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9 minutes, $195: We tested a heli-taxi vs. an Uber to the airport

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Thursday, November 21, 2024

On paper, the 16-mile commute between New York City and its biggest airport sounds like a cakewalk. But the reality of getting to John F. Kennedy International Airport is neither short nor sweet.At peak times, a cab from Manhattan can take an hour and costs $70 before surcharges, tip and tolls. With surge pricing, Uber fares can far exceed $100. For under $20, there’s the train, which can take anywhere between a half-hour and 75 minutes, depending on where you hop on.Or, if you really can’t wait, you could take a helicopter.Blade, a New York-based helicopter taxi service, promises to shuttle customers between the city and JFK (or Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey) in five minutes. Its base fare for a one-way trip is $195. No switching trains, no hurried cabbies — just smooth sailing over the gridlock below.Blade takes customers to airports and the Hamptons on Long Island by helicopter (or fancy bus), and it offers private jet charters in the region and beyond. Blade is also the largest dedicated air transporter of human organs in the United States, said CEO Rob Wiesenthal, who founded the company in 2014.While a $900 jaunt to the Hamptons is exponentially out of my price range, Blade’s airport service is less far-fetched.On a recent Sunday, before a late-afternoon flight from JFK to D.C., my cheapest Uber option from the Upper West Side was $146. For a comparable price (with a first-time-rider coupon), I could take back a half-hour of my time and pretend to be a character in “Succession.”To compare experiences, I sent my husband in an Uber while I tried Blade.The booking processLike Uber, booking a ride with Blade can be done quickly through its app or website. Unlike Uber, you can’t hail an affordable ride around-the-clock.Wiesenthal wouldn’t say how many flights Blade offers per day but said that during the week, “you can fly to Newark or Kennedy pretty much 12 hours a day.”The standard window for “by-the-seat” trips (vs. chartering the entire cabin) to JFK generally runs weekdays between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m., and from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Sundays. There are no such flights on Saturdays.Customers can “crowdsource” flights that aren’t on the schedule. After requesting a specific time, Blade will open slots for the public to book; the more people who join in, the less it costs the original requester. Alternatively, you can book the entire aircraft for yourself and up to seven other guests, starting at $1,875.I booked my seat a couple days in advance — and still had limited options. The best one for my schedule left an hour before my Delta flight boarded and cost $265, which was $70 higher than the advertised base fare. Again, like Uber — or commercial airlines — the company practices dynamic pricing. The same trip during the week of Thanksgiving, for example, was $325.With my first-time-flier coupon registering a $50 discount, the total came to $215.The loungeBlade operates from three heliports across the city. My trip departed from Lounge West, located on the Hudson River near Hudson Yards.It’s a portable building like you’d find at a construction site, but it’s painted matte black (save a few white Blade logos). A black chain-link fence with privacy netting surrounds the tarmac, protecting the identity of the travelers beyond. Wiesenthal told me that 60 percent of customers use the airport shuttle for business travel; leisure travelers account for the rest — not only people who want to get out of Dodge fast, but also tourists who want one last sightseeing adventure.The company recommends arriving at least 15 minutes before takeoff; I got there with 20 to spare to enjoy the perks. A friendly receptionist checked me in, took my luggage and gave me a colored wristband to indicate my flight group. There was no metal detector or TSA staff to flag my liquids. Then I was free to enjoy the 1960s-themed lounge.The place felt designed with Instagram in mind. Andy Warhol prints, neon acrylic tables, mushroom lamps. The furniture — like tulip chairs and leather barstools — looked the part but felt flimsy, more Temu than TWA Hotel.While my husband texted from crawling Brooklyn traffic, I sat at the bar and ordered a glass of complimentary white wine. There was Acqua Panna water and packaged snacks such as a maple blueberry protein bar and “skinny dipped” dark-chocolate-covered almonds.The rideBlade has a reputation for being on time; my chopper-mate told me he’s taken the airport service 50 times and it had never been late before. But that afternoon we ran 15 minutes behind schedule.Air traffic can cause delays. So can weather. Blade will cancel flights if the weather is deemed unsafe or heavy turbulence is expected and will take you to the airport by car instead.It wasn’t clear why we were held up, but the staff apologized for the delay. Soon, a helicopter landed in front of the lounge window and our wristband group was called. We filed into a line by the door, were given instructions on how to board and were escorted to the aircraft. I must have missed dibs on the shotgun seat next to the pilot and was slotted in the main cabin with two other fliers.The ethical dilemmaThe helicopter took off after a quick safety briefing from the pilot, who was wearing a hoodie, and in seconds we were hovering over the city skyline.Every passenger had their phone out at some point to capture the splendor. It felt surreal and a little nauseating — mostly because I’m prone to motion sickness, but also metaphorically. As we descended, and the skyscrapers gave way to houses, I thought about the people living below. The helicopter was incredibly loud; it had to be annoying to hear us screech past.The luxury is controversial. Nonessential helicopter traffic has been increasing for years, and residents living under the flight paths are filing evermore noise complaints. The New York nonprofit Stop the Chop also cites high carbon emissions among its primary reasons for a push to ban nonessential flights over the region.“Taking a helicopter ride is definitely more environmentally damaging than an hour-long Uber ride,” Peter DeCarlo, an associate professor of environmental health and engineering at Johns Hopkins University who studies atmospheric air pollution, told me in an email.Blade says it plans to transition to cleaner, quieter electric vertical aircraft once they’re available in the coming years.There wasn’t much time for my guilt to fester; we were on the ground about nine minutes (not five) after liftoff.In addition to the potential for small delays, travelers should factor in that Blade can’t drop you off at the curb like a taxi. Once we landed on the JFK chopper tarmac, a Blade attendant wheeled our bags on a luggage trolley through a small lobby and out to a parking lot, where chauffeurs were waiting to drive us to our respective airport terminals.I hopped in an SUV but was told I could have paid to upgrade to a Mercedes-Maybach. Depending on airport traffic, the ride can add another five to 10 minutes to your ETA.The takeawayMy driver told me that celebrities, like musicians and National Basketball Association players, are fans of Blade. If it wasn’t for the noise and environmental concerns, I’d be a fan of Blade, too. (Okay, I didn’t love being queasy afterward, either.) Once the company goes electric and I win the lottery, maybe we’ll talk.In the end, my husband got the last laugh. Factoring in the 20 minutes it took me to get to the Blade helipad, my lounge time and the flight, he actually beat me to JFK in his hour-long Uber ride, arriving with enough padding to get some Shake Shack and relax.

