the greener side

The green secret of NiMH batteries

It's a pain to pack for a trip when you're grappling with a tangle of cords and accessories. But as long as you're toting a laptop, USB Cell batteries let you ditch battery chargers. Just pop off the green cap on one of these puppies and plug it into a USB port on your PC. USB Cells come in AA, AAA, 9V versions, with flavors for iPods, digital cameras and smart phones. These Nickel Metal Hyrdide (NiMH) batteries lack the toxic ingredients that muck up alkalines and NiCads, and they last longer. You just slide off the cover of a compatible phone or camera to charge without having to remove the battery. I was all set to place an order, but you can't buy these outside the United Kingdom at the moment. Instead, I joined the wait list at maker Moixa Energy's Web site (via The Green Guy).

Will America grow its own?

Whatever happens at the Commonwealth Club stays at the Commonwealth Club--on its website, that is, as a podcast you can hear in case you miss all those big-brained events. Here's what happened at its panel on biofuels last week, in case you don't have time to listen. In a nutshell:

Hybrid sales continue to climb, while Hummer drivers look dumber than ever. Maybe global oil supplies already peaked within the past few years, if not decades ago. Green indie fuels for trains, trucks, and automobiles are hot. Why buy oil from countries run by dictators when our cars can chug along on corn, garbage, rice straw, banana peels, or french fry oil made in the U.S.A.?

Only in the next decade can we keep climate change trends from zooming so high off the charts that Al Gore will need to punch holes in conference room ceilings to fit his PowerPoint presentations. So shall we pop the cork (or prepare a casket) for the end of the oil age? Just a sec.

"The Stone Age didn't end because we ran out of stones," said Roland Hwang, vehicles policy director of the National Resources Defense Council. In other words, just because we're running out of fast, cheap oil doesn't mean we're going to stop trying to squeeze it out of stones. Literally. Rather than push for biofuels, much of the oil industry in North America is exploring tar sands, oil shale, and coal. These methods pollute air and water and expel more greenhouse gases than the conventional drilling that made the characters on "Dynasty" drip diamonds from their shoulderpads.

In Alberta, Canada for instance, stripmining sand covered with tar requires blasting with superhot water, using lots of natural gas (and nuclear reactors, if the companies really had their way). The process creates ponds of toxic waste, where canons are fired to keep birds from landing in the poison water, and it de-lovelies boreal forests. Blame a behemoth called Syncrude (with a convenient, Dickensian name), whose website links off the bat to a tidy sustainability report (left).

"We have the potential to drive our crossroads into a highly destructive path with these so-called unconventional sources," said Hwang. "After these investments are made, it's going to be very, very hard to turn back the clock and keep these out of the marketplace."

Ryan Lamberg of Community Fuels said he hoped that biodiesel will replace petroleum-based diesel for trucks, school buses, as well as construction and farming equipment.  "While most Americans drive gasoline cars, all Americans feel the effect of diesel prices and diesel pollution." But the demand for biodiesel is bigger than the supply. Lots of Californians want it, but they've got to ship the materials from the Midwest.

Rick Zalesky of Chevron said it would be wonderful if today's technology could convert biomass to a molecule chemically identical to gasoline but carbon neutral. Then we could just keep our fuel distribution centers and gas stations and combustion engines--presto, no new infrastructure or hyper hybrid-electric-hydrogen cars of the future necessary.

Ethanol is a drag, and would require using all our farmland if every gasoline car used it, noted Alex Farrell , UC Berkeley professor, who called waste fuels the next big thing in biofuels. "There's no silver bullet. We are likely to see in the future a number of different technologies."

When not to be flexible

When in the mood, we cover the intersection between all that's clean and green versus all that's dirty in sex machines, whether roaming the halls of the Adult Expo in Vegas or observing marketers' attempts to sell sustainability with sex. And it 's really a laff riot when you bring sex toys out on the street. I don't know this last part firsthand, but Treehugger TV found out how to raise New Yorkers' eyebrows by pimping cleaner, greener sex toys in public; watch the video here.

