Randomly, as it were…

This newsletter isn’t large enough or frequent enough (no complaints there!) to list the number of essential readings in this field I’ve not yet read and may never.

No pride in this reality, you understand, but the truth’s the truth, as once-honest daily newspapers used to suggest.

So it’s with due modesty that I acknowledge never having read Cadillac Desert, by the now deceased Marc Reisner.

I didn’t know Marc Reisner. I haven’t yet read his book. But Marc Reisner was no ____ _______ (you fill in the blanks yourself, I’ve done so mentally from my perspective).

The tributes to the seminal value of his book on western water resources by now have appeared in obits around the country, and you’ve most likely seen some of them. Among the special kudos noted by those environmental journalists who had known, or at least known of, him: he was gracious and generous in helping other writers and journalists with their research, with sources, and with understanding the vagaries of western water politics.

By that alone, environmental writing counts his death as a major loss. And so too will we, even before having digested his opus, which now moves to the top of the pile.

Another notable death in the environmental field.

Alvin L. Alm. Not so well known and well respected among environmental journalists, no doubt, as Reisner.

That’s okay.

Alm for the better part of three decades was an environmental constant, a fixture, in national environmental policy issues. From his early days with the President’s Council on Environmental Quality under then-CEQ Chairman Russell E. Train … to his move with Train to EPA as an Assistant Administrator during the Nixon Administration … to his service as EPA Deputy Administrator under Bill Ruckelshaus … to his move to energy agencies and his service as Assistant Secretary of Energy under the Clinton Administration … and more.

Alm was widely perceived as a respected and effective “inside manager,” a steady and stable force in a frequently troubled agency. He was never hugely prominent or highly visible to the outside.

But among federal environmental agency watchers, he was a knowledgeable and generally well regarded civil servant (note, not bureaucrat). He too will be missed.

You’re ready to start your new car – the car of the future – the car that’s destined to save the environment. It’s .... probably not an electric car.

“The battery-powered family car seems to be going the way of the personal jetpack – a vision of the future that never quite materialized,” according to The Portland Oregonian.

Sad but true. But the agony of the electric car’s defeat is being countered by the thrill of the hybrid car’s victory as a rising superstar. Hybrids, barely noticed a year ago, are now being heralded as “glistening engineering achievements, clever early executions of what might well be the transition between the cars of 2000 and 2030,” according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Hybrid cars are receiving more attention this summer than the much-maligned electric cars did during their debut seasons. Although electric cars still have their devoted and vocal backers – even in cities such as Katmandu – hybrids are currently getting better press. And all auto eyes are on California, where in September regulators are scheduled to decide if hybrids qualify as “zero emission” vehicles, and if they will defer the deadline requiring that 4 percent of new cars sales be zero emissions cars.

Here’s what reporters across the country have been writing about hybrid and electric cars this summer:

Chicago Tribune:

“As the market stands, retail customers can’t get electric vehicles....Why can’t consumers get them? Besides limited availability, there’s the recall of the EV1. GM produced 500 Generation I and 500 Generation II EV1s. In early March, GM recalled 450 Generation I EV1s and 450 Chevrolet S-10s because of a charger port defect that could cause a fire .... The second electric car available to consumers, Honda’s EV PLUS, was discontinued after 320 – half retail and half fleet – were leased....

“EPICs [Electric Powered Interurban Commuters] are being used as shuttle vehicles between Los Angeles International Airport and downtown L.A. ... In December ‘99, Ford received an order from the U.S. Postal Service for 500 electric mail delivery vehicles based on the [electric] Ranger .... Utilities are another big user and promoter of electric vehicles.”

Dallas Morning News (“Viewpoint”):

“The California program would result in more choices of cleaner cars. Where the standards are in place, consumers may buy zero emission, super-ultra-low emission, and ultra-low emission vehicles. New vehicles that meet California standards average only an additional $100 per car or an additional $200 per truck. Exciting new hybrid cars like the Honda Insight and Toyota Prius are becoming available.”

