RSS
March, 2009
-
The MTA Bailout: Why Bridge Tolls are a Necessity for the Poor, the Environment, and the People of New York
This morning, as I skimmed the New York section of the New York Times, I noticed a quote that intrigued me in the article "Unlikely Opponents of Bridge Tolls: Transit Riders." One transit rider, named Serena Burch, remarked "Why should the bridge commuters pay for the subway commuters in Brooklyn?" Obviously, her point, and the point of the writer, William Neuman, is that imposing bridge tolls to bailout the Mass Transit Authority are so unfair that even transit riders are opposed to them, for bridge commuters' money would go to subsidize public transportation. Yet there is a gaping doughnut hole in the middle of this argument, one that never occurred to many legislators, commuters, transit riders, and even the prestigious New York Times: roads (especially highways) and bridges used by commuters are usually fully paid for by the state-yet these commuters often do not have to pay tolls; therefore, it could be said that transit riders-with their tax dollars-are subsidizing co...
-
What's Happening OnEarth- Tuesday, March 31
MUST READ
Major Land Conservation Bill Passed
Yesterday, President Obama signed "a collection of 170 different bills that represents the most significant wilderness law in at least 15 years," one that protects "more than two million acres as wilderness and [creates] a new national system to conserve land held by the Bureau of Land Management." The Wilderness Society president William Meadows gave the bill his highest praise, saying "Future generations will look back at this day as one of the most important dates in American land conservation history." [Washington Post]
Skeptic'sDenier's HandbookThe Heartland Institute is distributing 150,000 copies of a newly-published "Skeptic's Handbook" to "850 journalists, 26,000 schools, 19,000 leaders and politicians." And while the "mass printing of this climate propaganda piece is being funded by an 'anonymous donor'...we do know that the Heartland Institute has been bankrolled to the tune of $676,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998." Desmog...
-
What's Happening OnEarth- Monday, March 30
SHOULD READ
International Climate Talks Imminent...
The Obama administration has announced a series of meetings, called the "Major Economies Meetings on Energy Security and Climate Change," to discuss climate and energy issues in anticipation of December's treaty talks in Copenhagen. "The meetings, to be held in Washington in April and in La Maddalena, Italy, in July, will seek to resolve longstanding issues that have blocked the development of an international climate treaty." China and India will be included among the 16 countries and European Union represented. [New York Times]
...But Expectations Are Lowered?
Todd Stern, the administration's chief climate envoy, is promising that the United States will be "powerfully, fervently engaged" in these talks, but adds that he doesn't "think anybody should be thinking that the U.S. can ride in on a white horse and make it all work." [Washington Post]
Stimulus Efficiency Money Mapped
The Department of Energy has released a map that shows ...
-
Bioblitz in Suburbia: Just Your Friendly Neighborhood Frog-Counting Rally
It's six-thirty in the morning in the not-so-sleepy Atlanta suburb of Dallas, Georgia, and biologist Sean Graham is standing in the bed of his pickup, barking out rules.
"You have from seven this morning to seven at night to find as many species as possible! Report back at dark." With a twinkle of mischief in his eye, he concludes, "Cheating is entirely acceptable."
Sean is laying down the ground rules to our ragtag group of herpetologists, all standing in a semicircle in the parking lot of a Sonic Drive-In. The whole scene looks like some kind of off-kilter, khaki-clad political rally. We've descended on Dallas for a bioblitz: a term scientists have coined for a rapid, all-encompassing inventory of a region's biodiversity. Put simply, the goal of a bioblitz is to find and identify as many species as possible within a set time limit, often in just one to two days. Sean's bioblitz has gathered groups of herpetologists from three southeastern universities to catalog the reptiles and ...
-
What's Happening OnEarth- Friday, March 27
Reporting From the Field
This week, I'm at the Aspen Environment Forum, and will be putting these daily round-ups together in rare free moments and gaps in the schedule. I beg your patience, and apologize in advance for anything I might miss.
