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November, 2009
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Day Five of No Impact Week: Lights Out
“What? I’m not going without overhead lights for the rest of the week, you crazy hippy!”
Admittedly, Seattle is dark this time of year, but really? Is Greg truly more attached to overhead lighting than he is to video games and 30 Rock?
I too have always considered overhead lighting mandatory. It’s just a reflex. As the sun goes down, lights go on. And in Seattle, where the sun doesn’t even come out much this time of year, the lights tend to be on all day, and usually up until bedtime. I don’t think that’s unreasonable. We need light to do the majority of things we do, and it’s not reasonable to suggest that people should sit in darkness from sun down till sun up. But do we really need as much light as we use? And does it have to come from a light bulb?
Greg and I have already switched over to green power with our utility company, unplug chargers that aren’t being used and plug our electronics into powerstrips that we shut off before we leave the house, but the en... -
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 how to shop, eat, dress, and furnish our w...
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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 me an awareness that I hadn’t yet been ... -
Having fun with science - Project FeederWatch
If you have any fondness for birds and have any room at all for a birdfeeder, then Project FeederWatch (http://www.birds.cornell.edu/pfw/ ) is a MUST. This year's count just started!
Basically, at a nominal cost, we ‘FeederWatchers', thousands of us across North America, regularly count the birds seen at our feeders and send the information to Cornell University.
Year in, year out, their world class Ornithology Department crunches the numbers and analyzes the movements of different species geographically, and also the long-term trends in populations and locations.
Last winter, 117,000 people were involved across all fifty states and almost every Canadian province, counting the maximum number of every species they saw at any one time. Although you might see three chickadees at one go, and later see another three, of course there is no real way of telling whether they are the same or different birds - but it is the trends from year to year that matter.
For instance, in the 2008-9 ...
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Nature Misunderstood
Does anyone else find it odd that the researchers on Isle Royale found the results to one of their most recent studies - wolves and moose improve biodiversity - to be unexpected?
I did not find the results to be at all surprising.
Animal corpses turn in to biological waste which decomposes into the necessary nutrients for local flora to flourish. The plant life provides the necessary nutrients for herbivores to survive. The herbivores provide the necessary nutrients through predation to carnivores. Carnivores die, decompose and, in turn, feed the plants, which feeds the herbivores, and so the cycle goes on.
The Isle Royale study was impressive in that they were able to get enough data to prove the assumptions. However, the descriptions of the results as surprising or unexpected left me wondering. How deep is the overall misunderstanding of nature?
Obviously, on pretty general observation, the depth of the misunderstanding is pretty extensive.
The wolves, for which I fight, are in the...
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Plight of the Humble Bee
Could half of our food supply actually be at risk now? by Larry Powell - No. 15 '09
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It seems that the news about disappearing bees isn't that bad after all.
It's worse!
(bee photo by l.p.)While the sad state of honeybees worldwide has now been well-documented, much less attention has been paid to their ungainly cousins, the bumblebees!
They, too are declining at an alarming rate and have been for at least a decade, possibly longer! But only recently have details of their predicament begun to emerge.
A Bee's Plea:
I am a bumblebee. I'm an excellent pollinator of many different kinds of fruits and vegetables, important to you humans. In some cases (if I do say so), I'm even better at it than my more famous cousins, the honeybees. (You've probably heard more about them because they make lots of honey and I don... -
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 a safer future for the city.
After Katr... -
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 Manhattan, Seattle’s public transportation ... -
More Is Less: Ocean absorbing less greenhouse gas pollution
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 closely aligns with research published in 2004 ...
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Exploring the Benefits of Green Roof Architecture
In 2007, Columbia joined with nine other universities in the City in Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC Challenge, pledging to decrease carbon dioxide emissions 30 percent by 2017. One initiative that is in the process of being explored to aid with this effort is the expansion and development of green roof (or vegetated roof cover) architecture.
Photo 1: Green Roof Con Edison Training, Long Island City
According to the National Institute of Building Sciences Whole Building Design Guide there are two types of green roofs: extensive, which are the most common and lightweight consisting of 3-4" of soil and low growing vegetation, and intensive which consist of 4" or more of soil. Intensive green roofs can support a larger variety of plants, shrubs and trees.
All successful, well-designed green roofs employ several features that are not commonly found as part of your typical roof.
- Drainage: must maintain optimum growing conditions and manage heavy rainfall conditions without damage due to erosion ...
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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 the cat food can. This is going to be a pr... -
Pakistan's Water: Domestic Steps
Pakistan can do a lot domestically to use water more efficiently, as well as improve the quality of the water that it uses. The quality of groundwater and surface-water is low and is further deteriorating because of the unchecked disposal of untreated municipal and industrial wastewater and excessive use of fertilizers and insecticides. The pollution levels are particularly high in and around major urban centers, due primarily to the discharge of hazardous industrial wastes including persistent toxic synthetic organic chemicals, heavy metals, pesticide products and municipal wastes, causing widespread water-borne and water-washed diseases.
Water quality monitoring and information management is lacking as no consolidated effort has been made in the past to monitor the quality of drinking water at the national level. As a consequence, no comprehensive data set is available on the quality of drinking water. Different organizations - including the Water and Power Development Authority (W...
