The Nature Conservancy is taking a new stripped-down approach to environmental protection: The green group is teaming up with the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and online luxury retailer Gilt to raise money for beach preservation in an unholy mashup of sex, commerce, marketing, publishing, and environmentalism.
Why the green tie-in? “Because everyone benefits from pristine tropical beaches. Especially when they’re occupied by gorgeous women in bathing suits.” That’s according to promotional prose about the partnership on the Gilt website, in an announcement that is no longer posted. (Though you can still buy a $1,000 ticket to a New York launch party where you can hang out with the swimsuit supermodels.)
Environmental writer Derrick Jensen of Orion already saw this sort of thing coming, having penned a prescient column in the current issue titled “Not in My Name.” Go ahead and call him a killjoy, but I think he pretty much nailed it:
Let me say upfront: I like fun, and I like sex. But I’m sick to death of hearing that we need to make environmentalism fun and sexy. … The fact that so many people routinely call for environmentalism to be more fun and more sexy reveals not only the weakness of our movement but also the utter lack of seriousness with which even many activists approach the problems we face. …
Unfortunately, the notion that activism … has to be fun and sexy pervades the entire environmental movement, from the most self-styled radical to the most mainstream reformist.
Composed of compressed sawdust, coffee beans, or green tea leaves, these toys offer a sustainability-minded spin on the stackable, rearrangeable form of classic LEGOs.
Europe’s great forests are largely gone, but there’s one often-overlooked country where lynx, wolves, moose, and wild boars still roam under dense tree cover: Latvia. Jeremy Hance reports in Mongabay on the Baltic nation’s richly diverse forests, and how they’re being endangered by an alarming logging spree during these strained economic times:
Facing tough circumstances, the country turned to its most important and abundant natural resource: forests. The Latvian government accepted a new plan for the nation’s forests, which has resulted in logging at rates many scientists say are clearly unsustainable. In addition, researchers contend that the on-the-ground practices of state-owned timber giant, Latvijas Valsts meži (LVM), are hurting wildlife and destroying rare ecosystems.
LEED-certified architecture was conceived by a nonprofit to save energy on heating and cooling, but it also makes for big business. According to the watchdogs at Mother Jones, an office building certified for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design costs $171 more to build per square foot than a typical structure—and the standards may be better at generating publicity than at encouraging truly cost-effective, environmentally friendly energy. At least that’s the contention of energy consultant Henry Gifford, who has filed a series of lawsuits against the U.S. Green Building Council, which developed the internationally recognized rating system.
As long as it flows freely from our taps, many of us fail to fully appreciate the wonders of clean, abundant water. While Cynthia Barnett is not the first to point out that we’re straining the limits of our water supplies, Blue Revolution stands out for its deep reporting, clearheaded analysis, and solutions-oriented approach. By speaking to water experts and managers of all stripes and traveling the globe to see success stories—and failures—Barnett shows how the United States might work out its vexing water problems.
Did the United States poison tens of thousands of its own soldiers in Iraq with fumes from burning toxic trash? Before you consider it an outlandish suggestion, I suggest you read J. Malcolm Garcia’s moving account in the Oxford American of two American soldiers who made it back from their tours of duty having escaped insurgents’ shells, bullets, and improvised explosive devices—only to die slow, torturous deaths from the effects of garbage torched in open pits by the U.S. military.
Personal stories like those of Billy McKenna and Kevin Wilkins may only become more common in coming years, according to Garcia, since the U.S. military operated at least 23 burn pits in Iraq before combat operations ended this year, including a notoriously noxious one that often literally cast a pall over Balad Air Base.
Chemists are trained to create new molecular compounds in a lab, where they work under fume hoods wearing goggles and gloves to protect themselves from their potentially toxic concoctions. When the experiments are successful, explains Laura Wright Treadway in OnEarth, the chemist often files a molecular patent and the new compound can be used to make consumer products: items like cleaning solvents, baby wipes, water purifiers, lipsticks, television sets, flame retardants, and, of course, all things plastic, from water bottles to rubber duckies to intravenous tubing.
One solution to this devil-may-care approach is green chemistry: the science of creating sustainable compounds that reduce or eliminate toxic substances while also taking into consideration a product’s entire life cycle. Green chemists ask commonsense questions: Will car mechanics be breathing it, as a brake-cleaning solvent, inside the poorly ventilated bowels of an auto shop? Will babies be stuffing it, as a plastic toy, in their mouths? Will everyone who washes clothes be scraping it, in the form of lint, out of their dryers?
Not right, not left, but forward thinking, Utne Reader combs the alternative, independent, and digital press for thoughtful journalism, artful storytelling, and emerging ideas.
Japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka will exhibit a glass window made of 500...
Recycle. Everybody’s doing it.
The author recounts playing herself — best-selling author Sloane Crosley — on...
