Gardener's Supply -- 4 Easy Steps to Beautiful Containers
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Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Happy Earth Day! - Learn the Secret to Beautiful Containers
Monday, April 21, 2008
Do you believe me yet? Re-post: It's Time To Develop Community Volunteer Pools
I said this first this past January as the foreclosure crisis started dragging on the economy. Dire predictions were flying all about. Now, there are major retailing chains and restaurant chains closing stores or going bankrupt. We've lost 3/4 of the Bakers Square, Joes Crab Shack, and Lonestar Steak Houses in our area already. Wickes Furniture was just built last spring, and they went out of business - it's empty now. Wilson's Leather is going out of business nationally, their entire store, fixtures included, is on clearance. Food rationing is starting to happen on both coasts. Oil has spiked over $117.00 a barrel and gasoline is looking to head north of $4.00 per gallon this spring, let alone this summer.
How do we beat this in the absence of help from the federal government?
With news like this, and many other stories threatening the possibility of a global Depression, (Based on a repeat of the land speculation mistakes of the 1920's and other factors) it is time to organize volunteer labor pools. Absent any real leadership from the government, the unemployed and bankrupt will increase in numbers dramatically over the next few years. This represents a lot of economically desperate people and a huge pool of idle talent.
Food security is going to become difficult under these circumstances. It will become vital to begin massive vegetable gardening efforts in urban and suburban areas. It is also going to become necessary to build large scale shelters as housing foreclosures continue to skyrocket, driving up the ranks of the homeless.
Grass lawns are a waste of precious crop-growing space. If you add up the aggregate land area of lawns in the USA, that is a large area of "farmable" land. Putting in a home garden now, before it's too late, could help many avoid hunger if the economy collapses as many are predicting. Community garden plots need to rise up, and so do back yard garden plots. "Canning days" for whole neighborhoods could mean the difference between just missing certain food items or going hungry over the next few winters. http://www.seedsavers.org is an excellent source of vegetable seeds and plant seedlings, with over 25,000 varieties of heirloom vegetables that are optimized for different parts of the country.
Why not begin forming the structures of a "citizens' W.P.A." now, before all this happens? Strapped municipalities could use these pools of labor to avoid much of the cost of infrastructure improvements, focusing their dwindling property tax intake on purchasing materials for volunteer workers to use. In return, such municipalities could provide materials and space for shelters and gardening projects to feed the volunteers and their families.
Additionally, judicious use of eminent domain laws could foreclose on the Foreclosers - seizing bank-owned vacant properties and using them to house homeless laborers in return for their labor hours on community projects. They do not need the federal government to solve the problem. This could be a way for rural communities and suburbs to turn the situation around - since such efforts would in effect fall outside the purview of the failing capitalist economy.
Obviously, recycling and local sourcing of materials would be driven higher by such measures. Energy efficiency could also be built into such plans.
Just as the States are taking action on renewable energy and climate change through local initiatives, the States and local communities could begin a national turn-around absent help from the federal government, in a legal and moral manner.
Idle union workers could initiate apprenticeship programs within the volunteer pools, creating a vast pool of skilled workers for when the economy does rebound. Municipal energy projects such as wind, solar, and biomass (not using food grains, but rather agricultural and yard waste) systems could be built also, driving up local renewable power generation.
Local sustainable forestry programs could also be developed and maintained, providing a source of lumber for furniture and interior building structures. Earthen housing using lumber only for floors, windows and roofing could provide highly durable and energy-efficient housing in place of the current lumber-intensive methods of buildings. Existing vacant structures could be tapped for materials and space to build with.
Municipalities that embark on such paths could begin to draw people back out into the small towns and suburbs without the need for long-distance commuting.
Small family-owned farms might even work with such communities, providing much-needed food in return for volunteer labor to help with growing and harvesting. Composting and sustainable farming methods are age-old ways of working farms without the need for petroleum-based fertilization. Natural methods of controlling pests would leave enough production in place, when combined with urban/suburban gardening efforts, to feed local populations.
I also wonder if milkweed pod fiber and cattail fiber couldn't be used to produce small quantities of local textiles in a manner similar to the way cotton is used today. Does anyone out there know if there are small-scale textile mills that could be used or built to operate with such materials? Milkweed and cattails are ubiquitous in the Midwestern US in my experience.
It's time to think outside the traditional box, and recover some of the skill sets that were our heritage from times when communities had to be much more self-reliant in the past, combined with modern technologies in ways that are harmonious to the natural environment and the natural rhythms of the human body.
There are things we can do to head the worst effects of a severe economic downturn off, while making the lives we lead more sustainable and healthy. More walking, biking, and horsepower in the flesh, more local foods, more local work, shared computers at libraries, community fire brigades, and many other means are available.
Open private schools where laid-off teachers could educate children and recover from the closures of public schools resulting from No Child Left Behind and lack of federal funding.
There are ways to do these things, using non-profit entities and local initiatives that would bypass the failures of national-scale systems. A mixture of the best from the past and present could lead to a more sustainable, stable, and bright future.
It's not necessary to go down in flaming despair at all - if we work together, and start now.
JMHO,
Dan Stafford
| Corn rationing predicted for 2008 | Banks abandoning student loans | Economic downturn hits states hard | Food stamp use nears new high | |
| Wave of Bankruptcies Will 'Remake' Shopping Malls Across the Country | "Foreclosures Prompt Cities to Make Plea for Aid : http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/24/us/24mayors.html?_r=1&oref=slogin " |
How do we beat this in the absence of help from the federal government?
It's Time To Develop Community Volunteer Pools
It's Time To Develop Community Volunteer Pools -
With news like this, and many other stories threatening the possibility of a global Depression, (Based on a repeat of the land speculation mistakes of the 1920's and other factors) it is time to organize volunteer labor pools. Absent any real leadership from the government, the unemployed and bankrupt will increase in numbers dramatically over the next few years. This represents a lot of economically desperate people and a huge pool of idle talent.
Food security is going to become difficult under these circumstances. It will become vital to begin massive vegetable gardening efforts in urban and suburban areas. It is also going to become necessary to build large scale shelters as housing foreclosures continue to skyrocket, driving up the ranks of the homeless.
Grass lawns are a waste of precious crop-growing space. If you add up the aggregate land area of lawns in the USA, that is a large area of "farmable" land. Putting in a home garden now, before it's too late, could help many avoid hunger if the economy collapses as many are predicting. Community garden plots need to rise up, and so do back yard garden plots. "Canning days" for whole neighborhoods could mean the difference between just missing certain food items or going hungry over the next few winters. http://www.seedsavers.org is an excellent source of vegetable seeds and plant seedlings, with over 25,000 varieties of heirloom vegetables that are optimized for different parts of the country.
Why not begin forming the structures of a "citizens' W.P.A." now, before all this happens? Strapped municipalities could use these pools of labor to avoid much of the cost of infrastructure improvements, focusing their dwindling property tax intake on purchasing materials for volunteer workers to use. In return, such municipalities could provide materials and space for shelters and gardening projects to feed the volunteers and their families.
Additionally, judicious use of eminent domain laws could foreclose on the Foreclosers - seizing bank-owned vacant properties and using them to house homeless laborers in return for their labor hours on community projects. They do not need the federal government to solve the problem. This could be a way for rural communities and suburbs to turn the situation around - since such efforts would in effect fall outside the purview of the failing capitalist economy.
