end of the food chain, collecting so many pollutants, so that the alarm sounds first in their tissues.

I'll welcome any nostalgic poke at the chemical-industrial empire. We might look back someday at even the silliest pop culture proof, maybe via comedies like these, that we've known for long enough that there might be a better way to engineer the ingredients in what we eat, slather on our skin and coat our countertops.

Still, chemicals in anything from paint to microwave popcorn bags have never been tested for their long-term, low-level health effects--or tested at all for what they do when mixed together. Europe just started requiring companies to label 35,000 ingredients in products we ingest or inhale every day--a monstrous effort of to-be-determined effectiveness.

Less than green at Black Rock

Contrary to expectations, I actually made it to Burning Man this year. You can check out some of the damage here. Despite so many good intentions and the hard work of many burners, Green Man was no Las Vegas, but it wasn't so green. Then again, what is? For me, the least green aspect was losing my shirt--not literally, but figuratively, in advance of the event, by shopping at Target and about four other big-box stores for a tent, cooler, LED lights for the bike, and so many other overpackaged, phthalate-ridden camping products.  (I felt less crazy after a new artist friend admitted that she, too, nearly cries in such emporia. Oh, the humanity.)  I didn't realize that the last time I used my own tent was for post-high school graduation bacchanalia on the beach. Because I decided to go at the last minute, I didn't have the luxury of collecting these things slowly and sustainably from friends, craigslist, or resale shops.

My petroleum-based "powdered" wig had to be new too. Or maybe the least green aspect was supplying gasoline to the theme camp's generators. Oh wait, that five gallons was nothing compared to the gasoline filling up the rental car. While I hate air conditioning in real life, some of my happiest Black Rock moments were of resting inside of other people's freon-cooled RVs and trucks for several hours during withering mid-day desert heat.

But I congratulate myself, as any self-righteous San Franciscan should, for spending $25 on a bucket of biodegradable, organic lavender handi-wipes, a hot item under the hotter sun. I brought a bottle of rosewater to spritz on dried-out compatriots too. The bottle claimed that people had prayed over it, and that it possessed special magnetic properties, but my failure to cover up the label made me feel as if I were advertising, a big burner no-no that may have demagnetized all that energy.

And despite the rush to shop at the last minute, the Alemany flea market the week before the burn was the best source of sustainable gifts. I bought a hat box worth of hand-embroidered, mid-century handkerchiefs, which my grandmother still requests at holidays, and passed them around to people. The least commercial, big tent aspect of the Burning Man experience was stopping at local shops and "Indian" taco stands on the way in and out of Black Rock, and sharing small talk with some Paiute people. Pyramid Lake is the bluest thing I've ever seen, especially after nearly a week of so much burning of the brain and fossil fuels.

P.S. See what I wrote for work on this subject here.

Lagging with blogging, so hopping around

This poor blog is becoming overrun by spam comments, like "bag leprechaun paper puppy," from prolific posters calling themselves "definition of douche bag" and so on. I'll keep updating the greener side here and there, but more often down the road you'll be likely to find me occasionally over at the Gristmill blog. Do you know what grist is? It's grain for grinding, or I guess you'd say something to chew on. Grist with a capital G is gritty, funny green news. You'll find my posts here once in a while, maybe more than that. More stuff I write elsewhere is here, here, here, and here. OK, I guess I've "outed" myself. Maybe I'll never work in this town again, as they say in Hollywood. Ah, what a relief.

A view from the road in Rwanda

Will is gonna die of embarrassment, but check out this video of his trip to a pygmy village with New York Times reporter Nick Kristof. We talk about green building in North America in terms of wheatboard cabinets and $40,000 solar panels, but look where this woman and her family live.

When Jessamay and I went to Brazil with Will a few years ago, all the ladies called him "Brad Peet" since Brad and Jennifer Aniston happened to be visiting Rio. Will was down with camping out in hostel bunkbeds, but being cultural imperialists,credit card owners (who are stil paying off the trip today, ahem), Jessamay and I carted the three of us to a suite in Ipanema and spent a day in salons. Poor Will found a way to do his own thing.

Will's an incredible photographer and teacher who's been documenting the wild

West Side of Chicago for years. He refuses to sell out--er, sell his work. Instead, he gives the pictures back to the people who are in them. If you're jealous that he won the NYT trip, just remember karma: some cretin recently stole his computer, camera equipment and digital photographs from his and Naomi's apartment.

Sustainable sweets

At Paris CDG airport a few years ago, I made my only splurge in France other than a big, fluffy white sweater: a stack of tins of Anis de Flavigny in every flavor. These old-school candies are fashioned in a sustainable way. I imagine Marie Antionette popping these during a long soak in the bathtub (OK, that’s not a sustainable image, and forgive the insufferable “when I was in Europe” start to this post. Zzz.).

