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Noted thinker Lester Brown says the US’s way of dealing with the environment is much like Enron’s dealing with finances: it’s keeping costs off the books.

Speaking at the Aspen Environment Forum and quoting a raft of statistics and others, Brown says, “Socialism collapsed because it did not tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not tell the environmental truth.”

So, do tell, right? What’s this silver bullet, this magic elixir that will sober us up and get us on track with environmental fixes? Taxes. Yes, the dreaded word that you’ll only perhaps hear mumbled out of a politician’s mouth.

“We need taxes on coal, not income,” Brown says. Of course there’s more. A whole lot more of a strategy that Brown lays out in Plan B, his new book, on how to go from ignorance and arrogance to understanding and proper utilization of resources.

He too looks to the sun for much of the solution. Forty million homes in China, he points out, have already switched to rooftop solar water heaters. By 2020, 110 million homes are expected to have rooftop solar water heaters in China, fully proving enough hot water for almost half a billion people. Algeria, he also notes, is developing enough solar power and transmission lines to export energy to Spain. 

Meantime, there are things we can do. If all the world switched to CFL bulbs we’d reduce energy demand by 12%, or the equivalent of 700 coal plants.

But at the center of Brown’s Plan B is the economy. We have to completely restructure it, he says to take into account the world’s natural resources, which are now subject to subsidy and odd trading between nations. The challenge can be met by raising public awareness. And the key driver in that is the media.

In other words we have to get the word out that the world is in an environmental crisis and showcase specific ways to fix it. If this conference is any evidence, that is occurring rapidly. The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, ABC News, National Geographic and other news media in attendance here say they are stepping up their coverage—mostly via the Internet.

Budgetary constraints keep environmental news off the air and the front pages much of the time. But they try.

So again, it can be said, it all goes back to the economy. Environmental truths must be told.

As another noted environmentalist and thinker, Amory Lovins, noted in a speech he gave here: the US provides $250 billion in energy subsidies.

As I write that, AAA is reporting that gas prices have reached a new high per gallon.

Things aren’t adding up. And that’s just how things began to unravel for Enron too.

In a candid conversation with an audience here at the Aspen Environment Forum, eminent biologist/naturalist EO Wilson said soccer moms are killing off bio-education because they don’t let their children experience nature.

In what he calls the “soccer mom syndrome” Wilson said the worst thing a parent can do for a child is to take him or her to a botanical garden where all the trees are marked and labeled. Instead, “Go to the seashore and give them a pale pail and bucket. Let them experience nature…and then come back and ask questions,” Wilson said, admittedly paraphrasing Rachel Carson’s advice. Carson famously wrote the book “Silent Spring.”

Wilson, who is compiling an encyclopedia of life (www.eol.org), which will describe every species known to man, didn’t back down when a woman from the audience said that she would “forgive him” for the soccer mom comment.

“Don’t,” he responded. “Think on it.”

Wilson filled more than an hour of questions and answers with witty remarks and barbs. And to be sure, his tone was playful. Yet, there was a seriousness behind his “soccer mom” remarks that struck a cord with many people in the audience: Have children been largely cut off from nature because of technology?

Many people agreed that they have, with video games, the Internet and structured play times replacing — as comedian George Carlin commented in a recent skit — sitting outside in a yard with a stick wondering how to entertain themselves.

That creative process — kinesthetic — is perhaps immunizing children from nature and therefore creating a social environment that entails less caring for the outdoors and all its splendors, people said.

It’s an interesting discussion in an age when children’s schedules and days are filled with all sorts of activities–but leave little time for children to entertain themselves outside.

Wilson said there is nothing to fear with nature. “I feel more afraid sometimes in big cities than when I step into a rainforest,” he said.

Appreciation, in other words, can only be had by first-hand experience. Virtual surrogates just won’t do.

Soccer moms take note and, I’m sure, some offense.

I’m here at the Aspen Environment Forum where big thinkers from all around the world have gathered to discuss climate change. It’s warm and sunny; curious considering it’s still ski season. Weather like this, of course, brings about the obvious remarks on global warming. And those casual comments can be easily discarded. But when the scientists put on their mad caps and the pinwheels begin to spin as their brains heat up, it’s hard to ignore their findings.

Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT, told us last night that it takes 12 terawatts to power all man’s uses on the planet annually. And that number will grow…to 14, 16 terawatts during this lifetime. There’s only one solution, he says, that will create enough energy to fulfill that power demand: solar. Don’t be fooled, he says, into believing otherwise. Run the numbers, as he did, as you see that he’s right. Wind, hydro, nuclear — all the alternatives just don’t add up. That is in any rational sense.