Obviously, recycling and local sourcing of materials would be driven higher by such measures. Energy efficiency could also be built into such plans.
Just as the States are taking action on renewable energy and climate change through local initiatives, the States and local communities could begin a national turn-around absent help from the federal government, in a legal and moral manner.
Idle union workers could initiate apprenticeship programs within the volunteer pools, creating a vast pool of skilled workers for when the economy does rebound. Municipal energy projects such as wind, solar, and biomass (not using food grains, but rather agricultural and yard waste) systems could be built also, driving up local renewable power generation.
Local sustainable forestry programs could also be developed and maintained, providing a source of lumber for furniture and interior building structures. Earthen housing using lumber only for floors, windows and roofing could provide highly durable and energy-efficient housing in place of the current lumber-intensive methods of buildings. Existing vacant structures could be tapped for materials and space to build with.
Municipalities that embark on such paths could begin to draw people back out into the small towns and suburbs without the need for long-distance commuting.
Small family-owned farms might even work with such communities, providing much-needed food in return for volunteer labor to help with growing and harvesting. Composting and sustainable farming methods are age-old ways of working farms without the need for petroleum-based fertilization. Natural methods of controlling pests would leave enough production in place, when combined with urban/suburban gardening efforts, to feed local populations.
I also wonder if milkweed pod fiber and cattail fiber couldn't be used to produce small quantities of local textiles in a manner similar to the way cotton is used today. Does anyone out there know if there are small-scale textile mills that could be used or built to operate with such materials? Milkweed and cattails are ubiquitous in the Midwestern US in my experience.
It's time to think outside the traditional box, and recover some of the skill sets that were our heritage from times when communities had to be much more self-reliant in the past, combined with modern technologies in ways that are harmonious to the natural environment and the natural rhythms of the human body.
There are things we can do to head the worst effects of a severe economic downturn off, while making the lives we lead more sustainable and healthy. More walking, biking, and horsepower in the flesh, more local foods, more local work, shared computers at libraries, community fire brigades, and many other means are available.
Open private schools where laid-off teachers could educate children and recover from the closures of public schools resulting from No Child Left Behind and lack of federal funding.
There are ways to do these things, using non-profit entities and local initiatives that would bypass the failures of national-scale systems. A mixture of the best from the past and present could lead to a more sustainable, stable, and bright future.
It's not necessary to go down in flaming despair at all - if we work together, and start now.
JMHO,
Dan Stafford
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Revisiting Organic Lawn Care
July 2006
Organic Lawn Care in 6 Simple Steps
By Erica Myers-Russo
Conventional lawn care is a vicious cycle. Since World War II, American backyards have been awash in synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, and fungicides, all of which wreak havoc on your environment, your health, and (ironically) your lawn. That’s right, typical lawn care practices turn a relatively self-sufficient lawn into a needy wreck with shallow roots, excess thatch, compacted soil, and decreased disease resistance.The solution is to go green: build and manage a lawn the organic way. It can be done, but it means rethinking the ecosystem from the ground up.
-----------------------------------------------------------
I've kept hard copy of this article with me since the first Spring season in our home. I'm trying to work this way, but I have to admit it's tough - having the neighbors lawns perfectly green while yours is perfectly healthy is not necessarily a visual win-over. However, I have no fear of planting the organic garden I mention in the article below, nor am I worried in the least about chemical exposure in my lawn - unless it comes in from the neighbors' yards.
I am, however, going to bag clippings a bit this year - so I can compost them and use them as organic mulch in my gardening.
Happy Spring!
Rev. Dan
Easy No-Till Garden Anyone Can Do - Mother Earth News
I'm trying a 12' x 12' version of this in my own back yard - Rev. Dan
Easy Garden Anyone Can Make
Hate to wait? Start an instant garden with this no-till plan!
 | With this proven and easy plan, anyone can create a beautiful garden. The white picket fence and pretty arbor help the garden match the owner’s white, clapboard house. LEE REICH |
My brother Andrew and his family have a true passion for fresh vegetables, especially salad vegetables. So when they moved to their new suburban home in Barrington, R.I., about a decade ago, Andrew’s first question was, “Where do I put a vegetable garden?”
Gen Y, Food
Upon watching "Gen Y," ( http://www.sundancechannel.com/films/500317061 , air date 04/22/2008 at 9pm Eastern & Pacific, run time 30 minutes) my first reaction was to want to defend my own generation and the one before - and it shames me to say that. It's not that my generation or the previous one haven't thought of environmentalism, because most of us have, just not on the scale or with the commitment Gen Y presents. At least, not yet. What I wish my first reaction had been, and what my second reaction was, way to go, Gen Y! I wish I were able to make half the changes and commitment these younger people are doing. All I can do is keep trying to "notch up the green" in my own life and do my best to help spread the word.
Continuing with the "Big Ideas For A Small Planet" theme of using three examples to illustrate concepts, Gen Y gets into green concerts, with the band Guster and the business that helps bands tour green, Reverb, ( http://www.reverbrock.org ) and shows all the ways that bands can either create a lot of pollution on tour, or offset and reduce that as much as possible. From biodiesel-powered bus fleets to wind-energy offset purchases to local food backstage to recycling waste at the venue, this company and these bands, well, rock! You'd be surprised at some of the band names on the roster of "greened" concerts, and pleasantly so. This is a trend that I am happy to support and promote, because it raises the visibility of going green in a very public way.
Next up, we have the subject of sustainable weddings, led by a beautiful young couple who put a lot of time, effort, and consideration into making their wedding as Earth-friendly as possible, while still keeping it elegant and stylish. Their accomplishments were myriad and subtle, and must be seen to be believed. The next couple I know planning a wedding, I am going to be after them to watch this video, I'm telling you! They might not do everything these two did, but it sure will get them thinking, and who knows, they might just come up with some new ideas of their own. Wedding planners, get your TV on this channel on the 22nd, and get your notepads ready to write!
Finally, we move into green college campuses, with the Pitzer College ( http://www.pitzer.edu/ ) campus re-design that incorporates renewable energy such as wind and solar power, and sustainable dormitories with a LEED Gold Standard sustainable architecture award featuring full water management, automated energy management, and sustainable materials. The scope of the campus makeover really shows what is possible, and how pleasant and comfortable sustainable living can be.
The film almost made me wish I were Gen Y, so I could get in on the action! Still, I think it's an inspiration for me to see so much hope for the future, and so much incentive to keep working on greening my own life and educating everyone who'll lend me an ear.
If you really want to get some hope in your heart, tune in to Gen Y on the 22nd. I double-dog dare you!
------------------------
Moving on, we have "Food." ( http://www.sundancechannel.com/films/500317079 , air date 04/29/2008, 9pm Eastern & Pacific, run time 30 minutes. ) Food gets into what agriculture used to be, what it is, and what it can be. This one is near and dear to my heart, because I'm actually trying this on a small scale at home with some organic gardening, but these folk really shine.
Starting off we have Amy's Kitchen, ( http://www.amyskitchen.com/ ) an all-organic operation that mass-produces ready-made organic meals. Amy's kitchen is conceived of and owned by a couple who named it after their first-born daughter. Simply put, when Amy's mother was pregnant with Amy, she didn't want to be ingesting all kinds of pesticide residues and passing that on to her child. She started struggling at home with making up organic meals, and the result was a highly successful business that makes it as easy to eat organic as it is to buy TV dinners, and supports thousands of acres of organic agriculture. You can see clearly how much these people care about the sustainability and quality of their operations and product, and it is a real inspiration.
