The “Silver Lining in High Gas Prices”: A Boost for Telecommuting

When I worked in Mayor Bradley’s office in the 1990s, I was part of a task force designed to increase city workers’ telecommuting.  At that time, oil was cheap, but traffic was horrible and air quality still (then as now) the worst in the nation.

We were mindful of the 1984 Olympics traffic experience, when just an 8 percent drop in the amount of cars on the road resulted in traffic that flowed like midnight.  Small changes can have a big impact on the traffic.  Less traffic idling was another anti-smog strategy.  So, we thought it should be possible for City Hall to set an example for the business community.

How silly.  When it comes to management, Los Angeles’ city government will never “lead the way” on anything.

Both management and labor perceived telecommuting as a threat.  Department heads didn’t want anyone out of their sightlines for any longer than was absolutely necessary.  They assumed the worst of their employees.  The unions demanded that telecommuting become a bargaining issue.  Typical of how city unions work, the labor appointee to our task force missed the first two meetings, then came late to the third and asked to speak with me privately.  She said, “We’re not sure if telecommuting is a way for managers to unfairly reward or unfairly punish our members, but either way, we’re going to oppose it.”  Then she sat at the table with the rest of the task force, repeating a few platitudes, knowing she’d killed the idea.

What emerged instead were 9/80 and 4/40 schemes to give some city employees the option of two to four weekdays off per month in return for a longer workday.  What it meant in practice was employees would work the same eight hours worth of tasks, stretched into nine- or ten-hour days, except with an extra day off every week or two.  It was nice for them, but chaotic when it was time to schedule meetings.  Most workers chose Friday to stay home, so Fridays went dead.  Add to that the introduction of casual Fridays — which started after I left the mayor’s office — and the end of each week became a world where Charles Bukowski would have fit right in:  Hardly anyone there, and those who did show up wearing sweats, old T-shirts and shoes you might use for wading into flooded basement.

I don’t know if that’s still the case over there; I haven’t been in City Hall for over four years.  But I digress.

In Southern California, every weekday there are tens of thousands of commuters who drive epic distances to get to work centers in LA and Orange counties.  In the 1990s, the Inland Empire land boom was just beginning.  My last commute was about 30 miles each way and that seemed painful and expensive enough.  Now gas prices have doubled since 2004, and many people are driving west from places like Temecula.   Temecula is almost 90 miles from downtown LA, and more than 65 miles from Santa Ana. Do the math.  If your car gets 20 miles per gallon, pretty good for a beep-n-creep voyage on crowded freeways, it’s costing you nine gallons per day to go back and forth from work = $36 per day just for gas.

I can’t imagine that at least some of those people, and the merciful among their bosses would want to alleviate that.  So, all of a sudden, telecommuting looks less scary, maybe necessary, and perhaps something that will be embraced in a rush.  That’s what Computerworld’s blogger Mike Elgan thinks:

One thing leads to another. High gas prices prompt employers (including the federal government) to allow employees to work from home once a week. Once that’s accepted culturally, an elephant appears in the boardroom: If it’s OK once a week, why isn’t it OK five times a week? (This is what happened with “casual Friday” — its once-a-week acceptance lead to the current trend of casual wear every day.) Once telecommuting is accepted, “extreme telecommuting” — working from the Bahamas or Paris or an internet-connected shack on the Australian Outback — becomes acceptable, too. After all, once you’re out of the office and connecting to the company over the Internet, it doesn’t really matter where you are, does it?

The last remaining barrier to the general acceptance of “extreme telecommuting” is purely cultural — it’s our irrational clinging to obsolete rules for how we work. As the cultural barriers fall, more of us will be freed to work from wherever we please, something which mobile technology and Internet communication already enables.

To me, that’s the silver lining in high gas prices.

Seth Godin, writing about the higher standards business meetings and conferences must meet to make it worth the (increasingly expensive) trip puts the onus on managers to make going to the office a value-added experience, or else:

If you’re a knowledge worker, your boss shouldn’t make you come to the (expensive) office every day unless there’s something there that makes it worth your trip. She needs to provide you with resources or interactions or energy you can’t find at home or at Starbucks. And if she does invite you in, don’t bother showing up if you’re just going to sit quietly.

I’ve worked in three companies that had lots of people and lots of cubes, and I spent the entire day walking around. I figured that was my job. The days where I sat down and did what looked like work were my least effective days. It’s hard for me to see why you’d bother having someone come all the way to an office just to sit in a cube and type.

The new rule seems to be that if you’re going to spend the time and the money to see someone face to face, be in their face. Interact or stay home!

How long before companies in Los Angeles, where the distance of commutes is among the most acute in the nation, adopt this kind of thinking?  I’m not sure they have a choice.

There’s probably money to be made in telling managers how to manage a virtual workforce, because a lot of companies will need to make this shift soon or they’ll lose valuable employees.

(A different version of this post appears on the blog I write for Dolan Media, From 50,000 Feet.)

The Secret to Getting a Movie Deal

The Daily Mail’s Liz Jones learns the secret to financing your movie, while trying to keep from getting seasick on a Cannes yacht party:

And while beautiful women all want to be in the movies, rich men all want to make them. I ask my producer friend whether a party is quite the right place, being so noisy, to pitch an idea to a mega-rich investor. He looks at me as if I’m mad. ‘We don’t pitch at the parties. We get them to trust us.’

And how do you do that? ‘We take drugs together.’ And when you do finally get to pitch, what.. . well, floats their yacht?

‘If you want your movie to get made, you have to pitch an idea that is either about the environment or about pornography. Basically, you have to make an investor feel either guilty or horny.’

And there’s always money for a movie about sin and redemption:

The most poignant moment, though, and one that seems to sum up what Cannes is all about, is when I sit in a booth with Mike Tyson. He has big, soft hands and is wearing an immaculate grey suit with an ironed white hanky in his top pocket.

He is the subject of a documentary by James Toback, the film that receives the biggest standing ovation all week. I ask him to sum up what it’s about, and he says: ‘It’s about how I was really sweet and nice when I started out, then became a monster and lost all my money.’

And what are you like now? ‘Oh, I’m sweet again.’

As I leave his booth, I bump into two predatory blondes. ‘No black man has ever turned me down,’ says one, a glint in her eye. ‘He’s a hit, right? His film’s a hit?’

Person Mike Tyson

Right click for SmartMenu shortcuts

Can “Second Life” Erase Your Carbon Footprint?

A brief interruption to the photoblog for this environmental brainstorm.

First, from John Tierney’s NY Times-affliated blog, a statement of the problem:

The Daily Mail has gone after celebrities who preach against greenhouse emissions but travel by private jet, like Brad Pitt, Madonna, Barbra Streisand and Coldplay’s Chris Martin. The British newspaper gives its full five-star “hippy-crite” rating to Mr. Pitt for narrating a documentary, “e2: The Economies of Being Environmentally Conscious,” and also taking dozens of private-jet trips last year, including a quick day-trip from Chicago to Los Angeles and back so he could perform jury duty.

Tierney goes on to recommend that Pitt, et. al. wear a carbon-footprint monitor, but that’s only a partial solution, and one that the more environmentally-conscious don’t really need. At some level Pitt, Al Gore, Robert Kennedy, Jr. and other celebs have a pretty good idea of the environmental damage they are doing every time they take off in a private jet. They just rationalize it as important work that can’t be done any other way: More important than mere work or entertainment, which is why Coldplay and Madonna have to clutter up their concerts with speeches and didactic songs; more important than what any of the rest of us are doing, an attitude that gets in the way of their message in a way they never see.

The solution is right here. Stay home, and send your avatar into cyberspace to do your good works for you. According to the LA Times, corporations are beginning to use the virtual world:

Two years ago, companies such as American Apparel and footwear maker Adidas started filling Second Life with stores and buildings. The virtual world’s early inhabitants, who largely disdain anything with a corporate tinge, rebelled by launching terrorist attacks and starting gunfights in the shops. Faced with empty storefronts and ridicule, many companies pulled out.

Now, other companies are carving out parts of Second Life as their own. They are creating employee-only islands and office buildings, then encouraging their staff to meet there. Compared with plane tickets and hotel bills, it’s pretty cheap: a 16-acre private island in Second Life costs $1,000 plus a $295 monthly maintenance fee.

And instead of staring at white walls during conference calls with strangers, employees can wander a virtual paradise and see representations of the co-workers they have never met.

Sun Microsystems, which makes computer servers and software, owns seven islands in Second Life, two of which are open to the public. The rest are used for training sessions and meetings. During its biggest event, a 12-hour corporate meeting held last month, 14 of Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun’s top executives hobnobbed with hundreds of employees. Alpine skiing, car racing, live jazz and a sandbox were also part of the event.

At one point, Sun Chairman Scott McNealy, dressed in a San Jose Sharks hockey jersey and holding a golf club, sat in a virtual auditorium next to Chief Gaming Officer Chris Melissinos, who had a mascot for Sun’s Java software sitting on his shoulder (the mascot looks a bit like a penguin).

Hundreds of Sun avatars lounged in the audience, some wearing sneakers and jeans, others in business attire, asking questions about new products, Second Life and Sun’s competitive position. Thousands of other employees watched the virtual meeting on monitors in Sun’s offices in Santa Clara, New York and Tokyo.

If we can go to corporate retreats in Second Life, why not a Coldplay concert, or a movie premiere? Imagine the energy savings if what Sun is doing replace just 10 percent of the traveling we now do. Environmentalists should be leading the way here.

Biofuel and Starvation

Occasionally, I might invite you over to read a post at my other blog, From 50,000 Feet.  This is a good time to go over there, if only to read this post about biofuel.  Biofuel is gaining popularity, but it is quickly showing itself to be a rather frightening menace to the people of the developing world. Not enough attention on this issue for sure. So please read it and if you think anything of it, pass it along.   

Sorry To Be So Quiet Lately

About a week ago, I came down with the flu, despite which I did a lot of work, including a business trip to Minneapolis that was exciting but didn’t do much for my health. So it’s been hard to keep up with the minimum of what was required of me, and this blog has become an off-hours project.

In fact, pretty soon, it’ll go into a suspended state. For a good reason. But more about that later.

In the meantime, I’ll try to give this blog a bit more of a pulse. So here’s something that struck me as interesting:

Gentlemen, Start Your Lobbyists

I’m sure the City Council is sincere about wanting to improve the diets and health of the residents of South Los Angeles. But they also have to know what will come of the proposal to impose a moratorium on new fast-food restaurants in that area of the city: A gig for every major lobbyist in town.

McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, Jack-in-the-Box and all their franchisee organizations will all want to strangle this idea in the cradle. They will pay whatever it takes. From a legal standpoint, I don’t know how you distinguish a fast-food chain restaurant from an ordinary restaurant, or what careful balance between unhealthy and healthy menu items would qualify a restaurant for the moratorium, but they will be talking about it at City Hall for months if not years. For the lobbyists, all that talk will be billable.

When was the last time the Council tried to take on so many international corporations at one time? Start looking for a new rush of donations from franchise operators’ associations and restaurant-industry PACs.

Amid worries of an obesity epidemic and its related illnesses, including high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease, Los Angeles officials, among others around the country, are proposing to limit new fast-food restaurants — a tactic that could be called health zoning.

The City Council will be asked this fall to consider an up to two-year moratorium on new fast-food restaurants in South L.A., a part of the city where fast food is at least as much a practicality as a preference.

“The people don’t want them, but when they don’t have any other options, they may gravitate to what’s there,” said Councilwoman Jan Perry, who proposed the ordinance in June, and whose district includes portions of South L.A. that would be affected by the plan.

