Environmental Media Draws Teens into the Green Movement

When you think of sustainability, chances are that young adult novels and comic books are not the first things to come to mind. But getting kids to read new narratives may be the thing that piques their interest in the world's well-being. The green novel for adults is nothing new (Edward Abbey’s 1975 The Monkey Wrench Gang), and the earth-conscious read for kids and teens has been rapidly evolving (Carl Hiaasen’s 2002 Hoot). The hyper-popular YA dystopian novel is even incorporating elements of eco-awareness: from the coal mines of The Hunger Games’ District 12 to the desolate wasteland outside the walls of the Divergent series, environmental devastation is taking up more space in young adult literature. The newest wave of YA fiction is breaking away from the dystopia and focusing on the reality of the present, addressing green issues like fracking and environmental justice while keeping the focus on teen life.

Lori Ann Stephens’ new novel Some Act of Vision, for example, is a fast-paced read with a sci-fi lens. Currently a finalist for the National Reader’s Choice Awards in the YA category, Stephens’ novel centers around a young ballerina whose life is disrupted when fracking-induced earthquakes rip her town apart on the eve of her big debut. The geological disturbance destroys a nearby chemical plant, which releases a compound that has a, shall we say, interesting effect on her (that's where the sci-fi comes in--no spoilers here!). The political intrigue that follows the disaster is thrilling, and the splash of first romance balances out the whole book perfectly.

Stephens says she was listening to a piece on NPR about fracking when she thought of the premise for the novel. It hit her that her teenage son, and many young people his age, probably had no idea what was going on with the fracking industry in their home state of Texas—things like geological instability and water pollution so bad residents could light their tap water on fire. “The first step” she says in reference to eco-awareness, “is being aware and educating [yourself] about the reality of the situation.” She admits that including environmental catastrophe in her novel felt like a bit of a risk, adding that “youth already feel like their world is falling apart”. But despite the seriousness of the subject matter, Stephens hopes readers will see themselves in her protagonist and feel more empowered to engage with their environment and take part in activism on their own.

The comic book world is also taking a turn for the green. Like young adult novels, the material is engaging and colorful, with characters so vivid you feel like you could reach out and touch them. Comics like Mayah's Lot, about a young girl's fight to keep her inner city community from being exploited by a corporation that wants to dump toxic waste in an empty lot where she’s growing a garden, showcase teen heroes bringing people together to fight for the good of the city. Rebecca Bratspies is one of the authors of the comic (along with Charlie La Greca), and is also the founder of the Center for Urban Environmental Reform.

The main goal of comics like Mayah’s Lot and YA novels like Some Act of Vision is to reach young people with the messages they may be accustomed to tuning out. As part of a narrative, environmental issues become personal and tangible for teens, ultimately using fiction to deepen their awareness of the real world around them.

 

 

-Photos courtesy of Lori Ann Stephens and Charlie La Greca & Rebecca Bratspies, respectively

MAREN HUNSBERGER is an editorial intern at Sierra. She is a rising senior studying biology and environmental science at the College of William and Mary. She loves hiking, running, animals of all shapes and sizes, and wants to be David Attenborough when she grows up. 

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A Supercell is Born

While you were watching a CGI Godzilla emerge from the Pacific this weekend, these stormchasers were capturing the birth of a monster storm (no special effects required).

Thanks to the time-lapse video made by Basehunters, we can see this supercell thunderstorm taking shape over Newcastle, Wyoming.  

Bianca Hernandez is the Acting Web Editor at Sierra. She recently received her MA in Visual Anthropology from the University of Southern California and has written for various publications.

Throwback Thursday: Chiura Obata and his Sierra Legacy

Part of an ongoing series exploring the Sierra Club's archives, because with such a long, rich history we don't throw back, we throw way back.

Chiura Obata is known for his striking Sierra landscapes and bald depictions of internment camps. Despite a tumultuous, life this master never stopped teaching others. Born in Sendai, Japan in 1885, Obata moved to California in 1903 and continued to paint using the sumi technique he had learned at home. His signature ink brush illustrations of Yosemite would become his legacy. 

