The Schuylkill River Sojourn below Port Clinton, entering Berks County.

Photo by Daniel P. Creighton

It's that time of year again.

The flowers are blooming, the bees are buzzing, the allergy sufferers are weeping. Yup, it's time to promote river sojourns.

The biggest, in this area anyway, is the seven-day, 112-mile trip on the Schuylkill River, from Schuylkill Haven to sunny Philadelphia.

Increasingly popular, the Schuylkill River Sojourn runs from June 6 to June 12 and, as if the word of the Thin Green Line staff were not enough to convince you of its popularity, know that Saturday June 6 and Sunday, June 7 are already fully booked.

As a past participant, I can vouch for this description as presented on the Web site of the Schuylkill River National Heritage Area, which organizes the trip each year:

Sometimes it is wet and wild. At other times it is peaceful and inspiring. There are a few rapids, calm water, plenty of laughs, songs at the campsites, and celebrations in the river towns. There is a little bit of everything in store for canoers and kayakers who take part in the week-long sojourn down the Schuylkill River that begins the first weekend of June. And even though the same route is paddled every year, a different river greets us every June.<br>

Last year the cost was $75 per day for adults. That includes meals, guides, transportation of canoes and kayaks as well as transportation to nightly special events and the cost of camping locations, but not canoe or kayak rental, necessary if you don't have your own to bring. The sojourn contracts with a rental facility, but you must make your own arrangements with them.

This link will take you to registration for the Schuylkill River Sojourn, which is now doing everything electronically. Since you are reading this on a computer, this presumably presents no problem for you dear reader.

Now, while the Schuylkill Sojourn may be the big dog in Southeast PA., know that there's another scrappy little sojourn moving up in the ranks as well.

The Perkiomen Creek is, with the exception of the Little Schuylkill River in Schuylkill County, the largest tributary of the Schuylkill itself.

Below, canoers on the Perkiomen Creek.

And, as such, the folks at the Perkiomen Watershed Conservancy felt their redoubtable creek deserved a sojourn of its own, and so it has one.

This one is only a day long and covers only a portion of the creek, whose watershed reaches from Berks and Bucks counties deep into Montgomery County.

The day is Saturday, May 23, from about 9 a.m. to early afternoon.

Experienced canoers and kayakers as well as canoe beginners can explore the Perkie between Schwenksville and the Skippack Creek confluence. The 2009 Perkiomen Creek Sojourn is sponsored by Keenan, Ciccitto and Associates, a law firm headquartered in Collegeville.

Registration, which is now open, must be received before May 11 at 4:30 p.m. Participation fees are $30 for members and $50 for non-members of the Perkiomen Watershed Conservancy.

Canoe rental fees are $25 for members and $35 for non-members. All canoes must have two paddlers at all times. All participants must wear personal flotation devices (pfd’s) at all times. Sojourn participants may use their own boats (kayaks or canoes) or they can rent a canoe from the Conservancy. (A limited number of rental canoes are available.) If renting, participants should already have a canoeing partner when they register.

The Perkiomen Sojourn will begin at the Conservancy Headquarters at 1 Skippack Pike in Schwenksville. The Sojourn will end at Hoy Park on Arcola Road in Lower Providence Township where a picnic lunch will be provided.

The middle Perkiomen Creek between Schwenksville and the Skippack Creek boasts forests and birds of all kinds including mallards, many types of hawks, great blue herons, cormorants and mergansers. Even an occasional bald eagle is spotted along the Perkie.

Those interested in participating should follow this link for more information, or contact the Conservancy at 610.287.9383 to register.

We we've learned anything at the Thin Green Line, a debate we'd rather avoid right now thank you very much, it is that there is no substitute for experience, for getting out there and seeing for yourself.

So if you've never been on the river or the creeks that literally run through your back yard, you are really missing out on an experience that could change your whole outlook about where you live.

"And the Band Played on..."

One of the most enduring images of the sinking of the Titanic is that of the orchestra, consigned to its fate, playing sonorously as the ship slips beneath the waves.

More than once, the slow-motion demise of printed newspapers has been compared to that ill-fated vessel, whose destruction was almost certainly assured the moment it was declared "unsinkable."

But what is missing from comparing journalism's crisis to its maritime counterpart is newspaper people.

One of our most enduring, irritating, maddening and, to be sure, necessary traits is our inability to just let things happen unexamined. We ask questions, we check the answers, we look things up. Like Columbo, we pick and pick and pick until we're satisfied with the answer.

