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Gaming with Garbage!

2007-11-15T15:52:11Z

Ian Wilker, NRDC alumnus, Asheville, NC

Any devotees of rotisserie-style fantasy sports leagues out there? You know, the online games where nerdy statsaholics hold a "draft" of baseball or football players and then "manage" their teams through the straits of a competition based on the real-world performance of their players?

Well, when you've climbed to the pinnacle of this noble practice -- when you've drafted perfectly balanced teams and then guided them to glory with a sure hand -- an even more difficult challenge lies ahead:

Fantasy sanitation commissioner.

Yes, the Gotham Gazette -- which has to be the top spot on the web for wonky news about New York City politics and policy -- has released an online "game" that takes the player through the decisions, both micro and macro, that determine the overall environmental footprint of the billions of pounds of garbage that New Yorkers collectively produce each year.

I enclose "game" in quotes because playing it isn't exactly a rip-snorting good time. But I learned a lot -- I freely admit to being the kind of guy who has to consult the cartoon trash bins on the "NYC Recycles" sticker every single time I'm at the trash cans, just to make sure I'm doing it right. (It really shouldn't be so hard to remember, but for some reason I just can't remember what plastics can/can't be recycled, etc.)

The Garbage Game takes you from the decisions we all make about what to do at home to minimize waste and pollution, and some simple things to do that can actually turn certain kinds of trash to the city's advantage. And then the game takes you through the big citywide picture, looking at the options New York (and by extension any other city, too!) has in transporting, processing, reusing, and even converting (into energy) its waste stream.

All in all, a great exercise. Any help I can get in being mindful about the materials I pick up and use, eat, whatever -- where these goods come from, and where they're going when I'm done with them -- is a good thing in my book. Helps me feel more of the connective tissue that weaves me into the living universe, that weaves us all together.

The Gazette has also posted a long article with more background on solid-waste policy and best practices in the City. And here's the little badge you get -- to embed in your website or blog -- after you finish the game:

I played The Gotham Gazette Garbage Game and sent 1,897,871 tons of refuse across 13,643,091 miles.

Busy Lives, Mindful Choices

2007-10-05T15:14:00Z

Ian Wilker, NRDC alumnus, Asheville, NC

Whoah. My colleague Phil's post this morning rocked me mightily.

Like so many people I'm sure, I spend a lot of 2am time staring at the ceiling, wondering when, how, if I can ever resolve all the puzzle pieces of my daily life into 24 hours. Parenting two small children, work and ambition, meditation/spirit time, my marriage, my friendships, omnivorous reading habits, time for things that bring me joy like exploring the woods, birding, exploring new music and returning to my musical heroes [can't resist adding the links ;-)].... and consistently making mindful, informed choices where my health is concerned, and where the health of the world that sustains us all is concerned. And these last two are not exactly "fun," so they're easy to neglect.

Phil reminds us that neglect of health and environment will implacably lead to consequences that render all the others moot. He's responding to hard news by owning that mindful choices re his health are always available, moment to moment. It's the same for me, for us all. And it's on all of us together to take better care of the environment around us -- individually, of the ground we stand on, the parts of the world we touch as we make our daily rounds; collectively, of Spaceship Earth entire.

We know so much more than we used to about the nature and treatment of life's afflictions. People (I've no idea how many, but it's a very large number) with HIV, heart disease, diabetes and other conditions once thought utterly debilitating or fatal have proved up to the challenge of making choices we know are prerequisites of hope -- they've made great sea changes to how they live, and have enjoyed long, vibrantly healthy lives post-diagnosis. If they can, I can. If they can, so can we all. Surely not perfectly, and across every individual who walks this planet -- but we can generate the critical mass necessary to stop, and eventually right, our world's gathering tilt out of balance:

The bottom line of the MA findings is that human actions are depleting Earth’s natural capital, putting such strain on the environment that the ability of the planet’s ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted. At the same time, the assessment shows that with appropriate actions it is possible to reverse the degradation of many ecosystem services over the next 50 years, but the changes in policy and practice required are substantial and not currently underway.

That's from the UN-sponsored Millenial Ecosystem assessment, which involved the work of more than 1,360 experts worldwide.

So now's the time. And people get it -- you'd have to have lived deep in an underground bunker to miss the explosion of interest in "going green" over the last few years, which shows no signs of abating. I'm optimistic, and I can't say that five years ago I was. I think that tipping point is coming.