Records show that the treats were given to travelers in 1591, but they may have been around for centuries longer. Here’s what I could translate from their sweet site: The staff of 25 works out of the precious-looking village of Flavigny, in an abbey built in 718. They get anise seeds from Spain, Turkey and Syria, and then roll them around and around in sugar snowballing for about 15 days until forming one-gram pastille confections. They use real sugar instead of skimping with cheap-o corn syrup like most soda pop makers do. The mouth-watering Candy Blog paid tribute recently:

The pastille was often the work of a pharmacist or herbalist, not a confectioner. They started with seeds or herbs that were prescribed for various reasons (fever, digestion, impotence)… The most talented pharmacists made beautiful pastilles that looked like shimmering opalescent spheres and were kept as if they were treasures as well, inside ornate boxes, often locked by the lady of the household.

Well-crafted candy can be medicinal, a work of art. Mais quelle horreur! Much of the postmodern world has lost its taste for artisanal, all-natural confections. Look how the FDA may try to pass off cocoa butter as true chocolate (hurry up and petition the government by April 25!). Sustainable sweet stuff is important in light of the obesity epidemic. For instance, former President Clinton chose to focus his speech before a crowd of educators in San Francisco this week on how the ever-growing heft of American children could collapse our healthcare system in the coming decades. So go ahead, be a food snob.

I’ll continue to budget as much as several dollars a day for real, dark chocolate, 65 percent and up, and I’ll down anything with a floral scent. When traveling through Paris, Venice and Rome back in the day, I scarfed my way through cone after cup after petite cone of ice cream and gelato in violet, lavender and rose flavors. Not a bad budget diet at $2 a pop. (Starving? Let them eat cake cones!) And one of my favorite all-time meals was a lavender-flavored pasta dish around quirky Bolinas, California.

Don’t crinkle your nose; these flavors are really no more radical than rosemary or peppermint. You can grow them in your windowsill and toss them into stir fries and stews. And hooray, floral herbs are surfacing more lately in mainstream American cooking.

Alligator madness

In Florida last month, I reluctantly agreed to the Gator Tour. Please don't tell anyone. It really wasn't my idea. Just ask Tracy; I was tricked into this trip. But OK, I'll admit that I love the name of Miami Nice Tours, which take you to the Everglades.

"Don't you want to see it before it's gone?" my mom pleaded.

In the bus ride from the chain of downtown hotels in that construction zone called Miami, it was obvious how urban sprawl is eating up the Everglades. White fences low to the ground abut swampy waterways. That didn't stop some hungry alligator from getting in the yard of one homeowner last year, who unintentionally fed himself to the reptile (so the bus driver said).

The tour of a corner of the endangered Everglades is done by air boat, a noisy thing with a giant fan in back. Earplugs are included. Everyone in the boat stands up, gawks, and snaps shots when the guide calls out . I wished we had the grizzled guide behind us, whose voice sounded like a buzzsaw. But our guide was friendly enough. He talked a bit about conservation, regaled us with the wonders of the 3,000 teeth (I bought a pack of 12--but these as well as gator meat and leather come only from our farmed friends) an alligator may grow over its lifetime, and wondered if we had any questions. There was barely a peep back, so I made a peep.

"Can't they run these things with diesel engines, and run them on biofuel, so they don't pollute the ecosystem?"

That would make the boats too heavy, he said.

"Um, really? I doubt it."

Uncomfortable silence.

"How many tours are there on average?" I continued.

Some 50 each day.

I imagined alligators and egrets gulping the rainbow swirls of gasoline left by the busy air boats. But I hope I didn't offend the tour guide. The other boat passengers studiously avoided me, or maybe I'm imagining that.

Update: Admit it, I may be the foolish-looking one for doubting the boat would be too heavy for a bigger engine, now that an air boat overturned last week and dumped tourists into the Everglades. But no reptile snacks became of them.

Green is good. Green is healthy.

So take that, Gordon Gekko--er, Ivan Boesky. I poked around the Cleantech Forum a bit this week. Lots of gray and navy blue suits there, with few of the jeans-and-polos found at dot-com dealmaking events, but it was relatively laid back nevertheless when you consider all the money-matchmaking involved. The $3.6 billion poured into the emerging clean tech sector in 2006 is twice the 2004 amount for North America and Europe. There are billions and billions of dollars just waiting to anoint the next clean, green, money-making machine. Startup CEOs and scientists were snapping  wishbones, crossing fingers, trading cards.

Want to gobble up clean stocks? Be on the lookout for the IPO of some yet-unpopular, cleantech cousin of Google! But which company will it be? One that can print thin-film solar panels? A large-scale  maker of biofuel blends? A startup that's making LED bulbs cheaper?

I wandered around some booths and learned about Group IV Semiconductor, backed by $10 million and working to make silicon-based, energy-efficient LED lightbulbs that might sell for a mere $3 a pop by 2010. Cheaper, white LED bulbs could be the holy grail of bright, low-energy lighting. SpringStar is working to get rid of things that bug you without pesticides with gizmos that mimic insects' mating calls and perfumes. However, there's no bedbug treatment yet because mimicking their stinky pheromones would make your boudoir smell pretty skanky. Engineers at Lawrence Berkeley Labs are building air quality sensors that they hope they can shrink to fit in or on cell phones. Here's more show-and-tell.

