When we talk about addressing global climate change, the talk is often about greening our homes, changing our source of energy, and cleaning up industry.

In my previous post, I briefly discussed the critical issue of food in addressing this problem.

In this post, I am bringing to attention the great relevance of transportation and our transportation patterns and habits in addressing this critical concern for our planet and our future generations.

Automobile travel is a major cause of greenhouse gas emissions according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The Department of Energy reported that the transportation sector accounts for approximately 33% of GHG emissions in the United States. Approximately 61% of these emissions are from automobiles and light duty trucks. The Department of Energy’s findings put the transportation sector as the largest contributor to GHGs in the country. Unfortunately, it is also the fastest growing contributor according to the DOE’s findings.

Efforts to develop more environmentally benign versions of the automobile are in progress, but viable and effective solutions are yet to materialize. A more immediate and probably more effective solution to these problems is to get people to switch from using the automobile to using more environmentally friendly modes of transportation, such as the bicycle. Traveling via bicycle, arguably the most environmentally friendly mode of travel, does not emit any greenhouse gases or any critical air pollutants. The United States Congress and others (Exploratorium; Lowe; Schinnerer; Whitt & Wilson; Wikipedia) consider bicycling to be the most efficient transportation mode. As one source explained it, on one slice of pizza a person could travel 10 miles by bike, 3.5 miles by foot, and 100 feet in an automobile. Nonetheless, transit and other non-motorized forms of travel are great alternatives as well. These all need to be pursued.

We need to bring this issue to the forefront of our discussions about solutions to global climate change and we need to start living the solutions! It is past the time for excuses, it is time for action. It is time for change to the way we live, the patterns of our daily lives and our environments. And if we don’t make the change, our environment is bound to force the change on us.

Let us lead the way.

Let us make that step, make that U-turn on bicycle, or on foot, or even riding on transit!

Let us be leaders and feel good about it.

Global climate change is the issue of concern facing our world today. The general consensus by climate experts is that we need to aim for a global temperature increase of no more than 2 to 3 degrees Celsius by 2050. (Even at this level, very serious environmental changes and catastrophes are predicted to occur.) To achieve this goal, we in the United States need to reduce GHG emissions to 60-80% below the 1990 level by 2050. We need to make changes now, and getting out of the car is one of them!

*For more on the benefits of bicycling, take a look at this post about bicycling in the city and EcoWordly’s whole series on bicycling and read the second article in this newsletter.

Sources:

Exploratorium. (1997). Human Power. Retrieved on February 11, 2007 from: http://www.exploratorium.com/cycling/humanpower1.html

Lowe, M. (1988). Pedaling Into the Future: Bicycles are the transportation alternative that can relieve the congestion and pollution brought on by automobiles. World Watch, 1: 10-16.

Schinnerer, J. (1997). The Most Efficient Engine. Retrieved on February 11, 2007 from: http://www.eco-living.net/writings/transport/effengine.html

U.S. Congress. (1978). National Energy Conservation Policy Act of 1978. PL 95-619. S. 682.

U.S. Department of the Environment(DOE)/Energy Information Administration’s(EIA) Office of Integrated Analysis and Forecasting—0573. (2006). Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States, 2005. United States Department of the Environment.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2006). Transportation and Air Quality. Retrieved on October 28, 2006 from: http://www.epa.gov/otaq/.

Wikipedia. (2007). Bicycle. Retrieved on February 11, 2007 from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle

Whitt, F. and D. Wilson. (1982). Bicycling Science. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

As Albert Einstein said, “Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances of survival for life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.”

The big issue today is global climate change. It is likely to dwarf any environmental issues we faced in the past. As reported by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization:

[T]he livestock sector is a major stressor on many ecosystems and on the planet as a whole. Globally it is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases…. It currently amounts to about 18 percent of the global warming effect — an even larger contribution than the transportation sector worldwide.

This is a critical issue. This is more critical than our power plants, our industries, the energy efficiency of our homes and appliances, or even transportation.

Beyond the greenhouse gas emissions, “meat production” — the raising of animals for humans to prematurely kill and eat and the processing of them after they have been killed — is a great pollutant to our water systems, causes an unsustainable amount of deforestation and soil erosion, is a significant threat to biodiversity, and requires the use of several times more natural resources than vegetables, grains, fruits, and legumes.

The UN FAO states, “(the livestock sector is) one of the leading causal factors in the loss of biodiversity, while in developed and emerging countries it is perhaps the leading source of water pollution.”