Next, we get into "school gardening," with a teenager on a Zuni reservation who got fed up with being fed bad food. "Alex" got the whole school talking, so his teacher asked him to come up with a solution - and the result is a jewel of local-food sustainable agriculture, right on school grounds! Kids are actually eager to go to school here, and eagerly participate in raising their own lunches in a completely organic fashion - and the program has promise to spread across the country in the future. These kids have a lot to teach all of us, and I would love to shake Alex's hand. Way to go, young man!
Finally, we cap the evening off with a nightcap - of organic, family-produced "biodynamic" wines. Here we have a family-owned vinyard that uses about half their land to produce grapes, and the other half to clean and recycle water, attract beneficial insects and wildlife that eat pests, and compost all the organic byproduct produced by their operations. These practices will improve and sustain soil fertility, water quality, and bio-diversity while making wonderful-tasting and very pure wines we can all enjoy.
By the end of this one, I was hungry for my own little organic garden to come to fruition, and spring has only barely sprung! I simply can not over-state the importance of the information in this film, or the hope it gives. You can FEEL the health and wholesomeness in this thirty minutes right in your own living room, and deep down in your bones.
If you watch no other environmental film this year, watch this one - because agriculture and the way it is done is one of the largest environmental impactors there is. What these people are doing is every bit as important as combating global warming, and a LOT tastier. I can tell you from experience that organic foods, if they do nothing else, TASTE much, much better than inorganic. Most of us know this, but here are the back stories that can give us all hope and incentive.
All the best,
Dan Stafford
Publisher - The Great Lakes Zephyr - Wind Energy & Hydrogen Journal
http://www.whizzyrds.com/Windblog.html
Continuing with the "Big Ideas For A Small Planet" theme of using three examples to illustrate concepts, Gen Y gets into green concerts, with the band Guster and the business that helps bands tour green, Reverb, ( http://www.reverbrock.org ) and shows all the ways that bands can either create a lot of pollution on tour, or offset and reduce that as much as possible. From biodiesel-powered bus fleets to wind-energy offset purchases to local food backstage to recycling waste at the venue, this company and these bands, well, rock! You'd be surprised at some of the band names on the roster of "greened" concerts, and pleasantly so. This is a trend that I am happy to support and promote, because it raises the visibility of going green in a very public way.
Next up, we have the subject of sustainable weddings, led by a beautiful young couple who put a lot of time, effort, and consideration into making their wedding as Earth-friendly as possible, while still keeping it elegant and stylish. Their accomplishments were myriad and subtle, and must be seen to be believed. The next couple I know planning a wedding, I am going to be after them to watch this video, I'm telling you! They might not do everything these two did, but it sure will get them thinking, and who knows, they might just come up with some new ideas of their own. Wedding planners, get your TV on this channel on the 22nd, and get your notepads ready to write!
Finally, we move into green college campuses, with the Pitzer College ( http://www.pitzer.edu/ ) campus re-design that incorporates renewable energy such as wind and solar power, and sustainable dormitories with a LEED Gold Standard sustainable architecture award featuring full water management, automated energy management, and sustainable materials. The scope of the campus makeover really shows what is possible, and how pleasant and comfortable sustainable living can be.
The film almost made me wish I were Gen Y, so I could get in on the action! Still, I think it's an inspiration for me to see so much hope for the future, and so much incentive to keep working on greening my own life and educating everyone who'll lend me an ear.
If you really want to get some hope in your heart, tune in to Gen Y on the 22nd. I double-dog dare you!
------------------------
Moving on, we have "Food." ( http://www.sundancechannel.com/films/500317079 , air date 04/29/2008, 9pm Eastern & Pacific, run time 30 minutes. ) Food gets into what agriculture used to be, what it is, and what it can be. This one is near and dear to my heart, because I'm actually trying this on a small scale at home with some organic gardening, but these folk really shine.
Starting off we have Amy's Kitchen, ( http://www.amyskitchen.com/ ) an all-organic operation that mass-produces ready-made organic meals. Amy's kitchen is conceived of and owned by a couple who named it after their first-born daughter. Simply put, when Amy's mother was pregnant with Amy, she didn't want to be ingesting all kinds of pesticide residues and passing that on to her child. She started struggling at home with making up organic meals, and the result was a highly successful business that makes it as easy to eat organic as it is to buy TV dinners, and supports thousands of acres of organic agriculture. You can see clearly how much these people care about the sustainability and quality of their operations and product, and it is a real inspiration.
Next, we get into "school gardening," with a teenager on a Zuni reservation who got fed up with being fed bad food. "Alex" got the whole school talking, so his teacher asked him to come up with a solution - and the result is a jewel of local-food sustainable agriculture, right on school grounds! Kids are actually eager to go to school here, and eagerly participate in raising their own lunches in a completely organic fashion - and the program has promise to spread across the country in the future. These kids have a lot to teach all of us, and I would love to shake Alex's hand. Way to go, young man!
Finally, we cap the evening off with a nightcap - of organic, family-produced "biodynamic" wines. Here we have a family-owned vinyard that uses about half their land to produce grapes, and the other half to clean and recycle water, attract beneficial insects and wildlife that eat pests, and compost all the organic byproduct produced by their operations. These practices will improve and sustain soil fertility, water quality, and bio-diversity while making wonderful-tasting and very pure wines we can all enjoy.
By the end of this one, I was hungry for my own little organic garden to come to fruition, and spring has only barely sprung! I simply can not over-state the importance of the information in this film, or the hope it gives. You can FEEL the health and wholesomeness in this thirty minutes right in your own living room, and deep down in your bones.
If you watch no other environmental film this year, watch this one - because agriculture and the way it is done is one of the largest environmental impactors there is. What these people are doing is every bit as important as combating global warming, and a LOT tastier. I can tell you from experience that organic foods, if they do nothing else, TASTE much, much better than inorganic. Most of us know this, but here are the back stories that can give us all hope and incentive.
All the best,
Dan Stafford
Publisher - The Great Lakes Zephyr - Wind Energy & Hydrogen Journal
http://www.whizzyrds.com/Windblog.html
Earth Policy News - World Facing Huge New Challenge on Food Front: Business-as-Usual Not a Viable Option
> Earth Policy Institute
> Plan B Update
> For Immediate Release
> April 16, 2008
>
> WORLD FACING HUGE NEW CHALLENGE ON FOOD FRONT
> Business-as-Usual Not a Viable Option
>
> http://www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2008/Update72.htm
>
> Lester R. Brown
>
> A fast-unfolding food shortage is engulfing the entire world, driving food prices to record highs. Over the past half-century grain prices have spiked from time to time because of weather-related events, such as the 1972 Soviet crop failure that led to a doubling of world wheat, rice, and corn prices. The situation today is entirely different, however. The current doubling of grain prices is trend-driven, the cumulative effect of some trends that are accelerating growth in demand and other trends that are slowing the growth in supply.
>
> The world has not experienced anything quite like this before. In the face of rising food prices and spreading hunger, the social order is beginning to break down in some countries. In several provinces in Thailand, for instance, rustlers steal rice by harvesting fields during the night. In response, Thai villagers with distant fields have taken to guarding ripe rice fields at night with loaded shotguns.
