North America’s beauty spreads from sea to shining sea.

When wanderlust strikes, there’s the tendency to picture oneself overseas. My personal fantasies bring me to deserts in Morocco, beaches in Goa, hole-in-the-wall salsa clubs in Havana. I tend to forget the bounty of natural beauty that exists right here in North America. These pictures showcase the stunning vistas, cultural relics, and breathtaking natural phenomena that exist right at our front doors, or at least within a few hours drive.

(above) Capitol Reef National Park, Utah, USA

San Jose del Cabo, Baja California, Mexico

White Sands, New Mexico, USA

Washington, D.C., USA

Venice Beach, California, USA

Crater Lake, Oregon, USA

Grand Canyon, Arizona, USA

San Gorgonio Pass Wind Farm, White Water, California, USA

Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, USA

Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada

Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

Banff National Park, Canada

Coyote Butte North, Arizona, USA

Henkel, Colorado, USA

Quebec City, Quebec, Canada

Kent, Washington, USA 

Pagosa Valley, Colorado, USA

Lackawanna State Forest, Pennsylvania, USA

San Francisco, California, USA

Chicago, Illinois, USA

Santa Cruz, California, USA

Galveston, Texas, USA

Cape Elizabeth, Maine, USA

Bitterroot Mountains, Montana, USA

Cimarron National Grassland, Kansas, USA

Fenway Park, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Yosemite National Park, California, USA

U.S. Route 66, Arizona, USA

Mule Canyon, Colorado, USA

New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

Everglades, Florida, USA

Sequoia National Park, California, USA

Anne’s Beach, Florida Keys, USA

South Dakota, USA

Quechee, Vermont, USA

Riverwood Park, Mississauga, Canada

St. Louis, Missouri, USA

Bountiful, Utah, USA

Big Moose Lake, New York, USA

New York, New York, USA

Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, USA

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40 Gorgeous Photos of Europe

25 Photos of Islands Threatened By Climate Change

40 Gorgeous Photos of Latin America

ColumnWhy is it that America is only known for hamburgers and hot dogs when we have a burgeoning foodie culture?

A surprising discovery when I lived in France was L’Americain. In the land of gourmet cheeses and perfected baguettes, food is more than something that you just consume for nourishment; it’s art. Which is why I was a little shell-shocked the first time I came across L’Americain, a late night favorite, post-pop music dance party, made up of a baguette stuffed with hamburger meat, french fries and ketchup.

If the French vision of American food had been unclear before, after this particular sandwich run in, it was very clear. For the French, there was no point in glorifying this version of junk street food, when they could just call it what they thought it represented: America.

As a nation, we have often been at the bottom of the list of culinary tradition. Sure, at home we’ve created a foodie culture and mastered combining dishes from around the world, but abroad, there remains a view that we’re all about pizza, hot dogs and chips. Our global foodie reputation is defined more by sugar and fat than by local ingredients with a cosmopolitan twist.

In fact, enter any “American” food store in another country and you’ll get a handful of classic ingredients. I’ve seen everything from swirled jars of peanut butter and jelly to marshmallow cream (things my American counterparts would never dream of buying at home), and much less abroad. But the international crowd loves this stuff. One of my best Swedish friends has specifically requested that next time I come visit she wants Reese’s Miniatures and several bags of Sour Patch Kids.

What is it that has made the rest of the world crave some of our most terrible exports and glaze over our more respectable creations? You don’t see Alice Waters shrines or bookshelves stocked with Mark Bittman translations abroad, but you’ll most certainly come across a sampling of the following.

Hamburgers

McDonald’s has swept the world like a virus, but it’s not just Big Macs that have made their way around the world. Grab an “American” menu in Southeast Asia and you’re sure to find some version of a meat patty wrapped in a bun. For some reason this American classic has other people hooked, albeit poor spellings on menus and misconceptions of what a bun should look like.

