United Health Care

Who's the greenest actor in Hollywood?

Certainly there's uber-enviro Ed Begley Jr., who has his own green reality TV show (Living with Ed), and whose greenness is so notorious that an episode of The Simpsons had him driving a car powered by his sense of self-satisfaction.

Don't count out Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Governator, who as California's head has ensure the state remains No. 1 in the nation when it comes to tackling climate change — though he hasn't shaken his Hummer habit.

And of course there's Leonardo DiCaprio, who proves conclusively that, contrary to what many conservatives think, Earth-friendly habits needn't preclude you from a rich lifestyle of award-winning film performances and rampant supermodel-dating.

But the greenest of them all may be a name that's less known: Hart Bochner. Bochner co-stars in the USA Network drama The Starter Wife, featuring Will and Grace alumna Debra Messing. (To Americans of my generation, however, Bochner will always be known for directing the classic early 1990s college comedy PCU, which proved Jeremy Piven's comedy chops long before he swaggered onto the set of Entourage.) What makes Bochner different from his celebrity peers is that he's willing to do the anonymous, behind-the-scenes work to make the industry more environmentally friendly. "It can't just be about messages," says Bochner. "It has to be about deeds as well."

By its nature, film and TV production isn't always the greenest undertaking in the world. Sets are built quickly and dismantled just as fast, with little regard for the long-term environmental impact. Productions can be energy intensive, especially when shooting on location. And actors, no matter how green they claim to be on Entertainment Tonight, are accustomed to a certain level of luxury that carries a certain carbon footprint.

Bochner and his colleagues at the Environmental Media Association (EMA), where he's been a board member since 2000, are working to change that. He started by creating the EMA Green Seal, which is a badge of approval for productions that follow environmentally friendly practices. "You hit the targets and you get the stamp of approval," says Bochner, who in his own career as a filmmaker helped ban the use of luan, a rainforest mahogany wood, often harvested in threatened Indonesia, in favor of more sustainable materials. "We want to make this the norm."

Even more admirable is his attempt to get Hollywood to believe that the hybrid Toyota Prius was as hot as a Ferrari. Bochner explains: "We just tried to position the Prius as the new sexy thing. It wasn't easy — making driving a smaller, more economic car hip was a task. So I'd just ask my friends, 'Do you love your children?' That was the linchpin in convincing them. I told them, 'The decision is yours, but the nation is watching what you want to do.'"

It's hard to take Hollywood's greens altogether seriously — gee, if only we could all afford to shell out $22,000 for a shiny new hybrid — but Bochner's got a point: The nation does watch Hollywood. The TV and film industry tends to be on the cutting edge of social change, from civil rights to the war in Iraq, and that's true when it comes to the environmental as well. From films like An Inconvenient Truth to high-profile attempts at carbon-neutrality (by the FOX drama, 24, last year), Hollywood is working to set the bar higher, bit by bit — who cares if it feels pretty good about itself in the process? And more importantly, bit by bit, Hollywood is changing social norms. Ideally, someday being green won't be cool anymore — it will just be boring old convention.

The nursing director of our operating room had been out of work a lot, gone for two and three weeks at a time, four or five times over the course of a year. There had been enough good reasons: terrible sickness, a number of tragic family problems.

She always seemed to have enough to do when she was at work, but the funny thing was — noted by the 40 or so people who worked in the OR with her — that nothing really changed when she wasn't there. The schedule got done, supplies were ordered, patients had their surgeries and left. When the director retired, the question of replacing her came up. Most of the doctors and nurses agreed: "There's no difference whether she's here or not, and we could sure use the money for more nurses in the rooms." The hospital administration had a different opinion — namely, "Of course we need to fill her post," while offering no real reason why. So we hired another nursing director. She doesn't take much time off and, fortunately, has become useful enough to be missed when she does.

I started musing about this last week, when John McCain dramatically suspended his campaign to return to Washington to do his real job — being a United States Senator. What other job allows you to not show up for work for months at a time without getting in trouble? In Obama's case it's been over a year now since he's worked, but he still gets paid to be Senator. What kind of employer cuts workers that much slack? And what kind of administrative mess must we have in the Senate for there to be no discernible loss of function in the absence of its chief administrators?

