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Eco-News on the Net

The Gristmill

New York City gets big reaction to new sex symbol
by Ashley Braun

When the Big Apple’s health department tried putting out free condoms, it found the recipients were less than stimulated by the wrapper’s appearance. To sex it up, the city held an online contest to design a new package, 15,000 voters got in on the action, and of course, one hot symbol nailed it.

The condom design that came out on top? The international sign for the power button. Six million of these limited-edition rubbers will hit the roads of New York City, turning on sex lives and (hopefully) powering down overpopulation.

After all, New Yorkers are all about power: power shopping, power
trips, and now ... power condoms. But if the city runs out of these rubbers, will the residents pitch tents outside city hall in protest? That’s the kind of news we hope won’t break.

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Like what you see? Sign up to receive our email roundup of pun-usual green news just like this—we call it “The Grist List”—every Friday.

You may be bike-curious if ...

Streetfilms: Fixing the car-centric city [video]

The (almond) joy of cooking your own candy bar
by John Legge

Editor’s Note: In his book Food Rules, Michael Pollan declares, “Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.” The idea is that by cooking at home, you’ll avoid all the unpronounceable chemicals found in store-bought junk. And even though you might gorge on it, you can only eat as much as you made—and it takes hands-on effort, not just a trip to the supermarket, to procure more. In that spirit, we offer DIY Junk Food, the recipe column for those who want to get their hands dirty in the kitchen before enjoying some sublime junk.

—————-

Photo: John Legge

I love Almond Joys. There’s nothing like hydrolyzed
milk proteins, soy lecithin, caramel coloring, sodium metabisulfite, and sulfur
dioxide to get my mouth watering. (Those last two additives keep Almond Joys extra-fresh
for an extra-, extra-long long time.)

Of course, I don’t want to actually eat those mystery
ingredients that candy bars are so full of, but that doesn’t mean I want to
skip the perfect Almond Joy combination of coconut, chocolate, and almonds.
Lucky for me, I’m a pastry chef. I knew I could figure out how to make my own Almond
Joy using just the basics—sugar, eggs, flour, honey, salt, butter, coconut, vanilla,
chocolate, and almonds (or no almonds because, you know, sometimes you feel
like a nut and sometimes you don’t). And I didn’t need a chemistry set to give
my Almond Joys long shelf-life—the bars don’t stick around that long.

If you’re afraid you’ll eat all 18 of your homemade
Almond Joys in a day, I recommend stowing at least half of the pre-formed bars
in the freezer. Then you can pull out the right number for you and a friend.
Just make sure you defrost those frozen bars before you bake them.

Homemade Almond Joys

7 oz sweetened shredded coconut
¾ cup white sugar
3 Tablespoons all purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup egg whites (about 4 eggs)
1 Tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 ounces whole roasted almonds (unsalted)
4 ounces good quality chocolate, chopped
1½ Tablespoons butter

Photo: John LeggeMix the coconut, sugar, flour and salt together in a sauce
pan.

In a bowl combine the egg whites and honey and whisk until
foamy.

Add the egg mixture
to the sauce pan and mix thoroughly with a rubber spatula.

Cook over medium high heat until the batter slightly
thickens and takes on a little color, about 10 minutes. You will need to stir
frequently so that the batter doesn’t burn on to the bottom of the pot.

Mix in the vanilla.

When the batter is cool enough to handle, form spoonfuls
into oval bars. Lightly press two whole almonds into the top of each bar.

Bake at 350 degrees
for 20 to 25 minutes, or until golden brown.
Allow the bars to cool to room temperature.

While they’re cooling, combine the chocolate and butter in a
double-boiler (you can set a metal bowl over a pot of boiling water if you
don’t have a double-boiler). Allow the chocolate to melt slowly, mixing it with
the butter.

Dip the top of each bar into the melted chocolate, shaking
off the excess.

Once the chocolate is set, you’re done.

Makes about 18 (highly delicious and preservative free)
bars, which can be eaten immediately or frozen for later use.

Getting back to our green roots with potlikker soup

The time has come to make delicious and easy bread at home

Nations now free to fish bluefin tuna to extinction
by Tom Laskawy

Well, bluefin tuna, it was nice knowing you:

A proposal to ban the export of Atlantic bluefin tuna prized in sushi has been rejected by a U.N. wildlife meeting.

Thursday’s decision occurred after Japan, Canada and scores of poor nations opposed the measure on the grounds that it would devastate fishing economies.

Monaco introduced the proposal at the 175-nation Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, or CITES. It argued that extreme measures are necessary because the stocks have fallen by 75 percent and current managing agencies have done nothing to rebuild the stocks.

Only the United States, Norway and Kenya supported the proposal outright. The European Union asked that implementation be delayed until May 2011 to give authorities to respond to concerns about overfishing.

