A vision for sustainable restaurants

Solar Roadways

Cool idea...Not only are they using the heat and sunlight captured on the surface of a road but they are adding safety and communications features to it. (http://www.solarroadways.com/main.html)

3Ts

"Hello, I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC -- Here's How I Help Fuel the World's Deadliest Conflict"

The Relationship of Evolution

Really great article, stretching our preconceived ideas on evolution.
"The Reenchanted World"

Making TP

If only the firm I used to work for had something like this for all that unwanted paper

Willie Smits Restores a Rainforest

This is such an inspiring story...permaculture at its finest. I can only imagine the possibilities when we accomplish restoration like this in other countries.

Sustainably

Interview with Wes Jackson, co-founder of The Land Institute
-- Read the Full Interview

We live off of what comes out of the soil, not what's in the bank. If we squander the ecological capital of the soil, the capital on paper won't much matter... For the past 50 or 60 years, we have followed industrialized agricultural policies that have increased the rate of destruction of productive farmland. For those 50 or 60 years, we have let ourselves believe the absurd notion that as long as we have money we will have food. If we continue our offenses against the land and the labor by which we are fed, the food supply will decline, and we will have a problem far more complex than the failure of our paper economy. Remember, if our agriculture is not sustainable then our food supply is not sustainable... Either we pay attention or we pay a huge price, not so far down the road. When we face the fact that civilizations have destroyed themselves by destroying their farmland, it's clear that we don't really have a choice.

Mercury in Corn Syrup

Included in the OCA's latest newsletter was this spot on Mercury...

In a new study published Monday in the scientific journal Environmental Health, mercury was found in nearly 50% of tested samples of commercial high fructose corn syrup. The news is disturbing given that this ingredient is present in a large portion of processed American foods. According to David Wallinga, M.D., co-author of the study, "Given how much high fructose corn syrup is consumed by children, it could be a significant additional source of mercury never before considered. We are calling for immediate changes by industry and the FDA to help stop this avoidable mercury contamination of the food supply."

A separate study by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy detected mercury in nearly one-third of 55 popular brand-name food and beverage products where high fructose corn syrup is the first or second highest labeled ingredient-including products by Quaker, Hershey's, Kraft and Smucker's.

Tens of millions of birds disappearing across North America

Sad story...

Ocean Conservation

huh...I mean as a scuba diver I'm super thrilled that more oceans are being protected than ever...But it's still not okay what Bush has done to the environment and I'm still not conceding to him.

President Bush's Last Act of Greenness
By Bryan Walsh for Time

Over the course of his two terms in office, President George W. Bush has taken a lot of mostly justified flak from environmentalists. But there's one area where Bush can legitimately claim a deep-green legacy: the often overlooked field of ocean conservation.

In 2006 Bush established the 140,000-sq.-mi. Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument off the northwestern coast of the Hawaiian Islands — at the time, the largest protected marine area in the U.S. Tuesday afternoon, however, Bush will beat his own record, announcing the creation of three separate marine national monuments in the central Pacific Ocean that together will span some 195,000 sq. mi. Though greens were hoping for an even larger area, taken together, the marine monuments will mean that President Bush — perhaps the least environmental President in U.S. history — will have protected more of the ocean than anyone else in the world.

How I built my family a windmill

When he was just 14 years old, Malawian inventor William Kamkwamba built his family an electricity-generating windmill from spare parts, working from rough plans he found in a library book.

(If he can do it....We can do it!)

A Spurt of Quake Activity Raises Fears in Yellowstone

A Spurt of Quake Activity Raises Fears in Yellowstone
By Pat Dawson for Time

Scientists are carefully measuring the geological activity in the national park because it contains the caldera of an enormous, ancient and still active volcano

The Death of My Beautiful Arches

Redrock Redemption
from Reality Sandwich by Adam Elenbaas

The auction of Utah's beautiful Redrock lands is taking place on December 19th. Over 300,000 acres of wilderness are being sold to the highest bidder (including oil and gas speculators).

The Redrock area includes vistas like Canyonlands, Arches National Parks, and Dinosaur National Monument. The plan to sell off leases for the land was advanced on election day this year.

Click here to take action against the Redrock giveaway.