Pringles

It’s not just chips in general, but there’s something about “once you pop you can’t stop,” that has seduced the international consumer. Turns out they’re marketed in at least a hundred countries and bring in $1 billion in sales. Sure, in other countries the packaging is often smaller,  because other places know better than to serve up ten servings in one container that we’re sure to down in a single sitting — but those brightly colored canisters with the goofy, mustached man are all over the place.

Mediocre – yet complicated – coffee drinks

Leave it to the global coffee chain Starbucks to make it perfectly acceptable to order a caramel machiatto in countries where coffee consumption is holy. The result is, well, abhorrent. Thanks to the chain it’s trendy to cruise the streets of Paris with a disposable cup and you can now buy Frappacinos in Guatemala. The company’s new instant product alone was responsible for $100 million in global sales last year.

Peanut Butter

It seems like such a staple product and yet for many it’s a luxury. Some love it and some hate it, but peanut butter to Europeans is just as exotic as caviar and foie gras are to many Americans. Try tracking it down outside of the U.S. and you’ll have a difficult time, and yet somehow, everyone knows about it. A former, very typical French roommate of mine (he wouldn’t dream of keeping his smelly cheeses in the refrigerator), thought there was nothing better on his weekend brioche than some good old Jiffy, imported by friends of course.

But forget our foodie reputation for a second.

Although it would be great to be known for all the fantastic, organic and healthy items that many American chefs whip up on a daily basis, wanting to be respected for our food culture is almost a little vain. What we should be more concerned with is how we’re physically impacting the rest of the world.

With obesity rates skyrocketing around the world, and often attributed to imported food, maybe it’s time we took a step back and asked ourselves what we want our global food influence to be.

Hot dogs and high fructose corn syrup? Changing what’s on our plates at home has a larger influence than we may think.

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’s column at EcoSalon, Foodie Underground, taking a conscious look at what’s bubbling in the underground food movement, from supper clubs to mini markets to the culinary avant garde.

Images: USDA China, permanently scatterbrained, Brett L., Like_the_Grand_Canyon, Alaivani, egarc2

A common form of illusion occurs when content is seen without context. Take, for example, how we perceive the size of an object. When we see an image of, say, an apple, on its own, without another object to compare it to, we mentally assign a certain size to the fruit based on our past experience with apples. If it looks really ripe and juicy and colorful, then we see a nice, big apple. But place it next to an extra-large orange and we see a different truth: our apple may in fact be very small. Compare the apple and the orange and the illusion is shattered.

I remember the first time I visited Cairo. I was still in my teens, and coming from the Midwestern United States I was immediately stunned by, among so many things, the masses of people and the poverty relative to the States. I had the sudden realization that most of the world lived more like this and not the way I lived back home. Illusion shattered.

Think about how you live and then visit ifitweremyhome.com. We introduced this site to you last last year to give you some idea about the size of the BP oil spill (“The Oil Spill Next Door: Size Matters”). We told how, with a click of your mouse, you could place a template of the map of the spill over your hometown – voilà, context. (From where I sit, near San Francisco, the damage engulfs Lake Tahoe and reaches all the way to Reno. That was one big apple.)

The site, developed by Andy Lintner and designed by Annette Calabrese, now has more to look at with a robust system that allows for the comparison of where and how you live to the farthest reaches of our planet. (The “disasters” function now also includes last summer’s devastating Pakistan flood.) In just a few minutes you’ll be able to do some serious work on the get-some-perspective front by doing things like this: Click U.S. Click Egypt. Learn many things, like if you were born in Egypt instead of the United States, you would use an average of 89.64 percent less electricity.

Here are 10 more U.S.-to-the-other-guys comparisons (based on averages) that’ll take the shine off of some of your illusions:

1. In South Korea, you would have a 55.91 better percent chance at being employed.
2. In Russia, you would die 12.08 years sooner.
3. In Morocco, you would make 90.09 percent less money.
4. In Germany, you would have 40.64 percent less babies.
5. In Romania, you would be 83.33 percent less likely to have HIV/AIDS.
6. In Canada, you would spend 45.33 percent less money on health care.
7. In Norway, you would experience 44.44 percent less of a class divide.
8. In Australia, you would have a 23.94 percent less chance of dying in infancy.
9. In China, you would consume 90. 43 percent less oil.
10. In France, you would have 17.92 percent more free time.