Environmental Defense Newsletter (column by Fred Krupp, “Why I’m Buying a Hybrid Car”):

“My worries were quickly dispelled. The 57-mpg, four-door Prius drove like a gas-guzzler, but more quietly and more efficiently. It can go 600 miles without a fill-up, never needs plugging in, and fits four six-footers comfortably....

“Hybrids are not pollution-free, but they are gas sippers rather than guzzlers. I hope the Prius – and Honda’s two-door, 66-mpg Insight – will prime the pump for even cleaner battery-powered or fuel-cell vehicles down the road.

“I am happy that we finally have a state of the art car available that incorporates an environmental ethic, yet doesn’t sacrifice comfort, safety or performance.”

The Futurist – Special Report:

“Emerging Technologies and Ground-Floor Investment Opportunities: Hybrid vehicles – Cars that combine electric and internal combustion engines are commonly available [in] 2006.” Newsweek: “Tourism can bring a lot of things to a city, but character usually isn’t one of them. Except in San Francisco, where Global Electric Motorcars’s ‘neighborhood electric vehicles’ are the latest in tourist transportation, their Crayola hues visible zipping up and down the hills. Available at Fisherman’s Wharf’s Zapworld.com, the golf cart/dune buggy crossbreeds rent for $35 an hour or $100 a day. Locals approve of their quiet, unpolluting nature. And tourists love them for sightseeing.”

The New York Times (Part 1):

“That raises the question of whether hybird cars, which combine gasoline engines and electric motors, will provide an alternative to electric vehicles for reducing emissions. The issue is expected to come to a boil in September when the California Air Resources Board considers whether to relax its mandate that starting in 2003, 10 percent of all vehicles sold in the state must give off no emissions or extremely low emissions .... Environmentalists worry that the auto industry will try to argue that hybrids, which still emit low levels of pollutants, should be allowed to substitute for true zero-emission vehicles, weakening air-quality goals.”

(Part 2):

“The numbers also showed that hybrids had better fuel economy than some electrics, but emitted more gases believed to cause climate change .... But even if the Insight gave off twice as much greenhouse gas as the EV1, it was still a huge improvement over most cars on the road. It had only a quarter of the emissions of a conventional gasoline-powered Saturn driven on the same route.

“In the near term, at least, hybrid cars are more likely than battery-electrics to be a solution to the problems of air pollution and dependence on imported oil. Toyota, which has produced both types of vehicles, told California regulators last week that the public was not ready to accept electrics; indeed, Toyota said it could not sell the cars and would have to pay customers to take them.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer:

“Indeed, the unusual little gas- and electric-powered two-seater possesses an interrogation quotient as high as those of Vipers and Prowlers. I couldn’t get from the curb to the store without people asking me what the Insight was (an incredibly clean and fuel-efficient commuter), how it worked (by deriving power from a small gas engine and an even smaller electric motor), and what it cost ($20,000 with air conditioning) ....

“In addition to sporting elevated interrogation quotients, the Insight and Prius boast equally high intelligence quotients .... Indeed, gas/electric hybrids like these have a much brighter immediate future than pure electric cars because they don’t have to stop to be recharged. In fact, their extraordinary fuel efficiency means they don’t have to stop for gas as often as conventional automobiles ....

“Beyond the promise of profitability is the benefit the companies will glean from applying the technologies they developed for the hybrid cars to their conventional automobiles.”

The Portland Oregonian:

“Ford has compromised its electric ambitions from the 1998 electric Ranger truck to something that’s little more than a souped-up golf cart ... Think of all-battery cars as the microwave ovens of the roads, said Bob Purcell, executive director of General Motors’ Advanced Technology Vehicles. ‘It comes as a complimentary vehicle in your garage, not as a replacement,’ he said ....

“The future of all-battery cars will be decided in California, the nation’s automotive trend-setter.”

The Seattle Times:

“On the City Council, Heidi Willis is on the waiting list. Margaret Pageler wants to lease one, and Richard Conlin is eyeing Honda’s gasoline-electric hybrid, the Insight, a model already on the road.

“Mayor Paul Schell thinks they’re cool, but he’s sticking with his limo. He wants them for the city fleet, however, and he’s trying to borrow 15 for a mayor’s conference in Seattle ....