On a Blade helicopter, a one-way trip from Manhattan to John F. Kennedy International Airport runs $195.

On paper, the 16-mile commute between New York City and its biggest airport sounds like a cakewalk. But the reality of getting to John F. Kennedy International Airport is neither short nor sweet.

At peak times, a cab from Manhattan can take an hour and costs $70 before surcharges, tip and tolls. With surge pricing, Uber fares can far exceed $100. For under $20, there’s the train, which can take anywhere between a half-hour and 75 minutes, depending on where you hop on.

Or, if you really can’t wait, you could take a helicopter.

Blade, a New York-based helicopter taxi service, promises to shuttle customers between the city and JFK (or Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey) in five minutes. Its base fare for a one-way trip is $195. No switching trains, no hurried cabbies — just smooth sailing over the gridlock below.

Blade takes customers to airports and the Hamptons on Long Island by helicopter (or fancy bus), and it offers private jet charters in the region and beyond. Blade is also the largest dedicated air transporter of human organs in the United States, said CEO Rob Wiesenthal, who founded the company in 2014.

While a $900 jaunt to the Hamptons is exponentially out of my price range, Blade’s airport service is less far-fetched.

On a recent Sunday, before a late-afternoon flight from JFK to D.C., my cheapest Uber option from the Upper West Side was $146. For a comparable price (with a first-time-rider coupon), I could take back a half-hour of my time and pretend to be a character in “Succession.”

To compare experiences, I sent my husband in an Uber while I tried Blade.

The booking process

Like Uber, booking a ride with Blade can be done quickly through its app or website. Unlike Uber, you can’t hail an affordable ride around-the-clock.

Wiesenthal wouldn’t say how many flights Blade offers per day but said that during the week, “you can fly to Newark or Kennedy pretty much 12 hours a day.”

The standard window for “by-the-seat” trips (vs. chartering the entire cabin) to JFK generally runs weekdays between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m., and from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Sundays. There are no such flights on Saturdays.

Customers can “crowdsource” flights that aren’t on the schedule. After requesting a specific time, Blade will open slots for the public to book; the more people who join in, the less it costs the original requester. Alternatively, you can book the entire aircraft for yourself and up to seven other guests, starting at $1,875.

I booked my seat a couple days in advance — and still had limited options. The best one for my schedule left an hour before my Delta flight boarded and cost $265, which was $70 higher than the advertised base fare. Again, like Uber — or commercial airlines — the company practices dynamic pricing. The same trip during the week of Thanksgiving, for example, was $325.

With my first-time-flier coupon registering a $50 discount, the total came to $215.

The lounge

Blade operates from three heliports across the city. My trip departed from Lounge West, located on the Hudson River near Hudson Yards.

It’s a portable building like you’d find at a construction site, but it’s painted matte black (save a few white Blade logos). A black chain-link fence with privacy netting surrounds the tarmac, protecting the identity of the travelers beyond. Wiesenthal told me that 60 percent of customers use the airport shuttle for business travel; leisure travelers account for the rest — not only people who want to get out of Dodge fast, but also tourists who want one last sightseeing adventure.

The company recommends arriving at least 15 minutes before takeoff; I got there with 20 to spare to enjoy the perks. A friendly receptionist checked me in, took my luggage and gave me a colored wristband to indicate my flight group. There was no metal detector or TSA staff to flag my liquids. Then I was free to enjoy the 1960s-themed lounge.

