I am the first to admit that I am, at best, a mediocre environmentalist. My crimes against the planet are too long to list, but even the highlight reel makes me cringe: I take really long hot showers, for the simple and idiotic reason that I’m so busy daydreaming I forget to turn off the water. I get nervous when I’m home alone, so I leave on every light in the house, and to hell with greenhouse gases. My addiction to disposable paper goods is legendary – I am the Courtney Love of double-ply paper towels.

But, in my defense, I have done one purely selfless thing for the environment: I gave up my big, beautiful, gas-guzzling SUV. This might not sound like such a big deal except for the fact that I loved that car – truly, deeply loved it.

As a suburban mother, I have historically spent massive amounts of time in the car, transporting kids to soccer games, bar mitzvahs and after school activities. My requirements for cars have been pretty straightforward: I insist on side impact air bags, anti-lock brakes and a few strategically placed cup holders.

But when a sleekly designed Bavarian four-door came into my life, my vehicular indifference began to unravel. Whereas our previous family cars had been businesslike and unbeautiful, this one was a lithe miracle of German engineering. This car moved like a panther, sure and confident, holding the road like it was a beautiful woman. The car radiated power and grace; it moved beneath me like a well-oiled pool boy. I was in the grip of my first and only car crush.

This was the first car that I ever felt the need to claim with a possessive pronoun. Previous vehicles had been referred to as “the Honda” or the “blue car.” This one, without fail, I referred to as, “my car,” and that phrase was frequently attached to a strident command (like “no eating Cheez Doodles in my car.” Or “Don’t let the dog vomit in my car.”)

The car pressed my buttons, which is ironic since it hardly ever reacted when I pressed its buttons. Attempting to turn on the heat or defroster might bring a response, but on the other hand it might not. The car did whatever it wanted, and like many previous objects of my desire, it showed complete indifference to my comfort and well-being. But my passion for the car never diminished. Being seen around town with such a beautiful vehicle made me want to upgrade my own look – I ditched the relaxed-fit “mom” jeans and forced myself to do an abdominal crunch or two.

But the car and I were not meant to be: it was stylish, fast and arrogant, but it was also an unrepentant gas guzzler. On a good day it got 14 miles to a gallon; it was costing me a fortune and crapping all over my carbon footprint. So I traded it in for a daintier, gas-efficient model, a small and practical but unremarkable Toyota SUV. I have now reverted to my previous, businesslike attitude towards cars. Emotionally, I’m in much better shape, now that I’m free of the distracting passion of being a car slut. And I’ll be in better physical shape too, once I resume those ab crunches. Any day now.

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: navinophotography

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More alpha men and women seem to be answering the call of the wild, signing on as leader of the pack for several hours each day. For herders able to command six-to-ten furry friends at a time in a neighborhood park or at the beach, dog walking can rake in as much as $200 a day (minus the truck fuel). Scooping poop just got a lot more enticing!

But you should know it isn’t all fun and games, warns Emy Sakai, 29, owner and founder of The Urban Paw dog walking service in San Francisco. The consummate animal lover has been pet sitting and dog walking since the age of 12, starting her career working part time while working in office settings and then branching off to launch her own service, which she likens to running a daycare program.

“The dog walker is like the teacher on a preschool field trip who has to keep a very close eye on the kids or they might wander off or eat something that is poisonous,” she finds. “I use treats and positive reinforcement and know what they are doing at all times.”

Sakai walks some seven different breeds at a time at Fort Funston, a wild and breezy stretch of headlands, sands and dunes. It has become the new happy hour spot for unleashed thirsty beasts and their guides, and where she has seen a lot of newbies come and go. It’s easy to talk the talk but can you walk the walk?

“You have to walk the dogs rain or shine, get dirty and not be grossed out by a lot of things,” she shares. “You have to have thick skin. It’s not just hanging out with cute, fuzzy animals. Being the pack leader shouldn’t be viewed as a glamorous or good transitional job.”

