There is an unspeakable tragedy going on in Japan right now. It will continue to unfold before our eyes in the days, weeks, months, years, and even decades ahead. It will reach the coast of America. This may sound alarmist, but it isn’t. As the New York Times reported this morning:

“The fast-moving developments at the Fukushima No. 1 (Daiichi) plant, 150 miles north of Tokyo, catapulted the 4-day-old nuclear crisis to an entirely new level, threatening to overshadow even the massive damage and loss of life spawned by a devastating earthquake and tsunami.”

Now nor ever is the right time for panic. The multiple stricken reactors might not melt down. But that doesn’t mean that they won’t continue to emit health-threatening levels of radiation. If the wind shifts, and that radiation heads inland, people will be migrating from their homes, villages, maybe even cities. To where?

What are we to do? What can we do?

First, of course, we have to do whatever we can to help Japan. It’s the third richest economy in the world, but every dollar, every package, every plane or ship that lands with relief supplies will be welcome, not just for the physical support, but for the moral support. If they want to send over exchange students, we should take them. If Japanese businesses need help, their competitors here in the United States should help. If you’re a person of faith, pray.

And here in America? The current nuclear disaster is in Japan, but we have our own problems. Would you light a lump of coal and put it on your kitchen table while your family was in the house? Why is there more air pollution in the Powder River Basin of Idaho than there is in Los Angeles? What are we going to do if hydraulic fracking many hundreds of feet underground releases gas and toxic chemicals that contaminate one of our rivers?

Coal and natural gas are no healthier than nuclear power. At the end of the day, across the planet and across what will be the couple centuries of world history of burning massive amounts of fossil fuels for power, fossil fuels will end up impacting far more people than nuclear power.

America needs to do what it has always, until recently, done best – lead. We need to get out of the dirty, dangerous, unhealthy fuels of the past and lead the way into a clean, healthy and prosperous new energy future. We need to support the people, the politicians, the companies and the organizations that are trying to get us there.

Image: Hogeasdf

I wouldn’t describe myself as a world traveler, but still – I have visited the Louvre, the White House and the Tower of London. I have driven to the top of a volcano on Maui and walked with my children down the Champs Elysee. And yet, one of my favorite tourist destinations of all time is the Publix Supermarket in Tamarac, Florida.

For years, whenever we would visit my in-laws in Florida, I would look forward to wandering the clean, wide aisles of this market, gape mouthed and in awe of the gleaming rows of produce, packaged goods, and wholesome prepared foods. This store was a direct and glaring contrast to my neighborhood market in New York, which was on its very last legs and had been allowed to devolve into the Bates Motel of food emporiums. It was cramped and gloomy and badly lit, with a low ceiling and an inch of dust on its tired boxes of cereal. The store was redolent with that unmistakable old-supermarket aroma of sour milk and perspiration. The entire market was clearly past its sell-by date.

As befits a retail hell-hole, this supermarket was populated with the shadiest of employees, surly crones who sneered at my cold cut choices, sullen teenage bag boys, and one especially skeevy young man who made a point of licking his fingers before counting out my change. It was so unlike Publix with its aggressively helpful sales staff – good natured retirees who would not only insist on wheeling my cart to the parking lot, they would call me “Miss” in the bargain (by Florida standards, I am dewy and youthful).

The market, finally, was torn down, and its place sprang a structure that rivaled Publix in its size and cleanliness – a model of well-lit, high-ceilinged commercial space. I was thrilled at first, but it wasn’t long before I found fault with my spiffy new market. The size began to feel oppressive, especially if I was running in for just one thing; I began to dread having to drag myself across a space the size of a football field just to buy a pint of fat free half and half. The new store is more expensive than the one it replaced, although I qualify for discounts if I use my member card. Apparently, it is no longer enough to patronize a supermarket – now you are expected to join the supermarket. My member card allows the market to keep track of points I’ve accrued from previous shopping trips. Call me paranoid, but I’m not crazy about having some faceless corporate bureaucracy know every detail of my Chips Ahoy purchasing history.