The place felt designed with Instagram in mind. Andy Warhol prints, neon acrylic tables, mushroom lamps. The furniture — like tulip chairs and leather barstools — looked the part but felt flimsy, more Temu than TWA Hotel.

While my husband texted from crawling Brooklyn traffic, I sat at the bar and ordered a glass of complimentary white wine. There was Acqua Panna water and packaged snacks such as a maple blueberry protein bar and “skinny dipped” dark-chocolate-covered almonds.

The ride

Blade has a reputation for being on time; my chopper-mate told me he’s taken the airport service 50 times and it had never been late before. But that afternoon we ran 15 minutes behind schedule.

Air traffic can cause delays. So can weather. Blade will cancel flights if the weather is deemed unsafe or heavy turbulence is expected and will take you to the airport by car instead.

It wasn’t clear why we were held up, but the staff apologized for the delay. Soon, a helicopter landed in front of the lounge window and our wristband group was called. We filed into a line by the door, were given instructions on how to board and were escorted to the aircraft. I must have missed dibs on the shotgun seat next to the pilot and was slotted in the main cabin with two other fliers.

The ethical dilemma

The helicopter took off after a quick safety briefing from the pilot, who was wearing a hoodie, and in seconds we were hovering over the city skyline.

Every passenger had their phone out at some point to capture the splendor. It felt surreal and a little nauseating — mostly because I’m prone to motion sickness, but also metaphorically. As we descended, and the skyscrapers gave way to houses, I thought about the people living below. The helicopter was incredibly loud; it had to be annoying to hear us screech past.

The luxury is controversial. Nonessential helicopter traffic has been increasing for years, and residents living under the flight paths are filing evermore noise complaints. The New York nonprofit Stop the Chop also cites high carbon emissions among its primary reasons for a push to ban nonessential flights over the region.

“Taking a helicopter ride is definitely more environmentally damaging than an hour-long Uber ride,” Peter DeCarlo, an associate professor of environmental health and engineering at Johns Hopkins University who studies atmospheric air pollution, told me in an email.

Blade says it plans to transition to cleaner, quieter electric vertical aircraft once they’re available in the coming years.

There wasn’t much time for my guilt to fester; we were on the ground about nine minutes (not five) after liftoff.

In addition to the potential for small delays, travelers should factor in that Blade can’t drop you off at the curb like a taxi. Once we landed on the JFK chopper tarmac, a Blade attendant wheeled our bags on a luggage trolley through a small lobby and out to a parking lot, where chauffeurs were waiting to drive us to our respective airport terminals.

I hopped in an SUV but was told I could have paid to upgrade to a Mercedes-Maybach. Depending on airport traffic, the ride can add another five to 10 minutes to your ETA.

The takeaway

My driver told me that celebrities, like musicians and National Basketball Association players, are fans of Blade. If it wasn’t for the noise and environmental concerns, I’d be a fan of Blade, too. (Okay, I didn’t love being queasy afterward, either.) Once the company goes electric and I win the lottery, maybe we’ll talk.

In the end, my husband got the last laugh. Factoring in the 20 minutes it took me to get to the Blade helipad, my lounge time and the flight, he actually beat me to JFK in his hour-long Uber ride, arriving with enough padding to get some Shake Shack and relax.

Read the full story here.

Photos courtesy of

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Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry is raising serious objections to a $3 billion project that has long been hailed key to restoring the state’s eroding coastline

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry raised serious objections Thursday to a $3 billion project long hailed as key to restoring the state's eroding coastline, decrying the growing cost and predicting dire harm to a coastal culture dependent on fishing, shrimping and oyster dredging.The Republican governor's remarks to a Senate committee in Baton Rouge were his most extensive — and most decisively negative — on the Mid-Barataria Sediment Diversion project since he took office in January. They come a month after federal authorities warned that money for the project channeled to the state by the federal government would have to be returned if the state could not provide a clear commitment to the plan.Landry stopped short of calling for an end to the project altogether but said a compromise must be reached with opponents of the project. The chair of the Senate Committee, Republican Sen. Pat Connick, said lawmakers would have to weigh the next move. The project would channel 75,000 cubic feet (2,100 cubic meters) of sediment per second from the Mississippi River into the nearby Barataria Basin in southeast Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish to create between 20 to 40 square miles (52 to 104 square kilometers) of new land over five decades. It has drawn opposition from some in Plaquemines Parish and now Landry. “This project is going to break our culture,” Landry said, likening the projected damage to shrimp and oyster harvesters to the diminishing of the Cajun French language generations ago when southwest Louisiana school children were forced to speak nothing but English.Ground was broken on the project in August 2023, but state and federal litigation by various interests has stalled it. Landry's remarks added to doubts about its future, despite support from environmental groups.Supporters of the project, which is being funded from a settlement arising from BP's 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, quickly pushed back during and after Landry's committee testimony. “I really think, again, the proper course of action is to remain and build as properly permitted as already funded with BP oil spill dollars ... Every day that we wait and delay we’re costing the state more money," Rep. Joseph Orgeron, a Republican from Cut Off, told Landry. While Landry called the project experimental, Orgeron said other, smaller diversion projects have worked.“As we continue to lose wetlands to open water, that’s just less and less breeding grounds, less and less protection for all of our juvenile shrimp, crab, finfish, you name it,” Corey Miller, community engagement director with the nonprofit Pontchartrain Conservancy, said in an interview. “We have to figure out a way to reestablish that connection between the river and our estuaries in order to rebuild deltas to protect all of our communities.”The project was planned in response to a rapidly vanishing coastline caused by a variety of natural and man-made factors. Those include land subsidence, sea-level rise, the cutting of canals through coastal wetlands by oil and gas companies, and the artificial control of the Mississippi River via levee systems that protect populations from floods but also prevent the natural flow of water that would ordinarily deposit sediment and rebuild land. The conservation group Restore the Mississippi River Delta said Landry's remarks represent a “dramatic shift” in coastal restoration efforts: “Not building this project as designed, permitted and funded will put citizens and businesses at increased risk from future storms.”Landry said delays have pushed the Mid-Barataria project cost over the years from around $1.5 billion to more than $3 billion, and he predicted costs above $2.9 billion will have to be passed on to Louisiana taxpayers. Associated Press reporter Jack Brook in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, contributed to this story.Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Sept. 2024