At a time when environmental degradation and massive environmental problems have become increasingly obvious and harmful to human health (as well as the health and existence of many other species), meat production per person has nearly doubled. Granted, there are many contributors to the environmental crises we face, but this is one of the largest and, at the same time, one of the most hidden and least discussed.

For more information on the relationship between food and the environment, take a look at the UN FAO report or this webpage on the link between food and the environment.

We are the top of creation, as they say, and as we proceed, so does our planet.

We may proceed in destruction, including taking the lives of nature’s more highly evolved species to “satisfy” our tongue and stomach.

Or we may proceed in more highly evolved care for life.

Our actions come back to us.

It is a more important issue than saving the environment that sustains us, physically, but it is a critical issue in this realm as well and should not be ignored just because it is considered to be more important to the realm of morals and spiritual life.

Life is to be cherished, and not only the life of our own, but the lives of our brother and sister animals and organisms.

Without taking care for the lives of other highly evolved creatures, we threaten our own lives and the lives of our future generations.

This is a great forgotten issue in many environmental discussions and societies.

For more discussion of food issues, check out Eat. Drink. Better. and check out the vegetarian archive in particular.

Source 1, 2 and 3.

Unfortunately for these media outlets, they have only shamed themselves by doing lousy reporting. Here’s what Mike Krumboltz from Yahoo news said:

“The broadcast of such images raises serious questions, not only about the morality of the artists in using dead babies in pursuit of their artistic expression, but of the broadcasters’ responsibility not to infringe their dignity,” ITC said.

Cannibalism can be more than art as has been documented among the Yanomami, Coaque and Anasazi Indians. Beth Conklin, an American anthropologist concluded in 2001 that cannibalism had a human face after spending time with the Wari’ Indians in the Amazon.

But this month, nine passengers who survived for four days after their plane crashed in the freezing southern forests of Chile confessed they considered eating the body of the dead pilot. “We thought about the pilot, I don’t know how to say it … to feed ourselves from him. We thought about this, but some people were not in agreement because the situation was already so extreme,” one survivor told newsmen.

In 1972, a Uruguayan rugby team survived for 72 days in the cold Andes mountains after eating their dead team mates.

Mad cow disease (MCD) was found after British cattle farmers tried to boost the growth rate of cattle by feeding them food supplements composed of the ground up carcasses of cattle and sheep.

If humans eat diseased tissue from cattle, they may develop the human form of mad cow disease known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD). Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in its classic form usually occurs in older people through an inherited tendency of the brain to change or spontaneously for no apparent reason.

The type identified as occurring from eating diseased cattle occurs in younger people and has prominent psychiatric or sensory symptoms at the time of clinical presentation and delayed onset of neurologic abnormalities, including ataxia within weeks or months, dementia (loss of memory and confusion) late in the illness, within a duration of at least 6 months.

In April while commenting on climate change, CNN founder Ted Turner, argued that inaction on global warming could turn catastrophic and wipe out humanity from the face of the earth but those who will survive could be forced to turn into cannibals.

So when South Koreans take to the streets in a candle light vigil to oppose US beef imports that many fear may be tainted with mad cow disease or when a nation rises against a popularity dipped president Lee Myung-bak for agreeing to resume U.S. beef imports without restriction, they may be out for a good cause - all in real fear of mad cow disease. But where it all makes cannibalistic sense, it has all been in the annals of history.

Further reading: Mad Cow Truth

Image Credit: Deanj at Flickr under a Creative Commons license

Citing green hotels, coconut oil fuel for airlines and even recyclable golf tees, executives in one of the world’s largest industries say they are urgently trying to shrink tourism’s oversized environmental footprint.

But with global travel projected to keep soaring, and those very leaders still eager to expand their own ventures, some doubt such efforts can significantly lessen global warming and other ecological woes.

“There are no simple solutions,” Anna Pollack, head of a British tourism consultancy, told a two-day conference which ended Wednesday. “Tourism is both a victim of and a contributor to climate change.”

Online you can read the a lot guides about how to reduce global warming. As you can see travel is only a little part of the main causes of global warming.

Below, I list of useful guides. You can use to reduce global warming.

Global warming refers to the Earth’s air and oceans gradually heating up to a point that disrupts balance, a problem that is continually getting worse. It sounds like a problem too massive for any one individual to take on, but it really isn’t. Combining any few of these suggestions can make more of a dramatic effect than most people understand. The goal is to emit less carbon dioxide into the atmospher

The part of Global warming caused by travel, is especially the ecotourism, practiced in remote destination. It’s so because it requires the use of air travel to land is those countries.