But mostly I find myself wishing the store was not such an extreme waste of space and resources. Is it really necessary to have a supermarket the size of an airplane hangar? Are slightly cramped aisles such a big price to pay for a store that is less costly to heat and light and air condition? In addition to the reckless waste of fossil fuels, there is something overly sunny and glitzy and un-New York about the new market – buying groceries now makes me feel like one of the Real Housewives of Boca Raton.

I think I preferred this type of happy, shiny shopping experience when it was a break from the norm, a thing to do on vacation before an early dinner in a Florida strip mall. As part of my everyday life it has lost some of its allure. With supermarkets, as with all things, be careful what you wish for.

Editor’s Note: Susan Goldberg is a slightly lapsed treehugger. Although known to overuse paper products, she has the best of intentions – and a really small SUV. Catch her column, The Goldberg Variations, each week here at EcoSalon.

Image: Marcin Wichary

The first night of Chanukah falls on December 1st this year – and if you didn’t know that, then welcome to the club. A casual survey of Jews and gentiles alike leads me to believe that pretty much no one realized how early the holiday would begin this year. Even those of us who “celebrate” Chanukah think of it as coming right around Christmas – and I put “celebrate” inside snarky quotation marks because no matter what Jewish parents tell our kids, Chanukah really is kind of a snooze. Plain, boring, and a little bit sad, it is the ugly step-sister of holidays.

For Jewish children, Chanukah is the consolation prize they get because Christmas is not their holiday. What started out as a minor occasion in the Hebrew calendar has been tarted up with gifts and chocolate coins in a desperate effort to compete with Christmas (or as it’s more commonly known: The Best Holiday Ever.) Over the years I have tried to get my kids amped up about the Festival of Lights, but no matter how many times I read them The Pop Up Book of Chanukah, they remained largely unimpressed. Every year I would wage a hard-sell campaign to interest them in dreidels – those iconic symbols of the holiday that are also massively un-fun playthings. But  I always felt that I was selling them on something I myself couldn’t get too worked up about.

Look at the facts: Christmas features festively decorated evergreen trees that twinkle with fairy lights and smell like happiness – Chanukah has a candle holder and it smells like fried foods. Christmas has Santa, flying in on a sled delivering huge piles of toys and goodies. Chanukah has one good present on the first night, quickly followed by inferior gifts for the next seven (by the end of the week my kids are getting Number Two pencils and throat lozenges). Christmas has Jingle Bells, The Chestnut Song and Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer – Chanukah music is all about minor chords and aggravation.

The biggest disappointment for Jewish children is the lack of a tree, a deprivation my kids have been whining about ever since they first learned to talk. But that’s hardly their only complaint about this ho-hum oil-based occasion. So, in a last-ditch effort to drum up holiday spirit, I have devised a new and improved way to present Chanukah to my family: this year I have gone to great pains to play up the fact that Chanukah is based on the fact that early Jews were able to get eight days of light out of oil that was supposed to last for just one night. Looked at this way, Chanukah is all about optimizing non-renewable resources and getting the most use out of fossil fuels. My daughter is a fervent environmentalist, and I had big hopes that this argument would help her to finally love Chanukah – for its eco-friendliness if nothing else. Smug and self-impressed I pointed out to her that Chanukah was probably the first holiday that could be considered green. “Christmas trees are green,” was my daughter’s sad and hopeful reply.

I give up.

Editor’s Note: Susan Goldberg is a slightly lapsed treehugger. Although known to overuse paper products, she has the best of intentions – and a really small SUV. Catch her column, The Goldberg Variations, each week here at EcoSalon.

Image: seantoyer

1. Highways

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When gas prices rose dramatically in 2008, Americans began flocking to mass transit in droves, resulting in declining revenues for the Federal Highway Trust Fund. Naturally, the Bush Administration’s response was to take money from already underfunded mass transit and use it to pay for highways that are already, as Slate put it, “paved with gold”. Billions of dollars are pumped into the highway system every year, which encourages the polluting car culture and leads to further sprawl, while mass transit continues to fall by the wayside.