Nocera says the whole scientific community is banding around the solar solution. He personally is looking for a photovoltaic solution, which he explained would essentially make a dead source alive by empowering it with the ability to photosynthesize. “It would be a reverse fuel cell,” he says.

All this powered by solar to replace our reliance on fossil fuel production because it’s no longer a sustainable form of energy — nevermind the environmental consequences. To that end, David Sandalow, director of the environment and energy project at the Brookings Institution commented that every one will be driving plug-in hybrids in the future.If their power source could be solar, we’d wipe fully one-third of fossil fuel energy use away in the US alone. Considering the US uses 25% of the world’s energy supply, that’s one terawatt down…11 to go.

They’re still thinking…      

Just off the coast of New York is the Gulf Stream. It’s a weird current that moves warm water from the Equator northward to the Arctic.

I swam in its bounty every summer as a kid on Cape Cod. I felt lucky because lots of my friends had homes on the other side of the Cape, and the water there was much colder. But the current is reportedly slowing down. And that means colder water along its northern stretches, such as Cape Cod. In other words, my kids may not be as lucky as I was to swim in warm water and snub noses at their friends; the water will be equally as cold.

Of course there could be more serious consequences of the Gulf Stream slowing.

If you recall the film The Day After Tomorrow, the reason New York and northern latitudes went into deep freeze was because the current stopped abruptly. Scientists say the current won’t scream to a halt; that was Hollywood fantasy. But a slowing has its own dramatic consequences — mostly more extreme winter temperatures in northern regions.

The Guardian newspaper best describes the Gulf Stream for the general public: “The current is essentially a huge oceanic conveyor belt that transports heat from equatorial regions towards the Arctic circle. Warm surface water coming up from the tropics gives off heat as it moves north until eventually, it cools so much in northern waters that it sinks and circulates back to the south. There it warms again, rises and heads back north. The constant sinking in the north and rising in the south drives the conveyor.

“Global warming weakens the circulation because increased meltwater from Greenland and the Arctic icesheets along with greater river run-off from Russia pour into the northern Atlantic and make it less saline which in turn makes it harder for the cooler water to sink, in effect slowing down the engine that drives the current.”

Warmer areas and factors such as the Gulf Stream get less attention in the context of global warming because higher degrees in areas of higher temperatures create marginal differences. If the temperature were heading in the opposite direction, on the other hand–getting colder–all eyes would be on the Equator and things like the Gulf Stream. It’s worth looking at the world’s hot spots today because, ironically, they may make the world colder in the age of global warming. And those extreme weather conditions will need to be dealt with too.  

From that perspective The Day After Tomorrow is already here: Last year some of the coldest temperatures on record were recorded…in some of the world’s warmest areas.

Global warming shouldn’t be ignored in warm areas either. 

Since my arrival in New York City, I’ve been heartened: Every time I go out to dinner with friends they jump in ahead of me to answer the waiter’s inevitable question: “Would you like a bottle of water for the table?”

“Tap is fine,” is the resounding answer.

Tomorrow is World Water Day. It’s a great day of awareness because water is so essential and so universal a need. As I’ve written before in this space: Besides air, water is the one other thing we can’t live without for very long — about 3 days in fact.

Yet our water awareness is scant. That’s why World Water Day is so important.

 According to the UN, this is how it all began: “The international observance of World Water Day is an initiative that grew out of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro. The United Nations General Assembly designated 22 March of each year as the World Day for Water by adopting a resolution.This world day for water was to be observed starting in 1993.” And the purpose since has been to raise not only observance but awareness of the water issues facing us today.   

We are in a world water crisis. Although you’d be hard-pressed to know it. Sort of like saying we are at war, which we are; few people pay attention until the most dramatic of circumstances hits home.

And water shortages are beginning to hit home. They will hit with more frequency and with more urgency. According to the federal government 36 states will experience emergency drought situations over the next five years.

Wake up calls will begin to ring. New initiatives will begin to take hold.

Here, at the American Museum of Natural History, H2O=Life is being staged. It’s a water exhibit on how water affects all aspects of our lives. The Tap Project, meanwhile, is signing restaurants on to an initiative that has them charge $1 for tap water. The dollar then goes to fund water projects around the world. It’s being sponsored by UNICEF and is a great idea.

For more info. On what you can do March 22d. Here are some links.

http://www.worldwaterday.org/

http://www.tapproject.org/

http://www.unicefusa.org/site/c.duLRI8O0H/b.25933/k.8DDD/US_Fund_for_UNICEF__US_Fund_for_UNICEF.htm

http://www.worldwaterday.net/

“If you go up to a native in the middle of the jungle and ask him if he wants money, he’ll say yes. If you ask him if he wants to sell land and get rich he’ll say yes too. But that is not an informed decision. If you took him up in a small plane and showed him the deforestation or took him to a river that is being polluted where he can no longer fish, he may have a different answer,” says Dr. Mark Plotkin, president of the Amazon Conservation Team organization and a Time magazine Hero for the Planet.