Thus the title of this blog. Had there been any newspaper people on board the Titanic, they no doubt would have run around interviewing people about how they felt, writing down the order of songs played by the orchestra, trying to "get to the bottom of this story" before the ship hit bottom -- all while others twittered, or IM'd or texted unconfirmed and unverified messages to friends and family about their fate.

I can say this with confidence because as our own titanic ship of journalism flounders on the rocks of electronic competition, a slumping economy and, dare I say it, a growing national indifference, we are devoting as much time to dissecting our apparent demise (some would say too much) as we are trying to fix it.

In fact you might say, no one is declaring newspapers to be dying more loudly than newspapers themselves, due to our strong-jawed determination to be principled and seem objective even about our own death.

One of the best examples of this tendency I've seen in a while is this post on the "Green Inc." Web page maintained by The New York Times.

Enticingly headlined, "Skip the Newspaper, Save the Planet?" the subject is the recent decision by Marriott hotels to no cease providing free newspapers to guests who don't ask for one.

Obviously a cost-cutting measure, Marriott nonetheless chose to add some green spin to the move, saying they wanted to reduce their carbon footprint since not everyone used the paper that was provided.

This is where the picking comes in.

You see, the writer, one Tom Zeller Jr., couldn't just let that one go.

And so, like so many irritating newspaper people I love, Zeller digs in.

What he finds is that yes, it takes an awful lot of carbon and an awful lot of water to print a newspaper page, not to mention the trees it destroys. He then finds that if you're reading a newspaper on-line in Sweden, where most electric power is generated by hydro-electric and nuclear power, the carbon footprint is indeed less than picking up a printed copy.

But, if you're reading elsewhere in Europe or, presumably, the U.S. where coal figures more highly into the electricity profile, once you pass the 10-minute mark on-line, the footprint starts to pass that of the printed page.

If all this sounds like a giant rationalization to insist that we, the holy journalism industry, could NEVER be part of the problem -- we're always all about the solution aren't we? -- that's because it probably is.

Doesn't make it less true, of course, but it certainly feels like CYA to me.

What we should be focusing our efforts on is figuring out how we continue to provide our vital needling, examining, professional-skeptic-function electronically, and one that continues to rely on confirmed information from reliable sources and not just opinion -- you know like this -- without spending so much time chronicling our death spiral. That's what blogs are for and they seem more than happy to do it, although what they'll blog about when we're gone is bound to be less interesting.

But that is not our way. If we just left it alone, we would be ignoring a major shift in society and we wouldn't be true to who we are and why we're in this business. To be sure, newspaper people are working on keeping us afloat. But they're also being pestered by other newspaper people, asking them annoying questions and telling them (and the world) what we may be doing wrong.

Hey we just want to know -- and to tell you.

Now, if you'll excuse me, a source told me the tuba player on the promenade deck has an interesting story to tell....

("Don't' worry kids," says Grandpa. "John Boehner says the global warming gas carbon dioxide is nothing to worry about because we exhale it. But just think how much safer you'll all be when I stop breathing altogether!" Oh gramps, you're funny but you're no John Boehner.)

This being the week of Earth Day, we find ourselves blogging on an almost continuous basis in order to stuff as much green gunk into readers' heads as we can before their attention wanders back to American Idol.

So how happy were we, we ask you, when the Environmental Protection Agency declared carbon dioxide and five other heat-trapping gases to be, imagine our amazement, dangerous?

The significance of this, other than to prove that the EPA is not spending its days drooling into a bucket and watching Sponge Bob Square Pants, is it sets the stage for carbon dioxide to be regulated. You may remember that was something George W. Bush promised to do when he first ran for president. You may also remember that promise evaporated faster than exhaust from a Camaro about 13 seconds into his first term.

Now, like magic, we are about the same amount of time into Barack Obama's first term and voila!, the EPA sees the light. If we didn't know better, we would almost suspect that somehow politics affects the government's view of science.

If you're wondering how we got to this point, here is a little refresher, courtesy of The New York Times: "In 2007, the Supreme Court, in Massachusetts v. E.P.A., ordered the agency to determine whether heat-trapping gases harmed the environment and public health. The case was brought by states and environmental groups to force the E.P.A. to use the Clean Air Act to regulate heat-trapping gases in vehicle emissions. Agency scientists were virtually unanimous in determining that those gases caused such harm, but top Bush administration officials suppressed their work and took no action."