>
> In Sudan, the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), which is responsible for supplying grain to 2 million people in Darfur refugee camps, is facing a difficult mission to say the least. During the first three months of this year, 56 grain-laden trucks were hijacked. Thus far, only 20 of the trucks have been recovered and some 24 drivers are still unaccounted for. This threat to U.N.-supplied food to the Darfur camps has reduced the flow of food into the region by half, raising the specter of starvation if supply lines cannot be secured.
>
> In Pakistan, where flour prices have doubled, food insecurity is a national concern. Thousands of armed Pakistani troops have been assigned to guard grain elevators and to accompany the trucks that transport grain.
>
> Food riots are now becoming commonplace. In Egypt, the bread lines at bakeries that distribute state-subsidized bread are often the scene of fights. In Morocco, 34 food rioters were jailed. In Yemen, food riots turned deadly, taking at least a dozen lives. In Cameroon, dozens of people have died in food riots and hundreds have been arrested. Other countries with food riots include Ethiopia, Haiti, Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines, and Senegal. (See additional examples of food price unrest at www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2008/Update72_data.htm.)
>
> The doubling of world wheat, rice, and corn prices has sharply reduced the availability of food aid, putting the 37 countries that depend on the WFP's emergency food assistance at risk. In March, the WFP issued an urgent appeal for $500 million of additional funds.
>
> Around the world, a politics of food scarcity is emerging. Most fundamentally, it involves the restriction of grain exports by countries that want to check the rise in their domestic food prices. Russia, the Ukraine, and Argentina are among the governments that are currently restricting wheat exports. Countries restricting rice exports include Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Egypt. These export restrictions simply drive prices higher in the world market.
>
> The chronically tight food supply the world is now facing is driven by the cumulative effect of several well established trends that are affecting both global demand and supply. On the demand side, the trends include the continuing addition of 70 million people per year to the earth's population, the desire of some 4 billion people to move up the food chain and consume more grain-intensive livestock products, and the recent sharp acceleration in the U.S. use of grain to produce ethanol for cars. Since 2005, this last source of demand has raised the annual growth in world grain consumption from roughly 20 million tons to 50 million tons.
>
> Meanwhile, on the supply side, there is little new land to be brought under the plow unless it comes from clearing tropical rainforests in the Amazon and Congo basins and in Indonesia, or from clearing land in the Brazilian cerrado, a savannah-like region south of the Amazon rainforest. Unfortunately, this has heavy environmental costs: the release of sequestered carbon, the loss of plant and animal species, and increased rainfall runoff and soil erosion. And in scores of countries prime cropland is being lost to both industrial and residential construction and to the paving of land for roads, highways, and parking lots for fast-growing automobile fleets.
>
> New sources of irrigation water are even more scarce than new land to plow. During the last half of the twentieth century, world irrigated area nearly tripled, expanding from 94 million hectares in 1950 to 276 million hectares in 2000. In the years since then there has been little, if any, growth. As a result, irrigated area per person is shrinking by 1 percent a year.
>
> Meanwhile, the backlog of agricultural technology that can be used to raise cropland productivity is dwindling. Between 1950 and 1990 the world's farmers raised grainland productivity by 2.1 percent a year, but from 1990 until 2007 this growth rate slowed to 1.2 percent a year. And the rising price of oil is boosting the costs of both food production and transport while at the same time making it more profitable to convert grain into fuel for cars.
>
> Beyond this, climate change presents new risks. Crop-withering heat waves, more-destructive storms, and the melting of the Asian mountain glaciers that sustain the dry-season flow of that region's major rivers, are combining to make harvest expansion more difficult. In the past the negative effect of unusual weather events was always temporary; within a year or two things would return to normal. But with climate in flux, there is no norm to return to.
>
> The collective effect of these trends makes it more and more difficult for farmers to keep pace with the growth in demand. During seven of the last eight years, grain consumption exceeded production. After seven years of drawing down stocks, world grain carryover stocks in 2008 have fallen to 55 days of world consumption, the lowest on record. The result is a new era of tightening food supplies, rising food prices, and political instability. With grain stocks at an all-time low, the world is only one poor harvest away from total chaos in world grain markets.
>
> Business-as-usual is no longer a viable option. Food security will deteriorate further unless leading countries can collectively mobilize to stabilize population, restrict the use of grain to produce automotive fuel, stabilize climate, stabilize water tables and aquifers, protect cropland, and conserve soils. Stabilizing population is not simply a matter of providing reproductive health care and family planning services. It requires a worldwide effort to eradicate poverty. Eliminating water shortages depends on a global attempt to raise water productivity similar to the effort launched a half-century ago to raise land productivity, an initiative that has nearly tripled the world grain yield per hectare. None of these goals can be achieved quickly, but progress toward all is essential to restoring a semblance of food security.
>
> This troubling situation is unlike any the world has faced before. The challenge is not simply to deal with a temporary rise in grain prices, as in the past, but rather to quickly alter those trends whose cumulative effects collectively threaten the food security that is a hallmark of civilization. If food security cannot be restored quickly, social unrest and political instability will spread and the number of failing states will likely increase dramatically, threatening the very stability of civilization itself.
>
> # # #
>
> Lester R. Brown is President of the Earth Policy Institute.
>
> For more information, see Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, available online for free downloading.
>
> Data and additional resources at www.earthpolicy.org.
>
> For information contact:
>
> Media Contact:
> Reah Janise Kauffman
> Tel: (202) 496-9290 x 12
> E-mail: rjk (at) earthpolicy.org
>
> Research Contact:
> Janet Larsen
> Tel: (202) 496-9290 x 14
> E-mail: jlarsen (at) earthpolicy.org
>
> Earth Policy Institute
> 1350 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 403
> Washington, DC 20036
> Web: www.earthpolicy.org
>
> Plan B Update
> For Immediate Release
> April 16, 2008
>
> WORLD FACING HUGE NEW CHALLENGE ON FOOD FRONT
> Business-as-Usual Not a Viable Option
>
> http://www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2008/Update72.htm
>
> Lester R. Brown
>
> A fast-unfolding food shortage is engulfing the entire world, driving food prices to record highs. Over the past half-century grain prices have spiked from time to time because of weather-related events, such as the 1972 Soviet crop failure that led to a doubling of world wheat, rice, and corn prices. The situation today is entirely different, however. The current doubling of grain prices is trend-driven, the cumulative effect of some trends that are accelerating growth in demand and other trends that are slowing the growth in supply.
>
> The world has not experienced anything quite like this before. In the face of rising food prices and spreading hunger, the social order is beginning to break down in some countries. In several provinces in Thailand, for instance, rustlers steal rice by harvesting fields during the night. In response, Thai villagers with distant fields have taken to guarding ripe rice fields at night with loaded shotguns.
>
> In Sudan, the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), which is responsible for supplying grain to 2 million people in Darfur refugee camps, is facing a difficult mission to say the least. During the first three months of this year, 56 grain-laden trucks were hijacked. Thus far, only 20 of the trucks have been recovered and some 24 drivers are still unaccounted for. This threat to U.N.-supplied food to the Darfur camps has reduced the flow of food into the region by half, raising the specter of starvation if supply lines cannot be secured.
>
> In Pakistan, where flour prices have doubled, food insecurity is a national concern. Thousands of armed Pakistani troops have been assigned to guard grain elevators and to accompany the trucks that transport grain.
