Category Archives: children and the environment

Rain Friday Night They Say – When Isaac’s remnants get here

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But the damage has already been done. The next question is what about next year. First, the seed corn was a total wash this year so right now they are trying to grow enough in Brazil to even get us going next year. But then the next question is when to plant and where. If anybody was a good enough predictor to get in during or right after the late frost then your corn would be fine and you would be sitting on a gold mine. This is contingent on us getting some moisture over the winter. If we don’t get enough moisture well then next year looks bleak.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/aug/30/iowa-corn-crop-drought-farmers-prices?newsfeed=true

Rain comes too late for Iowa’s corn crop as drought weighs on midwest minds

Farmers hope for better next year after summer of record drought leads to rising prices and brings tensions to the surface

Thursday 30 August 2012 10.44 EDT

Flying into Des Moines, the corn fields look surprisingly green. America’s midwest produces half the world’s corn and Iowa its largest harvest, yet amid the worst drought in living memory all the untrained eye can see is the occasional brown mark, like a cigarette burn on the baize of a pool table.

But appearances can be deceptive.

In Boone, Iowa, 30 miles away from the state capital, traffic backs up for miles bringing 200,000 people to Farm Progress, the US’s largest agricultural show one. Here, all the talk is of the drought.

Pam Johnson, first vice-president of the National Corn Growers Association, says she can’t remember one as bad as this in her 40 years of farming. “My parents say you have to go back to the 1930s for anything comparable,” she says. In June, her farm in northern Iowa got an inch and a half of rain. “We usually get that a week. In July we got seven-tenths of an inch, for the month.” Rain may be coming soon, thanks to hurricane Isaac, but it’s too late for America’s corn crop.

The US planted 97m acres of corn for this year’s crop – the most since 1937. If everything had gone according to plan, this year’s harvest would have produced a new record, at close to 15bn bushels of corn (a bushel is 24 million metric tonnes). It’s too early to say what the final tally will be, but the US department of agriculture has slashed its forecast to 10.8bn. Dan Basse, president of AgResources, an independent agriculture analyst, says that figure is likely to come down. “We’ve lost 4bn bushels of corn. That’s the largest loss in history, and we could lose another,” he says. The USDA has declared counties in 38 states to be “disaster areas”. About 72% of cattle areas are experiencing drought.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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When The Oil Runs Out – Capitalism goes down with it

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People are always playing out this dystopian vision of what the world will look like if there is a sharp break in the availability of fossil fuels. Most people imagine guys with guns will control their chunk of the world and abuse everyone in it for the own good. Or that we will break into semi-dead towns and farm life like 200 years ago. But, I usually say, what if it is slower than that and what if people cooperate instead of foolishly compete. Then life might look like this, which sounds kinda fun.

http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/07/ithaca-ecovillage-forges-a-path-to-sustainable-living/

Ithaca Ecovillage Forges a Path to Sustainable Living

By Coralie Tripier

ITHACA, New York, Jul 16 2012 (IPS) – Ecovillage at Ithaca (EVI), located in the beautiful Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, is an intentional community of 160 people striving for greater sustainability, a better quality of life, and perhaps even a new model for urban planners the world over.

Enjoying breathtaking surroundings, residents wander around the village on pedestrian-only streets, swim in the pond, share meals in the common house, and spend a small amount of their time working together for their community.

EVI’s residents have to volunteer for two hours every week in one of the six work teams – the cooking team, the dishwashing team, the common house cleanup team, the outdoor maintenance team, the regular maintenance team, or the finance team.

“If you had a house, you would have to do that anyway, so why not do it for the broader community and make friends at the same time,” Ashley Click, a young mother and new resident at EVI, told IPS.

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Go there and read about a grand life. More tomorrow.

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This Guy Had A Lot Of Guts – But the year is turning out the way he thought

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I love guys that think clearly about the future. So we will end the week with The Energy Collective and Gil Friend. I do not like the fact that they are backed by Siemens but I am something of a purist.

http://theenergycollective.com/node/75727

 

Posted by: Gil Friend

Predicting the Top Sustainability Stories of 2012

Last month I offered my picks for the Top Sustainability Stories of 2011. Here are my predictions for the Top Sustainability Stories of 2012. (It’s a rugged mix of bad news and good.)

Climate heats up and hides out The sheer pressure of the hard-to-escape evidence — more record-breaking temperatures, more disastrous weather events, big supply chain disruptions, ever-rising insurance payments — will drive more businesses to take global warming seriously as a business risk, even as The Economist and others blast the journalistic malpractice that leaves “climate” out of the weather disaster stories, and President Obama takes cover in an “all of the above” energy strategy.

