Maybe they’re right. Maybe the rightwing crazies have a point. Maybe global warming has all been part of vast leftwing conspiracy to stop us from funding terrorist states to the tune of $1 trillion a year through our oil imports; maybe the real agenda of the socialists is to reduce our use of coal, since it would be crazy to decrease the severe air pollution that kills thousands every year, despoils the American landscape, and provides some of the worst employment in the nation; maybe the liberal media really wants to divert our attention from the fact that China is now the leading producer of solar panels because they want American industry to fail; maybe those big-government fanatics just want the American economy to become more efficient so that they can have more money for their radical agenda, like making education more affordable and ensuring everyone access to quality healthcare.

As the evidence mounts that global warming is accelerating at an alarming pace, it is equally evident that progressives have done a terrible job of getting people to care about it. Barely a month goes by without polls showing that climate change nears the bottom of the list of most people’s concerns. Much of this is driven by the horrible messaging that begins with the basic terms themselves; neither global warming nor climate change conveys a sense of urgency.

But it’s more than that: the idea of global warming is simply too abstract and long-term for most people to grasp (despite some incredible weather events every year or two), and the solutions are presented in the worst possible ways, either completely dry and academic (i.e. cap and trade), or in terms which immediately invoke negative reactions (i.e. carbon tax).

And there are much better ways to convince people to do the things that will help avert catastrophic climate change, all of which are intuitive, and require no complex scientific knowledge, extended power point presentations, or fancy charts.

1: Gas guzzlers are the best friends of terrorists and Middle Eastern dictators

We have fought two wars in Iraq and are deeply engaged in the Middle East largely (not exclusively) because of the oil in the region; no one denies that. And the dictators and rogue regimes that dominate the Middle East exist because of the petrodollars we give them. It should incense Americans that our presidents have to pay respect to the Saudi Royal Family, which is one of the most Medieval, reactionary, and despicable regimes in the world, in which women can’t even walk alone or own a driver’s license. That a single dollar of our money goes to these despots or makes its way into the pockets of the Iranian mullahs should be an affront to our very sense of decency. Every time we fill our gas tanks some portion of that money is ending up in the pocket of someone who hates our values and wants to kill us. That should be enough to seal the deal on reducing our oil consumption. It should be talking point #1, repeated over and over again at every opportunity.

2: If you don’t believe we can do better than coal, then you don’t believe in America

Coal is cheap and abundant but it’s just about the dirtiest fuel out there. And it not only causes extreme forms of air pollution but getting it out of the mountains destroys them and the surrounding landscapes. It’s an 18th century technology that has carried us into the 21st century, but its time has passed. What jobs would be better for Americans, coal mining or building and installing wind turbines and solar panels? It’s that simple. The former is something most people couldn’t be paid enough to do, while the latter seems like a pretty attractive form of employment. And if we can get our energy without polluting the air and water and blowing up mountains, why wouldn’t we do that? And how on earth did we let the Chinese beat us at making solar panels? We should view it as a national disgrace that a communist government is beating us in the green technology race, and there’s little Americans love more than a good challenge to get them riled up, especially against an economic rival.

3: Wasting energy is for suckers

A recent report by McKinsey and Company estimates that energy efficiency improvements in the U.S. could save us $1.2 trillion. Letting the status quo continue is like throwing money down a rat hole; it is simply stupid. Retrofitting U.S. infrastructure would employ millions of workers in good jobs and end up saving us all money. What’s not to like? Being opposed to something like this is like being opposed to check-ups for infants.

The bottom line: so what if global warming is a hoax? There are clear and inarguable reasons that we should be doing everything in our power to reduce our use of fossil fuels and become leaders in the green energy revolution. Anything less should be viewed as un-American.

And for a bonus we might also help to reduce climate change and ensure a reasonably hospitable planet for generations to come.

Not bad for a leftwing conspiracy.

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Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7

Photo: White House

No one expected President Barack Obama's speech in Cairo today to focus on climate change, and it didn't. Obama didn't use the words "climate" or "environment," but rather talked about the usual Middle East challenges -- the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran's nuclear ambitions, the distrust of American influence, and the struggles of democracy in the region.