>
> Food riots are now becoming commonplace. In Egypt, the bread lines at bakeries that distribute state-subsidized bread are often the scene of fights. In Morocco, 34 food rioters were jailed. In Yemen, food riots turned deadly, taking at least a dozen lives. In Cameroon, dozens of people have died in food riots and hundreds have been arrested. Other countries with food riots include Ethiopia, Haiti, Indonesia, Mexico, the Philippines, and Senegal. (See additional examples of food price unrest at www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2008/Update72_data.htm.)
>
> The doubling of world wheat, rice, and corn prices has sharply reduced the availability of food aid, putting the 37 countries that depend on the WFP's emergency food assistance at risk. In March, the WFP issued an urgent appeal for $500 million of additional funds.
>
> Around the world, a politics of food scarcity is emerging. Most fundamentally, it involves the restriction of grain exports by countries that want to check the rise in their domestic food prices. Russia, the Ukraine, and Argentina are among the governments that are currently restricting wheat exports. Countries restricting rice exports include Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Egypt. These export restrictions simply drive prices higher in the world market.
>
> The chronically tight food supply the world is now facing is driven by the cumulative effect of several well established trends that are affecting both global demand and supply. On the demand side, the trends include the continuing addition of 70 million people per year to the earth's population, the desire of some 4 billion people to move up the food chain and consume more grain-intensive livestock products, and the recent sharp acceleration in the U.S. use of grain to produce ethanol for cars. Since 2005, this last source of demand has raised the annual growth in world grain consumption from roughly 20 million tons to 50 million tons.
>
> Meanwhile, on the supply side, there is little new land to be brought under the plow unless it comes from clearing tropical rainforests in the Amazon and Congo basins and in Indonesia, or from clearing land in the Brazilian cerrado, a savannah-like region south of the Amazon rainforest. Unfortunately, this has heavy environmental costs: the release of sequestered carbon, the loss of plant and animal species, and increased rainfall runoff and soil erosion. And in scores of countries prime cropland is being lost to both industrial and residential construction and to the paving of land for roads, highways, and parking lots for fast-growing automobile fleets.
>
> New sources of irrigation water are even more scarce than new land to plow. During the last half of the twentieth century, world irrigated area nearly tripled, expanding from 94 million hectares in 1950 to 276 million hectares in 2000. In the years since then there has been little, if any, growth. As a result, irrigated area per person is shrinking by 1 percent a year.
>
> Meanwhile, the backlog of agricultural technology that can be used to raise cropland productivity is dwindling. Between 1950 and 1990 the world's farmers raised grainland productivity by 2.1 percent a year, but from 1990 until 2007 this growth rate slowed to 1.2 percent a year. And the rising price of oil is boosting the costs of both food production and transport while at the same time making it more profitable to convert grain into fuel for cars.
>
> Beyond this, climate change presents new risks. Crop-withering heat waves, more-destructive storms, and the melting of the Asian mountain glaciers that sustain the dry-season flow of that region's major rivers, are combining to make harvest expansion more difficult. In the past the negative effect of unusual weather events was always temporary; within a year or two things would return to normal. But with climate in flux, there is no norm to return to.
>
> The collective effect of these trends makes it more and more difficult for farmers to keep pace with the growth in demand. During seven of the last eight years, grain consumption exceeded production. After seven years of drawing down stocks, world grain carryover stocks in 2008 have fallen to 55 days of world consumption, the lowest on record. The result is a new era of tightening food supplies, rising food prices, and political instability. With grain stocks at an all-time low, the world is only one poor harvest away from total chaos in world grain markets.
>
> Business-as-usual is no longer a viable option. Food security will deteriorate further unless leading countries can collectively mobilize to stabilize population, restrict the use of grain to produce automotive fuel, stabilize climate, stabilize water tables and aquifers, protect cropland, and conserve soils. Stabilizing population is not simply a matter of providing reproductive health care and family planning services. It requires a worldwide effort to eradicate poverty. Eliminating water shortages depends on a global attempt to raise water productivity similar to the effort launched a half-century ago to raise land productivity, an initiative that has nearly tripled the world grain yield per hectare. None of these goals can be achieved quickly, but progress toward all is essential to restoring a semblance of food security.
>
> This troubling situation is unlike any the world has faced before. The challenge is not simply to deal with a temporary rise in grain prices, as in the past, but rather to quickly alter those trends whose cumulative effects collectively threaten the food security that is a hallmark of civilization. If food security cannot be restored quickly, social unrest and political instability will spread and the number of failing states will likely increase dramatically, threatening the very stability of civilization itself.
>
> # # #
>
> Lester R. Brown is President of the Earth Policy Institute.
>
> For more information, see Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, available online for free downloading.
>
> Data and additional resources at www.earthpolicy.org.
>
> For information contact:
>
> Media Contact:
> Reah Janise Kauffman
> Tel: (202) 496-9290 x 12
> E-mail: rjk (at) earthpolicy.org
>
> Research Contact:
> Janet Larsen
> Tel: (202) 496-9290 x 14
> E-mail: jlarsen (at) earthpolicy.org
>
> Earth Policy Institute
> 1350 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 403
> Washington, DC 20036
> Web: www.earthpolicy.org
>
UW-Madison News Release--Combining Ecology, History
> FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
> 4/16/08
>
> CONTACT: Nancy Langston, (608) 265-9008, nelangst@wisc.edu
>
> PROFESSOR BLENDS ECOLOGY, HISTORY TO UNDERSTAND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE
>
> MADISON - As a University of Washington graduate student in the late 1980s, Nancy Langston traveled to a national park in Zimbabwe to study an endangered bird. She came back with a resolve to know more about people.
>
> During her time in the park, a flood of refugees from neighboring Zambia had stirred fears about poaching, recalls Langston, now a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of environmental studies and forest ecology. As a result, authorities had enacted a brutal conservation strategy: Any African found inside the park would be shot on sight. At the same time, the Zimbabwean government was under intense pressure to open parklands to farming and settlement. With the country's prime agricultural lands committed to commodity crops, such as sugar, many people had little means of feeding themselves.
>
> As she learned of these tensions, Langston found herself reflecting less on birds and more on people. What was driving them into the area? Who had access to land? And, most of all, why after people arrived in a landscape did so many striking changes follow? The young ecologist-in-training soon became convinced that understanding - and hopefully reversing - environmental decline meant paying much closer attention to human communities.
>
> "I came back to America and decided I wanted to look at the intersection of history, culture and conservation," says Langston.
>
> The niche she found was environmental history, the study of the shared history of people and the land. Started by a small group of historians and ecologists a decade before Langston went to Zimbabwe, the field rests on the idea that long-term changes in the landscape have as much to do with human culture as with natural processes. Ecologists and historians were already studying human impacts in parallel, but it was the pioneers of environmental history who got them talking about "how the two fields could add to one another," says Langston.
>
> One of those early leaders was UW-Madison history and environmental studies professor William Cronon. Another was University of Washington historian Richard White, who became Langston's mentor when she decided to switch tracks.
>
> "So I got integrated into this group of people who were trying to do this new field," she says. "And I felt like the whole world opened up for me."
>
> In the years since, Langston has examined the historic roots of the forest health crisis in the western United States, as well as conflicts over management of riparian areas, the zones where land and water meet. And a current project is documenting the history of the hormone-mimicking chemicals known as endocrine disruptors, which have become ubiquitous in the environment - and consequently in us.