Okay, so it’s not as cushy as being a personal assistant to Carrie Bradshaw or being the intern who erases the chalkboard on the Glen Beck set. You may not be after glamor. You may not be a cat person. But perhaps flicking a Frisbee or waving a ball wand is your idea of a fling.

Here are seven signs that dog walking is the career for you:

1. You form attachments easily, even with drooling mutts who won’t pick up their poop. (“It’s sad when clients leave and I don’t get to say goodbye or have one last walk,” shares Sakai. “They’re like our second kids.”)

2. You are seeking part time work with flexibility so you can play with your human kids or finish that novel. An indoor retail job would be impossible, and besides, they won’t let you wear your gnarly, muddy boots at Saks.

3. You’re an alpha personality (a.k.a. control freak) who feels powerless in your current position. Why won’t someone, anyone, listen to you? Why are you constantly interrupted by stupid humans? Dogs know their place.

4. When you run on the beach you feel like a lonely loser and envy the dog walkers you spot throwing balls and sticks and connecting with their four legged friends. You like throwing sticks. You want friends.

5. You are looking for way out of that booth at Starbucks and perusing your laptop for listings for desk jobs. Your tush is spreading like nobody’s business, but the bills are not getting paid. You need exercise and money. Who doesn’t?

6. While you are a master at multi-tasking, you have never had the right job to employ your skills. As a dog walker you can shout loudly (calling out each name so everyone around you can hear), run, scoop, praise, play, feed, defend and reward, all while socializing and commiserating with other walkers.

7. No matter how hard you try, you cannot get rid of that gas guzzling SUV but realize you can use it for a good cause, namely the outings with your Fidos. Better yet, your clients all live within walking distance and you can pick them up on foot and hit parks a few blocks away!

Images: revolution cycle, NinaZed

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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.

The post The 10 Least Green Government Subsidies appeared first on EcoSalon.

When historians look back on the fall of the American Empire, the Hummer may well serve as the symbol of cultural excess that brought down the once great nation. The Romans got gout and fell over from guzzling wine in lead pots; we bellied up to the gas pumps sucking down the sweet oily nectar that would flow forever.

If ever there was an apologue for the gilded anything-goes Clinton era, it is the Hummer. Hell, the car’s name itself calls to mind images of stripper-laden rap videos, $1,000 bottles of Cristal, cigars and teenage fantasies involving interns, corridors of power and sullied dresses.

Seemingly created for a real-time-action movie starring the Terminator himself, the Hummer was originally a military vehicle made famous in Desert Storm where some 20,000 of the vehicles helped display American might, showing the world once and for all, we make the rules when it comes to fighting wars in the Middle East.

Those days – and the Hummer marque – are long gone. GM announced that a deal to sell the brand to a Chinese manufacturer collapsed and it would begin to wind down the division unless another magical suitor has $150 million to burn. Ironically, the primary reason the Chinese government wouldn’t approve the deal was due to environmental concerns.

And the greenies rejoiced!

(Although, please keep in mind, 3,000 American jobs will be affected. As Bruce Springsteen said about his hometown, “Foreman says the jobs are going boys and they ain’t coming back.”)

In some ways, the Hummer already feels like a relic from another era. A vehicular charade from a time when play-acting weekend solider was a rich man’s hobby, and 5,363 American troops hadn’t lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Even Arnold Schwarzenegger himself bailed on the brand in 2006, and only 9,000 were sold in 2009. GM kept scaling them down, but the “efficient” H3 and its 15-mpg never captured the collective “love it or leave it” imagination like the original H1, and remaindered Hummers have been collecting cobwebs at dealerships ever since.

Does this mean Americans have become more responsible in their car-buying ways?

Well, Ford announced January SUV sales were up 8%. Alas.

The end of Hummer is a business decision, nothing else. But as far as symbolism goes, it’s a good day for common automotive sense.

There isn’t a lot to be said for the Hummer and one suspects it will die a quiet death, a lot quieter than the sounds of Earth being chewed-up by a pointless egotistical six-figure S.U.V. that should have been buried in the desert long ago, anyway.

In the end, there’s only one thing to be said about the Hummer.

Hasta la vista, baby.

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