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Look who's following me... yikes!

2009-01-28T21:42:18Z

I was struck with confusion, convinced I had misunderstood. But there is was:

Hi, JuliaBovey
AmericasPower (AmericasPower) is now following your updates on Twitter.

AmericasPower! I'm so flattered. It's only the most deceptive, sneakiest, best-funded front for the coal industry ever conceived! They sponsored half the presidential debates, have an ad on every five minutes.

These are the guys who brought us the Coal Christmas Carols - which was so stupid everyone thought their site had been hacked by The Onion.

Frosty the coal man is a jolly happy soul...
There must be magic in clean coal technology
For when they looked for pollutants
There was nearly none to see

I'm not making this up!

But unfortunately, they're not usually that stupid. On the contrary, they're blindingly deceitful, charmingly insidious. Their ads feature beautiful scientists in white coats in sparkling labs swirling colored liquids in beakers - all part of the dirtiest myth alive today, "clean coal."

And these are the guys who are now following me on Twitter!

NRDC is proud to be part of Reality (www.thisisreality.org), a campaign designed to tell the truth about coal. The reality is that burning coal is the dirtiest way to make electricity and the leading cause of global warming pollution.

It is true that someday, coal-fired electricity plants will likely be able to capture and store their global warming pollution, and that's something that NRDC encourages, as long as it's done well and done honestly.

But even when coal captures and stores it's pollution - will that make coal clean? Absolutely not! Just take a look at the video I shot in Kentucky. Or meet someone with black lung. Or look at what happened to the community in Tennessee where the dammed-up swamp of filthy coal ash - what's left over when you burn it - spilled into people's homes and polluted their water. (read Frances Beinecke's post on that) Clean Coal? Just plain impossible.

You can move a mountain, it takes five guys and some dynamite

2009-01-22T21:13:33Z

I recently returned from a trip where I saw environmental destruction worse than anything I saw during my week in China. I saw something that I just can't believe is happening in the United States of America. It's called Mountain-Top Removal Mining. Basically, coal companies blast off the top of a mountain, dump the top into the valley below, creating an earthen dam that destroys streams, and spew toxic chemicals all over the whole thing. Then, they move on to the next mountain.

I've heard about this practice for years, seen photos, met people who live in these communities. But seeing it with my own eyes was truly transformational.

I shot video with my Flip camera - this one shows the tiny town of Montgomery Creek - one of the remaining creeks in an area where many creeks no longer exist. The beginning is shot from a car window. The car is being driven by a salt-of-the earth man who took us to his hometown and into his home to show us the devastation. In the back seat of the car was the oxygen tank he uses because he has black lung from being a miner.

The second video starts in the plane, taking off from a flat runway where their once was a mountain. What's left behind looks like Southwestern mesas. And there, beside those flat-top mountains, instead of valleys, there were more flat bridges to the next mesa, where the mining waste had been dumped.

Frequently, the filled-in valleys served as dams to hold back ponds of chemical waste, unnatural in color, hovering above the valleys below.

In addition to the flat mountaintop removal sites, we also saw what's called contour mining, where machines go around the mountain, creating level steps, and take the coal out there. I'm told that contour mining can be done responsibly, as miners take the coal out of one section, they can replace the rock and dirt they've moved aside to get the coal. But we saw no sign of this alleged responsible contour mining. We saw bare rock steps, with the dirt and topsoil dumped below.

We met people who live amongst the mining. They were united in their fight against mountain-top removal, but divided on what to do about coal in general. Many of them worked in coal mining - in deep-shaft mines where more than a thousand men would work, often for good wages. Now, they tell me, it takes 5 men to blow apart a mountain and plow out the coal, and bulldoze the rest into the valley to create a hollow fill. Five men, thanks to technology. And someone is getting rich. But not the people who live among the destruction. They are poorer than they were a generation ago.

Usually when I think and write about energy I look to technology to solve problems. And though technology has hastened the ruin of Eastern Kentucky, technology can also be the answer there. Eastern Kentucky needs an economic base. Jobs. A future. Without mountain-top removal mining.

Take a look at the map of wind energy that exists or is being built across the US. Notice that one of the states with no wind whatsoever is Kentucky.