>
> In each study, Langston combines the quantitative data of scientists, with information gleaned from historical documents and interviews in the tradition of historians. Working across disciplines isn't easy, says forest and wildlife ecology professor David Mladenoff, who is Langston's frequent collaborator. But her background helps span the differences in language and assumptions that normally make interdisciplinary work so challenging.
>
> "What's interesting about Nancy is [since] she had almost completed a Ph.D. in ecology before she switched, as an environmental historian she's also extremely scientifically literate - I would say she's a good ecologist. Not that ecologists are somehow better," Mladenoff says with a laugh. "But it really does make communication easier."
>
> It was in a time and place where communication wasn't easy, where people's views had become too polarized to bridge, that Langston found her first chance to do environmental history. During her studies at University of Washington, she often visited a friend who worked for the U.S. Forest Service in northeastern Oregon. And there, Langston learned about the plight of the Blue Mountains.
>
> The Blues were once dominated by park-like stands of sun-loving, fire-resistant - and commercially valuable - ponderosa pine. With logging and other management practices, however, these trees had been replaced over 80 years by fir forests that were extremely fire-prone and riddled with insects. Foresters and environmentalists were both blaming each other for the calamity and arguing furiously over how to fix it. Yet, nobody really knew the history of how the changes had occurred - giving Langston her opportunity.
>
> "I thought that before we try to come to terms with each another and resolve some of these conflicts," she says, "it would be helpful to have some idea of what happened: what people did, why they did it, and what the ecological consequences were."
>
> As she unraveled the story, Langston came to terms with her own view of foresters. Her training in ecology and sympathy for environmental causes had led her to see them as people who cared little for the land beyond the resources it provided, she says. This quickly changed, though, once she began interviewing some of the older, retired Forest Service rangers and foresters who still hung around the Blues.
>
> "As soon as I started spending time with them, I realized how diverse their perspectives were, how much they loved the places where they worked, and how puzzled they were by the changes that were going on," she says." In other words, although forest management - and mismanagement - had certainly contributed to the tragedy, there were no villains. Rather, ordinary people had made decisions based on their cultural beliefs and assumptions about forests, decisions that only in retrospect seemed unsound.
>
> Langston believes such lessons about the power of our assumptions and ideals are critical - especially for scientists.
>
> "I think it's very important for us to understand the history of ideas about forests or about water," she says, "to help scientists realize that scientific ideas are never completely free of the culture or political era in which they're being developed."
>
> In her next project, Langston plans to examine the intersection of human culture with yet another sweeping environmental change: the profusion of global pollutants, such as mercury, that have made their way into water bodies - and the bodies of fish - everywhere. Fish is a healthy source of protein that we're encouraged to eat, and eating fish is also of great cultural significance to Indian tribes in the Great Lakes region. But the potential toxicity of fish today forces people to make trade-offs between their beliefs and possible harm to themselves.
>
> "How much fish do you eat when it's culturally important? How much do you eat when you're pregnant?" asks Langston. "These are terrible dilemmas people shouldn't have to face."
>
> Terrible, but also telling of how inextricably linked the fates of people and the environment truly are.
>
> ###
>
> - Madeline Fisher, (608) 890-0465, mmfisher@wisc.edu
>
>
>
> ****************************************************
> For questions or comments about UW-Madison's email
> news release system, please send an email to:
> releases@news.wisc.edu
>
> For more UW-Madison news, please visit:
> http://www.news.wisc.edu/
>
> University Communications
> University of Wisconsin-Madison
> 27 Bascom Hall
> 500 Lincoln Drive
> Madison, WI 53706
>
> Phone: (608) 262-3571
> Fax: (608) 262-2331
>
>
>
> 4/16/08
>
> CONTACT: Nancy Langston, (608) 265-9008, nelangst@wisc.edu
>
> PROFESSOR BLENDS ECOLOGY, HISTORY TO UNDERSTAND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE
>
> MADISON - As a University of Washington graduate student in the late 1980s, Nancy Langston traveled to a national park in Zimbabwe to study an endangered bird. She came back with a resolve to know more about people.
>
> During her time in the park, a flood of refugees from neighboring Zambia had stirred fears about poaching, recalls Langston, now a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of environmental studies and forest ecology. As a result, authorities had enacted a brutal conservation strategy: Any African found inside the park would be shot on sight. At the same time, the Zimbabwean government was under intense pressure to open parklands to farming and settlement. With the country's prime agricultural lands committed to commodity crops, such as sugar, many people had little means of feeding themselves.
>
> As she learned of these tensions, Langston found herself reflecting less on birds and more on people. What was driving them into the area? Who had access to land? And, most of all, why after people arrived in a landscape did so many striking changes follow? The young ecologist-in-training soon became convinced that understanding - and hopefully reversing - environmental decline meant paying much closer attention to human communities.
>
> "I came back to America and decided I wanted to look at the intersection of history, culture and conservation," says Langston.
>
> The niche she found was environmental history, the study of the shared history of people and the land. Started by a small group of historians and ecologists a decade before Langston went to Zimbabwe, the field rests on the idea that long-term changes in the landscape have as much to do with human culture as with natural processes. Ecologists and historians were already studying human impacts in parallel, but it was the pioneers of environmental history who got them talking about "how the two fields could add to one another," says Langston.
>
> One of those early leaders was UW-Madison history and environmental studies professor William Cronon. Another was University of Washington historian Richard White, who became Langston's mentor when she decided to switch tracks.
>
> "So I got integrated into this group of people who were trying to do this new field," she says. "And I felt like the whole world opened up for me."
>
> In the years since, Langston has examined the historic roots of the forest health crisis in the western United States, as well as conflicts over management of riparian areas, the zones where land and water meet. And a current project is documenting the history of the hormone-mimicking chemicals known as endocrine disruptors, which have become ubiquitous in the environment - and consequently in us.
>
> In each study, Langston combines the quantitative data of scientists, with information gleaned from historical documents and interviews in the tradition of historians. Working across disciplines isn't easy, says forest and wildlife ecology professor David Mladenoff, who is Langston's frequent collaborator. But her background helps span the differences in language and assumptions that normally make interdisciplinary work so challenging.
>
> "What's interesting about Nancy is [since] she had almost completed a Ph.D. in ecology before she switched, as an environmental historian she's also extremely scientifically literate - I would say she's a good ecologist. Not that ecologists are somehow better," Mladenoff says with a laugh. "But it really does make communication easier."
>
> It was in a time and place where communication wasn't easy, where people's views had become too polarized to bridge, that Langston found her first chance to do environmental history. During her studies at University of Washington, she often visited a friend who worked for the U.S. Forest Service in northeastern Oregon. And there, Langston learned about the plight of the Blue Mountains.
>
> The Blues were once dominated by park-like stands of sun-loving, fire-resistant - and commercially valuable - ponderosa pine. With logging and other management practices, however, these trees had been replaced over 80 years by fir forests that were extremely fire-prone and riddled with insects. Foresters and environmentalists were both blaming each other for the calamity and arguing furiously over how to fix it. Yet, nobody really knew the history of how the changes had occurred - giving Langston her opportunity.
>
> "I thought that before we try to come to terms with each another and resolve some of these conflicts," she says, "it would be helpful to have some idea of what happened: what people did, why they did it, and what the ecological consequences were."
>
> As she unraveled the story, Langston came to terms with her own view of foresters. Her training in ecology and sympathy for environmental causes had led her to see them as people who cared little for the land beyond the resources it provided, she says. This quickly changed, though, once she began interviewing some of the older, retired Forest Service rangers and foresters who still hung around the Blues.
