VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE PHOTO BY JULY 10th!

Thank you to Sierra Club Trails community members who submitted a total of more than 250 excellent entries in our National Park Photo Contest -- the first photo contest on Trails!

Our Sierra magazine art department staff and website designers narrowed the field to 20 finalists. Now it's your turn!

Vote for your favorite photo! You have until July 10th (12 p.m. PST) to cast your vote. The winner will be announced on July 14th.

The winning photo will be featured on the Sierra Club and Sierra Club Trails home page, in our Insider and Daily Ray of Hope e-newsletters, added to the slide show on our National Park website, and printed in the September/October issue of Sierra magazine.
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Greg Haegele, the Sierra Club's deputy executive director, sent out this email message this morning:

We heard the governor of South Carolina had some trouble finding the Appalachian Trail last week.

We don't want that to happen to anyone else, so now's a perfect time to let you know about our new online community: Sierra Club Trails. Members of the community are adding trails from around the country, sharing spectacular photos, and discussing topics such as whether guns should be allowed in our national parks.

But so far only two sections of the Appalachian Trail have been added by our members. No wonder the governor got lost!

If you've hiked the Appalachian Trail, join the Sierra Club Trails community and add a stretch or two. Share your photos of the trail, too!

If you haven't hiked that trail but have other favorites, we'd love you to share them on Trails as well.

 

Green Giant: Sears Tower, the tallest building in the Western hemisphere, is scheduled for a $350 million green retrofit that could reduce the skyscraper's consumption of electricity by 80 percent and water by 40 percent. Reuters

Baby On Board: According to a recent report by the International Whaling Commission, over 25 percent of the whales killed this year by Japanese research vessels in Antarctic waters were pregnant. Science News

Go Fish: A new task force created by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration plans to create a cap-and-trade system for fisheries. Scientific American

Dirty Oil: Environmental groups launched a campaign to urge Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to halt permits for pipeline projects designed to import tar sands oil from Canada into the United States. Sierra Club

Switcheroo: Lawmakers have agreed to shift control of agriculture offset programs under the House climate bill from the EPA to the USDA. New York Times and Reuters

--Della Watson

The Giving Tree Band has provided the song "Just One Thing" as a free download on Climate Crossroads.

The band is made up of Illinois boys who share not only their music but a love of nature. Described as progressive old time, eco-billy, and indie folk rock, their modern vintage approach is all about doing right by the song. The band is blazing a new artistic path and pioneering some of the most innovative methods to capture the sounds of their simple, time-tested acoustic instruments. The band does its best to support a culture of sustainability, using instruments built from naturally fallen trees and reclaimed woods, producing music with renewable energy, and packaging everything with recycled materials. The group's latest, called "Great Possessions," has been called the "greenest of albums" by the Chicago Sun-Times because of the extraordinary environmental stewardship behind the making of the music.  During the 100% solar-powered recording session, the band camped in tents in the woods, lived on local organic produce, and commuted over 500 miles by bicycle.

Get it now!

Not content with the slow progress on fuel-efficiency standards, President Obama pushed for vehicles to be rolling on 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016, four years earlier than current federal law requires. A new angle currently being examined in the jigsaw puzzle of auto emissions is energy-sucking air conditioners.

Colorado's National Renewable Energy Lab found that each year, 7 billion gallons of gasoline goes toward running vehicle air conditioners. That's 6 percent of the nation's total fuel consumption! In situations where simply turning off the AC isn't an option (think refrigerated shipping trucks or family-packed minivans in central Florida), scientists are fiddling away on new technology they expect will improve efficiency by 33 percent, save 1.8 billion gallons of oil, and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by 900 million metric tons. The alternative AC system will use thermoelectrics to aid pumps and condensers.

Until the new car coolers are on the market, try lowering your vehicle's consumption by turning off the AC and enjoying the summer breeze. If you're shopping for a new car, check out the EPA's Green Vehicle Guide to find the best fit for you and the environment.

--Jordana Fyne

Submit your own question to our very own Mr. Green!