2. SUVs

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In case you aren’t already taking optimal advantage of the polluting power of our nation’s sprawling web of highways, the government would like to make your impact even greater by setting you up in a nice gas-guzzling subsidized SUV. A portion of the tax code revised in 2003 gives business owners a huge deduction for up to 30% of a large vehicle’s cost, which can add up to $25,000 in the case of a Hummer – far more than the credit given to individual purchasers of energy-efficient vehicles. Attempts to axe this provision in 2007 failed.

You only get the credit if it seats more than 9 passengers or weighs more than 14,000 pounds, but they don’t really care whether your business actually requires such a vehicle. So, by all means, get the Escalade.

3. Paper Mills

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Paper mills cut down trees while sucking up massive amounts of fossil fuels and get big money from the government to do it – all through a loophole in a law that was supposed to benefit renewable energy. A law enacted in 2005 contains a section that gives businesses an incentive to mix alternative energy sources with fossil fuels. To qualify for the tax credit, paper companies started adding diesel fuel to “black liquor”, a pulp-making byproduct that they were already using to generate electricity on its own.

But time might be running out for this egregious misuse of taxpayer money: the unemployment extension bill approved by the Senate and on its way to the House would eliminate this loophole and use the funds for health care. (Editor’s note: We’ve contacted both the editor and writer of this story at BusinessWeek to confirm that this loophole will still be closed in the bill just passed by the Senate, and will update if more information becomes available. In the meantime, there’s this resource which seems to confirm the loophole is in fact being closed.)

4. Commercial Fishing

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About half of the $713 million in subsidies given to the U.S. fishing industry directly contributes to overfishing, according to a new study by the Environmental Working Group. The subsidies – which equal about a fifth of the value of the catch itself – lower overhead costs and promote increased fishing capacity, meaning more fish are caught than can be naturally replaced.

Overfishing is a huge environmental problem – up to 25% of the world’s fishery stocks are overexploited or depleted, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.  But that’s not the only result of the subsidies; because roughly half of the money goes toward fuel costs, other consequences include wasteful fuel consumption as well as air and water pollution.

5. Nuclear Power

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The nuclear industry’s decade-long, $600 million lobbying effort finally paid off as President Obama agreed to grant loan guarantees for nuclear power plants.  Obama has been promising since the early days of his campaign that he would find a way to “safely harness nuclear power”, but the $55 billion taxpayer-backed loan guarantees are going forward despite continued reservations about uranium mining and the storage of radioactive waste.

6. Factory Farming

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American factory farms are literally filthy cesspools of their own making, and who else is cleaning up all that shit but American taxpayers? Giant factory farms make up just 2% of the livestock farms in the U.S. yet raise 40% of all animals in the U.S., and they do it using practices that are not only harmful to workers and the animals themselves, but to the environment.

The government heavily subsidizes factory farms so they can provide über-cheap meat and dairy, raising as many animals as possible in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of care. And why should they care about finding better ways to manage manure when the government hands them $125 million annually to “deal” with the consequences, and then doesn’t bother to check up on them?

Despite the backwards funding given to clean them up, gaping lagoons of livestock waste packed with pollutants continue to be one of the biggest environmental problems in America, fouling our water and causing those depressing dead zones in our oceans.

7.  Corn Ethanol

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In the quest to beat back fossil fuels, cleaner fuels that we can grow seemed like a good idea – until we realized that some, like corn, make a huge dent in the world’s food supply. But that isn’t stopping the U.S. government from giving billions in subsidies to the corn industry in general, and corn ethanol in particular.

Corn-based ethanol gobbled up 76% of federal government renewable energy subsidies in 2007, leaving little for more environmentally sound renewable energy sources like wind and solar. Worse yet, it’s a huge drain on water resources, gulping down up to 2,138 liters of water per liter of ethanol.

This isn’t just an unwise investment – it’s also destroying the rainforest. As American farmers have abandoned soy for subsidized corn, soy prices have risen worldwide – and led to an increase in Amazon deforestation. Brazil is the world’s second-largest producer of soy next to the U.S., and growing demand has meant more clear-cutting for soy plantations.

