Lingual Tremors

PET Bottle Dwelling

And while we're at it, check out the PET-bottle Dwelling project from the 2005 Workshop, "Local Sources" in Monterrey Mexico.  Full project description and images of the whole building process here.

SEEing Water Bottles: Eduardo Srur's PET Project

Brazilian artists Eduardo Srur's latest project is bringing some startling visual awareness about water pollution to Sao Paulo.  He has placed 30 inflatable sculptures of giant 2 liter soda bottles along the Tiete River, one of the most polluted rivers in Sao Paulo.  This great picture from Mega Environmentalism encapsulates the impetus for the project:

The large sculptures (which also light up at night) are meant to raise awareness about pollution and clean water.  Just where do all of those plastic bottles we use everyday go?  And, what are the ramifications of this consumption?

From Para ver e pensar's Picasa gallery

See more of the project:

• Here (Srur's official site)
• Here (Blog's Monologue)
• Art Knowledge News

On Water Pollution in Brazil:

Urban Water Pollution (via IPS)

What to do with water bottles? Make an aquarium!

Miwa Koizumi's PET Project

It seems that Earth Day this year will be a big deal.  Even Macy's Department store is sporting a huge inflatable world at its front entrance to call awareness to Earth Day. 

I think that thinking about the environment is important everywhere, but in New York it has a particular importance.  Obviously, we do not, as a large urban community, take care of our own garbage.  We rely on other land and people to deal with the massive amount of trash and recycling thrown out everyday.  A general lack of awareness about the environment is perhaps bred by the industrialized nature of the city with its emphasis on concrete over green spaces.  Even today, you can sometimes walk for blocks seeing only concrete and no green space.  And, many people are far too casual about trash, tossing their litter in people's yards, on the streets, and on the subway tracks.  So, enter New York artist Miwa Koizumi who takes plastic water bottles and transforms them into underwater sea creatures.  See images of the creatures, like jellyfish, here.  And the "aquarium" here.  Read more about the artist here.

Eco Friendly Funerals

Via AP news today (from Salon), eco-friendly funerals are encouraged in London.  From cardboard coffins to use of dry ice instead of embalming fluid to eco-friendly clothes that will disintegrate easily, green funerals are the wave of the future. 

Biodegradable coffins (CNN)
How to green your funeral (Treehugger)
Green funerals catch on in the U.S. (Celsias)
 

Melling Morse's Split Box House

Ohhh.... this just makes me want to move out of the city and buy a little piece of land somewhere and design from the ground up:

It has passive solar heat, a rainwater collection system on the roof, is made from environmentally friendly wood, and has groovy landscaping.  Read the whole article on treehugger here.

I Love Greenpeace. Visit EfficienCity

Greenpeace has launched EfficienCity, a "climate friendly" model of what a town could look like and how it could manage its power needs in a more sustainable fashion.  You can tour the city and see real-life examples of how some of this is already in action in the UK.  Seriously cool!

Sending Secret Messages To Others: Sidewalk JINGOISM NOT APPRECIATED

Overheard on my way to the subway on Friday:

"See, in America, our technology is so much better.  There's no pollution here because of our technology.  Our factories are clean.  Our cars are clean.  It's not like China.  They have pollution, but we don't.  They could learn a lot from America.  Our technology is just so good."

Why, for the love of God, doesn't anyone love me $299.00 (+tax!) enough to buy me these (BOSE noise canceling headphones) so I don't have to hear New York?

Plastic Oceans?

Head on over to Coffee House to read Matt's piece on Plastic Oceans.  Make sure to follow the frightening links.  I'd be really interested to see if NOAA follows up on this to provide more information.

It's going to be a green, green christmas...

Everyone is going green this Christmas.  You've already heard about the Rockefeller Christmas tree's LED lights (some pics later today).  Now, Treehugger reports that funky Carnaby Street in London has eschewed lights for cool iridescent paper rings.  Cool!

Carnaby Launches Christmas Decorations:  A Chain Reaction

Abby & Laura, of Hippyshopper

Six Sins of Greenwashing...

NPR had a completely annoying article on "greenwashing" Friday morning.  I immediately sat down to chronicle the annoyance of the post & then was, given the time of the year, distracted by VIMNAA (Very Important Matters, Needing Attention ASAP).    And this is actually my larger point:  please don't waste my time. 