In just one-quarter of a mile near USC on Figueroa Street, from Adams Boulevard and south, there are about 20 fast-food outlets.

That particular cluster probably has much more to do with USC kids’ late-night study/beer munchies than with any other part of the neighborhood. They might want to choose another area to make an example of.

“While limiting fast-food restaurants isn’t a solution in itself, it’s an important piece of the puzzle,” said Mark Vallianatos, director of the Center for Food and Justice at Occidental College.

This is “bringing health policy and environmental policy together with land-use planning,” he said. “I think that’s smart, and it’s the wave of the future.”

I think he’s right about the future. I’ve noticed lately the increasing link environmentalists are making between food choices and the health of the planet. I know I read recently something to the effect that one cannot consider themselves an environmentalist and still eat meat. Global warming is as much cow- as car-driven.

The dietary paternalism inherent in this proposal — the claim that City officials know what you should eat — hasn’t registered yet. Maybe it never will. Maybe we all see ourselves as the sheer victims of corporations, and believe it is corporations that are limiting our choices, not government. I’d be curious to see the results of an approval poll comparing the Los Angeles City Council with McDonald’s.

Perhaps the council would win. Maybe all the popularity that fast-food brands have paid so dearly for over the past 40 years will now crash around their deep fryers. But they will not go down without a fight, and in Los Angeles, that means writing a lot of checks.

Where Are You Now, Woodsy Owl?

It’s official.  Celebrity endorsement of environmental causes has been officially declared counterproductive.  The story will run Sunday in the LA Times, but it’s already on the website.

No, it’s not easy being green, least of all for Hollywood A-listers living in jaw-dropping decadence. Solar panels on a 50,000-square-foot manse in Malibu just don’t scream “Live simply!” Ditto hopping onto a private plane to get to the Live Earth concert.

Of course, celebrities don’t let their lavish lifestyles stop them from preaching to the rest of us about temperance. Eco-friendly living isn’t about great sacrifice, they contend, it’s about making small but powerful changes. It’s about voting green. It’s about buying green. Besides, they say, they’re doing their part by using their fame to broadcast a pro-Earth message that reaches millions of people. Isn’t that enough?

It might have been, a few years back. But then, rather quickly, the green movement became part of the mainstream. For the rich and famous, the competition to stand out, to out-green the next guy, got so fierce that the next logical place to take the Greening of Hollywood was the exposé: sussing out the hypocrites.

Green organizations had a good run, deploying conscientious stars to draw attention to coastal pollution, smog-belching cars and the need to recycle.  A non-profit, the Environmental Media Association, formed in the early 1990s to supercharge the trend.

But it’s over.  Now when a star comes out for the environment, it’s all about the star and not the issue.   Which is not a surprise, given the attention-addiction that drives a star to become a star in the first place.  The environment is a siren song for those who want to cast themselves in the role of real-life hero.  Sometimes exotic travel is included in the package.

Should We Wave the White Flag on Wind Power?

Sometimes I wonder whether all the people who profess to believe global warming is a crisis are just posturing for either political gain or social acceptability. The signs that we aren’t really serious about it are everywhere.

Or maybe the problem goes deeper. We are now shamelessly hypocritical; demanding sacrifice from others that we defiantly refuse to make ourselves. John Edwards wins the fall-down-laughing award for this tendency, telling a labor group that Americans should give up their SUVs, despite owning several of them himself, and openly using one during campaign stops.

Edwards is obviously pathological. He believes his lifestyle and his campaign are of such surpassing importance to the future of the world that we all would trust him that SUVs, private jets and other smoggy luxuries are essential to his divine mission. What the rest of us do is relatively unimportant, so our sacrifice should be easy.

So Edwards isn’t really the problem. He’s an egotistical buffoon; good material for right-wing bloggers and late-night comedians, embarrassing for the rest of us. He’ll be back in private life in a few short months.

But this column, from the NY Times’ TimesSelect (i.e. $$) service, strikes me as more insidious precisely because it sounds so reasonable. Stanley Fish, an author and law professor, can be eloquent and thought-provoking on a range of topics. That he doesn’t recognize the hypocrisy of his position suggests that millions of intelligent people will also not recognize it:

For five months of the year, I live in the very small town of Andes, N.Y. Each year has its signature event — floods, drought, road construction, caterpillars. And 2006 to 2007 has been the year of the wind turbines.

Like many of the other towns targeted by the wind turbine industry, Andes is a rural community that over the years has lost its economic base. At one time the hills and valleys were home to many small dairy farms, but most of them are no longer in operation, and no industry, light or heavy, has taken their place. Now the area relies for its revenue on retirees and second home owners who are educated, relatively well off and tend to be teachers therapists, lawyers, artists and social workers. In short, liberals. They are all soldiers in Al Gore’s army, into organic foods, hybrid cars, clean air, clean water, the whole bit.

They are also against wind power.

Their reasons are the ones always given by those who wake up to find the wind interests at their door. Even if large wind farms were in place throughout the country, the electricity produced would be a very small percentage of the electricity we use. Because the turbines are huge, 400 feet or more, installing them involves tearing up the ridges on which they are placed. Once in operation, they cast shadows and produce noise. Their blades cause a “flicker” effect, kill birds and interfere with migration. The outsized towers ruin scenic views and depress real-estate values.

These last two reasons are seized on by wind proponents who say that a few elite newcomers are putting their aesthetic preferences ahead of both the community’s welfare and the national effort to shift to green energy as a way of slowing down global warming.

It’s a nice line, but it won’t fly. The wind companies may advertise themselves as environmentalists, but they are really developers, which means that they do things with other peoples’ money — yours. Wind farms are attractive as an investment because the combination of tax credits, tax shelters and accelerated depreciation rates means that investors reap large profits in a few years. Meanwhile, those in the community pay twice for their electricity; once when their taxes go to subsidize the wind interests and a second time when the monthly bill arrives. And that bill will likely be larger than it would have been had the turbines never been erected.

It’s a “nice line?”

Well, if Fish’s arguments mean wind power won’t fly in Andes, N.Y., it won’t fly anywhere. In fact, if his position is widely adopted, you can forget about alternative energy, period.

Nantucket NIMBYs* Mocked On “The Daily Show”

Ra-ther!

Haven’t you been warned?

Now, this is “The Daily Show,” and their satire is relatively benign.  It makes fun of the rich, some of whom happen to be environmentalists or Kennedys.  But what it only glancingly hits is the destructive hypocrisy on display.  Why should a farming community or a rural town put up with the admitted blight of a wind farm if the these people won’t put up with the minimal intrusion of Cape Wind?

Are we serious about global warming or not?  Seems like too many advocates are more focused on trying to convince the bitter-enders that the phenomenon is real (see this week’s Newsweek cover), and not focused enough on pushing past the special-interest opposition to getting vital projects like Cape Wind built.

*NIMBY = Not In My Back Yard

Lights Out for the River Dolphin

This was not unexpected, but still has huge significance:

The rare Chinese river dolphin has gone extinct, according to scientists who could not find a single one of the animals during a six-week search on China’s Yangtze River.

The small, nearly blind white dolphin, also known as the baiji, was nicknamed “the goddess of the Yangtze.”

“It’s possible that we missed one or two animals [during the search], but we can say the baiji is functionally extinct,” August Pfluger, a Swiss economist-turned-naturalist who financed the expedition, said in a telephone interview from Wuhan, China.

“If there are any baiji left in the river, they won’t have any chance of survival.”

If Pfluger’s team is correct, the baiji will be the first large aquatic mammal to have gone extinct since hunting and overfishing killed off the Caribbean monk seal in the 1950s.

According to this story, the Yangtze was home to a number of unique species — many of them threatened with extinction, too:

This is no ordinary extinction of the kind that occurs frequently in a world of millions of still-evolving species. The Yangtze freshwater dolphin was a remarkable creature that separated from all other species so many millions of years ago, and had become so distinct, that it qualified as a mammal family in its own right. It is the first large vertebrate to have become extinct for 50 years and only the fourth entire mammal family to disappear since the time of Columbus, when Europeans began their colonisation of the world.

The three previous mammal families gone from the face of the Earth are the giant lemurs of Madagascar, which were eliminated in the 17th century, the island shrews of the West Indies, probably wiped out by the rats that accompanied Colombus on his voyage, and the Tasmanian tiger, the last known specimen of which died in captivity in 1936. (The most famous creature to have become extinct in the past 500 years, the Dodo, was a bird.)

Sam Turvey, conservation biologist at the Zoological Society of London, who led the expedition to find the Yangtze dolphin and is chief author of the paper, said: “The loss of such a unique and charismatic species is a shocking tragedy. This extinction represents the disappearance of a complete branch of the evolutionary tree of life and emphasises we have yet to take full responsibility in our role as guardians of the planet.”

Several other species are “just hanging on” in the Yangtze and could disappear within a few years unless action is taken now, Dr Turvey warned. They include the Chinese alligator, the finless porpoise and the Chinese paddlefish, which grows up to 7m long but has not been seen since 2003.

Reuters says “the last confirmed baiji sighting was 2002, although there have been a handful of unconfirmed sightings since then. The last baiji in captivity died in 2002.”

Maybe It’s Time for Some Good News

Like, how about a biodiesel motorcycle!?

Here’s a video link.

When I was a reporter, my AP Stylebook said Diesel should always be capitalized — because  Diesel was his name-o.  Shouldn’t we call it bioDiesel now?

Tired Earth*

Not too long ago, having a celebrity at your environmental press conference was a sure way to attract the cameras and spread the word. Luckily, most of the celebs who agreed to appear were walk-the-walk types, like Ed Begley, Jr. You wouldn’t invite anyone who wasn’t serious about it. Begley would bicycle all the way from the Valley to Santa Monica to stand up for Heal the Bay or the Coalition for Clean Air. If someone had taken a satellite photo of his home, it would have embarassed neither him nor his cause. And he was never sanctimonious.

Now, the celeb phase of the environmental movement has achieved its absurd apotheosis and badly needs to be shut down. Billed as a massive teach-in on climate change, the Live Earth concerts were, politically, a train wreck. From Rasmussen Reports, a polling site:

The Live Earth concert promoted by former Vice President Al Gore received plenty of media coverage and hype, but most Americans tuned out. Just 22% said they followed news stories about the concert Somewhat or Very Closely. Seventy-five percent (75%) did not follow coverage of the event.

By way of comparison, eight-in-ten voters routinely said they were following news coverage of the recent Senate debate over immigration. Fifty-four percent (54%) said they followed news coverage of the President’s decision to commute Scooter Libby’s sentence.

Skepticism about the participants may have been a factor in creating this low level of interest. Most Americans (52%) believe the performers take part in such events because it is good for their image. Only 24% say the celebrities really believe in the cause while another 24% are not sure. One rock star who apparently shared that view is Matt Bellamy of the band Muse. Earlier in the week, he jokingly referred to Live Earth as “private jets for climate change.”

Only 34% believe that events like Live Earth actually help the cause they are intended to serve. Forty-one percent (41%) disagree. Those figures include 10% who believe the events are Very Helpful and 20% who say they are Not at All Helfpul. Adding to the skepticism, an earlier survey found that just 24% of Americans consider Al Gore an expert on Global Warming.

Given a choice of four major issues before the United States today, 36% named the war in Iraq as most important. Twenty-five percent (25%) named immigration, 20% selected the economy and only 12% thought Global Warming was the top issue.

