This post is the first in a year-long series by Ed Grumbine, professor of environmental studies at Prescott College and author of Where the Dragon Meets the Angry River.

Only five days into a one year stay in China, I’ve already noticed that the Chinese and U.S. media don’t report the news the same way. What amazed me is that Chinese state-run papers describe China’s economic growth and energy consumption more accurately than the U.S. press.

The past two years have been big years for China’s global position in economics and energy. In 2009, China replaced the U.S. as the largest auto market in the world, and surpassed Germany as the largest exporter of trade goods. Just a few weeks ago, China passed Japan in overall GDP to gain the No. 2 spot behind the U.S. (Japan had held this position since 1968).

In the first six months of 2010, China emitted more greenhouse gases than have ever been measured in a six month period and burned through more total energy than the U.S. (China debates this statistic, but the trend is clear). Almost without exception, the U.S. media portrayed these events as “threats.” The Wall Street Journal labeled China “the world’s most voracious energy consumer” accusing China of “… seeking resource and energy leverage…” in a “global scramble for (fossil fuel) resources.” The New York Times suggests that if China did not meet domestic energy efficiency targets, this “would be a big setback for international efforts to limit (carbon) emissions.” (The NY Times failed to mention that the U.S. doesn’t even have such targets.)

What distinguishes Chinese media accounts from U.S. stories is China’s emphasis on per capita data. Due to the fact that 20 percent of all people on Earth live here, at some point, China will likely surpass all countries in virtually every category of economics and energy use. The only meaningful way to compare nations is through per capita data, and this is what is missing from American reporting.

The Chinese media is quick to point out that China, despite its record-breaking behavior, is still a low-middle income nation according to United Nations definitions. China passed Japan in overall GDP, but each Japanese citizen pulls in ten times more income than the average Chinese. In terms of its human development status, China doesn’t even rank in the top 50 percent of all countries. The Wall Street Journal’s characterization of China as “the world’s most voracious energy consumer” is false; each U.S. citizen consumes about five times more energy that their Chinese counterparts.

What is behind the American media inaccurate portrayals of China? I see two biases at work here. The first bias is symbolic. America is so used to being No. 1 that we find it difficult to accept any position other than ‘leader.’ The second bias is more insidious. There are many U.S. politicians and policy makers who view the world as a zero sum game. If China is rising, everyone else must be falling. Competition—not cooperation—is the hallmark of these “realists, as if China was the new Russia.”

On the street here in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, I see economics and energy embodied all around me. The sheer number of people in the street can be overwhelming. It seems as if there are new buildings rising up on every urban block, and vehicles spew out exhaust while the number of bicycles declines steeply. So far, however, my advice is to take U.S. media reports about China with a hefty dose of soy sauce.

This post was excerpted a post written for Grist by Terry Tamminen is the former secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency and is now a policy adviser and author. His latest book is Lives Per Gallon: The True Cost of our Oil Addiction.

In the past few weeks, how many of us have seen (or participated in) that summer staple, the three-legged race? Two people stand side by side, each placing one leg into a gunny sack, then trying to coordinate movements to stay upright while running to a picnic table at the finish line. Visualize the U.S. and China similarly tethered together, but each trying to beat the other to a prize more valuable than hot dogs and potato salad — economic dominance in the 21st century.

The two superpowers are clearly joined at the hip economically, because so much of China’s production is shipped to U.S. consumers. Although each nation may have one leg apiece this common sack, make no mistake, they are competing to get ahead in at least one crucial area — to be the most energy-efficient, because energy resources enable economic growth and using those resources efficiently drives higher profits, employment, and tax revenues.

Click here to read Tamminen’s full article.

Peter H. Gleick, author of Bottled & Sold writes on Huffington Post:

First it was Central Florida University, which built a 45,000-seat football stadium with no (that’s right, zero) water fountains. And at their very first game in September 2007, 18 people went to the hospital and another 60 were treated at the stadium for heat-related problems. I describe this remarkable story in Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water.

Then, the sports arena that hosts the Cleveland Cavaliers removed its drinking water fountains. The only way for thirsty fans to get water was to wait in line at the concessions counters for a free small cup or pay $4 for bottled water or try to drink water from the bathroom faucets.