Some of his earliest subject matter was the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake and fires in San Francisco. In 1921 Obata established the East West Art Society in San Francisco which held exhibitions to promote cross-cultural discussion about art. 

A trip to Yosemite in 1927 would introduce him to the landscape that would become the focus of his future work. He became an art professor at UC Berkeley in 1939, where he would teach Gary Snyder, a man known more for his artistry with words than a brush.

After the attacks on Pearl Harbor, Obata and his family were "evacuated" to an internment camp in 1942. During this period Obata continued to teach others and produce his own works. Putting out a call for help from his Bay Area community, he raised funds for art classes, supplies and exhibitions for fellow prisoners. His haunting depictions of his imprisonment can be seen in Topaz Moon, a collection of his sketches, woodblocks and paintings from that time. 

After his release he joined the Sierra Club on their high trips and captured the “Great Nature” on his canvasses. 

Obata held painting demonstrations during these trips, passing on his unique perspective of the iconic sceneries.

Check out some of his paintings today and consider bringing painting supplies on that next hike. 

-- images courtesy of the Sierra Club Archives. Taken by Cedric Wright in the 1950s. 

-- Special thanks to Ellen Byrne, Sierra Club Librarian.

Bianca Hernandez is the Acting Web Editor at Sierra. She recently received her MA in Visual Anthropology from the University of Southern California and has written for various publications.

 

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Original Beards of the Sierra Club

Throwback Thursday: Retro Hiking Style

Women of the Sierra Club: Marion Randall Parsons

China Chips Away At Its Pollution Problems

Here’s some good news, China-style. Reports Vice: “Animal carcasses in its waterways, heavy particles in its air, toxic metals in its soil and food supply — these are a few of the things that led China to make waves on Earth Day by submitting proposals to its national legislature that would amend the country’s environmental protection law for the first time in 25 years.” If the proposals are approved by the National People’s Congress, China would increase its Ministry of Environmental Protection’s ability to enforce regulations, polluting companies could be closed, whistleblowers could gain legal protections, and industrial development could be restricted in certain areas. It all follows a declaration in March by Premier Li Keqiang, the second-ranked political leader and head of economic policy, of a “war on pollution” in the world’s biggest carbon-emitting nation.

Meanwhile, Greenpeace has issued a (moderately) optimistic report, “The End of China’s Coal Boom,” which focuses on coal policies announced by the government last fall and the coal pledges by 12 of China’s 34 provinces that have resulted from them. Coal consumption in China has increased at no more than 3 percent per year since 2012, which has a “How is this news?” aspect to it until you consider that 2003 and 2004’s rates were 19.2% and 17.5%, respectively. If China’s new coal programs are fully implemented, Greenpeace says, the slowdown in coal consumption “opens up a window of opportunity for peaking global CO2 emissions. Implementing the coal control measures could put China’s emissions almost in line with a 2-degrees trajectory.” (At the 2010 Copenhagen Accords, world leaders recognized the need to keep the increase in global temperature to no more than 2 degrees Celsius.)

That would be good news for all of us. “China’s coal consumption has become the single most significant determinant for the future of the world’s climate,” reports Greenpeace. “Between 2002 and 2012, CO2 emissions from coal burning in China increased by 4.5 billion [metric tons]. This is equivalent to the European Union’s entire emissions in 2011.”

If so much (tentatively) rosy news makes you a glutton for environmental punishment, you can follow the U.S. Embassy’s hourly Beijing air alerts. Spoiler: They seem to vary between “unhealthy” and “very unhealthy.”

Image of boy in Beijing smog by iStock/Hung_Chung_Chih

Reed McManus is a senior editor at Sierra. He has worked on the magazine since Ronald Reagan’s second term. For inspiration, he turns to cartoonist R. Crumb’s Mr. Natural, who famously noted: “Twas ever thus.”

