“I went to Iraq believing in the mission, and now I realize we were lied to,” Juan Beltran says in this video “We can’t be dependent on oil.” When Juan was deployed to Iraq, departing from his wife and daughter, it was with a wholehearted belief in the good of serving his country. Tragically, a helicopter crash broke Beltran’s neck, leaving him quadriplegic. Now, back home, he views the war in a much different light. Wanting to move toward a sustainable future for his family, and set an example others can follow, Beltran has enlisted the help of generous volunteers to turn his Chino, California property into an eco-friendly, self-sufficient farm.
The home is being remodeled with the likes of solar panels, LED lighting and a more efficient design. The Beltran’s have goats that keep the grass short and provide fertilizer, hens that provide a free daily breakfast, and a vegetable garden.
Beltran is a beacon of inspiration and hope, expressing that he harbors no bitterness about what happened to him: “I’m happy with my wife and my daughter, and this beautiful house that I have, even if I’m in this condition — It doesn’t matter.”
Visiting spouses will also tour Stone Barns Center, a New York farm and education center.
On Friday, September 24th, First Lady Michelle Obama will host a special event for the spouses of Chiefs of State and Heads of Government participating in the United Nations General Assembly at the Stone Barns Center, a non-profit farm and education center north of New York City. Spouses will take tours of the farm where they will see herbs and other ingredients that will be used in the luncheon that follows at “Blue Hill at Stone Barns,” a world-renowned restaurant at the Center. Spouses will also be introduced to Stone Barns Center’s one of a kind children’s education program, where students from a local school will demonstrate their experiences in hands-on farming such as harvesting vegetables and collecting eggs from pasture-raised hens.
Mrs. Obama will deliver brief remarks at the luncheon and will be followed by Dan Barber, the Executive Chef and Co-Owner of Blue Hill. This event begins at 11:00 AM and will be pooled press by domestic and international media.
Stone Barns Center is part of a national movement to create a sustainable food system that benefits the community’s health and environment. The Center teaches children, farmers, chefs and thousands of annual visitors about a better way of growing food. Located in Pocantico Hills, New York, the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture is a working farm with a mission: To celebrate, teach and advance community-based food production and the enjoyment of fresh, nutritious food.
WHITE HOUSE GARDENS
Last fall, Mrs. Obama invited spouses of leaders attending the Pittsburgh Summit to dinner at the home of Teresa Heinz at Rosemont Farm, a working farm that raises livestock and produces fruits and vegetables, some of which were used in the meal. Last spring, Mrs. Obama broke ground on the new White House Kitchen garden with students from a local Washington, DC school. Since then, the garden has yielded 1,600 pounds of vegetables, berries and herbs which have been used in various White House events and donated to local soup kitchens.
Prince Charles’s Charities Foundation begins a new nationwide initiative calledSTART to promote and celebrate sustainable green living across the the United Kingdom. With START, the objective is to present an inspiring picture of a sustainable future. The program will do this by highlighting the very best examples of sustainable practice in the UK, and showing how everyone can make positive changes right now.
During 2010, Start will grow into a vibrant and diverse program, which will engage people right across the UK. Some topics include recycling, saving water, saving energy, using renewable energy and healthy living ideas.
Inspired by Prince Charles, IBM will host a Sustainability Conference” Smarter Business for a Sustainable Future” to begin Wednesday September 8, 2010 in London. It will illustrate the challenges faced and provide an inspiring new starting point from which to build a smarter and more socially, economically and environmentally sustainable future. The Summit will be an exclusive opportunity for leaders in business and government, academics and subject matter experts to gather behind closed doors to work towards a set of actionable recommendations for business in the UK. IBM is one of the founding partners of Start along with Addison Lee, ASDA, B&Q, BT, EDF Energy, M&S, Virgin Money and Waitrose.
The Alaska cruise industry is having trouble getting traction with legislators to abolish a strict water-pollution rule approved by voters in 2006, Anchorage Daily News reports.
The cruise lines and some communities see the environmental rule as detrimental to tourism.