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Born in 1943, Newman began his career in the early 1960s writing for such artists as Bobby Darin and Irma Thomas, as well as recording his own pop and rock songs. But since the 1970s, Newman has written music for 29 films, including such animated blockbusters as Toy Story (1, 2, 3, and 4), Monsters, Inc., and A Bug’s Life, as well as The Natural, the dark drama about an ill-fated baseball star, played by Robert Redford. When I ask students if they have heard of Newman, most draw a blank. But nearly all can recite a few lines from “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” which he wrote for the first Toy Story, a staple of kids’ cinema since Pixar released it in 1995. He has won two Oscars for his music and been nominated for many others.Newman was to the film business born: Three of his uncles wrote acclaimed scores, and his physician father wanted his son to be a musician more than he did. Newman shed that reluctance when he discovered he had a gift for writing songs. Shortly after he graduated from high school, the Fleetwoods, a pop trio with a brace of No. 1 songs to their credit, recorded his ballad, “They Tell Me It’s Summer,” in which a teenager laments, “it just can’t be summer / When I’m not with you.” The banal, if catchy, tune climbed as high as No. 36 on the Billboard chart.Over his long career, Newman has written far better, if similarly painful, songs about longing and depression, covered by the likes of Nina Simone, Ray Charles, Bonnie Raitt, and Neil Diamond. In “Guilty,” recorded back in 1974, he captured with perfect pith the forlorn mood of a man on drugs: You know, I just can’t stand myselfAnd it takes a whole lot of medicineFor me to pretend that I’m somebody elseSuch songs appear on the same albums as do the overtly political creations, and Newman would probably object to the idea that there is a fundamental difference between them. “I’m interested in this country,” he told one interviewer, “geography, weather, the people, the way people look, what they eat, what they call things … maybe American psychology is my big subject.”In his political songs, however, Newman deploys satire in deft and original ways to highlight a horrific aspect of the nation’s past. Perhaps the greatest example is “Sail Away,” recorded in 1972. As the strings of an orchestra swell behind him, a slave trader eager to dispatch people in bondage across “the mighty ocean into Charleston Bay” speaks to a gathering of unwitting Africans. His offers them a P.R. pitch for the American dream, laced with condescending clichés: In America you get food to eatWon’t have to run through the jungleAnd scuff up your feetYou’ll just sing about Jesus and drink wine all dayIt’s great to be an American…In America every man is freeTo take care of his home and his familyYou’ll be as happy as a monkey in a monkey treeYou’re all gonna be an AmericanSail away, sail awayWe will cross the mighty ocean into Charleston BaySail away, sail awayWe will cross the mighty ocean into Charleston BaySo climb aboard that big ship and don’t pay any heed to any chains you may see laying around. For you will soon be on your way to the promised land, like those Europeans who came before and will come after you. The despicable con job underlines a sober truth: To be proud to “be an American,” one should be able to enjoy “the fruits of Americanism,” as Malcolm X put it. “A secret ambivalence of four hundred years” of life in this country “finds a voice in this song,” wrote the critic Greil Marcus. “It is like a vision of heaven superimposed on hell.”Newman’s best-known commentary on white supremacy in America was also his most controversial song. “Rednecks,” the lead track on the 1974 album Good Old Boys, scores white liberals’ hypocrisy about racism. The song’s protagonist is a white dude from Dixie who freely admits to “keepin’ the n—s down.” He defends Lester Maddox—the one-term governor of Georgia and unabashed segregationist who threatened to attack any Black people who tried to eat in his fried chicken restaurant—as one of his own (“he may be a fool but he’s our fool”) while sneering at “some smart-ass New York Jew” who ridiculed Maddox in a TV interview show. Newman’s “redneck” embraces a slew of stereotypes about uncouth figures like himself: “We talk real funny down here / We drink too much and we laugh too loud”; “We don’t know our ass from a hole in the ground.” Up to this point in the song, one might scoff at the benighted fellow’s easy acknowledgment of his racism and his other faults, too.Then the lyric takes a sharp turn away from mocking such not-so-good old boys. Up North, the redneck points out, white folks claim they “set the n— free” and call him a “Negro.” But oppression reigns there too. Black people are “free to be put in a cage / In Harlem in New York City” and “in the South Side of Chicago / And the West Side” and in Hough in Cleveland, in East St. Louis, in San Francisco and in Roxbury in Boston, the song goes on. To accuse one’s adversary of committing the same sins, without realizing it, is one of the oldest moves in ideological combat. It should have stung liberals who didn’t take responsibility for their own share of injustice. But the song may have been too clever for some. Newman stopped performing it in public when white audiences in the South began singing right along to it, n-word and all.For