Watermark: Diving into Water Use

The opening scene of Watermark, a new film from Edward Burtynsky and Jennifer Baichwal, creates a disorienting effect that leaves the viewer feeling tiny against the pure force of water. The film takes features 20 stories across 10 countries in what director Baichwal, Manufactured Landscapes and Payback, calls a “river-like rhythm.” Inspired by Burtynsky's images, the numerous stories create an overarching narrative around the ways we use, control and pollute water.

After working with Butynsky on Manufactured Landscapes (2006), Baichwal wanted to team up with the photographer again. His work had been the focus of her previous film about industrial manufacturing. When she saw the images he had been working on for a National Geographic essay about water in California, she knew it was the next film.

She felt that the dire tone of other environmental docs failed. Instead Watermark presents a visually compelling story that combines aerial vantages, macros shots and time lapses to present a holistic and artistic perspective. Baichwal said they wanted to capture the full reach of human interaction with water, resulting in a 90 minute film edited from 200 hours of footage.

Watermark moves between the expansive industrial projects around water, like China's Xiluodu Dam, which is six times the size of the Hoover Dam, and the individual human interactions with water, such as the water guard pacing the rice paddies of Yunnan, making sure no one diverts his family's supply. The lone guard’s patrol of trickling waterways contrasts with the Maha Kumbh Mela, a ritual gathering of 30 million people who bathe in a sacred river. Baichwal said the Maha Kumbh Mela served as the "spiritual connection to the water."

“We had broad and respectful ways of filming these stories,” Baichwal said. “Instead of having experts talking about it, we had the people living it.”

Another story focuses on the Dhaka, Bangledesh, leather tanneries that pump chemicals into the local water supply, highlighting the interconnectedness of different water usages. The same water used to process hides is later used for washing people and their clothes. In another scene the parched Colorado River Delta serves as a distinct contrast to the pools of Discovery Bay, a community built right onto the California Delta, built mere feet away from a body of water. California agriculture needs the scarce resource to produce the substantial amounts of produce it supplies the rest of the country, while the abalone farms near China’s Fujian coast are built into the water itself. There are parallels and divergences in how water is used by people around the world, but the recurring theme is that it is necessary for existence.

"It’s interesting living in Canada, which has about twenty percent of world’s fresh water supply. It’s very easy to take advantage of it," Baichwal said. "When you see the devastating effects of water pollution it’s impossible to take it for granted."

She wanted to create a greater awareness of and respect for water, but wanted to approach it different from other environmental documentaries. Instead of inundating viewers with interviews from experts, she chose a more philosophical approach. “We wanted to create a river - we wanted to immerse viewers in it,” Baichwal explained.

“I’m much more interested in understanding the complexity. Acknowledging complexity means not making quick judgements,” she said. “We worked hard on this film. Wanted to open up a space and move people. The power of film is that it can move you. The goal of the film is to do that and create an awareness, or expand our awareness, of this incredible natural force.”

Burtynsky’s studio is featured frequently as he makes edits to his book, Burtynsky-Water, which spans five years of work. The photographs were also part of a traveling exhibition in 2013, making this project a multi-platform experience.

The film, which won Best Documentary at the Canadian Screen Awards and Best Canadian Film from the Toronto Film Critics Association, is playing around the USA in limited release.

-- image reprinted with permission from filmmakers

 

BIANCA HERNANDEZ is the Acting Web Editor at Sierra. She recently received her MA in Visual Anthropology from the University of Southern California and has written for various publications.

Sorry Wired, Coal Isn’t the “Future of Clean Energy”

Ouch! Here comes the April Wired poking its finger in environmentalists’ eyes with its provocative headline, “Coal: It’s Dangerous, It’s Dirty, and It’s the Future of Clean Energy.” (Last time it was James Fallows in the Atlantic with “Dirty Coal, Clean Future,” which I discussed here.) Both features are well written, compelling, but absolutely wrong--and for the same reason.