In the adjoining rooms, each panel seemed to be running nearly an hour late. At a talk about corporate market drivers, Ali Iz of G.E. said his company has been snapping up great money-making green businesses, but it needs to figure out how to support innovation that's not yet profitable without spending hundreds of millions of dollars.

PG&E, the villain of Erin Brokovich, has greened nearly every bus station in San Francisco with ads for its eco-friendly efforts in recent months. During the Cleantech Forum, PG&E let loose that it's donating a year of office space to hot startups Adura Technologies (makes wireless lighting sensors) and GreenVolts (working on cheaper, more concentrated solar panels). I planned to make it to the mayor's announcement about launching a cleantech S.F. business campus near the former PG&E plant, but I was interrupted by friends who were wine tasting a block away. Cabbing it home two champagne flutes later, there was no hybrid to flag down. But that could change soon too.

What's next? If you're dying to get rich off of companies built to keep the planet from dying, then scroll down and look in the left column for my updated "Green Money" links of lots of cleantech-related blogs. The tickers at Sustainable Business can be useful too.

 

More that glitters can be green

There's a lot of guilt-free jewelry around if you shop carefully. But what if you like to string your own beads and sculpt your own pendants? Here are some green supplies for making jewelry. I'm almost too late for Valentine's Day, but keep this in mind next time you're stringing beads or bending wire for your beloved (chow on happy chocolate here).

The Beaded Needle, the best source of links I've found on this subject, advises buying beads manufactured in the U.S., Czech Republic, Germany, Italy and Japan because "all of these countries protect their workers." Glass beads from India or China? A big no-no (U.S. furnace glass artists such as David Christensen: yes, yes.). Yet even the popular Fire Mountain Gems fails to protect Chinese workers from fatal silicosis, says the L.A. Times. Insert comment here about how beauty shouldn't kill. After I received Fire Mountain's giant recycled paper catalog, which contains all sorts of information about the company's do-good deeds around breast cancer and so on, I e-mailed them asking about the eco- and human-friendliness of its goods. Two weeks later, haven't heard  back.

On the shinier side, look for Karen Hill tribe silver (also sold by Fire Mountain , Shiana, and Nina Designs), Ands' Bali beads, or Rishashay's Fair Trade Federation-approved Indonesian sterling--rather than from random, unregulated sources. Ethical Metalsmiths want to work with silver untarnished by eco-violations.

Rings & Things sells some 20,000 items online or in a 300-page catalog, and the owner told Beaded Needle that the stone cutters he visited seemed ethical enough. The family-owned A Grain of Sand says it handpicks stones and silver.

When dealing with Swarovski and other high-quality crystal, don't chew on the beads or uh...stud a goblet or silver platter with them, since they contain lead. You might want to wash your hands after handling beads, chains and filings. Some beads are dyed, heated, and irradiated. A reputable supplier should label their goods accordingly as the FTC demands.

Don't worry about quartz crystal, though, since that's so natural that it can be shaped make sweet music (beware soundtrack) and bring out your inner shaman. Kacha's Celtic crystals are hand-mined. Earthly Gems says it cares about ethical sourcing. You can buy Discount Crystals NOW! at Healing Crystals, where they pray for your order but don't guarantee how the rocks were mined. Just don't let someone turn those crystals against you to control your mind...ohhh. I'm sure that isn't the case for Chrissy White's hardcore healing crystal jewelry, which she's shown at U.K. eco-design fairs.

Ethical Beads has some more good links to sustainable jewelry-making supplies. And once again, vintage beads are always a safe bet. Try Earthly Adornments or New York Vintage Beads or the Beadin' Path or A Grain of Sand or Bruce Frank or  or go to a flea market that's not in San Francisco, where they try to charge you $20 for half a set of rhinestone, apple-shaped earrings and a rusted fake pearl choker.

Find out more about lab-grown diamonds here.

Other ready-made stuff: Purchases of Rainforest Native jewelry send money toward rainforest conservation. They even sell a grippy massage tool made from rainforest ivory instead of yucky plastics. The Palma Collection has more nice rainforest ivory earrings (left) and necklaces. Sustento sells bracelets of buttons.

Mac attack

There wasn't as much sustainable stuff at Macworld as there was even last year, except for the Greenpeace protestors outside, and big booths showing off Google Earth/Sketchup software and MacKiev's cool satellite weather application. I did learn that the way to measure the purity of the silicone in your iPod cover is to stretch the plasticky material. If it's clear, as pictured here, good news. If it's milky, clouded with white, then yuck. However, although there aren't any phthalates in silicone, it stays in the ground forever once you toss it.

On another note, Apple's ad campaign for its latest invention is ripping off Christian billboards circa 1999. Can God sue?