Whatever needs to happen next to bring about a reversal of man-made global warming, that goal is now farther away, thanks to Al Gore, Madonna, Leo DiCaprio and the global concerteers, who only managed to persuade the public they received some personal benefit from their association with the issue. Neither the celebrities nor the event organizers never answered the question of their basic hypocrisy. In a TMZ/Defamer/Murdoch world, of course we’re all going to find out how much energy the movement’s stars use, how many times they fly in private jets, tour demands completely at odds with their stated positions, huge stock positions in companies that pollute the most, and the vast amounts of energy burned and pollution released by the concerts themselves.

Gore and the celebrities complain about the tabloidization of the news, and are especially bitter if the snark gets in the way of their unselfish efforts to, you know, change the world. But an intriguing NY Times Magazine piece about a neurological disorder called Williams Syndrome and its implications for understanding why the human brain evolved the way it did, contains a profound nugget of insight into why celebrities hurt the causes they seek to help, unless they’re willing to be more like Ed Begley, Jr., and less like the people we saw on those concert stages Saturday.

Bear with me, it will all make sense:

Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist and social-brain theorist, and others have documented correlations between brain size and social-group size in many primate species. The bigger an animal’s typical group size (20 or so for macaques, for instance, 50 or so for chimps), the larger the percentage of brain devoted to neocortex, the thin but critical outer layer that accounts for most of a primate’s cognitive abilities. In most mammals the neocortex accounts for 30 percent to 40 percent of brain volume. In the highly social primates it occupies about 50 percent to 65 percent. In humans, it’s 80 percent.

According to Dunbar, no such strong correlation exists between neocortex size and tasks like hunting, navigating or creating shelter. Understanding one another, it seems, is our greatest cognitive challenge. And the only way humans could handle groups of more than 50, Dunbar suggests, was to learn how to talk.

“The conventional view,” Dunbar notes in his book “Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language,” “is that language evolved to enable males to do things like coordinate hunts more effectively. . . . I am suggesting that language evolved to allow us to gossip.”

Dunbar’s assertion about the origin of language is controversial. But you needn’t agree with it to see that talk provides a far more powerful and efficient way to exchange social information than grooming does. In the social-brain theory’s broad definition, gossip means any conversation about social relationships: who did what to whom, who is what to whom, at every level, from family to work or school group to global politics. Defined this way, gossip accounts for about two-thirds of our conversation. All this yakking — murmured asides in the kitchen, gripefests in the office coffee room — yields vital data about changing alliances; shocking machinations; new, wished-for and missed opportunities; falling kings and rising stars; dangerous rivals and potential friends. These conversations tell us too what our gossipmates think about it all, and about us, all of which is crucial to maintaining our own alliances.

For we are all gossiped about, constantly evaluated by two criteria: Whether we can contribute, and whether we can be trusted. This reflects what Ralph Adolphs, a social neuroscientist at the California Institute of Technology, calls the “complex and dynamic interplay between two opposing factors: on the one hand, groups can provide better security from predators, better mate choice and more reliable food; on the other hand, mates and food are available also to competitors from within the group.” You’re part of a team, but you’re competing with team members. Your teammates hope you’ll contribute skills and intergroup competitive spirit — without, however, offering too much competition within the group, or at least not cheating when you do. So, even if they like you, they constantly assess your trustworthiness. They know you can’t afford not to compete, and they worry you might do it sneakily.

The sentence I emphasized suggests why a global TV event featuring movie stars and pop-music performers might be just about the worst way to convey environmental information — or in fact, any important political message. In the very same global village Live Earth sought to educate, we are consumed with gossip about the stars who pretend to teach us–the truth about how they live as opposed to what they want us to hear and believe.

Stars attract attention, but the audience’s relationship with them is complex. We’re suspicious of their motives, don’t completely buy their idealism, and are on the lookout for hypocrisy — which this group of stars gave us by the carload. The media doesn’t create this; it’s human nature.

That is why the “carbon offset” concept is not working and should be dumped forthwith. All it does is emphasize that rich entertainers can’t bear to sacrifice and will buy their way out of living their lives in anything remotely resembling the fashion the rest of us must do. It destroys any possibility of consensus on dealing with climate change.

Climate change is a scientific issue. It raises complex issues for governments. Individuals can’t do very much about it, but they are avidly interested in considering viable solutions offered by experts. Of course, we might want to know something about those experts to determine if they’re trustworthy, but we wouldn’t be bombarded on a daily basis with stories about their incredibly opulent lives. Instead, the focus would be where it belongs, on the points of debate leading toward a political solution that, one would hope, would make a difference in earth’s environment.

Ironically, in “the entertainment capitol of the world,” there was no Live Earth concert. Just Mayor Villaraigosa, Begley, produce Lawrence Bender and a few supporting-actor types from TV like Daphne Zuniga and Sharon Lawrence, turning on some lights that made City Hall look green. I was glad the mayor mentioned that “Los Angeles recycles more than any other metropolitan city.” Hurray for the Bureau of Sanitation!

*Edited, 7/9/07

Bright Lights, Big City, Gone to My Planet’s Head

Bright lights, big city
Gone to my baby’s head
Bright lights, big city
Gone to my baby’s head

Nobody’s listening to Jimmy Reed, I guess.   They’re stampeding from the country to the city, all the world over.

As of last Wednesday, May 23rd, more people on Earth are living in urban areas than rural. According to Science Blog, scientists at North Carolina State University and the University of Georgia used United Nations data to determine the moment of transition. 

The United States is long past its tipping point: We became more urban than rural in 1910.

I’d tried to tell the woman
But she doesn’t believe a word I said
Go light pretty baby…
Gonna need my help some day
It’s all right pretty baby…
Gonna need my help some day

You’re gonna wish you listened
To some of those things I said

In spite of all the warnings, the reason for the rural to urban migration is obvious.  Earth’s rural areas are its most impoverished.

Findings by the International Fund for Agricultural Development show that 1.2 billion of the world’s people live on less than what a dollar a day can buy. Globally, three-fourths of these poor people live in rural areas.

The researchers add that, in addition to having a highly disproportionate share of the world’s poverty, rural areas also get the urban garbage. In exchange for useable natural resources produced by rural people for urban dwellers, rural places receive the waste products – polluted air, contaminated water, and solid and hazardous wastes – discharged by those in cities.

NC State sociology professor Dr. Ron Wimberley sees the shift as ominous, according to the university’s news release:

“So far, cities are getting whatever resource needs that can be had from rural areas,” he said. “But given global rural impoverishment, the rural-urban question for the future is not just what rural people and places can do for the world’s new urban majority. Rather, what can the urban majority do for poor rural people and the resources upon which cities depend for existence? The sustainable future of the new urban world may well depend upon the answer.”

It seems to me that this story gets closer to the heart of what I maintain is the world’s most pressing environmental task: Improving basic health conditions for the world’s rural poor, including potable water, wastewater treatment, reduction in toxic chemicals, sustainable and productive agriculture.  As Dr. Wimberley suggests, the fate of the entire world depends on how well we address these challenges. Dealing with global warming is connected with this agenda, but should not take precedence over it.

Go ahead pretty baby
Oh, honey knock yourself out
Go ahead pretty baby
Oh honey knock yourself out

I still love you baby
Cause you don’t know what it’s all about 

Checking in on CNG: Accidents Will Happen

According to the Daily Breeze, the owner-driver of a SuperShuttle van was killed while refueling at a CNG (compressed natural gas) station in Carson yesterday. Bob Mancuso, 61, was thrown 30 feet by the powerful explosion. There’s no photo to illustrate the story, but the writer describes the back of the van as “twisted out of shape” and the fueling station as littered with “shards of metal and plastic.” It sounds lucky that more people weren’t killed or hurt.

Why did this happen?

Sheriff’s investigators do not know the cause of the 10 a.m. incident, but Mancuso’s wife, Dianne, said her husband had been rear-ended by a drunken driver earlier in the month and had just gotten the vehicle back from the repair shop the night before.

“He got the van back last night and was told everything was OK,” she said.

“It’s not something anybody would ever expect,” she said a few hours after the blast.

Gulp.

Digging around the web for information on CNG, I was a little surprised at the circumstances of this accident. The potential for a deadly accident if a CNG tank is punctured is well-known. I’d be curious what procedures SuperShuttle follows after one of its franchisees is rear-ended to ensure that the fuel tank is not compromised. Does SuperShuttle have an authorized repair shop? Since the franchisee owns and operates his or her vehicle, there’s no revenue coming in if the van’s in the shop. Does that create a perverse incentive to turn around repairs too rapidly?

In the story, Mancuso does not come off as a careless man.

Although a smoker, Mancuso would never hold a lit cigarette while filling the tank, his wife said.

“He had the highest respect for that fuel,” she said. “My husband is stubborn, but he had a lot of respect. That is something you don’t play around with.”

CNG is one of the alternative fuels that began to gain acceptance in the late 1980s as a cleaner alternative to gasoline and diesel. I seem to recall SuperShuttle making a lot of noise about its switch to CNG here locally, but the company’s current website makes no environmental boasts.

The firm was purchased by Veolia Transportation in a deal announced last October. Veolia, which was previously known at Connex, also runs the Metrolink rail service in LA. It’s a subsidiary of the France-based Veolia Environment, which itself was a spin-off from Vivendi. Veolia Environment’s tagline is “The Industry of the Environment.” They’re involved in a number of environmental concerns around the world, but I couldn’t find any specific reference to CNG.

I did look up “CNG accidents” however, and found this horrific story from India, where many of the buses run on CNG:

Ahmedabad, May 15 (PTI): The number of dead in yesterday’s collision between a CNG-run state transport bus and a chemical tanker in Anand district rose to 29 today, police said here.

A total of 29 bodies have been recovered so far and police have been able to identify six of them. They include four women and drivers of the bus and the tanker.

Fourteen people were injured in the accident.

Most of the victims were charred beyond recognition, police said.

The mishap occurred when the bus which was headed towards Vadodara on national highway number eight in Anand district hit the chemical tanker while trying to overtake.

This might be a good time for whatever companies market CNG, CNG fuel tanks, and CNG-powered vehicles to take a look at whether they’re doing all they can to safeguard the public. Are the operators of CNG vehicles properly educated for safety? Are the repair requirements sufficiently stringent? Are the tanks as safe as they can be, given the catastrophic result if they are breached?

CNG is a cleaner-burning, domestically available fuel that will probably get renewed attention as all the presidential candidates campaign for U.S. energy independence and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. When the spotlight hits, the CNG business might want to be ready for questions.

The Smartest Person in Los Angeles

It’s been almost 20 years since I met the smartest person in Los Angeles, Cecilia Estolano. She was on the staff of Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, I was on Mayor Bradley’s staff. We were having one of the typical meetings you have in government — too many people who had nothing better to do, clogging up what should have been a smaller, shorter meeting with an excess of posturing. I don’t remember the subject, unfortunately, but it was something to do with the environment.

Suddenly, this voice piped in from the end of the table — a young woman’s. She spoke rapid-fire, impatiently, like a college student in a hot debate. In a few seconds, she summed up everything we needed to think about, framing the issue in macro terms while paying due respect to the many devilish details. For my purposes, at that point the meeting was over. There was nothing left to say.

Who are you? I remember asking her after the meeting was over since, characteristically, she had spoken her name and affiliation too fast for me to process it. She introduced herself with a firm handshake. She was new to Galanter’s staff. Friendly, but intensely focused. She really didn’t fit in at City Hall. It takes forever to get anything done, and most of the people there are unfriendly and unfocused. I figured the slow pace would cause her to spontaneously combust. But it didn’t. When I left the mayor’s office to begin my illustrious PR career, I recommended Cecilia to replace me.