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Defining and Exploring Citizen Journalism
After looking into Wikinews last week, I decided to investigate a bit of the history of citizen journalism and what it means to be a citizen journalist today.
Wikipedia (appropriately) provides a detailed article on the matter, with over 20 references to professional articles and papers published on the topic. The article defines citizen journalism as the role of reporter being brought back to those people who were once considered “audience.” As is fairly obvious from the name, this new type of reporting involves the non-professional public to become involved in news and media.
One of the most interesting highlights is a quote from an article published by Boston College law professor Mary-Rose Papandrea in which she discusses citizen journalism and the history of press. She reminds us that “freedom of the press” originally referred to literally using a printing press, an act often done by individuals to publish both news and opinions. Only in the late 1800s did the ter...
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Invasive Plants in the Media: Citizens and Scientists Showing Awareness
This week, I have provided my readers with three informative videos on invasive plants. The first, from University of Pennsylvania, discusses the impacts of invasive plants in the Northeast region of the United States. It provides examples of three species, Tree of Heaven, Autumn Olive, and Japanese Barberry and gives the best way to eradicate them. The second is a video from a Vancouver, British Columbia Canadian news station that talks about some of the invasive plants affecting native Canadian ecosystems. The third video is from UC Davis at the American River Parkway in California, which is very close to where I live. It talks about a few of the invasives affecting California and how they are changing the native diversity there. All of the videos are under five minutes long and illustrate how invasive plants are spread and what we as environmentally concious citizens can do to prevent this. Please watch and enjoy! -
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 flooding of New Orleans, I called for independen...
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The Fantastic Four Winds Farm
A while ago when I was compiling a list of resources for people interested in finding out about local food, I found Four Winds Farm on LocalHarvest. Their description on the site emphasized their organic farming methods, heirloom products, and grass-fed livestock. Seeing that they were 65 miles away (within the 100 mile ‘local' radius), I emailed the owners to see if I could come up , speak with them, and see their farm. I did this because I wanted to go see how food is made firsthand. Our culture has a huge disconnect from the means of food production, and seeing that food growing from the ground or walking around can reduce that disconnect. There are biological reasons behind how we grow food; these plants and animals have distinct life cycles and growing conditions (this is why a banana in New York is never local). An interesting side note - in agribu
siness where produce is being shipped for extended periods of time, it is often chemically treated to ripen or prevent ripen... -
Not In My Sidewalk!
As I've mentioned before, some people just don't seem to like trees very much, and some of the more dramatic incidents of anti-treeism made it into my pervious posts. But in the last couple of weeks, I've been spending some time at the NYC Parks Department helping to catalogue complaints (and other correspondence -- luckily it's not just complaints), and I'm getting a better idea of why people complain. Not only the big complaints (like the rare entirely impassable sidewalk), but the smaller-scale, more quotidien complaints that arrive by the hundreds during the spring and fall planting seasons.
But before I get into that, I want to say that the Central Forestry office is a pretty fabulous place. We can rest assured that the people behind our new street trees are genuine tree people, who genuinely believe in greening New York. They work in a fairly normal-looking office space -- wide open with low-walled cubicles, where most people are staring at their computers amid a quie...
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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 a week when we suddenly couldn’t have a...
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LED Traffic Signals: Mitigation or Migraine?
In my usual rushed commute from Barnard College on the west side of Broadway to Columbia just across the street I was stopped by a red illuminated pedestrian signal. I suppose the two hours I had just spent in Environmental Ethics stirred the environmental conscience in me, and I began to think about the electricity consumed from the traffic lights, pedestrian walk signals, and streetlights that adorn every city street corner. A city would not be able to function without such devices, and yet the fact that traffic signals run twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week never occurred to me (the things we take for granted as native New Yorkers). With this as my incentive I decided to do a bit of research on the topic.
According to the PlaNYC 2007 Emissions Data, such traffic signals accounted for 3.7 percent of government greenhouse gas emissions during the Fiscal Year of 2006 (translated as the release of 144,000 metric tons of CO2). With this said, over the 11-year time period from ...
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Where's Your Local Brownfield?
Do you want to know how close your home is to polluted land? Are you aware of contaminated property nearby and would like to inform your neighborhood? If you live in New York City, this can all be done using the website www.habitatmap.org . HabitatMap is an NYC based environmental health justice organization focused on making our neighborhoods cleaner, safer, and more sustainable. HabitatMap is a social networking website that takes advantage of community based knowledge to alert the public of environmental health hazards, such as contaminated land known as brownfields. A brownfield is a property featuring some amount of pollution due to previous development. Gas stations, dry cleaners, and factories are all common sources of toxic chemicals and pollution. Not only does HabitatMap seek to alert the NYC community of local contamination, it also aims to hold companies accountable for their environmental impacts as well as promote cleanup efforts and sustainability.
To view a map displ...