Look at my footage below: the oglers at Macworld are venerating the new iPhone as if tears and blood were streaming from its Magic Touch screen, imparting a telepathic message of eternal life and everlasting forgiveness. Instead, the gadget comes with a mortal battery, it demands a contract with a devilish telecom, and nobody's even touched it. Get real, people. It's a phone...oh yeah, and a music player and an "breakthrough Internet communications device." It can't feed or clothe you or detoxify your drinking water. Before I leave this earth, maybe I'll see a crowd like this one oohing and ahhing and elbowing over some new invention that actually helps people and the planet.

Maybe I'm forgetting that Apple's inventions just might usher in world peace! After all, as singer John Mayer said after Steve Jobs' keynote address--in the greatest WTF?! moment of Macworld (apart from the media's frenzied stampede up the escalators): "You know, Steve Jobs and Apple are making life more fun. It's the exact opposite of terrorism." Golly.

All that glitters isn't green, but this jewelry is.

I'm not big on jewelry. Note the $2 tin ring that I bought in Cozumel in high school my first trip out of North America. Other than that, I'll wear pieces that were worn or given by people I love.

But after a recent visit to an Oak Park, IL, bead store and the splurge it provoked, I'm left with hundreds of dollars' worth of unstrung Czech glass, Swarovski crystal, silver, wooden, dyed coral, wannabe pearl, jade, and vintage mid-century plastic beads, plus the wire and sterling clasps. I even spent a full day exploiting the worskhop table at an SF bead shop, crafting necklaces for my cousins for Christmas. While I waited two hours for a jump after my Zipcar battery died another day, I kept popping back into General Bead down the street, where the shopkeepers' rainbow hairdos match the beads.

But how sustainable is this jewelry hobby? For example, Swarovski crystals are supposed to be the best because of their high lead content, which sounds not so good, but how bad could it be? Are dyed beads a bad idea? Shoud you leave coral alone? Vintage jewelry is always a safe bet--best if you're lucky to get it handed down from family and friends. If you want to make your own pieces, you can buy box lots of broken pieces at estate auctions and yard sales. I'll be looking into the eco-friendliness of the ingredients you'll find at bead shops. In the meantime, here's the prettiest and greenest jewelry I've found:

You can see sunsets in the jasper and wear ancient history with the dinosaur bone fossils within Kirsten Muenster's strikingly modern, one-of-a-kind necklaces (left, above), rings, and bracelets. Lucina uses fair trade beads, such as Colombian red choclo seeds and vegetarian ivory, which add an earthy touch to the company's elegant, sparse pieces. How about an espresso pearl bracelet (below, right)? I also like 19 Moons' funky brooches (above, right), bracelets, and picture pendants, which embrace imagery from the Victorian and atomic eras. K. talis's North Carolina maker keeps old-fashioned, protective talismans in mind (right) when crafting wearable art from lost keys, shoe buckles, and other detritus. Viva Terra sells nice green jewelry, housewares, and other stuff. Vik Jewelry's fun Indio collection sources materials from Brazil, including dyed acai seeds (left) and feathers. Yvette Doss hand-crafts pendants (right) with semi-precious stones and recycled doodads such as Mexican milagros for her Yew Tree necklaces. By the Sea Jewelry uses softened sea glass in teal, seafoam, cherry and other hues. My favorite necklace pendant was a thousand year-old Roman coin I picked up in Jerusalem, but beware of looted and fake antiquities.

At the Green Festival, Moonrise Jewelry sold beautiful necklaces with real orchid pendants (left) dipped in resin. Vortex Green Jewelry's artists design pieces with lots of recycled beads. They also guide tours of Sedona, Arizona. Motherboard Inc.'s cufflinks are the ultimate accessory for the nerd who is taking over the world. Castaway's bold wood, leather, and horn designs aren't for the faint of heart--but you'd never know that these mature pieces are all sourced from castoff materials.

People make jewelry out of practically anything--like bike chains, gumball charms, and vinyl records. Verde Jewelry makes use of Timber Bamboo and vintage baubles (left). Transit tokens, dice, and Scrabble letters become cufflinks and rings thanks to tokens & coins(right). I used to glue quarters to my barrettes (don't ask). Japan's Harvest even sells jewelry made from old skateboards--supposedly. That part of the site is under construction. Israel's Ayala Bar costume jewelry involves lots of recycled goods. If you're making jewelry and need a sustainable silver source, Cloth of the Gods from Yellow Springs, OH (the original Twilight Zone) sells silver beads and more from tribes in Thailand.

Making a commitment? Skip the blood diamonds and the greed-gold. Brilliant Earth offers a line of fair trade, conflict-free diamonds. Sumiche Jewelry, fair-trade certified, is the work of an Oregon couple, Susan and Michelle. Leber's Earthwise Jewelry makes use of Canadian diamonds and fair trade ingredients. Green Karat sells engagement-ready, ecologically-sensible stuff (left). The Ringworks Studio in Puget Sound focuses on conflict-free gold as well as diamonds. Rather knock on wood than rocks? You could get a custom-crafted wooden ring made in Vancouver with all sorts of sustainbly-harvested trees such as cherry, the tree of the heart, or pine, which represents peace. Steve Wiser of Wiser Jewelry crafts pendants, engagement rings, and other 18 karat golden things from recycled gold in a Washington state studio that will soon be solar-powered.