New Fuel Efficiency Standards
The Obama administration is set to annouce today "a combined car and light-truck fuel economy standard for the 2011 model year of 27.3 m.p.g., a placeholder for a much-broader reworking of fuel efficiency rules later this year." This marks the first increase in the standard in more than two decades. [Detroit Free Press]
Only God Should Move Mountains
"In Appalachia, there is a growing struggle between two formidable forces – the coal industry that provides jobs in this impoverished region and the religious leaders who knit its rural communities together....Half a dozen major religious denominations have issued statements opposing mountaintop mining in recent years, but the strongest voices in this fight ar...
-
What's Happening OnEarth- Thursday, March 26
Reporting from the Field
Today and tomorrow, I'll be at the Aspen Environment Forum, and will be putting these daily round-ups together in rare free moments and gaps in the schedule. I beg your patience, and apologize in advance for anything I might miss.
GOOD READS
"In what’s being called the most sweeping land protection law in a quarter century, the US House of Representatives Wednesday passed a conservation plan to set aside more than 2 million acres of desert and forest in nine states." The Act cleared already cleared the Senate last week, and now goes to President Obama's desk. [Christian Science Monitor]
"There's been a deluge of bills on climate and energy introduced in Congress in the past few weeks." Here's a very handy round-up. [Grist]
The Senate is now stepping up and taking on mountaintop removal with its version of the Clean Water Act. [It's Getting Hot in Here]
"Advocates for alternative energy are discovering that water issues may prove to be as important...
-
Let The Sun Shine In
The weather in the city last Wednesday reached an end-of-winter high of 60. Hello, New York -- the winter has thawed! While the four seasons are a delightful change from the California sunshine I grew up with, the springtime could not come any sooner in my book. I long to sprawl out on a blanket in the park, have a meal with a light breeze in my hair, and enjoy the smell of barbecue, all while working on my tan. Unfortunately, though, while my room-mate and I have the luxury of two floors and two full baths, we do not have access to our backyard. Our uncovered front porch, however, currently displays two lawn chairs and a grill that failed to garner our attention during the past winter months. Another solid point -- the front porch is in view of anyone who cares to notice; it is an open invitation for others to be introduced into our lives.
While urban life promotes anything short of an open book -- you ride the rails, you walk your dog, you drag your dirty laundry to the cleaners... -
What's Happening OnEarth- Wednesday, March 25
MUST READ
EPA Halts Mountaintop Removal...Or Does It?
Everybody's reporting the Environmental Protection Agency's notice that hundreds of mountaintop removal coal-mining permits would be put on hold Tuesday to evaluate the projects' impact on streams and wetlands. But late in the day the agency issued a clarification that seems to take the teeth out of the warning. [Washington Post; Greenwire/New York Times; AP; Reuters; NPR; Clarification: Grist]
OPINION
Robert Kennedy, Jr. applauds the decision. [Washington Post]
JUDGE FOR YOURSELF
Here's the original press release. And then the clarificaction. Stay tuned!
GOOD READS
Insurers Weigh Climate Risks
Insurers in Texas are starting to look closely at climate change, after a hurricane-battered year that brought soaring damage claims and record losses for the state's industry. [ClimateWire/New York Times]
Guide for Climate Disasters
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is releasing a a study on climate extremes...
-
What's Happening OnEarth- Tuesday, March 24
Must Read
In what's being called "historic news," the EPA has found that climate-warming greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, pose a danger to human health and welfare. This, essentially, means that greenhouse gasses could be subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act, and "could trigger a broad regulatory process affecting much of the U.S. economy as well as the nation's future environmental trajectory." [Washington Post]
Good Reads
War of Words for Climate Victims
Migrants or refugees? What to call the victims of a changing climate that are forced from their land to seek a livelihood elsewhere? The debate isn't merely academic. The title they're given "can have real-life implications for national budgets, international law and immigration policies of nations from America to India." [ClimateWire/New York Times]
Clean Energy Meets Chicago Politics
Chicago, often heralded as one of the country's leading "green" cities, is failing to meet Mayor Daley's 2001 promise to g...