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The Fate of the Gowanus Canal: When Politics and Environmental Issues Collide
Pollution on the surface of the Gowanus Canal. (photo courtesy of http://www.brownstoner.com/)
After writing a blog a few weeks ago about the possibility of the Gowanus Canal being added to the Federal Superfund National Priorities List, I became increasingly interested in the progress of the EPA's proposal and the Superfund status of the canal. After perusing a recent article I came across in The Architect's Newspaper, I found out where Mayor Michael Bloomberg stands on the issue. As the article notes, in early October, Bloomberg revealed a $150 million investment plan for cleaning up the waterway. This plan for remediation wasn't exactly his first, as he had announced a comparable investment for cleanup back in 2002. As a result of raw sewerage being discharged into the canal after heavy rain storms, the city of New York needed to bring the state of the Gowanus into compliance with the Clean Water Act. Though Bloomberg announced this clean-up effort in 2002, no advances h...
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Sightseeing in NYC? Check Out the Deer!
I first started to hear about deer population problems two summers ago when I went to a town hall meeting in Cornwall, N.Y. At this meeting, any concerned person could learn about and discuss the deer population with other residents and a panel of people from the area who had experience with or jobs related to deer. The range of responses at this meeting amazed me. Some argued that there was no deer problem. Others claimed that deer populations were only in the nearby forest and not actually in the town. One woman's repeated announcement that "nature will take care of the deer" was met with the majority of the attendees quickly casting aside any amiability and reacting with sheer disagreement. Fortunately, less than two years later, residents have been more educated on the subject of deer and a deer management program has been implemented in the area due to the actions of a certain woman, Emily Thomas.
The people claiming that deer populations were not observable i...
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Asking for Forgiveness from Mother Nature
Hinduism and nature are so entwined that it is quite impossible to think about one without the other. Texts as early as the Vedas and Upanishads advocate environmental conservation and ecological balance. According to Vedic beliefs, trees, rivers, soil and mountains should all be venerated as forms of God. These aspects of nature were not created to be exploited, desecrated and devoured by human beings out to conquer, manipulate and control. Humans are one link in the ecosystem and in the chain of creation and consciousness. We must live in harmony with nature and recognize the sanctity of all elements of creation.
At a very early age, Hindus are taught to recite the following prayer before commencing their daily activities:
"Samudra Vasane Devi, Parvata Stana Mandale.
Vishnupatni Namastubhyam, Paada Sparsham Kshamasva Me."Translation:
"Salutations to the divine consort of Lord Vishnu, Who is clothed by oceans and adorned by the mountains. Pardon me mother, for setting my foot ...
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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 state's residents and is near collapse du...
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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.
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Common Sense for the Clean Energy and Climate Debate
In January of 1776, Philadelphia essayist Thomas Paine published a 47-page pamphlet that changed the world. Within three months, Common Sense had sold 150,000 copies -- in a land of just 2.5 million people -- framing the terms of debate for the American colony's epic break from British rule. By July of that year, the national conversation charged by Paine's work culminated in the Declaration of Independence.
In that hallowed tradition, Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, has penned a modern classic in revolutionary thought. Titled Clean Energy, Common Sense, this book calls on us, as a nation, to rise to the challenge of climate change while there's still time to act.
Time is of such essence, Frances writes, that every American of conscience must be engaged. Reading this essay is an essential first step.
Like Paine's pamphlet, Clean Energy, Common Sense is small enough to fit into your pocket and brief enough to read in two hours. It is accessible and ...
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City Forestry: The Next Generation
The other day I was lucky enough to accompany a New York City forester into the field -- which is, in this case, the city. Our first stop was Randall's Island. As we slid out of our beat-up, overloaded minivan to oversee a 7 am tree delivery, we were greeted by a friendly fellow with dark blue eyes, disarranged white hair, work boots, and a native New Yorker's accent, who saw us and called out with a grin, "Let me guess -- you're from Central Forestry." At the time it seemed like an odd remark, because my hostess struck me as rather outside the classic mold of a forester, but it passed. We watched the trees carefully unloaded (they must not be dropped, even a little, or the damage to their roots will doom them), and chatted with the trucker, who had driven them up from Maryland that morning on a huge, tarp-covered, flatbed trailer.
I remembered the remark later, though, when I went back to the central forestry office and was struck by the youth of most of the workers there. ...
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The Fairchild Challenge: An Introduction
Greetings Greenlight Readers!
The Fairchild Challenge team is excited to be blogging here on Greenlight!
The Fairchild Challenge is a scalable, replicable and transformative program with respect to infusing entire school systems with meaningful, appealing environmental education opportunities. The Fairchild Challenge is entering its eighth year and growing in Miami, Chicago, California, Utah, Pennsylvania and Costa Rica! Indeed, educators form 46 sites have now been trained to replicate the Fairchild Challenge in citie...
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A Day in the Life of a Wholesale Greenmarket Promotions Intern
Hey readers, I'm trying something a little different with my post this week. Instead of going over factual information about local food, the point of this post is to give readers an idea about what I am doing right now at Wholesale Greenmarket. I'm going to talk about what I'm learning, and why I'm so excited to be doing it. I apologize in advance for veering away from my usual type of post, but I hope you guys will find it interesting to see how an effective nonprofit organization like CENYC works from behind the scenes in terms of everyday work.
"Hi, my name is Kathryn and I'm calling from the Council on the Environment of New York City and the State Department of Agriculture and Markets." Each Friday, at the beginning of 30-50 conversations, I say this to different produce retailers in the Bronx. I'm getting pretty good at it - or at least I like to think so. While it seems a like a generic, scripted, and somewhat stiff introduction, I've found that it drastically decreas...