Update: Another option is to check out synthetic diamonds, which cost 10 to 15 percent less than those from open pit mines. Companies like Apollo, Chatham, and Adia are cultivating gems in labs.

Major jewelry sellers such as Tiffany & Co., and even Zales are signing on to support less brutal ways of mining precious gems and metals (Find out more from the Council for Responsible Jewellry Practices.). That won't stop companies' brutal marketing campaigns that shove diamonds in our faces. I couldn't think of a much emptier symbol of enduring love than a colorless cut rock. How about a blue sapphire instead?

For more, Happy Hippie offers a good list of eco jewelry. Inhabitat has some other ideas. So does Delia at In Business.

Little green gifts

  Here are small, green gifts that I thought about getting people for the holidays:

Motherboard Gifts sells silly stuff made from recycled computer circuitboards—money clips, notebooks, luggage tags, coasters, clocks, and more. You can even get personal engraving.

There are all sorts of handcrafted items made by Etsy's artistes. DIY? You can sell stuff here, too—whether you make morse code laptop sleeves, psychedelic light switch covers, or hand-poured candles.

Vintage jewelry is green--as in chrysropace--also purple as amethyst, silver like Danecraft, and all that glitters in between. I could spend thousands of dollars in about half an hour collecting 1920s through 1950s neclaces here, but I won't. Um, can't.

Typewriter key jewelry. OK, I really want one of these bracelets for myself. Lots of people are making these. You can get one personalized here and here.

Close the Loop's pretty pens, vases, and candle holders are made of shiny, recycled silverware.

I wish that I'd bought this at the Green Festival--a fruit basket that doubles as a rinsing colander, made of chopsticks. Now I can't find it. Can you?

Rosa grimaced when she saw yesterday what I was getting for my dad at Paxton Gate, but I think this mounted mousealope head is awesome, especially for a cat owner. And you could sort of say that it's sustainable, no? It's not wasting a little lab mouse.

LED lightbulbs!  OK, this might seem like a lame gift, until you let your friend know that it could last them a decade and help slim electrical bills.

Subscriptions! Make, Craft, and Readymade are fun for restless geniuses who like to get their hands all over things and remake them. Then there's the more traditional National Geographic, or the excellent On Earth, which comes with a donation to the National Resources Defense Council. Also check out the many green lifestyle magazines listed in the left column of this blog.

Ecoist's candy wrapper handbags--you can even shop online by color, just like at Etsy. Buy a bag, and Ecoist will plant a tree.

I'm not sure how sustainable this is, but it's fascinating. For about $100 per person, you can have family DNA analyzed by the Genographic Project, and find out where some of your ancient ancestors came from.

Better than the rest, you could do some truly unselfish giving this season to make impact around the world without even leaving your chair.

A WorldChanging secret

I stopped by the WorldChanging party in San Francisco last week. Guess what? It was in the same spot as the Grist party, where the Zipcar party was also held. 111 Minna must love its monopoly on the green parties.

The WorldChanging blog--now with city-specific editions--is also a newish book. Its fans (which likely means you, if you've found this blog) hope that this do-it-yourself guide to a sustainable 21st century will be on your holiday gift and wish lists. They even hacked Amazon to make WorldChanging the 12th most popular book for a little while last month. I bought one in Vermont (before it went on sale, eek).

The book is beautifully designed and comes inside of a box with little holes punched in it. The perforations emanate from an image of a cardinal, so it seems to sing or shine. WorldChanging maestro Alex Steffen explained the secret behind the holes: the more you keep the box out in the open, the more light will seep through each aperture, gradually bleaching the book underneath in the same dotty pattern. Therefore, come summertime, you'll be able to see whether your giftees are really living by the present you intended as a manual for greening their lives. Pop quiz in June?

Meanwhile, the world as we know it is probably ending as we enter an era of the Big Thaw, and most heads remain in the ice--er, in the sand. "We could do much better, but we're only just beginning," said Steffen.

I really need to bring along a working camera more when I go places. At a Google party last week, I got to check out a prototype of the famous $100 Linux laptop, being designed with poor kids around the world in mind. Cute? But all I have to show for it is a faint chardonnay stain on my t-shirt from balancing the wine glass in one hand and the hand-crankable gizmo in the other.

Give me your tired, poisonous electronics

Back in October, I trekked to Burlington, VT, for an annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists. Plus, one of my bestest friends, Amani, lives within a two-minute jog of the conference center, so I got to hang out with him. Lo and behold, I even ran into Nicole from high school as she spoke about green labeling on products and foodstuffs.

Arguments and emotions were intense in more than one conference discussion, especially those about nuclear power, climate change, and government secrecy. I'd have so much more to show (such as the hydrogen car fueling station) and tell if I'd remembered to bring my camera battery charger. Luckily, though, plenty of journalists did what comes naturally, so you can listen to MP3s of the heated debates and check out slide shows here.

