“Your [sic] packed in like rats in Baltimore.”

[I'm aware of the mis-spelling of "your're."  I'm quoting someone.]

Said one exile from Charm City (er, The County) to me four years ago.  She went on to talk about how “green” the shithole she’s from is.  How awesome. Made me want to puke.  Hate Baltimore all you want, but don’t make shit up (not that you have to sometimes).  Population density is often a good thing.  Not often, but what’s always good, besides coffee and a quality notebook?

To her, however, I say FU–, uh, EAT your heart out.Cities are on the rise, and I’m happy about it.

Green spaces are fun?  Of course they are.  If we keep spreading out as the population of our small planet grows, we’re not going to still have it if we keep getting our two-acre plots with houses that exist merely “to keep the TV dry.”  One gets tired of people who have to drive 30 miles from their house to even get groceries in a car that boasts environmental stickers.  Such people undo everything they might do every time they go buy organic carrots at the Wholefoods that’s a half hour away (each way!).  But I’m not the only one to point this out; I can’t be.

There are no green cars.  Not really.  Don’t kid yourself.

But I digress. I’m talking about cities.  And how awesome they are.

And I forgot what else.

Piles of Climate Change.

Everywhere in Baltimore, we hear the sarcastic phrase, “Piles of Global Warming.” I just thought I’d clog up the internetz with the correct adage:

Piles of Climate Change.

Snow doesn’t disprove Global Warming.  It proves (or at least works toward it — I realize that it does not constitute a real proof) Climate Change.  Sorta.

The refusal to acknowledge the “new” popular terminology for how we’re fucking up the planet does go a long way toward proving that denials of Climate Change have nothing to do with science and a lot to do with habit, politics and curmudeonliness — maybe even frustration that this state and city lean to the left just a little, sometimes. But I think I’m overstepping myself there.  Aside from spending a lot of money and our high taxes, you’d think we didn’t live in a blue state sometimes though.

EPA: Greenhouse gases endanger human health.

Let’s put this into both the “Finally” and the “No Shit” columns:

The Environmental Protection Agency has concluded greenhouse gases are endangering people’s health and must be regulated, signaling that the Obama administration is prepared to contain global warming without congressional action if necessary.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson scheduled a news conference for later Monday to announce the so-called endangerment finding, officials told The Associated Press, speaking privately because the announcement had not been made.

(More.)

Testing the Jones Falls River.

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The University where I work awards seed funding to awesome faculty project in Central Baltimore. I helped to recruit applicants and continue to help support/promote their projects. One such project is an analysis of the Jones Falls River, the lower falls. If you ride along the trail, you’re aware of the, uh, poopy smell around the Streetcar Museum? That’s a leak. That’s one of the four test sites.

It’s much nicer than you’d think down there, though, along our urban river. There are tadpoles, frogs, fish, ducks, assorted birds that our Ecologist can identify but that I certainly can’t. There are even tomato plants growing near the poopy leak.

“Do you think they’re being….fertilized by what’s coming out of here?” I asked.

“Probably. And you know what else I thought of, John[ny]? What if they weren’t planted?”

OMG. GAG. There are also cuke vines. Some are above the water, on the side of the trail. But, as my friend Dan points out, the seeds could have been picked out of the water by birds.

Still, there is some genuine beauty and peace down there. And it was fun to play scientist for a day, spending an afternoon making up for my relatively useless major.

New recycling program.

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With all the bullshit we keep hearing about rats, garbage everywhere, trashcans with lids and idiots complaining about any kind of change that will make them take an extra step to do anything, we’re forgetting about our yet-again-improved recycling program. In case you’re not lucky enough to live here, One PLUS One started this week. That is, city residents get their trash picked up on one day of the week and their recycling picked up on another. Everyone’s mad at DPW. God forbid anyone try to improve something, wait, I mean, CHANGE something and force people out of lazy habits.

This is the kind of thing that can get Baltimore some good national press. How much better can a recycling program be than to take everything recyclable from your home every single week? Do cities like Portland and Chicago have recycling programs like this? But this is Baltimore, right? And our local news is run by a bunch of complete DOWNERS.