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Pakistan's Water: Domestic Issues
My research on Pakistan's water security usually includes reviewing academic and governmental literature on the issue, but I also try and keep up with recent events that are germane. Last week, an interactive session called "Pakistan's Water Sector Strategy and Alternative Strategy to Resolve Critical Water Issues" was organized by the Pakistan Network of Rivers, Dams and People (PNRDP). Mr. A. N. G Abbasi, a prominent water expert in Pakistan who was formerly in charge of the Technical Committee on Water Resources, spoke at length about the various water security challenges Pakistan's current administration is facing.
Along with the problem of water disputes with India, Mr. Abbasi highlighted Pakistan's gross misuse of the water that it did have. Water distribution amongst Pakistan's provinces remained a point of contention, highlighting the lack of legal framework when it comes to environmental problems in most developing countries. The Minister of Irrigation of one of Pakistan's...
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"Greening" Your Garden: How to Be a Smart and Environmentally Friendly Gardener
Are you looking for ways to help make your yard "greener?" Here are some tips on how to make your garden more friendly toward the environment:- *Plant native species* You can research what plants are native in your area by going to the Plants Database at the USDA Plants website. Once you go to this website click on the link to "See a list of the plants in my state."
- *Research before you plant* It is important to research the plants that you plan on putting in your garden, especially if you wish to plant ornamentals (plants used for decorative purposes/landscaping). Cross reference your information to make sure that you do not plant any non-native invasives. A good place to start is also on the Plants Database using the link to either "Invasive and Noxious Weeds" or "Learn about noxious and invasive plants."
- *Weed out invasive plants* You may already have some invasive plants in your garden. If that's the case, do not be alarmed, simply pull them up. Some are more difficult to eliminat...
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What is Vertical Farming?
Raise your hand if you've heard rumblings about so-called "Vertical Farms" recently. Keep your hands up if the name "Despommier" means anything to you. Now keep your hands up if you can tell me who invented modern hydroponics, and where.
The best big idea to come around since the Internet has been attracting fans all around the world. Governments and entrepreneurs think there is great potential in hydroponic food production in the urban environment, and I am here to address some questions that crop-up in the discussion.
(FYI: Dickson Despommier, Columbia Microbiology Professor, is the Godfather of Vertical Farming; William Frederick Gericke, in the early 1930’s, pioneered hydroponics at the University of California at Berkley.)
To introduce it, Vertical Farming is hydroponic food production in cities in multi-story greenhouses. Hydroponic greenhouses exist all over the world, but none have yet been placed in a city. No multi-story hydroponic greenhouses have been b... -
Is "Wow Big Idea" a Bad Thing?
In response to the general public's fascination with, and support of, Vertical Farms, some people have recently written rebuttals of the idea. At least two blogs have attacked the economic viability of Vertical Farming, echoing one another in an empty whimper suggestive of unimaginative minds plodding along with a vague conviction that the status quo is ideal.
EcoGeek just posted an article called "Let's Make This Clear: Vertical Farms Don't Make Sense" in which they write that two things need to happen in order for "Vertical Farms to make sense":You need the price of food to increase 100 fold over today's prices, and you need the productivity of vertical farms to increase 100 fold over traditional farms. Neither of those things will ever happen.
Sci-Fi author and blogger, Tobias Buckell, writes:...The fact is, the existing land sprawling out around New York and the US and gasoline to transport the goods from the heartland to NYC is still far cheaper [than building Vertical Farms] whe...
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Drink the wine, drink to the cork forest
I drink a lot of wine.
Well, hopefully not too much, but you know what I mean. Wine is one of my three food groups (cheese and bread are the others). I drink all three colors, and am not prejudiced as to country - although I love the Spanish reds, and the French and Italian whites....and a bunch of New World ones too.
And you can buy organic ones. Although I am not too paranoid about pesticide residues in my body, I know that it makes a difference to the environment of Chile or Washington State not having those insecticides contaminating their forests, fields and streams.
But ......each time I open a bottle, deep green that I am, I either rejoice or curse. Because the bottle will be sealed with natural cork or...something else.
Because nowadays, you get a lot of advice on corks. Yes, really. Things like, "who needs cork....you know, it is a lot more hygienic without cork....don't be snooty about screw top bottles...and the ‘plastic' corks are better too..."
But my friends, this i...
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Making a Lesson Out of John Beddington
Professor Sir John Beddington is, according to Wikipedia, a scientist. In fact, Professor Sir John Beddington is the highest-ranking scientist in the UK; the job I'm referring to is: "Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK." I recently came across a speech he delivered at a GovNet event in March of this year. GovNet? Apparently they are "UK's leading Public Sector publisher and events organiser," according to themselves. (The particular event was called SDUK 2009.) So, earlier this year, the most influential scientist in the UK addressed an event organized by the leading events organizer, which presumably was attended by people who like going to events where eminent persons take the podium. Point being, this is not some middle school assembly.
The speech, by and large was spot-on. He explained the point which has garnered him much attention, which is this: lurking in near futurity are crises of food, of water, and of energy, and in addressing them all, we also must dea... -
A New Project Plan: Bridging the Communication Gap
It is often easy, when faced with a challenge to give up, to decide that something is simply not worth the time or the energy to find the solution. However, there is no growth of self in giving up.