As doctors who treat injured folk, we love the self-employed — they'll barely take the afternoon off to have surgery, and one way or another, manage to get back to work that week to keep the business going, get the mortgage paid and feed the family. Even among the salaried folks, we do see a good percentage who take sick-time fairly and responsibly. What a glaring contrast they are to the corporate or government employee whose minor injury keeps him out — but paid — for months at a time. Months during which we are forced to fill out ever more ridiculous disability forms every two weeks.

Docs are routinely called in to adjudicate these matters — to tell the patient that he or she is cured and has to go back to work — when companies want their employees back. But the sad truth is that within our medico-legal system, any doc would be a fool, and a soon-to-be bankrupt fool, if he thinks he can force a patient to return to work against his will.

And, so, we propose to all the companies flailing in this soon-to-be bankrupt economy a "take-away test" to figure out which of your employees you really need. Simply give each worker a nice long vacation — paid, of course (it will be a cost-saver in the long run). Then sit back and see what happens. If your business output suffers and important things go undone, get that employee back. Your company clearly needs him or her. If, on the other hand, you find no discernable fall-off in business, you know what to do: Give him a raise — he's probably a member of the U.S. Senate or the head of a major financial institution. He might throw some fat contracts, or at least a great mortgage, up your way.

Either way, you'll be saving doctors a lot of unnecessary paperwork.

Dr. Scott Haig is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He has a private practice in the New York City area.

When you're on the lookout for lemurs — the unusually cute and endangered group of primates found only on the African island of Madagascar — it helps to have good eyes (lemurs are small), sharp ears (they rustle the trees) and a keen nose (they have an unmistakable smell).

I'm walking through the Réserve Spéciale d'Analamazaotra, a few hours' drive west of Madagascar's capital of Antananarivo. The reserve is one of the few remaining patches of untouched forest on Madagascar, where more than 90% of the native tree cover has already been lost; chameleons, rare frogs and lemurs make their home here. It's late afternoon, and patches of early spring sunlight (this is the Southern Hemisphere) peek through the Ravenea louvelii, the native palm. Lemurs are sleeping this time of day, though, and a sleeping lemur is hard to spot. But then our guide, Marie Razafindrasolo, stops us — perched on a branch some 20 feet up is the black and white indri, the largest of the living lemurs and the symbol of Madagascar. After a few minutes, the indri gives a high-pitched, sustained cry — a spacing call, a warning to any other indri in the area, and a sound that stays with you.

It's hard to say how long the indri itself will stay with us. Madagascar's native plants and animals evolved in isolation for some 80 million years; as a result, the 587,000-sq-km country, which sits just off the coast of southeastern Africa, has perhaps the highest level of biodiversity per capita in the world. It's what conservationists call a "hotspot" — one of about 25 places on Earth that have suffered massive habitat loss and account for less than 2% of the planet's land surface, but are home to about half the world's plant species and a third of vertebrate animals. Because the vast majority of Madagascar's 2,300 species are found nowhere else on Earth, if a species is lost on Madagascar, it is lost forever. Yet rampant deforestation, a swelling human population and the early effects of climate change have already pushed countless species out of existence. Of the surviving 71 lemur species and subspecies on Madagascar, 63% are endangered. "Madagascar is the hottest of hotspots," says Russell Mittermeier, the president of Conservation International (CI) and a renowned primatologist. If we care about saving our wild cousins from extinction, Madagascar is the place to start.

That's why Mittermeier and I are here, to see Madagascar's wildlife while we can, and to see what's being done to save it. After a day in Antananarivo — a sprawling, diesel-soaked city that earns the adjective "teeming" — we leave by car for Andasibe, a former logging village that is now home to a burgeoning ecotourism trade. On the winding road we see the result of centuries of tavy, traditional slash-and-burn agriculture. The verdant forests that once covered much of Madagascar have been burnt or torn down, replaced by muddy rice paddies and secondary shrubs. This loss of habitat is the primary driver of extinction on Madagascar. The trees support a web of life, from the hefty indri to dazzlingly tiny frogs that fit on your pinky, but deforestation in Madagascar is so severe that the island's soil, unmoored by the loss of the trees, simply slides into the sea. The crimson trail of erosion has been visible from space.

It makes sense, then, that sustaining the forests would be the first step in saving the wildlife. For decades in Madagascar, as in much of the world, that has meant the creation of protected parklands like the Réserve Spéciale d'Analamazaotra, where one goes hunting (with cameras) for lemurs. But now scientists recognize that deforestation in tropical countries like Madagascar could be responsible for up to a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, giving another new incentive to save and expand forests.

