Going Green: One Small City's Big Impact | Newsweek Project Green

CAMPAIGN 2008
Yanking Our Chain?
Jonathan Alter 7/22/2008 12:00:00 AM
"What do you want, you little jerks?"
IRAQ
When the Good Guys are the Bad Guys
Babak Dehghanpisheh 7/19/2008 12:00:00 AM
Mohammed Waeli was furious. The powerful governor of Basra had heard that Iraqi Army soldiers were looking to use city bulldozers to clean up the streets of his unruly metropolis. If anyone was going to get credit for improving life in Basra, he was. In a late-night phone call last month, he tore into the top Army commander in Basra, Gen. Mohammed Huweidi. "We want to use [the bulldozers] to serve the city," the general protested. "We're not asking any money for this service." Waeli wasn't mollified. Huweidi's men were interfering and should back off, he warned. "Let me explain," Huweidi said, as the governor continued to berate him. Finally Huweidi relented. "Yes, you're the governor," he said. "I will ask them to pull back."
FAST CHAT
Living a Second Life Online
Jessica Bennett 7/19/2008 12:00:00 AM
We've all heard the warnings: addiction, isolation, a waste of time. But some 50 million people log on to online role-playing games like The Sims and Second Life—and many of them never log off. The makers of a new documentary called "Second Skin," which hits theaters in September, followed seven hard-core gamers to find out why. Victor Piñeiro, the film's producer, spoke with NEWSWEEK's Jessica Bennett:
PROJECT GREEN
’69 Flashback
Jamie Reno 7/16/2008 12:00:00 AM
The notion of new offshore drilling isn't going down well in Santa Barbara, Calif., the idyllic seaside community 90 miles northwest of Los Angeles that has often been called the birthplace of the modern environmental movement. Longtime residents still talk about the oil rig spill in January 1969 that left 35 miles of coastline covered with black goo and caused severe environmental damage. The disastrous spill, which gained worldwide attention, spurred the creation less than a year later of the Environmental Protection Agency by the Nixon administration and passage of the Clean Air Act.
ENERGY
America’s Untapped Oil
Jim Moscou 7/14/2008 12:00:00 AM
Royal Dutch Shell, the international oil giant, thinks the solution to America's oil crisis may lie in the heart of Colorado. Since 1981, the company has quietly funded a multi-million dollar research project that many call a quest for energy's Holy Grail. The mission: to discover a way to safely and economically extract fuel from oil shale, a type of sedimentary rock found in Wyoming, Utah, and especially Colorado's Western Slope. The potential windfall is staggering. Studies over the years by industry and government alike estimate that there may be between 800 billion and more than one trillion barrels of oil locked up in these rocks--nearly three times the known reserves in Saudi Arabia. That would be enough oil to supply America for the next 400 years. "It's coming eventually. It's just a matter of when," say Roy McClung, mayor of Parachute, Colorado, a community in the heart of oil shale country. "Should all the stuff come into place, this area is going to--well, I don't know if anyone is ready for that kind of growth."
WORLD AFFAIRS
All Shook Up
Mary Hennock
The Chinese phrase for "crisis" combines the words for both "danger" and "opportunity." That pretty much describes how the 7.9-magnitude earthquake that flattened parts of Sichuan also shattered parts of the traditional social order—for worse but also for better. New forces are now emerging from the rubble that will determine how China is ruled and perceived far after the crisis has passed. The official scramble to assist disaster victims has been accompanied by an unusual display of government transparency and openness, creating new opportunities for old rivals such as Taiwan and Japan; breaking down some barriers between rich and poor; injecting new levels of trust between the Communist Party and the people it rules, and offering those people new liberties.