If you think that this sort of blogging is just a cheap ploy to attract attention, then check out the latest "sex scandal" headlines being teased by the world's most famous green group. If the cute factor doesn't work with polar bears because it's too depressing that they're drowning in the melting Arctic, you've got to pursue prurience. Ladies, gentlemen, and everyone in between should take note of the dire September 11th warning issued by Greenpeace's Amsterdam (where else) office about unsavory sex toys such as the clitofing, the anneau d'erection, and spectra gels. The names sound to me like control panel buttons on the "Lost in Space" craft.

Such products are poisonous because they contain plasticizers called thay  pthay  phfft phthalates. Words this hard to spell and with that many syllables (left) are usually a turnoff. Phthalates (THAY-lates) make the props flexible, but their factory-spawned chemicals have been linked to the kind of unfun gender-bending that makes frogs infertile.

Can you believe that inserting what looks like a glass bong into your body is probably less dangerous than these bendy things? Rule of thumb: anything with that new plastic smell is offgassing unsavory ingredients, and I think it's fair to say that offgassing is a big turn-off even for kinky people. This stuff also leaches into the environment (ew, leeches  leaches: Turn Off) once you toss that corroded vibrator into a landfill.

The European Union frowns upon baby toys that contain phthalates, while American babies still suck on them. But governments won't test the adult goods, just as the FDA doesn't regulate cosmetics. So Greenpeace commissioned its own study on plasticky props for grown-ups. Results: seven of eight were packed with phthalates, which made up as much as 51 percent of the ingredients. What, Greenpeace could only afford to buy eight sex toys? They should have just gone out onto the streets waving dildos like Treehugger did, and asked some Dutch people for loaners. After all, that market is worth some $28 million each year in the Netherlands alone.

Chew on green, gritty reporting

Who said reporters just sit at their desks rewording press releases? Check out the finalists in the Society of Environmental Journalists 5th annual awards.

Oops, I forgot; "mainstream media" I mean like, MSM, is so 1972. Isn't it our duty to cheer up? It's the dawn of the postpostmodern, postindustrial, post-oil century, which is a new beginning, which must be positive! We wouldn't want to turn off any jetsetting ecorazzi with ugh, more unglossy headlines about the downtrodden state of nature. C'mon, let's say Yippie (no Hoffman/Rubin overtones, for Gwyneth's sake) for our bright, clean, green energy future--for amber waves of organic quinoa, for fleets of veggie oil Mercedes road-tripping from sea to sea, for backyard wind turbines rustling the leaves of native prairie plants that we put up where parking lots used to be!

Y'all couldn't feel any more numb being reminded about the toxic stew that sank the third-world, subtropical boot-toe of this number-one nation, could you? Say one more word about how our citizens stewed and stank and starved last year because of criminal ecological neglect or whatever, and it'll spoil my salad. Who wants to lose an appetite about how many other waters flow with poisons, and why "wars over wetlands" has such a nice ring to it? Can't we go without the gloomcasts about how shifting weather patterns will doom our shivering offspring to relentless wars over resources? So what if there aren't any fish left in the sea, or if teflon and flame retardants float in baby's bloodstream. Wouldn't you rather subscribe to happygrams about shopping in an ecologically-correct fashion, so you can make those little green choices mean a lot, day after day?

If so, nevertheless, let's salute those scandalously underfunded investigative journalists who chase the depressing subjects. Without them, we'd have no motivation to shop at Whole Foods or to rendezvous over fair trade coffee with with fellow "conscious" souls.

Target: eco-enemy #1

An energy expert who founded a wind-power startup plans to dethrone the congressman known as the nation's top eco-villain, Rep. Richard Pombo (who devoted a special Earth Day web page to ripping "sky is falling" environmentalists). Democratic challenger Jerry McNerney's (left) credentials include a stint at West Point and high level engineering and security work. His son--who signed up with the Air Force after 9/11--convinced dad to run. Plus, McNerney serves up the requisite firm handshake.

I found out the latter at last night's Green Drinks party, a monthly shoulder-rubbing shindig. San Franciscans can't even vote for McNerney since the 11th District is within the outer eastern reaches of the BART line, where Pombo won 6 terms. Still, McNerney hopes that San Francisco citizens will hand over the greenbacks for his campaign. Green-minded voters are desperate for McNerney to oust Pombo, known for backing the sale of public forest lands as well as drilling for oil in the pristine Arctic, and other classic ungreen stuff that spoils national and global natural treasures--even though the kids' section of his website shows off a happy, fiddling raccoon. Aw. Yet McNerney's blog likens Pombo to a Soprano:

As the recipient of another commander-in-chief cuddle...no incumbent is a more worthy target of voter ire than Richard Pombo...While Pombo's disregard for our veterans and his record on the environment are deplorable, Pombo is also under fire for corruption.