Now the 100,000-seat Michigan Stadium, at the University of Michigan (the “Big House”), has just reopened after renovation and they’ve announced that no one can bring water into the stadium. Instead, fans must buy $4 bottled water at the 40 concession stands, find one of four “hydration tents” (whatever those are), wait in line for a free cup, or try to find one of only 28 water fountains (one per 4,000 fans). I’ve looked at the stadium website and the official stadium map: the concession stands are listed, but not the location of the water fountains. And in what seems more like a bad joke than an actual benefit, the University has announced a promotion for the Wolverines’ home opener on September 4th: the first 25,000 fans through the turnstiles will receive a commemorative plastic bottle of commercial water. Oh boy.

Read entire post here

Spring comes to the northern Rocky Mountains like a lion and often leaves like one too. This spring proved no different. I spent it in Waterton, Alberta, resampling eighty miles of track transects I had created three years earlier, looking for changes in wolf and elk use of this critical wildlife corridor. My study area in Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park spans the US-Canada border and harbors most wildlife species present at the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Track transect surveys are among my favorite fieldwork, because this method allows me to experience landscapes intimately. Walking along the same pathways that wolves and elk use, I pull measuring tape in fifty-yard increments and record all the large mammal animal sign I find along a two-yard strip on either side of the tape. Along the way I often find unexpected and fascinating things and secret places—coyote dens, wolf rendezvous sites, a newborn elk bedded in the shrubs, and the place where a grizzly sow has lain with her cubs. However, this method can only be applied between snowmelt and when the grass grows tall enough to hide the data (wolf and elk droppings, carcass pieces). This May, five snowstorms made our work more challenging than usual, effectively burying my data and immuring us in our quarters for days.

The research house phone rang during a particularly severe snowstorm. A stranger named Marilyn was on the line. She’d read my book, The Wolf’s Tooth: Keystone Predators, Trophic Cascades, and Biodiversity, and had tracked me down to this remote outpost. A second grade teacher from South Carolina passionate about wolves, she said my book had changed how she looks at the natural world.

“Will you take me in the field with you?” she asked softly. “Can you show me a trophic cascade?”

How could I resist?

Two months later I had the pleasure of meeting Marilyn and her sister Gail, a university administrator, and taking them into Glacier National Park’s secluded North Fork Valley, where a high wolf population is leaving the bold ecological signature characteristic of trophic cascades.

So what are trophic cascades? They are cascading food web relationships in which a top predator, such as a wolf, influences its primary prey, such as an elk, by killing or scaring it and making it more wary. Termed “the ecology of fear,” these dynamics cause profound effects in elk behavior, forcing them to nibble plants warily and look up frequently, rather than standing around complacently browsing aspen and shrubs to death.

I led Marilyn and Gail on a well-marked game trail into an aspen-hemmed moist meadow that is indiscernible from the park road. Humans seldom visit this meadow; consequently, wolves spend considerable time here. The wolves were not home that day, but their trophic markers were abundantly evident. The sisters were full of questions, their naturalist eyes keenly aware of details.

No matter where we looked, we saw many old and young aspens, but no middle-aged ones. The gap in the trees’ ages corresponded with the period between 1915 and 1985 when humans had eliminated wolves from this landscape. Until the wolves’ return, few aspens had been able to grow above the elk’s hungry reach. Willow thickets in the center of the meadow offered further evidence of the ecology of fear. These formerly knee-high shrubs had grown tall again since the wolves had returned, providing rich habitat for beavers and songbirds, such as American redstarts.

We wandered the meadow, bushwhacking through luxuriant streambank vegetation—serviceberry, chokecherry, and willow intertangled in a prodigious mess— and crossed a narrow stream. I described what this place had been like before the wolves’ return—the barren streambanks, the senescent aspen stands. I related what it had been like to live in a small cabin in the forest south of the park and witness wolves recolonizing my home in the 1990s. These inveterate travelers drifted down from Canada into some of northwestern Montana’s most mysterious wild country: the North Fork, Ninemile, Swan, and Yaak valleys. Prolific breeders, they soon filled these legendary valleys with their progeny and howls. And miraculous changes—more vigilant elk, flourishing willows and aspens—quickly began to occur, literally in our backyard.