(Now if only I could right my own ship -- time to get in the gym, and I gotta remember to turn off those power strips!)

Of Mountains, Joy, and Outrage

2007-08-29T04:13:59Z

Ian Wilker, NRDC alumnus, Asheville, NC

Last week, we got a tip from a friend in the know: "Head on down to Shining Rock Wilderness this weekend, the blueberries are in." And so on Saturday, my family and I got out onto the roof of southern Appalachia and traipsed along a treeline-level footpath for a couple miles before arriving at a mile-long expanse of open ridge from which immense views fell away in several directions. The sky seemed to hunker down close around us, and the air.... Well, I've tried many a time to describe the sensory experience of good Appalachian Mountain air and can only say that I felt a deep homesickness melt away as I savored its crisp bite and heady fragrance of too many flowers and green things to count.

And the wild blueberries were abundant indeed. There were quite a few pickers, many of them clearly the mountain folk who've lived in this area for generations, and all armed with containers of some kind, ranging from milk jugs to big joint-compound buckets. We'd been admitted, it seemed, into a seasonal ritual that probably has unfolded each August in this place for hundreds of years. And so we spent two idyllic hours up there, picked enough blueberries to make pancakes for a small army, and me feeling the joy of knowing that right here, right now is exactly where I want to be. On the way back down to the car, a fast-moving thunderstorm rumbled through, dumping a chilly rain on us; I did my best Gene Kelly routine, my daughter shivering but giggling away in the backpack strapped to me.

This was why we'd moved to Asheville, NC -- I wanted to bring days like this one much closer, within easier reach, than they had been in Brooklyn. But in the hubbub of actually moving, getting settled, starting a business, and expanding our family, I'd lost touch with my need to get outside -- hadn't managed a single day hike or fat-tire ride in eight months. I hereby vow to better see to the care and feeding of my inner mountain man.

The previous evening, I'd stayed up brooding about news that the Bush administration, in its latest gift to the extractive industries, would issue a new regulation smoothing the path for mountaintop removal mining, a brutally efficient descendent of strip mining that is literally remaking the face of southern Appalachia. It is exactly what it sounds like. (See pictures, video, or Kentucky-based journalist Eric Reese's essay Appalachian Apocalypse.) I don't at all like the idea that a patchwork of southern Appalachian topography equal to the size of Delaware has already been mined in this way. I wanted to write something for this blog that might in some tiny way contribute to putting the kibosh on mountaintop removal, and my instinct, regardless of personal feelings, is to eschew negative rhetoric and focus on energy alternatives that are simply better for the public good. So I started amassing facts and figures, planning to post something the next day, after we returned from our family hike.

But as I walked that Blue Ridge mountaintop the next morning, something became crystal-clear to me. Anyone who can't see the obscenity of mountaintop-removal mining -- can't see that it is way beyond criminal to lay waste to an entire region's natural and cultural heritage -- is beyond the reach of any coolly rational arguments against the practice that I could make. So for me at least, it's time to stand up and get loud. I'm outraged that this is happening in our country, that this White House has condoned and in fact worked relentlessly to legitimize mountaintop removal mining. This has to stop, and sometimes the only way to make that happen is to find others who think similarly, put your collective foot down, and say "No more."

My Favorite "Step It Up 2007" Photo

2007-04-15T05:48:28Z

Ian Wilker, NRDC alumnus, Asheville, NC

On April 14 -- proclaimed a "National Day of Climate Action" by the amazingly energetic Step It Up 2007 campaign to, well, DO something about global warming -- my family and I made the short trip over to downtown Asheville to catch the local rally. There were something like 1,400 rallies all over the country -- pretty good considering that this campaign's only just beginning to get revved up.

We had brilliant Blue Ridge sunshine for our event, which was a big success. There were good words, good old-time music, and evidence aplenty of Asheville's unusually well-developed green economy (We just moved here recently from New York, and have found that where other communities talk about developing a more sustainable way of life, this small city is actually doing it. Smart-growth planning, biiodiesel stations, green builders, a hugely popular local-foods movement -- Asheville's just way ahead of what I've seen elsewhere.)

But my favorite thing of all was this moment: A gust of wind plucked a laminated placard off a nearby table, setting it down not far from my daughter Evan, all of 18 months old. She snapped it up and paraded around with it for the next 10 minutes:

Clearly a natural, right?!