At least I typed up some notes about the well-attended panel on toxic trash. You can blame Moore's Law for chips doubling in power and dropping in price every two years or so, feeding the mad cycle of obsolescence in consumer electronics. Want a phone with a video camera? You'll probably throw away last season's model that only took still pictures. Some 4,000 tons of gadgets and appliances get tossed each hour around the world.

''We're going through the largest industrial expansion in the history of the world,'' said Ted Smith, former executive director of the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.

Lately, however, big stories are piquing the public's interest in electronics waste. For instance, IBM electronics factory workers suffer high rates of cancer. We hear about iPod maker FoxConn's labor rights violations. The SVTC's Toxic Sweatshops report shows how prison labor is used to make shiny, new digital toys.

''It's not a good guys versus bad guys kind of issue," says High Tech Trash author Elizabeth "Lizzie" Grossman, whose book took an axe and gave the electronics industry so many whacks.

The Electronics Industry Alliance's Richard Goss agreed. "There's no desire by industry to use mercury or lead," he said, adding that the alternatives are dubious both in terms of practicality and safety. For instance, what if we learn later, after phasing out lead solder, that the substitute solder falls apart and millions of products need to be recalled? Wouldn't that be a bigger disaster than simply managing and recycling the known toxicants responsibly?

Goss noted that even while Europe bans heavy metals and brominated flame retardants from electronics, there are many exemptions. Flat screen monitors like the one that might be in your lap are allowed to contain 5 milligrams of lead. But that's far better than the four to 6 pounds of lead in boxy CRT monitors that were necessary to shield us from radiation back in the day. Plus, LCD monitors use 10 times less energy than cathode ray tube boxes.

Plastics containing DECA, a brominated flame retardant, are also exempt from Europe's ROHS rules, although manufacturers are phasing out this endocrine disruptor. But little is known about the ingredients in these plastics because NO epidemiological studies exist about BFRS, said Kellyn Betts, an editor at Environmental Science and Technology.

"This is one of the hottest research areas that we write about," she said.

Europe banned BFRs Deca, Penta and Octa. But because the United States and Canada have such high fire safety standards, BFRS and PBDES are 10 times more common in the bodies of North Americans than in people in the rest of the world. Omnipresent, these substances travel in dust, leaking from our supposedly sealed personal computers, televisions, and so much more.

"'They're everywhere,"' Betts said--probably in the cushions you sit on, the carpet underfoot, the drapes you toss open when you rise from the flame-retardant-soaked mattress on which you sleep. And these poisonous flame retardants wind up in our tissues and breast milk.

Next year China will introduce a good housekeeping seal on the bottom of all iPods, cell phones, TVs and all such electronics big and small, with a date stamp spelling when the safety of chemicals contained therein might start to seep outward, said Mark Schapiro of the Center for Investigative Reporting during another panel. He's working on a book to detail that and much more about how the U.S. is no longer the standard bearer for environmental, chemical, product safety (although Californians are fighting the powers that be, as usual).

The European Union and China are going much further to take precautions to protect people and ecosystems from potential hazards. Their new laws will change global industries, so we'll see the effects trickling down, but still the lower standards Stateside could mean more poisonous products for Americans. Just as China is shipping formaldehyde-laced lumber banned there to our shores, so we'll probably see an influx of junky, expired electronics shipped here, oozing chemicals that can cause cancer and monkey with our reproductive systems.

The New Orleans you might miss

Hasn't New Orleans dried out and begun resprouting as a green, sustainable city? Sure, much of it stewed for weeks in water teeming with 45,000 the amount of bacteria safe for swimming (not to mention those pesky heavy metals, organochlorines and stuff). But the EPA recently gave the environmental conditions down there a green light anyway. Can't we just load up some barges with mushrooms to float down the Mississippi and deep clean the Gulf Coast upon arrival?

New Orleans' woes may be forgotten in the headlines, but they're not gone. It's a mess and much of it is far from habitable. What's taking so long to get this place back on its feet? Brad Pitt can only do so much. So who's rebuilding the city without gloves, face masks, or goggles?
To find out, watch New Orleans' secret history in the making in this 11-minute movie. It airs Thursday on Current TV ("Al Gore's station" is channel 107 in SF)--or at any time right here.

About a year after Katrina, Miguel flew down to New Orleans from SF on a whim. Armed with Gregory's camera, yet without knowing a soul in the city or a lick about making a documentary, Miguel chatted up strangers over the course of a week and wrapped up the editing in less than a month. Check out his raw footage of the ongoing dirty work in what some might call Nueva Orleans.

Said Miguel on location in September:"Why aren't there tons of trucks over here cleaning up? You'd think you were at the end of the world, and the center of the world is here...It's really twisted. It's so f***ing heartbreaking. This place will change your life, it's unreal. This isn't reality. What the hell, I don't know what to say about it."

Rest, post-Green Fest

Everything's coming up way too green this month, and I can't keep up. There were round-the-block lines outside the Grist party Friday night, then so many organic raspberry vodkas leading to logorrhea--and then spotting Siel (aka GreenLAGirl), David (Grist), and other nice sustainadrinkers.