As we all know, everyone is anxious to be seen as "environmentally friendly" these days and it's hard to determine what that really means.  So, NPR reported that eco-friendly marketing firm  TerraChoice has indentified six "sins" of greenwashing: 

• Sin of the Hidden Trade Off
• Sin of No Proof
• Sin of Vagueness
• Sin of Irrelevance
• Sin of Fibbing
• Sin of Lesser of Two Evils

While this is great, and you should read their longer document on greenwashing, let's cut to the chase:  they identified 1,108 consumer products which made 1,753 environmental claims.  Of these products, they determined that all but ONE--that's 1,107 products--made assertions about their product that were "demonstrably false or that risk misleading intended audiences."  That sounds great, right?  What an amazing piece of research!  I thought "wow, I'd really like to know if my Seventh Generation dishwasher detergent is as eco-friendly as it claims."  But TerraChoice in the interview, and on their homepage, refuses to identify any of the products that they looked at.  Instead, the "greenwashing paper" is essentially a 15 page instruction manual on how to duplicate their research yourself, to make sure that you are not being duped in the eco-friendly marketplace. Give me a break.  If I had time to investigate all of these companies, then I wouldn't be running into stores and buying things marked "eco-friendly" in the first place!

Now, maybe it's just me and you all have oodles of time to research each and every item that you buy.  But me?  I did my two-week grocery shopping in a record 21 1/2 minutes on Saturday morning before I rushed off to my next 10 hours of stuff to do.  You know what would make my life a little easier?  A report from TerraChoice that actually showed which products are not living up to their claims.  For instance, I have no idea if TerraChoice "ignored" products with a good reputation or if they simply went after everything on the market.   Did they investigate the products they market?  Only other products? 

I don't really see the point of engaging in a vapid research project & publishing it if you aren't going to stand behind your work.  I can imagine all sorts of reasons why TerraChoice would do this research, but to publish it and not offer the true results of their research seems irresponsible to me.  The only good thing to come out of the report is a recommendation that you buy products that have ecologo or green seal.

Both of these companies have lists of products, easily accessible on their web pages, which have been 3rd party verified.  So, this seems like a good, practical (and easy!) solution.

And while the six sins of greenwashing might be interesting, I don't have time, right now, to investigate before I shop.  Me & the rest of mainstream U.S.A., so TerraChoice made a loud sound, signifying nothing.

In Which LX Is Surprisingly Poly: Lingual Y & Al Gore-- My Men

An Open Letter to Al Gore

Dear Al,

Yesterday, while I was walking around New York City, I saw an old, old (1988) copy of National Geographic.  You might remember it:  it made headlines for the unusual hologram of the Earth on its cover.  My grandparents had a copy on their coffee table and I wanted it.  I had never seen anything quite like it.  The title of the issue was, "Can Man Save This Fragile Earth?"  If ever the answer were yes, it's now.  And if ever there were a man, it's you.  Al Gore, I love you.   You're hot.  Not "New York City is 20 degrees too hot for the current season" hot, but, like, hot, hot.  You know.  Hot.  In the good way, not the environmentally climate changing bad way.

Now, of course the environmental world is bigger than you and your slide show.  Of course the IPCC is as deserving of the Nobel Prize.  Of course the small gains we've made in the environment are the result of a small group of dedicated individuals who have refused to be cowed by the larger social rhetoric of memememememememememe.   Of course the environmental movement is a huge group of like minded people who want to save the world. 

But, tonight, what I want to say to you is this:  you won.  In the end, who cares about being President of the United States?  10, 20, 30 years from now, George W. Bush is just going to be the punch line to some lame-ass joke at a cocktail party.  But you?  You'll forever be a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

To be a really good president, you would have been necessarily deadlocked by a Congress that would have fought you every step of the way, just because it could.  Call it governing by obstinance rather than logic.  So really?  You probably would have been, despite your best intentions, a quite mediocre president whose gains would have been as inconsequential as a small grain of sand in the hourglass of history.  All of your best efforts and all of your best ideas would have taken second place to voter polls and issue tracking.  Or, you wouldn't have gotten anything done.  You'd have spent 4 or 8 years in photo ops.  You would have had to solve the problems of a small and increasingly impotent country and its bloated and corpse-like bureaucracy.  (Of course, you probably would have kept us out of Iraq, so there is that).