“City-dwelling environmentalists and governments trying to reduce fuel use and exhaust emissions are the markets Toyota is targeting with the Prius. The car is propelled by a small gas engine and batteries that are charged by generators in its brakes ....

“Washington state and Seattle have tried alternative-fuel vehicles before, such as natural-gas-powered sedans, but their odor and inconvenient fueling made them less popular than ordinary cars ....

“Local fleet managers also examined the Honda Insight but consider the Toyota better for fleet use. Priuses could be used by agencies that make a lot of short trips and for police investigators. [Seattle fleet engineer Matt] Rathke said they would not work as patrol cars.”

Time:

“Automakers say consumers are resisting EVs, which have a range of up to 120 miles between charges. But the electric-car crowd contends that manufacturers have hardly advertised and have either shut down production lines or forced consumers to wait so many months for an EV that they give up.

“Now drivers and would-be lessees of GM’s EV-1 sports coupe are organizing on the Internet. Meanwhile the auto lobby is working on Governor Gray Davis and California legislators. The wild card: a group of Silicon Valley types who embrace the clean machines.”

The Wall Street Journal:

“Introduced commercially in 1996, the vehicles, which are white or green and advertise their environmental friendliness, illustrate that it isn’t just high-tech inventions that can improve people’s lives. The batteries running the vehicles aren’t revolutionary. They are the ones that run golf carts in the U.S. But they could change the face of Katmandu – if the private sector and government officials let them ....

“The air quality does seem better since 1996, when for-profit companies first began assembling the electric vehicles, which have replaced older diesel-powered three-wheelers. Although hard figures aren’t available, environmentalists say the gray-brown smog that blankets the city in winter is thinner. The snow-capped Himalayas in the distance are visible more often ....

“World-wide, alternative-fuel vehicles are beginning to gain some ground. U.S. cities such as New York and Chicago are introducing or boosting their fleets of electric or electric-diesel buses, and automakers in the U.S., Japan, and Germany have developed both all-electric cars and gasoline-electric hybrids. Still, in the West, all-electric vehicles are generally regarded as too slow and too limited in range.”

Newspapers and stations holding AP memberships soon will have access to a new online mapping service providing them timely and accurate geographic map information and content ranging from global to street-level detail.

The AP and Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. (ESRI), of Redlands, California, say the new “MapShop” service will provide data layers on roads and waterways, topography, vegetation and mineral resources, natural disasters, fault lines, and more. Demographic data will provide insights on population densities, income, ethnicity, and education.

Involving data gathered from organizations such as the Census Bureau, the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and others, the service will inform news organizations on “how and when the data was gathered, as well as its source,” AP and ESRI said in announcing the new mapping service, to be formally launched this September. AP subscribers, based on circulation, are expected to pay between $75 and $1,000 per week for the add-on service, which AP officials say is typical of other add-ons the wire service offers.

Maps, once downloaded on either a Macintosh or Windows-based operating system, can be further customized using common desktop graphics programs such as FreeHand or Illustrator. Users will be able to define an area of particular news interest through a search function, address match, or latitude/longitude coordinates, or by zooming in to a specific area of a map.

“When a natural disaster strikes, a mapmaker will be able to show more than just where it happened by overlaying data about fault lines, past earthquakes or the path of a hurricane,” AP said in announcing the joint venture at a recent ESRI-sponsored users group meeting in San Diego.

AP member newspapers, TV stations and Web sites using the service can access “timely, real-world data and the tools to quickly create and save map graphics and style preferences,” the wire service’s MapShop promotional copy says. The wire service says that will save time and hassles in scanning and tracking paper maps and will allow users to share data with computer-assisted reporting teams with confidence that the maps will meet color and style preferences.

“A copy editor on deadline can create a map for a breaking news story and download it in a matter of minutes” and reporters will be able to locate specific sites by inputting an address.

News organizations having an AP membership and subscribing to the add-on MapShop service will receive copies of ESRI’s Arc View® geographic information service software.

Additional information on MapShop is available from local AP bureau chiefs and from AP’s cartographic editor at (212) 621-7804.