Since then, Estolano has worked for the U.S. EPA, the city attorney’s office, and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Now she’s CEO of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency. This week’s Downtown News has an interview with her. It’s the first one I’ve seen since she took the job about a year ago. Why the thoughts and plans of this dynamic new leader aren’t of more interest to the city’s more prominent media, I couldn’t tell you.

Two things are interesting about this interview: What it reveals about her management style, and the issues to which she’s directing her attention. Here are a couple of excerpts that illustrate what I mean, (with the key statements in bold letters):

Q: With a name like Community Redevelopment Agency, you would imagine that community building would have been the founding principle from the start. Why hasn’t it and how will you ensure it does?

A: I think in times past, the agency has looked at catalytic projects one by one, project by project, and we really are trying to look at, from a planning perspective, what are all of the different components that make a healthy community? Instead of just doing a one-off deal, we’re also looking at how does the fabric of the community work? Is it a healthy place for families to live, shop and work? What I wanted to do coming on board was set a very clear sense of what the mission of the agency was and communicate that consistently and repeatedly throughout and drive down those goals through every rank of the agency. And I think I’ve been somewhat successful at that. Our budget this year is aimed at reflecting those goals, so that means we’re adding capacity on workforce development, on local hiring, on affordable housing, on green urbanism. We really do want to reflect those values in our budgeting, in the way we measure our performance, in the way that we communicate with the community.

Q: What are the biggest obstacles to taking the agency where you want to take it?

A: I don’t really see a lot of obstacles, to be honest with you. I think it’s a matter of getting people the resources they need. We have an incredibly motivated staff here. It has to be one of the strongest mission-driven workforces I’ve ever been a part of. I compare it to when I worked at the EPA where people were very mission-driven about protecting the environment. I haven’t seen that level of commitment until this job. It’s really impressive. So, I don’t think of it as a challenge so much as an opportunity. The other thing we really want to look at is trying to track more private sector investment. We’re looking at a time when there is more private capital chasing urban in-fill deals than ever in history. And we have to find a way to pull that money into our project areas.

Q: Is your background as an environmental lawyer new for someone in your position? And how does it inform your decisions?

A: I think it’s an unusual package for a redevelopment executive director and it informs everything I do. It’s wonderful to be working for a board and a mayor and council members who see the value of sustainable urbanism. But when I came here I wanted to make sure that was a core value of the agency and so in every speech I gave, and every time I talked to staff members, I made it clear that I expected us to move into sustainable urbanism, that we would find a way to reform the agency’s internal practices as well as our relationship with developers to encourage that kind of activity.

And:

Q: Do you see red flags in Downtown’s boom and do those concerns play into your decision-making?

A: We have to try to maintain a balance of incomes in Downtown. We also have to be mindful of all the people living in the single room occupancy hotels and how precious that resource is as a reservoir of scarce housing. We have to deal with Skid Row; we have to deal with the homelessness problem. That is an enormous challenge that is going to take an extraordinary level of cooperation with the county. You asked me what the biggest challenge is; to me that is probably the single biggest challenge we face as a city – not just for Downtown but as a city – grappling with the homelessness problem and our inter-jurisdictional conflicts.

Q: How would you rate Downtown in terms of being a mixed-economic, mixed-income area?

A: Well, it’s funny you ask that question when we’ve just seen the survey come out from [the Downtown Center Business Improvement District] about the new residents and how they have a much higher median income than the rest of the city. I think it’s a challenge to keep it of a diverse economic background. Right now, we pretty much have a bipolar Downtown residential population. We have the homeless and the SRO dwellers and we have the folks that live in the lofts and there is a big gulf in between. That’s not a healthy community. We need to have more workforce housing; we need to have people who are the administrative assistants who live Downtown as well as the associates of law firms. We’re just happy to see that there is a residential development boom occurring in Downtown – we don’t want to put the skids to that – but we do want to make sure that we have more of an income mix.

The politics are thick and greasy downtown — especially now that so many more developers are making so much more money than before — but Cecilia’s intelligence, clarity and experience will hopefully act as a solvent. I like how she describes her leadership style — no wasted energy, focused on the big picture.

The story repeats a rumor that Estolano is considering a race for a westside City Council seat, a rumor she dismisses. It’s so tempting for intelligent people in public service to go that route, but I hope she doesn’t. It’s been proven over many decades that you don’t really need to be that smart to be a successful councilmember. But downtown LA needs a leader, and the timing of Cecilia’s emergence in this role is perfect.

(Hat tip: LA Observed.)

Hollywood, Silicon Valley and Wall Street: Lining Up to Run America

Joel Kotkin sees a new power elite and a new political paradigm emerging from behind the ruins of George W. Bush’s failed administration.   The whole essay is worth reading. Here’s a taste:

How much things have changed in the past few decades! Hollywood once split its loyalties carefully among the parties; its only president came from its right. Now, as much as 80 percent of its largesse flows to the Democrats. The schism between Obama supporter David Geffen and those hanging tough with Clinton is important, not only because of how it reflects Hollywood’s endemic pettiness, but because much of the party, instead of regarding these wealthy prima donnas as deluded minstrels, now treats them as enlightened policy gurus.

Not long ago, Silicon Valley was a bastion of middle-of-the-road Republicans like former Congressman Ed Zschau. But as power once vested in industrial firms like Hewlett Packard has shifted to software and internet-based companies, high-tech politics have shifted both left and dark green. The rising powers of the 21st Century Valley, firms like Google and eBay, generally don’t worry about trifles like groundwater regulations or factory emissions since they don’t manufacture anything. Nor do they worry much about labor laws, because their own employees tend to be young, well-educated and well-compensated. This makes it easier to curry favor with enviro-friendly, left-leaning politicians like former Vice President Al Gore.

Perhaps most important of all have been the changes on Wall Street, whose power extends deeply into both Hollywood and Silicon Valley and which now stands as one of the predominant sources of funds for federal office-seekers and related political action committees. Long the bastion of the old Republican establishment and a backer of Bush in his two presidential runs, Wall Street in 2006 gave more money to the Democrats, and that trend seems to be accelerating along with the implosion of the Republicans.

(snip)

How did this corporate power shift occur so quickly and dramatically? To a large extent, the answer lies in the utter failure of George W. Bush and his administration. Bush came to office with the support of a Sun Belt elite that drew its wealth and power from the great economic surge west and south after World War II and for nearly a quarter-century dominated American political life

Donors from this group of businesses propelled the careers of such substantial figures as Arizona’s Barry Goldwater, and California’s Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Arguably, their final triumph, helped by the demographic shift to the South and West, lay with Newt Gingrich’s 1994 congressional takeover.

Back in the late 1970s, founding fathers of the Sun Belt power grab, such as oilman Henry Salvatori and Litton Industries founder Tex Thornton, shared with me their conviction that the old Eastern establishment lacked the power and conviction to lead the country. They felt America needed to be guided by more vital, more clear-headed leaders. Economic malaise of the Jimmy Carter years, as well as the perception of America’s weakness both against the Soviet Union and terrorist states such as Iran, lent credibility to these beliefs among a large part of the public.

Like most successful elites, these leaders possessed a relatively coherent agenda. It centered on gaining a free hand over the nation’s natural resources, a low-tax economic policy and support for a strong national defense. The divisive moral agenda, particularly helpful in wooing working-class and Southern voters, was grafted on later but was never widely embraced by the right’s corporate funders.

Bush’s disastrous tenure has pretty much destroyed his backers’ credibility on all three issues. High energy prices and shifting climate-change politics have decimated the traditional agenda of oil and gas companies. An uneven and poorly shared economic expansion has convinced many middle-class erstwhile conservatives that Bush’s low tax, pro-business policies do not really work for them. Finally, the catastrophe in Iraq has undermined support for the overt, aggressive national defense policy long supported by Sun Belt conservatives and their defense industry allies.

(snip)

Once they recover from their post-Bush euphoria, however, traditional liberals should realize that the ongoing power shift does not necessarily signify the rise of a populist agenda. The wealthiest fifth of Americans are now equally likely to be Democrats or Republicans, a shocking shift from the nearly 70 percent Republican cast of this same quintile just two decades ago. The “party of the people” increasingly now must appeal as much to the affluent as the working-class voter.

I’ve been struggling for a “big picture” that explains the changes in politics in the past couple of years that goes beyond the tactical novelties like the netroots and YouTube.  Kotkin’s is pretty coherent. 

A possible flaw, however, is that his analysis completely omits 9/11, the jihad against the West, the “war on terror.”  Or, is he implying that 9/11 is no longer pertinent, the war on terror is quiescent, and that whole policy arena doesn’t cut politically anymore?  That would come as a huge, rude surprise to the blogospheric right, who think the war on terror is the only issue.  But maybe that’s the case.

We’ve Got Global Warming Right Where We Want It

First, former Vice President Al Gore goes to Congress, winning converts to the cause of reversing man-made global warming, and support for his proposal to cap U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide at current levels, and begin cutting them back by 90 percent over the next 43 years.  The political trend gets noticed:

As Gore concedes, he is more salesman than scientist. But most scientists acknowledge that he is absolutely right on the fundamentals: Humans are artificially warming the world, the risks of inaction are great, the time frame for action is growing short and meaningful cuts in emissions will happen only if the United States takes the lead. An increasing number of business leaders and politicians outside Washington are moving his way.

Congress is paying attention to this shift. Representative Henry Waxman of California has signed up 127 co-sponsors for a very tough bill he proposed last week that seeks to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by midcentury, which is close to what Gore wants. When you consider that Gore and President Bill Clinton could not find five senators willing to ratify the far more modest 1997 Kyoto treaty – which called for a mere 7 percent reduction below 1990 levels, with no further reductions scheduled after 2012 – you get some idea of how far the debate has come.

But then, project-by-project, in states across the country, viable ways to actually achieve these kinds of cuts get blocked.  From today’s LA Times:

In a blustery stretch of desert two hours east of Los Angeles, where many of the world’s first power-producing windmills were built, a plan for more turbines has triggered a backlash that echoes a national debate over the merits of wind energy.

A proposal to build about 50 windmills next to Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument has aroused passions in a region already dotted with 3,000 windmills, with opponents charging that the wind energy industry has neither delivered the promised power nor spared the environment.

The industry, which was born in California, now has projects in 40 states and $8 billion in investments over the last two years, according to the American Wind Energy Assn.

Supporters say wind power has come of age and will help slow global warming, while critics contend that it has delivered only a quarter of its promised energy, proved lethal to wildlife and, in the view of many residents, blighted the landscape.

Around the country, Internet blogs and anti-wind energy websites hum with angry postings about projects on picturesque ridgelines, seascapes and farmlands from New England to Texas.

Politicians and celebrities have weighed in. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and his Nantucket Island neighbors have so far successfully fought installation of offshore turbines.

Their opposition, in turn, has prompted criticism that rich liberals are all for alternative power providing it doesn’t mar their views.

So, are we serious about global warming or not?  Wind power is not perfect. But locations like San Gorgonio Pass, where the wind blows constantly, are inherently scarce.  We don’t have the luxury of ruling these sites off-limits, even when there is some other environmental impact.  Local politics should not drive how the pros and cons are weighed.

If we were serious about global warming, there would be a national policy to encourage development of wind projects in locations where there is the highest potential to exploit it for baseline power. Perhaps we should require environmental impact reports for each site — with the burden of proof being shifted to advocates of the no-build option.