-
Top Canadian Scientist Has Sober Climate Findings
A distinguished climate scientist says an unforeseen phenomenon is quickly eroding the Greenland Ice Sheet.
David Barber is the Canada Research Chair in Arctic System Science at the University of Manitoba and leader of the largest polar project in the world, studying climate change in the Arctic.
Prof. Barber says many scientists have believed the sheet is simply melting as global warming takes its toll.
What is actually happening is, torrents of melt-water on the surface are finding their way down, through fissures, to the bottom.
There, they act as a "lubricants," breaking the ice apart and causing it to, as he puts it, to "calve" many small icebergs into the ocean at a rapid rate.
Barber believes the icebergs sliding into the sea in this way, could raise sea levels by as much as 6 meters. That's enough, he warns, to damage several large coastal cities!
He further predicts summer sea ice could be completely gone from the Canadian Arctic by as early as 2013, just four years from n...
-
What's Happening OnEarth- Monday, March 23
Must Read
Climate Change Comes to your Garden
The USDA has been revising its Plant Hardiness Zone Map--used by "anyone involved with gardening, especially with perennials...to pick the right plants for their location”--and it will "make very clear how much rising temperatures have shifted planting zones northward." [The Daily Climate]
Should Read
Don't Blame Cities
City-dwellers don't deserve disproportionate blame for their impact on climate change. A new British report found that "urban residents generate substantially lower greenhouse gas emissions, which scientists blame for global warming, than people elsewhere in the country." It continues: "Although the concentration of people, enterprises, vehicles and waste in cities is often seen as a 'problem', high densities and large population concentrations can also bring a variety of advantages for ... environmental management." [Reuters]
Fires Underground
For 94 years abandoned coal mines have been burning underneath Central ...
-
What's Happening OnEarth- Friday, March 20
Must Read
Requiem for the Birds
Nearly a third of all U.S. bird species are "imperiled or in significant decline because of habitat loss, climate change, invasive species and other threats." The "State of the Birds" report, which Interior Secretary Ken Salazar referred to as a "clarior call," looked at 800 domestic bird populations over 40 years, and called for a "new ethic of conservation." The good news? Bird populations do respond to conservation efforts, as past conservation programs have "paid huge dividends." [New York Times/Greenwire; Also listen on NPR]
Perfect Storm of Shortages
Increasing demand for food, water, and energy as population grows will create "a perfect storm" of shortages globally by 2030, warns the U.K.'s chief science advisor. "Demand for food and energy will jump 50 per cent by 2030 and for fresh water by 30 per cent, as the global population tops 8.3 billion." [Telegraph]
Should Read
Getting Weirder Every Day
Are you ready for "global weirding?...
-
What's Happening OnEarth- Thursday, March 19
Must Read
The City that Ended Hunger
Francis Moore Lappé, author of Diet for a Small Planet, found a "city that ended hunger" in central Brazil. How'd they do it? By recruiting local farmers. Belo Horizonte has, in a short decade, "cut its infant death rate—widely used as evidence of hunger—by more than half, and today these initiatives benefit almost 40 percent of the city’s 2.5 million population. One six-month period in 1999 saw infant malnutrition in a sample group reduced by 50 percent. And between 1993 and 2002 Belo Horizonte was the only locality in which consumption of fruits and vegetables went up." [Yes Magazine]
Should Read
Public Transit Paradox
Ridership on public transportation nationwide has been increasing dramatically - and is now at its highest level in the past 52 years, but transit systems are struggling to keep up. Adds Kaid Benfield: "Another sad irony is that, just as the federal stimulus is pumping (needed) money for new transit start-ups, it is ...