Now look up close at the potential wind map for Kentucky. There is clearly potential for wind in exactly the areas of south-eastern Kentucky that are being flattened -- -- but of course the potential for wind there decreases when the mountains disappear. So Kentuckians are trading their mountains now for their clean energy future. And it's permanent.

The Gulf States Poised for Clean Energy, Our Gulf States!

2009-01-13T18:16:14Z

I thrilled at the New York Times headline: Gulf Oil States Seeking a Lead in Clean Energy. About time! Sure Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and East Texas were the oil backbone of the United States oil industry for a long time, but their clean energy potential is vast. Thank goodness they're realizing it and are taking steps to get into the clean energy game, I thought. Then, I clicked the link (on my blackberry, on metro, to airport) and saw the article's dateline: ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates. Oh. Those Gulf Oil States.

And that made the article even more poignant to me. Even the most oil-rich (and just plain rich!) countries in the world are expanding into clean energy. While our very own Gulf Oil States here in the US remain so tied to Big Oil that every fluctuation in price not only sends households into a frenzy the way it does the rest of us, it means that the few jobs left there hang in the balance every time the fickle, inexplicable oil markets skyrocket and crash. Having your commute to work dependent on oil is bad enough. But when great American cities like New Orleans, Mobile, Biloxi and Beaufort can't predict where their revenues will come from because oil could be boom or bust any given month (or a hurricane could wipe out rigs, or put them offline indefinitely) - that's dependence that must be overcome. What's the answer? Part of it is finding which types of renewables are best suited to the US Gulf States. They've sure got sun there (more than in the areas of Germany where solar has taken off and become a significant portion of the energy supply) and offshore wind could be an option too. If the other Gulf Oil States are doing it, we sure can too.

Greetings from a soon-to-be greener China!

2008-10-23T01:43:23Z

Greetings from Beijing, China, where NRDC's multi-year effort to reduce pollution from factories got a major bump from Wal-Mart.

I was here in the room when Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott told a room of Wal-Mart's 900 Chinese suppliers that they will have to waste less energy and stop polluting (as much) if they want to keep making goods for Wal-Mart. (See the Wall Street Journal's coverage; subscription required.)

If you're wondering whether this is big - the answer is YES... if Wal-Mart sticks to its commitments and IF there is expertise and capital for the suppliers to really figure out where their waste is occurring and how to fix it. That's what NRDC is doing for 10 factories here, so that we can then create a set of best practices that we hope factories here in China - and eventually all over the word - can use to be cleaner, greener, and even save money.

NRDC's Linda Greer has been behind this effort from the get-go, and she was on the panel here at the Wal-Mart conference to try to explain to the suppliers how energy efficiency will help them and the planet. Afterward, NRDC's booth at the "trade fair" was swamped with Chinese manufacturers asking how to implement Linda's ideas.

More to come on this soon, but now I am packing up from Beijing and we're heading to Wuxi to see a rayon factory. Yesterday I was telling a Chinese journalist that we were going to try to figure out how to make rayon without so much devastating pollution and energy use. She said, "Yes, that already exists. It's called silk."

Anything to Declare? Or, Radiation Monitors Cannot Reliably Detect Highly Enriched Uranium at U.S. Ports and Border Crossings

2008-03-25T21:34:54Z

I have personally lost about a dozen pocketknives and six pairs of nail scissors to the good folks from TSA at airport security checkpoints, working to make sure that terrorists do not once again attack the U.S. I don’t complain, they’re just doing their job.

But what I am losing sleep over is what isn’t doing its job: the Radiation Monitors at U.S. Ports and Border Crossings, which we now learn are not capable of detecting Highly Enriched Uranium if it’s smuggled into our country.

Two of the biggest brains at NRDC, Thomas B. Cochran, Ph.D., senior scientist and Wade Green Chair for Nuclear Policy; and Matthew G. McKinzie, Ph.D., senior scientist in the nuclear program, have an article out today in Scientific American that shows that Americans are spending billions for machines that don’t reliably detect the most dangerous nuclear material, making it possible for terrorists to smuggle in the uranium needed to build a nuclear bomb in the United States.