McNerney has come closer than anyone else to beating Pombo, who is otherwise poised to take the helm of the House Agriculture Committee in 2008 once his term as Resources Committee chairman expires. Green Republicans on the Hill preferred Pete McCloskey as a Pombo foil in the spring, but now out of the race, McCloskey backs McNerney. McNerney is getting endorsements left and right from area papers, too.

A fun ride, though not so critical for Katrina

Last Friday, my feet were among some 2,500 pairs pumping the pedals in the Katrina anniversary edition of Critical Mass observed in about 30 cities.  The monthly Critical Mass bike ride has been complicating rush hour urban traffic while dumbfounding, enraging, and even delighting trapped drivers around the country for 14 years. 

Last week's special course was designed to trace the floodline around San Francisco, to show where global warming might lead saltwater to swallow parts of the city within decades. Gulp; that's quite a bit of turf (map it yourself). But cyclists weren't donning much to mark Gulf Coast culture, aside from a few Mardi Gras beads, rainless raincoats, and handwritten "Save New Orleans" pages stuck to their spokes. One bearded guy wore only salmon-colored, generic Speedos (to swim?), but I missed the feather-bedecked dude who handed out organic carrots from his basket last month. There was way more Patagonia gear than nudity and glitter. (Stay up for Midnight Ridazz if you're jonesing for fishnets or boogaloo bunny suits.)

We started late, since I had to run home first and buy a helmet to replace the one that disappeared this month, and then we followed the floodline backwards hunting for the cyclists.  Just when we gave up, arriving an hour past the launch near the waterfront, ta da! Suddenly, the flood of hyperempowered humans-on-wheels surfaced down Market Street. Wheee! Gradeschool fun. A highlight, after the initial climax when everyone circled around a guy climbing a light pole, was blocking the Stockton tunnel to ride through it once, then back the other side.

But it was overkill when some riders hijacked the tunnel a third time. Irrational exuberance can rule the flow in these situations, and at that point the police escorts revved their motorcycle engines uncomfortably close to my rear tire. Yeah, we get it, the car culture stinks and bikes rule, etc. We cut out and got some fish tacos. Once again, here's some Mona Caron art (left); you can still buy this Mucha-inspired poster that commemorated the decade birthday of Critical Mass in 2002.

Offsetting Burning Man's eco-impact

No matter what I may have murmured since the late 90s, once again I'm definitely not going to Burning Man this year, and I don't dare predict if I'll ever go. Help to finagle some extra vacation time for me, and I'll postpone my ho-humness for a week to freak with you in the desert.

But if I were heading to Black Rock, I could use the CoolingMan calculator (via SF Chronicle) to help make up for whatever pollution I might cause there. Contrary to what the Chronicle's headline implies, this is by no means the first effort to make Burning Man greener; the festival's environmental commitment starts with its rule that no trace is left when it's all over. So many members of the Burning Man community already pilot biodiesel buses and dedicate their days to green pursuits rather than daily downtown wage slavery, whether they're helping prisoners to garden organically or volunteering in the post-Katrina zone.

Then again, plenty of trustafarians and corporate sellouts make the annual trek, which is an uncharitable and glass-house thing to say. I guess that the climax of an even greener Burning Man might just light up a sculpture with LED lights instead of torching a pyrotechnical effigy. If that ever happened, hopefully Burning Man wouldn't tame itself to the point of resembling the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree (doubt it, but who in 1971 would have foreseen Jerry Garcia ties?). By a stretch of the imagination, if there were ever some corporate involvement, then hopefully the world at that point would be more like a Mona Caron mural and so it wouldn't matter, because corporations would have evolved to behave like Eleanor Roosevelt rather than as run-of-the-mill psychopaths.

Electric, green cars generating buzz

I first saw real, live electric cars at the San Francisco Solar Homes tour about a year ago, then again in January at the ZAP display at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (pictures here), and then ran into another ZAP booth at the Maker Faire a few months ago. But my hands were too full then to write about them. Lazy.