In issuing the EPA's determination Friday, the E.P.A. administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, said: “This finding confirms that greenhouse gas pollution is a serious problem now and for future generations," according to this article in The New York Times.

Almost as quickly, John Boehner, the top Republican in the House of Representatives, went on national television to declare that "the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the world, you know, when they do what they do, you’ve got more carbon dioxide. And so I think it’s clear…"

This insightful piece of logic was presented on ABC This Week to amazed host, George Stephanopoulos and can be viewed at this link to The New York Times Web site for Green Inc.

What's truly clear, is evidenced in the transcript; that Mr. Boehner was trying hard not to answer the question while seeming to, it also undermines its own logic.

According to Mr. Boehner, if it comes out of our bodies, it must be safe. And yet, what we do with what we flush down the toilet is highly regulated. How our bodily fluids get handled is regulated. Here in Pennsylvania, you even need a license to cut people's hair. Heck, just try burying grandpa in the back yard after he buys the farm and see what happens. Our whole bodies are regulated after we die.

(I must also mention here, with some reluctance, that Mr. Boehner and his party have a great deal of interest in regulating what comes out of a woman's body after conception, so I'm not sure he really wants to go down that road.)

Also, we're not sure where Mr. Boehner came up with the idea that anyone is calling carbon dioxide a "carcinogen." No one, to our knowledge, other than Mr. Boehner is saying CO2 causes cancer, only that it is altering the atmosphere in a way that may change the planet forever, which juuusssttttt might have an effect on human health.

So we agree with Mr. Boehner that the idea that CO2 is a carcinogen is "almost comical," largely because no one but him is saying that. Which, we're pretty sure, makes the joke on him.

In fact, we would consider his entire position "almost comical," if the survival of our planet's eco-system were a laughing matter.

P.S. We do want to thank him for providing us with the opportunity to inject a little bathroom humor into this debate, allowing us to loosen our collective collar and shed a little bit of our stuffy erudite image. After all, you should always leave 'em laughing, a point Mr. Boehner seems to understand.

I'll admit, I was skeptical when I saw the headline on The New York Times Web site.

"Why isn't the brain green?" it asked.

As Earth Day approaches, every publication and Web site is flashing it's "Green" cred, including The Mercury, which has a page on its Web site every day devoted to environmental news.

So I figured this was just The New York Times upscale version of some deep think piece about why the brain wasn't born an environmentalist, especially when I saw it was in The New York Times Magazine. Their stuff is always too long (HEY!, get that mirror away from me...)

Because I'm devoted to you, dear reader (all nine of you), I threw myself upon the green grenade and undertook the task of reading it FOR you, so you wouldn't have to.

But now, I'm afraid, I am going to have to throw you under the bus, hydrogen powered of course.

As it turns out, the subject is darn interesting.

First of all, CRED, created with the help of a $6 million grant from the National Science Foundation, actually stands for something: the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions.

And while this immediately presents itself as an excellent candidate for mocking, the following quote from one of its founders, Elke Weber — who holds a chair at Columbia’s business school as well as an appointment in the school’s psychology department -- dispels that impulse.

It goes like this: "Let’s start with the fact that climate change is anthropogenic. More or less, people have agreed on that. That means it’s caused by human behavior. That’s not to say that engineering solutions aren’t important. But if it’s caused by human behavior, then the solution probably also lies in changing human behavior."

And THAT, dear reader, is the core message of Earth Day.

When it began in the 1970s, Earth Day provided the public face that helped push for the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Clean Air and Clean Water acts.

But the necessity for a more tidal change is now upon us.

Consider the case of water pollution. What began when Ohio's Cuyahoga River caught fire has been addressed. Factories are regulated, power plants have inspectors, sewage treatment plants have been upgraded.

What now poses the greatest threat to water purity is us, and all we do. Called "non-point source pollution," it's the fertilizers, the pesticides we put on our lawns, the drippings from the car that go down the storm drain, the expired prescriptions we flush down the toilet.

It's our lifestyle that now has to change, and it goes far beyond water pollution. It's everything.

And what CRED is looking at is the fact that human beings are not wired to do something now that will prevent harm later.

