Above the frenzied commuters one Friday afternoon in Connecticut

A thunderstorm had crashed through central Connecticut at 2:30 p.m. I was going to take someone up Mount Higby, a traprock hill just off Route 66 between Middlefield and Meriden. He was worried it would thunder and pour rain again. So I went alone. And these are the trips that matter. These are the forays that take me out of my distracted, list-making accelerator-pedal life. The wind was crazy. The birches bent toward me. Another storm blew over without settling at all. Then brilliant sun.

Four brothers and 1,000-plus cows

The four Crave brothers and one of their sons in the basement of their farm's cheesemaking operation in Waterloo, Wisconsin.

SEJ conference in Madison

Governor Jim Doyle of Wisconsin tells the assembled at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference that his state has taken climate change seriously for several years.

Grantham Prize for Environmental Reporting

Last night reporters from USA Today described the work that went into a series of articles that won this year's Grantham Prize, awarded at the Newseum in Washington DC. Runners-up, who received "awards of special merit" were a team of freelance filmmakers who did the PBS series "e2 Transport"; three reporters from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel who dug into problems with chemicals we all use every day; and Andrew Nikiforuk, an Alberta, Canada-based journalist who wrote the book "Tar Sands" (Greystone Books).

See www.granthamprize.org for the background of these projects. I would include a hyper link, but the blogger technology is not cooperating with me.

The photo here shows Nikiforuk with Sunshine Menezes, executive director of the Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting and prize administrator for the Grantham Prize. The jury coordinator for the prize is Bud Ward, publisher of the Yale Climate Media Forum. See www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org.

As a member of the committee that helped screen the entries into a list of semi-finalists, I was especially glad to see Nikiforuk's exhaustive research and clear, graceful writing get this kind of attention. Too few people understand what exactly is involved in ensuring a steady flow of petroleum. We in the United States are going to be living by the destruction of the land that holds the thick substance known as tar sands, or bitumen.

Changing Behavior and Levittown: My Recent Writing

My review of the "Moving Cooler" report

A new Urban Land Institute report on Americans’ traveling behavior concludes that cleaner cars and cleaner fuels alone can’t reduce carbon emissions unless Americans drive fewer miles at slower speeds, avoid gas-burning traffic jams, and reduce their number of trips.

It’s all part of the prescription being put forward by a new ULI report linking carbon emission trends and excessive climate change to a growing population.

More fuel efficient cars and cleaner fuels alone simply won’t be sufficient, the ULI report says. Instead, it points to a need for those fundamental shifts in traveling patterns and behavior.

For the rest of my article, see the Yale Climate Media Forum:

http://www.yaleclimatemediaforum.org/2009/09/behavioral-changes-in-travel/

---
Return to Levittown

...
It has become politically correct since for social critics to speak of Levittown as a code word for everything gone wrong in American suburbia: here were thousands of cookie-cutter houses, plopped down many miles from shopping and jobs. Here were families all living the same conformist life, with prim front lawns on which no one seemed to do anything. Here were endlessly curving streets with names that all sounded alike.

And here were veterans’ families bedazzled by the austere park-like setting: in one old documentary a young Levittown wife stands in the developer’s office insisting on a particular home lot only because it is on Butterfly Lane. The land clerk winks at the husband and says, “Better let her have her way!”

Yes, it’s easy to critique Levittown and developer William J. Levitt, and scholars have done so, seeing it as the antithesis of community and sustainability. But there was plenty good about Levittown. People talked with their neighbors. The children played safely on the streets and yards, and their parents could watch them and the neighbors’ kids from inside the picture windows. People worked on their houses, felt incredible pride of ownership, and could afford the payments.

By far the most admirable feature of Levittown was that the homes were small. They were, in fact, typically smaller than the homes in which the World War II veterans who inhabited them had grown up.

FOR MY FULL ARTICLE, SEE blueridgepress.com.
This has appeared in New York Newsday and other newspapers. Blue Ridge Press is an environmental syndicate. Check it out.

The price of oil and us

Well, for a while there it looked as if people were going to stop driving so much. Now the price of oil has dropped by about $30 a barrel in just a few months. It's still not low. Car gasoline in the United States had never averaged about $2 a gallon until about three years ago. Remember how the gas stations didn't even own large number two symbols for their price signs, and they had to take small number fives and turn them upside down to look like a two?

The experts say that the wild jump of a few years ago and the wild drop of the past few months have little to do with long-term petroleum supplies in the world. They are because of the American dollar, which was very weak only a few months ago and now is strengthening; because of unrest in the Middle East; and because of financial speculation.

New version of book coming

Well, I'm going to be updating my book on alternative energy, for a 2009 publication by Lyons Press. I tell people why fossil fuels still rule and what an individual in America can do to use less energy and begin using alternative energy.

In my book...

Learn sobering facts about per-capita energy use in the United States.
Demystify solar energy.
Consider wind turbines.
Meet people who built micro-hydroelectric plants in their yards.
Consider whether to heat with wood.
Rethink how you get around. Compare hybrids to ordinary cars.
Explore geothermal heat.

Learn how to conserve energy at home.