Now, you get to save the world.  In the last 8 years, you have bloomed.  We know, from An Inconvenient Truth, that the environment has always been your passion.  But, that passion was absent from your campaign and more importantly, your platform.  I didn't even know that you were an environmentalist: that's how far your ideals had already slipped. 

Now, you get the world as your soapbox, the Earth as your project, and us as your willing audience.  Congratulations.  It couldn't have happened to a better guy, with a better project, more willing to work with everyone to make a change.

P.S.  It's really scary how much worse things have gotten in 20 years.  I keep comparing the National Geographic issue to your book.  Can you say "climate change havoc?"  Don't celebrate for too long.  It's already time to get back to work.

Linky, Linky!

Seriously. Cool.  Environmentalism.  Cityworm.  Check it out!  And, make sure you see "this dirt museum."

Fellow knitters, see also the "one red worm" instructions here.

I've also linked to Naomi's blog "a little red hen" in the new & improved blogroll (look right!  it's back!).

New Cool Blog

Check out Matt's new blog:  Environment Solutions.  There's a ton of great stuff up there.  I particularly like the post on the hydro-electric plant!

Ban Hummers. Seriously.

Thanks to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, New York city is seeing green this summer.  Posters and billboards pepper the city with suggestions about how to save energy and money.  These ads encourage recycling, replacing regular light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs, turning off air-conditioners when you're not home, etc.  This poster is part of that ad campaign.  What's great about this poster, however, is the final annotation, "Ban SUVs/Hummers!"

This made me laugh.  I've been on a Hummer rant for a while.  You've seen their ads, featuring the planet Earth and the Hummer--or the images of the Hummer breaking trails in "untouched" wilderness.  That is, the Hummer "conquering the virginal earth."  How very masculine.  How very patriarchal.

When I was in L.A. this spring, I couldn't believe how many Hummers were clogging the highway.  At one point, I just couldn't get a good shot from the car, but in front of me, spread over 4 lanes, were at least 10 Hummers in a rainbow of colors.  They weren't from the same dealership--they seemed to just be random drivers stuck on the same freeway. 

As a new bike rider, I am very aware of Hummers trying to drive down our narrow, car-clogged streets.  If I'm biking on a street where people are parked on both the right and the left and a Hummer comes through, I have to get onto the sidewalk or risk getting hit. 

It really makes me wonder.  As our government seeks to continue to limit choices and to regulate our lives, why don't cars and car owners have to come into line with what's good for the rest of us?  SUVs and Hummers take an extraordinary toll on the environment.  Shouldn't that count? 

Moreover, it's outrageous that Hummer owners get a tax break.  Let me say that again:  Hummer owners get a tax break.  ???? Huh ????  According to Code Pink:

Hummer dealers are snagging new customers by telling them they can get a tax write-off of up to $100,000 as a business expense. How can that be? This tax break was originally designed for farmers and their trucks, but the legislation defines the vehicle by weight, not use, creating a loophole big enough to drive a Hummer through. Many people are furious about this loophole and are pushing for Congress to change the law.

Why does anyone need a car that big?  And why do they need a tax break?

This is cross-posted with my Project 365 blog.

Read more:

Code Pink's Top Ten Reasons Not to Buy a Hummer

The Flipping off Hummers Website

2004 BBC Article on Hummers & Hybrids

China & Carbon Emissions: Economic Exploitation

The Guardian has done a very interesting series of articles on the recent news that China has outpaced the United States in carbon emissions.  I think the U.S. media has jumped on this because they are so happy that it's finally not the United States.  In essence, the prevailing sentiment is "yay!  We can blame someone else!" From the articles (and the images I posted last week of the polluted water in China), the environmental situation seems pretty dire.  Here's a description from one of the Guardian's articles:

On a bad day - which can be hundreds in a year - the ancient city of Linfen in the northern province of Shanxi is environmental hell. Named by the World Bank last year as having the worst air quality on Earth, its 3.5 million people more often than not choke on coal dust; its soil and its rivers are covered with soot, and its Buddhas are blackened and shrouded in a toxic mist.