-
When greener gadgets become the norm
Environmentalists rightly focus on greening the consumer, but with somewhat of a 'hell be damned' thought about the expensive upfront costs that often come with greening. Some rough estimates from my local shopping hubs here in Brooklyn: Seventh Generation Toilet Paper, 4 rolls at about $5.95, Scott Tissue, 4 at around 99 cents each; CFL lightbulbs, one for $4.95, regular bulbs, one at $1.25. For a person who lives paycheck to paycheck (and I, a freelancer, have good practice at this) if it comes down to the ability to buy multiple lightbulbs and at least two rolls of the unrecylced toilet tissue, or just a lightbulb, well, I often go with the former. This decision comes despite the fact that I know CFL lightbulbs will save me money on my electricity bill, or that Seventh Generation really couldn’t be better. The cost of going green, and my paycheck, often trump my sustainable heart. And therein lies the problem: we need to find a way to make “being green” part of our daily li...
-
I Was Too Early on Solar--Let's Not Be Too Late
In his State of the Union address, President Obama noted that although America invented solar energy technology, we have fallen behind countries like Germany and Japan in producing it. He is right of course.
I remember when America was leading the pack on clean energy in the 1970s. We abdicated that leadership thanks to the influence of a fossil fuel industry with deep pockets and friends in the White House. But Obama reminded us of an important aspect of the American character: ingenuity. We are a nation of innovators, and we can harness that resourcefulness again to build a better future.
I saw that ingenuity emerge three decades ago, when the promise of renewable energy became clear to many of us. We were so eager to spread the word about solar power that we created "Sun Day," the solar equivalent of Earth Day. We had events from Maine to Chicago to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir even agreed to participate in one event.
People were just s... -
What's Happening OnEarth- Wednesday, March 18
Must Read
Some researchers have completed "the first comprehensive, peer-reviewed energy analysis of bottled water, and the results aren't pretty." Producing one bottle of water takes 2,000 times the energy as it would to produce same amount of tap water. [Fast Company]
Should Read
Tom Philpott takes a look at the human cost of industrial tomatoes, spending time in Immokalee, Florida, "epicenter of U.S. fresh-tomato production from December to March." A two-part series. [Grist]
The people in Australia's Murray-Darling Basin watershed are now learning the answer the global question of "what will happen when the climate starts to change and the rivers dry up and a whole way of life comes to an end?" More than a decade into a drought that is looking more and more permanent, life has changed. [National Geographic]
Colorado state law dictates that rainwater belongs to those who bought the rights to waterways, making anybody with a home rainwater capture system a criminal. [Los An...
-
It's Global Warming, Stupid!
So I hear another flood "of biblical proportions" could be headed Manitoba-way!
A swollen Red River already has officials in North Dakota and even our province on high alert.
Word is this one could be as bad or even worse, (if that's possible) than the one in '97 that brought tragedy and grief to both farms and small towns in the flood plain.
They called the one back then "the worst of the century," following what had been "the worst blizzard of all-time." (Or was it the other way around?)
Whichever the case, it makes me feel like screaming, "It's climate change, stupid!"
What is it going to take for you politicians and you, "average Joes" to wake up from your stupor and see the light? (That industry and big corporations do nothing, is no surprise. I expect better of you.)
As you watch growing evidence of the climate crisis unfold all around you, you remain in a state of denial, preferring instead to "party on" as if there is no tomorrow (& if you don't change, there won't be)...
-
What's Happening OnEarth- Tuesday, March 17
Must Read
Obama: End Mountaintop Removal Now
A powerful editorial from the New York Times this morning calls upon the president to put an end to mountaintop removal coal mining once and for all. The MTR process "is just what the name suggests. Enormous machines — bulldozers and draglines — scrape away mountain ridges to expose the coal seams below. The coal is then trucked away, and the leftover rock and dirt are dumped into adjacent valleys and streams." But the Clean Water Act could prevent this, so long as the Obama White House makes sure that the original intent of the law is followed. [New York Times]
Should Read
Bad Advice
How to green your home? Unplug chargers? Put a brick in your toilet tank? Low-flow showerheads? No, no, no, says Joe Romm as he dismantles a New York Times "5 Steps to a Greener Home" column. [Climate Progress]
Department of Short Term Memory
Hybrid car sales are way down. Prius and Civic hybrids are piling up on dealer lots, as gas pric...