I know that Gore and Waxman probably see the coming battles to be about conservation, green industries, solar power incentives, etc.   And certainly that’s going to be part of it.  But a properly located wind energy site is one of the few alternative-energy methods now available that is even close to being cost-competitive with burning fossil fuels.  Shouldn’t we be looking there first? 

Also, why isn’t there more discussion of hydro power?  According to this site, there are 80,000 dams in the U.S.  Only 2,400 of them generate electricity.  Wikipedia’s entry on hydroelectricity articulate the case against the energy source.  But what about installing turbines in existing dams?  If the dams are already built, what’s the incremental environmental damage from doing that?

Gore needs to shift his salesmanship toward selling solutions. Rep. Waxman is following the old Clean Air Act model of setting high standards and forcing local areas to meet them or else face lawsuits and federal sanctions.  That’s great if your purpose is to grandstand against enemies of the environment.  But I’d prefer we try to depoliticize this issue, acknowledge (which Gore does) that it won’t be easy, and stop creating binds for ourselves by simultaneously pursuing two competing environmental goals.  In San Gorgonio, in Cape Cod and elsewhere, we need to make tough choices.

If’ we’re really serious.  

Bob Hattoy, R.I.P.

Bob Hattoy was a grand human being.  

He is one of the handful of people who educated me about the environment when Mayor Bradley appointed me as his deputy for environmental issues despite my minimal experience with the issue.  This was in 1987, at the cusp of a period of environmental progress that I was fortunate enough to participate in.  He helped me, even though he was allied with Bradley’s rival at the time, then-Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky. He was naturally generous.

Bob was sort of the Robin Williams of the environmental movement — outrageous, lightening-quick, hilarious.  As with any activist movement, some environmentalists are irony-challenged.  Not Bob.  He knew what the other side would say, and he was already making fun of it, simultaneously making fun of himself and all of us.  He came out of politics, and he was a good exponent of the “don’t believe your own press releases” maxim.  He worked hard and passionately, but wore his burdens lightly.  His humor was never cutting, cheap or mean.  It was always apparent he cared about people. Not people in the abstract.  People in the room. People in his life.

In the LA Times obituary, Elaine Woo describes how Bob’s irreverence got him in trouble with President Clinton on the issue of gays in the military:

He told that newspaper in March 1993 that he “almost started to cry” when he heard Clinton say at a news conference that he would consider limiting the assignments of gay soldiers. Such a move, Hattoy said, would be akin to “restricting gays and lesbians to jobs as florists and hairdressers” in civilian life.

By the next year, he was reassigned to the post of White House liaison on environmental matters at the Interior Department, where administration officials thought he would be less likely to be consulted about issues affecting gays and lesbians.

Of course, it was Bill Clinton who made Bob famous when he invited him to address the 1992 Democratic Convention about AIDS.  After mischeviously thanking ”Aretha and God” in that order, Bob mesmerized the crowd and the TV audience, delivering this speech, proving he could be intensely serious when the occasion called for it.  Here is a piece of it, but the whole thing is at the link and deserves your time.

We need a President who will take action, a President strong enough to take on the insurance companies that drop people with the HIV virus, a President courageous enough to take on the drug companies who drive AIDS patients into poverty and deny them lifesaving medicine. And we need a President who isn’t terrified of the word “condom.” (Applause)

Every single person with AIDS is someone worthy of caring for. After all, we are your sons and daughters, fathers and mothers. We are doctors and lawyers, folks in the military, ministers and priests and rabbis. We are Democrats, and yes, Mr. President, Republicans. We are part of the American family and, Mr. President, your family has AIDS and we’re dying and you’re doing nothing about it. (Applause)

Listen. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. But I don’t want to live in an America where the President sees me as the enemy. I can face dying because of a disease, but not because of politics.

I was so fortunate to see Bob for what turned out to be the last time at a beautiful outdoor wedding of a mutual friend last fall.  He was the same guy, funny, sweet, extremely gracious to my wife, hungry for political gossip.  He looked positively vigorous.  But he told me that he veered from good health to bad, and wasn’t always so robust. Things could change quickly.

According to the Times, he moved to Sacramento in January, perhaps to facilitate his service as chairman of the Fish and Game Commission, where he had served since 2002.  He died last weekend from complications of his disease.  I owe Bob a lot, and I’m going to miss him. 

Green Topsy Turvy

You will find this post from Treehugger.com startling, especially in light of the fresh round of attacks on Al Gore’s lifestyle. 

(Didn’t I warn people that the disconnect between Gore’s preachings and Gore’s sense of entitlement might blow up? Now environmentalists who live nothing like Gore are defending his energy gluttony with the same craven language that Communist sympathizers used 40 years ago to justify the palaces of the nomenklatura.) 

Anyway, back to Treehugger, a site about “mak(ing) sustainability mainstream”…

…is it possible that George Bush is a secret Green? Evidently his Crawford Winter White House has 25,000 gallons of rainwater storage, gray water collection from sinks and showers for irrigation, passive solar, geothermal heating and cooling.

And you will find the comments a riot of invective coming from both sides.  Like this one here:

Oh come on PEOPLE!!! What, do you think GWB chose the stone, geothermal system, rainwater harvesting system, and insisted on the southern orientation of the main windows? PUHLEASE!!! He happened to have a halfway enlightened architect who designed a house that pleased him aesthetically and happened to also have these features as a side note. This is what celebs and people of stature do: hire those who can make them look good in one way or another.

GWB doesn’t have a friggin clue, other than he can tell his friends how green ONE of his homes is.

Followed by this one:

Why does he need a clue? He hired someone who did. That counts too.

All I can say is, bring on more news like this!  (Or like this!)  

The left-right blogosphere divide is so 2006.  I want everyone who believes all that is good resides on their side and all that is evil and dishonest on the other to experience sudden and repeated attacks of vertigo that call their worldview into question. Today’s as good a day to start as any.

Environmentalists shouldn’t worry about any of this.  It’s a sign, maybe, that more people are taking environmentalism and global warming seriously.  Americans are not ideologues by nature.  They are questioners.  The embrace of environmental consciousness will mean many smart people of good faith will come to different conclusions as to what constitutes sustainability or good policy.  It won’t be dictated from above.

What’s So Funny ‘Bout Lightbulbs and Global Warming…?*

A year ago, I called attention to a British environmental activist’s campaign to ban the incandescent light bulb.  “Ban the Bulb” had a simplicity and elegance to it that appealed to this exiled PR man’s sense of how to communicate the imperatives of global warming. 

I’m not into finger-wagging on climate change, or attaching blame.  I’m into solutions, the less bothersome the better.  Getting people to switch to a source of lighting that uses dramatically less energy and thus is much cheaper over its lifespan makes more sense to me than 1,000 Al Gore “Inconvenient Truth” spinoffs or Arianna Huffington autograph sessions.

Just as I expected, a U.S. political leader has embraced the idea, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s a Californian, Assemblyman Lloyd Levine.  From the press release on his website:

“Incandescent light bulbs were first developed almost 125 years ago, and since that time they have undergone no major modifications,” Assemblymember Levine said. “Meanwhile, they remain incredibly inefficient, converting only about five percent of the energy they receive into light. It’s time to take a step forward – energy-efficient bulbs are easy to use, require less electricity to do the same job, cut greenhouse gas emissions, and save consumers money.”

According to the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), a nonprofit organization that focuses on energy policy, replacing a 75-watt incandescent light bulb with a 20-watt compact fluorescent would result in the same amount of light but would save 1,300 pounds of carbon dioxide and save customers $55 over the life of the bulb (while the life of one 75-watt incandescent bulb is roughly 750 hours, the life of a compact fluorescent is a whopping 10,000 hours). Meanwhile, incandescent bulbs use 750 kWh over 10,000 hours, while compact fluorescents use only 180 kWh.

Well, I hope Assemblyman Levine didn’t count on getting a lot of support for this idea based on my advocacy.  This idea is getting the California nuts and flakes treatment from some quarters.  Ann Althouse:

This is a California idea. If I lived there and faced this ban, I’d buy my lightbulbs in another state. It’s just too horrible to live in such an ugly glare. People who have no aesthetic sense don’t understand how a limit like this affects people. I’d be happy to make up for it by turning off more lights or using dimmers.

Why don’t you ban air conditioning?

Glenn Reynolds:

I’m quite interested in compact fluorescents — I’ve installed quite a few in my house, and I’ve been experimenting to see which ones suck (most of them) and which ones are okay. But banning incandescents? That’s just silly.

Now a ban on private jets? Much less intrusive, and there’s lots of reason to think that this sort of thing has gotten out of hand. Flying commercial — you can even fly First Class if you want — is a small sacrifice for our business and political and entertainment leaders to pay in order to fight the scourge of global warming. Plus, who knows, if the “jet set” starts flying commercial again, maybe commercial flying will get better . . . .

Certainly, Reynolds has a point about private jets — I’ve made the same point.  And, I get it that some compact-fluorescents are ugly, or flicker like office flourescents, and for some people can trigger migraines.  But let’s chill out here. Levine’s talking about 2012. If, as Reynolds says, there are some that are “okay,” why is it so hard to imagine further developments in the next five years to give consumers more good choices? It simply beggars common sense that the only alternative to a 125-year-old wasteful technology is an “ugly glare.”

Besides, the likelihood of Levine’s proposal becoming law anytime soon is nonexistent.  It’s a publicity stunt — the good kind of publicity stunt, one that educates people and stimulates a more informed debate.  Maybe it will sell more energy-saving bulbs.  Maybe it will cause people to turn off lights when they aren’t using them.  Maybe we’ll figure out a tax incentive to accomplish the same thing.  The debate has to start somewhere.  

Right now, I hate all the rhetoric about global warming. It’s so apocalyptic, on both sides.  Let’s get down to the nitty gritty.  Assume there is at least a good chance there is man-made climate change.  Assume there is an opportunity to mitigate it through a reduction in pollution from greenhouse gases.  Look for the most cost-effective, least economically damaging ways to attain those reductions. Push the technology, fund the research.  Make things happen. 

Maybe the seas will rise.  Or maybe future scientists will conclude the panic was silly.  We can’t know the future.  But we can make changes.  Levine’s proposal is a practical contribution, and I’d like to see more of them.  

*Update:  Just noticed that Glenn Reynolds has a new post up about compact flourescents. As he finds more bulbs that give off a satisfactory glow, his tone shifts.  Given his huge readership and his reputation as a small-l libertarian, he’s doing a lot of good.  Obviously, a guy like him will never endorse a bill that mandates a change in the market — he calls regulatory intervention the “hair-shirt approach.”  But Glenn’s talking as if Levine’s bill has a prayer.  It doesn’t. 

Reynolds and Levine, together, are educating people based on their respective positions in the intellectual firmament.  I’m sure Levine’s proposal got a lot of liberals and environmentalists to say, oops, why haven’t I made the switch?  If they’re interested in a non-tree-hugging consumer’s evaluation, they can turn to Reynolds.  Blogecology at its finest.

Wal-Mart’s Compact-Flourescent Push

This story, and the new Wal-Mart policy concerning energy conservation it describes, undoubtedly has heads exploding all over Washington, D.C.  On the one hand, good for Wal-Mart to set an ambitous goal to overcome public resistance to a proven technology that will cut energy used for lighting by 75 percent.  On the other hand, this is Wal-Mart, and they do good things the same way they do bad things — like a two-ton gorilla:

In September 2005, (CEO H. Lee Scott Jr.) and Andy Ruben, Wal-Mart’s vice president for strategy and sustainability, drove 6,000 feet to the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire with Steve Hamburg, an environmental studies professor at Brown University, and Fred Krupp, the president of the advocacy group Environmental Defense.