And to think, I was busted trying to bring a coconut back from Jamaica when I was 14.

In the article, Tom (pictured at left) and Matthew tell the tale of their “coke can,” a slug of depleted uranium about the size of, you guess it, a can of coke, that traveled across the US border undetected by the supposedly-sophisticated detectors you and I bought with our tax dollars to protect ourselves and our families from nuclear terrorism.

Tom and Matthew go to prove that their coke can actually sent out a stronger signal to the detectors than highly enriched uranium would have, and then they reveal some really frightening calculations to show that even a small amount of highly enriched uranium could be used to make a crude bomb that could do massive damage in any U.S. city.

But don’t fear, Tom and Matthew have a solution, and a pretty sensible one at that. Rather than invest in expensive machines that don’t work, why not spend our money securing the highly enriched uranium that’s strewn about the world, unprotected from terrorists who wish to do us harm?

There are two paths to making this happen: securing so-called “loose nukes” in other countries and making sure that highly enriched uranium is also under lock-and-key here in the US. To that end, NRDC just filed a petition for rulemaking with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) requesting that NRC establish a date after which it would no longer license the civil use of highly enriched uranium or authorize its export. (link)

By doing that, and working with other countries to secure uranium abroad, we would be a lot safer than by buying more detectors that provide nothing but a false sense of security.

Read all about it here.

Dear Senator Kerry: We're on the same side.

2007-12-14T01:14:30Z

“No fighting, no hitting, no yelling and do not come downstairs!” I told my children this evening, “Mommy has a very important phone call.” They knew I meant business.

Unable to get a last-minute babysitter, I parked the kids in front of PBS Kids and prayed they wouldn’t make a peep during my conference call with Sen. John Kerry.

Kerry joined the call breathless having run back to his office seconds after casting his vote for the victorious energy bill. I watched him vote on C-Span II (we have another TV downstairs) and 10 seconds later he was on the phone. How important is the energy bill you ask? NRDC will release new analysis tomorrow showing that the bill’s provision to make the average new car in America get 35 mph will be even more effective than we imagined in slowing global warming and breaking America’s addiction to oil.

Kerry was on the call to talk about recent developments with some folks who blog about climate change, specifically Bali and the energy bill victory. But I had let his folks know in advance that I planned to ask him about the subject of my blog post from yesterday: the $25 billion for nuclear loan guarantees in the appropriations bill that is about to be sprung on us. I wanted to ask him about it NOT because I wanted to give him a hard time, but because I believe he has the power to actually DO something about it. He’s Senator John Kerry.

But that’s not how it went down. In fact, it went down badly, as is detailed in this description in Gristmill.

To Kerry, clearly I sounded hostile. Accusatory. This was not meant to be the case. I mean, he and I are supposed to agree, right? John Kerry wants to protect the environment. I want to protect the environment. John Kerry wants to stop global warming. I want to stop global warming. John Kerry works in Washington to try to make the world better. I work in Washington to try to make the world better. John Kerry thought he was the best candidate to be President in 2004. I thought he was the best candidate to be President in 2004. So I made a quip thinking that he would think it was coming from someone on the same team. He did not think it was from someone on the same team. He thought it was rude. He thought it was blaming.

But to me this speaks to a larger disconnect and defensiveness that’s happening now in the environmental community trying to fight the fight in the Nation’s Capital. Here in Washington, we are far more focused on what divides us than what unites us lately. People who agree that, for instance, global warming pollution should be reduced 80% by 2050 seem to believe they are diametrically opposed on solving global warming because one believes in a carbon tax and the other believes in a cap and trade system. That’s Washington. There’s no longer much feeling of a shared mission among those who would execute differently on any one detail of a plan. So, I guess it's no wonder that Sen. Kerry thought I was attacking him.

All of this is put in perspective for me by something very upsetting and disturbing I saw in the New York Times today. It was a photo of so-called eco jeans. Apparently the maker of these jeans suggests they are best laundered in the shower, with shampoo… while the washer is actually wearing the jeans. I’m not making this up.

