It’s crazy to see a show on you tube the day or two after I was there.

Michael Franti, acoustic, at the Kiva auditorium in Albuquerque. That’s Robert Mirabal on assorted flutes. 3/8/08

In a time where hundreds of species die out each day, it is stories like this that drive home the importance of a diverse planet.

A dolphin has come to the rescue of two whales which had become stranded on a beach in New Zealand.

Conservation officer Malcolm Smith told the BBC that he and a group of other people had tried in vain for an hour and a half to get the whales to sea.

The pygmy sperm whales had repeatedly beached, and both they and the humans were tired and set to give up, he said.

But then the dolphin appeared, communicated with the whales, and led them to safety.

“I don’t speak whale and I don’t speak dolphin,” Mr Smith told the BBC, “but there was obviously something that went on because the two whales changed their attitude from being quite distressed to following the dolphin quite willingly and directly along the beach and straight out to sea.”

I’ll bet somebody out there can speak to a whale. I don’t think we’re incapable of speaking and listening to nonhuman animals, it’s just that we’ve forgot how.

Here are two examples from many that illustrate the way in which the “green revolution” merely acts as a smoke and mirror trick, whereby one environmental problem is “fixed” but creates other—often larger—problems for the environment in other ways.

Food. (NYT) (thanks to beneath the pavement [formerly Auckland’s Burning] for posting this article.)

The world’s food situation is bleak, and shortsighted policies in the United States and other wealthy countries — which are diverting crops to environmentally dubious biofuels — bear much of the blame.

The global cost of wheat has increased by 80% in the last year alone.

Prices have gone so high that the World Food Program, which aims to feed 73 million people this year, said it might have to reduce rations or the number of people it will help.

The reason? We’re not growing food to eat, we’re increasingly growing food to put in our gas tanks.

Yet the most important reason for the price shock is the rich world’s subsidized appetite for biofuels. In the United States, 14 percent of the corn crop was used to produce ethanol in 2006 — a share expected to reach 30 percent by 2010.

Now, you might be thinking, “well, my new plug-in Prius runs solely on electricity.”

They may not be gas-guzzlers, but electric cars have a raging thirst for water. (ENN)

A comparison of the volume of coolant water used in the thermoelectric power plants that provide most of our electricity and that used in extracting and refining petroleum suggests that electric vehicles require significantly more water per mile than those powered by gasoline.

… cars, light trucks, and SUVs running off the electric grid consume three times more water and withdraw 17 times more water per mile than their equivalent gasoline-powered vehicles.

Don’t forget about our local film festival, which starts today! I’m skipping off to NM to see Michael Franti this weekend, but I hope to make it back to see some of the Sunday shows. The film, Drowning River, in particular, has me very interested.

WOODINVILLE, Wash. (AP) — Fires gutted four multimillion-dollar model homes in a Seattle suburb on Monday, and authorities found a sign purportedly left by eco-terrorists that mocks claims that the homes were environmentally friendly.

“Built Green? Nope black!” said the spray-painted sign that bore the initials of the radical environmental group Earth Liberation Front.

Explosive devices were found in the homes, and crews were able to remove them, said Fire Chief Rick Eastman of Snohomish County District 7. The FBI was investigating the fires as a potential domestic terrorism act, said FBI spokesman Rich Kolko in Washington, D.C.

The fires started at the “Street of Dreams,” a strip of unoccupied, furnished luxury model homes where developers show off the latest in high-end housing, interior design and landscaping. The homes are later sold.

No injuries were reported in the fires, which began before dawn in the wooded subdivision and were still smoldering by midmorning.

The homes are in a development near the headwaters of Bear Creek, which is home to endangered chinook salmon. Opponents of the development had questioned whether the luxury homes could pollute the creek and an aquifer that is a drinking water source, and whether enough was done to protect nearby wetlands.

The sign, a sheet with red scraggly letters, said “McMansions in RCDs r not green,” a reference to rural cluster developments.

One of the people involved in the project said the homes used “green” techniques such as water-pervious sidewalks, super-insulated walls and windows and products made with recycled materials, such carpet pads. Advertising for last summer’s Street of Dreams show focused on the environmentally friendly aspects of the homes, which were smaller than some of the huge houses featured in years past.

Say what you want about the tactics, but I agree with the message. As long as we are made to believe houses like this are “good” for the environment, the millionaires who buy them can continue to justify their irresponsible lifestyle. Why is there not a bigger movement to retro-fit old houses or older cars with more efficient amenities. Why does it seem that “buying green” automatically means buying new? This all stinks of environmental inequality. The tiny fraction of people in this country who can afford mansions like this can now also claim moral superiority because their houses are “Green.”