Consider this paragraph:

"In analytical mode, we are not always adept at long-term thinking; experiments have shown a frequent dislike for delayed benefits, so we undervalue promised future outcomes. (Given a choice, we usually take $10 now as opposed to, say, $20 two years from now.) Environmentally speaking, this means we are far less likely to make lifestyle changes in order to ensure a safer future climate. Letting emotions determine how we assess risk presents its own problems. Almost certainly, we underestimate the danger of rising sea levels or epic droughts or other events that we’ve never experienced and seem far away in time and place. Worse, Weber’s research seems to help establish that we have a “finite pool of worry,” which means we’re unable to maintain our fear of climate change when a different problem — a plunging stock market, a personal emergency — comes along. We simply move one fear into the worry bin and one fear out. And even if we could remain persistently concerned about a warmer world? Weber described what she calls a 'single-action bias.' Prompted by a distressing emotional signal, we buy a more efficient furnace or insulate our attic or vote for a green candidate — a single action that effectively diminishes global warming as a motivating factor. And that leaves us where we started."

So fear won't work because, quite simply, it can't be sustained; at least not on one subject. With fear as an inadequate motivator for saving the future, perhaps, and yes I know it sounds trite, we should try love -- the love of our children to be specific.

We've all heard the tales of the mother who lifts the car to save the trapped child, the father who donates a kidney to save his daughter. Those things are true and real. Why should it be harder to buy a more fuel-efficient car or use recycled products?

We all know we're supposed to save for their college, get life insurance to provide for them if we get hit by lightning, why is this different?

Perhaps its time to ask ourselves this question: "Do we love our children enough to save the place they will live out the rest of their lives?"

Like guilty spouses, we now confess -- we forgot our anniversary.

It was one year ago April 15, that The Thin Green Line bounded onto the Internet stage with a tiny little splash. A splash that we have cleverly managed to keep tiny by writing over-long entries that no one wants to read. (We cling to the illusion that the tiny splash will make big rippes into the world, it's not much, but it's all we've got.)

So, one year? And here we let it pass without so much as a card.

It's not that you don't mean the world to us dear reader, it's just that well, time gets away from you when you work at a place that used to employ nine reporters and now uses three to produce the same amount of copy.

That's no excuse we know, and we'll do better next year we promise.

As all guilty spouses know, the first anniversary is traditionally celebrated with paper.

But given that there is not much to celebrate at papers these days, and a card is just a waste of trees unless its made from recycled paper (and that's so hard to find at the last minute or, worse yet, when you're late).

So instead we bring you news about another kind of paper.

Specifically, toilet paper.

Yes, we know, you thought we had had our fun with this subject, with liberal applications of toilet humor spread tastelessly throughout a previous blog. But then, Kimberly-Clark, the giant Death Star of toilet paper companies, went and did what we told them to do.

Shamed, chagrined and no doubt intimidated by the dauntless reasoning and peerless prose of our March 12 post about the paucity of toilet paper made from recycled paper, Kimberly-Clark went ahead and, with dizzying corporate aplomb, launched a brand of paper products made from recycled paper.

It was with dumbfound amazement and then a misplaced sense of pride that we read this Reuters article, reporting this spectacular development.

"The launch this month of Scott Naturals makes Kimberly-Clark the first major paper products maker to have a full line that taps into the growing market for environmentally friendly products," the wire service reported.

We would beg to differ, as our beloved Marcal paper products have been made from recycled paper for years. But we don't quibble. We're all about the big picture here at The Thin Green Line.

Of course, still worried about our sensitive nether regions, Kimberly-Clark is only using 40 percent recycled material in its toilet paper, although paper towels will have 60 percent and napkins 80.

Perhaps we'll give them 40 percent of our business in exchange.

But hey, as big name polluters like Clorox see the light (green of course) we have to welcome the converts into the fold and allow them to see that light at their own pace.

In the meantime, we would just like to thank them for giving us another opportunity to use our toilet paper picture on the blog.

But then, you already know how easy we are to please. After all, we've been together for a whole year now.

I had originally planned to write this entry at Christmas time, but time, as it tends to do during that time of year, got away from me.

But as I watched a group of pastors from different denominations gather at the green between Emmanuel Lutheran Church and Zions United Church of Christ Friday, it occurred to me that the prayer processional through Pottstown is, among other things, a rite of spring.

It is a rite that brings people of all different beliefs, however slight, together in the common cause of helping their community. Then I started thinking about how that common cause might be enlarged to include the planet we all share.

And suddenly it seemed that Easter, what is arguably a more significant holiday on the Christian calendar than Christmas, and which coincides so directly with the idea of new life that spring epitomizes, is an even better time to ask the question.