Hey Mr. Green,

In an attempt to be greener, the company I work for switched the fleet vehicle to the Chevy Impala which has the FleFuel E85 capability.  However, I know that corn-based ethanol is not the ideal alternative, since it dumps carbon dioxide into the air during productions, and gets fewer miles to the gallon. Is E85 for the fleet vehicle any greener? Or should I still fill up with regular unleaded?

–Roy in Sisters, Oregon

I remain quite skeptical about corn ethanol, which some environmentalists still consider a superior biofuel alternative. In our rush for energy sources that’ll reduce global warming, we seem to be forgetting about other environmental issues, like wildlife habitat, water pollution, depletion by irrigation, soil erosion, and so forth. Depending on where it’s being grown, corn can cause all these problems. Aside from the moral dilemma of using corn as fuel, I'm not convinced that there’s any net benefit to the environment in ethanol.

Corn is one of the most magnificent and productive plants. But raising too much of it in the wrong places can turn it into one of the most destructive. Having grown up on a hybrid corn farm right next to a corn-processing company, and having worked every summer of my youth in test plots with dedicated corn breeders, my awe of the species is so intense that its misuse seems like downright sacrilege. It's perfectly easy for anybody who has experienced the power and glory of maize to understand why its Aztec cultivators worshiped a goddess of corn.

Theology aside, increasing use of ethanol is bound to raise demand for corn, the hyper-cultivation of which already poses environmental problems exposed by many scientific observers. In the past 20 years, U.S. corn acreage increased from less than 70 million acres, and spiked at almost 94 million in 2007, though it’s dropped down to about 85 million, partly because of lower market prices. If demand or other factors such as weather drive up prices, that acreage could expand.

Among the effects on the habitat could be the removal of millions of acres of land from the Conservation Reserve Program. This would harm wildlife on reserve land and cause much erosion. One study concluded that in Iowa alone, sediment losses could increase from less than 5 million to 30 million tons if more than 1.35 million more acres in Iowa acres were put back into production, and could reach 78 million tons if all of Iowa's 2 million CRP land were plowed up.

But it's not only about all the wildlife and soil displaced by Midwest farming. The fertilizer washing off fields and flowing down the Mississippi helps create the Gulf of Mexico’s notorious dead zone. The same study projects a huge addition to an already prodigious nitrogen loss if acreage is increased.

In many areas, corn irrigation further taxes the environment. In Kansas, for example, it can soak up as much as 18 inches of water per acre to produce a 200-bushel crop—a staggering half-million gallons Thirsty agriculture draws so much water from the ground that there is serious concern about the depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer, the major underground water source for a region that runs from South Dakota to Texas.

True, ethanol has some effect in combating global warming by reducing net carbon dioxide emissions, though you have to burn a lot of fossil fuel to produce it. Even the most positive assessment I've seen (PDF) says that it takes more than half as much energy to produce the ethanol as it contains. Another study (PDF) even claims a 29 percent loss.

As with most environmental issues, the economy is deeply involved. Because of intense pressure from corn-growing regions, ethanol has been heavily subsidized by tax credits. These are now 45 cents a gallon, and will soon reach $5 billion per year. It might make more sense to harness those legendary Wizard of Oz Kansas winds than letting agribusiness “wizards” keep blowing smoke at Congress.

Acre by acre, you can get 200 to 300 times the equivalent in electrical energy per acre of windmill, and $5 billion worth of windmills could generate around $1.5 billion worth of electricity each year, which seems like a more sensible long-term investment than ethanol (PDF). Not that wind is a panacea, because you'd also have to build service roads and power lines, plus allow for space between the windmills from 5 to 10 times the diameter of their humongous rotors. However, much of the land between the windmills can still be used for agriculture.

These are among the many reasons why I keep on harping about the need for radical energy conservation while warning against utopian hopes for new technologies. We certainly do need to develop clean alternatives to fossil fuel, but this possibility shouldn't lull us into believing that we can continue to binge on fossil fuels and emit more carbon dioxide than the new technology offsets—or worse yet, that we can blunder into new wars for oil.