“The lottery of birth is responsible for much of who we are,” says the site’s homepage. It then asks the questions: “If you were not born in the country you were, what would your life be like? Would you be the same person?” Good questions, to be sure. How about this one: If you are who you are, but become better informed about the experiences of others with whom you share the planet, would you do anything differently?

Image: Dano

But that time capsule has an impact.

The average American produces a little over 4 pounds of trash per day, and although we might be diligent about separating our recyclables, once the garbage truck comes along, to us, our waste is out of sight and out of mind. While we return to the house with an empty garbage can, our waste takes off on a journey for the landfill, where mountains of trash pile up to be pushed around by bulldozers and circled by vultures in the air.

Where does your trash go?

We rounded up a list of the top 10 biggest landfills, just to show the ultimate impact of our everyday waste. According to Waste & Recycling News, these are the biggest landfills, based upon tonnage received in 2007. Here are some interesting facts about these places, including some very uplifting ones (really).

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1. Apex, Las Vegas, Nevada. 3,824,814 tons.

America’s largest landfill, Apex, lies just an hour north of Sin City. Storing nearly 50 million tons of rotting trash, Apex is no small operation. Surprisingly enough, things seem to be slowing down. According to General Manager Mark Clinker commercial and residential waste has actually decreased. Maybe there’s still hope?

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2. Puente Hills, Whittier, California. 3,756,718 tons.

Taking in a third of Los Angeles County’s trash, Puente Hills is a big player when it comes to waste. But talking about trash doesn’t have the same effect as seeing it. Last year, the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI), a Culver City-based think tank, sponsored a tour of Puente Hills in an effort to raise awareness about waste. Tickets sold out in minutes. But the landfill doesn’t just process waste. Puente Hills is the largest recycling location in the US, taking more than one million tons per year of recyclable materials.

Concerts

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3. Newton County Landfill Partnership, Brook, Indiana. 2,692,455 tons.

A stone’s throw from Chicago, Newton County Landfill is responsible for taking a large part of the city’s waste. Chicago residents produce about 1 million tons of trash per year.

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4. Atlantic Waste, Waverly, Virginia. 2,669,423 tons.

Virginia’s largest landfill, Atlantic Waste is owned by the trash giant, Waste Management. In 2008 the landfill was fined for some 8,000 gallons of leachate – in other words, garbage juice – which spilled into surrounding wetlands.

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5. Okeechobee, Okeechobee, Florida. 2,640,000 tons.

Surprisingly enough, visitors to Okeechobee won’t just see piles of trash, they’ll also get a view of local wildlife. Of the 4,150 acres that make up the site, 1,550 have been placed in conservation easement, offering visitors a variety of recreation and conservation related activities.

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6. Denver Arapahoe Disposal Site, Aurora, Colorado. 2,561,809 tons.

Colorado’s largest landfill, Denver Araphoe Disposal Site accepts around 12,000 tons of waste per day. But some of that trash is going to good use. In September of 2008, DADS launched its waste-to-energy system to convert methane into electricity. In partnership with the City of Denver, the system generates enough power to fuel about 3,000 homes. (Photos are from adjacent landfill site Lowry, which ceased operations in 1990 and is now part of the waste-to-energy system)

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7. El Sobrante, Corona, California. 2,173,216 tons.

Another landfill owned by Waste Management, El Sobrante works closely with the Wildlife Habitat Council to manage more than 640 acres for the benefit of 31 different species, two of which are endangered.

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8. Rumpke Sanitary, Colerain Township, Ohio. 2,128,165 tons.

Located near Cincinnati, Rumpke Sanitary brings in a lot of trash, but like other landfills, is doing its part to put some of it to good use. The landfill site hosts three methane recovery facilities that have the potential to recover approximately 15 million standard cubic feet of landfill gas daily. In total, the facilities produce enough energy to power 25,000 homes.