Some times ago an airline company used to travel with biofuel.

IN February, on a chilly, clear Sunday morning, Sir Richard Branson, president of Virgin Atlantic, along with the co-sponsors Boeing and GE Aviation, lured more than 200 journalists to a hangar at Heathrow Airport near London to witness what they said was airline history. Over flutes of Champagne and plates of mini-bagels filled with salmon, everyone’s eyes were fixed on a 747 as it took off on the world’s first biofuel demonstration flight.

Never mind that only one of the plane’s engines used biofuel, and that was about 25 percent mixed with standard kerosene jet fuel. It was still significant, given that air travel is the fastest-growing source of global greenhouse gases, and the race to find an alternative to kerosene is now crucial. The biofuel used — a combination of coconut and babassu (a Brazilian tree) oil, which Mr. Branson pretended to drink that day like an island cocktail from a coconut shell — worked in this very small test. But even its developers, Imperium Renewables, are aware it could never become a substitute for what John Plaza, president and chief executive of Imperium, another sponsor, says is the 87 billion gallons of fuel needed each year to fly the world’s airline fleet.

“This is just a first-generation product,” Mr. Plaza said. “But the test was meaningful in that it showed that a biofuel was viable with the infrastructure in a commercial jet.” Imperium created the fuel from oils harvested from existing plantations, but Mr. Plaza said he believed that algae was the fuel of the future. “You would only need the landmass of West Virginia,” he said, “to make enough fuel to replace aviation’s demand for kerosene.”

So I’m not scared about the future, because change is happened. I think that most airlines will become more green so traveling in foreign countries will be less environmental damaging.

Anyone else find this photo creepy?

Something about the sunglasses, I guess. Or the export of American culture.

The photo depicts clowns who were on hand to celebrate the opening of a McDonald’s in Beijing, and it was part of a New York Times article about the company’s record profits in February. McDonald’s profits jumped 11.7 percent internationally, fueled in part by Leap Year sales but also the weak U.S. dollar. You can get more Mac for your Yuan these days.

I’d like to use that story to play the Six Degrees of Separation game. But instead of people, in this instance, I’d like to look at the short distance between food news. We know McDonald’s is doing well – that’s one data point. Let’s put another marker by the story that University of Washington researchers determined that calorie for calorie, junk food is way cheaper than good-for-you food. According to the researchers, who compared foods in major grocery stores in the Seattle area, you pay $1.76 per 1,000 calories for sugary, fatty foods that have the most calories, but you pay $18.16 per 1,000 calories for the lowest-calorie foods (which are most often better for you, such as fruits and vegetables).

Now, here’s our third degree: increasing food costs overall. We’ve endured a 4.2 increase for meats, fish, veggies, fruit, dairy and eggs in 2007, and there’s a predicted jump of 3.5 to 4.5 percent in food costs for this year. May not sound like much to you as an individual, but when you add in higher fuel costs for gasoline and heating your home, you’re bound to notice it.

And finally, there isn’t enough grain to go around. We’re looking at a worldwide grain shortage brought about in part by more people on the planet, corn-hungry biofuels such as ethanol, and fewer acres to grow food successfully. Or, you can think of it the way Daniel W. Basse of the AgResource put it in this comprehensive look at grain shortages: “Everyone wants to eat like an American on this globe,” Basse said. “But if they do, we’re going to need another two or three globes to grow it all.”

When I look at the big, big picture, taking all this news and more into account, I’m scared by what I see coming together. A faltering U.S. economy. More people are cash-strapped and rely on unhealthy, calorie-dense foods. Those unhealthy foods gobble up lots of resources (transportation, grain for animal meats, land and plastics for packaging, among them). Global warming may restrict those resources even further. At the same time, prices for all foods are going up, driven in part by scarcity of supply. Already, some nations have to safeguard grain supplies that are distributed to keep people from rioting.

There’s no easy way to answer such a complex economic web of problems. But I think that if anything would bring about change to the American, Western diet that the world seems to embrace more and more often, it’s going to be the force wielded by economics. If there isn’t enough money to buy meat, or bread or milk, at some point we will be forced to go without it. I wonder how that will affect that jump in profit at McDonalds?*

*And I’m not picking on McD’s as the evil empire, but they are a mom and apple pie export of American living, as well as an enormous corporate success. About 47 million people each day eat at the 31,000 McDonald’s locations worldwide. That’s roughly the entire populations of Greece, Australia and the Netherlands combined.