US falls behind in solar China, Germany, Brazil — and California — continue to invest policy and capital in the new economy, while Washington remains lost in ideological shock and awe (as House republicans tell the Pentagon “you have to waste taxpayers money and make the troops less safe so we can continue to ignore both the science and the economics of climate change”). But there are surprises too: “red state” Iowa has decided that exporting $6b/year to buy fossil fuel from unfriendly nations might not be the most “conservative” plan, and is investing government money to reduce that balance of payments deficit!

EPA battle royal The right’s war on the EPA (and on regulation in general) will continue, and in fact heat up as campaign fodder. Little noticed: 191 house votes attacking the EPA in 2011. Expect this battle to continue into 2013 (depending on how the elections turn out). But there’s good news too.

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Go there and read. More next week.

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Summer Solar Fun – Some useful toys too

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Not much to say about this. As the founding father’s said, “We hold these truths to be self evident”.

 

http://www.savingpower.com/three-new-fun-renewably-powered-gadgets-to-get-you-saving-energy/

There seems to be no end of interesting and innovative renewably-powered gadgets coming on the market these days, some more affordable and useful than others. But they all have one thing in common: making it easier for you to power-up your various portable electronic devices on the go with clean energy, like solar energy, kinetic energy, and even doggie-powered energy!

Take the Scosche solBAT II for instance. It’s a solar charger that hooks up to most portable devices using a USB connection. It has a 1500mAh capacity battery with a 5-volt output. You can hook it to your backpack, hang it from your car window with a suction mount, or just put it on your desk. Wherever you put it, just be sure to leave it where it will get direct sunlight. You can charge up the onboard battery within about five hours (after an initial charge that takes 4-5 days). And the best part is that it is only $30.

Then there’s the new Neon Green solar bag. Now, we know that there are a ton of solar bags around these days, but this company has put together a wide range of styles and shapes so that there’s something for almost any renewable energy enthusiast looking for a new bag. From the Piggy Back Soular Back-Up Pack (attach it to your existing backpack), to the full-sized Centurian backpack, to the Big Piggy (for powering up gadgets), they’ve got all kinds of options.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Rocky Mountain Flats Sucked Then – And it still sucks now

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All they did really was put out the fires and bury the remains. It sits there moldering to this day. They cleaned up the first 3 ft. of soil and tore down the buldings. The buildings and other materials were shipped to New Mexico and Nevada for storage. See first, the history of Rocky Flats:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Flats_Plant

The Rocky Flats Plant was a United States nuclear weapons production facility near Denver, Colorado that operated from 1952 to 1992. It was under the control of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) until 1977, when it was replaced by the Department of Energy (DOE).

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Then see her book:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/28/books/book-review-full-body-burden-by-kristen-iversen.html?_r=0

Publication Date: June 5, 2012

Full Body Burden is a haunting work of narrative nonfiction about a young woman, Kristen Iversen, growing up in a small Colorado town close to Rocky Flats, a secret nuclear weapons plant once designated “the most contaminated site in America.” It’s the story of a childhood and adolescence in the shadow of the Cold War, in a landscape at once startlingly beautiful and–unknown to those who lived there–tainted with invisible yet deadly particles of plutonium.

It’s also a book about the destructive power of secrets–both family and government. Her father’s hidden liquor bottles, the strange cancers in children in the neighborhood, the truth about what was made at Rocky Flats (cleaning supplies, her mother guessed)–best not to inquire too deeply into any of it.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Being An Environmentalist Is Not Limited To Earth – Transit of Venus

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My ability to post videos is limited by my technological inadequacies. However, we care about the environment exactly because we care about the solar system and the universe. So since it will not happen again in my lifetime here is a short clip of the transit of Venus across the face of the sun.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iDjo9D4t78&feature=colike

Published on Jun 5, 2012 by

Transit of Venus
6/5/12 7:17pm with 8″ Telescope and Canon Rebel T2i
Wake Forest, NC

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

License:

Creative Commons Attribution license (reuse allowed)

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Go there and gaze lovingly. More tomorrow.

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Hot Fun In The Summertime – Acting eco friendly is important

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This is just a fun little site for kids. We are on summer vacation after all.

http://green.thefuntimesguide.com/2012/03/living-green.php

Americans Are Becoming More Environmentally Aware & Conscious Of Their Behaviors

A new national survey of more than 1,000 Americans found that ‘being green’ is becoming more mainstream and has less of a stigma tied to it than it once did.

According to the survey, getting caught littering is more embarrassing to Americans than getting caught cheating on taxes.