I am currently a senior undergraduate in Environmental Biology at Columbia University taking Environmental Ethics, Literature, and Action (ELEA). For this class we are required to produce a semester long project in which we have demonstrated our role as environmental leaders in the communities around us. To jump start my project and further my interest in ecology, I applied for two internships through the NYC Parks department. However, I was not chosen for either. Although I was disappointed, I did not let my apparent failure as a Park's intern applicant stop me from pursuing another avenue---one that I was even more passionate about in the end. For my project I intend on finding a way to make scientific knowledge that is common and easy to access for scientists more accessible...
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Bow Hunting in Cornwall
Following the example of Westchester County, Cornwall, New York is currently experiencing its first bow hunt in the town and village. This decision came about after years of discussion and activism on the part of Emily Thomas. I have had the privilege of meeting and keeping in touch with Ms. Thomas following my first summer in Cornwall. I spoke with her about the events leading up to this first bow-hunting season.
Ms. Thomas was raised to care about food and the land. She has been a member of the Grail for about twenty years. A couple years ago, she began to notice that the flowers and plants that she had planted and loved seeing outside were gone. “I began asking around and someone mentioned to me that it was due to deer”, stated Ms. Thomas. In April of 2007, she used posters and announcements to gather people of the community together for a meeting entitled, “Deer or Trees”. The meeting, consisting of about 45 interested people and two deer specialists, was held...
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The Arctic Circle: The Loneliness of the Coal Town
Oct. 19th, Barentsburg
If you think it is strange there is a Russian town on Spitsbergen, remember that this land is not exactly part of Norway. It really is a kind of no-man's territory, not subject to any taxation, where historically a man could arrive from anywhere and stake a claim. The American Longyear founded Longyearbyen, the Russians had Pyramiden, now abandoned, and Barentsburg, still going strong. Long before climate change grabbed our attention the Arctic had tremendous strategic importance, and the Germans bombed all of it in World War II. They even had one far and remote weather station that was the final place the Nazis surrendered in September 1945.
Whereas Ny Ålesund is a curious modern science town of satellite dishes, nationalistic research buildings from nations as diverse as China, India, Germany and France, Barentsburg looks like a little slice of Siberia. You walk up to the city up hundreds of carefully constructed wooden steps, to emerge on a plateau ...
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Raising Brownfield Awareness
Information regarding brownfields is very limited compared to that available on other environmental issues such as sustainability, natural resources management, wildlife protection, or pollution, but is in fact is a major issue and is related to these important topics. The word “brownfield” is not widely known; few people have ever heard the term before. A brownfield is a plot of land presumed to contain some amount of pollution due to previous development. Properties hosting gas stations, drycleaners, or factories often become brownfield sites. Toxic chemicals from these and other businesses contaminate soil and eventually enter local ground water systems. Abandoned brownfield sites create unsafe properties, pollute the environment, contaminate water, economically depress their local neighborhood, and contribute to urban sprawl.
Most people are not aware that brownfields are so common. The public needs to become educated on brownfields and on the environmental implications a...
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An Interview with Dr. Eleanor Sterling
Dr. Sterling, for those who aren't familiar, is currently the director of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation (CBC) at the American Museum of Natural History, as well as a faculty member at Columbia University's Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology Department. Dr. Sterling's research has ranged from historical changes in land use in Vietnam to studying lemur populations in Madagascar.
Over the past several years, the CBC has been emphasizing food as an important biodiversity issue. In 2004, the CBC published Living With Nature: Cooking for Biodiversity (one of the authors is Dr. Sterling), and two Healthy Eating for You and the Planet brochures (one on eating seasonally and one on avoiding produce grown with pesticides). I wanted to see Dr. Sterling's thoughts on how local food fits into the work done by the CBC. Dr. Sterling was nice enough to agree to meet with me, so I headed over the beautiful American Museum of Natural History (if you've never, been, I ...
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Riverkeeper Publishes Fifth Volume of Its Industrial Gas Drilling Reporter
Industrial Gas Drilling Visual (Courtesy of dteenergy.com)
The fifth volume of Riverkeeper's Industrial Gas Drilling Reporter couldn't have been released at a more opportune time. With New York's draft environmental impact statement on drilling in the Marcellus Shale, has come concerns and questions in reference to the negative environmental effects of natural gas drilling on the surrounding ecological and community infrastructures. As James L. Simpson, Riverkeeper Staff Attorney, noted, "Our goal is to educate our members and the general public about what has happened elsewhere [after drilling was undertaken in the shale] and what may happen here in New York. We want to help the public make informed decisions during the public participation component of New York's draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement." Accordingly, the volume delineates the research Riverkeeper has been conducting since the summer of 2008 on potential industrial gas drilling in the state...
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A Call for Global Attention: Nepal to hold Cabinet Meeting on Mount Everest
Later this month, the government of Nepal will hold a cabinet meeting at the base of Mount Everest at an altitude of 17,585 feet to draw global attention to the effects of climate change in the Himalayas (India Times). This landmark revolutionary meeting is expected to predate the UN Climate Change Conference, which will be held from December 7th through December 18th, 2009 in Copenhagen. With this call for urgency, responsibility and environmental vigor, the ministers hope to incite the international world to rise from its slumber.
