greenlight - Citizen Journalism onEarth

  • The Not-So-Badness of Guides to Green Living

    Back in my post-collegiate salad days, a popular little paperback was published called "50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth." If I'm remembering correctly, it was one of the first books to suggest that we could shop, reuse, and recycle our way to a better world.

    This seemed pretty appealing during the era when President Reagan was heating up the Cold War to the point that a nuclear exchange with the USSR seemed not just possible, but practically inevitable.

    With those ICBMs locked and loaded, recycling the Sunday paper felt comfortingly tangible -- just as likely to protect the environment as marching in one more fringe political protest rally that the TV news and politicians would ignore.

    Well, the US survived the Soviet Union -- and so did the market for green advice books. Two decades after "50 Simple Things," just try to enter a bookstore (virtual or actual) without bumping into over a dozen tomes offering advice on ...read full post

  • No Impact Week Day Four: Foreign Foods

    To say I am disconnected from my food is an understatement. Root vegetables frighten me. A whole fresh squash makes about as much sense to me as cognitive neuroscience. Needless to say, I’m not really much of a cook. It’s not so much that I’ve tried and failed. The issue is that I don’t really feel like it. I would rather spend my time writing, walking the dogs or reading a good book. I tend to find myself in the frozen foods aisle quite often and I’m great with pre-made pasta and a jar of sauce.

    Greg, on the other hand, is an amazing cook! And he likes to do it. We have a great system. He cooks, we eat, I do the dishes. I suggest ingredients for the stir-fry, he rolls his eyes and comes up with something better.

    And then comes Eat Local day of No Impact Week and Greg, a bar manager at a local restaurant and pub, has to go to work, leaving me to fend for myself. I panicked. Which, in retrospect, wasn’t a bad thing because it gave ...read full post
  • Disappearing Dollars: New Orleans Soil Clean-Up Money is Tied Up and Unspent

    Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the levee system put the very existence of New Orleans in question. New Orleans was viewed by many as unsustainable and unworthy of being rebuilt, and some people actually verbalized a willingness to sacrifice the city.  Arsenic and lead were discovered in soils and sediments after the flood, but instead of initiating clean up the contaminiation was ignored and residents were told it was safe to return.  Keeping people out of their homes is not a solution, nor is repopulating contaminated neighborhoods. Our survival in the city and in the Gulf Coast region depends on a paradigm shift. Environmental remediation in New Orleans must be viewed within the broader, integrating principles of sustainable development. Cleaning up soil that is still contaminated with lead and arsenic, especially at child care sites, schools, and playgrounds where children are most likely to be exposed, is one key part of providing ...read full post
  • Day Three of No Impact Week: Walkin' it Off

    About four months ago I moved back to Seattle, where I use a car almost daily, from New York City, where I was car-less for eight years. After eight years of daily, crowded and musty subway commuting, I have to admit that I was anxious to leave that all behind. And I did. I left it all on my behind, which has swollen eight pounds (one for every year I lived in the city) in just four months. Sure, my weight has always fluctuated. But this, two pounds a month for four months straight, all gain no loss—I don’t think you can call that fluctuation. There’s a pretty clear pattern here that I’m not a big fan of.

    Let me say now that I LOVE Seattle—maybe even more than I love New York. With it’s ample green spaces, impressive compost and recycling program, fresh air and culture of conscious consumerism, I’ve had many of moments of relief upon finding the issues I care so deeply about, so deeply ingrained here. But when compared with ...read full post
  • More Is Less: Ocean absorbing less greenhouse gas pollution

    Chart of manmade carbon uptake rate 1765-2008

    The world ocean plays a major role in regulating the climate, in part by absorbing more than a quarter of the billions of tons of heat-trapping greenhouse gas that humans put into atmosphere.

    Scientists have suspected that even as these human-propelled emissions rise, the ocean's capacity to store them is maxing out. Research released this week in the journal Nature adds new strength to that argument.

    In their study, Samar Khatiwala of Columbia University and colleagues developed an ingenious mathematical method for charting the history of how much CO2 the ocean has absorbed since the beginning of the industrial era in 1765: by tracing the amount of human-produced CO2 in water masses of different ages and different geographic origins.

