Fallen Giant

I was shocked to read last night that Wall Arch on the Devils Garden Primitive Loop, Arches NP, collapsed during the night of August 4th, 2008. Wall Arch was formerly the 12th largest in Arches NP and a favorite place to stop and munch a granola bar when hiking the Garden. I took this "before" photo in 2005 (click for larger view). News release with an "after" photo may be seen here. Of course, having an arch in the park collapse in one's lifetime is the rarest of events. But I really don't feel a sense of history. Just sadness. Farewell, old friend.

The Story of Stuff

It is a comparatively rare thing that I come across something deeply affective. All truly great creative work possesses a spark of inspiration and genius that makes it of seminal and enduring worth. But not even the best of human creativity necessarily moves me in so fundamental a way that my life would in fact be poorer for not having experienced it. And sometimes deeply affective food or art or music is not so much exceptional in genius as that my acquaintance with it was serendipitous. It fills a peculiar hole in my soul which I did not know I had.

I've had several such affective encounters recently, but one of the most startling was watching The Story of Stuff. I won't rehearse the story behind it, which was recently profiled in the Times. Basically, a passionate environmentalist made a popular web movie on a shoestring budget about the consequences of consumption which succeeded where so many have failed before. It is short, simple, upbeat, factual, and brutally effective. And massively popular. I expect few who watch it are entirely unmoved.

I was deeply moved. I've long been a passive environmentalist, but have generally preferred the denial of hard realities to the burden of responsibility. The Story of Stuff has knocked me off the fence. We all know that willful ignorance does not change unpleasant facts. So if you haven't seen it, watch it now.

(The original video on the Story of Stuff website is the best quality, but I've also embedded the YouTube version here.)

Missing the Train

A follow up to yesterday's post, I came across this article in the Times about a car-free community in Germany. The main subject is fine, but more interesting to me are the subsidiary considerations of (sub)urban planning, mass transit, etc., in the States. For example,

In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency is promoting “car reduced” communities, and legislators are starting to act, if cautiously. Many experts expect public transport serving suburbs to play a much larger role in a new six-year federal transportation bill to be approved this year, Mr. Goldberg said. In previous bills, 80 percent of appropriations have by law gone to highways and only 20 percent to other transport.

This comparative lack of support for mass transit in the States should be the first thing addressed in pursuit of more more sustainable carbon policies. Light rail initiatives here in Utah County have consistently failed for want of funding, while enormous state and federal investment has been made in highways. And the roads are still massively congested. With budgets in collapse, I have no optimism about any change in the short-term, but when the economy picks back up and fuel prices skyrocket, as of course they will, perhaps light rail will get another chance.

Bio-fuelishness

President Obama is still pushing hard to enforce legislated biofuel production and usage, despite widespread bankruptcy in the biofuel industry. This is a policy I disagree with. While biofuels may decrease greenhouse gas emissions (it may in fact increase them) and might reduce (very slightly) dependence on foreign oil, the rush to biofuels has driven up food prices, increasing poverty and instability in the poorest of countries. It has been broadly condemned even by many environmental progressives, because it is simply a repugnant trade of one set of evils (unsustainable oil consumption) for another (food scarcity, deforestation, etc.).

Obama is so sensible, and manning up to some many things, I don't know why he is supporting this particular failed Bush policy. The solution to our oil dependence are things like increased mass transit, urbanization and environmentally-responsible consumption. This is universal knowledge. Biofuels are just another enabling mechanism for what Bush infamously termed a non-negotiable "Amercan way of life." Which is, single drivers in large SUVs commuting to urban employment from distant suburbs to earn lots of money to buy mountains of cheap goods transported 3000 miles from sweatshops and toxin-spewing factories in the impoverished third world produced by workers making $7 per 14-hour workday.

As noble as this American way of life is, it is not sustainable, and biofuel will not change that fact. One estimate is that, "For the United States, attaining 20% biofuel content will require it to use 100% of its current corn production to power cars rather than feed people." Hardly a big-picture solution. I cannot guess Obama's intentions, but he must know this. But whatever he knows about biofuel, he also certainly knows that there is no will in America to end this way of life. End it will, of course, and likely a long emergency will end it. But that's another topic.