Eco-Chick · The modern girl's guide to living green & fabulous.

Supreme Court Chooses Navy Over Whales

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by Kimberly Jordan Allen · 11/13/08

The Supreme Court chose the Navy over marine mammals in a dispute involving the military use of sonar in the Pacific. Environmentalists have long voiced concern regarding sonar, which has been shown to affect whales, dolphins, and other ocean species that use sonar for communication and navigation.

It has been argued that the sonar interferes with the whales’ ability to navigate and surface without getting the bends. One species, known as the Beak whale, has been found particularly susceptible to the sonar, which can cause the whales to beach themselves. The NRDC had sued the US Government and received some restrictions regarding testing and implementation of sonar equipment, but President Bush had stepped in to permit the military training and exempt the Navy from environmental stipulation.

An appeals court had rejected this move, which drove the government to seek assistance from the Supreme Court. Yesterday, the Courts deemed that the testing must go on in order to have an adequately trained military. Chief Justice, John Roberts noted, “To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.”

military, whales

The War on Bugs

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by Brianne Goodspeed · 03/12/08

For anyone else who digs on books that examine how PR shapes public perception, Will Allen’s new book, The War on Bugs is the latest in a genre that includes The Best War Ever and Toxic Sludge is Good for You. Instead of the now-tired observation that much of our food supply harms our bodies and destroys the land, Allen looks at the historical connection between advertising and agriculture and how toxins were marketed and sold to farmers to create The War on Bugs. (Fans of The Lorax might be surprised to see how else Dr. Suess put his talents to work — shilling for DDT and Standard Oil — before he spoke for the trees.)

Here’s an excerpt from a Q&A with Will Allen that I did for Chelsea Green.

BG: You’re an organic farmer, but you’re also an ex-Marine – and you were arrested and sentenced to a year in jail during the early 70s for civil rights and antiwar activism. That’s not a one-track life. Were there noticeable turning points for you?

WA: A turning point for me came during my time in the Marine Corps when I was dispossessed of the belief that as Marines we were protecting democracy, liberty, and freedom. I learned we were mostly protecting corporations. Some of our military actions while I was a Marine were in Lebanon, Cuba, and Vietnam. In Lebanon, we protected American corporations in the mid-East and mid-East allies, no matter how corrupt. In Cuba, we protected American businesses, a dictator, the ruling class that fled to Miami after the Revolution, and the Mafia drug cartels. In Vietnam we protected business interests, rice interests, illegal drug interests – the opium trade – and religious interests. We installed a Catholic president in a nation where 95% of the population was Buddhist and were shocked when he was assassinated. By 1963, I was protesting the Vietnam War in Chicago rallies and campus teach-ins.

…

BG: Do you see any similarities in the way that wars are spun and sold to the American public and the ways that toxic chemicals are spun and sold to American farmers?

WA: Advertising agencies made a quantum leap during the First World War. They did contract work for the government to sell the war and recruitment work for the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. The country was isolationist at the time and not interested in getting into another of Europe’s seemingly endless string of wars. Advertisers were able to get enlistments up and the public to buy war bonds. The themes were: a “can do attitude”, (such as, if America enters the war we will win it), a patriotic obligation, and protecting the civil rights of occupied countries.

When the same advertising agencies sold chemicals to farmers and householders, their pitches were similar. We are at war, be patriotic, and “a can do attitude.” That attitude encouraged such boasts as “. . .We can grow more than any other farmers in the world”, which led to the common belief that American farmers are feeding the world.

BG: On the flip side, do you see similarities in your resistance – resistance to war and resistance to toxic chemicals?

WA: I think that when someone becomes as anti-war as I am, then whatever one does – whether it is organic farming or something else – the irrationality and injustice of war is never far from their consciousness. While farm wars and military wars are of a different scale, many of the chemical and mining corporations that make fertilizer and pesticides are also manufacturers of bombs, and other military hardware and software. I think the sooner we can stop the chemical and genetic war on the farms, and the mindset that we are at war with nature, the better we will be as a species. In a sense, it is hard to not think of the war every time I fire up a tractor or pump or generator or heater that runs on gas or diesel from war zones around the world, especially Iraq. For that reason, we are looking at all the alternatives to fossil fuels for moving vehicles and for stationary heaters and generators.