My take away: there are people out there who want to protect the planet so badly that there is a market for $295 blue jeans that you must wash with shampoo while wearing them in the shower. Here in Washington, the goal should be to translate that desire – that caused someone to invent and someone else to buy those stupid jeans – into solutions.

Today a real solution happened in the form of a new mpg standard for cars sold in America. It’s a huge day, a huge step forward. But for me it will go down as the day that I talked to John Kerry assuming he knew that we were on the same side, but he assumed that we weren’t.

Smells Like Radioactive Pork. Ew.

2007-12-11T17:53:58Z

We can’t waste time around here patting ourselves on the back, and never is this more apparent than in the case of the relentless attempt to get American taxpayers to dole out even more cash to the world’s most environmentally problematic and fiscally disasterous source of energy: nuclear power.

We yelled ourselves hoarse getting the nuclear loan guarantees out of the energy bill passed by Congress last week. Folks thought there was no way we could do it, but we did. The bill passed without a dime for nukes.

But now, a whole week after that vote to make investments in new, renewable energy, we hear that Congress – that’s right, the one with the Democratic majority elected a year ago to bring change to Washington– has stuck the $25 billion for loan guarantees in the omnibus spending bill. This is an eighth night of Hanukah/early Christmas present from Congress to an undeserving and degenerative industry. This is a gargantuan public policy failure. And guess who pays? You and me.

How much is $25 billion in Washington, you ask? Are we talking about real money here? Well, President Bush is asking for $7.2 billion to fund the EPA for the next three years. So $25 billion in radioactive pork is three times what it costs to run the EPA for three years. Yeah, it’s real money.

What’s funny – the pathetic kind of funny – is that both the President and Congress are hollering about getting rid of pork, slashing earmarks, returning to the halcyon days of small government. Do where does $25 billion in loan guarantees for a handful of our nation’s most profitable companies fit in the quest for fiscal common sense?

Should Americans invest in energy? Absolutely. Clean renewable energy – the energy of the future – that will beat back global warming and free us from dependence on the Middle East. Wind. Solar. Geothermal. The next generation of cellulosic biofuels I like to call “grassoline” that will be cleaner, cheaper and far less resource intensive than corn ethanol. If we’re going to spend public money on energy, these are projects that deserve it.

As for the nuclear industry, how about borrowing money on the open market like every other business has to? What? No one will loan you money? How come? Oh, because you probably can’t pay it back? Because your business model isn’t viable? Well then, should you really be borrowing money? Can’t build new nukes without it? Well, maybe you should look into building something else. Ever hear of wind turbines?

Dont Look Back, A New Day is Breakin'

2007-11-02T21:34:53Z

I just noticed that I’ve been singing the song "Don’t Look Back" in my head all day and I had no idea why. Just because I’m from Boston does not mean that I am a devotee of the band Boston, and although I’ve been known to belt out "More Than a Feeling" when it comes on the car radio (who doesn’t?) Boston (the band) isn't really my style. Too much synthesizer, not enough bass.

So how, I wondered, did "Don’t Look Back" get lodged in my head, given that as far as I know it was not featured in any ads during the American league Championship Series or the World Series (this being all the mass media I’ve been exposed to in the last month)?

I just figured it out. Yesterday I had the very interesting opportunity to be on the phone with the very-close-to-almost 44th President of the United States, Massachusetts’ junior Senator John Kerry. He wanted to get down in the trenches and dish about global warming with some bloggers. Lots of us have been feeling much stress and angst lately about what the Lieberman-Warner bill – officially known as the Climate Security Act – and what it will look like when it actually comes to a vote. Two things are for sure: America needs a limit on global warming pollution, and if that limit comes in the form of a cap and trade system based on companies getting pollution "credits," then the majority of those credits should be auctioned or sold, and not given away for free to polluters. Another point: the limit on pollution should decline over time.

So here in Washington DC, there are a great number of people, some of them extremely bright, who are losing a good deal of sleep over two questions: what percentage of the credits should be auctioned and how fast should the cap decline? What if what we know about global warming changes and, as we’re starting to see, we need to reduce more pollution faster in order to save the planet from the worst consequences of global warming? What if we pass a bill based on today’s science and then tomorrow’s science – based on newer information – tells us something else?