To be fair to Wired contributing editor Charles C. Mann, his article is far more nuanced than its contrarian cover line might suggest. In fact, much of it details the environmental evils of coal, particularly in China, which gets three quarters of its energy by burning nearly as much coal as the entire rest of the world:

According to one major research project involving almost 500 scientists in 50 nations, outdoor air pollution annually contributes to about 1.2 million premature deaths in China. Another study argued that eliminating coal pollution in northern China would raise average life expectancy there by nearly five years.

That’s in addition to the horrific climate effects: 

China already emits one-quarter of the world’s greenhouse gases, more than any other country. The International Energy Agency (IEA), a Paris-based think tank sponsored by 28 developed nations, estimates that Beijing will double its ranks of coal-fired power plants by 2040. If that happens, China’s carbon dioxide figures could double or even triple.

Like Fallows before him, Mann goes on to note that China is making tremendous efforts to harness clean energy, deploying solar and wind faster than any other country. But, he argues, as much as the Sierra Club and Greenpeace may scoff, renewables can’t do the trick.

No one has ever powered a nation solely, or even mostly, with sun and wind over the long term . . . . [T]he process of replacing the present coal-and-gas grid with a new, sun-and-wind grid—all the while keeping the old grid running—will be long, expensive, and risky.

So to recap: Coal is awful. Renewables would be better, but scaling them up would be hard and cost a lot of money. Therefore, conclude both Fallows and Mann, the solution must be “carbon capture and storage” (CCS)--stripping out the carbon dioxide from the burning coal and pumping it away for storage in deep underground caverns. China has a number of such facilities (although it turns out that GreenGen’s billion-dollar CCS plant in Tianjin just sells its CO2 to soft drink companies).

Mann acknowledges that there are some major problems with CCS, though--it uses a tremendous amount of energy (“20 to 30 percent of a power plant’s output”), costs a fortune (“as much as $100 per ton of stored CO2”), and is still largely experimental.

[T]he world has just 12 fully operational large-scale carbon-capture projects, most in the United States. Not one of them is what is most needed: a facility that traps and stores emissions from a big coal-fired power plant.

And yet, he argues, CCS is the future of clean energy. Unexplained is why China would apply this fantastically expensive fix to its coal plants when it doesn't even provide simple scrubbers that would prevent the horrendous particle pollution Mann previously cited. China burns coal because it's as cheap as dirt, but if it’s suddenly going to cost $2 trillion a year to bury that carbon in the ground (Mann’s figure), the entire rationale for coal disappears. And even if CCS did become widespread, it would do nothing to lessen the environmental horrors of coal extraction, transportation, and coal-ash pollution. 

If you’re going to spend billions--or trillions!--to prevent climate disaster, why spend it on an experimental scheme to clean up coal instead of proven, zero-carbon, renewable technology? The only reason to keep talking about “clean coal” and CCS is what it has always been--to maintain the pretense that someday, somehow, the coal industry will clean up after itself, and to delay the inevitable switch to truly clean energy.

PAUL RAUBER is a senior editor at Sierra. He is the author, with Carl Pope, of the happily outdated Strategic Ignorance: Why the Bush Administration Is Recklessly Destroying a Century of Environmental Progress. Otherwise he is a cyclist, cook, and dad. Follow him on Twitter @paulrauber

Mission Compostable: Is Eco-Comedy Funny?

Why aren’t environmentalists funny? Because they recycle all their jokes.

Luckily this year’s Eco-Comedy Film Competition winners have better jokes than I do. Started by Professor Chris Palmer of American University, the competition is now in its fifth year and receives around 50 submissions annually. They are judged on multiple criteria and being funny is only one of them. The winning video receives $1,000.

Palmer, an environmental filmmaker and one-time stand up comedian, came up with the idea to combine his interests.

“[Participants] gain a renewed appreciation of how using comedy and humor can help convey the message of conservation more powerfully,” Palmer said. He hopes comedy can encourage people to act on environmental problems.

“Comedy has so much potential, and as advocates for our planet, we must learn to harness this potential to do good,” Palmer said at the DC Environmental Film Fest.

The winners were announced at American University. See this year’s top picks below.