The question, as it was so succinctly put by this Chicago Tribune headline, is this: "Is God a Tree-Hugger?"

First, let's get some confessions out of the way. I don't go to church and I've never read The Bible.

Many of you might argue this makes me a poor choice, or even ineligible, to address this question. You might be right. Feel free to say so on your blog.

I have often been puzzled by the resistance some more fundamental Christians have toward environmental issues. To me, it seems counter-intuitive. After all, according to their beliefs, and those who advocate the unprovable theory of "Intelligent Design," God created the Earth.

As a full-blown supporter of scientific inquiry, you might be surprised to know that I am willing to concede this point, although not the way it is portrayed in the Bible, which again, I have never read. Literal interpretation of the Good Book suggests the planet is a few thousand years old, a stubborn insistence that flies in the face of incontrovertible physical evidence.

(God gave us brains too folks. Come on.)

But that same scientific evidence also suggests the universe was created by the Big Bang. Given that no scientist can offer a provable explanation for that event, it seems to me that the hand of the Big Guy is as good an explanation as any for the thing that started it all, and so I say thanks for life and all that.

But back to what puzzles me. If God created the Earth, the animals, the ecosystems, the perfectly coordinated interaction that makes life work here in any number of forms, would he really want us to be trashing it?

There is an argument that because God intends to destroy the Earth any day now, it doesn't matter what we do to it, but that seems more like a rationalization that a belief to me. What if the Rapture doesn't come for 50 or 100 years, what does that say about our love for our children or our grandchildren? Do we want to take the chance on leaving them a ravaged planet, barren of the resources needed to sustain life, a ruined paradise, just because we mis-read the schedule for Armageddon's arrival? Are we really that selfish? Is that terribly Christian of us?

Anyway, who is going to argue with a straight face that God is pro-pollution? Does God want us to fish and pollute the seas into dead zones? Does God want majestic old growth forests cut down so we can have softer toilet paper?

I may not have read the Bible folks, but I feel pretty secure in saying it doesn't tell us to "go forth and trash the place."

If indeed this planet is the product of "Intelligent Design," is it a good thing to be messing with the design by introducing a whole host of chemicals to the environment that were never part of the original model? Chemicals which are now found in our bodies during routine blood samples?

My favorite comment on this subject comes from a fellow named. J. Matthew Sleeth. Once an affluent doctor, he became "haunted" by the deaths of children; deaths he saw being caused by environmental factors. He gave up his practice, moved to Kentucky and became a Christian lecturer on being kinder to the Earth.

If you wonder what kind of things Sleeth talks about, consider this quote: "In the Bible, the first page has a tree -- the tree of life," he said. "The last page has a tree on it -- the tree of life. … The Earth is the Lord's. That's what the 24th Psalm says. And we've treated it like it's ours."

"Sleeth notes that when he speaks at churches, some ask, 'Won't people start worshipping trees?'"

He said he finds it ironic that the question is asked by those "who belong to the only religion on the planet that brings a tree into their house once a year, sings songs to it, decorates it, and puts little statues of their God underneath it."

I know all this as a result of this article in the Louisville Courier-Sentinel which featured Sleeth because he wrote the introduction to the Green Bible, a new version of an old book that is printed on recycled paper, using soy-based inks and which highlights passages having to do with the Earth in green.

(For those who live and die by spreadsheets, the Tribune has calculated that the Bible -- have I mentioned that I've never read it? -- "contains 1,000 references to the planet but only 490 references to heaven and 530 references to love.")

Called "Creation Care," the melding of Christianity and environmentalism is a growing movement. Last October, the student-initiated Renewal network gathered at Eastern University in Pennsylvania to plan their activities.

As reported by this article in the Christian Science Monitor, they had a new tool to work with. The "Green" Bible mentioned above.

"Along with the biblical text, the book includes a set of essays by theologians and conservationists (including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Brian McLaren, and Pope John Paul II). There’s a concordance on environmental subjects and a study guide on “green” biblical themes for use by individuals and church or campus groups," The Monitor reports.

"'Many younger people very much feel it is part of the Christian message to take care of the world,' says Michael Maudlin, coproject editor for HarperOne. 'So we wanted to give them a primer to help people understand that Earth care is part of the mandate God gives us.'"

"'It helps rectify a misperception that this is not a biblical issue,' says Peter Illyn, an evangelical pastor who founded an environmental stewardship group called Restoring Eden to foster awareness across the denominational spectrum. (The Green Bible comes in the New Revised Standard Version, which is accepted by Protestants, Roman Catholics, and the Orthodox.)"