I shared a taxi to the Common Vision party at Cellspace, partied up by an old school crowd--the type deemed too dredful by hesitant, would-be environmentalists these days. It was a pretty hardcore bunch, and I belonged to the combed-hair minority. Ah, ultragreen sights and scents (someone has to keep incense vendors fed). But I admit, even in my double-breasted jacket, I got into it during the nonprofit's film about its biofuel bus tour. They planted 1,000 trees in 20 cities with helping hands from schoolchildren more eager than most of us to let loose with the big drums. Imagine looking left to right and seeing reverential gazes all down the line. Been there, done...time to go.

Next, the d7tv launch party (go watch Yoga Girl, Raw pumpkin slaw, and web 2.0 party crashing) kept me from sleeping much. Saturday and Sunday were merciless--blame the Green Festival. Saturday night, the Sustainlane party at the W Hotel mixed bare feet and strappy heels, tie-dyes and neckties. Watch above (or click here) for one man's blissful toe-jamming session.

The Raging Grannies rocked the Green Fest on Sunday. Their getup is equal parts Susan B. Anthony and Medea Benjamin, bridging the centuries with a lady punk flair: straw hats brimming with flowers and political buttons, magenta and cotton-candy hues, yellow police caution strips too. They held those MOMS (Make our Milk Safe) "Target: Phase Out PVC" signs. Looks like rocket fuel and toxic flame retardants are tasteless in breast milk. I was prepping my camera when a 50something man next to me wondered aloud about filming them: "Is it worth it? Is it worth it?" Judge yourself--here's my micro-movie (or below).

As we were rushed out of the exhibition hall to return our Zipcar in time, blurring past the LED lightbulbs, chopstick colanders, Bidematic, and Oeko-Tek-certified latex beds, I said hey to Summer of BTC Elements--who was still selling a cute cashmere sweater and was one of the few, unwilting souls still holding down a booth past 6pm. 

It's Monday Tuesday already and my solar cells are sapped, so I couldn't hang around after work to hear Darryl Hannah talk about food at the Commonwealth Club or to crash the Zipcar party down the street at 111 Minna (same watering hole for Grist, il y a 3 nights). Good night~

Crowd catches Clinton's clean tech bug

A crowd of a few thousand San Franciscans held its collective breath for a few hours outside City Hall last night to hear Bill Clinton pump a California ballot measure that would make oil companies pay higher taxes per barrel to fund cleaner fuels.

California voters will approve or nix Proposition 87 next week. Behind the event stood the Apollo Alliance, a bunch of big progressive groups pushing for green tech to create jobs, address climate change, and wean the U.S. off of foreign oil.

In the pre-Clinton hours, a dude from Third Eye Blind sang, then Bonnie Raitt did too. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom introduced District Attorney Kamala Harris basically by calling her a hottie. Desperate housewife Eva Longoria lauded Clinton bilingually, and the 42nd president's victory song burst from the speakers as he took the stage.

Do we really have to nerve to let Fleetwood Mac turn us on these days? You can take those lyrics with equal fatalism and optimism: "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow...Yesterday's gone." Which yesterday is that: that buried era this man ushered in circa 1992, or the future's yesterday that we're surviving now, from 2000 until--?

"I am so tired of America being the caboose on the world's train to the future," Clinton said.

Clean tech dealmakers like Vinod Khosla want Prop 87 to "create a new Cleantech Silicon Valley." Already, more venture capital is funneling into clean tech than all those wiggy new Web 2.0 startups. But to prevent Proposition 87 from passing, big oil interests have spent some $90 million. Lots of the state's editorial pages have sided with the oil industry, saying that the devil of the well-intentioned proposition is in the details that require setting up a brand new state agency.

So does Clinton still ooze infectious sexual isotopes? Miguel shook Clinton's hand twice in the front row, and barely escaped suffocation by panting high-school girls in the process. After most of the crowd ambled home, breathless clusters of hangers-on waved their camera phones in the air, calling for their tow-headed saint to grant a gaze in their direction.

On this same patch of land less than two months ago, another lovefest turned Civic Center and City Hall into a post-pacifier-sucking, neo-psychedelic, electro-yogi-pirate, urban black rock-lite, benevolent-psycho-digital-steampunk, rainbow-glitterati dance orgy. Last night, too, all genders swooned, hip grinding ensued, and the past decade never happened.  I was up on a platform in back and so none of that fairy dust fell on me, but I managed to take these low quality micro movies. Go watch the local evening news if you really want to see it.

Wash those breasts right in through your hair

You buy organic milk and eat Ben & Jerry's ice cream because it's free of hormones, which can throw your body out of whack in mysterious ways. But what are you rubbing into your scalp? Many shampoos and conditioners--especially those marketed to smooth the hair of black women--are packed with synthetic hormones, which your body easily sucks in through the skin. How about organic brands instead? In test tubes, even lavender oil mimics estrogen.

