Occupy the Food System, by John M.Gerber
Good essay from my colleague in the next town, whose path crossed mine because we both write for the same website in Australia, on how we locally-minded consumers can take back control of the food system.
Category: Energy & Sustainability
Denmark’s Audacious Goal: 100 percent Renewable Energy by 2050
Already getting a fifth of its power from the wind, wants to kick that number all the way to half by 2020, and completely eliminate fossil-fuel sources by 2050, according to Reuters.
Denmark had enough sense to abandon its plans for nuclear power in 1985, before actually building any (though a portion of the power it imports is undoubtedly nuclear).
However, don’t break out the champagne just yet. Denmark plans to replace coal and oil with a large percentage of biofuels. While biofuels are renewable, they are not always clean. Wood-burning, in particular, can contribute massively toward pollution and carbon emissions (and thus toward catastrophic climate change, a/k/a global warming).
CO2 Emissions Up 6% in 2010—Dismal!
According to the Associated Press, there was a huge jump in carbon emissions, worldwide.
The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago…
The world pumped about 564 million more tons (512 million metric tons) of carbon into the air in 2010 than it did in 2009. That’s an increase of 6 percent. That amount of extra pollution eclipses the individual emissions of all but three countries — China, the United States and India, the world’s top producers of greenhouse gases.
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Increased reliance on coal (WHY??? WE KNOW BETTER!) has a lot to do with the problem.
And not surprisingly, climate change correlates closely with the growing epidemic of extreme weather events.
Meanwhile, the climate talks in Durban, like their predecessors in Copenhagen a few years ago, don’t seem to be getting much accomplished.
“Double-plus ungood.” Fiddling while the planet burns.
Photos and Text: My Induction Into National Environmental Hall of Fame
Got to brag on myself here. I was deeply honored to be inducted in October, honoring my 40 years of work as an environmental activist and wrier. Now I just found out the National Environmental Hall of Fame put up a whole spiffy page about the event.
I welcome your comments about it here.
International Energy Agency: Solar could supply 1/3 of energy by 2060
No less a mainstream organization than the International Energy Agency–not exactly a bunch of tree huggers–just released a study showing how to get to 1/3 solar in just 50 years.
This is GOING to happen. It’s just a matter of how fast.
Passive Solar, No Furnace in COLD Minnesota
I’ve always said that if we could get most of our hot water from the sun in our antique (1743) house in cloudy, cold Massachusetts (which we do), it should be easy for most of the country to heat water with the sun.
Taking that philosophy much farther, Paul Brazelton’s Minnesota family has just done a deep-green retrofit of a 1935 house—and yanked out the furnace. With frequent temperatures of -20F and spikes well below that, this is a brave thing to do.
But not unproven. Energy visionary Amory Lovins also lives in the snowbelt (just outside Aspen, Colorado). While he doesn’t see the temperature extremes of a Minnesota winter, his no-furnace house was designed and built back in 1983, with technology we’d now consider quite primitive—and he grows bananas in his sunroom. And thousands of Passivhaus Institute-certified EnerPHit homes have been built in Germany and Scandinavia (also not known for balmy winters).
The Brazelton project will be the first certified EnerPHit home in North America.
Cool Resource: Ecofreek International Swap Exchange
Maybe once or twice a year, I actually get an unsolicited bulk e-mail that is targeted, relevant, and has a subject line that makes me open it. nd while I absolutely detest spam, I don’t object to this. If I am exactly the right audience for an offer, it’s not spam; it means a company is doing its homework and compiling a list of actual prospects.
This morning, I got one with the subject, “recycle related/reuse and swap search engine.” Since I write about the environment and have a 40-year commitment to encouraging reuse, I opened the e-mail.
This is an excerpt:
ecofreek.com is a search engine that searches the web for free and ‘for swap/trade’ items people no longer need from over 45+ major sources, providing the most diverse and accurate results anywhere in the world.
Also included are items for trade like books, sports equipment, antiques, automobiles, bicycles, motorcycles, CDs/DVDs, computers, property, seeds/gardening supplies, and lots more.
We also encourage people to exchange and re-use items though our search engine and also our ‘places to give things away’ section. Feel free to recommend us new resources as well, we have a section we link to other environmental/green sites.
We hope you enjoy your experience at our site and welcome any and all feedback.
Please contact me for any questions about our site/service or working together.Sincerely,
Nicole Boivin – Founder
She also included her personal e-mail and phone number.
So I went over to look, and I like what I found (mostly).
As a longtime participant in Freecycle.org, I was interested to compare. I found several major differences:
1. The search engine is elegant and allows you to choose a geographic area ranging from your own town or US state to anywhere in the world. Freecycle restricts you to your own community.
2. Ecofreek is web-based, rather than e-mail-driven, which means you can search for what you want instead of just posting a wanted or offered notice and hoping for response.
3. Freecycle is about gifting. While gifting is an option at Ecofreek, swaps are also encouraged.
I did get very weird results when I clicked a suggested link (not a database result) for free samples of Kashi. And I do see that this site will need to be prepared to deal with people spamming the message boards (I saw one or two noncommercial spams). But I think it’s a good addition to the frugality and environmentalism toolbox.
And I will write to Nicole and ask her how I get listed in the environmental section she referred to.
India Sues Monsanto for Biopiracy
A government is finally taking action against Monsanto, which has a long history of abusive practices involving genetically modified crops.
In this instance, the company stands accused of stealing brinjal (a kind of eggplant) and developing GM varieties in an attempt first of all to extract biodiversity riches from the local populace without compensation, and second, to mislead others about whether they were engaging in GM once they had it. In the past, Monsanto has had a particularly disgusting habit of letting its GM crops contaminate other farmers’ fields, including organic growers, and then suing the victims for using its seed without permission. I am glad to see a government finally going after this corporate bully that plays fast and loose with our food safety.
Lots of bloggers have picked up this story, but it doesn’t seem like the mainstream media have paid attention. I finally located a mainstream media report: an English-language public affairs show on French TV covering India’s lawsuit against Monsanto.
Let’s hope this action is the first of many similar actions of governments protecting their people against these outrages.
Researchers quantify net societal benefit of cycling for short trips:
According to a new study by Environmental Health Perspectives, biking instead of driving for trips under five miles turns out not only to be healthful, cleaner, more fun, etc.–it’s also apparently good for the economy to replace car trips with bike trips.
As a long-term bike fan (and sometime bike commuter all the way back to high school), I’m not surprised.
(via @undriving)
Positive Lessons from The Solyndra Debacle
Two commentators demonstrate why solar continues to be viable, and why the dramatic and very public failure of Solyndra has nothing to do with the viability of solar.
On Huffington Post, Graciela Tiscareño-Sato writes, in “A Teaching Moment About the Green Economy,” of several brilliant entrepreneurs who are helping us take big steps toward a green economy, emphasizing multiple benefits such as saving cost and carbon and creating jobs at the same time. Her examples (all from the Latino world, incidentally) cover the building industry (specifically, solarizing schools in California), fashion, eco-consulting, and more.
And in the New York Times, Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman points out that Solyndra’s failure was directly related to the success of solar. Solyndra’s model was based in high prices and scarcity, but as solar becomes more popular, the energy equivalent of the computer industry’s Moore’s Law kicks in; we get ever-more-powerful, cheaper, more effective systems as the quantity goes up. Solyndra couldn’t compete with the new low-cost solar providers. (Note: this is a different aspect of the same article I blogged about yesterday.)