At the summit, where scientists measure climate change 24 hours a day, the men discussed global warming, acid rain, the hole in the ozone layer and what Wal-Mart could do about them.

“You need to look at what is being sold on the shelf,” Mr. Hamburg recalled telling Mr. Scott over a dinner of turkey and mashed potatoes. He began talking excitedly about compact fluorescent bulbs. “Very few products,” he said, “are such a clear winner” for consumers and the environment.

Soon after returning from the trip, Wal-Mart publicly embraced the bulbs with the zealotry of a convert. In meetings with suppliers, buyers for the chain laid out their plans: lower prices, expanding the shelf space dedicated to them and heavily promoting the technology.

Light-bulb manufacturers, who sell millions of incandescent lights at Wal-Mart, immediately expressed reservations. In a December 2005 meeting with executives from General Electric, Wal-Mart’s largest bulb supplier, “the message from G.E. was, ‘Don’t go too fast. We have all these plants that produce traditional bulbs,’ ” said one person involved with the issue, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of an agreement not to speak publicly about the negotiations.

The response from the Wal-Mart buyer was blunt, this person said. “We are going there,” the buyer said. “You decide if you are coming with us.”

In the end, as Wal-Mart suppliers generally do, the bulb makers decided to come with the company.

Philips, despite protests from packaging designers, agreed to change the name of its compact fluorescent bulbs from “Marathon” to “energy saver.” To keep up with swelling orders from the chain, Osram Sylvania took to flying entire planeloads of compact fluorescent bulbs from Asia to the United States.

“When Wal-Mart sets its mind to something with a narrow objective like that, they are going to make it happen,” said Jim Jubb, vice president for consumer product sales at Sylvania.

Last February, I wrote this post about “Ban the Bulb,” founded by Dr. Matt Prescott, who asked, sensibly:

If we cannot deny ourselves incandescent light bulbs, which would require minimal sacrifice, how are we ever going to do the really difficult things such as cutting our reliance on fossil fuels, buying smaller cars or reducing our use of finite natural resources?

“Ban the Bulb” seems to approve of Wal-Mart’s policies, but bemoans the fact that the giant discounter dismissed the idea of supporting a ban on energy-wasting incandescent bulbs as “too radical.”

Even if Wal Mart doesn’t want to be too radical, perhaps it could consider the implementation of programme which would allow it to phase out the sale of incandescents over the next 10 years…

This would clearly be a lot easier than tackling the carbon emissions associated with its supply chains, stores, shoppers and distribution network, and would allow the barriers to beneficial change to be seriously tackled.

Cycling in the Shallows

John Balzar is leaving the LA Times soon to go to work for the Humane Society in a PR position.  Balzar’s departure is sad on many levels; he was one of the Times’ best and most passionate writers, a last link to the Otis Chandler years.  His story today on Monica Howe, outreach coordinator for the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, could well be the last byline he has in the newspaper.

So I was frustrated after reading it to see that Balzar, of all people, wrote it.  I wanted to rip it to shreds as yet another example of the Times’ shallow reporting, and of the missed opportunity to expose its readers to the many fascinating and disruptive dimensions of the urban bicycling movement.   But, as is my usual habit, I read the byline last. 

“Aw nuts,” I said to myself.  “I really respect Balzar.”  I started making excuses for him.  Maybe it’s his editors’ fault.  Maybe the problem is the unimaginative approach of the Times’ website overseers.  And hey, it’s not the like story is bad, exactly.  It’s well-written and…  uh…

Okay, read Balzar’s story.  Do you see the words “Critical Mass” in there anywhere?  No?  In 1992, there was a massive traffic disruption in San Francisco, in which bicyclists dramatized their demands by clogging automotive traffic at rush hour.  It was called Critical Mass–a “visionary traffic jam.”  Critical Mass is now the name given to a monthly mass bike ride in major cities, in which bicycle and other self-propelled commuters take part.  According to the Critical Mass site dedicated to listing such events, Los Angeles, Long Beach and Newport Beach are among the cities that participate regularly.  It says here that the Los Angeles Critical Mass ride used to start at Sunset and Silver Lake, but recently moved to Wilshire and Western. It’s a local phenomenon as well as a global one. 

If you’re interested in what Critical Mass is all about, you can start with Wikipedia’s entry on the topic — a great read.  Critical Mass is many things: An environmental protest, a demand that cities do a better job of accomodating cyclists and ensuring their safety on public roadways, a celebration, an “organized coincidence” that demonstrates the viability of xerocracy – a benign form of anarchy, in which no one is in charge, but a mass event happens anyway.  Did you know that the Critical Mass phenomenon has led to a Rand Institute study of netwars? 

It’s possible, of course, that Monica Howe knows nothing about Critical Mass — unlikely, but possible.  But she certainly knows her own organization, and the specific public policy demands it has made.  Balzar describes Howe’s political positions this way:

She has thrown herself into the campaign to demand the stenciling of “sharrows” on city streets. A sharrow is a bicycle symbol with two chevrons that is meant to remind motorists to share the road and also to promote better lane positioning for those on bikes. Howe has rallied cyclists to demand safer streets. She has led efforts to support cyclists hit by cars. She has promoted group rides that bring residents in touch with unfamiliar neighborhoods. She hammers away on the idea that bicycles are the only zero-emission transit machines.

But his focus seems to be mostly on Howe’s personality.  This is a personality profile, after all.  But how many stories does the Times run on the issues facing bicyclists in Los Angeles?  If not in this story, when is the Times going to tell its readers what the Los Angeles Bicycle Coalition is advocating?  Here is a flyer from CICLE (Cyclists Inciting Change through Live Exchange) that Howe’s coalition wants to distribute to motorists:

(I hope this is readable. It’s downloadable at the link above.) 

The most important thing to take away from this flyer is that bicycle activists believe bicyclists should be entitled to as much space on the road as a car.  They don’t use the sidewalk, and they shouldn’t be limited to the parking lane — those places are often too dangerous.  People in parked cars are wont to open their doors suddenly, placing a deadly obstacle in the path of a fast-moving bicyclist.  Also, sometimes bicyclists need to make left turns.  They are not breaking the law if they cut in front of you to do this.  They have a right to do this.

The organization is also joining a postcard-writing campaign aimed at Mayor Villaraigosa:

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa speaks about his efforts to make Los Angeles “the greenest and cleanest city in America”, yet his vision for a sustainable Los Angeles continues to neglect an emphasis on walking and bicycling as being part of this future.

Cities such as Portland, OR and San Francisco have quickly risen to the top of the list as the nation’s most sustainable cities. These cities have made significant efforts to encourage both bicycling and walking as clean and viable modes of transportation. C.I.C.L.E. believes that if Los Angeles is to become the “greenest and cleanest” city in the nation, then we too need to be incorporating strategies that encourage bicycling and walking as part of a sustainable solution for our transportation needs.

That’s news, isn’t it?  Not as sexy as the mayor’s battle over LAUSD, I grant, but if the Times is going to write a story about one of the city’s most influential bicyclist advocates, shouldn’t her involvement in a political protest of the mayor’s policies rate a mention?  Doesn’t it stand to reason that there ought to be — at least — a link to some of this information on the web? 

Believe me, I’m no expert on bicycling or bicycle activists.  I found all this information in about 10 minutes.  There is undoubtedly much, much more. The Web is one place where bicycle activists talk to each other–globally.

Bicyclist activism is a rich topic with massive implications for growth, the environment, transportation in Los Angeles — way more interesting stuff than anything SCAG has to say on those topics.  It is also a harbinger of the new forms that political activism will take, as the Harold Meyerson-approved model of deep-thinking, self-congratulatory conferences gives way to a new form of networking that, as you read further into it, could alter the balance of power in a dimension that conventional politics can’t access.

As far as it goes, John Balzar gives Monica Howe a nice profile.  I can just imagine the Westsiders who form the Times’ core readership reading it and nodding their heads approvingly.  Bicycles are just…so…wonderful!  Like puppies and rainbows. That’s just great that somebody is so passionate about it.  These readers might have had a different reaction if they understood the radicalism inherent in bicycle activism.

What the #$*! Does SCAG Know!?*

When the Southern California Association of Governments puts out its annual State of the Region report, it’s usually a one-day story in the L.A.-area local media, and no story at all in Sacramento or Washington, D.C., where one could argue SCAG’s findings are really aimed — at the custodians of the mythical treasure chests where money to build all the roads, commuter rail lines, housing and schools we need is supposed to come from.  

SCAG’s report would get even less attention if it weren’t for the easy PR hook of a “report card.”  The report card itself is unpleasant reading, as the headlines reflect: “Quality of Life is Dim.” “State of Region Report is Bleak.” “Traffic Negatively Affects Life in SoCal…Duh.” The LA Times didn’t bother with it, instead choosing to focus on how the Inland Empire used to be affordable, but not so much anymore.  

The percentage of households able to afford a median-priced home in Riverside and San Bernardino counties dropped from 48% in 2001 to 18% last year, as the median price for an Inland Empire home increased from $157,000 to $374,000 during the same period, the study found.

Riverside Mayor Ron Loveridge is also a SCAG board member and was in charge of this report.  As he assesses the explosive growth in his area, he makes the point that has always annoyed me about SCAG:

Loveridge compared his region’s growth to the boom that hit Orange County and the San Fernando Valley years ago. “You try to learn lessons,” he said, “but there are clearly market forces and social forces that help shape what takes place.”

New residents are moving to Riverside and San Bernardino counties from elsewhere in the United States, the study showed, bucking a larger regional migration trend.

Last year, 24,000 more people left Southern California to live and work in other parts of the United States than moved here, according to SCAG statistics.

Regional officials suggested that that turnaround could reflect Southern California’s cost of living, including high housing prices. The region last year registered a near-record-low mark in housing affordability, the report found. Still, it has not dampened the region’s housing construction boom.

In other words, nothing SCAG does or says matters.  If you’ve been around public affairs in LA long enough, you know that by now, SCAG could phone in these reports from a shack in Wyoming.  The numbers they crunch and package for public consumption are meant to spur action to change the region’s negative trends, but they can’t even stop history from repeating itself. Against “market forces and social forces,” SCAG and the region-wide consensus of elected officials who all endorse its agenda are impotent.  

The clue to SCAG’s weakness?  The report card, with all its C’s and D’s and F’s, is a policy-wonk view that doesn’t fit with what real people think.   According to SCAG’s own survey, more than half of Southern Californians think things are going “very well” or “somewhat well,” while less than 10 percent think things are going very badly.  Only about 20 percent of Southern Californians think transportation is the region’s top problem — and the survey shows there is no consensus about what the top problem really is. Crime, environment, economic concerns, education and immigration are each named by about 10-15 percent of the region’s residents as the top problem. 

SCAG, which is chartered as a regional planning entity, claims authority “to promote economic growth, personal well-being, and livable communities for all Southern Californians,” but has few tools with which to fulfill this grandiose promise.  This is why the agency is so relentless in telling us that traffic, the environment and affordable housing are bad and getting worse.  Its leaders perpetually wait for a call from the people of Southern California to come to their rescue.  

We’ve got myriad problems in Southern California, but the ones SCAG focuses on aren’t especially unique.  The environment is now perceived as a global issue.  Where you stand on housing affordability depends on whether you are currently an owner or a renter.  Most Southern California owners have an investment that appreciates faster than most other ventures. 

