There were some fascinating little asides, too, that weren’t the usual obvious or trivial tips. One referred to research about the environmental effects of divorce, and another explained that human hair is the very best material for cleaning up oil spills–in a completely ecological process, or cycle. The hair is made into mats that mop up the oil, and the oil-soaked mats can in turn be composted. Salons are asked to donate hair to the program. I’ve already written the two salons I use to suggest this, and I hope you’ll do the same.

And here’s a PDF of the research about divorce.

We spent a wonderful afternoon while we were there at the Living History Farms, walking through the woodland grove where an Indian encampment, and gardens, had been created, then on to an 1850 farmstead. The third farm was from 1900, with a house that reminded me of my grandparents’ rural Iowa home. The final display was of modern agriculture, with lots of tractors and the other equipment so beloved of boys and, presumably, other visitors. It was harvest time, and we were happily, curiously examining a long bed planted with different types of soybean, and then different types of corn.

Corn is a curious plant: it depends on humans, who take its seeds out of the heavy husks, in order to reproduce. There were tall, lanky plants of the ancient grass ancestor of our modern corn, and then various other types of corn. The final one, looking not much different from its neighbor, was labeled “BT corn.” Biotech, that is, genetically modified corn. I was stunned to see it growing there, next to ordinary hybrid corn, because I thought Bt corn was always carefully separated. Insects can pollinate corn plants as far as 100 feet (31 meters) away, so the corn beside it was necessarily non-Bt anymore.

I’m not hysterically anti-GM, but I do believe strongly in the rights of consumer to know what they are eating. This experience didn’t leave me feeling quite so confident about the separation of GMO and non-GMO (yet another way of saying this). See for yourself, in this photo: biotech corn growing at Living History Farms in Des Moines, Iowa.

The author says his son asks him why it used to be more fun being a kid, and his stories of playing outside–which children in western and urbanized cultures do not do any more–resonate with me. My husband and I both grew up in suburbs, but we spent much of our childhoods outside, playing with other children.

Instead, our children have playdates and Nintendo, and they suffer from obesity, ADHD, and depression. Take a look at this book, and see if perhaps you can effect, somewhere, a nature-child reunion. Or even a nature-adult reunion. We need the chill of summer dawns and the crunchy brightness of autumn leaves, too, just as much as our children.

One of the most important demands of this law is that Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) be produced. As Rachel points out, creating these big reports is a lot of work. (Students are very much aware of the work involved writing reports, but I’m sure she doesn’t realize the extraordinary resources that go into writing government reports.) Just calling for an EIS can slow down or derail projects that would damage the environment.

Naturally, today’s US government considers NEPA too restrictive, tough on business. I was fascinated to learn that any citizen can contact the government and ask for a copy of an EIS. Rachel was even given the choice of hard copy or CD/ROM. I think it’s great to have students make personal contact with a person in Washington DC, so they realize that the government consists of real people sitting at desks, answering the phone, doing their jobs.

I’ve also discovered that the websites that go with textbooks have some interesting features. Some of the links and resources are pretty weak–you could do much better on Google–but there are some good case studies and high-tech mapping tools. I was startled to read that the snow goose, as well as the Canadian goose, is increasing rapidly. The snow goose has “a devastating effect on the fragile tundra ecosystem in the far north where they breed and raise their young.”

For a free home environmental studies lesson, take a look at the Environmental Science site from McGraw-Hill.

For some commentary, try these links:
Mark Hertsgaard
Living On Earth
And the authors’ own website, at the Breakthrough Institute. But don’t think the blog is a blog; it’s just a collection of articles about the report (come on, guys, keep up the debate!).

What they carefully ignore, and Greens don’t do enough to publicize, is that there is a third way, a kind of biotechnology that combines the ingenuity humans have always shown in agriculture with techniques possible in today’s labs. If I were one of the scientists coming up with these brilliant ideas I know I’d be choking with frustration on my open-pollinated carrot.

The aim of this open-source biotechnology, being developed in universities around the world, is to improve crops just as humans have for millennia – a process that is safe and sensible, and highly effective. Instead of injecting genes from one species into another (daffodils into rice, fish into strawberries), these scientists look for traits in related wild plants or latent genes within a plant itself. Instead of so-called ‘terminator’ seeds – which can’t reproduce so farmers have to buy expensive GM seed every year – the new varieties are open-pollinated.

This is the kind of technology we need, the kind we should support because it gives us a chance at a future that’s fair to the small farmer, a world where the rich won’t live in gated, air-filtered eco-estates while the poor take what they can get in a desecrated world.

What are we going to do about it? I’m in Rome, having flown here in a airplane that made a heavy contribution to greenhouse gases, and a food service operation that takes no account whatsoever of environmental issues. Later today I’m meeting a journalist from an Italian environmental magazine, La Nuova Ecologia. Here’s my thought: there are a lot of us who care, and who see the dangers and are willing to do things differently. How can we unite? We especially need to find new ways to influence governments and companies, as well as our friends and families.

Yesterday my brother flew in from the west coast. It’s unseasonably warm, and he mentioned this to the toll booth clerk. “One of those tsunamis, I guess,” the toll clerk said.

We laugh about public misconception, but those of us concerned about the environment could also dig deeper. I have a lot to learn myself, and hope you won’t mind my sharing some environmental science and history here, along with recipes and tips. An interesting place to start is with the hottest debate of recent years, between a Danish statistician and much of the environmental establishment, as well as leading scientific journals.

Scientific American (for those outside the U.S., I agree with you, that American magazines and organizations speaking to global issues should stop calling themselves The American Scholar. (Not to mention the World Series in baseball!)

This means jumping in at the deep end of the pool, but it’s an interesting place to be, and you’ll get a sense of the complexity of the debate. The argument, by the way, is not, between Bush White House and bioregionalist libertarians, both with fierce fundamentalist agendas, but between highly educated, serious people who are trying to understand the challenges that face us in the 21st century.

Start with this article from Scientific American*, A Response to Lomborg’s Rebuttal.

Then take a look at the site of the Dane who started the discussion with his book The Skeptical Environmentalist: Bjorn Lomborg.