You gotta love the 2007 John Kerry. Unstressed by trying to win national election, he is free to be the person that got him into public service in the first place. He is serious, he is smart, he’s into the details, and his incapability of turning this off in the presidential race, a detriment then, is an asset to him now.

He reiterated a detail about the Lieberman-Warner bill that should not be overlooked: LOOK BACKS. And, yes, gentle readers, this is why the Boston song "Don’t Look Back" has been stuck in my head all day."Look backs" in the Lieberman-Warner bill give it the ability – if passed – to be adjusted based on the latest science and pressing need to cut pollution faster than originally thought necessary. Kerry and pal Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) are making sure these look backs will allow the bill to respond to changes and keep current.

To me this is crucial because there are still some folks out there who think that we should wait and pass a climate bill under a different administration with a more sympathetic congress. Then there are realists like John Kerry that have been around before when you thought a friendlier administration – like your own administration – was almost in hand only to see it slip through your fingers.

The time for climate change legislation is now. Waiting for a friendlier congress could leave us kicking ourselves for thinking we would ever have a friendlier congress than this one. A friendlier administration? Did you know there are candidates who don’t even believe in climate change?

In the immortal words of Boston:

Dont look back

A new day is breakin'

Its been too long since I felt this way

I dont mind where I get taken

The road is callin'

Today is the day

Does This Water Bottle Make Me Look Fat?

2007-09-11T23:59:05Z

I’m on a diet. I’ve been on a diet or breaking my diet pretty much since I was in third grade. I currently own black and navy blue suits in sizes 6, 8, 10 and 12. I’ve probably given a dozen very nice size 12 suits to Goodwill in my life, so certain I would never be a 12 again. With the 6’s, I never give up.

So this news piqued my interest: researchers from several leading universities now believe that even tiny exposures to common chemicals might pre-program children to be obesity-prone from birth. The article is from the San Diego Union-Tribune.

The culprits? Tobacco (my mom smoked Marlboro Reds) and a little something called bisphenol A – a chemical that NRDC’s hotshot scientist Jennifer Sass has been working on. The Union-Tribune article includes this quote from Frederick vom Saal, a biology professor at the University of Missouri:

"You set up a metabolism that is entirely different from what it would have if it were not exposed." The result: Exposed mice are normal-weight at birth, but grow fat with age.

Working with Dr. Sass – ok, Jen – to get the word out about her bisphenol A work, I’ve been pretty horrified to see what this stuff can do to you, and how many places it’s lurking. It’s in plastic food and drink packaging, baby bottles and in resins that are used to coat food cans, bottle tops, and water supply pipes. So if you eat or drink anything – you’re ingesting it.

The National Institutes of Health are trying to figure out how bad bisphenol A is, and what to do about this. So they’re listening to these smart scientists, right? Wrong. They’re listening to the chemical industry of course! Who better to tell you that the chemicals in your Tupperware and your Nalgene bottle are safe?

Eat right and exercise, I know. I am. But what if my -- and America's -- losing battle with our waistlines (thighs, upper arms) is getting harder and harder based on a chemical we eat and drink out of every day?

Global Warming... Will Eat You for Lunch?

2007-08-16T22:05:53Z

This just in from the good folks at Science Daily: Flesh-eating Disease Is On The Rise Due To Global Warming, Experts Warn. (Gross photograph not for the weak of stomach.)

Wow — that would really be the cherry on the top my summer.

Seems like all the other good things that we get a break from when it's cold -- poison ivy, disease-spreading mosquitoes, invasive weeds -- flesh-eating bacteria loves that global warming. Really kind of eats a hole in the whole "adaptation" argument. Sure you can turn up the A/C all you want, but once those limbs are eaten off, it's a little hard to get up and turn the thermostat down.

Riddle Me This: Ode to the Model T

2007-07-25T00:20:41Z

What technology is less efficient today than it was 100 years ago? The automobile in America. The 1908 Ford Model T got 25 miles per gallon. What's the average miles-per-gallon for cars in America today? About 21.

Think of the advancements in other technologies in just the last 20 years. Personal computers. Cell phones. The internet. HD-TV. GPS.