But natives aren’t privy to this point of view. They are relegated to their lives in the jungle – until that is taken away. And then what happens? They are forced to urban areas where they can survive – their ability to subsist off the land having been taken away.

Urbanization brings with it poverty and slums and disease for those who can ill-afford to live higher up the ladder of society.  

In the Amazon jungle big businesses come into town, pay natives for rights to their land, kick them off or encroach upon it, forcing displacement.

Way out in the middle of the jungle through wetlands, creeks, rivers and forest a young family of four subsists happily of their land. They have fruits, vegetables, fish, keep livestock, and hunt. They live in a virtual Eden. Closer, though, eco lodges are being built. Energy producers scout the area. And illegal timber producers are a constant threat.

The two children, three and four, bring me crayons and comic books. We sit on the floor of their hand-built home and draw and color. A rooster pokes its head through the door. It stretches its neck, checks us out, cackles and zips off.

It’s warm. I’m served a fruit smoothie. There isn’t the sound of any thing artificial: no plane, car, boat, machine, TV, nor radio.

Wind thick with humidity comes and passes us by as it lofts high into the palm trees where leaves rustle, mimicking the sound of rain splattering the ground. The humidity will inevitably draw wetness too, as it does every day this time of year.

Now it’s moments of warmth, engagement, curiosity, and struggles to communicate and understand. 

Which brings me to REDD: reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation. It’s a UN proposal that would pay countries not to deforest and give them the same carbon emission credits as countries get in the developed world. It was proposed last year at the United Nations conference on climate change in Bali.

It’s the type of program that gives people opportunities to make informed decisions, or I should say more decisions than just whether or not they would indeed like some money to help them survive.

Already certain governors in the state of Amazonia pay some of their constituents NOT to clear their land. They see the bigger picture. We certainly should too.

As I finish coloring, my three-year-old instructor shakes her head and points out what I did wrong. I drew outside the line.

I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to.

Waking up in the jungle is blinding. It’s truly a feeling of having popped into somewhere, an existence, consciousness. There isn’t a slow awakening. Nope. The light hits you and the surroundings shake you into a heightened state of curiosity right away. You have to then work to remember where you are and what the *#@!+ you ARE doing in the middle of nowhere. So you look around and try immediately to figure things out. Fire: Out. How long? Anything traipse through camp? My stuff still there? Anything crawl on me? Where is everyone else?   

Here in the Amazon jungle there are lots of questions. Curiosity abounds, in fact. Perhaps it’s because you’re so exposed, so raw, so…”in it.”

Down at the small creek where we find running fresh water to drink, one of my guides is looking at a track. “Animal,” is all I can make out from what he tells me in Portuguese. Then my translator comes along and says it was just a tapir. It must have come through camp at night.

Tapirs are the cutest little guys in the forest. They’re large, but pretty harmless. They’re about 7 feet long and three feet high. They look like a small elephant with its trunk cut short. They are defenseless except if they turn their pudgy bodies around and try to kick you with their small hind legs. They could bite you, but they are very shy. Tapirs feed on fruits, berries, and leaves. They’re also great prey for jaguars.

Here there is no forgiveness or sympathy. The law of the jungle prevails. We humans take that rule to new levels: We dominate the jungle itself and conquer it along with everything in it. The regard for other species is very much lost. We are, according to the famed biologist EO Wilson just one out of 1.6 million identified species on the planet. There may be as many as 100 million species, he estimates. Yet we have no clue about our impact on them and what that does to the planet never mind what we do ourselves to the Earth. Land is being lost, species are being displaced and we never connect the pieces of paper in our drawers and on our desks to that ravaging. Nor do we consider other affects…like beef.

Brazil is now the largest beef exporter in the world, responsible for 25% of the world’s supply. Cattle take up a lot of land too. One recent report exclaims that fast-food hamburgers are wreaking havoc on the Brazilian rainforest.  Unconsciously we order. Unconsciously we eat. Unconscious are we of the effects of all that we do…until we arrive in the land of our consequence. Then we feel uncomfortable and out of place. I wonder why. 

I will be posting occasional field notes and asides from my travels in this space as well as straight up chronicles, reports and opinion pieces. The following is from the Amazon:

Nighttime in the jungle. I’m in a hammock. The fire is burning to my right. The cicadas are on full throttle. In the distance an owl, a toucan, macaws, frogs. Different noises than the typical forest.