Image credit: Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

But hold on. You’re the type who wants to help make the world a better place. Frappuccinos, Guinness, and burritos are not the be all and end all of cultural exchange. Then you’ll be happy to know that environmental values are making their way into Korea as well.

Many Koreans are taking note of the global environmental movement, which is already in full swing in much of the world, with increasing interest.

Children in South Korea are exposed to both their parent’s traditional environmental values and the environmental values of their foreign teachers in their English academies. They’re therefore a good barometer for the evolving environmental consciousness in South Korea. In one informal survey that I conducted with all 44 of my Korean students, I found that 77% of them said they were “very interested in the environment.”

Students who study for the TOEFL (the Test Of English as a Foreign Language) have an additional influence when it comes to matters of the environment: the TOEFL test materials themselves. Today’s TOEFL test prep books concentrate heavily on readings about such environmentally germane topics as species extinction and renewable energy.

Through school and media influences, interest in the environment is strong enough here to sway even the greatest of forces in Korean culture, the Korean mother. A New York Times article about Eco-Moms, which recently circulated around the Korean media, has only added to the interest in parenting with environmental values.

Still, for all of the growing numbers of foreigners and increasingly international dialogue on the environment, in much of South Korea the environmental movement remains distinctly Korean. The chamsari, or well-being, movement is a uniquely Korean green movement. It’s centered on healthy eating, exercising, and avoiding unhealthy activities.

Cultural colonialism or a healthy exchange of ideas?

In some ways, I can’t get over the feeling that I’m a neo-colonialist. My job as an English teacher is to spread the dominant language and culture. In my classroom, I’m a linguistic bouncer, kicking out Korean wherever it crops up and stamping everyone with new English terms. Many of my students have even chosen English names, like the little tyke in the picture above.

Linguists would say that I’m replacing the substrate language and culture with the superstrate language and culture. If these terms sound familiar, you’re either a linguist or you’ve lived in San Francisco, like me. Sure, we have a straight culture… a super straight culture.

But for whatever negatives there are in spreading the most dominant language around the world, being an English teacher also allows for some very positive cultural exchanges. Sometimes, I’m able to help my students take pride in their country’s great strides toward renewable energy, personal health, and recycling. More often than not, I’m the one who’s learning.

When the middle school English books talk about organic foods, I can ask, “Did you know that organics are a rapidly growing industry in North America?” When the TOEFL prep books give a reading on wind energy, I can point to Gangneung’s wind energy farm, which is on the mountains right above the city. And with my small kids, we all enjoy seeing YouTube footage of whales and other amazing animals before class starts.

Outside of the classroom, I’m the one on the receiving end of cultural lessons. Here in rural Korea, westerners make up about 0.02% of the population by my calculations. When you’re one in 5,000, you tend to draw attention. When I go into a restaurant by myself for lunch–already a faux pas in Korea’s group-centered culture–the word wegugin, or foreigner, excites people’s tongues and hangs in the air, strung up by sideways stares like squid drying in the sun. I feel like the squid. The other diners casually throw out guesses amongst themselves as to where I’m probably from, or they swap stories about previous encounters with foreigners. Cultural lesson number one: Confucius says, “value community.”

Photo: Flickr

Seoul is a very old city but you would hardly guess that today; the city is as modern as they come. During the Korean War in the 1950s, large parts of the city were destroyed. Many cultural treasures in both north and south Korea were leveled. Many symbols of Korea were targeted to destroy troop morale.

The city gates were symbols of power and prestige, and as such they were brightly painted and ornately decorated. Their huge stone foundations gave you a sense of stability and might while their towers were decorated with layers of identically-carved and painted fingers of wood. Looking up you felt as though you were gazing into a deeply symbolic sky: the curving wood seemed like the clouds and the dark, vaulted roof like the crown of heaven. At least, that’s how I felt. How disconcerting it must have been to walk under the shadowed gaze of guards in that tower!

I can’t pretend to understand the full significance of the flowers painted in repeating patterns, the greens, reds and yellows used, or the aging animal figures that guarded it.  I don’t know why they used so much repetition, except that the sheer number of identical decors overwhelmed the eye. But it was obvious that the gate was old and important in its day, and it was honored in its downtown Seoul location. Namdaemun (which means “Southern Gate” and implies something big) was the last great undamaged symbol of Seoul and the last Korean dynasty. It also marked the entrance to a famous market where you could go for the best prices in town.