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9. Frank Bowerman, Irvine, California. 2,059,859 tons.

One of California’s largest landfills, Frank Bowerman also boasts the world’s first landfill gas-to-LNG plant. The plant has the capacity to produce 5,000 gallons of LNG per day, which has about the same environmental benefits as taking about 150,000 vehicles off the road per year.

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10. Columbia Ridge, Arlington Oregon. 2,050,602 tons.

Columbia Ridge processes waste from all over the Northwest, serving major cities Portland, OR and Seattle, WA.

Each week here at EcoSalon, the editors choose a post from the archives that we think you’ll love. The original post can be found here.

Images: D’Arcy Norman, Steve Marcus, Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County, WM, Google, Farache, EPA, Center for Land Use Interpretation, Craig Ruttle, n6vhf, Eric Mortenson.

Urban sprawl, pollution, over-consumption, deforestation…like it or not, U.S. taxpayers are still paying for all of these things to occur in America and beyond. Despite recent investments in green jobs and technology, an array of government subsidies pay big dirty industries like oil, coal and factory farms to destroy the environment in every way possible while greener, healthier industries like solar power and vegetable farms get a pittance.

10. Highways

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.

9. SUVs

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.

8. Paper Mills

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.)

7. Commercial Fishing

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.

6. Nuclear Power

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.

5. Factory Farming

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.

4.  Corn Ethanol

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.

3. Processed Foods

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.

2. Coal

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.

1. Oil

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.

Is summer fresh produce from Chile growing on you? Are you grateful to be able to buy grapes, plums, peaches and other August fruit in the dead of winter because of that 2004 free trade agreement?

That mindset is what the earthquake-ravaged country is cultivating in a new Cornucopia television ad campaign reaching out to American consumers who buy produce at Safeway, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Winn Dixie and other outlets that peddle an array of both imported and locally harvested fruits and vegetables.

The buy local mantra of the eco movement threatens international growers whose livelihood depends upon the plastic sealing and heavy fuel shipping of fresh foods to markets throughout the United States, including rich agricultural states like California, Arizona and Texas.

That threat has been worsened by the recent 8.9-magnitude quake which damaged roads, bridges, harbors and other key infrastructure while hampering communication lines used by processors and packaging plants.

The 30-second ad, tells us “right now it is summer in Chile” where vast natural resources allow it to grow produce, dairy, meat products, olive oil, wine, seafood and more. What swank menus don’t feature Chilean sea bass? The buttery male voice asks you to experience the abundance of the central American’s country’s harvest, “in season now at Winn Dixie.”

It has been pretty good so far with nearly half of all fruit in the U.S. coming from Chile.

The Stats

The California and American Chambers of Commerce report Chile is our 25th largest export partner, sending us $1.3 billion in fresh fruits in 2003, and packaged food exports worth a whopping $1.5 billion in 2008. The Philadelphia Inquirer tells us the bulk of the crops shipped to U.S. shores (65%), enter Philadelphia to be directed to stores east of the Mississippi River. The rest comes through Los Angeles. California, alone, lists Chile as its 22th largest export buddy. This graph shows countries that imported fresh fruits from Chile in 2008-2009.

Are We Also Buying the Image?

The primary world exporter of grapes, Chile controls 24 percent of the global grape market. Raisins, our favorite dried fruit, are produced at home, but we also imported 42.5 million pounds in 2008, mostly from our partner, Chile. Chilean wine, also threatened by the quake, has also been a popular choice here with trendy reds and subtle whites, and Chile has enjoyed the status of being fourth in the world for wine exports. The country is the world’s larges plum supplier with 36 varieties grown annually. It is the second largest exporter of kiwifruit, another gourmet staple, and after the 2004 trade agreement, it upped its peach exportation greatly, shipping over 60 percent of its peaches and nectarines to the U.S.