My car has heated seats, a radio that displays the name of the song that's playing, a special lighted signal to tell me when the windshield-wiper fluid is running low. But it can't go as far on a gallon of gas as a model T.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, there is no faster, cheaper, better way to break our addiction to oil that to have cars that go a lot farther on a gallon of gas.

The technology exists right now to make almost all cars get 35 miles per gallon or a lot higher. It's expensive you say? Not when you think about the money you will save in just a couple of years on gas. Not when you account for the cost of staying friends with the oil-rich countries that would just as soon see us dead than sell us oil. Not when you consider the cost of relocating our population inward as the seas rise due to the melting ice of global warming.

The Senate passed the fuel economystandard that would make new cars (and light trucks, meaning SUVs) in America get an average 35mph in a little over 10 years. Now, Congress is at bat. At this moment, we predict the House will vote on its energy bill as soon as one week from today – that's Tuesday, July 31. Right now, there is no fuel economy standard in the House energy bill. But there is still time to get it in there. That's the goal of the NRDC Action Fund this week. Check it out.

Tysons Corner, USA

2007-07-19T07:09:24Z

On June 1st my husband was riding his bike home from work when he was hit by a car. Of course he was. He works in a place called Tysons Corner, Virginia.

He's going to be fine, though he's still pretty banged up and his mouth is crocked from the way they sewed him back up. But he could have been killed, so I'm not complaining about the crocked mouth thing too much.

Even if you've never been to Tysons Corner, you know exactly what it's like, because if you live in the United State of America, you likely have a Tysons Corner of your very own. Two major and two minor highways meet there, so in about 1980, someone decided to build a mall there. Then a movie theater. Then an office building. Then more office buildings. Then another mall. Then fill in the parts in-between with strip malls. Then more office buildings and a couple of hotels.

What didn't they build in Tysons Corner? Sidewalks. Bike paths. Public transportation. So if you want to get to Tysons Corner, you drive. And if you want to get from, say, Tysons Corner Center, which has dozens of shops, four department stores, and a 16-screen movie theater, to Tysons Galleria, which has 120 stores and six restaurants, then you have exactly one way to cross the road that runs in-between them. You drive your car. It was biking across this road that my husband was hit.

The Major Corporation for which my husband works was very proud when it built its headquarters in Tysons Corner about six years ago. Back then, we lived in Boston and when he traveled to the headquarters everyone said to him "Isn't this great! We have a Starbucks in the building!"

What cracks me up is that the Major Corporation paid an architect a zillion dollars to design this really nice-looking building, but when you drive up to it guess what you see? A massive, poured-cement parking garage.

And, as you know from visiting your town's own version of Tysons Corner, the traffic is outrageous. In the evening it takes my husband one hour to drive the 13 miles home to DC from Tysons Corner. Most of that time is just getting out of Tysons Corner. By biking he was saving time.

But not anymore, because a) his bike is in a million pieces, b) he's scared, and c) bikes really have no business being in Tysons Corner. Neither do pedestrians.

When people at Major Corporation ask why we live in DC, my husband says "so my wife can take the Metro to work and we can walk to shops and restaurants." People look at him like he's mentally ill. They point out that if he lived near Tysons Corner he could have a bigger house. But not a shorter commute – because people who live mere miles from Tysons Corner also have an hour commute because they are in absolute gridlock the entire way home.

Here's the disconnect for me. People say they like communities. They say they like biking and walking. They say they hate traffic and concrete. They say they want to save money on gas. So why are we getting more and more, bigger and bigger Tysons Corners? How on earth can we move America beyond oil if we need to work or shop in a place that's only accessible by car?

And here, gentle readers, is the punch line. A mere 25 years since building the first mall at Tysons Corner, a train is now planned to bring commuters there and on to Dulles Airport. But, after much pleading to do otherwise, local authorities have decided to build the train ABOVE ground, rather than putting it in a much-recommended tunnel under the malls and office buildings. So, while most trains are heralded for getting people out of their cars – this train will in fact make the traffic at Tysons Corner WORSE.

Hmmm, maybe that means no cars will be going fast enough to make a dent in my husband.

