Environment: Forging The Future: The Planet Protectors

GETTING A CHARGE OUT OF MUD THE MICROBE MASTER

Clean and dry is not an interesting environment for Derek Lovley. As a boy, he always wanted to go where he might get wet. Growing up in northwest Connecticut, he worked summers as a lifeguard and briefly considered a career monitoring streams. So even though his work in environmental microbiology kept him indoors, when it was time to open his own lab in 1995, he chose to do so at the University of Massachusetts in pastoral Amherst, turning down more prestigious Ivy League suitors so that he could have a better prospect of getting his boots muddy.

Lovley’s dual pursuits of scientific exploration and natural surroundings led him straight to the discovery of a group of remarkable microbes he named Geobacter, which breathes rust instead of oxygen, thrives in polluted earth and can even generate electricity. When Lovley first found Geobacter in silt beneath the Potomac River in 1987, he had no idea how capable it was. “I never thought it would go this far,” says Lovley. “But Geobacter can do so many things.”

Geobacter’s secret is its unique metabolism: the microbes expel electrons outside their cell walls without needing to convert them to water, as human cells do. Geobacter needs only an outside compound–usually iron oxide, or rust–to accept the excess electrons. Lovley discovered how to coax Geobacter into not only dumping electrons onto uranium waste but also consuming petroleum by-products. Geobacter has already effectively decontaminated a uranium mine in Colorado and an oil spill in Minnesota.

But Geobacter has an even more remarkable talent. Just as the microbes can give electrons to iron, they will gladly donate them to an electrode, which creates an electrical current. Navy researchers first observed “electrified” sea muck in 2000. From this, Lovley’s lab has corralled Geobacter into sediment batteries that could be powering battlefield electronics within a year.

Lovley’s unyielding faith in the microbe’s potential, along with financial backing from the Department of Energy and the military think tank DARPA, has expanded his lab from five scientists to more than 50 today. Daniel Bond, who has won accolades for his work in Lovley’s lab, says his colleague’s creativity comes from an ability to straddle different disciplines in his work. Says Bond: “Derek really appreciates a good unsolved problem.” And the rest of us can appreciate Lovley’s ingenious answers.

–By Nathan Thornburgh

WEARING OF THE GREEN THE ORGANIC DESIGNER

A lot of environmentalists work in bold strokes, saving a species or blocking a dam, but Christina Kim operates in a more subtle way. The fashion designer weaves an eco-friendly philosophy into all her creations. “I am less interested in some really grandiose idea of how I’m going to save the environment,” says Kim. “Ultimately, we have to look at how we spend one day.” Kim and her clothing-and-housewares company, Dosa, do a lot of little green things that add up. She will make fleece jackets and recycle the remnant material–even collecting other companies’ leftovers–as stuffing for poufs in her home-furnishings line. She has made a mission of promoting the “imperfect white”–keeping cotton its natural color, a creamy off-white, instead of using harmful chemical bleaches. “It’s more beautiful to wear different shades of white,” she says. When she colors her fabrics, she often dips them in natural dyes, such as indigo, cochineal (a scarlet pigment produced by a parasite that lives on cacti) and fustic (a yellow dye drawn from a tropical tree). She employs cream of tartar instead of toxic chemical binders to fuse pigments to textiles. It’s more expensive, but “I deal with a high-end market,” says Kim, “so I can choose to use things that are environmentally much friendlier.” Dosa, with a store in New York City and galleries in Los Angeles and London, sells goods that are good-hearted but not cheap: its hand-embroidered Bali blouse costs $680.

The designer also uses organically grown wools in addition to handloomed cottons. “In fashion, we’re much more interested in the end product, the few moments of glory on the runway,” Kim says. “For me, it is the making of one garment [that’s important]–it goes through so many hands, I feel responsible for those people.” Last year she provided the livelihood for some 500 women in the Assam region of India who spun eri silk by hand for Dosa. Eri silk comes from cocoons in the wild and is harvested only after the silk moth has broken free. Kim uses it undyed and buys only what’s available naturally. “As our modern society grows, we’re losing human touches,” she says. “I want the wearer of my clothes to feel someone’s energy, someone’s hand, someone’s warmth.”

–By Sora Song

A GOD’S EYE VIEW OF THE SITUATION THE IMAGE MAKER

Yann Arthus-Bertrand is an aesthete with the soul of a moralist. He uses the beauty of the world to beguile you into a photograph in which a larger lesson awaits. His lesson is about the planet in jeopardy. For the past decade the 57-year-old Frenchman has been taking aerial shots over deserts, volcanoes, rain forests and cities. He turns natural formations and highway interchanges into nearly abstract, high-luster photographs–and also into food for thought. If his pictures are beautiful, the realities they point to are not: deforestation, desertification, unbridled development. “Each photograph,” he explains, “has something to say about our environment.”

Arthus-Bertrand has been spreading his message in a series of best-selling Earth from Above photo books and a traveling outdoor show of nearly 150 4-ft. by 6-ft. prints accompanied by captions that link the images to the environmental issues at stake. Since the show was first mounted in Paris four years ago, it has been seen by millions of people in 53 cities. To find a project of comparable ambition, you have to look back to “The Family of Man,” the milestone 1955 museum show that toured the world to illustrate common threads in the human fabric. But that exhibition involved scores of photographers. Arthus-Bertrand spearheads his own effort, though even his most delicate images require something like a paramilitary operation–his team now totals 15–to handle planning and logistics. Some nations, like Saudi Arabia and China, have yet to give him flyover permission. “One problem with doing aerial photography,” he explains dryly, “is that people think you are a spy.”

–By Richard Lacayo. Reported by Andrea Dorfman