The Pew Environment Group responded to the news:

Today’s vote puts the fate of Atlantic bluefin tuna back in the hands of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), the very body that drove the species to the disastrous state it is now in.

Ah, the ICCAT, or as marine biologist Carl Safina likes to call it, the International Conspiracy to Catch All Tunas. The ICCAT has repeatedly overruled its own scientists to set catch quotas far above sustainable levels. In fact, ICCAT’s scientists recently came out in support of the trade ban just rejected at the CITES meeting. The only thing the ICCAT seems able to manage is the Atlantic bluefin’s destruction.

It’d be nice to think that at there are plenty of fish in the sea, but really, there aren’t. At least the U.S. did the right thing. The rest of the international community may not have mustered the courage to save the tuna, but everyone should realize that, vote or no, Atlantic bluefin tuna is an endangered species and should not be eaten. You have been warned.

Bolivia summit to seek global climate change referendum

Sanyo sets up solar parking lots for electric bikes

Christian Coalition backs Sen. Graham on climate legislation
by Samantha Thompson

Since coming out in
support of climate legislation in October, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham
of South Carolina has faced a lot of vitriol from groups on the right, including
Tea Party activists in Charleston. This criticism culminated in a formal censure from
Charleston County that lambasted Graham for subverting “Republican
leadership and party solidarity for his own benefit” and defiling “the ideals
of freedom, rule of law, and fiscal conservatism.”

But one unlikely group is coming to Graham’s defense: the
Christian Coalition. The group released a radio ad last week defending the senator’s
actions.

The ad begins with an audio clip of President George W. Bush
lamenting America’s addiction to oil as a “serious problem.” (You can listen
to it here.) It continues with
narration from Roberta Combs, president of the Christian Coalition:

President Bush was right: our addiction to
foreign oil threatens our national security and economic prosperity. America
spends almost a billion dollars a day on foreign oil and a lot of that goes to
countries that do not like us and harbor terrorists. Washington’s failure to
act puts our national security at risk, and drains our economy. I’ve heard from
so many Christian Coalition supporters that energy is one of the most important
issues we face today. America is a can-do country. We’ve got to take the lead
to explore energy alternatives and protect our national security. We have to
make our country safer by creating jobs with the made-in-America energy plan. I
would like to ask you to call Sen. Lindsey Graham and encourage him to continue
fighting for our families.

Could the Christian Coalition give fledgling climate
legislation the leg up it needs? The
organization boasts 2.5 million supporters, largely conservative Republicans;
if they embraced the cause, they could give a big boost to efforts to build a
bipartisan coalition for a clean-energy and climate bill.

Meanwhile, dozens of
South Carolina veterans are also saluting Graham for his climate activism in an ad [PDF] running in
local South Carolina newspapers, funded by the Pew Project on National
Security, Energy and Climate:

As U.S. military veterans, we share Senator
Lindsey Graham’s strong belief that our national security depends on more than troops
and arms. America must also reduce its dangerous dependence on foreign oil and
develop its own alternative energy sources.

If it does matter where CO2 is released, cities are in trouble

Is Senator Graham looking for an excuse to bail on climate legislation?

Should electric bike sales be subsidized?
by Alan Durning

Photo: Flickr via Imnop88aAs I argued in part 2, electric bikes could be forerunners for electrifying the whole transportation sector. They’re sweeping into urban areas in China by the tens of millions. New technologies are improving e-bike performance. And powerful institutions are aligning to speed battery innovations.

Many observers now believe e-bikes will grow rapidly in North America, including in the Pacific Northwest. Colorado-based market analysts Pike Research, for example, predict that U.S. sales will quadruple from 250,000 e-bikes in 2010 to more than 1 million in 2016, as shown in the chart below. (Asia is left off the chart, because it’s on a different scale. Some 98 percent of e-bike sales worldwide have been in China.)

To speed this process, one common approach—evident in the bevy of tax credits available for purchasers of hybrid and electric cars—would be to subsidize e-bike sales. That’s what Santa Cruz, California did early in the 2000s decade. Coupons from local authorities helped sell as many as 1,000 e-bikes there, making it briefly the e-bike capital of North America. Similarly, rebates from Swiss localities have boosted e-bike sales in Switzerland. Some 16,000 sold there in the first half of 2009, according to one report.

The implicit assumption behind underwriting new products with public funds is that once they are adequately established in the marketplace, they will spread contagiously without continued public support. The public investment is justified by the subsequent flipping of a market, in which cleaner, greener products push out dirtier products and yield large benefits for society.