Near Andasibe, CI and its partners are working on a project that will hire local villagers to plant new trees on land that had been cleared. The benefit is two-fold: The new forests will earn carbon credits under the Kyoto Protocol, since the trees will sequester carbon dioxide that would otherwise warm the atmosphere, and eventually the forests will help rebuild the disappearing habitat for species like the indri. What's more, the project employs job-hungry villagers and gives them a financial stake in the new forests, which is key if conservation is going to work. To save the animals, you need to save the trees, and to save the trees, you need to save the people. "We're bringing back the shelter of the forests, and we don't have to cut trees for charcoal," says Herve Tahirimalala, 28, who is paid about $100 a month to work the plantation — a decent wage in one of the poorest nations on Earth. Poverty and habitat loss go hand in hand in Madagascar and in much of the developing world, and only win-win solutions will work for conservation.

A walk through Analamazaotra reminds you of how much there is to be gained when projects like this work — or lost, if they fail. After the sun sets, Mittermeier and Razafindrasolo lead a nocturnal tour along the outskirts of the reserve. The forest throbs with invisible life. What we can't see, we can hear: tree frogs mating, insects whirring, a rustling through the branches. Our flashlights pierce the canopy, but just barely, before a thicket of leaves absorbs the beam. After hundreds of years of human exploration on this island, there are still countless species that have yet to be described — and that may be lost to extinction before we ever discover them. Our knowledge of this planet's incalculable richness is barely more complete than a flashlight's illumination of a tropical rainforest — brief and finite — but our capacity for destruction is limitless. Finally, our guide's passing beam catches the shining eyes of an indri in the night, reflecting back at us. It holds the light for a moment, and then, with a leap, it's gone.

Click here for pictures of Madagascar's flora and fauna.
Click here for pictures of primates on the danger list.
See TIME's pictures of the week here.

Richard Garriott has made a career and more than one fortune as a preeminent computer game designer and creator of the seminal Ultima role playing series. But as the son of SkyLab astronaut Owen K. Garriott, his passion has long been space flight. Now, at a reported cost of more than $30 million, he will become the sixth private citizen to travel into orbit. Garriott is preparing to join the crew of the Soyuz TMA 13 mission as a spaceflight participant, thanks to Space Adventures, a company he helped found. He spoke to TIME about his upcoming voyage from the cosmonaut training facility in Star City, Russia.

How's the training going?
Thursday and Friday were our crew final exams; we passed with pretty much perfect 5 out of 5 scores across the board. For me personally, I felt that I was able to perform my duties satisfactorily, which of course is a good baseline. I now know I'm not a liability.

You’re a second-generation spaceman. Had you applied for the U.S. space program as well?
No, I never applied. I was told no before that ever occurred. Because my father was an astronaut, the NASA clinic was my family doctor, you might say. And one year when I was a young teenager the NASA eye doctor came to me, and as my eyesight was becoming fairly bad, he said, "Hey richard, you've got bad eyesight; I'm sorry to be the one to tell you, but that's going to prevent you from ever being selected as a NASA astronaut." I hadn't really thought to myself before then that I was going to be an astronaut; I grew up in a neighborhood where everybody was an astronaut. So it was like being told, You are not eligible for a club that everyone you know is a member of. I was shocked and horrified there briefly, but then fairly quickly made up my mind to say, Hey wait a minute, these guys can't tell me whether I'm allowed to fly into space or not. And so if I'm not going to be eligible to go with NASA I'm just going to have to find my own way.

There are companies like Virgin Galactic now trying to open up commercial space travel right now; did you ever think to yourself, maybe I'll just wait until these are viable and save myself $30 million?
I've been in this a lot longer than there's been a Virgin Galactic. Those of us who founded Space Adventures are, generally speaking, the same people who founded the X-Prize. And the X-Prize is what created the opportunity for Burt Rutan to go build SpaceShipOne, and Virgin Galactic came in and paid to have “Virgin Galactic” painted its tail. They’re a latecomer to the party, but an extremely valuable participant; they'll probably fly the first commercial suborbital flights.