Other behaviors that people admit to being socially aware that they’re doing include:

  • not recycling plastic bottles
  • driving a vehicles that gets only a few miles per gallon
  • letting the water run while brushing teeth

It’s clear that it is no longer just a highly motivated ‘few’ who are conscious about their own environmentally friendly actions these days.

It’s The Little Things

For most, it’s important to start small in order to stay committed to living green.

In  my case, I set a few simple actions as my New Year’s Resolutions a few years ago.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Milwaukee Has A Pretty Phenomenal Transition Movement – Maybe this post will stay

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I tried to post about the Transition Movement in Milwaukee last year or the year before and got slammed for it by some editor/publisher woman there for using “too much” copyrighted text. She also dissed my unorthodox style. So I took the post down and replaced it with one about transition groups in Boston or Los Angeles. Maybe even the mothership in England. Let us see how this goes this time around.

http://onmilwaukee.com/living/articles/transitionmilwaukee.html?viewall=1

Transition Milwaukee: “we’re all in this together”

By Royal Brevväxling RSS Feed
Special to OnMilwaukee.com

E-mail author | Author bio
More articles by Royal Brevväxlin

Published May 30, 2012 at 5:31 a.m.

Transition Milwaukee (TM) is part of an international movement formed, in part, in response to the peak oil crisis and more generally around issues of climate change, economic security and permaculture principles.

Peak oil is a non-controversial acknowledgement from government, academic and industry experts that fossil fuels, a finite resource, reach a peak moment of production and necessarily begin to decline.

Any controversy that peak oil generates is from determining when this peak production will occur, from a few decades into the future to it already peaking in 2007. Bigger questions about what a society that can’t rely on fossil fuels looks like also stir up debate – and emotions.

Permaculture principles are those that inform design and systems theories about how to develop not only sustainable but self-maintained and regenerative ecological systems. Modern agriculture and societies based on oil consumption are not regarded as sustainable.

TM’s goals involve a “whole-systems” approach toward making our economies sustainable and regenerative for seven generations into the future.

“Right now, Transition Milwaukee acts as a network of concerned activists who are working toward reducing the radius in which we get our goods and services, food, water and shelter,” says Jessica Cohodes, TM steering committee leader, press contact and “big-picture synthesizer.”

Members of TM don’t really have official titles. Although it has a steering committee, TM is organized non-hierarchically.

“Transition Milwaukee has always been a group, grass-roots endeavor about the community, from the ground up. Part of its founding philosophy is that it isn’t someone else’s job to get us off oil, but our job,” says Erik Lindberg, a former TM steering committee member who regularly gives presentations on energy and the environment.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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The Big Fix Gets It Right – Thus gets no attention

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The American sheeple have grown tired of Reality TV that is not manufactured. If you show the American people the truth they stampede in the opposite direction because they have been taught that the truth entertains not that the truth shall set you free. First I give you the movie site and then the best review I could find. I know this has been out for awhile and I apologize for my tardiness. Part of the problem is I have spent a fair amount of time on the Gulf Coast, living in Tampa and New Orleans. As a result I have been frequent visitor to St. George Island. So I many times do not trust my emotional response to events there. Still this is important.

http://www.thebigfixmovie.com/

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/big-fix-cannes-2011-review-189062

The Big Fix: Cannes 2011 Review

8:39 AM PDT 5/17/2011 by Kirk Honeycutt

The Bottom Line

A gloomy but perhaps realistic depiction of the forces of corruption and deceit that produce environmental catastrophes.

CANNES — The Big Fix from Josh Tickell (Fuel) and his wife and co-director Rebecca Tickell is the latest doom-and-gloom environmental documentary although this one takes alarming leaps from a single environmental catastrophe into fantastic realms of worldwide conspiracies, corporate malfeasance and political corruption. Which is not to say the filmmakers got anything wrong. Anyone with an open mind and some attention paid to events of the past few years will have little trouble seeing that the fix was in when the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig blew up in the Gulf of Mexico last year — and this fix will still be in when the next catastrophe happens.

The problems with The Big Fix though are threefold: One, judging by the poor attendance of journalists and film critics at the film’s Palais press screening, few people other than fellow activists are seeing to these doom-and-gloom movies anymore. Two, little here is really new as much of the Tickells’ findings have been reported elsewhere, even by some of those they interview, especially Jeff Goodell, who spent months in the Gulf for his well-researched Rolling Stone article.

Finally, the Tickells describe a “fix” is so vast and powerful, the film can only throws its hands up over any realistic solution other than to install solar panels to heat up your toxic household water.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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