Newman, the meaning of Americanism always swings between elegiac hope and justifiable rage. He loves his countrywomen and men, but it’s the affection of a brutal realist. In the 2006 song Robert Hilburn chose as the title of his biography, “A Few Words in Defense of Our Country,” Newman contrasted President George W. Bush’s misgoverning of the nation with the muddled decency of its citizens:I’d like to say a few wordsIn defense of our countryWhose people aren’t badNor are they meanNow, the leaders we haveWhile they’re the worst that we’ve hadAre hardly the worstThis poor world has seenNewman then ticked off the regimes of bloodthirsty tyrants, like King Leopold of Belgium, whose minions caused the deaths of millions of Congolese, and the Spanish monarchs who oversaw the Inquisition that lasted for centuries. He wasn’t apologizing for the debacle of the invasion of Iraq, motivated by lies, but warning that the United States could be rushing toward the same fate that befell such once mighty domains:The end of an empire is messy at bestAnd this empire is endingLike all the restLike the Spanish Armada adrift on the seaWe’re adrift in the land of the braveAnd the home of the freeThe New York Times published an abridged version of this casual message of terminal decline as an op-ed. Yet, in cold type and pixels, it fails to capture the power of a satirist whose laid-back vocals assail the myopia and cruelties of U.S. history.Newman always conveys that critique with the affection of an artist who will never abandon the place that, in another song, he embraces: “This is my country / These are my people / And I know ’em like the back of my own hand.” I think Newman would nod in agreement with the American protagonist of Rachel Kushner’s new novel, Creation Lake, an undercover spy in France, who remarks, “I miss being at home in a culture.… Our words, our expanse of idioms, are expressive and creative and precise, like our music and … our passion for violence, stupidity, and freedom.”Hilburn’s biography does not explain how this rather shy fellow from a well-to-do Jewish family managed to create such provocative music about a cornucopia of subjects and the characters who embody them. He dispenses a surfeit of details about Newman’s personal life, but few bear on the content of his works, political and otherwise. Having conducted many hours of interviews with his subject, Hilburn can dwell at length on the highs and lows of Newman’s prolific career and two marriages. But to learn which of his albums made lots of money and which flopped or why he split from his first wife but is happily married to the second reveals almost nothing about what inspired his songs. Hilburn even fails to make clear why Newman has always sung with a gentle Southern drawl—although he spent just two infant years in New Orleans and has long lived in the leafy comfort of West L.A. The result is a biography seemingly intended for readers who already adore Newman’s music but might enjoy having a chronological reference book around as they listen to it.To his credit, Hilburn reprints all the words to a remarkable Newman song from 1999 that fans of classics like “Sail Away” may have missed. “The Great Nations of Europe” is something quite rare in popular music: a witty critique of empire inspired by a book written by a distinguished historian. In Ecological Imperialism, published in 1986, Alfred Crosby argued that adventurers from the Old World were able to subjugate the inhabitants of the New because they not just had plenty of “guns for conquest” but, without being aware of it, also carried in their cargo and bodies “infectious diseases for decimating indigenous populations.” Newman lifted a few shocking details from Crosby’s influential book and tied them together with a catchy chorus:The great nations of EuropeHad gathered on the shoreThey’d conquered what was behind themAnd now they wanted moreSo they looked to the mighty oceanAnd took to the western seaThe great nations of Europe in the sixteenth centuryHide your wives and daughtersHide the groceries, tooGreat nations of Europe coming throughThe Grand Canary IslandsFirst land to which they cameThey slaughtered all the canariesWhich gave the land its nameThere were natives there called GuanchesGuanches by the scoreBullets, disease, the Portuguese, and they weren’t there anymoreNewman offers no hope for collective liberation in this or any other song. They could never serve as the soundtrack for a left-wing gathering as “Solidarity Forever” or “This Land Is Your Land” once did. But the skeptical humor of his best creations may be more valuable to the left than the romantic uplift in such radical standards. Just as Mr. Burns in The Simpsons has probably taught more Americans to ridicule corporate moguls than have reams of Marxian essays, so “Sail Away” debunks the ideal of American exceptionalism with a panache no leftist scholar has equaled. “The common discovery of America,” Norman Mailer once wrote, “was probably that Americans were the first people on earth to live for their humor; nothing was so important to Americans as humor.”Now in his eighties, Newman has not performed in recent years and may never mount a stage again. But I will never forget the times I saw this small, froggish man sit down at a piano and drawl out doses of grim reality that made me grin and think about this land that’s our land—for better and for worse.