A lesser known detail is that many years went by before we were actually able to fund the $10 million prize for the X-Prize. When we envisioned Space Adventures and the X-Prize, we thought basically the X-Prize would get the ships built, and then Space Adventures would fly them. But without the prize being funded, and therefore no ships being built, we said look, even though NASA won't take private citizens, maybe we’ll be able to convince the Russians. So we went and we talked to the Russians and they said Yeah, well, we might consider it, but even just to figure out if it were possible and how much it would cost, would cost a lot of money. And I actually personally paid for the study to determine if and how private citizens could fly, with the full intention of actually being the first private citizen to fly. However, that's also when the Internet stock bubble burst, and unfortunately for me that meant my ability to pay for that first space flight disappeared, and so we sold my seat to Dennis Tito.

You're in Russia at a very interesting time right now, politically. Have people treated you differently as a result of the diplomatic tensions over the Georgian invasion?
Not at all. Not at all on this side. But I agree with you it's been fascinating to be here during this period politically. For example, you know what Americans always describe, universally, as the Georgian invasion, is not a term that would ever be used over here. I know that I personally do not truly understand the issues involved in this very complicated international situation. However, I don’t think anyone in the United States really understands this issue very well either. And when I say anyone I mean everyone from the CIA to the president to the news media. That really makes me care a lot more about international politics and care a lot more about how the US is projecting its image and its might around the globe.

With China planning to conduct its first ever spacewalk this week and India making noise about its own space program, it almost seems as if there’s a new space race heating up. And this comes at a time when the U.S. is retiring its shuttle program and NASA's scrambling for funding; is the U.S. in danger of falling behind?
There's no question that other countries are really pushing forward, fairly significantly in some cases, right at the time when the U.S. is having what I would describe as a hiccup in its continuity. But I don't think that in the short term we're in any risk of falling behind. If you look at the level of sophistication of U.S. technology involved in space I think it is still really outstanding. However, what is true is that there is a short-term problem looming, associated with what I'll call, broadly, access to space, where the US is at significant risk of having little to no access to space for a few years, thanks to anti-terrorism agreements and the fact that we may not have the shuttle. Long term, I think that as long as the U.S. says look, we really do want to push on to the moon and Mars, I think that's the right way to go. We can easily retool to get there.

One of your most important missions is preserving the DNA of Stephen Colbert for the future population of the human race. How did that come up?
I'm a big fan of the show, and when I was at a gaming [convention], one of my fans came up to me and gave me one of his WristStrong bracelets. I have of course worn it through my training, and we've been editing together a pitch because I thought basically, here was my ticket to get onto the show. And midway through my training, Garrett Reisman, a NASA astronaut who is also a fan of the show, called in from space, to show that he had this on his wrist. In space. And totally scooped me.

So we'd been sending photographs and video to the Colbert show during my training and we'd really gotten no response. Up until Operation Immortality, which originated purely as a promotion for [science fiction computer game] Tabula Rasa, thinking of it as a way I could tie my space game into my space flight. We wanted originally just to send some of the player data and player votes on the greatest accomplishments in humanity, and we thought it'd be cool to send some of their DNA. But what we found was that suddenly famous people from all over were going, Hey, can you take mine? We actually called the Colbert show because we thought aha, our opportunity has availed itself once again, and as soon as we called they were all over it.

Is your own DNA going up?
You know, strangely, one person we forgot to include was me. Of course, my DNA will physically be there; my skin cells will be on it. So you won't need to send my digital sequence.

Aside from leaving your DNA behind and aside from your official experiments, is there anything you've wanted to do in space that you hope to get a chance to do while you're up there?
No one's asked and therefore I've never said, but there is one kind of fun thing that I'm hoping I get a chance to do. When my father was on SkyLab, it had a big central chamber with this ring of lockers all the way around the perimeter; it was just big enough that you could run around and create enough centrifugal force to hold you against the lockers and have a little circular jogging track like in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I'm hoping to find a cross-section that is sufficient for me to pull that off on the ISS. Most of the areas are too small, but there may be a couple of modules that have gone up that don’t yet have experiment lockers in them. I'll report back when I get there.

You’re going up to the ISS for 10 days, and then you land, if all goes well. What do you do after that?
I am a devout explorer of the reality in which we live, so this is by no means my first exploration — but it’s a big one. It’s the biggest. But I still have on my list visiting disappearing indigenous populations around the globe, which I have yet to do, and Southeast Asia is still an area to me which is largely unexplored, and I still have a lot of things in the deep oceans that I hope to do. Plus, you know, I hope this isn't my only spaceflight.