The Middle East won't be immune from the effects of climate change, however, and a hard-core environmentalist might argue Obama should have used this opportunity to remind the region that climate could exacerbate or trump all of its current problems.

Still, Obama did call out clean water, clean energy, and green jobs as he spoke about how the well-being of the United States and the Muslim world are linked. Whitehouse.gov has the full text of his speech, and video is below, but here are the relevant excerpts:

Watch the (55-minute) speech:

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Lebanese oil spill continues to spread

Six weeks after Israel bombed a Lebanese power plant, spilling 10,000 to 15,000 tons of heavy fuel oil into the Mediterranean Sea, the disaster continues to be disastrous. The slick has traveled an estimated 90 miles north, affecting every one of Lebanon's approximately 200 beaches, and may reach Syria and Turkey. Lebanon's coastline has traded in throngs of tourists for beach-cleanup volunteers; in Beirut, 18 miles from the original site of the spill, they gaze upon black sand and yellowish-green water, breathe in the scent of petroleum, and look in vain for any sign of live fish. Lebanese divers have found oil up to four inches thick on the seabed; sea turtle hatchlings at an island nature reserve will have to crawl through an oil slick to reach the water; and coastal towns with fishing- and tourism-dependent economies are struggling mightily. Ongoing conflict has delayed cleanup, which Lebanon's Environment Ministry estimates will cost $150 million over the next year. Worst of all, there's really nothing funny to say about any of it.

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Eric Pallant is a professor of environmental science at Allegheny College in Meadville, Pa., and codirector of the NATO Advanced Study Institute on Integrated Water Resources Management.

Monday, 13 Feb 2006

Kibbutz Ketura, Israel

A Moldovan, two Bulgarians, and three Canadians walk into the desert. It's like the start of a bad joke, but this is a specific desert -- an extreme one, according to local hydrologists. The Arava, in the southern Negev of Israel, is one of the driest deserts in the world, with an average amount of annual precipitation that would barely breach the soles on a pair of sandals.

The Moldovan, Bulgarians, and Canadians are in the company of 41 colleagues, who have come from 14 countries and the Palestinian Authority for a 10-day institute on water resources management. The event is sponsored by NATO, which understands that a future conflict in the Middle East -- heck, in many places on the planet -- could arise over natural resources. And water is the most embattled liquid, after oil.

I organized this institute with Clive Lipchin of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies. The organization is a liberal survivor of the 1990s, when peace between Israel and its neighbors seemed imminent and environment and peace groups sprouted like spring flowers. Arava is located on Kibbutz Ketura, a small communal village generating income from growing voluptuous medjool dates, farming fish in cages floating in the Red Sea about 35 miles from here, and raising cows that produce the best chocolate milk in Israel. On many mornings, before the desert winds flow down the Syrio-African rift valley, the aroma of desiccating cow manure blankets the kibbutz.

To kick things off, NATO sent its program director for Scientific and Environmental Affairs, Professor F. Carvalho Rodrigues, to explain why an organization formed during the Cold War to protect Europe from the Warsaw Pact had become a funder of a conference in Israel on water use in the Middle East. Carvalho, built like Luciano Pavarotti, sported a black suit and floral bowtie beneath a coal-black beard. He said the challenges to NATO's core countries and partners (there are 56 nations now) "have been transformed from national security to broadly defined social security." NATO now worries about failures in transportation, energy, communications, and what Carvalho calls "life support systems": water, air, soil, and climate.

Immediately after Carvalho sat down, we heard "good news and bad news" from David Brooks, a Canadian septuagenarian who is the closest thing to a globally recognized, impartial expert on Middle Eastern water. Brooks said the good news is that water wars aren't imminent, thanks to reasonably good cooperation among erstwhile enemies. The bad news is that water scarcity is pronounced, and getting worse. The overwhelming majority of surface water in the region is polluted, mostly by raw sewage. Inappropriate disposal of industrial and chemical waste is widespread. Farmers receive water for irrigation at absurdly subsidized prices, and groundwater is being extracted at unsustainable rates.