This assumption may be reasonable for green products that are new and unfamiliar, such as ground-source heat pumps and green roofs, or that are not produced on a large enough scale to bring down manufacturing costs. But electric bikes are neither new nor unfamiliar: half a million have sold in the United States over the years. And they’re a variation on the ubiquitous bicycle, which is found in a majority of homes. What’s more, we should have already benefited from the economies of scale, insofar as they’re rolling out of Chinese factories at a pace of 20 million a year, far in excess of the scale of U.S. auto manufacturing before the recession. Furthermore, the notion that there is a tipping point for sales of e-bikes is speculative at best. In fact, a look at electric bikes’ progress in North America and abroad leads to the conclusion that they confront a formidable set of barriers to growth—barriers that public sales rebates are unlikely to overcome. I’ll describe these barriers in my next post.

Stay tuned for part four of this five-part series tomorrow.

This post originally appeared at Sightline’s Daily Score blog.

Related Links:

Bike Curious in Rhode Island (video)

Three trends that favor electric bikes

The parable of the electric bike

The secret mall gardens of Cleveland
by Lisa Selin Davis

Photo: Gardens Under GlassThe shopping mall is not dead. In Cleveland, in fact, it’s growing
green: cucumbers, lettuce, herbs and even flowers.

In the former Galleria at Erieview mall, a project called Gardens Under Glass is taking root, part of a grand plan to transform malls into greenhouses. It’s just one of many Cleveland-based projects, suggesting that this rust belt city might have a few sustainabilty tricks to teach urban centers everywhere.

Vicky Poole, who heads up marketing for the Galleria, conceived this project after looking at a photograph of plants growing in a cafe window. Hmmm, she thought, imagining a
retooled version of the food court. The mall was already scrambling to find innovative uses for itself in a flagging economy, primarily as a wedding hall, but also as a farmers market. A greenhouse, she discovered, could thrive in the building’s climate controlled environment under the tremendous glassed-in atrium that runs like a spine down its emtpy center.

Poole and her partner-in-green Jack Hamilton (who manages Artist
Review Today magazine and gallery, located in the Galleria) won a $30,000 grant to set up the greenhouse project. The money came from Cleveland’s Civic Innovation Lab, which funds ideas for growing the local economy (other projects include a recycled glassware company and a renewable energy group).

In February, spinach, tomatoes, and strawberries were started in a composted
soil system produced by a local company. This week, a hydroponic system was delivered that will exponentially increase output. They also added artificial light to supplement the daylight streaming through the glass ceiling.

Poole’s vision for the mall is both a master marketing tool—this one, like so many of its mid-80s brethren, was in dire straights not long ago, with dozens of vacancies in its 200 stores—and an inventive way to promote sustainability in what has proven to be a largely unsustainable architectural dinosaur. It’s pretty hard to find alternate uses for 100,000-plus square feet of mostly windowless space. “I don’t look at us as a mall anymore,” she says. “We really serve the downtown business community.”

Already, the farmers market is growing in popularity. The grander plan calls for the entire mall to become a retail ecovillage: vegetarian restaurants, health food stores, garden supply outlets, more farmers’ stalls and shops selling recycled goods. There are other ecovillages in Cleveland and a whole slew of green initiatives that we detailed in 2008.

What’s great about this mall project, though, is that it comes from the private sector, from one woman with a big idea and a big enough space to realize it. “I hope it’ll bring this building back,” she says.

In the meantime, malls are struggling to find new uses. Perhaps dead malls will become centers of local live produce?

Colbert grows a ‘crisis herb garden’

Garden Girl TV: Raised beds in the city

If it does matter where CO2 is released, cities are in trouble
by Jonathan Hiskes

There’s some fascinating new research about “CO2 domes,” invisible clouds of carbon pollution that hover above urban areas. Bradford Plumer at The New Republic does a great job setting the context:

Does it matter where carbon dioxide is emitted? From a climate perspective, at least, the standard answer has always been, “Not really.” Carbon dioxide mixes pretty evenly and uniformly throughout the atmosphere, so that the heat-trapping gases coming out of a factory in China have the same effect on global temperatures, pound for pound, as the greenhouse gases emitted by, say, cars in Delaware. (This is in contrast to a number of other air pollutants, whose effects are often localized—sulfur dioxide only causes acid rain in discrete areas.)

The new finding:

But a new study just published in Environmental Science and Technology by Stanford’s Mark Jacobson adds a slight twist to this standard view. Older research has found that local “domes” of high CO2 levels can often form over cities. What Jacobson found was that these domes can have a serious local impact: Among other things, they worsen the effects of localized air pollutants like ozone and particulates, which cause respiratory diseases and the like. As a result, Jacobson estimates that local CO2 emissions cause anywhere from 300 to 1,000 premature deaths in the United States each year. And presumably the problem’s much worse in developing countries.