You've spent a huge amount of money on this trip, a large part of your personal fortune. So far at least, is it worth it?
Absolutely. Even kids ask me, Wow, how could you possibly consider spending that much of your personal wealth on this particular event? And what people have to know is, it wasn't that I was looking for a place to go spend some money. It was that I was looking for a way to reach space.. And I've built businesses, and invested, and grown my assets to pull it off. And I've made it.

A new report analyzing 30-year trends in abortion rates finds that fewer and fewer U.S. women are choosing abortion overall, but that the rate of decline differed significantly between populations. Abortion decreased more among white women and white teenagers, for example, compared with women of Latina or African-American descent.

The study, released Tuesday by the non-profit Guttmacher Institute, which specializes in research on reproductive and sexual health, examined abortion rates in the U.S. from 1974 — the year after Roe v. Wade deemed abortion a "fundamental right" — through 2004. The total number of abortions has dropped over the last two decades, from nearly 1.6 million in 1984 to 1.2 million in 2004. The abortion rate hit its peak in 1980 at 29 abortions per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44; in 2004, that number had dropped to 20 per 1,000 women.

Statistically one in three U.S. women will have an abortion in her lifetime, the study found, but that risk does not apply to all women equally. Women who choose abortion are more likely to be in their 20s or 30s than in their teens or 40s; they're more likely to have children already; and they're also more likely to be black or Hispanic than white. The abortion rates in 2004 were 50 abortions per 1,000 black women and 28 abortions per 1,000 Hispanic women, compared with 11 out of every 1,000 white women.

"This is the first time that somebody's really sat down and said, in this 30-year time period, what have been some of the changes in characteristics of women obtaining abortions?" says Rachel Jones, a senior research associate at the Guttmacher Institute and the project manager for the new study.

In 2004, 60% of women who had abortions had already given birth to at least one child, an increase from 50% in 1989, while 47% of women who had an abortion had already undergone the procedure at least once before (the study's authors point out, however, that the trend in multiple abortions may already be declining). Between 1974 and 2004, the percentage of abortions performed among women in their 20s increased from 50% to 57%; the percentage among women in their 30s increased from 15% to 24%. Meanwhile, the proportion of abortions sought by patients under 20 fell from 33% in 1974 to 17% three decades later.

"The shift in age, more women who already have children — this really does paint a different picture of women having abortions than the way it's portrayed in popular culture," Jones says, in reference to the popular notion that unintended pregnancy happens to careless teens and college kids.

The trend also points to a gap in outreach and education, says Jones: "We've devoted a lot of effort to preventing teen pregnancy and we haven't done very much for older women. So, what you see is that teenagers are doing a better job, over the 30-year time period, of avoiding unintended pregnancies and avoiding abortions."

Economics may also have something to do with it. Single motherhood has become increasingly common over the past 30 years, which may have affected the number of women who already have children who opt for abortions. "A single mom, if she's already got kids and she finds herself pregnant, just has fewer resources to raise another child," Jones says.

Health officials are struggling to educate women who have had an abortion about avoiding additional unwanted pregnancies. "People in the family planning and abortion community are trying to deal with this head on," Jones says. "We have an obligation to women who are experiencing multiple unintended pregnancies to do what we can to help them avoid subsequent unintended pregnancies."

That is no easy task. Jones points out that the population at hand is sexually active and of child-bearing age — at the start, that makes birth control a trickier issue. Also, says Jones, many women who get abortions may not have access to good health care or reliable contraception, or they may not have partners who are willing to use condoms or to use them consistently. "All of these risk factors combined lead to an increased vulnerability to having multiple unintended pregnancies," Jones says.

One interesting finding is that in recent years, there has been a marked trend toward early abortions — in particular, abortions within 7 weeks of pregnancy — something Jones attributes to more accurate home pregnancy tests and more choices in abortion methods, including the introduction of mifepristone, the miscarriage-inducing drug also known as the RU-486 that was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2000.

Despite a reduction in access to abortion providers — the Guttmacher Institute conducts a regular census, which has consistently shown a decline in abortion care, Jones says — the increase in early termination of pregnancies suggests that women are still able to find providers and find them quickly. While this marks progress, Jones stresses that there is still a lot of ground to cover toward giving women more control over their family planning. "It's not just about preventing pregnancies," Jones says. "It's about having children when you're ready, and when you want to."

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