the greener side

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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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.

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.

 

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."

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.

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.

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."

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.