War is not what is going on at Cedar Circle Organic Farm (in East Thetford, Vermont). We have struggles with pests, including woodchucks, voles, birds, worms, fungi, insects and weeds. We develop and copy strategies that are softer, non poisonous, and often very effective, and sometimes those adopted strategies are not effective. It is a process. We don’t have all the answers, but we have a lot more now than when we started in the 1960s.

activism, agriculture, birds, book, books, business, car, corporations, diesel, Europe, farm, farming, farms, Food, gas, insects, military, oil, Organic, SPUN, Tea, Toxins, trees, wood

Green+Woman=Wussy; Green+Man=Technology?

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by Starre Vartan · 08/07/07

I’m not the only one who’s noticed that men are taking over the environmental discussion. An eco-event in Bryant Park in New York City tomorrow is just one example that recently crossed my desk. There will be five speakers and not one woman! If there was a panel of five women, and no men, would people see it as a ‘woman’s event’? I think so. So why does this get to be an eco-discussion and not a men’s roundtable on the environment?

A great piece over at Grist questions whether the ‘new’ environmentalism isn’t just all about making ‘green’ more appealing to men, since women are already on the bandwagon, and most importantly, what that means for how we make changes in the future.

“[Thomas Friedman] wrote that America should redefine green to make it more “muscular” and transform its characterization by opponents as “sissy,” “girlie-man,” and “vaguely French.” Elsewhere, he has summed it up this way: “Green isn’t some ‘wussy’ tree-hugging thing. Green is patriotic. Green is strategic. Green is the new red, white, and blue.” Wussy being derogatory slang for “especially unmanly,” consider Friedman’s view to be the opposite. Call it “manly green.”

Do we need ‘manly green’ to keep environmental discussions on the table as a serious issue? Why are women’s issues (typically thought of as healthcare, reproductive rights, education, the environment) always pigeon-holed as such? I mean, doesn’t everyone go to school, get sick, decide to have kids or not, and breathe air and drink water? Why are these issues feminized? And relegated to second-class status because of it?

Surveys — from sources including the Yale School of Forestry, Center for American Progress Action Fund, Institute for Women’s Policy Research, and American National Election Studies — consistently show that women feel a stronger connection to the environment than men do:

-Women are up to 15 percent more likely than men to rate the environment a high priority.
-Women comprise up to two-thirds of voters who cast their ballots around environmental issues.
-Women are more likely than men to volunteer for and give money to environmental causes, especially related to public health.
-Women report both more support for environmental activists and more concern that government isn’t doing enough.
-Women support increased government spending for the environment, while men favor spending cuts.

Polls also show that about 68 percent of American consumers have gone green, preferring health-conscious and environmentally responsible products. Since 90 percent of women identify themselves as the primary shoppers for their households, and women sign 80 percent of all personal checks, it’s safe to say that women are leading a quiet revolution in green consumerism.

These trends suggest more than simply stronger support for the environment — they reveal a completely different attitude about it. Prevailing masculine views see environmentalism in terms of energy independence, as a political or military tactic. In the speech quoted above, President Bush pointed to alternative fuels such as hydrogen as a way for America to wean itself off foreign oil. A few years earlier, the CIA called the environment “the national-security issue of the early 21st century” and “the core foreign-policy challenge from which most others will ultimately emanate.”

If making the environment more of a manly issue means relying on technology, how does that impact what decisions are made and what to focus on? Instead of relying on innovation to solve our problems, what about the more prosaic ideas of cutting down on consumption, recycling, and conservation? Are those too girly? Not exciting enough? I think this argument takes a lot of liberties about what is ‘male’ and what is ‘female’; the writers are making pretty huge generalizations here. I think in the end, whether and idea is ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ is irrelevant, but I hate to see one sex dominating the discussion and having a bigger voice on any subject as important as the future of the environmental movement.

alternative fuel, Bush, car, conservation, consumerism, consumption, Energy, Events, farm, health, kids, military, New York City, oil, Recycling, soap, Tea, Technology, Vote, water, women, women's

Why is Europe greener (really)?

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by Courtney Tenz · 05/25/07

In case you missed it, The New York Times Magazine was devoted to green architecture on Sunday. It printed several articles, including a piece by the Times’ chief architecture critic, Nicolai Ourousoff, that I found especially interesting. In it, he asks, not entirely rhetorically, Why Are They (Europe) Greener Than We (The US) Are?