We also buy Chilean farmed salmon which has boosted the country’s seafood industry. The USDA reports salmon exports exploded from 1.2 million pounds in 1989 to 50 million in 1996, not a welcomed increase by our own salmon farmers who have sought legislation to reduce the surplus.

All About Image

The cornucopia ad, funded by the Chilean exporters Association (Asoex) and The Export Promotion Bureau (ProChile) and fielded by the Chilean Fresh Fruit Association (CFFA), is designed to promote Chile as not just a country with plentiful resources, but a country you can trust to put the healthiest food on your table.

Fruitnet tells us retailers were offered five-second tags at the end of the spots in exchange for in-store promotions. That is why one of the ads says “now in season at Winn Dixie.”

“We have many creative promoters among our partners in retail,” says Tom Tjerandsen, North American managing director of CFFA. “We marvel at the multitude of ways that retailers choose to ensure that they take full advantage of our television support.”

In deciding for yourself, you might want to consider the issue of pesticides in fresh foods, one of the main concerns of the local food movement. According to Consumer Health, residues of the toxins are present on many of our favorite fresh foods, including grapes, peaches, apples and celery. But surprisingly, research shows the crops we import from Mexico and Chile are not more contaminated than domestic foods, despite what is commonly believed.

A reason for the belief is that Chilean farmers in the past have been pressured to use pesticides like Dormex even though exposure has proven to harm the health of growers and their unborn children. Chile imports some 15, 000 tons of the chemicals each year and experts say there are some 928 registered pesticides in use there, including 39 prohibited or severely restricted by the United Nations and governments of the world. Grapes grown in the Copiapo Valley are heavily sprayed, and grapes showed high traces of residue on the Consumer Health study.

And if you are buying Chilean salmon, you should know last year the FDA stepped up its scrutiny of the glut when the New York Times reported on the spread of infectious salmon anemia (ISA) plaguing the Chilean farming industry, as well as unsanitary, overcrowded salmon pens and poor environmental conditions. Stores like Safeway restricted imports, and Chile responded by promising to tighten its control by tripling inspections and reducing antibiotics.

Looks like we have to do some policing at home, as well. Consumer Health says 11 of the 12 highest contaminated foods recently tested were U.S. grown, including peaches, pears, apples, winter squash, and green beans. The key is to know what you are eating, and to properly wash and peel fruits and vegetables before eating.

Still, buying locally raised, organic food is the best way to avoid exposure to toxins. And buying locally grown, organic fare also is the best way to promote and support local farmers who are stepping up to the green plate. Will Chile suffer greatly if we refuse to buy what the country is selling?

I suppose that is a risk we must take in considering our future. When I was a child, we only bought peaches, plums and grapes in the summer – that is – when it was summer in sunny California.

Images: athrasher, CFFA/USA

Anyone who has been to Costa Rica can understand why the people are happy. The natural surroundings are beautiful and well maintained and there is a commitment to peace (the country abolished its armed forces in 1949).

Because of these and other reasons, an op-ed article in the New York Times reports the Dutch sociologists who run the World Database of Happiness lists Costa Rica as the leader in happiness out of 148 nations. On a 10-point scale, ticos earned 8.5, followed by Denmark at 8.3. The report says the U.S. ranked 7th at 7.4, while Togo and Tanzania trail at 2.6.

Apparently a focus on sustainability in preserving its natural landscape and the choice to dissolve the army and invest instead in education has lifted the spirits of the Central American nation’s people. Such heartening prioritizing has allowed the country to score at the top in other happy indicators, such as one that calculates “happy life years” (the U.S. comes in at 19th and Zimbabwe is last) as well as the “happy planet index” operated by the  New Economics Foundation.

According to columnist Nicholas Kristof, “Rising education levels also led the country to preserve its lush environment as an economic asset,” and the country is “an ecological pioneer, introducing a carbon tax in 1997.”