Nature Bites Back

2007-07-10T03:42:47Z

My husband stepped on a bee and now he's icing his foot. I could not get up to help him, as I am bandaged and resigned to bed having just had a massive poisonous spider bite cut out of my thigh by the heroic overnight staff at the Martha's Vineyard Hospital.

Ah Nature. I work all year to protect it. Why has it turned against me on vacation this year? No sooner had we left Washington than we were assaulted by everything from rain, pollen, fog, sunburn, poison ivy, and — addition to the aforementioned insects — ticks, mosquitoes, and a disappointing lack of fireflies.

I am an urbanist, meaning — to me — that I live in the city where people should dwell so that during the week I can enjoy a 10-minute subway commute, lively community, and an energy-efficient, low-impact existence. Sure trees were cut down to build my neighborhood, but that was 100 years ago.

Then, for weekends and vacations, we head out into Nature, the kind without McMansions or 7-Elevens or even jet skis. We swim where there's no chlorine, walk where there's no pavement, cook where there's no roof. Through this, I remember many of the reasons why working to protect the environment is endlessly worthwhile despite the occasional frustrations of, say, the Bush administration denying that heat-trapping greenhouse gasses are pollution. During these sorties into Nature, I also hope to instill in my children this love of the outdoors that trumps their admiration for TV and dump trucks. Usually, it's blissful.

We came for our bite of nature. This summer, nature bit back.

Now I am hard at work at coming to terms with this. That, in its essence, our attempts to make a world in which no one gets bitten by a poisonous spider, steps on a bee, gets sunburn or poison ivy, or even gets wet in a rainstorm, are a big part of what got us in this heap of trouble we're in with Nature.

So here's where I'm at. In my little world of a small townhouse in Washington, DC I will expect to stay adequately warm, dry, cool, shaded, clean, and — after inspecting all my screens once I can finally travel home — insect free. I will expect the same in my office at NRDC. However — despite the searing pain in my leg and all the other ailments Nature has inflicted on my family members, I will not expect the same in Nature. I am here to be in the Outdoors on its own terms. I am not interested in some Nature-lite where a dozen cans of herbicide and pesticide later I can sit on a plastic chair on some mutant-bred imported species of carpet-like lawn-grass. One of the reasons I value Nature is that it must be on its own terms — otherwise, it's not Nature anymore. Any attempts to control it ruin it for me. However, keep in mind, as I write this, I am on a high dose of painkillers.

How can you be clear when you’re basically schizophrenic?

2007-06-22T23:27:47Z

The Senate Energy Bill passed without the provisions that would have made biofuels cleaner while also making sure growing crops to make them doesn't mean bulldozing Redwoods to grow corn. That stinks.

The excuse/reason is that Senate leadership wanted a vote lickedy split so that they could pass the bill before some numbskull could offer an amendment to ruin the fabulous, historic, bold, courageous vote on CAFE standards (see every previous post). So they voted, and the Senate Energy Bill passed.

Now, we turn our attention to the House, where if we play our cards not only right but hard and relentlessly we could get the good stuff -- the global warming and land and water protections we desperately need -- into the House version That's one of the things that's agonizing about this work. What we really want to be doing today is jumping up and down and hugging and drinking over the CAFE win. Is it HUGE. But instead we're wringing our hands about how the bill lacks other things that are very important to us.

Many people -- including the grumpy but excellent Wall Street Journal energy reporter John Fialka -- say that the problem with us environmentalists is that we "make the perfect the enemy of the good." Not only that, but it seems that wins and losses happen to us simultaneously, so that we're forced to be thrilled about one thing at the same moment that we'e bitterly disappointed about something else. We want to have a clear message. But how can you be clear when you're basically schizophrenic?

It's in there!

2007-06-22T05:10:49Z

Well hogtie me to a Chevy and take me to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame – I never would have guessed that champagne corks would be popping on Capitol Hill tonight. Yes, CAFE – the provision to get better cars and trucks that go farther on a gallon of gas – IS in the Senate Energy Bill. Now, let's see what happens in the vote on the entire bill. It's my job to be cautiously optimistic . . . more to come.