So why wax sentimental in an environmental  blog? Because symbols like Namdaemun litter the world. And by “litter” I mean mark, express, and mirror the cultures and environments that build them. I do not adhere to the dichomatic separation between “nature” and “culture”. Those who say that mankind is destructive to nature forget that nature is also destructive to mankind, and that both are also productive for each other and trapped in infinitely complex systems that intertwine and reinforce each other. Global warming is perhaps the most pungent proof of that fact. We can no more “escape” to or from “nature” than nature can escape or rush towards us. Even the most developed, urban, concrete landscape hosts lichens, plants and critters which seek equilibrium in new niche environments. Even the most remote wilderness has felt the distant touch of mankind. We are linked like siamese twins.

When people in any part of the world build great structures or landmarks, they are limited and shaped by the environment in which they live, and as in Namdaemun, they also draw reason and symbolism out of the natural world. In the west we would never think to paint pretty flowers all over a military installation, but Namdaemun was in bloom for 600 years. In many ways our monuments are as much mirrors of our concepts of the natural world as they are memories of a time, place, or intention. The Egyptian Pyramids are an excellent example; the precision measurements to accurately track the stars is still remarkable today. So when a symbol is destroyed, we lose also an insight into our culture and ourselves. It may not be a tragedy for the environment, but it’s certainly a tragedy for our cultures and civilization as a whole.

When we protect the environment we also protect our heritage. Many monuments around the globe are threatened or even crumbling from the damaging effects of pollution. Perhaps it is the nature of time for all things to eventually crumble and fall, but I don’t see any reason to speed up the process if we don’t need to.

Coal is as riddled through this living tradition as the seams in the hills. The region is rich in the history and dirges surrounding the mines. The winding county roads that lead into the mines are lined with the physical community: the brick homes of skilled labor, double-wide trailers, and a few burnt down shacks. They live on a narrow strip of land between mountain sides and muddied creeks, or perhaps “in town”, the next valley over. Until recently these were forgotten, unpaved roads. No longer: civilization has encroached.

Walmart and McDonalds have arrived with a fresh four-lane road that leads to I-75. The new business promised a new way of life, namely the life that the rest of the world was supposedly living while miners labored underground. But the new jobs pay less than the mine work, and civilization added demons to the community instead of exorcising them. Ten years ago the burnt-out shacks along the road were over-achieving liquor stills. Now they’re meth labs. The world betrayed their trust upon arrival. Is it any wonder then that these mountain towns are hot spots for drug abuse and snake handling? How would you react if you were trapped between the steady stone of the mines and unsafe waters of the outside world? Who would you trust?

I asked my father about employment in the mines. Could a high-school drop out rise through the ranks to skilled labor? “Sure,” he replied, “We’d start a kid out driving trucks. If he could be trusted we’d move him up to operating machinery or something. Problem is now days, I can’t get any good kids on staff. Eighty percent fail the drug test.”

Coal is a complicated issue, and not all of it is environmental. We must always remember that the environment and society move hand-in-hand. If we want to reduce the role of coal in this country, we need to offer these mountain communities a viable alternative. A huge 4-wheeler park recently opened near the mines. The remote wilderness has attracted outdoor enthusiasts from across the east coast. The unspoiled forest with its wild turkey, deer, bear, and elk have already raked in over a million dollars for the local community. Alternatives exist, and if the people can see the path clearly, they will leave their narrow road to forge a new one - but only on their own terms.

In fact, in many ways, there is more reason for optimism for the fate of our species and the planet now than at any point in the last several centuries. These are the views found in Dr. Seymour Garte’s new book, Where We Stand, a surprising look at the real state of our planet.

The book is a response to a real dilemma in the environmentalist community: pessimism and the apathy spawned from a sense that the challenges we’re facing are insurmountable. We seem to move from crises to crises (acid rain to ozone thinning to climate change to species extinction) with a mounting sense of panic and despair. But hasn’t the environmental movement accomplished anything since its birth? Isn’t anything getting better?

This book answers both questions with an emphatic “yes!” Dr. Garte makes a persuading case for optimism about the state of the environment and the quality of human health worldwide. The book finds compelling good news on the subjects of hunger, disease, toxins, biodiversity, population growth, and other issues of environmental ecology and human welfare. We should all celebrate the successful reduction of ozone thinning agents, the hard-fought protection of many endangered species, the elimination of lead from gasoline and paint, and the sanity that prevented nuclear warfare and a nuclear winter in the ‘60s and ‘80s.

Despite all the good news that Dr. Garte offers, he urges that the purpose of the book is not to lull readers into a sense of complacency or to give a false sense that environmental issues are will solve themselves. We’re reminded of ongoing threats to environmental and public health at the end of each chapter in a section simply titled, “The Bad News.” Perhaps one take-home message is that we can solve (and have solved) some very daunting man-made environmental issues, but solutions don’t just happen over night; they are the result of hard work from many different people and industries.