Thanks to "Who Killed the Electric Car?" as well as pricey oil and the end of the world as we know it supposedly being nigh, Zero Air Pollution (ZAP) vehicles are in high demand. They're cute and zippy, but you can only drive the Xebra about 40mph for 40 miles before needing to plug it in again. And as you can glean from the photos, the interior is less than luxurious--more along the lines of a Yugo. Take heart, however; the plastic seat coverings are removable and were probably for display only. I'm 5' 5.5" and fit comfortably in the front, though you might feel cramped if you're taller. But who needs leg room and speed when you're just running errands around town?

In San Francisco, at least, a dawdling Xebra might be perfect. I've come to believe that so many drivers here are simply too stoned to enter the freeway on-ramp without first pausing to take in the view and breathe in that ominpresent scent of non-native eucalyptus. This is frustrating to a native of Chicago, where we drive (yes, defensively) as if steering a tommy gun. And have patience; charging the Xebra takes about six hours. Once you're rolling, though, it only winds up costing a couple of pennies per mile worth of electricity.

The Santa Rosa-based ZAP company sells a whole line of two, three and four-wheeled electric cars, scooters, bikes, and ATVs, many of which Brazilian drivers have enjoyed for some time. An ethanol car is planned for next year. ZAP owns the U.S. rights to distribute Smart cars, which you may have snapped a photo of on some European vacation.

You can buy a ZAP Xebra for around $10,000 from a handful of U.S. dealerships in Santa Rosa, CA; Elizabeth, CO; Salem, OR; Mesa, AZ; Reno, NV; Exeter, NH; Vandergrift, PA; Kirkland and Fife, WA; and West Palm Beach, FL. But expect a wait list.  The company is enjoying record sales, which is just about 300 cars, yet for now it's operating at a loss.

As for higher-end electric autos, the first batch of electric Tesla sports cars, which cost close to six figures each, have already sold out. See a slideshow of ZAP cars here, and check out vintage tiny cars at the Microcar Museum.

If you're partial to your old VW van and live in Northern California, you can contact Larry to help you convert the beast to a plug-in electric engine for around $4,000. Never mind, I misplaced his e-mail. Let me know if you find it.

tags: green cars electric cars zap

Learning to drive, greener

The freedom of your first driver's license may be exciting, but few things make you feel more trapped than getting behind the wheel with a halitosis-challenged drivers ed instructor, and then sealing the deal at the political-appointee-staffed-DMV--not to mention the depressing fact that your presence on the road makes you another mobile soul sucking up petroleum, polluting the planet, just so you can idle outside the White Hen Pantry Friday night while a bribed college student buys your friends a six-pack to chug in your mom's basement. 

But a greener form of driving instruction puts a twist on the initiation rite of learning to drive. Drivers Ed Direct has taught about 10,000 teenagers how to safely steer a hybrid car. The online lessons help you earn a license in the Golden State, the Longhorn State, as well as in Florida and Nevada, where the company advertises on Craigslist. In-car sessions are available around L.A. with a hybrid Toyota Prius or Ford Escape. The company doesn't offer instruction for biofuel cars (but you don't really need that anyway). Founder Blake Mycoskie, a former contestant on The Amazing Race, also runs TOMS shoes, which gives a pair of duds to a needy kid for each pair that you buy.

Stop squeezing those peaches

Soon a sticker on your fruit may tell you that that peach is ready for a juicy bite or that, yes, you have ripe bananas--and it won't be that little old Chiquita sticker telling you so. Within a few years, new RediRipe stickers might start showing up on supermarket fruits, turning blue to indicate ripeness. An Arizona professor invented the stickers to detect levels of ethylene gas given off by peaches, apples, pears, avocados, bananas, as well as other fruits, veggies and flowers when they reach their potential.

Ethylene acts like a hormone in plants, by the way. It makes me wonder if we'll ever get a sticker to light up when our milk, cheese, and ice cream is laced with artifical hormones? That sticker would have to turn from a pure white to a putrid, green-beige pus color. How about a little gold star sticker to light up a shocking chartreuse hue when there's radiation in our backyards? I also wouldn't mind a sticker to glow black to show when we're breathing pesticides outdoors or formaledyde indoors.