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Apprehension, not celebration, greets this World Environment Day

Saturday, June 5th, 2010

Aurora, Colo., tornado (Photo: Brittany McKown) It’s World Environment Day, and all I can think about is how the Gulf oil disaster has been book-ended by two environmental commemorations. The BP oil well blew out two days before Earth Day in April, though it was barely covered in the news until a few days later when people realized that oil was leaking into the ocean unabated. (In the back of our minds, we tend to assume that someone has a plan for these contingencies. Surprise! No plan.)

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Pesticides, ADHD and what we can do about it

Monday, May 17th, 2010

After reading today’s news about yet another study linking pesticides to yet another health issue, in this case ADHD, I thought maybe this time, we’ll pay attention to this dark undercurrent in modern life. Perhaps now, with 3-7 percent of kids affected by ADHD, and the disorder possibly triggered by pesticide exposure, we’ll finally see that it really is something in the water — and the food — that’s causing this crisis.

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Kerry-Lieberman bill arrives, limp but breathing

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

Nearly nine months in the making, the Kerry-Lieberman clean energy bill has been born, and is available for nursery viewings in the U.S. Senate. The little bundle, some 987 pages long, has been received with polite congratulations. But in all honesty, some of the viewers seem to be silently whispering: “God what an ugly baby!” And some are visibly put off.

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Offshore wind or offshore oil?

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

Up around Cape Cod, they were so worried about how the Cape Wind project might affect their views, or more precisely, their property values, that the opposition to this groundbreaking project dragged on and on. It took nine years to get final approval, which came yesterday from the Department of the Interior. Two years ago we ran a story about another wind project, in nearby Hull, Mass., where the vast majority of residents are quite pleased with their money-saving wind turbines, which are a lot more up close and view-affecting than the Cape Wind project will ever be. Richard Miller, operations manager of the Hull Municipal Light Plant (HMLP), said then: “There has been no resistance on the part of the residents.” Perhaps wind is a little less intimidating once it’s saving your school district $20K a year.

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Earth Day flying under the radar

Monday, April 26th, 2010

Today, I’d hoped to write a story about the big Earth Day celebration in D.C. with its war cries for a climate bill — or climate solutions. Indeed, there was a major 40th Anniversary Earth Day celebration in D.C. Tens of thousands attended. And there were calls for change. But sadly, this event seems not to have captured the imagination of the media.

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Climate change speeds up and Americans don’t believe it

Friday, April 16th, 2010

There’s a big disconnect when it comes to climate change in the U.S. Seems we’re too busy arguing along partisan political lines or trying to dig our way out of the recession to notice that the world… as we know it… is melting. Sounds overly dramatic, right? But let’s look at some of the headlines from a few credible news sources.

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Obama OK’s offshore oil drilling, launching an era of energy pragmatism?

Thursday, April 1st, 2010

By Barbara Kessler

With President Obama’s announcement that he supports opening vast new areas to offshore oil and gas drilling, it is certain that environmentalists will react. But how?

Some will attack the president’s grating tendency to appease oil interests, as he has already done with the coal and nuclear industries. (And what old-energy concern is even left to mollify now?)

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Another reason to consider the meat we eat

Friday, February 12th, 2010

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

Recently I was hashing over with a family member about the reasons people are vegetarians, or vegans or mostly veggie. We agreed that people get off the meat, for a variety of reasons, often complex and intertwined, regardless of whether they’re just cutting way back or drawing a hard line deep in vegan territory.

(Image: FoodandWaterWatch.org.)

I proposed that health reasons were the paramount motivator, given the United States’ high rate of heart disease, still the number one killer here. Not to mention our obesity issues. And I was about to further dominate the conversation when my companion blurted that he thought more people were primarily motivated by animal rights concerns, followed by health reasons. Vegetarians think that way, he said.

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Green campuses, future generations and cap and trade

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

Green news is just streaming out these days, like a ticker tape parade, but without the paper waste.

Carleton College, in Northfield, Minn.

First on my notes, the College Sustainability Report Card people have issued their 2010 list of schools making A’s for green initiatives. Actually, no campus has earned an A yet, but 27 are getting A-’s for a range of innovative efforts. My native Minnesota has propelled Carleton College, Macalester College and the University of Minnesota into the top ranks. Uffda, that’s exciting.

Depending on your roots and alma mater, you’ll likely find a campus to cheer on. The sheer diversity of activities being launched — from eco-peer training to building retrofits to food co-ops — makes our mouth water for local food and a pesticide-free place to eat it. Kudos to the Gen Y’ers and administrations behind all this.

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Let the sun shine in: See our new solar tunnel

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

By Barbara Kessler

I’ll save the puns and bragging about what a bright idea it was to illuminate a dark interior room with a solar tube. I’ll just cut right to the details of how the process worked, for those who want to know.

Home office before solar tunnel; a dark spot

First, a couple guys, or one guy, (or it could be a woman, but the two companies we got bids from sent guys) poke around in the attic above the approximate place where the solar tube will have to travel to carry outside light through the attic and into your dim and dreary space below.

In our case, the installer we chose, a fellow named Juan who has been putting in solar tubes for more than a decade, immediately went to work advising us on the positioning of the tube and assuring us that the light would be sufficiently diffused. He saw that we would be limited by the placement of the furnace in the attic above. But he found a way to angle the tube past a beam and some duct work, so that we could have the light installed where we needed it.

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