Two years ago, we got cans, glass, #1 and #2 plastic picked up once a month and paper picked up once a month.  It was, at best, a basic recycling program for a large, modern city.  Then Sheila Dixon started us on twice a month single-stream recycling.  Not only that, but if you paid attention, the plastics they would take increased from #1-2 to #1-7.  A lot of household plastic is #4-5, so this was an awesome, if quiet, improvement.  More recently, it was announced that these plastics even included things that had oil like butter containers, etc.  Up until last week, city residents could put all their paper, metal, plastic and glass out twice a month and have it recycled for them.  Up until last week, we had a very nice recycling system.

Starting this week, we get the same single-stream recycling pick-ups, but we get them every week.  EVERY WEEK!  How many cities are there where you put out basically everything in your home that is recyclable, and the city takes it all away every single week, without even requiring you to have a special container?

We don’t hear about this in our local news.  All we hear about is that “trash” pick-up has been reduced to once a week.  “And I been having dat pick-up day fer ferty years!” Oh, shit! There are gonna be more rats! More trash in the streets! People are gonna ferrgit! “Now I gotta git me a ke-an wiff a lid!”

Well, folks, you were never supposed to leave your fucking trash out without a can in the first place. This has always been a law, but it has seldom been enforced. Do you leave your trash out behind your home in bags? Well, blame yourself for the plague of rats in this fucking city. You did your part to bring them here, so why don’t you take a few in as pets or at least name a few of the fuckers and keep feeding them your trash that you leave all over your alley? You think trash is gonna be all over the alleys? Simple. Put it in your can. Did you know that trash in cans with tight lids usually stays there? (I know; HOLY SHIT! What a concept!)

You don’t think that three 32-gallon cans is enough for you? You create more than 96 fucking gallons of trash a week?! What are you putting in your trash? Do you use it for a toilet also?

Guess what? Sheila figured out a way to FORCE you lazy fucking 35% of Baltimoreans who don’t recycle at all. Ha! Ha! You think recycling is some liberal bullshit? Fine. Be stupid. But now you’re gonna be stupid and recycle, fuckers.

There, I’ve cussed enough on the innernetz today.

Finally saw An Inconvenient Truth.

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I finally got around to watching An Inconvenient Truth last night.  I was wondering what took me so long to get around to it, and I think it’s because of my own know-it-all-ism. As much as I fight it, I’ve become very eco-self-righteous.  From the stash of cans stacked in protest in my office because my workplace doesn’t recycle to my lack of car, I walk around like I’m more…consistent than other people.

I know; this is bullshit.  But when I hear someone who flaunts how anal they are about recycling (“I can’t believe UB doesn’t recycle cans!”) and how their $200 totebag is made of recycled cat turds (and fair trade, too!)  and when this person drives a fucking car to and from the suburbs (really the burbs of the burbs), I want to hold them down and lecture them about my own awesomeness. “No one gives a shit what your fucking purse is made of when you transport it in an SUV!”  Etc.

Which is ridiculous, stupid and mean.  I have eco-sins that I know about and live with, from my obsession with imported PVC-covered notebooks and plastic pens to my affection for imported beer and nylon sandals.  I justify them to myself because having no car and eating no meat and living in a small space transcends a lot of people’s efforts.  It makes me feel special and important and powerful and like people who make small efforts where I make huge sacrifices are wasting their time and self-esteem when they should be selling their cars, learning about bike repair and going vegetarian.

This kind of asshatery and assholery is something I really do make an effort to curb.  I really do.  It doesn’t do anyone any good for environmentalists to insult people’s efforts, when the truth is really that every little bit does in fact help.