All of which sounds to me like the kind of spring/Easter renewal Christians and environmentalists alike can get behind; maybe enough of one that I will finally get around to reading that book. I understand it has quite a following.

Living on a limited budget as we do, we here at The Thin Green Line are sensitive to the fact that all too often, doing the right thing is not the cheapest thing.

Which is why we wanted to make you all aware of a couple of ideas out there in the idea-o-sphere (if this becomes Webster's new word of the year, we hereby formally lay legal and binding claim to it. Stuff THAT in your "truthiness" and smoke it Stephen Colbert!).

First of all, we'd like to tell you about an incentive from an industry long thought to be bereft of soul and all human feeling, unless of course you've been in a car crash or had your house burn down.

Yes, you've guessed it, we're talking about the insurance industry, which took us completely by surprise last month and announced discounts for folks who try to make their house more green.

According to this helpful release provided by the folks at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, at least one company, Donegal Insurance Group, will provide you with a 5 percent discount for installing solar electric panels on your house and another 5 percent discount for installing geo-thermal heat pumps to heat and cool your house.

(Shown at right is a geo-thermal plant, just a weeeeee bit bigger than the kind your house would use.)

And, if you own a small business, the state is offering 2 percent fixed interest 10-year loans for projects that reduce waste, pollution or energy use. The loans can be used to pay up to 75 percent of the cost, up to $100,000.

Click here for the link to that program.

If heating your hot water with the sun is your bag, consider that homeowners are eligible for a federal tax credit on solar heaters of up to 30 percent of the installed system's cost, with a cap of $2,000.

In this Feb. 9 Op-Ed piece for the New York Times, Amherst professor Larry Hunter argued that solar hot water is cheaper, simpler and more energy efficient than photovoltaic (in which solar energy is used to generate electricity for your house) and deserves a bigger slice of the stimulus pie.

Of course if you're devoted to photo-voltaic, The Thin Green Line has a morsel for you as well.

One of the frustrating things about being the first on your block with anything is you don't have a lot of bargaining power with the seller...unless if you got your whole block to buy it.!

Voila!

And so we bring you this link to a New York Times Magazine article about an entity called 1BOG.

So long as you are not so sensitive to the wave of "socialist" accusations sweeping out from the far right shouting machine, you may find savings from the "collective" purchasing of solar power. Just think of it like pitching in with your neighbor to share the cost of a fence dividing your two properties.

This how the Times described the company: "Owned by Virgance, a for-profit company based in San Francisco, 1BOG aims to make money by collecting what amounts to a referral fee from the solar installer, and some of the incentives it offers to consumers involve straightforward middleman functions: mastering the details of state, local and federal incentive programs that drastically lower costs; vetting solar-installation companies; and so on. Solar panels are, after all, a big-ticket item that few consumers know much about. (Costs vary, but under normal circumstances a $20,000 price tag is not unusual.) Finding the best installer and getting a fair price can be intimidating and bewildering."

Having seen "Obama-mania" sweep the country, the company collects customers through a campaign. "When 1BOG starts a “campaign” in a city, it relies on its consumer participants to recruit more consumer participants," the Times reports.

They've even hired a former Obama campaign coordinator to help. Whether or not this results in 1BOG-o-mania, it's too soon to tell.

In its first venture, with a group of 41 homes, it garnered a 20 percent discount in the price of installation, no small figure when you figure it can cost as much as $40,000 to install a 4.5 kilowatt system.

So far, the nearest the company has a group is Washington, D.C., but there is also one started in Bergen County, N.J., so Pennsylvania might be next.

We'll let you know...

In the meantime, consider this. If you think none of this affects you because you're just fine with the way things are, know that things will not stay the way they are.

The Obama administration and Congress are already moving toward regulations to reduce carbon emissions into the air, that means coal, currently the cheapest of the fossil fuels.

When coal gets more expensive, your electric bill will go up.

As this New York Times article shows, those worst hit by the price jumps may well be those least able to afford it.

The heavy hand of man is destroying the grassland habitat vital to the survival of the northern bobwhite, at left, whose northern range includes Pennsylvania.

Being trend setters here at The Thin Green Line, we are sometimes slow to recognize trends we haven't set.

So after having suggested our army of readers participate in the National Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count, we began to wonder what kind of numbers in might produce.