Brooks predicted that as Middle Eastern populations continue to expand, water shortages would be felt first in food production, nearly all of which depends on irrigation. There wouldn't be a shortage of drinking water; humans can survive on mere gallons per day. In fact, the average Palestinian consumes just 15 gallons a day -- half as much as a Jordanian, a fifth as much as an Israeli, and about one-twentieth as much as a Californian.

We got a hint of things to come when Dr. Samir Hijazin, from the Jordanian Ministry of Water and Irrigation, asked, "How can Israel grow vegetables [and raise cows] in the middle of the desert, when Jordanians and Palestinians have to wait for sporadic water deliveries during the middle of the summer?" To paraphrase David Brooks, water shouldn't be a cause for war in the Middle East -- but it could become an excuse.

Tapped Out

Tuesday, 14 Feb 2006

Kibbutz Ketura, Israel

Nader El Khatib is the Palestinian director of Friends of the Earth Middle East. During most of the year, he meets with his Israeli and Jordanian counterparts to promote environmental protection of the region. During the summer, however, he is a dictator.

Nader lives with his two brothers in a house on the West Bank. There are 35 water tanks on the roof, but inside there is no running water. Speaking softly, he told the participants at this week's NATO institute, "I become a dictator in my family during the summer, when no rain falls for six or seven months. I am constantly checking that no one in the household is wasting water."

Nader El Khatib.

Photo: Eric Pallant.

In Amman, Jordan, there are water shortages, but at least there is a schedule: water comes every Wednesday. "But in Palestine," continued Nader, "it could be weeks or months, because Israel controls water allocations to Palestinians on the West Bank. When we were under curfew for 40 days in Bethlehem [during the worst of the intifada], we were constantly worried about water supplies." The only predictable increase in water provisions on the West Bank comes on Saturday, when religious Jews observe the Sabbath in their West Bank settlement communities and do no work.

To Nader and his fellow citizens, this is the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. During the peaceful 1990s, Palestinian children were out in the street handing olive branches to Israeli soldiers. After seeing their hopes for an independent Palestine dashed, Nader says it is very hard to tell kids to conserve. "They tell me to get lost, because they do not have enough water to use."

Nader once participated in a study of water supply to Palestinian cities on the West Bank. In 1997 in Hebron, a city of approximately 110,000, he found most people got water from the piped system only once a week from May to October. This was only enough for 27 liters per day -- a little more than six gallons. Picture that many Coke bottles, and imagine using just that amount for cooking, cleaning, washing, and toilet activities. "People have to buy water from suppliers, tanker trucks, and this is an economic burden," Nader says.

Evgeni Levner, a gray-haired Israeli scientist from the Holon Academic Institute of Technology, listened to Nader's stories with quiet intensity before finally speaking up. "First of all, I want to say that I never knew any of what Nader just told us. I also want to say that I don't think we should generalize, we should not create an image of a monster of Israel, nor should we aim to praise it. We should do our very best to find a solution."

Susana Neto, an urban and regional planner from the Technical University of Lisbon, could not believe Israelis were unaware of Palestinian water shortages. Other Israeli participants confirmed Evgeni's observation. Israelis don't know how hard it is. The same can be said for most residents of the developed world.

The participants produced one example of "consciousness raising" from Jordan. A few months ago, there was a campaign in Jordan called "Right to Water." It was designed to raise awareness among the privileged part of the country's population about scarcity and lack of water experienced by its poor residents. Participants wondered why there couldn't be something similar throughout the Middle East.

Jonathon Chenowith from the Center for Environmental Strategy, University of Surrey, England, put his finger on the problem of conferences like these. "The thing is, we are sitting in a small room in a small kibbutz in the middle of the Arava Desert. How can we get the message out beyond our bubble to the rest of the world?"

Now you know.

Dead on Arrival

Wednesday, 15 Feb 2006

Dead Sea, Israel

The public beach on the Dead Sea is filled with gleeful voices: Russian, Italian, Portuguese, Arabic, Turkish, heavily accented English, German, and Armenian. Chris Bowser, a graduate student from Poughkeepsie, N.Y., laughs as he paddles on his back, his feet in the air, his head, shoulders, and half his chest well above the surface.