Beyond the new AP-members-only MapShop initiative, ESRI at its users group meeting announced one other new resource potentially useful to journalists covering natural resources and environmental issues. The new geographynetwork.com online service offers extensive free mapping and demographic data gleaned from federal agencies such as the US Geological Survey and EPA and from National Geographic.

The service offers content such as raw data, maps, population demographics, climate modeling, real-time weather reports, flood risk mapping, and more. The service aims to unite private and public sector data users, publishers, and service providers in a so-called “global network” of the geographic information community.

The moves appear to reflect growing newsroom interest in geographic information systems (GIS) as a research and reporting tool. Editor & Publisher May 29 reported Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) Executive Director Brant Houston as saying GIS “is definitely part of the future of journalism” because “it’s much easier to convey a message from visualizations. In the future, journalists will be working more with databases, and the more they can visualize them, the better.” E&P reported also that “the learning curve” in using GIS can be steep, comparable to that in effectively using database and spreadsheet software. It said journalism schools increasingly are offering GIS software courses.*

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* EHC, publisher of this newsletter, and the Radio and Television News Directors Foundation RTNDF) are sponsoring a GIS/journalism seminar as part of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) annual meeting at Michigan State University October 19-22. Environment Writer will carry future stories on that meeting and on the GIS session in particular.

A new online database scheduled to be available by mid-September will provide journalists access to extensive information on plants, animals, and ecological communities generally.

The service to be provided by the Association for Biodiversity Information will allow searches on plants and animals by scientific or common names or by taxonomic groups, such as birds or reptiles, followed by a selection of one or more records from a large list. Visitors to the site also will be able to search ecological communities by scientific or common names or use classifications, such as forest or shrubland.

Reporters will be able to search the site by location — U.S. states and Canadian provinces — or by ecoregions as designated by the U.S. Forest Service. A results table will include all records matching the search criteria, identifying states and provinces illustrating distribution.

Four different reports on the retrieved data will be available:

• a summary report identifying conservation management needs and ecological/life history;
• a status report detailing conservation ranking factors (abundance, trends, threats, fragility, protection status);
• a distribution report on conservation statuses; and
• a comprehensive report providing additional text and information on management issues and ecology/life history.

The database includes information on more than 25,000 North American species and subspecies of vascular plants; on nearly 5,500 North American species of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish; on more than 13,000 North American species and subspecies of invertebrates tracked by the National Heritage Network (freshwater mussels, dragonflies, freshwater snails, butterflies, crayfish, etc.); on select North American nonvascular plant species such as lichens, liverworts, mosses, and some fungi; and on more than 4,500 documented ecological communities throughout the United States.

The Association for Biodiversity Information is an nonprofit group that has worked closely with The Nature Conservancy and that describes itself as “a leading source for biodiversity information that is essential for effective conservation action.”

The new Web site is to be available in mid-September at www.abi.org/natureserve, and reporters can get more information by contacting ABI Director of Communications Rob Riordan at (703) 841-2080 or at e-mail address rriordan@tnc.org.

A respected regional provider of environmental coverage over radio is expanding with funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the C.S. Mott Foundation to television coverage providing environmental documentaries for public TV.

The new Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Great Lakes Television Consortium says it will produce two hour-long land use documentaries over the next year, one focusing on social and economic impacts of sprawl and the other on impacts on agriculture.

Based at Michigan Radio, the University of Michigan public radio system, the effort is aimed at countering what Michigan Radio Station Manager Donovan Reynolds describes as “a decline in serious environmental journalism in recent years.”

Reynolds pointed to the seeming irony in a radio station’s switching to TV but said “it’s consistent with our long-term of becoming a media production center.”

The TV effort is to be modeled after the existing Great Lakes Radio Consortium, which distributes a weekly environmental news feed about the Great Lakes region, said to reach 2.4 million listeners over 130 stations.

“Clearly, there is a strong desire for substantive environmental programming and we’ve found a model that works,” said GLRC former managing editor David Hammond, who now directs national programs for Michigan Radio.

The new TV programs are expected to be available for broadcast by next spring.

The initial grants from the Kellogg and Mott Foundations total more than $288,000.

Note: Formerly published by the National Safety Council. Reprinted with permission.