Nonetheless, we’d all do well to remember that our little efforts are often outdone by the ways we have our heads up our own asses and the larger sacrifices we are unwilling (often referred to as “unable”) to make.  I can’t help but feel like a lot of people would in fact rather live in a hotter world with coastal land underwater and wars raging over scarce natural resources than to live in smaller houses and stop driving cars everywhere.  If that’s not true, then people:

1) Don’t really make the connection between their actions and concerns and a global crisis, in which case this kind of blindness really crosses the border into intentional ignorance, which in turn at this scale becomes a mild form of stupidity.

2) Don’t believe that the climate crisis is real or caused by us, in which case these people should stop drinking clean water, taking medicine and wearing seatbelts.  Because good science obviously is lost on people who don’t want to deal with something that might change their lazy and selfish habits.  Back to the Stone Age with them.

3) Can’t grasp that doing things like going car-free or living in a smaller place or closer to work is something in all of our control.  If one inherits a house that’s 100 miles from his job, this person is not stuck.  You can always move or change jobs.  Move to the city.  Get a job near your house.  Take a folding bike and transit.  Such a person values their own home/job/lifestyle over efforts to save the fucking planet.

That’s the point.  We can’t just buy recycled and hybrid versions of all the shit we already buy. This is going to take imagination and effort.

“I wish I could just ride a bike everywhere like you,” people tell me a lot.  I’m too “nice” in person to ask, “Then why don’t you?”  People who are able to live car-free can do so because they make choices around this lifestyle.  I live close to everywhere I want or need to be.  I don’t generally do things that require me to carry more than I can fit on my bike rack.  It’s not really hard, and it’s often more fun than driving. I’ve said before that I am largely a big kid who likes to have as much fun as possible, which cycling is for me — even in winter and when I’m tired.

Now I am getting self-righteous.  But it’s not me that I think is righteous, just putting one’s efforts and lifestyle where one’s mouth is, which I happen to buy into and try to do as much as I can.  But I know I suck at it.  Hard. I buy all kinds of shit I don’t need, hoard pens and forget my travel mug often. In true Thoreauvian spirit, however, I know that there is no environmental failure as bad as my own.

Please don’t send me hatemail about my choice of notebooks and my insistence that none of us sacrifices enough.  If you were so awesome as to sacrifice that much, I would think you’ve transcended assshole blog comments, too.

Now I sound like Jesus.

Your mileage may vary.

Why, in car commercials, are we still supposed to believe that 30 mpg is good mileage?  I remember when I was still a car owner (ahem!) and bought a car that was rated at 30 mpg on the highway — a very small car at that.  I was disappointed.  “What?  That’s all?  All that technology, and that’s the best they can do?”  Of course, gas was like $1.20 then, and eco-consciousness was not as widespread.  At least, I was clueless.  I thought recycling was enough.

Now, the same auto company still does not have their own hybrid technology, even though I met a guy recently who mistakenly said they did it first.  This same car company has a new SUV out this year.

Gee.  The auto-industry really seems to have their own self-preservation in mind.

What?

In the morning, I get four miles per bagel and then some on my hybrid [bike].  In the afternoon, not so much, going all up hill.  Maybe like four miles on a whole croissant.  That’s a steep hill, and I’m my own heavy cargo.

Staying home or running around?


This is a neat article on the environmental benefits of being lazy. Funny, I didn’t know that I have been saving the planet my whole life!

Yeah, but, uh, just so you know, person in article: not buying stuff does not make you a “transcendentalist.”

From the same source, a piece on kids never going outside. This is strange to me. When I was a kid, not going outside to play was a punishment or my parents being strict because of rain. We rode bikes, created our own baseball league with stats kept in copybooks, played guns, got into minor trouble, socialized sans playdates, etc. But the kids I work with on cycling, most of them, don’t do anything like that. If they go over one another’s houses, its by car and their parents’ permission. Two made it to thirteen without learning to ride a bike at all. But with cycling, you have to go out, learn, risk, engage. It’s very different from the online video games these kids use as social interaction.

I think that’s why they’re taking to cycling like they are. One young man has taken his bike as transportation a few times that I know of, trips of a few miles for which his parents would usually drive him. I think that’s awesome. A few of them seem to enjoy learning how their bikes work, and most of them are amazed when I tell them something like, “That wasn’t hard, was it? We just rode thirteen miles.”