Traffic congestion is part of living in an urban area; it improves only when the economy weakens, and no one wants that.  People in Southern California figure that part of living and working includes traffic jams, crowded buses and trains, parking hassles, etc.  They don’t think it’s much different in other cities, where you can also get stuck in traffic — and freeze your butt off in December.  They don’t think anyone has the answers to problems like this — least of all an obscure public agency that seems obsessed with telling them what they already know. 

*Edited, 12/17

Dinosaurs: Hard to Kill

It took a lot more than just one meteor slamming into Mexico to wipe out the big lizards, it turns out:

There’s growing evidence that the dinosaurs and most their contemporaries were not wiped out by the famed Chicxulub meteor impact, according to a paleontologist who says multiple meteor impacts, massive volcanism in India, and climate changes culminated in the end of the Cretaceous Period.

The Chicxulub impact may, in fact, have been the lesser and earlier of a series of meteors and volcanic eruptions that pounded life on Earth for more than 500,000 years, say Princeton University paleontologist Gerta Keller and her collaborators Thierry Adatte from the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland, and Zsolt Berner and Doris Stueben from Karlsruhe University in Germany. A final, much larger and still unidentified impact 65.5 million years ago appears to have been the last straw, exterminating two thirds of all species in one of the largest mass extinction events in the history of life. It’s that impact — not Chicxulub — which left the famous extraterrestrial iridium layer found in rocks worldwide that marks the impact that finally ended the Age of Reptiles.

“The Chicxulub impact could not have caused the mass extinction,” says Princeton University paleontologist Gerta Keller, “because this impact predates the mass extinction and apparently didn’t cause any extinctions.”

The climate changes, caused in part by greenhouse gases released from “prolonged and massive eruptions” of the Deccan Flood Basalts in India, were pretty extreme: Oceans 3 or 4 degrees warmer, and land temperatures 7 or 8 degrees warmer, 20,000 years before, and 100,000 years after, the Chicxulub meteor struck. Marine life was affected by growing smaller and reproducing more offspring — to increase the odds for survival. Tropical species were on the edge of extinction. Then there was another huge meteor impact, comparable to the first. Where did that meteor strike? Scientists don’t know, although some are suggesting a 500-kilometer-wide crater in India might be a remnant of it.

Thank You, Del Biagi, Wherever You Are

If you are an environmentally-minded kind of person, this is a thrilling story, and an unbelievable accomplishment.

State officials announced Thursday that California has finally achieved its goal of reducing landfill waste by 50%, thanks to diligent recycling by residents and businesses.

The milestone culminates a 16-year campaign by the state to persuade people to separate recyclables out of the trash.
The state passed a landmark law in 1989 mandating that communities establish waste-management plans for residents and businesses that would ultimately divert at least 50% of all recyclable trash from landfills. California was supposed to reach the goal in 2000, but preliminary data released Thursday show that the goal wasn’t reached until last year.

A total of 88 million tons of solid waste was recycled in 2005 for a 52% recycling rate, said Jon Myers, a spokesman for the state’s Integrated Waste Management Board. In 2004, 76 million tons were recycled, or 48%.

Though some cities still lag behind, other communities that are now diverting 60% or more of their waste to recycling centers made up the difference.

That 1989 law would never have passed unless, a year earlier, my boss, the late Mayor Tom Bradley hadn’t publicly commmited the City of Los Angeles to recycling (or “beneficially reusing”) at least 50 percent of its trash. And Mayor Bradley wouldn’t have had the nerve to make what seemed like an outrageously ambitious commitment if his Bureau of Sanitation director Del Biagi hadn’t said to me, and then later to the mayor, “What the hell, why don’t we just tell everybody we’re going to recycle half our trash?”

Up til then, Biagi had been a reluctant supporter of recycling. A few short months before these conversations started, Biagi was still trying to talk me out of telling the mayor he should abandon the trash-burning LANCER project. Biagi was running a small pilot recycling program on the Westside. To appease me, he said he’d be willing to expand it. “Into every council district?” I asked, since I knew none of them wanted to be left out. “Grrr,” said Biagi. We used to have these bantering conversations in the awful food court in City Hall Mall, eating baked potato and salad from Leon’s.

I wish I could take the credit for talking Biagi into his new position, but I think it was his staff — the sharpest bunch of garbagemen you’ll ever meet. Or maybe it was Biagi’s refined sense of which way the political winds were blowing. Biagi was, to me, the quintessential city department manager in Los Angeles — a Zen surfer on shifting currents. In real life, he was a surfer, and I think he found peace in imagining himself shooting the curl whenever a councilmember was berating him in public, which happened frequently.

Whatever happened, over yet another baked potato, Biagi pulled the 50 percent rabbit out of his hat. Within a few weeks, Bradley and several members of the Council announced the goal. It led to the development of a citywide curbside recycling program to be phased in over, I think, about seven years. When it was done, it was the largest municipal curbside recycling program in the country, and due to LA’s size, it probably still is.

I don’t know if the state of California would’ve had the courage to propose such an ambitious goal if the biggest city in the state hadn’t gone first. And I don’t think I would have had the balls to tell Mayor Bradley to announce a 50 percent goal if Biagi hadn’t sprung it on me first. It was like Babe Ruth calling his home run in the 1932 World Series. The chances of failure were a lot higher than the chances of success, but Biagi knew his team could make it happen.

So if you are into recycling and are happy that California’s stopped filling canyons with our trash, tip your post-consumer chapeau in the direction of Del Biagi, the reluctant environmentalist, now retired, and hopefully enjoying some tasty waves in a secluded cove somewhere off of Orange County.

(Meanwhile, after my vacation, I’ll try to find out the fate of Councilman Greig Smith’s pledge to divert 100 percent of our waste and his new ideas on trash-burning, which I wrote about here.)

News From the Desert, News From the Sea

Today’s LA Times has a distressing take on the damage the Sawtooth fires wrought on the Mojave Desert’s populations of juniper, piñon and Joshua trees, and raises questions as to whether the fires are a preview of coming attractions in a climate-changed world, or a rare event caused by the especially rainy conditions in the desert winter before last combined with the especially hot conditions earlier this summer. 

Scientists do agree that it will take centuries, if not millenniums, for the desert to recover.

“It won’t be on a timeline we humans would like, but it will happen,” said Tasha LaDoux, Joshua Tree National Park’s botanist.

Inside the park, new growth provides fodder for the debate over whether the fragile, arid landscape is undergoing dramatic change.

At the scene of a 1995 fire, not a single juniper or piñon pine seedling has come up after 11 years. But healthy, 3-foot “pups” have sprouted from the roots of once seemingly dead Joshua trees. The pups may or may not survive, scientists say, because in drought years they may be gnawed by thirsty rodents and ground squirrels. Meanwhile, native apricot mallow, bright-green cheesebush and golden California marigold are blooming even in August.

Along a sandy road in the western section, the scene of a 1999 blaze that scorched 14,000 acres, a beige sea of grasses spreads beneath burned Joshua trees bleached silver by sun and rain. The new growth consists of native bunch grasses and a pair of noxious, ankle-scratching weeds.

These two nonnatives, known as red brome and cheatgrass, form highly flammable carpets between native shrubs and trees, and many scientists believe they are the main culprits behind increasing fires.

“These invasive grasses fill in the spaces between the desert plants. They carry the flame through at a very high rate, and much hotter. It spreads a lot faster,” Sall said.

(snip)
Native to Mediterranean Europe and Asia, the weeds were probably blown across the West by the wind, tracked in by hikers’ boots and construction equipment, and excreted by livestock. Researchers at UCLA and elsewhere say the weeds appear to capture nitrogen from smog-laden air more readily than native plants, eventually choking them out. 
 

The whole story is worth reading.  Disagreement is rife among the desert ecologists the Times interviewed.

Meanwhile, while the California deserts become more flammable, the ocean is getting noisier, according to a UC San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography study cited in Science Blog:

Mark McDonald of WhaleAcoustics in Bellvue, Colo., and John Hildebrand and Sean Wiggins of Scripps Oceanography accessed acoustic data recorded in 1964-1966 through declassified U.S. Navy documents and compared them against acoustic recordings made in 2003-2004 in the same area off San Nicolas Island, one of the Channel Islands more than 160 miles west of San Diego.

The results showed that noise levels in 2003-2004 were 10 to 12 decibels higher than in 1964-1966, an average noise increase rate of three decibels per decade. The culprit behind the increase, according to Hildebrand, appears to be a byproduct of the vast increase in the global shipping trade, the number of ships plying the world’s oceans and the higher speeds and propulsion power for individual ships. The noise detected off Southern California originates from ships traveling across the entire North Pacific Ocean. According to Lloyd’s Register figures quoted in the JASA paper, the world’s commercial fleet more than doubled in the past 38 years, from 41,865 in 1965 to 89,899 in 2003.

“We’ve demonstrated that the ocean is a lot noisier now than it was 40 years ago. The noise is more powerful by a factor of 10,” said Hildebrand, a professor of oceanography in the Marine Physical Laboratory at Scripps. “If we’ve doubled the number of ships and we’ve documented 10 times more noise, then the noise increase is due to both more ships and noisier individual ships than in the ’60s. And that may be because the ships are now bigger, faster and have more propulsion power. The next step is to understand what aspect of modern shipping has resulted in more noise per ship,” said Hildebrand.

Is there an impact on marine life?  The scientists don’t know, but it seems to this non-scientist that it could have a profound impact.  The suggestion that the noise impact of ships be regulated, and/or that shipping lanes be re-routed, will likely soon appear on the environmental global policy agenda.

An Inconvenient Truth…but a Very Convenient Travel Schedule

What is it about the most prominent environmental activists? Especially those who speak out on climate change? Why do they need private planes? And so much air conditioning?

I realize this op-ed was written by someone who is hostile to liberals, so it’s fine to take it with a grain of sea salt. Maybe everything he says about Al Gore is a pack of lies, although I’ve yet to hear anyone refute it:

For someone who says the sky is falling, (Gore) does very little. He says he recycles and drives a hybrid. And he claims he uses renewable energy credits to offset the pollution he produces when using a private jet to promote his film. (In reality, Paramount Classics, the film’s distributor, pays this.)

Public records reveal that as Gore lectures Americans on excessive consumption, he and his wife Tipper live in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Va. (He also has a third home in Carthage, Tenn.) For someone rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from himself.

Then there is the troubling matter of his energy use. In the Washington, D.C., area, utility companies offer wind energy as an alternative to traditional energy. In Nashville, similar programs exist. Utility customers must simply pay a few extra pennies per kilowatt hour, and they can continue living their carbon-neutral lifestyles knowing that they are supporting wind energy. Plenty of businesses and institutions have signed up. Even the Bush administration is using green energy for some federal office buildings, as are thousands of area residents.

But according to public records, there is no evidence that Gore has signed up to use green energy in either of his large residences. When contacted Wednesday, Gore’s office confirmed as much but said the Gores were looking into making the switch at both homes. Talk about inconvenient truths.

Eco-celebrities’ use of private planes was chided a bit more gently in this editorial in today’s LA Times:

In Hollywood, carbon offsets are the successor to the Prius: the hippest way for stars to flaunt their conspicuous non-consumption. Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters offset tour emissions by protecting forests. Leonardo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz and Brad Pitt invested in trees too. The producers of “Syriana” got into the act. This year’s Super Bowl was “carbon-neutral” — and so was the World Cup.