First Place: Be a Better Roommate 

Second Place: Joe Wakes Up

Second Place: Go Green with Eloise

Third Place: Earth Copz  

 

 

--Cover image courtesy of iStock/

 

Bianca Hernandezis an editorial intern at Sierra. She recently received her MA in Visual Anthropology from the University of Southern California and has written for various publications.

 

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Green Your Humor: Irreverant News

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Closeup: How Green Is Your Camera?

Late last year, POV released the findings from its equipment survey of documentary filmmakers. Of the primary cameras and lenses used, Canon, Sony, and Panasonic dominated the survey. The minor players -- accounting for just 9% -- were Nikon, Red, Apple, and BlackMagic. One of the survey's missing components is information on the sustainability of these manufacturers. A basic kit is a big investment, so why not be aware of whether your money is going to an environmentally friendly company?

Climate Counts and the Center for Sustainable Organizations recently released a carbon-score-based study of 100 corporations. Among them, only 49 were deemed sustainable by the study, which in addition to emissions also considered factors beyond the environment, including social and economic impacts and GDP contribution. 

Canon comes in at number 4 on the list, high in the sustainability category. This isn't much of a surprise once you look over the company's extensive "Environmental Vision," which covers the materials it uses, the products it develops, its manufacturing processes, and its energy and resource use. Canon is working on a worldwide recycling program and trying to implement inverse manufacturing in the development of future products.

Sony is ranked an unsustainable 62. While the company has a big vision to achieve a zero environmental footprint by 2050, its closer benchmark in 2015 includes these reductions: CO2 emissions from Sony sites by 30%, energy consumption per product by 30%, and CO2 emissions in distribution by 14%. Sony has a pretty holistic sustainability plan available on its website that includes conservation, emissions reductions, and higher chemical standards.

Panasonic trails among the big three with an unsustainable ranking of 75. Perhaps this low grade won't last for too much longer, as the company has launched Green Plan 2018, a massive overhaul that aims to make it "the No. 1 green innovation company in the electronics industry by 2018." Some key points of this plan include CO2 reduction, a 99.5% recycling ratio, and an environmental education program. The environmental portion of its website touts that its sustainability concerns started with its founder, so it will be interesting to see what improvements Panasonic makes.

Though only one of the three top camera companies from the POV study makes the sustainable grade, these companies have clearly taken their customers' environmental concerns to heart and decided to act on them. They all have extensive plans that look at sustainability as more than simply achieving zero waste or CO2 reductions. Time will tell if these manufacturers uphold their goals, but meanwhile it's a good thing to keep in mind when shelling out major bucks for your next video or photography project.

 

-- image courtesy of iStock/perkmeup

Bianca Hernandez is an editorial intern at Sierra. She recently received her MA in Visual Anthropology from the University of Southern California and has written for various publications.

 

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5 Short Eco-Videos to Watch on Your Break

You have five more minutes on break and you've already caught up on your Snapchats and tweets, what's left to do? Why not watch some amusing eco-related videos in those last minutes before returning to your desk? Some are funny, artistic or even educational, but they are all worth a watch.

 

 

Amazing Ways the NBA is Going Green

The National Basketball Association is quickly becoming just as famous for getting bottles in bins as it is for balls in hoops. That's because the NBA has partnered with the National Resource Defense Council to drastically reduce the carbon footprint of the world's preeminent basketball league. From green building to grassroots activism, the NBA is showing initiative in making professional sports a more sustainable venture.

On February 12, as part of the lead up to this month's All-Star game in New Orleans, the NBA hosted a star-studded event promoting cell phone and electronic recycling. Former NBA players PJ Brown and Dikembe Mutombo met fans and signed autographs at the Sprint Store in Harvey, Louisiana. The two former players helped fans recycle their old cell phones and left with positive reviews about the NBA's green initiative. The Times-Picayune quoted Dikembe Mutombo saying, "This is a great initiative to help America go green." Also during this month's All-Star week, the NBA will host a Discover Green event which will feature bicycle-powered cell phone charging stations and simple tips to help reduce your daily environmental impact.