China's entry onto the world stage has been literally fueled by coal.  Much of the carbon emissions are related to an over-reliance on coal as a source of energy.  From afar, it sounds horrifying and reminds me (and probably everyone!) of the early history of industrialization.  This seems not so far removed from Dickens' soot-covered London or the sooty tenements of New York City.  The article goes on to discuss how the Himalayans are melting and rivers are drying up.  Among the consequences on China are health, environmental degredation, and inaccessibility of clean water.  A different article explores China's rising cancer rates:

Chen Zhizhou, of a cancer research institute affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, said the situation was getting worse. "Many chemical and industrial enterprises are built along rivers so that they can dump the waste into water easily," he told the China Daily. "Excessive use of fertilisers and pesticides also pollute underground water. The contaminated water has directly affected soil, crops and food."

While China's carbon output has caught the attention of the global community, I was interested in two items buried in that news. 

The carbon footprint of the average Chinese last year was only a quarter of an American, or half that of a Briton.

and

John Sauven, director of Greenpeace, said: "Responsibility for China's soaring emissions lies not just in Beijing but also in Washington, London and Tokyo. The west has moved its manufacturing base to China knowing it was vastly more polluting than Japan, Europe or the US."

Although China has outpaced the U.S. and other industrialized nations, in many ways, the west is still to blame for this.  By moving our manufacturing base to China and India, we avoid taking responsibility for our own production and consumption.  It's a form of extended economic colonialism reliant on the exploitation of others.  What if the U.S. and other industrialized nations worked to support green business practices in China (and at home!)?  What if we actually paid for what things cost instead of always trying to get more for less?  There are, of course, no easy answers here, but it feels like China is in the midst of a horrific environmental disaster and it's hard to watch that from afar and know that the U.S. is integrally linked to that destruction.

China's Carbon Footprint:

Guardian Articles:

• China Overtakes U.S.
• Beijing Blames Pollutants for Rise in Cancer
• China's Climate Change Plan
• As Glaciers Melt and Rivers Dry Up
• Isabel Hilton, We Must Take the Lead

For Your Next Flight, Consider Taking the Train

From UK Greenpeace:

Impromptu ticket exchange booths have been appearing in airports across the UK. Greenpeace volunteers (fetchingly dressed as stewards and stewardesses) have been offering BA passengers checking into domestic flights climate-friendly train tickets instead, and talking to them about the damage aviation does to the environment (10 times more than taking the train).

Just a Thought, When You're Sucking Down that Bottle of Evian or Fiji...

"water samples collected by Wu Yilong from Chinese urban rivers and lakes."
Photo credit: Teh Eng Koon/AFP/Getty Images
Via: Treehugger

Clean water. Concerned?

Read on, my friends!
United Nations Water Site

Real Recycling Comes to New York

The New York City Spring 2007 Public Recycling Project is putting these bins in some (too few!) public places as a pilot project for NYC recycling. The bins are in:

Bronx: Poe Park Brooklyn: Columbus Park Manhattan: Union Square Park & Whitehall Ferry Terminal Queens: Hoffman Park Staten Island: Tappen Park, Cloves Lake Park, St. George Ferry Terminal At each location, there will be pairs of recycling containers, both within the sites as well as the perimeters, to capture recyclables from passersby.

I think it's a smashing idea; I'm not sure why it's a pilot project instead of a full-blown recycling/education effort, but it's a good start. So, if you see them, use them!

What Would Google Say?

Here's an interesting new project:  "What Would Google Say"?  A description of the project:

Took the first 200 images that appeared in a Google image search for the search term “global warming.” Uploaded all the images into Adobe Premier and then laid down a sweet track, which in this case is Rob Dougan’s “Clubbed to Death” from the Matrix soundtrack.

Visually interesting, particularly in terms of "visual rhetoric", how we emphasize what we are say.

April 14th: Global Climate Change--Be Aware!

I'll be in LA, but if I weren't, I'd be here, with the Sea of Change group working to raise awareness about global climate change.

Consumption-itis: Living on Less

It seems like we are all appropriately agog with environmentalism.  Here in the Lingual home, we are continuing our efforts to slowly green our apartment.  The latest?  We've moved to earth-friendly dish detergent and are slowly replacing all of our cleaning supplies with earth-friendly products.  But our fledgling efforts have nothing on No Impact Man who is trying to live a no-impact lifestyle for a year in Manhattan.  And I agree that learning to live without making an impact on the environment in New York City is a huge challenge!  Read his blog here.

And we really have nothing on the Tremor parental units who are now considering geo-thermal heating for their home.