Environmental crises require attention and action from a number of different sectors of society, says Garte. Firstly, the scientific community more fully explains the causes of environmental issues and suggests possible courses of action to remedy the problem. Next, environmentalists and non-profits make the issues known to the public, push lawmakers to pass appropriate legislation. Then lawmakers, who have the power to pass regulations to protect the public from an unhealthy environment, pass legislation to do so. Business responds by developing the technologies to make environmental sustainability goals possible. Finally, it’s back the to environmentalists to try to keep everyone honest and the scientists to double check and continue their work.

Dr. Garte offers a refreshingly rational and level-headed approach to dealing with environmental crises. He peppers the work with personal anecdotes that illustrate practical and impractical responses to environmental issues. He argues, for example, that a complete “back to nature” approach that involves an abandonment of modern technologies is neither practical nor particularly useful. Clearing forests with stone axes and fire is no more benign than culling them with modern lumber machines. With these examples, the author makes the argument for the importance of an objective understanding of our impact on the planet and regulations that control this impact.

Some of the most captivating portions of the book are those that give in-depth analysis of specific environmental issues. For instance, Chapter 9 explores the histories of three hazardous substances that have been successfully reduced in the environment: lead, CFCs, and tobacco smoke. These were effective little vignettes that read like short stories with happy endings. After 8 chapters covering topics ranging anywhere from the AIDS epidemic to deforestation, it was a welcome change of pace to pause and focus on a few topics in this fashion.

But if there’s something for everyone to like in Dr. Garte’s book, there are also details with which various parties are sure to disagree. For instance, notion that the health of a nation can be gauged by the amount of meat it consumes per capita may raise more than a few eyebrows in the vegetarian community. There are several other small but poignant assertions that may start heads shaking. These include the claims that ground water has been mostly undrinkable for the majority of human history and that wild foods are inferior to foods from domesticated plant species.

Critics may also point to possible oversimplifications in favor of the positive. In a very brief discussion of surface water, the author sites a twofold increase in the number of lakes, ponds, and reservoirs in the U.S. as a positive development without giving much of an explanation why. “Because water is always precious to living things” doesn’t do justice to the author’s ability elsewhere to provide clear and convincing reasoning.

It must have been difficult for the author to shepherd his argument through the vast and complex fields of the environment and human health. The book offers a window on a plethora of environmental issues and their resolutions. Therefore, readers with a stronger interest in one field than another may wish to use the book as a reference tool for ways in which matters regarding that field have improved. For instance, readers interested in air quality may be fascinated to learn the severity of air quality issues in the 1950s and a brief history of the ensuing air quality acts in Europe and North America. Other readers may choose to skim or skip over these sections in preference for a discussion on how infectious diseases have been reduced.

With these criticisms in mind, Dr. Garte deserves praise for delivering a book from the perspective of an environmentalist, which offers hope for the future. It’s easy to get lost in a sense of despair or even what the author describes as “grim satisfaction” at the conclusion that there’s nothing we can do now to save the planet. With unhealthy and certainly unhelpful attitudes such as these circulating, Dr. Garte’s book acts like a sort of booster shot of optimism. It’s a celebration of how far we’ve come and a reminder of what’s possible.

King Corn focuses on co-producers Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis as they move to Iowa, rent an plot of farmland, and attempt to grow an acre of corn using typical industrial methods: genetically modified seeds, nitrogen fertilizers, powerful herbicides, and government subsidies. They show us exactly how industrial corn production works today, from seed to table, in the convoluted journey of a commodity. From Ian and Curt's one acre, they harvest enough corn to make 57,348 sodas, 3,894 burgers, or 6,726 boxes of cornflakes. And yes, corn is a major ingredient in all of those foods.

If our goal is to encourage environmental protection legislation, it is our responsibility (indeed, our exciting privilege) to educate ourselves on the environmental impact of local and state propositions and vote accordingly. If our goal is to support elected officials who serve our interests as citizens (such as clean air and water), we have to make our interests known and hold officials accountable with our power to vote them in or out of office. Voting is possibly the single most important way to ensure strong civil liberties, government accountability, and policies that protect the health of the environment in which we live.

For one source of information on the environmental policies and view of the 2008 presidential candidates, take a look at Mike Garofalo’s blog on GO, which addresses each candidate one by one. The League of Conservation Voters also offers a quick reference database of the candidates for president, graded by their response to a series of questions on the environment.