The article gives a nice overview of recent architectural history:

Americans did not always lag so far behind; much of our most celebrated architecture has had a green strain. Frank Lloyd Wright, Rudolf Schindler and Richard Neutra all sought to create a more fluid relationship between indoor and outdoor spaces, man and nature. At the height of the cold war, architect-engineers like Buckminster Fuller envisioned marshaling the immense resources of the American military-industrial complex to create a more ecologically balanced world. Fuller’s geodesic domes, which he hoped would one day house all humanity, were cheap and lightweight yet held up in extreme weather. They could also be erected in a matter of hours. In the late 1960s and ’70s, the Whole Earth Catalogue, with its D.I.Y. ethic and living-off-the-land know-how, encouraged a whole generation to dream of dropping off the grid.

By the ’80s the green dream had faded somewhat. Faced with corporate and governmental clients who saw little financial benefit in investing in sustainable design, American architects often ignored ecological questions. The few who didn’t tended to focus on small-scale projects that could serve local populations: mud-brick construction in Arizona or rural shacks made of recycled materials in Alabama.

In Europe, by contrast, where the E.U. and national governments often play a greater role in planning and regulating building, the effort to develop sustainable architecture gathered momentum. By the mid-90s, all new construction in Europe had to meet basic requirements in energy consumption, and many European architects began to make sustainability a central theme in their work. This was true of established architects like Norman Foster, whose 1997 Commerzbank in Frankfurt was conceived as a soaring high-tech glass-and-steel tower punctuated by open-air gardens. But it was especially true of younger European architects who were just beginning to practice their craft at that time and saw sustainability as a basic moral responsibility.

I’m not sure, though, that the two locales can so easily be compared based only on the last forty years. In most European countries, but especially in Germany and the former East, people remember a time when they had nothing … no bread, no water, no housing … and many conserve because they recognize the recentness of that history. In Spain and Portugal, still struggling out of the economic hardships brought on by dictatorships, indoor heating and air conditioning is considered a luxury; in the heat of those countries, energy efficiency in buildings is a must. Electricity in Andalusia remains sporadic enough that using a dishwasher and microwave at the same time can cause power failures for an entire neighborhood. For both of those reasons, both architecture and people’s lifestyles have to be “green”.

Population density here also demands a greater attention to resources and community-minded housing projects. Germany, as an example, has to fit 80 people in the same area that the US has to fit 3. One of the reasons people here tend to live in more eco-friendly multi-family homes instead of McMansions is simply a lack of space.

Environmentalism here is a necessity, more than just a zeitgeist issue. In The Netherlands, where finances are better, the country’s future depends on people being green – built on a complex dyke system, much of the country could be underwater soon if oceans keep rising.

This is not to disparage Europe’s green-ness (one of the reasons I live here!) or to counter what the Timeshad to say. But maybe comparing it with the US is more like looking at apples and pears. There are a lot of lessons the US can take from Europe (including, but not limited to, realigning our federal policy to cap emissions and provide more incentives for greening). Still, based on this country’s history of innovation, Americans should be teaching Europeans a few things about being eco-friendly.

architecture, community, consumption, design, eating, electric, electricity, emissions, Energy, Europe, fur, garden, gardens, Germany, Home, local, magazine, military, mom, New York Times, NYTimes, oceans, recycle, recycled, resources, spa, style, sustainability, sustainable, Tea, teaching, Vote, water, weather

The Men of Real Climate

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by Brianne Goodspeed · 04/09/07

For anyone who’s interested in learning about “climate science from climate scientists,” Real Climate is a good resource. Contributors are all experts in their fields–ranging from geochemistry to oceanography–and include lead authors on chapters of the IPCC TAR (Third Assessment Report, 2001).

I like Real Climate for a lot of reasons. Most importantly, every time I read a post, I imagine the writer throwing off the shackles of academic jargon, bellowing and yawping, “Annals of Paleoclimatology, ye shall bind me no more!” and then sitting down with a smile on his face to write something comprehensible and lucid. And these guys are actually pretty of funny in a nerdy science kind of way. The April Fool’s post, “The Sheep Albedo Feedback,” made me laugh.

On a serious note, I think that Real Climate is doing something important. Recognizing the communication breakdown between the scientific community and the public/media, the contributors are walking down the steps of the ivory tower and out the front door in order to talk to the rest of us. Their response to media coverage—such as NASA scientist Gavin Schmit’s post today—is particularly interesting since we typically only get the colorful quotes or sound bites.

Although I think that there are limitations to science, I also think that we owe a debt of gratitude to the men and women who have devoted their careers to understanding the complexities of the world around us. I’m not talking so much about the scientists who go to bed with Big Business (pharmaceuticals, military, etc.); I mean the more independent scientists who risk their funding and their careers in order to bring us the truth.

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