-
What's Happening OnEarth- Monday, March 16
Must Read
Rising Tides in America
The northeast coast of the U.S. "is likely to see the world's biggest sea level rise from man-made global warming." The new study finds that because of changes in ocean currents and the strength of the Gulf Stream, cities like New York and Boston will face an extra 8 inches of sea level rise on top of the 2-3 feet that's predicted globally by 2100. "It's not just waterfront homes and wetlands that are at stake here," one expert said. "Those kind of rises in sea level when placed on top of the storm surges we see today, put in jeopardy lots of infrastructure, including the New York subway system." [AP]
Must Watch
A massive oil spill closes down 40 miles of popular Australian beaches. [Guardian]
Should Read
Solar in the City
A new experiment in financing solar photovoltaic installations is gaining popularity in California. Cities provide municipal financing for the upfront costs of installing solar, allowing residents to pay it back with increase...
-
New Life for Mineral Carbon Sequestration
It has been a good year for mineral carbon dioxide sequestration. The idea, first developed by Columbia Professor Klaus Lackner and others at Los Alamos National Laboratories in the mid-90s, is that one could keep CO2 gas out of the atmosphere and oceans by reacting it with magnesium or calcium silicate minerals to form stable carbonate minerals, such as magnesium or calcium carbonate. Because carbonate minerals are the thermodynamic ground state of carbon at the Earth's crust, this process does not require energy to occur, and in fact as the recent article in OnEarth discusses, is happening naturally on large scales in areas where there are rocks with high concentrations of magnesium silicate minerals.
Although this process happens naturally, the rates at which they take place in nature are generally too slow to balance the rate of CO2 emissions from our industrial processes. Thus scientists over the last 10 years have explored numerous routes through which to speed up t...
-
What's Happening OnEarth- Friday, March 13
Must Read
A new U.N. report paints a grim picture of the world's freshwater supplies, particularly in developing nations. The report, "Water in a Changing World," places blame on "surging population growth, climate change, reckless irrigation and chronic waste," and highlights the complex ties between freshwater supplies and other geopolitical issues like public health, political stability, poverty, and conflict. [Grist]
Should Read
Copenhagen Roundup
The three day Copenhagen climate science conference--formally the " International Scientific Congress Climate Change: Global Risks, Challenges & Decisions"--has wrapped up. There were no shartage of panic-inducing reports presented. Andy Revkin recaps the summit, and breaks down the conclusions drawn. [Dot Earth]
Field Notes from Catastrophe Coverage
Elizabeth Kolbert has used her New Yorker articles and an influential book, Field Notes From a Catastrophe, to help push climate change into a more dominant place in the American publ...
-
What's Happening OnEarth- Thursday, March 12
Must Read
Amazon "as we know it would be effectively gone"
The biggest threat to the Amazon rainforest might not be deforestation, but rather global warming. A study--called a "bombshell" by one scientist in attendance--released at the climate science conference in Copenhagen found that even "best case scenarios...would still see 20-40% of the Amazon die off within 100 years....while a [4 degree Celcius rise] would kill 85%." [Guardian]
Should Read
Western Water Woes
Reuters is running a knockout series on water woes in the American West. So far they've covered: the impacts of climate change on the hunt for water; how fast growing cities are trying to cope; the financial costs and politics of a high-tech water future.
"Even trash has become worthless"
The market for recyclable materials is collapsing. In China, "the multibillion-dollar recycling industry has gone into a nosedive because of the global economic crisis and a...fall in commodity prices." Last fall there was ...