He points out that this commitment to the environment has bolstered rather than threatened the Costa Rican economy, adding that it is one of the few tourist countries seeing migration from the United States. In fact, it has seen such an influx, it has had to take steps to keep its parks and rainforests from feeling the strain of too much impact.

Image: Thombo 2

]]> http://ecosalon.com/costa-ricans-blow-their-horn-considered-happiest-people/feed/ 1 http://ecosalon.com/lost-and-found-in-the-age-of-affluenza/ http://ecosalon.com/lost-and-found-in-the-age-of-affluenza/#comments Mon, 21 Dec 2009 16:30:10 +0000 Luanne Bradley http://www.ecosalon.com/?p=30261

I’m always tempted by those clever hooks for purses to keep better track of our keys. They’re usually hidden in my bag under a bushel of important papers, hair ties, various wallets and glasses. Digging for keys is adding years to my life. It’s that stressful because disorder complicates my life.

There are people out there called professional organizers who charge hourly rates to box and label the accumulation in our homes. And everywhere you look, there are attractive storage boxes and baskets for sale to keep things in their proper places in our offices and homes. What I wouldn’t do to keep my family’s things in their proper places. I would glue them down if that worked.

The middle class is begging for these gadgets and services. We are not only being buried alive by constant connection and information, our accumulation, too, is taking over and greatly complicating our lives.

It doesn’t matter that I’m attempting to go paperless by saying no to receipts at the register or reading my news and paying  bills online. It doesn’t matter that I spent last weekend eliminating clothes from my daughters’ closets and retiring enough garments to fill five supersize garbage compactor bags. Today, my husband is hauling them to his mother’s so that her nurse can ship the items to her poor family in the Philippines.

As I strive to reduce excess and clutter to make my home the simplified, functional haven I envision, I continue to do battle with the nagging phenomenon of  losing shit. Shit! I’m sick of it.

“Where’s the English paper I printed out?”

“Who moved my tax documents? They were on kitchen table!”

“Have you seen my new skinny jeans? I’ve looked in the hampers and in everyone’s rooms and I can’t find them.”

Yes, playing the surprisingly unrewarding game of lost and found remains the most aggravating symptom of the consumption syndrome known as affluenza, aptly defined by Wikipedia as “the portmanteau of the words affluence and influenza and a socially transmitted condition of overload resulting form the dogged pursuit of more. ”

First, allow me to point out that the mother is the sole proprietor of the house capable of locating lost articles. And once the lost treasure surfaces, I rarely see the results I would expect, i.e. a big hug and overwhelming expression of joy on their faces. “Goodness, Mother, how can I ever thank you?”

Take my husband, an intelligent eco man who acquires the least, loses the most, and can’t find objects that are literally under his nose. One daughter has inherited this same bizarre gene. The other daughter was once a registered bloodhound like her mama, but is now losing her shit, and has succumbed to the same bad habits as her influential sister such as getting undressed and leaving belongings strewn on the floor of various rooms. (They also both bite their fingers and devour chocolate like wild beasts, habits I link to the bizarre genes inherited from their mother.)

Every so often, like last weekend, I get on a roll and rifle through closets, sort my kitchen desk nook, organize the kids’ bins of art supplies, and perform the most dreaded and vapid chore of all – filing. Man oh man, does anyone loathe filing as much as I do?

I wish I could get that organizer lady back here to help me make new files and sort all the junk. She made professional labels on her label maker. She was great. I wanted to marry her. I want her to move in and take over and take me away. She’s Calgon to me, minus the harsh chemicals. But wouldn’t you know it, I don’t know where I put her number.

I try not to beat myself up about all of this – to follow the advice of modern clergy and therapists and be compassionate with myself. Sure, I’m a bonehead about keeping order, a little better than some of my most eccentric working friends, and not half as good as most stay-at-home moms.

It’s really a matter of overcoming the selfishness which leads to the over-consumption of material possessions, according to the author of the website My Super- Charged Life. As he sees it, the disease of deriving happiness from the next new toy “is a fruitless pursuit that will quickly leave a person depressed, disillusioned and broke.”