My young daughters’ infectious curiosity about these changes had inspired me to study trophic cascades for my dissertation research. These relationships and their unexpected and astonishing consequences are part of nature’s interconnected web and provide evidence of evolution. My study represents only a small part of society’s growing store of research and knowledge about these effects.

As the heat of the afternoon rose, Marilyn, Gail, and I sat in the wildflowers in the shade of the aspen forest and talked about how wolves indirectly touch everything in an ecosystem. Mourning cloak butterflies, their black wings bordered by bright blue spots and edged with cream, flitted among the lupines and asters. This meadow felt infused with the ineluctable play of energies at the heart of trophic cascades.

Gail picked up part of an elk femur thicker than her forearm and gingerly examined it. I showed her the mark of the wolf’s tooth on the bone’s jagged edge—and in the meadow—how only a wolf had teeth strong enough to crack this bone and suck out the marrow. This carcass piece provided a graphic example of how the elk’s blood spilling out into the meadow created a haven for beavers and butterflies.

The sisters’ visit reinforced something I’ve long known. Coexisting with wolves has more to do with humans and our views than with wolves. Eyes shining, these women described their vision for educating young children about how wolves can renew aspen communities and streams and wild nature. Spending a day afield with them and experiencing their sense of wonder about trophic cascades science filled me with hope.

After a seven-decade absence, wolves have returned home and are prospering. But wolf conservation and ecological restoration depend only partly on science—the rest has to do with our human hearts.

———

Cristina Eisenberg is a conservation biologist at Oregon State University, College of Forestry, and Boone and Crockett Fellow who studies how wolves affect forest ecosystems throughout the West. Her new book is The Wolf’s Tooth: Keystone Predators, Trophic Cascades, and Biodiversity

Author Elizabeth Grossman writes on Huffington Post, “Can Green Chemistry Get Us Out of Deepwater?” where she challenges society’s dependence on petrochemicals for manufactured goods and products.

In Grossman’s book Chasing Molecules, she looks inside industrial technologies of many large, brand-name companies. “There are already some other packaging materials that perform comparably to PVC, but many companies have also begun to shift away from PVC as a structural material.”

Many products have already been made through green chemistry. Case in point, Live Science published an article recently how Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute undergrads turned mushrooms in to green packaging.

In her blog post, Grossman says:

“Green chemistry design has already created products like paint made with soy additives, pesticides made from microbes, and plastics made from orange peels. There are even green chemistry products that can break down petroleum in environmentally benign ways, products that detoxify hazardous petrochemicals and leave behind nothing more toxic than oxygen and water.”

But this is a controversial topic. So much so that event policymakers who are introducing green chemistry initiatives aren’t taking sides in the debate. The Capitol Weekly reported on a hearing Tuesday debating green chemistry regulations:

“Environmentalists and their allies in the Legislature have continually been confounded by the contrast between a governor [Schwarzenegger] who sticks his neck out by proposing a groundbreaking Green Chemistry in the first place—then pursues it in a way that is much more inclusive of industry concerns than they would have preferred.”

As we look at what has been happening in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, this debate may become more frequent. As Grossman noted in her post that a commitment to green chemistry may include:

“Government procurement programs would use green chemistry principles to seek out the ‘greenest’ technologies. Rather than being limited to products (ranging from dispersants to carpets) that fit a standard set decades ago, government agencies would be empowered to choose and use the most environmentally innovative.”

For more information on green chemistry, check out Grossman’s book Chasing Molecules.

This post was written by Todd Baldwin, vice president and associate publisher at Island Press.

The theme of this year’s Ecological Society of America’s 95th Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is “Global Warming:  The Legacy of our Past, the Challenge of Our Future,” a far cry from my last visit to ESA some years ago, when climate change was barely a blip on the radar and confined to a few specialized sessions. This trend emerged over the past few years, but this year a majority of the sessions deal with climate change impacts on species and ecosystems. It is the elephant in the room that everyone is now talking about.