But why let the famous people have all the fun? Regular folks can buy carbon offsets too, using any of a number of Internet-based calculators to measure their own carbon footprints and purchase affordable mini-offsets, which might run anywhere from $30 to a few hundred dollars. Some websites will even send a decal or sticker suitable for the bumper of a Prius. Or Hummer, as the case may be.

It’s a nice idea, as far as it goes — a little consciousness-raising can be a good thing, and it certainly doesn’t hurt to get more windmills spinning on the grid. But as some environmentalists have noted, this kind of do-gooder consumerism doesn’t necessarily achieve an overall net reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (which is, after all, the ultimate goal).

That will take regulatory oversight and global coordination. Not to mention a dose of real sacrifice from all of us — including those of us who live in 15,000-square-foot estates in Beverly Hills and travel in private jets.

Unless you are travelling to extremely remote places, private planes are utterly dispensible. If you’re doing a PR tour to launch a movie in major metropolitan markets, you can probably get there on a commercial flight.

It seems bizarre to have to explain this, but in case Arianna Huffington, Al Gore or Cameron Diaz are reading: Commercial flights are like mass transit, except in the air. The idea is, for the same amount of fuel (and pollution) that your private plane uses to get you, your make-up artist, your flack and other members of your entourage from LAX to JFK, a commercial carrier can take hundreds of people!

“B-b-but what about carbon offsets? I’m cool if I use those, right?”

Well, as the LA Times says, yeah, I suppose, technically. But how about this idea? Calculate how much carbon offset you would have to buy if you took your private plane, and go buy it. Then, take a commercial flight anyway. That way, you haven’t just evened the score — you’ve actually made a difference.

More importantly, global warming skeptics won’t be able to dismiss your cause by pointing out what a big hypocrite you are.

Hear me now and believe me later: Celebrities who claim environmental leadership but take private planes hurt the environment. They hurt it. I’ll say it again: You’re hurting the environment. You might as well just vote for Republicans. You might as well be in a secret meeting with Dick Cheney. You might as well be BP, spending millions on the “beyond petroleum” PR campaign while skimping on Alaska pipeline inspections. You make the real environmentalists, the men and women who work for grassroots organizations for low wages, look foolish.

If you just have to take private planes, if First Class just isn’t first-class enough for you, that’s okay. There are plenty of other good causes to choose from. But stay away from the environment.

Now don’t get me started on the stars with multiple residences who keep all of them air conditioned like meat lockers….

Pelicans and Hummingbirds — Separated at Birth?

The pelican is a bird of disproportionate meaning to me. 

When I was at Cal, I edited The Pelican, which during my years (and probably only during my years) attempted to be a “New Journalism” type of magazine with serious non-fiction, poetry and fiction.  (At its inception, through most of its history, and probably today, it has tried, usually without success, to be the West Coast’s answer to the Harvard Lampoon.) 

The pelican’s revival along the California coast has, along with the dolphin’s, signalled that aggressive environmental protections make a difference.  (I’m an enviro-optimist.  I like to think when you pass laws to limit pollution, the laws’ advocates should stop once in awhile and say: “See? Wasn’t that worth it?”)  

It’s also hard not to relate to a bird that is uglier than the ugly duckling, and yet flies with such stately insouciance and grace. Actually, the relaxed pelican could not be less like the frantic hummingbird — except in silhouette:

Usually pelicans travel in flocks but this one patrolled a cove off Catalina alone and didn’t seem to want any fishing buddies.  

These two banked against the stiff breeze at Hurricane Gulch, at LA Harbor, making it look easy to fly against a wind that knocked the cap off my head repeatedly. 

“End Times”: Imagine a World With No Lollipops

It’s hot, I’m slow, I only got to this story this morning, but I was not exactly charmed by it:

STEAL a toddler’s lollipop and he’s bound to start bawling, was photographer Jill Greenberg’s thinking. So that’s just what Greenberg did to elicit tears from the 27 or so 2- and 3-year-olds featured in her latest exhibition, “End Times,” recently at the Paul Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles. The children’s cherubic faces, illuminated against a blue-white studio backdrop, suggest abject betrayal far beyond the loss of a Tootsie Pop; sometimes tears spill onto naked shoulders and bellies.

The work depicts how children would feel if they knew the state of the world they’re set to inherit, explained Greenberg, whose own daughter is featured in the show. “Our government is so corrupt, with all the cronyism and corporate lobbyists,” she said. “I just feel that our world is being ruined. And the environment — when I was pregnant, I kept thinking that I’d love to have a tuna fish sandwich, but I couldn’t because we’ve ruined our oceans.”

What nonsense! Jill Greenberg is living in the lap of the lap of luxury, and she thinks it’s “end times.” What a gassy title for her exhibit — claiming for herself the final word before the curtain comes down.

Oh, how I wish there was a time machine, so I could take Greenberg back to, say, New York in the so-called Gilded Age, or London in the 1830s, or really almost anytime in history prior to her own cozy lifespan. Mozart had six siblings; he was one of two to survive infancy, and that was a common ratio, even among relatively comfortable families like his, until only about 100 years ago. If a stolen lollipop is Greenberg’s metaphor for the cruelties that our society will visit upon the next generation of children, she is completely ignorant of history.

The future’s so bright for our society’s kids, on the whole, they won’t even notice the lollipop is missing. There is plenty to worry about, of course, and any parent worries for their child’s fate. 9/11 will happen again. Wars won’t stop, and the weapons of mass destruction loom as a threat. And then, as Kurt Vonnegut put it, there’s “plain old death,” dogging all our steps. But as a society, we are heading into a period of unimaginable prosperity, when many festering problems will find sustainable solutions.

Before you get the vapors, be assured: I’m no denier of global warming. We have a lot of environmental problems, serious ones. And fortunately, we have serious people investing their lives in addressing them. On this blog, I honor the scientists who are working to understand, characterize and hopefully reverse global warming. But I have less respect for people like Jill Greenberg, who prefer to wallow in the apocalypse.

In terms of human impact, the environmental conditions that Jill Greenberg or her toddler are likely to encounter anytime in their lives will be enviable compared with what most people in the history of the world have faced. The bleakest environments are in the poorest countries, there is no scenario in which her child will face those conditions unless she volunteers to do so. There is such hubris in her saying “we’ve ruined our oceans.” Sure, the oceans are polluted. But be grateful that your child is growing up at a time when scientists are able to monitor environmental conditions, and people can organize globally for change. Greenberg acts like she’s just discovered this problem — epiphanies of a tunafish sandwich — and nothing’s being done. Which is partly true. She, herself, is doing nothing. She’s taking pictures and trying to depress people. What good does that do?

Likewise the incantations of “corrupt…cronyism…corporate lobbyists..,” like that’s something new and unique to our era. Is she serious? Is she saying this in a national publication like the LA Times? Let me throw a few names at her: Boss Tweed. Mark Hanna. J.P. Morgan. Albert Fall. Billy Sol Estes. Bobby Baker. Richard Nixon. Spiro Agnew. Thomas Keating. All of these names and many more are in Wikipedia if she wants to look them up.

Just to pick a juicy one: Is she familiar with Sam Giancana? One president, Eisenhower, used the murderous Mafia chieftain in an attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro. Another future president’s father, Joseph Kennedy, got Giancana to help him wrangle labor votes for John Kennedy’s successful 1960 election. When Giancana was found years later with a bullet in his head, the CIA chief actually had to deny having anything to do with it. If there is a political scandal today that rivals two presidents trucking with a Mafia capo, I want to know about it.

Anywhere in the vicinity of money or power, Ms. Greenberg, you will find corruption, and that’s been true for 3,000 years. And yet, somehow, we keep making babies, and most of them grow up to enjoy the blessings of this rare and unusual planet.

Okay, but the story’s absurdity doesn’t stop there. It seems like the Internet has gotten ahold of Greenberg long before I did. The complaint? That she’s hopelessly naive? That she’s spoiled by prosperity? That’s she a doom-porn addict? No. They’re mad at her because she took the lollipops away from the kids before she photographed them in order to make them cry.

Bloggers such as Andrew Peterson called Greenberg’s lollipop technique abusive and exploitative, while Greenberg, her husband, Robert Green, and gallery owner Paul Kopeikin defended the work, the process and one another. The conversation, cycling between rational and hyperbolic, says as much about Net communication as about the art in question.

“Jill Greenberg is a Sick Woman Who Should Be Arrested and Charged With Child Abuse,” Peterson wrote under his pseudonym Thomas Hawk at ThomasHawk.com, a blog that focuses on new media and technology. For Peterson, Greenberg’s technique was “evil.”

At this point, I change sides, and become Jill Greenberg’s defender. Child abuse? Is this man insane? When you pollute the English language by relating something as benign as a photographer’s trick to the hideous violence and cruelty visited upon children all over the world by abusive parents and other authority figures, you dishonor the real victims.

But the vortex of stupidity didn’t stop there. Greenberg’s husband, Robert Green was so offended by the comments on ThomasHawk.com that he searched until he found the real identity of the previously anonymous blogger, and outed him. As if the idiocy of his comments wasn’t enough to hang him! He had to be cyber-stalked?

We’re in a bad stretch in the politicized culture of America. It might not be the “end times,” but I still wish I had my lollipop.

Not-So-Tiny Bubbles and Global Warming: News from UCSB

A team of UC Santa Barbara scientists went diving one day in 2002 in an area of the Santa Barbara Channel called Shane Seep, when the earth did something alarmingly rude, though not unexpected.

She belched — a “massive blowout of methane,” that “sounded like a freight train,” as Science Blog relates the story.

“Other people have reported this type of methane blowout, but no one has ever checked the numbers until now,” said Ira Leifer, lead author and an associate researcher with UCSB’s Marine Science Institute. “Ours is the first set of numbers associated with a seep blowout.” Leifer was in a research boat on the surface at the time of the blowouts.

Aside from underwater measurements, a nearby meteorological station measured the methane “cloud” that emerged as being approximately 5,000 cubic feet, or equal to the volume of the entire first floor of a two-bedroom house. The research team also had a small plane in place, flown by the California Department of Conservation, shooting video of the event from the air.

Leifer explained that when this type of blowout event occurs, virtually all the gas from the seeps escapes into the atmosphere, unlike the emission of small bubbles from the ocean floor, which partially, or mostly, dissolve in the ocean water. Transporting this methane to the atmosphere affects climate, according to the researchers. The methane blowout that the UCSB team witnessed reached the sea surface 60 feet above in just seven seconds. This was clear because the divers injected green food dye into the rising bubble plume.

Atmospheric methane is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, and is the most abundant organic compound in the atmosphere. The ocean floor’s release of trapped methane hydrate — a form of ice that contains a large amount of methane within its crystal structure — in bubble form is both a symptom and a cause of global warming, according to UCSB geological science professor James Kennett’s theory.

When ocean temperatures rise, the methane releases are more likely to occur in the form of blowouts, like the one UCSB’s researchers saw. Those bubbles make a marked difference in the quantity of methane in the atmosphere, “thereby initiating a feedback cycle of abrupt atmospheric warming.”

Studies of seabed seep features suggest such events are common in the area of the Coal Oil Point seep field and very likely occur elsewhere.The authors explain that these results show that an important piece of the global climate puzzle may be explained by understanding bubble-plume processes during blowout events. The next important step is to measure the frequency and magnitude of these events. The UCSB seep group is working toward this goal through the development of a long-term, seep observatory in active seep areas.

(Not to make light of this disturbing news, but there is a bright side. Here’s one big blowout in Santa Barbara that can’t be blamed on Wendy McCaw.)