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Culture

Food

This seaside town will power thousands of homes with waves

A test site off the Oregon coast could be key to unlocking wave power in the United States. Surprisingly, residents aren’t opposed.

NEWPORT, Ore. — At a moment when large offshore wind projects are encountering public resistance, a nascent ocean industry is showing promise: wave energy.It’s coming to life in Newport, a rainy coastal town of nearly 10,500 people located a couple of hours south of Portland. Home to fishing operators and researchers, Newport attracts tourists and retirees with its famous aquarium, sprawling beaches and noisy sea lions. If you ask anyone at the lively bayfront about a wave energy project, they probably don’t know much about it.And yet right off the coast, a $100 million effort with funding from the Energy Department aims to convert the power of waves into energy, and help catch up to Europe in developing this new technology. The buoy-like contraptions, located several miles offshore, will deliver up to 20 megawatts of energy — enough to power thousands of homes and businesses.As federal officials look to shift America’s electricity grid away from fossil fuels, they are seeking alternatives to solar and wind, which can only deliver energy when the sun shines or the wind blows. Waves — constant and full of untapped energy — have emerged as a promising option. And because wave energy projects are relatively unobtrusive, they’re far less controversial than offshore wind, which has generated fierce opposition on both U.S. coasts. In September, the Biden administration announced up to $112.5 million would go toward the development of wave energy converters, the largest federal investment in marine energy.There’s enough energy in the waves off America’s coasts to power one third of all the nation’s homes, said Matthew Grosso, the Energy Department’s director of the water power technologies office.Spanning 2.65 square miles and located seven miles out from shore, the PacWave test site is expected to be a “game changer for marine energy,” he said in an interview.Under the water, subsea connectors are waiting to be plugged in like extension cords to wave energy converters developed by teams around the world. With deep-sea offshore testing, companies will see how much power these energy converters can produce, whether they can hold up in rough ocean conditions, what environmental impacts they might have and how the devices will interact with each other.PacWave, a project of Oregon State University (OSU), represents a necessary step for commercializing wave energy, experts said.“The research that’s been done in the past 15 years is reaching the point of what we can do just in labs or in theory,” Grosso said. “We’ve got to start testing some of this stuff out and see what works and what doesn’t.”How wave energy worksUnlike other forms of renewable energy, engineers have not yet settled on a single model of wave energy converters. While wind turbines have converged into the three-blade turbine shape, there’s many types of wave energy converters in development, turning the motion of the wave into electrical energy in different ways.You can feel the energy in the waves, when it laps at the shore or when it rocks your boat. Created by wind over the sea, it’s one part of the ecosystem of renewable energy that’s available to us. But since waves don’t move in a linear motion, they’re harder to capture energy from than the flow of wind over a turbine, for example.One wave energy converter may not work in all environments, either — models can vary based on the depth of water and conditions the converter will operate in. Some use rotating cylinders; some are buoys that move up and down with the waves; others look like snakes with joints that move when waves roll through.But all of these devices use the oscillating or orbital motion of a wave to generate an electrical current, explained PacWave Chief Scientist Burke Hales, in the same way that turbines use rotations to generate a current.With four different berths, the site can host devices by multiple developers at once. The cables carrying the electricity are buried under the seafloor, running 12 miles diagonal to the shoreline to avoid a rocky reef. On land, an operating site measures the energy output and sends the energy to the Central Lincoln power utility.Because there’s no wave energy converters plugged in yet, there’s still a clear view of the horizon from Newport’s beaches. But even the larger devices are unlikely to be visible to the naked eye once they’re there in the new year.Coexisting with fisheriesThe PacWave site sits where crabbers set out