Frolickers like us can still walk to the public beach, but the walk has gotten longer every year. And reaching the fancy beach at the Ein Gedi Spa now requires a mile tram ride. The snake-like road from spa to beach must be extended annually in order to reach the edge of the Dead -- a shrinking body of water that has lost about one-third of its surface area over time.

Dead Sea salt.

Photos: Eric Pallant.

The famed sea is actually a terminal lake. Water flows into this, the lowest point on the earth's surface, from the River Jordan. Its only way out is evaporation. But the last time any fresh water from the Jordan reached this point was in 2005.

As Gidon Bromberg, Israeli director of Friends of the Earth Middle East, puts it, the one-meter-per-year drop in the level of the lake is the best example of international cooperation in the Middle East: "Syria, Israel, Lebanon, and Jordan have all worked together to drain it."

The Jordan River flows through the Sea of Galilee on its way to the Dead Sea in a nearly straight line from north to south, along the border between Jordan and Israel. North of the Galilee, its tributaries in Syria and Lebanon are dammed. Farther downstream, it is piped to farms in southern Israel. Water is extracted from the Sea of Galilee to supply Israel and Jordan. By the time the river exits the Sea of Galilee to continue south, it consists of brackish water and sewage.

To compound matters, an enormous industrial complex at the southern end of the Dead Sea -- known as the Arab Potash Company in Jordan and the Dead Sea Works in Israel -- has established evaporation ponds to extract commercially important salts. The factories produce magnesium, bromide, potash, and phosphorus fertilizers for export. Through evaporation, the two companies are responsible for approximately 30 percent of the Dead Sea's demise.

In the last decade, 800 sinkholes have opened on the Israeli side of the lake. The holes have absorbed highways, bridges, and date orchards. When rainwater or fresh springwater washes away salts in the soil, craters 30 feet deep and wide enough to swallow a bus open without warning.

Sinkholes forming on the former lake bottom.

Eduard Interweis, a German ecologist at the Institute for International and European Policy, said it best -- while standing next to a sinkhole the size of a condo. "How can I make it clear to my mother? She goes to the store to buy peppers. They come from Israel. Those peppers contain water that once flowed into the Dead Sea and fertilizers manufactured by the Dead Sea Works. How do I explain to her that the salad she prepares for me is killing the Dead Sea?"

The water exported in those vegetables could have been used to support people in Jordan, foster agricultural development in Palestine, preserve endangered riparian species in the Jordan River Valley, or prevent the Dead Sea from drying up.

The Dead Sea won't disappear. Springs on its floor supply some water that can't be tapped by surrounding countries. Furthermore, as the lake shrinks, salt concentrations will get so high the rate of evaporation will eventually decline. Nevertheless, in just a few decades, one of the world's most unique resources -- a lake known for millennia for its ability to buoy bodies and spirits -- will become a tiny, painfully salty, human-made puddle.

A Sight for Besor Eyes

Thursday, 16 Feb 2006

Kibbutz Ketura, Israel

The Besor River is just like the 14 other streams that begin in the mountains of the West Bank and flow west toward the Mediterranean Sea across the border between the Palestinian territory and Israel. Like the other streams, the Besor is utterly polluted.

The Besor looking sickly.

Photo: Lior Assaf

Raw sewage from 200,000 people in the Palestinian city of Hebron and the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba is dumped into the Besor. At its start, the stream is a milky white slurry, but 60 percent of this sewage will seep into the ground before the stream reaches the sea. On its 70 mile trip, the Besor picks up sewage from the Israeli industrial city of Dimona, turns velvety brown, collects agricultural chemicals from Israeli farms in the northern Negev, gathers solid waste, leaves Israeli territory for the Gaza Strip, and finally empties into the Mediterranean. The Besor is the largest watershed in Israel. In Gaza, it is the only flowing water.

