Salon.com > Katherine Ellison

Shopping for carbon credits

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 11:14:00 +0000

Like so many people I know these days, I've been feeling bad about my energy splurges: the four-block drive to my son's school on rainy days, the kilowatts frittered away recharging the new latte frother.

I've got two young kids, so in my darker moments, I fear these sprees may add to the risk they'll reach adulthood in a hotter, stormier world. Anyone who hasn't just returned from a long silent retreat knows that Americans are among the world's leading energy hogs in billowing emissions of carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas. The United Nations calculates our yearly per capita average at roughly 20 tons per capita, about six times the world's average. Unless we make deep cuts, soon, we're in deep trouble, scientists warn.

On the other hand, it's a drag to bike in the rain, and the frother keeps me out of Starbucks.

Gone with the wind

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 12:23:00 +0000

Peter Mandelstam says he can power 130,000 Delaware homes without adding to the greenhouse gas emissions dangerously heating our planet. His proposed 600-megawatt offshore wind park -- the biggest such project yet unveiled in the United States -- could supply that power over 20 years cheaper than coal or gas, he vows.

The tireless founder of Bluewater Wind, a wind energy developer, Mandelstam has been right before, having built a wind farm in Montana that provides power to more than 45,000 homes. And Delaware is no Cape Cod, where an offshore wind plan has stalled amid bitter controversy for the past six years. Polls show that offshore wind is overwhelmingly popular in this state, graded F for air pollution by the American Lung Association, whose coastal residents aren't griping about their ocean views being ruined.

Yet Mandelstam still faces a gale force in persuading Delaware officials, lashed to coal and gas industries, to go along with his plan. "The chief obstacle is the newness of offshore wind," he says enthusiastically. "It's not new in the world, but it's new in this country. So my challenge is simply to educate people."

The agony and the ecotourism

Sat, 04 Dec 1999 17:00:00 +0000

Deep at the bottom of a red-walled canyon,
half a dozen travelers soaking in a meticulously landscaped hot spring
watched a tray of sun-struck Pisco Sours floating their way.

It was one of the most decadent things I've ever seen. And to my
guilty dismay, all I could think was: These people really know
how to camp.

Only later did it strike me that my sympathy for this scene, arranged
by thoughtful minders from the luxurious new explora hotel in Chile's
stunning Atacama desert, showed not just how much I have changed, but
how much tourism has changed in my lifetime.

For me, like many of my baby boom peers, the 1970s and '80s were years
of cheap and easy exploration. I rode a battered jeep through African
plains, camped on Asian beaches, even followed a ragged band of Huichol
Indians in Mexico on their annual peyote pilgrimage.

Now, at 42, I've got a lot more baggage: a husband, two babies and editors who have kept me on a tight leash. No longer do I -- if, frankly, I ever did -- look forward to long bus rides or sleeping on the ground. Yet while I have grown rather less carefree and brave, my hunger for nature has become more intense as pristine wilderness has turned into a scarce commodity.

Baby on board

Tue, 16 Mar 1999 20:00:00 +0000

I didn't travel to the ends of the Earth so I could breast-feed my babies. It just turned out that way. I was working in Rio de Janeiro in 1995, as South America bureau chief for the Miami Herald, when my first son, Joe, was born. Like other members of the midlife mothers' cult, I'd read reams of literature on infant care long before my baby's birth, so I never doubted he'd nurse for his first year. Everything I'd learned about breast milk's superiority over formula convinced me I'd be failing him by doing anything less. Besides, nursing mothers are such a common sight in Latin America, where I've lived for the past decade, that I assumed they were common back home.

Of course, I was wrong.

In my own mother's day, most women didn't breast-feed because it seemed confining, unnecessary, even revolting -- and doctors advised against it. Today, despite the doctors' turnabout, most women don't do it because of their jobs. Only 12.5 percent of full-time working mothers manage to keep nursing even for their baby's first five months, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The city of lost children

Sat, 30 Jan 1999 20:00:00 +0000

| JUNDIAM, Brazil -- Rita de Cassia lost her 2-year-old son in May 1997. Unwed, unemployed and just 18 years old, she had despaired when the boy's father abandoned her. In need of help to care for him, the shy, black-haired teen sought help from the chief of the local minors court, Judge Luiz Beethoven Giffoni Ferreira. The judge, who is most commonly referred to as Judge Beethoven, agreed to let the boy stay in a shelter until de Cassia found work -- or at least that's what she thought as she signed the papers he gave her. But when she came back to his office two months later, newly employed, de Cassia says she realized her child had been taken away.

"I got a lawyer who looked in my court file, and he told me it said I was a prostitute," de Cassia recalls with quiet indignation. "But that's a lie. No one ever came to interview me or talk to my neighbors. I don't know how they can say that."