Stop Global Warming's Best of 2008

by Emily Gertz

Published January 01, 2009 @ 01:12PM PT

I gave 2008 every possible second to bring along something that would be the best in its class. Now that the entire globe has ticked over into 2009, here are my totally subjective choices for what really stood out last year in culture, along very general climate and/or sustainability lines.

Best Reading

The Stolen Forests: Inside the Covert War on Illegal Logging, is an amazing piece of reporting on how some nervy undercover activists are trying to stop illegal logging in Russia's Far East. The trees make their way into Chinese factories, and from there on to the shelves of Wal-Mart as as toilet seats and baby cribs. I've encountered very few reports that better expose the true complexity of the struggle for global sustainability. By Raffi Khatchadourian, in the October 6, 2008 issue of The New Yorker, which put video and audio extras online as well.

Best Viewing

Frontline: Heat, broadcast in early autumn, investigates how the world's largest corporations are responding to global warming: some are facing up to the challenge, while others are bent on enriching themselves with business as usual for as long as they can. In interviews in 12 countries with civic leaders, lawmakers, and top executives from many of the world's largest carbon-emitting companies, including U.S. oil giants, Indian automakers, and Chinese coal companies, it becomes painfully clear that despite a lot of chatter about saving the planet, few are sacrificing short-term gain to stabilize the climate.

Best Fashion:

Not available in stores, but far more interesting than even jackets made of PLA and sweaters knit from the wool of rescued sheep, was Stephanie Sandstrom’s pollution-sensing "EPA dress" (photo above; part of the 2nd Skin exhibit at the San Francisco Exploratorim). Sandstrom embedded sensors in the fabric that evaluate the surrounding air quality and wrinkle the dress in proportion to the level of pollution. "On days when the air quality is particularly poor, the EPA dress looks as if it has been pulled out of the laundry bin or from the back of one’s closet," wrote Abigail Doan on Inhabitat. The EPA dress makes the invisible visible -- a crucial step in creating real change. We need one that can sense carbon dioxide concentrations.

Best "Not a Plastic Bag" Bag:

I am definitely more inclined to carry around a reusable bag when it doesn't entail hemp, cheesy slogans, or adding a lot of bulk to the mess of gear I already sling across my shoulder. So this net bag from Saxony, Germany is my favorite reusable sack. I found it at Kiosk, my favorite little independent store in New York City. It's got style, compresses down incredibly small, and carries half-gallons of milk and cans of tomatoes without a hitch. It even embodies a touch of mid-20th century nostalgia, being made of threads spun for strength in the GDR. (That's German Democratic Republic, aka Communist East Germany, for my younger readers.)

Best Inspiration

So far I have few of the skills needed to undertake the projects covered in Craft Magazine. But when the new issue arrives every few months, seeing just how enterprising others are at making their own clothes, toys, housewares, and other goods gets my own imagination going, and inspires me to keep working on my skills. I enjoy seeing how "old" crafts are being brought into the present with cutting-edge designs, new uses -- including blurring the border between craft and art -- and technological materials like conductive thread and the Lily Pad Arduino -- a soft, washable microcontroller board. Readers of this blog may especially enjoy the latest issue, Craft 09: Green Craft. If you're more into resistors and sanders than yarn and fabric, Make Magazine is equally fine.

Best Listening

This American Life: The Giant Pool of Money was last year's best explanation of the roots of the home mortgage meltdown, and possibly the only explanation that was actually comprehensible. First aired on May 9, 2008, the radio show followed it up in the fall with an equally lucid installment that sought to explain the expanding financial crisis, Another Frightening Show About the Economy. If we're going to remake this financial system along much more sustainable lines, or even just keep political momentum going for expanding clean energy and curbing climate change in what's sure to be an economically stressed out 2009, then we need to first understand how we got here.

Simply the Best of 2009

The animated movie Wall-E seamlessly mixed physical comedy, social satire, and a love story into one and a half of the year's most enjoyable hours.

Even if all Wall-E was, was 98 minutes of well-crafted fun in the middle of difficult times, that would be enough.

Even if it was that, and got more people curious about this Buster Keaton fellow that everyone compared to Wall-E's first 20 minutes on screen, that would be enough.

But Wall-E was all that, and also -- without being a self-conscious, bummer, violent eco-apocalypse flick like the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still -- a very funny, somewhat hopeful vision of one logical endpoint to our use-it-and-forget-it (or in the case of our bodies, use-it-or-lose-it) consumer culture.

Images:

Top: EPA dress

Best Reading: Timber in the train station at Suifenhe, China. The country is now the world’s largest importer of logs and exporter of finished wood products. Photograph by Lu Guang, via The New Yorker.

Best Viewing: Still image from promotional video for Frontline: Heat.

Best "Not a Plastic Bag" Bag: German string bag, available at Kiosk

Best Inspiration: Cover of Craft 09: Green Craft

Best Listening: Via TAL web site

Simply the Best: Promotional image for Wall-E