Mysterious Acorn Shortage

Scientists baffled by mysterious acorn shortage

Hard to Find Seeds

It's never too early to start planning that garden. And towards that goal, Mother Earth News has created a nice custom Google search engine that scours over 600 seed suppliers. It's the perfect way to find those obscure plants and varieties not at the local nursery. You can test out this new tool here on the Mother Earth website

Climbing the World's Biggest Trees

Science writer Richard Preston talks about some of the most enormous living beings on the planet, the giant trees of the US Pacific Northwest. Growing from a tiny seed, they support vast ecosystems -- and are still, largely, a mystery.

REDD - Paying Countries to Keep Their Trees

Green Banks: Paying Countries to Keep their Trees
By Bryan Walsh for Time

In 1997 TNC, U.S. utility companies American Electric Power (AEP) and PacifiCorp, and oil major BP Amoco paid Bolivia $10.8 million for the credits represented by all the carbon and potential greenhouse gas that is locked inside trees. In return, the government simply has to ensure that the forest remains standing and healthy for the next 30 years. It's called avoided deforestation, and projects like this may represent one of the most promising ways to simultaneously slow the destruction of tropical forests and the pace of climate change — if we can get it right.

[The] promise of avoided deforestation, in which rich countries pay to keep rain forests standing and receive carbon credits in return is also known by the acronym REDD, for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation. Currently, the international carbon cap-and-trade system organized by the Kyoto Protocol only recognizes industrial projects — such as a rich country paying to improve energy efficiency at a power plant — or programs to actively reforest land already cleared. It doesn't recognize avoided deforestation. Supporters are confident that when the world meets for the annual U.N. summit on climate change in Poznan, Poland, this month, avoided deforestation will be one of the main topics of discussion. "This is too important not to be front and center on everyone's minds," says Jake Schmidt, head of international climate policy for the New York City-based Natural Resources Defense Council. "It will be a major focus."..

An estimated 50,000 sq. mi. (129,500 sq km) of forest are lost to the logger's ax or to fire every year, and that hurts the planet in two very important ways. Rare plants and animals, many still undiscovered, depend on the forests — especially the rich rain forests that encircle the earth either side of the equator. When the forests disappear, all that wildlife disappears as well. But trees also contain carbon, and while they live, they absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, compensating in part for the greenhouse gases spewed into the air from cars, power plants and factories. When trees are cut down or burned, that carbon is put back into the atmosphere, accelerating climate change. At least 20% of annual global carbon emissions come from deforestation. If we can't stop forest loss, we'll struggle to stop climate change...

Foodies Make a Pitch to Obama

Foodies Make a Pitch to Obama
By Kim Severson for The New York Times

The fact that a Secretary of Agriculture has yet to be named has some chefs, farmers and animal welfare advocates wondering whether food and farming have been shoved to the Obama D team.

To help move the process along, nearly 90 notable figures in the world of sustainable agriculture and food sent a letter to the Obama transition team earlier this week offering their six top picks for what they called “the sustainable choice for the next U.S. Secretary of Agriculture.”

The hope is that the new secretary will be less aligned with industrial agribusiness and commodity farming than secretaries past. And if he or she embraces the connection between food, health and the environment, well, that’s all the better.

The letter lays out a tall order:

“From rising childhood and adult obesity to issues of food safety, global warming and air and water pollution, we believe our next Secretary of Agriculture must have a vision that calls for: recreating regional food systems, supporting the growth of humane, natural and organic farms, and protecting the environment, biodiversity and the health of our children while implementing policies that place conservation, soil health, animal welfare and worker’s rights as well as sustainable renewable energy near the top of their agenda.”

It was signed by 88 people, among them: Michael Pollan, Judy Wicks, Alice Waters, Rick Bayless, Wendell Berry, Eric Schlosser, Anna Lappe, Frances Moore Lappe, Paul Willis, Dan Barber, Michel Nischan, Ann Cooper, Marion Nestle, Peter Hoffman, Winona LaDuke, and Michael Dimock.

For those playing along at home, here’s their list of the six top picks for Secretary of Agriculture. Keep in mind that yesterday, Rep. John Salazar, Democrat of Colorado, a potato farmer, said he was being considered. (And no, the effort to nominate Michael Pollan never got off the ground):

Gus Schumacher, former Under Secretary of Agriculture for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services and former Massachusetts Commissioner of Agriculture.