Lior Assaf, an Israeli staff hydrologist at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, is part of a team of Palestinians and Israelis working together to model the hydrology and chemistry of the Besor. As happens at meetings like these, he presented a PowerPoint profile of the stream: "Biological Oxygen Demand," "Index of Biological Integrity," "Nitrate Concentrations," and so on. Every measure indicates the stream is deadly. Lior summed up his presentation in Israeli-accented English. "If it smells like sewage and it looks like sewage, then guess what: it's sewage."

When he finished his presentation he was attacked. Jordanians, Canadians, and Europeans felt certain he was laying the blame inside the bathrooms of Palestinians for dumping their sewage into the Besor's headwaters. First, Lior insisted he was only presenting data; the city of Hebron was simply the first to dump its waste. Second, he tried to remind the countries of NATO that Israel also added chemical, agricultural, and human waste. He could not assuage the audience. In the Middle East, even feces (this is a polite publication) is political.

A troubled river helps bring people together.

Photo: Lior Assaf.

Nevertheless, hidden in Lior's message is a news story bubbling below the line of sight of the world's television cameras: Palestinian and Israeli scientists are working together. While their leaders hurl vitriol at one another and their armed forces launch missiles, people who care about the environment have steadfastly continued to call, email, and meet.

The Besor River study is not the only cooperative venture in the region to cross borders. The last formal talk of our NATO Advanced Study Institute was delivered by David Lehrer, director of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies and host for the meeting. David said the goal of the Arava Institute is to bring Jewish and Arab citizens together to protect the environment, "because nature knows no boundaries."

In one example, college-level students attending the Arava Institute will prepare curricula on transboundary environmental issues during the upcoming semester. They will discuss the religion of birds in high-school classrooms in Eilat, Israel, and Aqaba, Jordan.

The cities of Aqaba and Eilat, which sit side by side on the Red Sea, separated only by the Israeli/Jordanian border, present the first food and rest for nearly a billion migrating birds a year, making it the busiest flyway in the world. The high-school students will be asked to decide whether squacco herons, white storks, little crakes, or tawny pipits choose Judaism or Islam before selecting which side of the border to land on, or whether the quality of the habitat and resources are more important. It proves David's point. Migrating birds know no boundaries and only cooperative efforts between Jordanians and Israelis will ensure that open space is protected from developers.

There are dozens of cooperative environmental projects in the Middle East, each one rather tiny in the grand scheme of Middle Eastern politics. What they have in common is recognition that everyone here depends on the same dwindling aquifers and breathes the same polluted air. The Middle East is a densely populated, small, dry place, but seen from a bird's eye view, environmentalists are defying politicians, building bridges across religious, ethnic, and political borders that separate people, but not nature.

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Middle East Conflict Decimates Jordan River

The Jordan River, a holy waterway for Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike, is a desiccated shadow of its once robust self, thanks to unceasing conflict and competition for water in the Middle East. Fifty years ago, the river's flow was more than 264 billion gallons a year; today, it is less than 26.5 billion a year -- and that includes more than 5 billion gallons of raw sewage. Israel, Jordan, and Syria have been siphoning off water in rising amounts as their populations increase; Jordan and Syria are currently building a new dam that could further cut the river's flow. Due to conflict in the region, very little cooperative work has been done among governments to address the sad state of the Jordan. Middle East representatives of Friends of the Earth have asked the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to place the river on its World Heritage list, which would mean financial and technical assistance for conservation efforts. Says Israeli Chana Ridlin, "when we see each side of the river is flourishing, then we know there is peace."

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Iraq's first environment ministry, facing a host of daunting ecological problems and a list of 35 priority projects that would cost more than $200 million, has been allotted a 2004 budget of ... $1 million. A report from the United Nations Environment Program presents a litany of environmental challenges facing the war-ravaged country: rivers polluted by crude-oil leaks; widespread cholera, malaria, typhoid, and diarrhea due to contaminated water; post-war looting of hazardous materials from government, industrial, and scientific facilities; and depleted uranium from weapons used by U.S. forces in the war, to name but a few. The ministry is seeking international support and attempting to establish a department that would coordinate with other fledgling agencies on environmental problems.