A debate is raging about why nearly half of black girls and 15 percent of white girls seem to be starting puberty by age 8. (I couldn't find any way around the P word, yech.) Some toddler girls and boys even develop breasts, suffering what the NYT highlights as "preschool puberty." Could it be mom's shampoo--Super Gro being so aptly named? Or plastics, with hormone-disrupting phthalates rubbing into our mucous membranes through pacifiers and sex toys? What about the omnipresent industrial chemicals that monkey with our endocrine systems and so much more? It's been seven years since the government was supposed to take a hard look at how such ingredients mess with the environment and our bodies.

Scientists don't even know enough about how hormones work to endorse them after menopause, or to warn women about a breast cancer link. But the FDA lets drugstore bodycare products contain just as many artifical female hormones as grandmother might swallow in her daily change-of-life horse pills.

The estrogen compounds in the urine of millions get flushed into our groundwater, streams and oceans, probably rendering frogs and other delicate creatures infertile. Yet gynecologists regularly push birth control pills on tweens. Women even take the pill year-round so they'll never have to have a period; a new drug will make that even easier. What to do? Stuntmother puts the lack of an answer better than I can:

Problem is, there's something worrying every time I swing my head around. Water has lead. Shampoo has lavender. Food has growth hormones or has been genetically modified. Our vegetables are sprayed. Our playgrounds have glass in the grass and needles on the swings. Our cars are spewing out carcinogens, as are our factories and air conditioners. Our crackers have preservatives and polyunsaturated grease. Fish is riddled with mercury. George Bush is president. Perverts lurk on the internet and reality television is weird. North Korea has nuclear bombs and the Gulf Stream is slowing. Oil is over sixty dollars a barrel and clothing is sweat-shopped. Children are dying in mines and orphanages and pressure treated wood has arsenic. New paint and carpets off-gas and old carpets have dust mites and old paint has lead. People still think that Paris Hilton is pretty and the authorities (ha!) can't decide whether 10,000 or 600,000 Iraqis have died since we charged into Iraq.

There are dangers everywhere and a thousand more I do not know or that have not yet been discovered. I cannot be a one woman shield against all that is poisoning, threatening, lurking and destroying my children. I want to be -- but I can't. So where is the line?

Fight pollution with a better map

Summer's over and the hope-inspiring greenery outside is shriveling up to make way for a barren, icy winter, so let's check out some ultra-blighted parts of the world, just for fun. A new list of the world's 10 most polluted places completely skips over the United States. Chernobyl speaks for itself, for instance. Have a strong argument for your own backyard? Go ahead, nominate your own site. The Blacksmith Institute, a collaboration between governments and nonprofits around the globe that put together the list, will hear your plea.

This reminds me of Google Maps' virtual tour guide of eco-friendly U.S. vacation spots this summer. Google should help the Blacksmith Institute with its maps. Look at how empty their map looks (above) next to the satellite views you can grab for free at Google Maps and its rival sites.

Google's polishing its "do no evil" green credentials lately. The Googleplex is going solar, becoming the world's biggest office to run on sunshine (catch a glimpse here). In an example of Google tech used for good, iLoveMountains.org makes use of Google Earth software to take you on a dizzying tour of decapitated mountains throughout Appalachia.

When people talk about clean coal, don't believe the doublespeak. Mountaintop mining has already decimated some 800 square miles, according to the site, burying 1,000 miles of streams and just generally depressing people who used to have a nice view from their windows. Install Google Earth for 3-D proof. On a brighter note, Blacksmith does detail progress in cleaning up radiation as well as cancerous contamination of groundwater and air around Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa.

When food puritans go too far

I'm so glad I don't live in NYC, and the feeling is probably mutual. While rent is ridiculous here too, at least I can inhale the scents of jasmine and trumpet flowers while walking to the train stop. I apologize for blowing this S.F. smug cloud in your face, but it's also a luxury to hike down a hill on Saturdays for $1/pound locally-grown, organic apples or onions, or to cycle over to the aptly-named Good Life or Rainbow for groceries week-round. La di da.

Look at what this poor, gray New Yorker had to go through just for cheap produce in Park Slope, Brooklyn, trying to improve her failing health. For the privilege of shopping at a food co-op there, you have to volunteer a few hours of work each month. That's fine, but the membership rules sound downright draconian, as the author explained on Mr. Beller's Neighborhood. Her story contains some tired stereotypes about granola shoppers, but hear this horror: you supposedly get kicked out of the co-op if any non-member winds up eating the food you buy there:

A friend of mine, making use of her free pass to shop, told me of a harrowing experience she encountered while waiting on line to purchase a variety of vegetarian foods: Tofurkey Jerky that tasted like the beef variety but wasn’t, Quinoa, spelt, and tempeh, and then a number of organic steaks for her live-in boyfriend who was a meat and potatoes kind of guy. Her upper lip beaded with sweat as she stood on line, worried that the mix of items in her cart gave her away–-she was committing a flagrant food coop offense, shopping for a non-worker.

What if you want to throw dinner parties?