Imagine our dismay when we stumbled across this March announcement by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar.

The gist of the announcement was summed up with uncommon directness (for a government document): "nearly a third of the nation's 800 bird species are endangered, threatened or in significant decline due to habitat loss, invasive species, and other threats."

We may be math-phobic here at TTGL, but we suspect that one-third is a pretty big number to be endangered.

In addition to being pretty, singing sweetly and crapping all over your just washed car, birds are like frogs in that they are a bellwether of their environment. (There was a reason they had canaries in coal mines and it wasn't to add a dash of color to the gloom.)

The threats are primarily two-fold, invasive species and loss of habitat.

Invasive species are among the primary threats in Hawaii, where ground-dwelling birds that formerly had no predator now fall victim to rats, brought from ships, and cats brought in to control the rats. (It is the absurdity of the situation as much as the rhyming that reminds us of Dr. Suess here).

The thing over which we should have more control is the loss of habitat. The habitat most at risk these days is grassland. Having gotten religion on wetlands, many of those species are making a comeback as a result of conservation efforts.

But while it's not too hard to convince a builder not to erect a house in the middle of a swamp, it's harder when the property is grassland, seemingly perfect for a row of McMansions.

Which is why the northern bobwhite is among the more threatened species, highlighted in Salazar's release about the new bird population report.

This is nothing new to Pennsylvania hunters.

Several years ago, a Pennsylvania Game Commission report concluded the same thing.

Among other things, it noted "Pennsylvania has lost 1.1 million acres of farmland since the 1960s. Since that time, major declines have occurred in almost all groups of grassland-associated wildlife. A high proportion of the declining bird species in Pennsylvania are associated with grasslands. Nearly 90 percent of grassland birds monitored by the Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) show declines; 43 percent of all grassland species show significant declines while none show significant increases in the state since 1980. In Pennsylvania, species such as the grasshopper sparrow, vesper sparrow, bobolink, eastern meadowlark, northern bobwhite quail, and ring-necked pheasant have declined by 80 percent or more since the mid 1960s.

Don't test us or anything, but we're pretty sure 80 and 90 percent is even more than one-third.

Call us crazy, but this looks like it could be a trend....

It's hard to feel sorry for them.

Certainly, we here at The Thin Green Line don't want anyone to lose their job.

But as true believers in sustainability, we can't help but whisper a little "We told you so" at the looming demise of the auto industry's most conspicuous symbol of gas guzzling lunacy -- the Hummer.

Because the universe is rarely lacking in irony, we think back to the person who made the Hummer popular in the first place, now-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger who, as we all know, has transmogrified into one of the nation's greenest and most progressive governors. Go figure.

Anyhoo, as if we needed any more examples of the ripple effect the collapse of the auto industry can have on our economy, we recently stumbled across this article in The New York Times (from which we shamelessly stole the cool photo above, so cool it almost made us want a Hummer) about how Hummer's pending demise is affecting it's largest dealer, based in Missouri.

In reality, most people who bought Hummer's use them in places like in this photo at right, smoothly paved suburban streets on which even a scooter has no trouble.


Those are the people to whom dealers like Jim Lynch sold the illusion that you could create the persona of a rugged, outdoor lifestyle simply by spending enough money on the floor of a fancy showroom.

And now, as the Times article points out, the risk he took is turning into a big loss.

In the end, any bet that is placed on an unsustainable product or practice is destined to lose. And the idea that we could forever support a vehicle that gets 10 miles to the gallon when there is a finite supply of oil in the world and most of it belongs to people who hate us, is definitely unsustainable.

The real tragedy here is that when that bet finally goes bad, too often it is we, the taxpayers, who are holding the marker.

Last week, a mail miracle occurred.

I didn't get any.

Sitting on my front porch with a book (yes, made from paper), I watched in wonder as our friendly neighborhood carrier passed by and said "nothing today."

I was flabbergasted.

Dumbfounded.

Non-plussed.

We at Thin Green Line's Corporate Mega-Headquarters and luxury green spa were puzzled because we have not yet done what we put on our "to do" list months ago -- sign up with 41 pounds.org

We should. After all, what's not to like?

For $41, they stop all junk mail to your house for five years.

No credit card offers to shred or unwanted catalogs; one-hundred-plus trees not harvested to make the junk; 28 billion gallons of water kept clean.

And, more than two-thirds of the fee you pay is donated to the green charity of your choice.