I just ate a potato. We found it and dug it up. We buried it beneath the fire to cook. I drank water from a vine. I learned which trees hold magnesia. Which ones are filled with licorice that the Germans, I’m told, buy and make Chiclet gum from.
We hear things rustling among the trees: “Here. No. There.” I’m with a two local guides. Branches crack. Leaves crunch. The fire’s pops become sounds of solace; fire keeps intruders away.

I notice darkness only truly turns to black when you shine a light into the sky.

We are some 50 miles away from the Ariau Towers eco lodge outside Manaus where I stopped before hopping into a canoe to get out here. This is as far into the jungle as I can get in a day. Of course, it’s night now. Dawn will take me farther into the jungles’ s depths.

Alan, one of my guides, informs me that the last time he was out this far he lost place of his canoe. He had to swim and wade for hours through the rainforest’s wetlands to find it. That’s dangerous, he says, because of alligators and snakes.

I pray he remembers where we docked this time.

Something is approaching camp. I can hear it make its way closer and closer…

Sleeping in the Amazon jungle isn’t restful. Once you’ve lashed your hammock to trees so you don’t have to sleep on the ground with the bugs, you create shelter. Rain is a big concern. It comes up fast. First you notice the wind pick up. Then the clouds cover. A thunder clap. Then it’s heavy downpour. This all occurs within a few minutes. And the rain is blinding: you have to be prepared for it.

There’s a lot of work to do.

There’s fire; it wards off the animals– jaguars, wild boars, etc. (and that’s a big etc.)–who might traipse through camp. That means gathering wood. Then there’s dinner.

On this outing we had no provisions. The idea was to live off what nature provides. That means more foraging through the jungle. A felled palm tree. Berries. Roots. Nuts. Sap. A stream. These all make for dinner ingredients. My guides caught fish. (I failed.)  These are the things we ate and drank.

My experience living off the land in the middle of nowhere, well, technically miles from any other human existence and tens of miles from any sort of community, was to see how we humans are ravaging the land. Natural resources are dwindling. Food crops are low–at their lowest levels in 30 years, I’m told–which has the World Food Program nervous.

Amazonia, Brazil, the site of my jungle expedition, is suffering from deforestation. That means people are being displaced, and the areas natural resources are being pillaged. No resources to live off of, people are forced to urban areas. Urbanization, of course, unfolds new strains on natural resources–concentrating effects. As it stands, The Amazon’s rate of deforestation is thousands of miles of rainforest per year. Since just the year 2000, more than 60,000 square miles of rainforest have been lost. Lost too are all the natural resources that go with it.

Here there can be found chewing gum (chicle), printing ink (copal), cashew nuts, coffee, chocolate, insect repellent (camphor), beef (cattle), sugar, vanilla, rope (jute), furniture (bamboo/rattan). There’s an assortment of fruits and medicinal herbs to be had, and aloe for lotions. There’s even natural Viagra. 

Use any of the above, or their derivatives and your footprint makes a big mark here too. As for me, I step cautiously through the jungle. I was pricked and stung. I starved and stumbled. The rules of the jungle are to survive. But the jungle itself is having a difficult time because we aren’t imposing enough laws of our own to keep it intact.  

The City of New York is turning the Fresh Kills landfill site on Staten Island into what it claims will be a world-class park.

Fresh Kills is famously the largest landfill in the USA if not the world. It is a massive dumpsite–more than 2,200 acres, or about 5 square miles. To put that into perspective it is about three times the size of Central Park in Manhattan. You can see it with the naked eye from outer space. Fresh Kills stopped officially operating in 2001. So the Puente Hills landfill in Whittier, CA is now the king of the landfills in operation. 

But even though it stopped operating there’s still a lot of trash to be seen in certain parts of the Fresh Kills’ site. I noticed a raft of bottles, bags and even bulldozers pushing large mounds of material around as I walked the site.

The city of New York holds tours of Fresh Kills; I made my own way around. And while it’s a little creepy thinking about the decades worth of trash you’re standing on top of (Fresh Kills is the tallest place on the Eastern Seaboard) there is something heartening about the prospect of turning something so nasty into something pretty. If nothing else, visitors may be made aware of the tragedy of our waste problem: Over the past 40 years we’ve doubled the amount of waste we send to landfills. And while the number of landfills in the US has shrunk considerably over that time, from more than 8,000 to less than 2,000 today, the size of those landfills has mushroomed 25 times. So while we are recycling more–about 14 times as much–we are still stewards of miles of trash.

The City of New York is trying to add Recreation to the list of “R’s”–Reduce, Reuse Recycle–which environmentalists live by. But I’d personally like to see less waste than play on it.