-
U.S. Logging Giant Scraps Pollution Controls in Manitoba
Over the Christmas holidays, the Government of Manitoba quietly agreed to let the Louisiana Pacific Corporation (LP), with extensive forestry operations in North America, shut down pollution control equipment at one of its wood products plants in the west-central part of the province.
As a result, many emissions such as benzene, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide, have apparently been escaping into the air since January at its “oriented strand board” (OSB) plant near Minitonas in the SwanValley. (OSB is a building product similar to plywood made mostly from poplar tree fiber.)
Now, LP wants to keep that equipment shut down, permanently. Much to the chagrin of environmental groups, the Government is considering that request.
Ironically, it was the New Democratic Opposition Party, now the government, that insisted that the equipment, called “regenerative thermal oxidizers,”(RTOs) be installed when LP was first issued its Manitoba license back in the late 90’s. So did a ...
-
What's Happening OnEarth- Wednesday, March 11
Must Read
Who's Protecting Us?
The federal agency responsible for assessing "health hazards at polluted sites designated under the Superfund cleanup law, and those of concern to local communities" is not, a new Congressional report finds, doing its job. "Time and time again [the agency] appears to avoid clearly and directly confronting the most obvious toxic culprits that harm the health of local communities throughout the nation," the report states, adding that officials "deny, delay, minimize, trivialize or ignore legitimate health concerns." Keep up the great work, guys! [AP]
Worse (and Wetter) than Expected
As nearly 2,000 scientists gather in Copenhagen for the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change, a stark warning dominated the first day's news. Sea levels may rise twice the amount estimated just two years ago in the famous (and Nobel Prize winning) IPCC report, which neglected the effects of Greenland and Antarctic ice shelf melt. "This means the lives o...
-
What's Happening OnEarth- Tuesday, March 10
Breaking
After much blog-fueled speculation yesterday, it's now confirmed that "author and activist Van Jones will be a special adviser for green jobs, enterprise and innovation in the Obama administration." [AP]
Must Read
Too Few Shades of Green
Environmental organizations have long been criticized for lack of diversity, "and have faced criticism for focusing more on protecting resources than protecting people." Over the past couple decades, change has been "slow to come," but now "many environmentalists say they feel pressure to diversify the movement further, both in membership and at higher levels of leadership." [New York Times]
Should Read
House of Cards
With a nod to the Heartland Institute's "Deniers" Conference, George Monbiot breaks down the world's top ten worst climate criminals, in playing card form. [Guardian]
The Changing Climate From Clinton to Obama
Two of the most prominent voices in the climate conversation now belong to Bill Clinton and, of course, Al Gore. So...
-
Poweshift 2009 Galvanizes America's Youth
In nature, anomalies can be important in natural development. If nothing else they almost always signal a change; sometimes even a new species can emerge. National conferences are generally removed from the sphere of student activism, but Powershift 2009 is a notable exception to this rule- the high-profile anomaly in a vast network of local climate activism. Powershift brought 12,000 students and youth from across America to D.C. last weekend for three days of action focused on a clean energy future. The conference, held at the Washington Convention center, featured hundreds panels and workshops where students met with community organizers, professionals, experts, and each other to learn about a vast array of energy related issues. Topics ranged from environmental justice to campus organizing, coal mining to Copenhagen. The workshops and panels brought speakers and experts from all walks of life, including everyone from the radical Christian environmentalists in the “Stop a Bulld...
-
What's Happening OnEarth- Monday, March 9
Must Read
Ash Protection
The EPA is planning to regulate coal "combustion waste" to "prevent accidents like the release in December of more than a billion gallons of coal ash that smothered 300 acres in eastern Tennessee and choked nearby waterways." While the administration figures out whether to classify coal ash--which contains toxins like arsenic, lead, and mercury--as hazardous or nonhazardous waste, they'll start monitoring the roughly 300 storage "ponds" around the country with hopes of preventing another spill. [New York Times]
Should Read
Good News for People Who Love Bad News
As scientists gather in Copenhagen for an international climate conference this week, the conversation looks to be awfully sobering. New reports indicate that "Low-lying areas including Bangladesh, Florida, the Maldives and the Netherlands face catastrophic flooding, while, in Britain, large areas of the Norfolk Broads and the Thames estuary are likely to disappear by 2100." Meanwhile, research...