Most of us never question our decision to buy and drive cars because we identify cars with our culture. “Driving is what people do.” That’s been the unspoken motto of the last handful of generations and it’s the lesson we’re teaching our children. Handing over the keys to the car is our society’s rite of passage. We send our youth out onto roadways with thousands of other vehicles, each thundering around at up to 80 mile/hr (130 km/hr) and weighing as much as 40 tons (36,000 kg). Unlike most other dangerous rights of passage around the world, ours is visited upon children of both sexes. Those who make it home at the end of each day face the challenge of paying to own their vehicle — a life-long financial burden that averages between $250,000 and $360,000 per person, according to Motor Trend magazine.

Last night, I got behind the wheel of a car for the first time in a long time. I’ve never owned a car, and being in one usually makes me feel about as secure and comfortable as a vegan in a steak house — but not last night. There was the rush of independence in the autumn evening and a flood of old driving memories: going over the Golden Gate bridge, sneaking out at night from my parent’s house to court an old girlfriend, rolling through the countryside in a Mustang convertible, and making late night drives to the city with friends. I felt connected to a culture that I’ve tried so hard to eschew: the gas-guzzling, oil-pumping culture that stretches far and wide across freeway-laced landscapes.

After a long absence, I was again in touch with this culture — the auto-loving tribe of the developed world. I felt an affinity for all of these people in cars. They were people just like me: riding in their metal boxes, clogging freeways and roadways with red tail lights, like blood in the veins of some gigantic algal life form strapped to the land.

I feel good in the driver’s seat, and then I take a wrong turn. That damn truck won’t let me back into the lane. Somewhere inside me, the red arrow on my stress gauge crawls up a notch. I pull into a parking lot so that I could turn around, still thinking more or less benevolent thoughts. But now who does this guy in front of me think he is? Could he walk any slower? I’m in a stick shift, so to go any slower I’d have to come to a complete stop and switch into first gear. Finally, I have enough room to drive by, but I no longer feel goodwill toward all men and women.

I pull out into the road again, my left blinker flitting nervously across four lanes of traffic in the night. In the time it takes to cross the lanes, a bicyclist has pedaled his way up the hill and is waiting at the stop light in the right lane. He looks like a nice man: middle-aged with reflective gear galore, bicycle bags or “panniers,” and a helmet with a small blinking red light. I feel a sense of camaraderie with him. This is my culture; these are my people. Why is that car behind him crowding him like that? Doesn’t that driver know that bicyclists have all the rights of the road that drivers do and that they operate like any other vehicle on the road? My blood pressure skips another small step higher.

When the panoptic red light changes moods and casts an authoritative green glow, I part ways with the bicyclist and make another left turn past an audience of cars and headlights. Quick, better get in the right hand lane. I crane my head over my shoulder, gazing backwards as my vehicle charges forward. Now I have to slow down right away; it’s a sharp turn into the parking lot. I hope no one gets irritated with me that they have to slow down and wait for me to turn. Oh well, screw them if they do, I decide. I arrive at the supermarket, which is air-conditioned even at night, and grab my groceries.

Late night shoppers trickle through check-out lines, and back out into the comfort of their personal pieces of steel. I do, too. I pull out of the parking spot and turn my tires toward home. But now I’m in a right turn only lane and I want to turn left. Damn. If I were on foot, I wouldn’t have to obey these strictures that limit the directions we can travel.

In order to turn left, I pull out to the right and then take a left into a gas station to get turned around. A brief glance down at my gas gauge tells me the car needs fuel. Better buy some gas while I’m here. I pull up to aisle 5. The sweet, noxious smell of gas stations fills my nostrils. And now I’m that guy at the pump, directing the thick rubber hose to the open gas tank, filling my vehicle with foreign, environmentally destructive oil. Did I feel like a bad person, knowing that the slick, expensive liquid that flowed unseen into the car’s bowels was about to be released as air pollution into the atmosphere when I turned the key? No, not really. I was just another guy at the gas station pump. But I also wished there was another way.

Back when autos were nothing more than extravagant play toys for the super rich, Henry Ford developed a way to mass-produce them with cheap, streamlined labor. Cars caught on big, and in less than fifty years, they had become entwined in our popular ideologies. In just a scant few generations, marketers and auto companies have made us believe that we need cars by confusing them with our notions of happiness, success, attractiveness, family, prosperity, and even our sense self-identification. People everywhere feel connected to their cars, thanks to successful advertising. More importantly, they feel that driving a car is what they should do in their culture. That’s the really interesting thing. That’s why it’s so hard to get people to change their habits when it comes to transportation.

