Archive for August, 2007
The country moves on, but not New Orleans
I wanted to be back in New Orleans Wednesday, standing with its citizens as they observed the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. I never visited the area before the storm and the flooding. I saw it for the first time last October after making my way by car along the Mississippi Gulf Coast and onward to New Orleans. I needed to see for myself what nature and human incompetence and indifference had wrought. Three months later I made an unplanned return trip to the city with a group of Portland volunteers to help gut flooded homes.
Hurricane Katrina hit me just as hard as 9/11. If 9/11 stole my feelings of security as an American citizen, Katrina filled me with anger and frustration. It’s been nearly six years since the Twin Towers fell, and only two since the levees broke. That may explain why I still feel more raw emotions in the aftermath of the hurricane. Or maybe it’s because our nation’s responses to the two catastrophes were so starkly different. One heroic. The other shameful. Americans came together after 9/11. We stared dumbfounded into our TV sets after 8/29, unable to find our greatness.
Two years removed, our country continues to fail the people of New Orleans and surrounding parishes. As reporters in the city observed Wednesday, with the prodding of President Bush, there are signs of progress to be sure,
“But vast stretches of the city show little or no recovery. A housing shortage and high rents have hampered business growth. The homeless population has almost doubled since the storm, and many of those squat in an estimated 80,000 vacant dwellings. Violent crime is also on the rise, and the National Guard and state troopers still supplement a diminished local police force.”
And that’s to say nothing about the city’s decimated educational and health care systems. The people of New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast are suffering. Deeply. Still. And we can still help. For starters, check out US Sen. Mary Landrieu’s page on volunteering in New Orleans. Maybe we can give the victims of Katrina a reason to celebrate when the third anniversary comes around.
And you call yourself an environmentalist
I am a meat-eating environmentalist. And that would make me a hypocrite.
It says so right here in the NY Times: “You just cannot be a meat-eating environmentalist,” says a PETA spokesman.
Through stepped-up advertising campaigns, PETA and other animal rights groups are trying to educate us that eating meat does more to cause global warming than driving. And those they are going after most aggressively are environmentalists, reserving special wrath for Al Gore. The animal rights activists don’t believe the earth activists are doing enough to promote a non-meat diet. Especially after a UN report issued late last year concluded “that the livestock business generates more greenhouse gas emissions than all forms of transportation combined.”
I’m sympathetic to the causes of animal rights groups. But why hammer environmental types for eating meat or not promoting vegetarian or vegan diets? After all, it ain’t exactly easy getting yourself, much less others, to get rid of SUVs, drive less, walk or bicycle more, move into or build smaller homes, switch to CFLs and turn off the lights, stop flying, buy local, unplug appliances, reduce, recycle, reuse, buy carbon offsets, and on and on.
“So what,” seems to be the rabid herbivores’ response. As one vegan tells the Times:
“I guess the environmentalists recognize that it’s a lot easier to ask people to put in a fluorescent light bulb than to learn to cook with tofu.”
Environmentalists, and I’m sure many are also vegetarians, have all they can do to get people to change transportation and household behaviors that contribute to global warming. Let the animal rights activists carry the flag for vegetarianism. The only way we can expect to re-wire every citizen in this country so they contribute the least possible amount of carbon emissions is by sharing the duties.
Call me crazy, but I don’t think a strategy of telling those already doing more than most others to stop global warming, “You’re not doing enough,” will swell the vegan ranks anytime soon.
What would you do if Wal-Mart called?
“He Sold His Soul to Wal-Mart,” the cover of September’s Fast Company magazine shouts.
The story inside doesn’t quite pay off the cover tease, but it offers a fascinating look at the life of Adam Werbach. Or at least what it’s been like since he decided to take on Wal-Mart as a client. That alone isn’t newsworthy. But the plot thickens when you recall or learn that Werbach is the former wunderkind president of Sierra Club and once called Wal-Mart “a new breed of toxin.” After a very public falling out with the environmental movement, Werbach was approached by Wal-Mart to help them with their now much-publicized sustainability initiatives. He eventually agreed. And in the past year his consulting firm has grown from eight to 45 employees, mainly to handle the Wal-Mart work.
The article gets to the heart — and soul — of one of the many contentious debates within the environmental movement. Are environmentalists better advised to become corporate insiders to move business toward greater sustainability? Or do they need to remain outsiders to a consumption-based economy that by definition is unsustainable and needs radical overhauling? Perhaps that choice isn’t as stark for the environmentalist who weighs whether to go to work for a progressive company such as Clif Bar. But when it’s the hated Wal-Mart, well, that’s a line most won’t cross. Had Werbach taken on just about any other corporation in America as a client, he wouldn’t be nearly as reviled by his former environmentalist kin.