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Last year, China became the world's second-largest importer of oil (take a wild guess who's No. 1), struggling to keep up with the energy demands of an economy expanding at a rate of 9.9 percent annually. Having recently concluded, like other oil-thirsty countries, that the volatile Middle East might not be a stable, long-term source of black gold, China has begun jostling with other global energy consumers -- notably the U.S., Japan, and Europe -- to find oil in more out-of-the-way locations. Recent months have seen Chinese President Hu Jintao visit the African nations of Gabon and Algeria, not exactly high-profile diplomatic allies, but lucrative sources for oil contracts. China's ballooning energy demands are helping to fuel an oil boom in West Africa.

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Egyptian Agro-Business Is Socially Conscious and Green to Boot

In the arid Egyptian desert -- an area not typically associated with socially progressive entrepreneurship -- the Sekem Group is demonstrating how home-grown business can make both profit and positive change. Founded in 1977 by Ibrahim Abouleish, the agro-business has developed a wide range of products (herbal medicines, organic food and cotton, and more), and it provides good schooling, vocational training, and health care to its 2,000 employees and other local community members. At a time when many other businesses are struggling, Sekem actually grew by 25 percent last year. It has also started a number of nearly self-sustaining nonprofit projects like the Egyptian Biodynamic Association, which promotes chemical-free farming. The jury of the Right Livelihood Foundation awarded Sekem its "Alternative Nobel Prize," saying, "Dr. Abouleish practices what he calls the economics of love -- and it works. He proves that you can do the right thing and make a living out of it."

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Saudi Arabia is home to the world's largest oil reserves, but it's desperately short on another, equally precious resource: water. There isn't a river or lake to be found anywhere in the nation, and the only renewable water sources are shallow aquifers refilled by infrequent rains. A growing population, a fondness for showy swimming pools and fountains, and a not-very-conservation-minded agricultural industry are all putting increased pressure on the limited water supply. Meanwhile, as the aquifers are drained, the concentration of salts and metals rises in the remaining water, which must undergo a costly purification process before it can be used, even for agricultural purposes. And water shortages, or the fear of them, contribute to tensions in an already volatile region.

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The Bush administration, U.S. troops, and Iraqi citizens aren't the only people preparing for war: Employees of American companies that specialize in extinguishing fires from oil wells are also readying themselves for what's to come. Iraq's economy, Middle Eastern political stability, and U.S. interests all dictate that the oil industry cannot be a casualty of war -- so any fires would have to be controlled, fast. That's a tall order in a country whose oil wells are spread over swamps and mountains, and are often far from water sources that could be used to help control flames. During the Gulf War, Iraqi troops blew up 700 oil wells in Kuwait, sending the country into a nine-month environmental nightmare the aftereffects of which are still being felt. An even worse scenario could unfold in Iraq, home to the world's second-largest oil supply, if wells are tainted with chemical or biological weapons and oil fields are booby-trapped to make firefighting difficult and deadly.

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As President Bush weighs the pros and cons of waging war on Iraq, the issue of U.S. oil energy security looms large. And although no one would have believed it 50 years ago, the U.S. is increasingly contemplating Russia as a stable and desirable alternative source of oil. The strategic partnership between the Cold War-era enemies would be built on mutual self-interest; the U.S. wants an oil source far from the strife of the Middle East, and Russia wants to rebuild its economy and enhance its importance in global politics. The Middle East, and particularly Saudi Arabia, still dominates the oil market, but Russia is already in second place. One hot spot of Russian energy development: Sakhalin, a verdant island in the far eastern Sea of Okhotsk. The region could yield 3.3 billion barrels of oil and lots of natural gas -- but environmentalists worry that energy exploitation on Sakhalin could harm the area's rare gray whales, one of just two populations left in the world.

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Former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt announced today that he will become the chair of a company that plans to develop massive water projects in the Middle East. Babbitt, a lawyer who headed up the Interior Department during the Clinton administration, has since earned the ire of environmentalists by advising two companies seeking to develop parts of the California coast. His new and as-yet-unnamed business will be a subsidiary of Cadiz Inc., which has also drawn fire from environmentalists over its plan to sell large amounts of water from underneath the Mojave Desert. Babbitt says he will not be involved in the Mojave Desert project but will be wholly dedicated to creating desalinization programs, distribution and management systems, and other water projects in the Middle East.