The Himalayan glaciers feed some of the region's most widely utilized and well-known rivers, including the Ganges, the Yamuna and the Brahmaputra. Fulfilling their divine purpose to service mankind and the environment, the glaciers irrigate agriculture in Tibet, Nepal, Bangladesh and India. However, rising temperatures are having an enormous impact on the region. Many of the largest glaciers, including the Siachen glacier separating India and Pakista...
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The End of the Tour But the Beginning of the Fight
On Oct 12, military veterans of Operation Free boarded two large biodiesel buses in two different states to begin a historic journey crisscrossing the country to talk to citizens, political leaders and fellow veterans about the national security implications of climate change and the need for Congress to enact comprehensive new clean energy legislation.The brilliant blue coach buses were wrapped with the names of more than 70 cities and towns in 21 states that the buses visited over a two-week period. Veterans of wars from all services participated in the tour, some jumping on board for a few days while a few others stayed on board for the entire period.
I served as communications staff aboard the "southern" bus, blogging at various points along the way for the Operation Free and the NRDC Greenlight websites. We started our trek in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and then headed north through Missouri and Nebraska until we veered east and rolled through Iowa, Indiana, Ohio and West Virgini...
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The Arctic Circle: Science at the End of the Earth
Oct. 18th, Ny Ålesund, Arctic Science Village
In Ny Ålesund, a former mining village that is now an international center for climate research, most of the two hundred researchers and technicians have left for the season. But at the Alfred Wegener Polar Institute, a German engineer still remains, for a whole year in this inaccessible outpost, to repeat the same experiments every day. In one he releases a large white weather balloon, each day at 1pm, which rises and drifts into the stratosphere before exploding when it gets too high, but not before transmitting essential data from its disposable radio which will never be found. Then at night he shoots a high energy laser beam straight up into the clouds, of such power that even a tiny fraction of its bright beam is diffused back through the cloud cover and can be registered by the naked eye. The beam bounces through the building inside a complex and irregular rectilinear box, down to the floor off a large telescope mirror, then s...
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Road to Copenhagen: Fears Arise Outside Closed Doors
From all I can gather, the actual on-paper negotiations are moving this week, progressing in some way towards some kind of agreement. (We'll get to what kind of agreement soon.) But we wouldn't have much way of knowing, since proceedings largely disappeared behind closed doors this week. I've been told by plenty of folks--including two former US negotiators--that I shouldn't complain about the lack of access, because it's the closed-door meetings where things really get done. Still, it's frustrating that an institution that prides itself on openness seems to operate best through closed meetings. The American delegation does seem more confident at this stage that there's an agreement out there to be achieved. Whether that agreement will be anything close to what the science tells us is necessary is another question (hint: it won't be). And what form that agreement will take has become the story of the week. Will it be a "legally-binding" treaty that is enforceable by internationa...
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Join the Campaign to “Kill the Drill” and Keep NYC’s Drinking Water Free of Toxic Chemicals
Last month, Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon vowed that his company will not drill for natural gas in New York City's upstate watershed. This may seem like a victory for the "Kill the Drill" campaign, but it's only a partial one: In five years' time, Chesapeake's leases in the watershed will expire, and even before then there is no guarantee that McClendon will remain the head of the company. That's why I am calling on the State Department of Environmental Conservation to implement a complete and permanent ban on hydrofracture drilling in the Catskill / Delaware watershed.
As McClendon himself stated, "How could any one well be so profitable that it would be worth damaging the New York City water system?" Now the State environmental agency finds itself in the uncomfortable position of lagging behind the industry it regulates in protecting the City's drinking water.
For those who may be unfamiliar with the drilling technique known as "hydraulic fracturing," it is already being u...
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The Arctic Circle: The Graves of Failed Dreams
Oct. 17th, Blomstrand halvøya, Krossfjorden
In 1910 Ernest Mansfield was convinced that this was going to be the site of the greatest marble quarry in the world, so he set up the Northern Exploration Company to cut all the stone out. He named the spot New London. Some of his machines remain right on the rails, having never even been used. The whole project fell apart, there was nothing worth taking.
The more we experience this distance the place, the less it seems it's a wilderness. Spitsbergen is the warmest place in the Arctic, because it's the end of the gulf stream, so much of the sea surrounding remains ice-free most of the year. Already by 1700 the Dutch had killed all the whales here, and after that came trappers, hunters, miners, still trying to extract something useful out of the landscape. What might remain most useful today is strategy-a few years ago a cable was laid all the way from Norway under the sea, bringing fast communication to the outside world. There a...
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The Arctic Circle: The Cruel Beauty of Nature
October 14th, Sailing toward Magdalena Fjord, 79.6°N, 11°E
The bell rings on deck, that means there's something to see. "Ayeaah," says the captain, usually a man of few words, "seven polar bears eating an old whale carcass. I have only seen something like this a few times in all my journeys in the North."
Every artist rushes to our cabins, grabs our latest-model cameras, and runs up on deck. The bears don't seem interested in us, that slimy whale backbone looks so delicious. We can smell it easily a few hundred yards away, it's probably been there for months.
"Ooohhh..." someone says, "it looks like something out of a Matthew Barney film." "Hey," someone else has a bright idea, "let's put those binoculars over a camera lens, see what kind of effect comes out."