(We are compelled to report here that, sadly, despite vociferous argumentation by the Thin Green Line's financial team -- all of whom have paid their taxes, for the most part -- those snobs at the IRS insist we are not a charity and you cannot name us at the "charity of your choice." Apparently, we also do not qualify for a government bail-out despite making many, many financial mistakes with other people's money. Sad as this no doubt makes you, believe you us, it makes US much sadder.)

Anyway, back to our over-burdened mailman. Despite his tendency to deliver unwanted bills, he's a great guy who unfortunately is tasked with carrying a whole lot of other stuff we don't want; in other words, junk mail.

Now those in the business like to call it "direct mail," as in mail that goes "direct"ly into the trash.

There is a little less of it these days, primarily because a national credit crisis has a tendency to dry up myriad credit card offers from companies that no longer feel safe giving credit to Fort Knox, much less environmentalist losers trying to make a better world.

But let's not kid ourselves, its out there...waiting... and, like an Arnold Schwarzenegger cameo in the next Terminator movie, it will be back!

So now comes the spot in our blog where we bombard you with numbers to prove our incontrovertible point; numbers carefully researched by a guy sitting at home in sweat pants reading The New York Times.

According to our crack research department, producing junk mail produces more carbon dioxide than nine million cars.

Now those readers who did not respond to Earth Hour's call last month to shut down all unnecessary lighting for one-hour by declaring in self-righteous (and mildly paranoid) defiance that you would turn on lights you don't even own, probably know that nasty old CO2 is the planet's number one greenhouse gas.

In fact, our (unwitting) research partners at the Times inform us here that a recent report by Forest Ethics -- with the fabulously clever title of "Do Not Mail: Climate Change Enclosed" -- found "mail advertisements create 51.5 million metric tons of greenhouse gases each year — equivalent to the emissions generated by heating about 13 million homes during the winter, or mowing more than 20 billion lawns. "

Worse yet, only about 40 percent of junk mail gets recycled, probably because those of us who cannot afford to have our credit rating get any worse have to systematically shred each of those sounds-too-good-to-be-true-because-they-are credit card offers to prevent dumpster divers from stealing our slightly tarnished good name.

Those who (literally) bring you your junk mail, the U.S. Postal Service, are doing their part, installing 4,000 recycling stations near post office boxes so as much can be captured there as possible.

The Post Office is even urging direct mailers to follow their lead, providing a list of things they can do to green their product such as providing people the chance to "opt out" of being on their list and using recycled paper and biodegradable inks for their product.

But those direct mailers are a stubborn lot.

View here, if you have the stomach for it, an interview with Michael J. Critelli, 59, executive chairman of the mailing company Pitney Bowes, who uses a defense for junk mail that is as time-honored as it is disingenuous, best summarized as "we're not as bad as our competition."

Critelli argues that the trees used to make junk mail are replaced with new trees (so no harm, no foul); that junk mail makes up only 2 percent of landfill waste (what's 2 percent among friends?); and that spam, the bastard off-spring of junk mail, has an even greater environmental cost because of all the electricity those computer serves require.

All of which is completely true and, of course, completely besides the point.

To take the last point first, for this argument about spam to have weight, you have to assume that doing away with junk mail results in an increase in spam. We took a poll here at the Thin Green Line office tower complex and decided we could live with doing away with both. It also presumes we'll swallow in slack-jawed conformity that because the harm the other guy is causing is worse, we won't care about the harm you are doing.

This line of logic was dis-proved once and for all in the famous case of Crook Vs. Homeowner, renowned for the burglar's famous line, "hey pal, you should stop worrying that I'm stealing your TV, because I saw your neighbor kick your cat!"

Further, there is an environmental cost to harvesting those junk mail trees, replaced or not, and such mono-culture replants are rarely as diverse or as stable as old-growth forests; not to mention the greenhouse gases emitted by the chainsaws, loaders, helicopters (yes, we've seen it on The History Channel so it must be true) and paper mills.

Lastly, we doubt anyone would argue that reducing landfill waste by another two percent would be anything but a good thing.

Besides, how can you take seriously a guy who, when asked if some Americans like to get junk mail, replied "absolutely."

Forgive us, Mr. Critielli, if, when we ask ourselves this leading question -- "Do you think a guy whose salary is paid by junk mail will say anything to defend it no matter how damning the evidence of its harm?" -- we answer by saying "absolutely."

Now, if you all will excuse me, I have the clear the junk mail off my dining room table.