While I haven’t walked in Werbach’s shoes, I can tell you this: If I had been approached with the same offer from Wal-Mart, I sure as hell hope I would have run away faster than it takes Wal-Mart to earn its first million dollars each morning.
How about you? Is Wal-Mart “beyond redemption”? Would you have stayed in the environmental movement and tried to make it more effective, rather than walk away like Werbach? Or would you have taken the Wal-Mart gig and figure on making a bigger difference there?
These are my questions.
P.S. Thanks to The Triple Bottom Line Blog for the tip-off on this article.
Tags: Adam Werback, Sierra Club, Sustainability, Wal-Mart
Posted in Business & Economics, Marketing, Sustainability | 1 Comment »
Sampling the local-foods debate
A recent post, “The Eat-Local Backlash,” has stirred up some good conversation over on Grist.org (thanks to BALLE for tipping me off to the blog entry). I encourage you to read both the post and the comments to sample the debate that is emerging over the local foods movement.
The author addresses specific efforts to debunk the claim that shorter distances between food and plate — “food miles” — mean fewer carbon emissions. The commenters take the discussion in numerous other directions, including whether it is better to buy local non-organic versus non-local organic or whether it is immoral to stop buying food from impoverished African farmers in favor of growing and buying locally. I agree with the guy who writes:
“I do think we’re going to be seeing more and more clashes over competing ‘goods’ (reducing carbon emissions and alleviating poverty).”
Speaking of the local-foods movement, the blog author thinks the visible criticism it is getting now in places like the Economist and NY Times is a good sign:
“Just as you’re not really famous until you’ve been rumored to be gay or on drugs, a movement hasn’t come into its own until it’s drawn a formidable entourage of detractors.”
Just getting high-profile media to openly examine the tradeoffs between localized and globalized food economies is indeed a sign of progress. I am optimistic this argument will expand into a much broader mainstream conversation around the merits of turning to local producers for not just food, but for an increasing share of all the goods and services we consume.
Posted in Business & Economics, Climate Change, Food and Drink, Sustainability | No Comments »
Global warming? No, things are just peachy in Georgia
Not to belabor my post from yesterday, but if you really want to see what a completely empty green cup looks like, check out the Georgia Legislature. While most other states are asking how they can slow or prevent climate change, a Georgia House committee this week held a hearing titled “Global Warming: Debunking the Myth or a Need for Climate Change Policy.” And the majority conclusion?
“Climate scientists and environmental activists like former Vice President Al Gore are alarmists. They use flawed statistical models to predict a catastrophic future of thawed glaciers, super-charged hurricanes, swamped coastlines and scorched crops.”
Turns out three of the four panelists invited by the Republican-led committee are among “the nation’s leading skeptics on climate-change science.” So no one could be too surprised by the testimony. As the debunkers convened in their cool majority, legislative reporters took note of Tuesday’s weather: “a 98-degree day during a record-setting heat wave.”
The half-full, half-empty view from Oregon
Opinion makers at The Oregonian today offer differing takes on Oregon’s green reputation.
A self-described “glass-half-empty kind of guy,” columnist Steve Duin (URL unavailable) cites Oregon’s toothless Department of Environmental Quality, befouled Willamatte River and wind turbine opponents in the Columbia River Gorge. Then he concludes, “Green? Us? Please. Smug? Definitely. But as far as Oregon’s reputation as an environmental pacesetter? Way overrated.”
If Duin wants to find additional evidence for his case he need look no farther than one of his paper’s editorials today. The editorial board sees a green lining in a report by Joe Cortright. The Oregon economist dispenses with the notion that Portlanders are making financial sacrifices because of the city’s environmental protection policies. On the contrary, Portland’s economy is the richer for these policies, Cortright argues. The editorial writers like that, and — one might say, smugly — conclude, “And the other upshot — sigh — is continued stardom for Portland. It’s not easy being a green celebrity.”
I assume Duin is including Portland when he lashes out at Oregon’s “laziness and neglect” toward the environment. Portland, in particular, continues to haul in accolades across the country and globe for its green ethic. As far as Oregon overall, one of Duin’s sources laments that the state continues to “rest on our laurels.” Agree. Just look at the Willamette River. How can a so-called green state continue to tolerate such a cesspool for so long?
Still there’s no denying we’re making progress on many fronts, particularly in Portland: bicycle usage, renewable energy legislation, light rail, streetcars, green building. At the citizen level, I see widespread passion toward green issues. That’s the half-full view.
But to look through Duin’s eyes is to see that it was also the citizens who passed Measure 37, that ominous threat to our land-use laws. And you see unwillingness among state political leadership to fully fund DEQ and ensure that it enforces the environmental regulations in place.
Half full, half empty? It doesn’t really matter. In either case, the green glass is still not full. Until it’s overflowing, we can be optimistic or cranky, but not satisfied.
Posted in Oregon, Politics, Sustainability | Comments Off on The half-full, half-empty view from Oregon