We watch the bears eating and playing for hours. It's impossible to pull our eyes away. The raw reality of nature holds us transfixed. A couple of us remember Werner Herzog's line in Grizzly Man, where the ...
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Road to Copenhagen: No Senate Bill Before Copenhagen, What's Next?
Well that's settled. There won't be a Senate bill before Copenhagen. Which means a lot of things: the US won't have concrete numbers on mitigation targets and finance commitments before COP15 convenes; the difficult job of the American negotiators just got even harder; the international community has even more cause to accuse the US of coming up short; the chances of a fair, ambitious and binding deal coming out of Copenhagen have taken a serious blow; and finally, any hope for the talks to succeed depends on a dramatic shift in how the State Department approaches the negotiations.
A new (and very controversial) way forward?
Up until now, the thinking was that the best course towards any sort of deal in Copenhagen was through a good bill passing on Capitol Hill. Now this changes-we know that a Senate bill isn't coming. The conventional wisdom has long held that the US needs to bring numbers from our domestic policies to the UNFCCC, and not vice versa. Doi...
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Road to Copenhagen: This Week's Tripping Points
With the US still holding out on a couple crucial bits of information (mitigation targets and finance numbers) that make real progress on the Long-term Cooperative Agreement (LCA) track just about impossible, the UN talks this week in Barcelona are circling around a couple other troubling tripping points.
First, there’s the question of what’s to become of the Kyoto Protocol. Many developing countries are accusing industrialized nations of sabotaging the agreement, which isn’t–as many believe–supposed to end in 2012, but requires new commitments to be agreed upon for a second phase that runs through 2020. Brendan Demille’s got a solid account of the fireworks the erupted Monday over this when 50 African nations “suspended” any further Kyoto Protocol talks until developed countries start taking them more seriously and deliver some numbers that are long overdue.
Second, there’s quite of bit of unease in the air over the flood of recent comments–from everyone from th...
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Pakistan's Water Security: Ground Realities
Pakistan and India point a lot of fingers at each other - usually blaming the other for instability in the region through state-sponsored terrorism. In most cases, the blame game is based on facts: it's no secret that both countries have supported "terrorist" groups (one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter, especially when considering the disputed territories of Jammu & Kashmir, through which most rivers flow) to wield greater influence in the region. Often, this cycle is spurred by retaliatory attacks, which in turn induce retaliatory attacks, and the cycle continues; it is impossible to determine "who started it" and it is inconsequential at this point anyway. The media sensationalizes these allegations and grave issues like water security often fade into the shadows.
Pakistan's water disputes with India cannot be considered in isolation - they must be viewed within the larger context of geopolitics between the two countries. Since independence from British rule in 1947, P...
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An Interview with an Expert: A First Hand Account of Management of Invasive Plants
When attempting to reduce the impact that invasive species have on native ecosystems it is important to ask questions. It is important to talk with people who deal with the invasions on a regular basis. Over the weekend, I interviewed the Executive Director of the Black Rock Forest Consortium, Dr. William S. F. Schuster. Black Rock Forest (BRF) is located in the Hudson Highlands region near Cornwall, New York. Although oak dominated, it has begun to be over-run by invasive plants which are slowly transforming the beautiful native ecosystem into an alien monoculture. The story of Black Rock Forest and its history with invasive plants can be seen below in my interview with Dr. Schuster.
Me: "In terms of Black Rock which invasive plant seems to be most prevalent or causes the most damage to the native ecosystem?"
Dr. Schuster: "Top problematic non-native invasive plants in BRF are Japanese stiltgrass (along trails, roadsides, and open areas), Japanese bamboo (along streams and...
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A Great Year for Growing Green
Farmers and producers: take note! The Natural Resources Defense Council has announced its groundbreaking annual Growing Green Awards, honoring those who work to strengthen our national food system. In the year since I was honored with the 2009 Growing Green Business Leader Award, food has been given a prominent place on the national agenda -- in a way that I only could have dreamed of when I encouraged our chefs to start sourcing direct from small owner-operated farms more than 10 years ago.
Among the highlights of the year: A vegetable garden was planted on the White House Lawn to promote the benefits of local, seasonal food; First Lady Michelle Obama loudly endorsed an urgent focus to bring fresh food into national school lunch programs; a TIME Magazine cover article decried the high cost of cheap food for human and environmental health; a student garden movement bloomed to help young farmers hit pay dirt on college campuses, tomato pickers in Florida began winning their...
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Of Bears and Men: Does the public have a say?
In my first month as an intern with NRDC’s wildlife team in Montana, I had already heard many tales of the complex world of grizzly bear management, where it is safe to say that not everybody sees eye-to-eye with each other, and even fewer people see eye-to-eye with the bears. Adding fuel to the fire, a federal court had recently put grizzly bears back on the endangered species list, as my colleagues Louisa Willcox and Matt Skoglund have discussed.
So it was with quite a bit of curiosity, mixed with a touch of intimidation, that I hopped into a car with NRDC’s three other Montana staff and headed down to Jackson, Wyoming last week, for the latest round of meetings of the Yellowstone Grizzly Bear Coordinating Committee (YGCC). What I found in Jackson was, in some ways, better than I had expected. Everyone at the meeting was cordial despite the tense atmosphere, which I gather is an improvement over some past meetings. But in other ways, this meeting clearly showed me that t...