Mark JacobsonMark Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford, has been vocal about the need for a complete clean-energy transformation. This week, with the political world consumed by health care, his work offers a reminder that carbon pollution is a serious health problem. It makes traditional air pollution—such as particulates and ozone—more harmful, so it poses particular threats to the places with the worst air pollution—cities.

Here’s a map of CO2 released from fossil fuels (with red and yellow marking the biggest pollution points), compiled from 2002 data by the Vulcan Project at Purdue University. It’s a map of emissions, which isn’t quite the same as airborne concentrations, but it gives a sense of where pollution happens:

Map courtesy of Purdue University Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Jacobson’s urban-dome research presents two implications worth teasing out:

Trouble for cap-and-trade? The new evidence adds a wrinkle to cap-and-trade plans by suggesting that it matters where pollution happens. Cap-and-trade rests on the assumption that a ton of carbon has the same impact regardless of where it’s emitted, so it doesn’t matter if a factory in Nashville and a power plant in Phoenix trade emission permits. It only matters where emissions can be reduced most cheaply.

But, says Jacobson, “This study contradicts that assumption.” Stanford’s press release on the research plays up the contradiction; “Urban CO2 domes increase deaths, poke hole in cap-and-trade proposal,” blares the headline.

If the research proves correct, it doesn’t argue against cap-and-trade so much as highlight the need for a multi-pronged approach to CO2 regulation. The Clean Air Act can set plant-by-plant performance standards while a declining cap covers the broader economy. (That’s the approach taken by the Kerry/Boxer Clean Energy Jobs & American Power Act.) So the study shouldn’t be used to entirely discount the idea of cap-and-trade plans—but that doesn’t mean it won’t be.

Urban vs. rural. Jacobson’s research also pits the interests of rural and urban communities against each other. Cities could stand to suffer more under climate change, but the senators representing large urban areas already have proportionately less power to push through legislation that would curb CO2 pollution. California, with its 37 million residents and numerous polluted urban areas, has two senators who want to enact climate legislation; Wyoming, with 540,000 residents and vast expanses of rural land, has two senators who oppose climate legislation.

Urban and rural areas have already been at odds over climate policy—and that was before we had any evidence that cities might really get the short end of the stick. The “domes” research provides more fodder for the fight. It underscores the essential unfairness of the effects of carbon pollution, and raises the question of just how much Wyoming should have to say about the health of Californians.

Christian Coalition backs Sen. Graham on climate legislation

Bolivia summit to seek global climate change referendum

Bolivia summit to seek global climate change referendum
by Agence France-Presse

Bolivian President Evo MoralesLA PAZ—An alternative “people’s conference” on climate change in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba in April will seek to advance an international global warming referendum, organizers said Tuesday.

“The only thing that can save mankind from a [climate] tragedy is the exercise of global democracy,” said Bolivia’s United Nations Ambassador Pablo Solon, a key organizer of the summit.

A priority of the meeting would be discussing the possibility of a global referendum “with the goal of reaching two billion people,” he told reporters.

Thousands of people, mostly members of social movements and indigenous groups, are expected to attend the People’s World Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights on April 20-22.

Organizers say it is intended to “give a voice to the people” on climate change after the perceived failure of the U.N.-sponsored Copenhagen summit on the same issue.

Solon said he expected participants from 94 countries and representatives from 70 governments to attend, without giving further details.

Bolivian President Evo Morales, who in January issued an open invitation to the conference to governments, scientists, and social movements, has said a number of South American presidents would also attend.

But the outlines of the conference remain vague, and it is so far shaping up to be something between an environmental forum and a political rally. It is expected to tackle many of the themes Morales raised at the Copenhagen summit last year, including creating a “climate court of justice” and the need to “change the system of capitalist consumerism”—proposals that could be included in the suggested global vote.

Solon said the summit’s conclusions would be delivered to the next U.N.-sponsored meeting on climate change, currently scheduled for December in Mexico.

If it does matter where CO2 is released, cities are in trouble

Sanyo sets up solar parking lots for electric bikes

Ask Umbra on paint that’s better for the planet [VIDEO]
by Umbra Fisk

Ask Umbra on keyboard cleaners, automatic composters, and book club

Carbon neutral caution

Chanel gives global warming the cold shoulder in Paris fashion show
by Ashley Braun

Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld made a clothes call about his thoughts on global warming during Paris Fashion Week. Unlike those other designers who prefer diamonds, Karl flooded the runway with real ice: a 240 metric ton iceberg sculpture in a room that was chilly in temperature, but not in reception to his global cooling theme.

Karl may make fake fur mod, but he’ll only appease the polar bears until they start sweating out of their skin. Personally, we’re not convinced Karl’s wooly wardrobe and climatic condescension are quite yeti ready-to-wear.

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