Salon.com > Earth Day

Would we give up burgers to stop climate change?

Thu, 02 May 2013 23:29:00 +0000

In case you missed the news, humanity spent the Earth Day week reaching another sad milestone in the history of catastrophic climate change: For the first time, measurements of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere surpassed 400 parts per million, aka way above what our current ecosystem can handle.

Actually, you probably did miss the news because most major media outlets didn't cover it in a serious way, if at all. Instead, they and their audiences evidently view such information as far less news-, buzz- and tweet-worthy than (among other things) the opening of George W. Bush's library and President Obama's jokes at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

Such an appetite for distraction, no doubt, comes from both those who deny the problem of climate change and those who acknowledge the crisis but nonetheless look away from what feels like an unsolvable mess.

That sense of hopelessness is understandable. After all, some of the most hyped ways to reduce carbon emissions -- electric cars, mass-scale renewable energy power plants, etc. -- require the kind of technological transformations that can seem impossibly unrealistic at a time when Congress can't even pass a budget.

Interactive Earth Day site asks us to slow down, find “What Is Missing”

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 15:53:00 +0000

The Internet is about quantity over quality, speed over content. I'm not saying everything on the web has to be Nyan the Poptart Cat, only that Cute Roulette is the hottest site this week precisely because it lets you click through adorable animal videos with amazing speed. Don't like the raccoon taking a bath? Boom, you're looking at a Great Dane trying to knock over a giant tortoise.

Earth Day protest: Clean up this mess

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 00:30:00 +0000

Earth Day may have devolved from a spontaneous outburst of benevolence toward nature to a green marketing opportunity in its 40-year history, but for a group of activists and residents of contaminated areas in San Francisco, the day has retained its value. Standing outside the Pacific Gas & Electric headquarters this week, residents of Bayview-Hunters Point, a predominantly African-American section in southeast San Francisco, and activists from the group Greenaction chanted for clean air.

Axe’s Earth Day: Shower together!

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 21:22:00 +0000

Happy Earth Day! The nice gentlemen at Axe have a suggestion for saving our planet's most precious resource: water. Just turn your hygiene habits into a group activity and "showerpool." Get it? See, it's funny because it's about getting "friendly" with naked girls, under the guise of conservation. The Canadian Axe ad drives home the point by illustrating it with cute icons of one male showerpooling with several curvy females, "all over zee planet." (Axe's ambitious suggested ratio: four ladies per Axe man.)

The "shower with a friend" joke is probably older than you are and it's a harmless riff on Axe's typical enthusiasm for ladies by the dozen. But Axe, we hate to tell you how impractical this idea is. First, men always want the water colder than their female shower buddies, which is no incentive. And second, if you think you're going to get a bevy of dames to lather up with your super stinky grooming products, even for the good of the earth, we can only offer an au contraire.

The hypocrisy of the green-living bullies

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 16:45:00 +0000

A version of this post initially appeared on Ann Nichols' Open Salon blog.

As a lefty/crunchy granola/pop-culture influenced foodie type, I am well aware that "green is the word." I read Michael Pollan, Russ Parsons and Barbara Kingsolver. I watch the network entirely devoted to all things green, from Ed Begley Jr. installing solar panels and a rain barrel to Emeril teaching the clueless how to cook entire meals using only the vegetable section of Whole Foods. I've seen "Food, Inc." and "King Corn." I recycle, I repurpose, I always try to buy local, I shop at the farmers market, I covet the Prius, I make my own non-toxic cleaning products, and I just started composting. I am a (good) home cook, and prepare meals from scratch seven nights out of seven. Conceptually I am in. Way, way in.

Here's the thing, though. It is very, very expensive to be green. The only eco-friendly things that I do that actually save money are making my own cleaning products, using cloth rags and napkins instead of buying paper, and using energy-efficient light bulbs. It may be TMI, but I will tell you that money is very tight around here these days, as it is for many people. I have a grocery budget, it is fixed, and I have, for years, been using the weapons of sales circulars, meticulous list, menu planning and creative cooking to make the money stretch to feed a big carnivore and a growing boy.

Earth Day: Rebellious roots, but mainstream now

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 16:15:00 +0000

There was no "Green Movement" yet and little talk of global warming. Instead, the original Earth Day 40 years ago emphasized "ecology" and goals like cleaning up pollution and litter -- along with a more anti-establishment vibe than today.

"Welcome, sulfur dioxide, hello, carbon monoxide," a woman sang from the 1968 countercultural Broadway hit, "Hair," at a rally in Philadelphia that day. Across the country, activists donned gas masks or spread out in grassy parks to hear speeches about overpopulation, smog and dirty rivers.

"It was brand new on the scene. We were basically using a new vocabulary," recalled Denis Hayes, who was the 25-year-old national coordinator for that first Earth Day. "So it was all fresh.

"In 1969, most Americans couldn't even define the word environment," Hayes said. "By the end of 1970, a huge fraction of them thought of themselves as environmentalists."

The movement capitalized on the experience and passion of activists who had organized anti-war, civil rights and feminist rallies in the 1960s. Today, the environmental cause is far more sophisticated, with thousands of environmental lawyers and advocates with advanced degrees and corporations rushing to advertise "green" products.

Can technology cool the planet?

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 13:01:00 +0000

These days, it's hard not to feel disillusioned about the fight against global warming. The 2009 Copenhagen climate summit failed to create a binding agreement to reduce CO2 emissions, and predictions about the impact of climate change are growing increasingly dire (some are predicting an ice-free Arctic by the end of the decade). Recently, many scientists have begun to embrace the notion that, barring a massive policy change, we're going to have to learn how to live with global warming. (It's a sobering fact that even if emissions drop to zero today, existing CO2 will keep our planet warm for the next several centuries.)

As Rolling Stone contributing editor and frequent New York Times contributor Jeff Goodell explains in his fascinating new book, "How to Cool the Planet," this has led some members of the scientific establishment to reconsider the radical option of geoengineering -- using technology to physically bring down the global temperature. The possibilities being considered include shielding the world from the sun's rays by releasing particles into the stratosphere and using specially-built remote-controlled ships to increase the reflectivity of marine clouds. These notions may sound far-fetched, but in the case of an ever-worsening global calamity, Goodell argues, they could play a dramatic role in making the planet more habitable, quickly.

The best and worst news for the Earth

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 11:01:00 +0000

As far as the environment is concerned, the past year will bear two mantles above all: the Year of Obama and the Year of Copenhagen. Greens cheered as the Obama administration threw U.S. environmental policy into a near-180: A vigorous EPA halted plans for dirty coal mines, administrators and legislators moved to regulate greenhouse gases, Obama set a tough fuel economy standard to 35.5 mpg by 2016, and clean energy got its biggest-ever funding boost from the stimulus bill. The specter of Bush's environmental policy -- if you could venture to call it that -- was chased from the rafters.

And then, of course, there was Copenhagen, which loomed throughout the year as a hope that nations around the world could negotiate a deal to head off the incoming environmental crisis posed by climate change. We all know how that worked out.