their pots to catch Dungeness crab, one of the West Coast’s most important seafood species. And yet, unlike an offshore wind project a hundred miles down the coast that sparked strong opposition, most residents are either unaware of the wave energy project or support it. The fact that the project is limited, and unlikely to spur commercial activity offshore that could damage the town’s fishing economy, has helped its cause.When deciding where to locate the project, Newport won out for its proximity to OSU’s main campus in Corvallis and the local fishing fleet’s openness to the idea. The town also hosts the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Operations Center for the Pacific, which has its own research fleet.PacWave also brought the promise of jobs, said Belinda Batten, who conducted outreach for PacWave when she directed the Energy Department’s Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center. Many here remember how NOAA’s move to Newport in 2011 created employment opportunities.Perhaps most importantly, OSU already had a strong relationship with the community given the marine center in town, according to Charlie Plybon, who lives in Newport and is the Oregon senior policy manager for the nonprofit Surfrider Foundation.It took years of outreach and many town hall meetings for Batten, who now serves as a senior adviser to the OSU provost, and Kaety Jacobson, Lincoln County commissioner and a fisherman’s daughter, to cement their trust with the community. When they assembled some fleet members to decide the site, it took all of 10 minutes for the crabbers to draw a plot on a map of the ocean for a location that could work for everyone involved.That area was important fishing grounds for the fleet, said crabber Bob Eder. In his button-down shirt and sneakers, Eder knows he doesn’t look like a stereotypical fisherman, but he’s one of the most well-respected crabbers in the fleet and still goes out in the waters every season at the age of 73. The PacWave site could represent a loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars for the fleet every crabbing season, he said. On the navigation system in his boat, he pointed to a map that showed he had previously crabbed in the area that was now off limits.But the operators agreed to give it up for the sake of the experiment.Eder, a representative of the fishing community during the process, said that the agreement with Oregon State was a show of goodwill from the fishing community, whose members care about the environment and want to preserve their livelihood.“[Climate change] definitely affects those of us whose work is directly involved with the environment,” he said. “And so every fishery is at an environmental risk.”Where wave energy could thriveIn states like Oregon, where an abundance of renewable energy has lowered the price of electricity to around 3½ cents per kilowatt hour, wave energy isn’t a competitive option. The first large-scale commercial wave energy project, by contrast, is expected to produce electricity costing 12 to 47 cents per kilowatt hour.But in small, remote communities that depend on more expensive diesel fuel, wave power could ease energy woes.“There’s remote communities in Alaska where everyone is running on diesel generators, they’re not on the grid, they have no electrical system,” said PacWave Director Dan Hellin.The wave industry first has to overcome several challenges. The consensus in the industry is that wave energy’s development is 20 years behind that of wind. But Tim Ramsey, the Energy Department’s marine energy program manager, pointed out that wind began to take off at that point, in the early 2000s.In addition, putting something into offshore waters usually requires extensive federal permitting, which can take years. That’s why this test site is important for developers — PacWave’s operation offers a site that has already earned the necessary approvals.In order for wave energy to be economically viable, developers need to lower its cost. Technological advancements can help, and just as solar and wind energy have received government subsidies, federal support could help get wave energy off the ground.Members of the Newport fishing fleet — even those who aren’t fans of the project — have hope that this renewable energy offers possibilities.Crabber Bob Kemp, 75, said he isn’t thrilled that he won’t be able to fish for crab in that part of the ocean anymore, but he’s counting on the researchers to make good use of the space they’ve taken.“I want to make sure the project has some kind of pressure on it to keep going and not just [move on] like a contractor moves on to a new house,” Kemp said. “I want them to stay on that.”