-
What's Happening OnEarth- Friday, March 6
Today we debut a new running feature here on Greenlight--a daily roundup of all the environmental news that's worth your time and attention. You're busy, and there's a lot of noise out there in the media, so let Greenlight be your filter. Without further adieu...
Friday, March 6th
Must Read
Endangered Species Act Now Less Endangered
Back in the dark days of December, the Bush administration cut a leg out from under the Endangered Species Act, waiving requirements for federal agencies to consult with actual wildlife experts "over decisions that may affect threatened or endangered species." Well, President Obama just suspended that widely-criticized "midnight regulation." [Washington Post]
Whereto the Nukes?
After 25 years of planning at a cost of about $10.4 billion, Yucca Mountain will not be used to store nuclear waste. The Obama administration budget just released "cuts off almost all funding for creating a permanent burial site for a large portion of the nation's radioacti...
-
On the ground at the Greener Gadgets Conference: Heirloom Products
Last Friday, February 27, I was sitting in the middle of the Greener Gadgets Conference in New York City. The second annual conference was a discourse in how we might inject sustainability into the consumer cycle (a conversation that often reminded me of Annie Leonard's film, The Story of Stuff).
Despite my best intentions, I couldn't live blog from the event because of a faulty internet connection (the irony of a gadget conference with no digital connection was not lost on me). But in my mind, it's always a good day to discuss how we might change the developed world's consumption frenzy. So, even if the conference is over, I'd still like to talk about some of the points that were raised there, starting with heirloom products.
The morning key note speech was by Saul Griffith, who holds a PhD in mechanical engineering and is co-founder of the high-altitude wind company Makani power (among many other companies). The high-energy Aussie-born, California surfer describes himself as a pers...
-
Factory Farms and the TVA Spill: How Environmental Disasters Affect Our Health
I've been reading the blog of the Tennessee Coal Ash Survivor Network about the symptoms afflicting the population around the Kingston coal plant disaster. It reminded me about the health problems I had while desperately trying to stop a 5,800 pig factory farm from being built in my small town of 5,400 people.
I've lived all my life on the Richelieu River and had been trying to stop the pollution that prevented me from being able to swim in it like when I was a child. Knowing that a factory farm and liquid manure spreading was inevitably coming to be upriver from me made me sick--mentally and physically.
I started losing weight: more than 30 pounds in a few months. I started having trouble sleeping: something blissfully unknown to me until then. I started having heart palpitations. Stress made my throat contract so much my voice started to get raspy. A doctor suspected thyroid problems. I started having high blood pressure, something I never had, nor anybody in my family. I went thr... -
You Can Have Green Energy Now
Did you know that most people in the U.S. today have the opportunity to purchase some or all their electricity from clean, renewable sources? If you didn't know that, don't feel bad. Most people aren't aware of this opportunity.
During the past couple of years, my wife Abbie and I have been trying to figure out how we could fulfill our electrical needs with renewable energy. Solar panels and windmills were out, as we just couldn't afford to make the investment. Finally, we found Maine Renewable Energy (MRE), a local Maine company that sells 100% renewable power, a combination of wind and hydro, so we signed up. It costs us a little more, 1-2 cents per kWh, which translates to an additional $5 to $10 per month. We think it's worth it and believe it is the right thing to do.
As we began to share the idea with others, to our surprise, no one seemed to know anything about the "green power option". That bothered me. So, I started doing some research and found that "not knowing", is a ma...
Mowing the Lawn