I feel depressed when I drop my girls off at their private school and pass the lost and found corner which is so generously stocked, it resembles a second hand store. Piles of forgotten lunch boxes with rotting contents, abandoned warm winter jackets, essential classroom binders and adorable stylish tee shirts: They all abound in the unsightly lost and found – glaring symbols of affluenza.

At the end of each month, a volunteer parent named Tila from Colombia ships the unclaimed items to the poor in her homeland. The children there are appreciative. Children who barely have enough food to eat don’t snub their cheese sandwiches and abandon lunch boxes on the black top. When you own just one winter jacket, you don’t leave it behind when you board the bus for home.

True, kids will always be forgetful. I was once a forgetful child. But unlike my daughters, I had less and kept track of it. My walk-in-closet contained about five pair of shoes and two toy boxes, one with Barbies, one with stuffed animals. It was easy to clean up after play. It was freeing.

Guess it all adds up to wanting to be free, again, free from the clutter and feeling that fleeting high from getting something new, a wired emotion we don’t feel by accident.

In the ’30s, Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays (known as the father of public relations) figured out how to mold public opinion via third party propaganda campaigns for selling everything from bacon and eggs promoted by the nation’s doctors to cigarettes, soap and books. This marketing strategy dictated to the receptive nation eventually became a familiar meme: Linking the accumulation of goods with feelings of happiness and success.

Ironically, I’m now finding happiness is attainable not by adding but subtracting. If anything should get lost, it is the brainwashing (and sometimes greenwashing) that the more we amass, the better we feel.

I strive to find the simplicity of less. Even more than ignorance, I suspect it is the route to bliss. In other words, it is time to bench Team Edward.

This is the latest installment in Luanne’s column, Life in the Green Lane.

Main Image: Evelyn is Here

Images: Jeffrey Beall, It’s a Purse Thing, Squidoo, Wikipedia

If you ever plan to motor west
Travel my way, the highway that’s the best.
Get your kicks on Route 66!
- Bobby Troup

There’s scarcely a more classically American form of travel than the road trip.

The great American road trip is immortalized in art – from Jack Kerouac to Thelma and Louise – but the myth is firmly planted in reality. Americans love their cars and the freedom of the open road and with such a vast, beautiful country to explore, who can blame them?

More Americans own a passport than ever before but it’s still only one in three and as the recession bites, vacationing close to home is bound to become even more popular. But while air travel gets the lion’s share of the bad press about carbon dioxide emissions, we all know driving ain’t that green, either.

For starters, road trips tend to lend themselves to prepackaged junk food, which is bad for you and even worse for the environment.

Even with the best intentions in the world, exhaustion and a lack of choice on the road can prompt you to make choices you wouldn’t necessarily make at home. Smart travelers – those that are green, frugal, health conscious or all of the above – travel with a cool box with healthy, fresh food in the trunk so they don’t need takeaways, and plan their trips to make time to stop for proper meals. They also know that perfection is impossible and instead focus on making the best choices in the circumstances.

The biggest problem with a road trip is guzzling all that gas and the governors of the West Coast states – California, Oregon and Washington – are trying to change that. They envision a “green freeway” running down the West Coast from British Columbia, Canada to Baja, Mexico. The idea is that drivers of eco-friendly cars could pull off the green pit stops to charge, or swap out, their electric-vehicle batteries or fill their tanks with biodiesel, ethanol, hydrogen or compressed natural gas.

It sounds like a truly exciting idea and I hope it comes to reality. Sadly that’s not guaranteed – there is resistance to from the likes of the National Association of Truck Stop Operators (Natso) and national gasoline distribution groups.

It’s a shame existing service stations don’t see this as an opportunity rather than a threat, but perhaps unsurprising. If you live in one of these three states and would like to see the project happen, it’s worth writing to your governor or state legislature to voice your support, so the idea doesn’t get killed before it even gets off the ground. You could even write to Natso to suggest their members should embrace the idea as a new business opportunity and work with government to make it happen.