    According to their findings, the ocean currently holds around 150 billion tons of carbon. Just over a decade ago, their calculations suggest, it was around 114 billion tons -- a figure that ...read full post

  • Day Two of No Impact Week: Wading Through Wasted Stuff

    This morning was triumphant. I opened my bag where I had been gathering garbage from the day before, and found it virtuously lean. The contents included one foil and film apple chips bag, one aluminum cat food can, one cardboard toilet paper roll, and one paper pint that once housed the delicious pumpkin sorbet I finally finished off last night. And these materials didn’t bother me at all because they were all the remnants of purchases made long before this experiment started, and therefore atypical of my new waste-free way of life. Or are they? The apple chips I can certainly get without packaging at the cooperative supermarket in my neighborhood. But what about the sorbet? I’m definitely not going to stop eating ice cream. I don’t think that would be healthy for me or for anyone who knows me. Maybe I should learn to make my own. Or maybe I can find a creamery that will fill reusable containers. Yes. I can do this.

    But then there’s ...read full post
  • Finding a Safe Way Back Home: My Request to EPA Administrator Jackson

    There is an emotional side of losing everything, losing your community, and then not knowing when you can go back home.

    There are so many things that New Orleans residents lost after Hurricane Katrina. In my case it wasn't just losing my house, it was losing all the pictures of my mom, who passed away in April 2005. I had a whole chronology of her life from when she was a little girl all the way till when she was 79. The whole memory is just wiped out.  These things can't be undone.

    But there are other legacies from Katrina that can be undone -- that could be fixed to make New Orleans a better and stronger place. For example, there's still time to create a safe environmental legacy for our children. That is why I will be talking with the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today, and I will be giving her a letter signed by local and national organizations asking for her help.

    Immediately following the ...read full post

  • Day One of No Impact Week: Coping with a Consumer Hangover

    In preparation for No Impact Week, my boyfriend and I compulsively had takeout five nights in a row, used the car to run close-by errands (well, it was raining…) and went on a mini shopping spree for things we “needed” around the house. That we were about to drastically reduce our impact for seven days in a row seemed justification enough for our splurges. Funny thing is, most days we would consider ourselves greener than the average Joe. We use reusable shopping bags, watch our water and energy consumption, buy organic… And we make the effort not just because it’s trendy, but because we understand the issues behind our choices and want our actions to be as healthy for ourselves and for the environment as possible. (Brief aside: I say “we,” but as the eco-writer and green thumper in the relationship, he’s mostly green to win points with me. But hey, whatever works.) Yet somehow, the nagging thought that we were about to enter ...read full post

  • Assessing the Impact of California's Water Reforms

    A series of measures designed to overhaul California's ailing water infrastructure has come under increased scrutiny this week since being signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday. Some call the reforms a historic achievement; others say they don't go far enough to tackle the state's complex water problems.

    The measures were adopted by the California state legislature last week after an all-night session and signed by Schwarzenegger in the Central Valley, one of the areas hardest hit by the water crisis.  The centerpiece of the package --an $11.1 billion bond measure -- will appear on the ballot for consideration by state voters next fall.

    A three-year drought has caused severe water shortages, crop losses and damage to the state's fishing industry.  The plan aims to address these problems by developing new drinking water sources and repairing the delicate Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, which supplies water to two-thirds of the ...read full post

  • THREE: A Book of Triptychs

    Click here to see the slideshow.

    In Ed Kashi's new book, THREE, the photographer uses triptychs to "play on the visual appetite of a hectic world." Here's Kashi on the project:

    These triptychs are a celebration of the language of photography, forcing the viewer to “read” each triptych, not only for individual photographs but for their cumulative visual impact. In a world inundated by visual imagery, our ability to take in more than one image at a time has become innate. This series plays on the visual appetite of a hectic world, offering multiple screens from which to process, submerge and make sense of the chaos that surrounds us.

    We're proud to host excerpts from THREE here on OnEarth. 

    Click here to see the slideshow.



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