>
> "As soon as I started spending time with them, I realized how diverse their perspectives were, how much they loved the places where they worked, and how puzzled they were by the changes that were going on," she says." In other words, although forest management - and mismanagement - had certainly contributed to the tragedy, there were no villains. Rather, ordinary people had made decisions based on their cultural beliefs and assumptions about forests, decisions that only in retrospect seemed unsound.
>
> Langston believes such lessons about the power of our assumptions and ideals are critical - especially for scientists.
>
> "I think it's very important for us to understand the history of ideas about forests or about water," she says, "to help scientists realize that scientific ideas are never completely free of the culture or political era in which they're being developed."
>
> In her next project, Langston plans to examine the intersection of human culture with yet another sweeping environmental change: the profusion of global pollutants, such as mercury, that have made their way into water bodies - and the bodies of fish - everywhere. Fish is a healthy source of protein that we're encouraged to eat, and eating fish is also of great cultural significance to Indian tribes in the Great Lakes region. But the potential toxicity of fish today forces people to make trade-offs between their beliefs and possible harm to themselves.
>
> "How much fish do you eat when it's culturally important? How much do you eat when you're pregnant?" asks Langston. "These are terrible dilemmas people shouldn't have to face."
>
> Terrible, but also telling of how inextricably linked the fates of people and the environment truly are.
>
> ###
>
> - Madeline Fisher, (608) 890-0465, mmfisher@wisc.edu
>
>
>
> ****************************************************
> For questions or comments about UW-Madison's email
> news release system, please send an email to:
> releases@news.wisc.edu
>
> For more UW-Madison news, please visit:
> http://www.news.wisc.edu/
>
> University Communications
> University of Wisconsin-Madison
> 27 Bascom Hall
> 500 Lincoln Drive
> Madison, WI 53706
>
> Phone: (608) 262-3571
> Fax: (608) 262-2331
>
>
>
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
04/15/2008 TO Enviro-news
UN Body Urges Agriculture Reforms to Stave Off Food Crisis
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041508C.shtml
Angela Balakrishnan, of The Guardian UK, writes, "A UN body today called on world leaders to urgently reform farming rules to boost the state of global agriculture and prevent a food crisis that could threaten international security and the fight against poverty. The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) said in a report that failing to take action would put future generations in jeopardy."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041508C.shtml
Angela Balakrishnan, of The Guardian UK, writes, "A UN body today called on world leaders to urgently reform farming rules to boost the state of global agriculture and prevent a food crisis that could threaten international security and the fight against poverty. The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) said in a report that failing to take action would put future generations in jeopardy."
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Initial Thoughts On "The Great warming"
I honestly think that we can change the world together, for the better, and get a lot of enjoyment, satisfaction, and fulfillment out of the effort. Additionally, I think that the effort can form the basis for a lot of common ground between people who currently feel divided, and restore our sense of community and connectedness in the process. It can give us a common focus, a common problem, instead of a common "enemy."
I just finished watching "The Great Warming," a film on the scale of "An Inconvenient Truth," but with as much solution presentation as problem presentation. It's narrated by Keaneau Reeves and Alannis Morrisette. It will be one of the films I am reviewing for the Sundance Channel, and airs in late spring of this year.
What I found inspiring about the film at first glance was how it presented the growing evangelical movement toward environmental stewardship based on both religious reasoning and science. This gave me a great sense of hope. All over the world, the "grass roots" are waking up to the problem in a big way, across all walks of life. The "green age" is coming. The only question is if we will move collectively fast enough.
I firmly believe that we must work to educate and break down barriers to common ground and effort being established. We need to work together to push public policy and private action in a sustainable direction, and I believe we can.
No situation, political, cultural, or economic is static. Change is coming, and each of us must lend shoulders to the oars and tiller of this great ship to turn our course. I see many positive signs, and all one has to do is look and learn to see the course.
The little things add up - it took a huge collection of individual decisions and actions to get where we are, and it will take the same to get where we will go. The difference is knowledge, and in this early part of the green age, every one of us that can show a way forward to even one other makes a difference that adds to the overall result.
Seeds of change are sprouting - and we need to nourish them.
Dan
Decorate, Water
I really wanted to write about this first episode a week ago, before it first aired on The Sundance Channel, but it was just impossible to get to. Still, you can view it online at http://www.sundancechannel.com/films/500317026 - the episode is entitled "Decorate." (Next Television Showing: Sun day, April 13, 3:00PM on the Sundance Channel)
Decorate follows the base format of the "Big Ideas For A Small Planet" series, using three examples of people following the principles it teaches. First, we see an interior designer who utilizes low-VOC paints, post-consumer re-manufactured tiles, recycled wood, appliances, furniture, and even knick-knacks to remodel three vacation "cottages" for a couple wanting to do a green re-do before opening for business. The results are a stunning showcase of what is possible using these methods.
Next, we turn to a world of natural cork - literally, if these designers had their way. From soft, comfortable lounge chairs to large salad bowls, the depths of this wonderfully renewable and recyclable material are explored and will amaze you.
Finally, one designer turns to nature for inspiration, with exotic results that are organic, graceful, durable, and recyclable.
In "Water," the Sundance Channel brings home the issues with water that are starting to loom larger and larger in this world. From severe droughts in California and the lower Mississippi Basin states to epochal drought in Australia and China's remote provinces, clean, fresh water is fast becoming one of the most precious resources on the planet. The situation is only made harder as human populations climb ever-higher.
Water takes a look at solutions, from an ingenious mobile desalination plant that can turn sea water into fresh where ever in the world it is needed, (Remember Katrina?) to rainwater systems that could potentially catch billions of gallons of fresh water that are now just running off our roof tops. Additionally, there is a young entrepreneur who is cleaning up the water we do have, in our streams and rivers across the USA. The film airs this Tuesday evening on the Sundance Channel at 9pm Eastern & Pacific, and also can be seen online at http://www.sundancechannel.com/films/500317044 .
What really felt good to me about these short documentaries (30 minutes each) was the upbeat, can-do attitude you get right away, and are left with. There are solutions to these problems, and we can tackle them together. It can also be financially and emotionally rewarding and soul-satisfying to do so. That is the message of these early Green-Age films, and definitely, watch these films!
Watch this space for further reviews of films in this series.
Dan Stafford
Publisher - The Great Lakes Zephyr - Wind Energy & Hydrogen Journal
http://www.whizzyrds.com/Windblog.html
Decorate follows the base format of the "Big Ideas For A Small Planet" series, using three examples of people following the principles it teaches. First, we see an interior designer who utilizes low-VOC paints, post-consumer re-manufactured tiles, recycled wood, appliances, furniture, and even knick-knacks to remodel three vacation "cottages" for a couple wanting to do a green re-do before opening for business. The results are a stunning showcase of what is possible using these methods.
Next, we turn to a world of natural cork - literally, if these designers had their way. From soft, comfortable lounge chairs to large salad bowls, the depths of this wonderfully renewable and recyclable material are explored and will amaze you.
Finally, one designer turns to nature for inspiration, with exotic results that are organic, graceful, durable, and recyclable.
In "Water," the Sundance Channel brings home the issues with water that are starting to loom larger and larger in this world. From severe droughts in California and the lower Mississippi Basin states to epochal drought in Australia and China's remote provinces, clean, fresh water is fast becoming one of the most precious resources on the planet. The situation is only made harder as human populations climb ever-higher.