8. Processed Foods

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Ethanol isn’t the only product that comes to us courtesy of U.S. corn subsidies. There’s also plenty of craptastic processed “food” products packed with multiple subsidized ingredients: wheat, sugar, soy and of course, corn. Gee, could the obesity epidemic have anything to do with the fact that our government makes junk food cheap, and encourages its consumption through the food stamp program?

It’s a sad state of affairs when a Twinkie costs less, calorically speaking, than a carrot. Meanwhile, farmers who produce fruits and vegetables (aside from corn), don’t get a dime in government subsidies. While the government is considering junk food taxes, a change to the Farm Bill might be more efficient.

9. Coal

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You would think that the coal industry’s long-held dominance of the American energy market would have eliminated the need for subsidies. After all, the industry spent $47 million last year on PR alone. But the fact is, coal companies are milking the government for all it’s worth while continuing to pump greenhouse gases and carcinogens into the air and turn the Appalachian Mountains into post-apocalyptic hellholes.

Coal subsidies have survived this long because of the industry’s staggering influence on lawmakers, and because constituents in coal states often fear the economic repercussions of a scaled-back coal industry more than they fear the harm to their health and homes. And on top of the federal coal subsidies lumped in under “˜fossil fuels’, the industry gets untold breaks on a state and local level in places like Kentucky, where the coal industry netted $115 million in subsidies in 2006.

10. Oil

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Climate change: brought to you by the U.S. government! According to a study by the Environmental Law Institute, fossil fuels received over $70 billion in subsidies between 2002 and 2008, while traditional sources of renewable energy were given just $12.2 billion.

But the oil industry won’t even admit that the direct spending and tax breaks they get are subsidies – they prefer to call them “incentives”, and claim that attempts to roll back some of those subsidies are actually “new taxes”.

As Grist notes, the ELI report is actually pretty conservative – it didn’t include things like military spending to defend oil in the Middle East or infrastructure spending. But the fossil fuel industry’s free ride is almost over: President Obama’s new federal budget proposal wipes out these breaks and increases funding for clean energy research (and, unfortunately, nuclear power).

Photo credits: The following photos are from Flickr and licensed for commercial use under Creative Commons: “Freeway” by Payton Chung; ”SUV” by The Car Spy; ”Paper mill in Washington State” by Jan Tik; ”Fish face” by Andy Welsh; ”Nuclear reactor” by Intamin10; ”Factory farm protest sign” by johnnyalive; ”Corn” by normanack;  ”Coal” by Duncan Harris; ”Oil rig” by kenhodge13.

Not that great, according to everyone. While one of the three holes in the Deepwater Horizon has been plugged, the rate of oil lost was unaffected. Depending on whom you ask, that’s anywhere from 5,000 to upwards of 40,000 barrels a day.

Also, hurricane season is less than a month away. The first storm of the season would not only arrest cleanup crews, but could potentially disperse the oil slick over a greater field. That is, if it doesn’t suck up all the oil and turn into some sort of self-aware, Captain-Planet-style, oil-powered storm beast.

More realistic fears include the possible failure of domed well caps currently being maneuvered into place over the leaks. BP has ordered a 125-ton steel dome to contain and remove the oil gushing from the rig, but even a successful placement won’t contain more than 85 percent of the leak. Oh, and there’s no guarantee of a successful placement.

At this point, more than two weeks out from the explosion/fire/complete destruction of the Deepwater Horizon, eleven workers are dead, fishing bans have been put into effect, and oil has begun to wash up on certain coastal marshes. A relief well, the best method of containing the underwater geyser, will not be ready for months. The Coast Guard has started several controlled burns on different parts of the slick. They’ve even deployed a team of deep-sea robots to attend to the leak. So far the only potential bright spot in this unmitigated disaster is the possibility of a knock-down, drag-out fight between the underwater robots and an oil-fueled hurricane.