Chuck Hassebrook, executive director, Center for Rural Affairs, Lyons, Neb.
Sarah Vogel, former Commissioner of Agriculture for North Dakota, lawyer, Bismarck, N.D.

Fred Kirschenmann, organic farmer, distinguished fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture in Ames, Iowa, and president of the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, Pocantico Hills, NY.

Mark Ritchie, Minnesota Secretary of State, former policy analyst in Minnesota’s Department of Agriculture under Governor Rudy Perpich, co-founder of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

Neil Hamilton, Dwight D. Opperman Chair of Law and director of the Agricultural Law Center, Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa.

Wind Turbines for the Home

Got Wind? Turbines for the Green Home
Saverio Truglia for TIME

Doug Morrell had already installed solar panels on his house in Coopersville, Mich., but he was eager to get a little bit greener. So the 52-year-old Navy veteran bought something that might seem more at home in the Dutch countryside than in a small town in western Michigan: a personal wind turbine. The 33-ft.-high (10 m) machine, whose blades span 7 ft. (2 m) in diameter, sits next to the pole barn 100 yd. (90 m) from Morrell's home. (Turbines like Morrell's convert the energy of the wind to electricity, while old windmills are geared for mechanical power, like pulling water from a well.) On days with decent wind — which occur frequently enough, since he can feel the breeze from Lake Michigan — the $16,000 Swift wind turbine can generate 1.5 kilowatts (kW) an hour, i.e., enough to power the average lightbulb for 15 hours. Together with his solar array, that's enough to take care of much of his electricity bill. "It's clean energy we don't have to dig for. It just comes right to us," says Morrell. And best of all, he says, "it's fun watching our meter run backward instead of forward."

Thanks in part to a new tax credit put into place by Congress in October, owning your own wind turbine could be the next green trend. While it's true that wind power has taken off in the U.S. — adding more in new capacity to the electrical grid last year than any other power source — most of that increase comes from utility wind farms, vast fields of turbines more than 300 ft. (90 m) tall. For homeowners seeking renewable-energy sources, however, better-known solar power has always dominated. Home solar power currently generates 12 times as much energy as small wind power, which is defined as turbines that have a capacity of 100 kW or less (though most household turbines will produce 10 kW at most). That's partly because residential wind turbines require space and sky — at least half an acre of open land — to get access to consistent winds. Still, according to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), some 15 million homes in the U.S. fit that definition — and small turbines, unlike large wind farms, can be productive in weaker breezes, which puts more of the country into play, though the best areas are still windy spots like the Midwest or West Texas.

What's really held back residential wind power has been the lack of federal subsidies, which have fed the growth of other renewables like solar and large-scale wind. "We've had zero federal assistance," says Ron Stimmel, AWEA's small-wind expert.

But when Congress passed the bailout bill this fall, it added a 30% tax credit for small-wind projects, which Stimmel believes will enable the industry to grow 40% next year, even in a down market.

In other words, small wind may not be small potatoes for much longer. And that could be a boost for domestic green businesses as well: U.S. firms control 98% of the small-wind market, in contrast to large-scale wind and solar, in which foreign manufacturers dominate. "Since the tax credit, our phone has been ringing off the hook," says Andy Kruse, a co-founder of Southwest Windpower, a major small-scale-turbine producer in Flagstaff, Ariz. "It's really exciting to see the market coming to us."

More than 20 states offer separate subsidies, including ever green California and Vermont. "The federal and state subsidies can make it feasible to get a quicker payback," says Mike Bergey, president of Bergey Windpower, a small-wind producer in Norman, Okla.

Even so, buying your own windmill isn't cheap. A turbine that could produce most of your family's electricity might cost as much as $80,000 and take as long as two decades to pay back, depending on wind strength and state subsidies. (The 30% federal tax credit is currently capped at $4,000.)...

Gen-We

Numbering 95 million, Generation We or "Millennials" were born between 1978 and 2000 and are emerging as a social, political and philosophical force. In 2016 the youngest of us will reach voting age and we'll be the largest voting block in the history of the country.



Join the movement...The 'We Declaration'

Gen-We plans to release a site in 2009 that will allow us to connect, organize, develop campaigns, and launch actions that influence the political process, enable collective voices to be heard and heeded, and encourage a movement of globally responsible citizens.