In this complex world, finding competent answers to the tough questions is key to survival. For car problems, you can ask Mr. Goodwrench. Need directions? Ever heard of Murray the Map Man? But, until recently, questions about the environment might lead you to that disheveled guy at the recycling center who could offer some thoughtful advice on disposing of used motor oil. Or not. Enter Mr. Green, the environmental answer guy in the Sierra Club’s monthly magazine, Sierra. A former editor of the magazine, he has unimpeachable enviro-zealot credentials, having grown up on a farm in Wisconsin and edited the Berkeley Co-Op News. I got Mr. Green (whose other persona is as longtime Berkeley journalist and editor Bob Schildgen) on the blower recently to bushwhack through some rough patches I’ve had with Mother Earth.

Paul Kilduff: What’s your advice on this daily question: Paper or plastic?

Mr. Green: My first answer is neither. I have canvas bags that I’ve used since 1980.

PK: Wow, dude, you stopped contributing to deforestation and the pollution of the ocean with plastic baggies back when cassette decks still roamed the earth.

MG: And I’ve saved, with that nickel rebate . . . four bags a week, that’s approximately $10 a year. So I’ve saved $250 on the bag rebate over that period of time. But if you have to use [a store bag] I’m voting for plastic.

PK: Really. Why?

MG: I did a lot of calculations. The total amount of energy consumed and also the fact that paper does not biodegrade in the solid waste dump, plus deforestation; I’d give an edge to plastic. And I’d strongly urge people to reuse the plastic. But I oppose both of them.

PK: I keep hearing that if you go a mile or so out into the ocean you have plastic bags from 30 years ago.

MG: Yeah, they don’t decay either. It’s just that the paper bag is much bulkier. It’s occupying more space.

PK: I must admit I don’t carry a 25-year-old canvas bag to Trader Joe’s.

MG: Well, you’re a sinner. You’ll go to environmental hell where you’ll bag groceries for all eternity.

PK: How do we get people to realize this disposable bag thing is madness?

MG: I liked the idea that San Francisco had: Slap a big deposit on it. But of course some morons thought that was politically not feasible. The cost of disposing of those damn things is very high. It’s added on to your grocery cost. Plus it’s costing–any city–a considerable sum of money to dispose of them. And their contribution to the waste stream, and other problems they cause like plugging storm drains. You’re paying as a consumer to get the bag, then the government is [paying] an additional sum of money to get rid of them. Putting a realistic market price on what they actually cost lets the consumer make that economic decision. I don’t think it’s the worst environmental problem there is, by the way. You use a lot more energy driving your SUV to the grocery store every week–about ten times as much–than the energy used in making bags.

PK: Now that we’re all nostalgic for $2-a-gallon gas, do you think we’ll be hearing the SUV death knell?

MG: Sales have dropped 50 percent. It may force the automakers to do what they did with the Ford Escape–create a more efficient SUV, because they’re not going to let go of a high value-added item.

PK: What do you drive?

MG: I have not had a car in ten years, and it’s liberating. Over the course of a lifetime the average American spends $300,000 on cars and that includes the lost value of the car, the lost interest on the money that he could have invested if he hadn’t squandered it on a vehicle.The real cost of operating a car is now well over 50 cents a mile. Between bicycling, mass transit, and a very occasional cab, I get around just fine. If I want to leave town I’ll rent a car. It’s hard to get around with kids, although in retrospect I probably could have managed.

PK: So, what vehicle do you recommend to those of us who aren’t as enlightened as you?

MG: A hybrid. The Prius or the new Honda that supposedly gets 66 miles a gallon. But, one caveat: You have to drive about 50,000 miles in the hybrid to save the amount of energy it takes to make a new car. A very big chunk of a car’s total fuel usage is expended in making it. If it’s going to take you 50 years to drive 50,000 miles than you may not be doing the environment a big favor because you’ve burned a substantial amount of fuel in having the car made. If you drive a large amount–10,000 miles a year–you’d definitely want to get the hybrid.

PK: What about incorporating more ethanol into gas?

MG: I’m scared of ethanol and biodiesel because a lot of it is going to come from crops that are raised. Given our hunger for energy, it’s fairly frightening for me to think that a vast amount of land could be dedicated to raising fuel, which could have disastrous environmental consequences. Farmers have been dreadfully wrong about the way they’ve used land in the past. My darkest vision is that we starve millions of people in order to grow fuel for SUVs. I think it should be looked at very carefully.

PK: Many gas stations in the Midwest now have ethanol.

MG: Sure, and there’s a lot of pollution running down the Mississippi River coming off of the fumes from growing that ethanol. They’re making ethanol out of corn. If you’re going to grow fuel, for which there’s almost unlimited hunger, then you see where this could lead. As far as war in the Middle East, the way out of the energy problem is to stop using so much. But you have not had a real fuel economy rule since the ’70s because the energy companies have bought off the politicians. The two big things for saving energy (and getting out of the Middle East) would be: fuel efficiency [and] mass transit. And that takes care of a lot of the problem right there.

Suggestions? E-mail Paul Kilduff at pkilduff@sbcglobal.net.