While the most media-friendly parts of an oil spill (beached seals and turtles flapping their sludge-covered fins helplessly) haven’t yet occurred, serious damage to the environment is already being done. Plankton and other microscopic forms of marine life at the bottom of the sea are easily damaged by contact with oil particles, which could send a ripple effect throughout the Gulf’s food chain. The fishing industry will almost certainly continue to be negatively affected. The spill could spread to the East Coast via powerful ocean currents and even damage certain ports and shipping lines. The worst is almost certainly yet to come.

Image: NASA Goddard Photo and Video

“Get real! This is the biggest crisis humanity has faced,” warns Annie Leonard in her latest environmental education video, The Story of Cap & Trade. It is getting mixed reviews as the dust settles since its recent release.

A follow up to her widely popular animated eco tutorial, The Story of Stuff, it offers a pureed breakdown of how energy traders (greedy corporations and industries) and Wall Street financiers hope to get rich off of pretending to save the planet. The method to the madness: capping carbon emissions by giving permits to the polluters, who will in turn have the free license to pollute, especially in the third world where lax standards pose disastrous consequences for farmers and villagers.

Leonard’s release of the video comes on the heels of what many considered the failed talks for climate change solutions at Copenhagen, and identified the devils in the existing caps and trade proposals. These include issuing free permits to major polluters rather than selling the permits instead and allotting dividends to citizens and paying back ecological debt.  She also cites fake offsets which let polluters make false claims about what they will do the cut emissions, as well as the most dangerous devil of the plan – distraction.

Leonard tells us relying on the scheme weakens our ability to make strong laws away from fossil fuels.

While climate talks in Europe or on Capitol Hill have yet to scratch the surface on global caps on carbon emissions, the video illustrates (with charming, monochromatic animated stick figures) that education of the masses is crucial for curbing any crisis, as witnessed with the AIDS public information campaigns of the early 80s.

Leonard is adept at making sense of it all with her wholesome, kindergarten teacher approach to feeding our overwhelmed brains one truth at a time. In the end, she basically throws up her arms to declare about the process, “It’s protecting business as usual.”

Not all agree. “Just colossally ignorant,” is how one Grist writer sums up the video’s treatment of the trade entities, such as Enron, and how Europe has botched its attempts at handing out permits to cut emissions. Of course, many of the critics calling the critique of cap and trade deceptive also lump Leonard with the rest of the “Left” making up all of this hogwash about fossil fuels contributing to climate change.

Meanwhile, eco activist Michael Gaworecki, writing for Change.org, agrees with the video’s arguments, but says he isn’t sure the cap-and-trade plan isn’t the best mechanism for lowering carbon emissions that we can put in place  in enough time to make a difference.

“America needs to take the lead on stopping global warming if we’re to stand a chance, and anything perceived to interfere with unfettered capitalism is unlikely to fly in the good ol’ US of A,” he says.

Gaworecki adds that the few alternatives, such as a straight-up tax on carbon pollution, could be simple and effective, but “would never make it out of the American Congress alive.”

Image: Telegraph

Can an entire city eliminate the use of fossil fuels?

One Swedish city is going to try. The city of Kalmar, located in southeast Sweden, plus the surrounding 12 towns in the region, are trading in nearly all gas, oil, and electric furnaces.

Instead, the residents will get their energy requirements from “district heat” – energy that’s created from burning sawdust and waste wood from timber companies. The remainder of energy requirements will be supplied by hydropower, windmills, and nuclear power.

Cars and buses will run on either locally-produced biofuel made from waste wood and chicken manure or a 85% ethanol blend imported from Brazil.

In addition, more and more bicycle lanes have appeared, trucking companies are teaching employees eco-friendly driving techniques, and street lights now use low-energy sodium bulbs.

A result of creativity and political will, this change couldn’t come at a better time. With the current worldwide economic downtown, the residents of Kalmar and environs are finding that switching from oil and gas is providing economic relief, both from reduced power bills and a cottage boom with the growth in its clean-technology industries.

Kalmar’s goal is to be totally fossil fuel free by 2030. They are well on the way to making it happen.

Images: ckrantz