Business

Climate

Energy

Little sign of rain to alleviate drought and wildfire risks in US north-east

Ongoing dry conditions threaten to aggravate blazes in New York and New Jersey as wildfire seasons grow in intensityWildfires continue to ravage parts of New York and New Jersey, fueled by high winds and record low precipitation and, despite some rain over last weekend, there is no immediate relief in sight for the historic drought in the region, with ongoing dry conditions exacerbating the risk of spreading fires.Last month was the driest on record in New York City, with only 0.87in (2.2cm) of rain compared with the historic average of 4.12in for October, and forecasts predict the deficit between normal levels of rain and this autumn in the region will grow before the end of the season. Continue reading...

Wildfires continue to ravage parts of New York and New Jersey, fueled by high winds and record low precipitation and, despite some rain over last weekend, there is no immediate relief in sight for the historic drought in the region, with ongoing dry conditions exacerbating the risk of spreading fires.Last month was the driest on record in New York City, with only 0.87in (2.2cm) of rain compared with the historic average of 4.12in for October, and forecasts predict the deficit between normal levels of rain and this autumn in the region will grow before the end of the season.The state of New York is currently under a burn ban and a drought watch, meaning that residents and businesses are encouraged to reduce their water usage.“We’re seeing extreme weather manifest itself,” said Zach Iscol, New York City’s commissioner of emergency management. “It’s important that we start conserving water now.”Earlier this week, New Jersey declared a drought warning, with mandatory water conservation issued in parts of the state and limiting all non-essential water usage like outdoor watering.The total water usage by over 8 million New Yorkers amounts to about a billion gallons a day. The last time New York City experienced a drought was over 20 years ago, lasting from 2001 to 2003, with the city’s water storage dropping below 42% during the worst of it. As of Thursday, the city’s water reservoir levels were sitting at around 62%, compared with typical 79%.Firefighters are continuing to battle the Jennings Creek wildfire that broke out last Saturday and scorched nearly 5,000 acres in both states, killing at least one person. Dariel Vasque, an 18-year-old parks and recreation aide with the New York state parks department, was killed last Saturday while battling the blaze.Dense, urban areas are not spared from the ongoing bush fires. New York City saw more than 229 brush fires in the two week period between 31 October and 12 November. Officials are still investigating the fire that burned 2 acres of Prospect Park in the borough of Brooklyn last Saturday, and on Thursday fire officials contained a 4-acre (1.6-hectare) fire in Manhattan’s Inwood Hill Park.“It is a more extreme fire season that we’ve had in recent history,” said Capt Scott Jackson, a forest ranger for the New York department of environmental conservation, at a press conference on Monday.New York state generally has two major fire seasons, a larger one in spring and a more abbreviated autumn season.“We did have a relatively light spring fire season this year, so I think we’re making it up for it in the fall,” Jackson said. “That’s the time when we have a lot of dead leaves off the trees, and grass on the ground, so you get that sunlight direct to the ground to dry out those forest fuels.”Wildfire seasons are getting longer and growing more intense, especially across the western United States, according to analysis by non-profit Climate Central. The climate crisis is shifting weather patterns, with warming temperatures and drier air increasing wildfire risks across the country.skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotion“We have seen a little increase in how early and late the seasons are going,” Jackson said. “So far, the changes are occurring at a slow enough rate that I think we’re adapting to those changes as they happen.”Farmers across New York and New Jersey are bracing for the impact of the drought on crop production and water resources.“I feel like it’s still the early days, and we haven’t seen the worst of it yet,” said Emily Eder, farm director at Poughkeepsie Farm Project. “We’d usually be watering our crops with just a small amount of rainfall, instead we’re moving irrigation around, which we typically wouldn’t this time in the season.”Eder said that although the region had experienced unusually warm temperatures and record low rainfall for several months, some people were starting to realize the full extent of the drought only recently.“A lot of us have had interactions with people where we’ll talk about how it hasn’t rained in so long and people will say: ‘Oh, really, I didn’t even notice,’” Eder said. “It’s this sort of semi-invisibility of climate change, despite the fact that these disasters are happening. There’s still a level of it that a lot of people are not seeing and those who work with the land and rely on it for their living are really seeing.”

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Conservation

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Green Waste

What if every person could actually make an impact on the world? “Green Waste” takes an in-depth look at the process of recycling and waste management in the community of Flagstaff. From recycling plastic bags, to re-using glass bottles, from recycling hazardous waste to the efforts of local businesses, the film shows how every contribution, no matter how small, can collectively make the difference for a better tomorrow. Filmed and Produced under the Emerging Filmmakers Program for youth filmmakers.

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The Wisdom To Survive: Climate Change, Capitalism & Community

This film reveals how diverse environmental problems, from climate change to species extinction to ruined ecosystems, are all ultimately rooted in the “growth at all costs” attitude that pervades modern industrial society. Through beautiful and disturbing images and interviews with ecological scholars, spiritual leaders and activists, The Wisdom to Survive argues that the survival of humanity and most living beings on the planet will not come from technology, but from a profound raising of consciousness and deep spiritual transformation of humans who finally realize that we must live differently on planet earth.

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Last Chair

We pollute the environment upon which we depend. An exploration of the paradox of sustainable skiing and how we can protect the places we love.

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Let's talk about it! (International Politics is NOT a child's play)

The effects of the Human impact in the World can't be resolved through conflicts and wars. We need to talk about it!

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The Custodians of the Andean Gold

In the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes, more than 3 800 meters above sea level, live alpaca and vicunia breeders. Quechua and Aymara families protect their animals live off of the sale of the animals’ fiber. Gold mining is another activity that predates the Conquest and is widespread among families living in the border area between Peru and Bolivia. The difficult compatibility on the same territory of these two production activities increases the need for environmental protection and workers' rights. It has become indispensable to support producers so that this activity does not disappear with the migration of native peoples, abandoning traditions and animals.

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9 minutes, $195: We tested a heli-taxi vs. an Uber to the airport

The booking process

The lounge

The ride

The ethical dilemma

The takeaway

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This seaside town will power thousands of homes with waves

Little sign of rain to alleviate drought and wildfire risks in US north-east

Suggested Viewing

Green Waste

The Wisdom To Survive: Climate Change, Capitalism & Community

Last Chair

Let's talk about it! (International Politics is NOT a child's play)

The Custodians of the Andean Gold

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9 minutes, $195: We tested a heli-taxi vs. an Uber to the airport

The booking process

The lounge

The ride

The ethical dilemma

The takeaway

Related News

Louisiana's Governor Raises Major Doubts About a Stalled $3 Billion Coastal Restoration Project

‘Business as usual:’ Why the $27B ‘green bank’ could survive Trump

Randy Newman’s Genius for Political Irony

This seaside town will power thousands of homes with waves

Little sign of rain to alleviate drought and wildfire risks in US north-east

Suggested Viewing

Green Waste

The Wisdom To Survive: Climate Change, Capitalism & Community

Last Chair

Let's talk about it! (International Politics is NOT a child's play)

The Custodians of the Andean Gold

Join us to forgea sustainable future

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Join us to forge
a sustainable future