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Brownfield Action: A Unique Environmental Teaching Tool
Peter Bower, senior lecturer at Barnard College, developed a revolutionary computer-based teaching program known as Brownfield Action in collaboration with Columbia University’s Center for New Media Teaching and Learning in 1999. The program educates college students about pollution and how it can affect our communities. A brownfield is a plot of land that may feature some amount of contamination due to previous development. Gas stations, dry cleaners, and factories are common brownfield sites. Chemicals found on these properties can seep into groundwater systems and contaminate local drinking water supplies.
With a background in toxicity, Bower was attracted to teaching students about brownfields. In the computer simulation, students become detectives. They investigate the source of water contamination in the program’s virtual town. The simulation shows how pollution can impact an entire city and the importance of preventing this. I recently sat down with Professor Bower...
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Road to Copenhagen: Waiting for America
As the last round of “intersessional” climate talks before Copenhagen opened today in Barcelona, all eyes were looking in the same direction they were when we left Bangkok three weeks earlier: at the United States. Without American numbers on mitigation (or emissions reductions) and finance (for developing nations to build their own clean energy economies, and also to adapt to the impacts of climate change), any real forward progress in the talks is just about impossible. “We need a clear target from the United States in Copenhagen,” urged Yvo de Boer, who’s trying to steer this UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) process to some kind of December resolution.” “That is an essential component of the puzzle.” The problem is that the U.S. isn’t putting anything out there. At least not yet. Not while the Kerry-Boxer bill limps through Senate subcommittees back on Capital Hill.
And that’s really where De Boer’s comment–-and most criticism...
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Chromium 6 Still Threatens California's Drinking Water
Polluters who contaminate drinking water and make people sick shouldn't get off easy. That has been the focus of my work for two decades, and I'm not planning to stop now. My work focused the attention of the world on a carcinogen called hexavalent chromium (hex chrome). In 1996, PG&E -- a multi-billion dollar corporation -- paid $333 million in damages to the people of Hinkley, Calif., for contaminating their drinking water and covering up the problem for decades while people got sick and died. This victory for was immortalized in film. But the story doesn't end there.
More than 500 California communities and 30 million state residents drank water contaminated with hexavalent chromium at levels above safe levels between 1998 and 2003. Hex chrome has been detected in nearly 60 percent of the drinking water sources sampled in California. These problems are especially widespread in the Central Valley and the Inland Empire regions of the state. The PG&E Kettleman case was settled...
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Chesapeake Energy Will Not Drill in the NYC Watershed: But is it Enough to Safeguard the Integrity of our Waterways?
Map of the Marcellus Shale (photo accessed on greencollarrap.com)
On October 18th, I posted a blog entitled "Will the Pursuit of Natural Gas Endanger New York's Drinking Water?" In this post, I discussed the probable abundance of natural gas reserves in the Marcellus Shale, which lies beneath much of the New York City Watershed-the daily source of New Yorker's drinking water. I also advocated for preserving our indispensable water supply in lieu of the natural gas drilling that could occur if its plans are to be finalized by the state of New York.
Less than ten days after my blog was posted, a major energy company, who is one of the country's biggest gas producers and the largest leaseholder in the Marcellus Shale, announced that it will not drill in the New York Watershed. In an October 27th article in The New York Times, the decision of the Chesapeake Energy Corporation and its implications were described: Chesapeake Energy C.E.O. Aubrey McClendon stated that not one well co...
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You Take the High Road
The backstory has been told many times by now: how, originally, the High Line was an elevated railway line down Manhattan's west side, serving the Meatpacking District. Built in the 1930s, it replaced a street-level rail line - one that was so dangerous to pedestrians that the city had hired the 10th Avenue cowboys to ride on horseback in front of the trains to warn people of their approach. But in 1980 the elevated line was abandoned south of Penn Station, and through the 80s and 90s nature steadily reclaimed it until, early this century, it was imaginatively reinvented as a city park.
I've never lived near the High Line, but I remember noticing it sometimes when I visited Chelsea, before people were talking much about it. I liked seeing it, hulking inexplicably overhead; I liked its massive industrial dimensions, and its apparently arbitrary aerial zigzag between old warehouses, but I thought it was just part of that large array of Neat Historical New York Stuff that Nobody...
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Annually Assessing Deer Populations: Case Study at Black Rock Forest
As I mentioned in previous posts, I have been interning at Black Rock Forest for several years. For the past year, I have worked with the forest manager, John Brady, in assessing the deer population at the forest. Using a variety of techniques annually allows us to determine several aspects of the deer population in order to try and generate a complete understanding of the deer at the forest. Some of these techniques are the deer tracking census, spotlight census, and information from the hunting take.
A method started at Black Rock in 1988, the deer tracking census (DTC), is a way to create an index of over-wintering deer. The DTC is performed at 12 and 24 hour intervals after each snowfall.
John and some others ride along roadways in the forest to observe any deer trails in the snow. The roadways are a great place to observe the number of deer in a group because although deer travel single-file, when they reach roadways they tend to disperse and cross at different pla...
Mowing the Lawn