Great. Thanks, automakers. Thanks for the tax burden of building and maintaining millions of square miles of roadways, bridges, and parking lots. Thanks for increased exposure to air pollution, which causes asthma and other lung and heart conditions. Thanks for making it impossible to walk from point A to point B if there’s a freeway cutting through the middle. Thanks for the sedentary, high-stress lifestyle. Thanks for the climate-changing gases, the fact that oil is an incentive for war, and for the 45,000 Americans and the 955,000 other people worldwide killed yearly in car crashes. Thanks a lot for creating roadways through nature’s gems, such as Seattle’s Washington Park, which would rival Monet’s gardens if it weren’t for I-520. Yeah, thanks a lot. Mission accomplished.

For the sake of our vehicles, we tear through towns, forests, and plains to build super-structures of steel and cement where our autos can range. We overthrow foreign countries and topple governments in a frenetic bid to fill our engines for as little pocket money as possible. The entire Earth’s weather patterns are pushing new, less habitable extremes because of the gas belched out of the tailpipes of our personal transportation vehicles. Despite all this, as well as hundreds of thousands of road deaths a year, getting rid of our cars and trucks and shutting down the auto manufacturing industry is unthinkable.

These days, taking the bus, riding a bike, or even walking can make a person feel marginalized in small towns where every form of transportation has lost its place to single person motor vehicles. We see this message repeated in popular media as well: the socially awkward 40-Year Old Virgin on his bicycle is pitted against a sexy alpha male like James Bond, operating fast internal combustion engines on four wheels. And they’re not even driving cars with decent gas mileage. What’s so sexy about paying more for gas?

You can offer all the good evidence you want to show people that by not owning a car, they will be healthier, richer, more productive, and easier on the environment that we all share. Still, you’ll be talking to a wall as long as we have the common notion that driving is culturally what people do. Denounce driving and too often people feel as though you’re denouncing them and their entire culture. There’s a great scene in the film I Heart Huckabees where the father of an ultra-conservative family reviles one of the film’s protagonists as a socialist, a communist and anti-Christian for his stance against using oil and driving cars. The father felt — as many people do — that being against driving was analogous to being against the cultural institutions that he was a part of. It’s a sticky situation.

Our cars force us to sacrifice walkable downtown areas and weaken our sense of community. They cause us to leave our neighborhoods to commute dozens of miles each day to work. They undercut local businesses by giving people an incentive to drive for miles to shopping malls and box stores. They consume our time, our open spaces, and our good will toward others. When the auto and oil industries spend millions of dollars to vote down clean energy legislation, as it did last year in California, we have to ask: are we in control of our cars or does our car culture control us?

We might think it’s faster to drive to the store. But imagine there were no cars — only public transportation, bicycling and walking. Would people really locate food stores 10 miles or more apart? No. There would be more local food markets. I might actually know the person at the register. Instead of being herded through a check-out line and back into a parking lot, I might have the option to talk with my neighborhood grocer before taking the brisk, healthy walk back home. This has been my experience in countries like Italy, and I’ll admit that living with fewer cars and more community is pretty nice.

“Alternative transportation” isn’t going to be popular when it’s still just the alternative to the cultural norm. Still, alternatives to cars have come a long way. Commuter buses are beginning to offer free Wi-Fi; California is planning the release of a bullet train connecting the downtowns of SF and LA in under three hours; car share programs are offering easy, gentler ways to overcome our addiction to owning an auto; and bicycle and pedestrian lanes are taking back spaces they’ve been forced from in cities around the world, from Paris to New York.

A shift away from cars is possible. We could convert auto-manufacturing jobs into employment opportunities building a national public transportation infrastructure. We could support local businesses and reduce sprawl by shopping within walking or biking distance of our homes. We could commute by public transit, thereby saving ourselves the stress of bumper-to-bumper pushing and shoving and allowing us time to get a little more rest in during the ride to work. We could go for walks or bike rides together, making streets safer and communities stronger with an increased pedestrian presence. In how many other ways could our country and world be cleaner, safer, healthier, and more efficient without our dependence on cars?

It just takes enough people to stand up and change their daily habits before it becomes accepted, even commonplace to act outside of the cultural box. In the language of songwriter, Arlo Guthrie, if just one person does it, they’ll probably think he’s nuts; if three people do it, they might think it’s an organization; and if lots of people do it everyday, then they might think it’s a movement. And before long, you’re changing the way we get around.

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