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If Kenya gets its way, water distribution in east Africa could change dramatically: The nation's energy minister, Raila Odinga, has called for a review of the 1929 British colonial treaty that grants Egypt the right to veto projects involving use of the headwaters of the Nile. Odinga called the treaty outdated and said it fails to take into account the interests of countries other than Egypt that also depend on the Nile as their main water source. Ethiopia, whose catchment areas account for 86 percent of Nile waters, has echoed Kenya's demands by calling for an end to a 1959 water-sharing treaty between Egypt and Sudan. Odinga said that countries that use the water downstream should compensate those nations that protect and conserve catchment areas and other parts of the river system.

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Disappearing slave history

The cruel practice of shark-finning -- in which the fins are sliced off of living sharks to make soup -- has found its way into the heavily protected waters of Egypt's Red Sea. The discovery of illegal shark-fin fishing in the region has alarmed both environmentalist and tourism operators in the region. Underwater tourism in the Red Sea is a multi-million dollar industry, and every shark is estimated to be worth as much as $10,000 in income brought in by tourists. Trouble is, shark fins fetch a substantial wad of cash, too -- as much as several thousand dollars per fin, which makes eliminating the trade difficult.

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Fair-to-middling was the U.S. ranking in a new study, presented at the World Economic Forum last week in New York, that rated the environmental health of 142 countries. In the study, conducted by the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University, the U.S. came in at number 51, behind Botswana (15) and Cuba (47) but ahead of Japan (62) and Great Britain (98). The top-ranking countries were (can you guess?) Finland, Norway, Sweden, Canada, and Switzerland, while the worst were Haiti, Iraq, North Korea, and the United Arab Emirates. Interestingly, the study found no clear correlation between economic wealth or degree of industrialization and environmental health.

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The tar sands blow

As if all the political strife weren't enough, here's more grim news from the Middle East: The Dead Sea, the lowest spot on Earth, is getting even lower. In the last decade, the sea, which already lies more than 1,300 feet below sea level, has fallen an additional 20 feet. Scientists attribute the change to a drop in the water table around the Dead Sea, which allows the ground to settle and compact. The declining water table, in turn, is blamed on the steady siphoning of water from the area for agricultural, industrial, and residential uses in the parched region.

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These days, press coverage of the Middle East is all bombs and burkhas, but Victoria Jamali is fighting a very different battle. The Iranian woman cofounded one of her country's most active nonprofits, the Women's Society Against Environmental Pollution. Now, along with colleagues at the University of Tehran, she is launching Iran's first environmental law program. U.S. environmentalists have called Jamali an Iranian John Muir. She is leading Iran's movement against severe water and air pollution (cities like Tehran must close their schools in the fall, when air pollution is most severe); against threats to the country's wildlife (such as the rare Persian cheetah); and against the general lack of environmental regulation in her society.

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America's fragile domestic infrastructure threatens her energy security at least as much as dependence on oil from the Middle East. Replacing oil from that region with even more vulnerable domestic systems would therefore decrease energy security.

Stranger than science fiction.

Extraordinarily concentrated energy flows invite and reward devastating attack. In our 1982 Pentagon study Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security, we found that a handful of people could shut down three-quarters of the oil and gas supplies to the Eastern states (without leaving Louisiana), cut the power to any major city, or kill millions by crashing an airplane into a nuclear power plant. All of that remains true today. Expanding such centralized and vulnerable energy systems would threaten our national security.

Fundamentally, energy security is less about foreign vs. domestic sources, or a shortage of giant energy facilities, than about the basic architecture of the energy infrastructure. A system is secure not because it's American or big, but because it's designed to make large-scale failures impossible and local failures benign. Energy security starts with using less energy far more efficiently to do the same tasks. Then it gets that energy from sources that are inherently invulnerable because they're dispersed, diverse, and increasingly renewable.

This strategy doesn't cost more; indeed, it's already winning in the marketplace. For example, central power stations, no matter how well engineered, can't supply really cheap and reliable electricity. The power lines that deliver the electricity cost more than the generators, and cause almost all power failures. Onsite and neighborhood micropower is cheaper, eliminates grid losses and glitches, and harnesses waste heat -- so savvy investors favor it.

