Ordinarily I do not plug the media, especially thick glossy magazines, however the current issue of Vanity Fair is a must read for anyone interested in climate change and global warming. Last year they decided to do a major focus on green issues on an annual basis. What they’ve done is create a current report on the state of the world:
- The politics of denial (really frightening)
- The business of water (people in China are paying up to 25% of their income for water)
- Vehicle technology
- The tipping point for the end of the rainforests
And many more very in-depth articles. Despite a stupid photo series dedicated to green ‘celebrities’, the issue is a tour de force look at the green movement and our very real enemies.
I am off to St.John in the US VI and plan to spend some time reading through the mag (along with the new Einstein bio and my boss’s account of his Everest expedition) so blogging will be light for a week or so. No Internet connection and I’m not taking my laptop…bliss.

Apple has been criticized by Greenpeace for being a poor environmental steward. My personal feelings about Greenpeace are mixed as I don’t care for their holier than thou attitude. The days of crunchy granola environmental activism are over- everyone’s in it now. I also think they have not looked at the big picture with Apple.
Apple just announced that they have sold 2.5 billion songs on iTunes. That’s 250 million plastic CDs and jewel cases that are not out there headed for landfills. Instead we have our music collections as digital files on tiny devices that last for years. Even the SONY walkmans of the eighties were about 15 times as massive as an iPod.
Now they are doing the same with movies, eliminating 2 million DVDs in the last year alone. This will accelerate as the movie studios keep joining them.

Those CDs and cases are made from petro products- if we are going to do environmental audits on companies we have to take a more strategic look these days and weigh the less obvious against the easy target.

A new study, covered in New Scientist, predicts that 50% of the unique climates on earth will be destroyed by the end of the century due to climate change. 30% of all species will be extinct with a catastrophic affect on the biodiversity that serves as a leveling mechanism for the planet’s climate. Add in a 50% growth in human population by 2050 and we start to look more like a virus than a viable part of the planet’s ecosystem.
Click the image for a map set of disappearing climates.

According to the International Herald Tribune, New York City has a real problem and there is no simple solution. In this article about NY’s reaction to rising ocean levels, a few facts stood out (note that I referenced ‘facts’ not speculation). First, all of the home insurers are changing their business models radically to protect against flood and hurricane losses. For example, Allstate will no longer renew homeowner’s policies in eight downstate, waterfront counties including the NYC area. This may represent the most concentrated chunk of premium waterfront residential real estate in the world. They’re no longer taking that bet. Last fall I drove down the Jersey shore from Atlantic City and the housing is impressive. Also impressive is the fact that all of it is built practically at sea level on what are obviously reclaimed dunes and salt marshes. Now it is increasingly difficult to insure this property which, in turn, means you can’t mortgage it.
The second fact is that lower Manahattan is built on sand so fine you can’t pile it up on a table- it just slides off. For the many older buildings whose foundations rest on sand (like all the brownstones) this means that a single flood event could wash away their foundations, leaving them uninhabitable. With a five inch rise in ocean levels predicted by 2030 and increasingly intense hurricane seasons this is a real possibility.
The ’solutions’ are equally drastic. A thirty foot high wall wide enough for a four lane highway around Manhattan? I doubt those who paid a very high premium for waterfront property are going to go for that.
New York is one of my favorite places. If you haven’t been, you have to go- it’s an amazing testament to the vitality of humanity. However, when you look at it from the perspective of climate change it is a very vulnerable place. Things could change there very quickly.