Water takes a look at solutions, from an ingenious mobile desalination plant that can turn sea water into fresh where ever in the world it is needed, (Remember Katrina?) to rainwater systems that could potentially catch billions of gallons of fresh water that are now just running off our roof tops. Additionally, there is a young entrepreneur who is cleaning up the water we do have, in our streams and rivers across the USA. The film airs this Tuesday evening on the Sundance Channel at 9pm Eastern & Pacific, and also can be seen online at http://www.sundancechannel.com/films/500317044 .
What really felt good to me about these short documentaries (30 minutes each) was the upbeat, can-do attitude you get right away, and are left with. There are solutions to these problems, and we can tackle them together. It can also be financially and emotionally rewarding and soul-satisfying to do so. That is the message of these early Green-Age films, and definitely, watch these films!
Watch this space for further reviews of films in this series.
Dan Stafford
Publisher - The Great Lakes Zephyr - Wind Energy & Hydrogen Journal
http://www.whizzyrds.com/Windblog.html
Thursday, April 10, 2008
UW-Madison News Release--Run Benefits El Salvador Project
> FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
> 4/10/08
>
> CONTACT: Jim Beal, (608) 263-0611, jbeal@engr.wisc.edu
>
> PI MILE RUN BENEFITS WELL WATER PROJECT IN EL SALVADOR
>
> MADISON - As 255 University of Wisconsin-Madison students and community members thundered down the Lakeshore Path on the first warm Saturday morning in April, they dodged muddy puddles and happy pedestrians out for a weekend walk along Lake Mendota.
>
> The runners' motivation? A worthy cause and several hundred slices of pie waiting at the finish line.
>
> April 5 was the eighth annual Pi Mile Run, hosted by the UW-Madison chapter of Tau Beta Pi, an engineering honor society. This year boasted double the attendance of last year's event, with participants running in either a 5k (3.14 miles) or 10k race.
>
> All race proceeds go toward a clean water project in El Salvador.
>
> Mechanical engineering student Ted Durkee, who coordinated the 2007 run, connected the honor society with the El Salvador project. Two summers ago, Durkee traveled to El Salvador to work with ENLACE, a nonprofit organization that develops sustainable initiatives in El Salvador.
>
> Currently, families in the communities of Las Delicias, Las Animas and El Rosario spend a third of their meager income trucking in water - yet, the water comes from one of the most polluted rivers in El Salvador.
>
> During his stay in El Salvador, Durkee learned that community residents have been trying to get clean water for more than 50 years. The three communities, which combined have a population of 6,100, now are working together on their attempts to build a well water system. They finally developed formal plans in 2002.
>
> Although the communities have the will to implement the project and ENLACE provides organizational support, they lack the finances to get the wells and pipes in place.
>
> Biomedical engineering student Jessica Hause organized the 2008 Pi Mile Run, with help from Durkee and biomedical engineering student Sarah Steenblock. As in 2007, they again chose the Las Delicias water project as the charity to benefit from race sponsors and registration fees. "We volunteered for this because we were really excited about the opportunity to organize a community event and help fulfill a need that will directly change people's lives," Durkee says.
>
> The strong turnout means Tau Beta Pi will donate about $4,000 - an amount that will make a significant difference. Every $20 equals 8 feet of pipe for the well system, according to Hause.
>
> A variety of sponsors, including URS Washington Division; Graef, Anhalt, Schloemer and Associates Inc.; Polygon Engineering Council; Saris Cycling Group; Rudolph & Sletten Inc; Underground Printing; Fontana Sports; Montgomery Associates; and Hey and Associates Inc., also helped make the Pi Mile Run a success, says Durkee.
>
> "We were really excited and pleasantly surprised by the generosity of our sponsors this year. That definitely had a tremendous effect on the event and enabled us to make a much bigger impact on our chosen charity," he says.
> ###
> - Sandra Knisely, (608) 262-2481, perspective@engr.wisc.edu
>
>
>
> ****************************************************
> For questions or comments about UW-Madison's email
> news release system, please send an email to:
> releases@news.wisc.edu
>
> For more UW-Madison news, please visit:
> http://www.news.wisc.edu/
>
> University Communications
> University of Wisconsin-Madison
> 27 Bascom Hall
> 500 Lincoln Drive
> Madison, WI 53706
>
> Phone: (608) 262-3571
> Fax: (608) 262-2331
>
>
>
> 4/10/08
>
> CONTACT: Jim Beal, (608) 263-0611, jbeal@engr.wisc.edu
>
> PI MILE RUN BENEFITS WELL WATER PROJECT IN EL SALVADOR
>
> MADISON - As 255 University of Wisconsin-Madison students and community members thundered down the Lakeshore Path on the first warm Saturday morning in April, they dodged muddy puddles and happy pedestrians out for a weekend walk along Lake Mendota.
>
> The runners' motivation? A worthy cause and several hundred slices of pie waiting at the finish line.
>
> April 5 was the eighth annual Pi Mile Run, hosted by the UW-Madison chapter of Tau Beta Pi, an engineering honor society. This year boasted double the attendance of last year's event, with participants running in either a 5k (3.14 miles) or 10k race.
>
> All race proceeds go toward a clean water project in El Salvador.
>
> Mechanical engineering student Ted Durkee, who coordinated the 2007 run, connected the honor society with the El Salvador project. Two summers ago, Durkee traveled to El Salvador to work with ENLACE, a nonprofit organization that develops sustainable initiatives in El Salvador.
>
> Currently, families in the communities of Las Delicias, Las Animas and El Rosario spend a third of their meager income trucking in water - yet, the water comes from one of the most polluted rivers in El Salvador.
>
> During his stay in El Salvador, Durkee learned that community residents have been trying to get clean water for more than 50 years. The three communities, which combined have a population of 6,100, now are working together on their attempts to build a well water system. They finally developed formal plans in 2002.
>
> Although the communities have the will to implement the project and ENLACE provides organizational support, they lack the finances to get the wells and pipes in place.
>
> Biomedical engineering student Jessica Hause organized the 2008 Pi Mile Run, with help from Durkee and biomedical engineering student Sarah Steenblock. As in 2007, they again chose the Las Delicias water project as the charity to benefit from race sponsors and registration fees. "We volunteered for this because we were really excited about the opportunity to organize a community event and help fulfill a need that will directly change people's lives," Durkee says.
>
> The strong turnout means Tau Beta Pi will donate about $4,000 - an amount that will make a significant difference. Every $20 equals 8 feet of pipe for the well system, according to Hause.
>
> A variety of sponsors, including URS Washington Division; Graef, Anhalt, Schloemer and Associates Inc.; Polygon Engineering Council; Saris Cycling Group; Rudolph & Sletten Inc; Underground Printing; Fontana Sports; Montgomery Associates; and Hey and Associates Inc., also helped make the Pi Mile Run a success, says Durkee.
>
> "We were really excited and pleasantly surprised by the generosity of our sponsors this year. That definitely had a tremendous effect on the event and enabled us to make a much bigger impact on our chosen charity," he says.
> ###
> - Sandra Knisely, (608) 262-2481, perspective@engr.wisc.edu
>
>
>
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> University Communications
> University of Wisconsin-Madison
> 27 Bascom Hall
> 500 Lincoln Drive
> Madison, WI 53706
>
> Phone: (608) 262-3571
> Fax: (608) 262-2331
>
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