Of course, oil from the Middle East is a problem. Getting oil from the unstable Persian Gulf leaves America less secure and yoked to unattractive regimes. Although only 22 percent of oil imports come from the Gulf (three-fifths come from the Western Hemisphere), decreasing that dependence is wise. But this requires investing in the fastest and cheapest energy system, so we buy the most solution with every year and every dollar spent. We don't need just another crude-oil source, but an inherently secure supply chain delivering fuel safely all the way to the customer.

Energy efficiency is the rapid-deployment energy resource. Compared to 1975, America used 40 percent less energy and 49 percent less oil last year to produce each dollar of gross domestic product. Those savings are now the nation's largest "source" of energy -- five times domestic oil output. Most were achieved in just six years, from 1979 to 1985, when GDP grew 16 percent, total oil use fell 15 percent, and Gulf imports fell 87 percent. Maintaining that pace could have eliminated all Gulf imports after 1985.

Get hyper about cars of the future.

Photo: RMI.

Modern efficiency technologies can put another $300 billion a year back in Americans' pockets. A light-vehicle fleet that was just 2.7 miles per gallon more efficient would eliminate Gulf imports. Saving energy is the fastest way to blunt OPEC's market power, beat down prices, and expand the share of energy supply from invulnerable sources. And national security would benefit from improvements in fuel-efficiency in another respect: The Defense Science Board, an influential advisor to the Defense secretary, recently identified billions of dollars of military fuel-saving opportunities.

Then there are new ways to supply fuel that are secure, fast, and competitive. Done right, abundant farm, forest, and even urban wastes can yield clean liquid fuels while protecting topsoil, farmers, rural culture, climate, and prosperity. Producing such biofuels locally bypasses vulnerable pipelines and provides more jobs. Another attractive innovation is fuel cells that use natural gas or renewable energy. (Manhattan's Conde-Nast Building outperformed its rivals by saving half its energy and incorporating the two most reliable known power sources -- fuel cells and solar cells -- all at no extra cost.) Together, these proven alternatives can displace oil promptly, securely, profitably -- and, in time, completely.

In contrast, such options as drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge decrease security. If the refuge held economically recoverable oil (unlikely and in any case a decade away, according to the official data), then delivering that oil by its only route, the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline System, would undercut the anti-terrorist goals of the Defense Authorization Act. It would make the pipeline the fattest energy-terrorist target in the country -- akin, writes Bill McKibben, to pinning a "Kick Me" sign on Uncle Sam's backside.

In the pipeline of fire.

Photo: NREL.

The pipeline would carry a domestic energy source all right, but it's frighteningly insecure. It's mostly aboveground, accessible to attackers, and can become impossible to repair in winter. If pumping stations or key facilities at either end were disabled, 9 million barrels of hot oil could congeal in one winter week into an 800-mile-long Chapstik. The Army, U.S. General Accounting Office, and Senate Judiciary Committee found the pipeline indefensible. On Oct. 4, a drunk shut it down for 60 hours with one rifle shot. It had previously been sabotaged, shot at on over 50 occasions, and incompetently bombed twice. A disgruntled engineer's more sophisticated plot to blow up three critical points with 14 bombs, then profit from oil futures trading, was thwarted by luck two years ago. He was an amiable bungler compared with the Sept. 11 attackers, whose Algerian colleagues have just threatened to blow up a major gas pipeline to Southern Europe. On the weekend of Oct. 26, Midwest police detained, and later released, six suspicious Middle Eastern men who had photographs of the pipeline.

Both Gulf oil and the vulnerable, rapidly aging Trans-Alaska Pipeline imperil national energy security. Both should be replaced with faster, cheaper, inherently secure energy efficiency and a distributed domestic supply system. That is how to design an energy system that terrorists can't shut off -- and a durable foundation for an America that would no longer be a fragile power.

For further details, please visit the Rocky Mountain Institute's library of articles on energy and energy security. An earlier version of this piece was published on TomPaine.com.

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