During dinner, the Island Press staff and Cristina Eisenberg, author of The Wolf’s Tooth, were talking about the overwhelming weight of climate change reflected in the program. Eisenberg noted an interesting frustration, nowhere had anyone made the link between climate adaptation and trophic cascades—the scientific term describing the way top predators keep an ecosystem in balance by keeping lower levels of the food web in check through predation. Top predators—like wolves—help to maintain the diversity and function of an ecosystem by preventing populations of other species such as elk from exploding and overrunning other species—for example, the aspen trees the elk love to eat.

The concept is quickly becoming a key one in ecology, yet it has not made into conversations about climate impacts.

Find out more more about The Wolf’s Tooth.

Peter Harnik discusses ideas from his new book Urban Green: Innovate Parks for Resurgent Cities on the Trust for Public Land’s City Parks blog:

We asked Peter Harnik to answer some questions about his new book, Urban Green: Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities, that covers how cities can plan for parks as well as how to create them in “all built-out” settings.

Your book addresses many age-old questions about parks and cities. Let’s start with the big one — how much parkland should a city have?

“Should” is the wrong verb. “Should” implies that the outcome is decided by planners. The right verb is “want”: “How much parkland do we as residents and taxpayers want?” It’s a political issue, and it’s got to be approached politically by building a base of active park supporters. Every city has a different geography, a different history and a different culture — it’s not one size fits all. I think people sometimes use the word “should” in the hopes that someone else will do the work for them. No great park system was created solely by planners using official standards.

But still — don’t even advocates need to know how their city compares to others?

Oh, definitely! That’s why I give some comparative numbers in the book and many more on our web page (at www.tpl.org/cityparkfacts). If you take a trip to Boston or Minneapolis and like what you see, you can compare what your city has with them — everything from acreage to playgrounds to recreation centers to swimming pools. Which is why I always say it’s not just about gross acreage. One place may have lots of young people primarily interested in sports fields, another may be tilted toward older folks who want walking trails through bird-filled marshes. The environment also matters: some cities easily support lush forested parks, others are built on arid deserts where trees are essentially alien species. But the most important factor is population density. Crowded New York and San Francisco have so much concrete everywhere that every added pocket park is magical. Roomy Jacksonville and Oklahoma City, with thousands of large suburban-style yards are already halfway natural even not counting their parks. Density has a major impact on how people think about parks and how they use them.

Read more at the City Parks blog or learn more about Urban Green

Peter Gleick, author of Bottled and Sold, reads East of Eden:

“And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.”

‘It was always that way’ about water, and it still is. And if we are to have any hope of changing this cycle of crisis and forgetfulness, we have to start thinking differently.

California has just suffered through three years of drought. Certainly not the first such drought and certainly not the last. And during the drought, we had the opportunity to think differently, to do things differently. But we failed to do so.

That’s Bill McKibben’s concern about the Straight Up author. From the Washington Monthly:

Romm’s hyper-realism may ignore more important political possibilities. He’s paid less attention to the emerging popular movement on climate change than to the machinations of the Senate, but if we’re actually going to get change on the scale we need, it’s quite possible it won’t happen without an aggressive, large, and noisy movement demanding that change. And Romm, who would have a good deal of useful things to say to such a movement, hasn’t been very interested. He’s deeply Washington centric. And in that he’s not alone—most of the D.C. green movement has pretty much written off organizing out in the hinterlands in favor of lobbying in the offices of senators and congressmen. The problem with that strategy, though, is that effective lobbying depends on senators and congressmen actually perceiving that there’s some pain involved in doing the easy thing and stalling action. (Pain beyond wrecking the planet—I’m talking real pain, like losing an election.)

Elizabeth Grossman, author of Chasing Molecules and High Tech Trash, visits the Louisiana coast:

Grand Isle was hit hard by Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Gustav. But the community, which island resident Jeannine Braud describes as “a family,” rebuilt. “You knew when that [disaster] was over. You’d wake up and hear hammers,” she says. But then came the financial meltdown and the bad weather winter of 2009 that kept tourists away. “This season was going to be the one that got us over the hump,” says Hopkins.

But coastal residents see no end to this disaster. “It’s not just shut off this year but for years and possibly generations to come,” says [Louisiana resident Karen] Hopkins of the fishing, shrimping, and shellfish harvests that sustain Gulf Coast communities.

Read the whole post at the Pump Handle.