There’s hope! And, ahem, it seems like bikes certainly help.

Earth Day 2008.


I was in Memphis two years ago on Earth Day, during a blogging hiatus. Scored this awesome pin at the Hardrock Cafe’ because I am sometimes a terrible tourist, and I love to hit those joints. A lot has happened since that Earth Day — in my own environmental endeavors and the world’s. Too much to write about.

I mean, the whole “green” thing was hot last year. It’s hotter this year. Like a lot of people, I was worried that it was just a fad. That the fixie crowd would ditch their bikes, that organic food would dwindle again, that hybrids would get fewer and uglier. But it seems like it’s either a long-living fad or becoming the norm.

My initial concern is that I’m losing some cool factor. Recycling and buying recycled goods are getting mainstream enough that I’m not that awesome for wearing a recycled steel necklace and junk. Lots of people in Baltimore brave the traffic and the hills to cycle now. But this is something I’m happy about. I mean, “the more, the merrier” applies here as much as it possibly can. With my windows open on University Parkway, I constantly hear freehubs and old freewheels clicking by. I want to cheer everyone on, but there are too many. So I stick to yelling at joggers who ignore the empty sidwalk to run in bike lanes.

My other concern is that we’re all going to half-ass any green efforts. Ooooh, there are some recycled Coke bottles in my shirt. BFD — what are your jeans made of? Too much of the green craze revolves around buying shit, which is largely how we started messing up the planet so much anyway — material showing-off. [My TV is on because I wanted to hear a weather report and not get too into NPR to do what I need to do this morning. Ed Norton just said that plastic bags are the stupidest things we are doing. Hey, dude. Yeah, you. Heard of cars?] I know; I do that, too. I’m just saying. Driving a big SUV pretty much cancels out most of what else you do for the planet, doesn’t it? I mean, seriously, look at how much of your carbon footprint your car is, even hybrids, which are made of the same junk as any other car before you even buy them.

Off my high-horse now because everyone I know has a car. So at least I retain some of my awesomeness, being the only (aside from my wife, of course) intentionally car-free person I currently hang out with or am related to. [Though Mr. D has gone mad car-light with The Mule and pedals around town constantly.] And I don’t pretend that environmental issues are the only reason I went car-free, either. A large part of that decision was my own neuroses.

I don’t mean to insult anyone, and I totally get some bummed rides all the time. Don’t send me hatemail because you love your car. I realize that my bike was made overseas, that my pedals, lock and tools are covered in vinyl, that the metal and plastic on The Duke didn’t grow on trees. I know my own shortcomings, too, like non-recycled, imported notebooks, my fleeting weakness for French bubbly water, my Tevas, my fondness for cheap pens in spite of my collection of Goodkinds, my failure to remember travel mugs, etc. Very verily etc.

But I’m not the only one with a long way to go.

Shell be gone?

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Holy Oily Sand, Batman! Shell’s CEO, Jeroen van der Veer, admits that peak oil might be here in seven years. Read the story and letter here.

What is “peak oil”? “Peak oil is the point in time at which the maximum global petroleum production rate is reached, after which the rate of production enters its terminal decline. If global consumption is not mitigated before the peak, the availability of conventional oil will drop and prices will rise, perhaps dramatically.”

That means that we’re running out. Guess who’s going to get oil when it really starts to disappear? Not you, not me. Probably the airlines, industry, the government — all groups who should have freakin seen this coming. Maybe rich people will be apple to get oil. Probably. I can see all the cars in Hampden and Roland Park disappearing for tiny versions of their former selves, more bikes (which now sell for two thousand dollars), then the huge houses down the street from me on University Parkway having land yachts with combination locks on the gas tank doors and armed guards circling them. The engines left running as a disturbing display of wealth.

Not to mention things made of oil like plastic. Starbucks might charge you for that lid soon, man. Plastic will replace gold for bling!

What? You just bought a big SUV or hovercraft? That sucks for you, dude.