The 2006 law requires cruise ships to meet tougher pollution standards and puts new taxes, fees and environmental monitoring on the industry. It also bans cruise lines from applying for state permission to use mixing zones. Mixing zones allow cruise lines to discharge pollution that exceed the state’s water-quality standards. The mixing ban for cruise lines goes into effect in 2009.
House Minority Leader Beth Kerttula, D-Juneau, says revising the pollution rules may be a hard sell and seems premature because the cruise lines have until next year to comply.
Cruise ships emit three times more CO2 than airplanes, EL reported last year.
Cruise ships contend they are working hard to lessen their environmental impact. Royal Caribbean said it had installed advanced water purification systems on board and smokeless gas-turbine engines and that it also burns bio-fuel when available.
INCEPTION ON A ROLL
“SOLARMOBIL” – solar-power vehicle
The association that runs Freiburg’s (Germany)
“play bus” travels round visiting children. The
Solarmobil runs off solar power.
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Urban farming is catching on in New Orleans
Linked by Michael Levenston
Jane Stubbs poses for a photo with her chickens, Breakfast, left, Lunch, center, and Dinner, right, at her home in New Orleans. Photo by Rusty Costanza, The Times-Picayune.
This is a neighborhood that doesn’t have a grocery store - By Matt Davis, The Times-Picayune
“It would be great if everyone on this block had some kind of animal and grew vegetables. We could be almost self-sufficient,” said Frank Carter, an engineering technician who trained with the farm network and keeps 12 chickens with his wife, Laura Reiff, in a 60-by-50-foot foot pen in their backyard in Algiers. Their chicken breeds include Rhode Island Reds, Brown Leghorns, and even a Buff Orpington — ordered via the U.S. Postal Service from a breeder in Texas.
“The post office called us at 8 o’clock in the evening and said, ‘We have your live chickens,’ ” Carter said. ” ‘They’re peeping.’ ”
As well as the chickens, Carter and Reiff grow peaches, grapefruit, peppers, watermelons, blueberries, tomatoes, persimmons, figs and bananas. They also have a bee hive that produced 50 pounds of honey this year.
The chickens are “very entertaining to watch,” Reiff said, although there is still some resistance among the couple’s friends to taking the eggs. Some say they’ll eat only white eggs, not the blue eggs from the Brown Leghorns. Others are concerned about cracking an egg open to find a chicken embryo, which is impossible unless a broody hen has sat on a fertilized egg for at least a month.
Jenga Mwendo runs the Guerilla Garden in the Lower 9th Ward. Once a vacant lot, Mwendo petitioned the city to let her buy it for $4,000 last year, and since then, more than 400 volunteers have developed the plot into a working farm producing fresh vegetables.
“This is a neighborhood that doesn’t have a grocery store,” Mwendo said. “And yet a couple of generations ago, everybody had fruit trees in their yards. We’re just trying to preserve and encourage that tradition.”
Frank Carter collects chicken eggs from his coop at his Algiers home. When it comes to raising and slaughtering livestock, New Orleans also affords unique opportunities for free experimentation. Simply put, the New Orleans Police Department seems to have bigger fish to fry than cracking down on urban farmers.
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BP set to begin oil drilling off Libya
The Gulf of Mexico spill has raised serious safety concerns for BP. Oil giant BP has confirmed it will begin drilling off the Libyan coast in the next few weeks.
The deepwater drilling will take place in the Gulf of Sirte following a deal signed in 2007 with Libya on oil and gas development.
The news comes amid major concerns over BP’s environmental and safety record following the Gulf of Mexico spill. It also follows claims, denied by BP, that it lobbied for Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi’s release. The Libyan was convicted of blowing up a Pan Am jumbo jet over the Scottish town in 1988, killing 270 people, but was freed by the Scottish government on medical grounds last August.
When the deal with Libya’s National Oil Company was announced in 2007 BP set a minimum initial exploration commitment of $900m.Chief executive Tony Hayward at the time hailed it as “BP’s single biggest exploration commitment” and “a welcome return to the country for BP after more than 30 years”.
BP spokesman David Nicholas told AFP news agency on Saturday: “We expect to begin the first well in the next few weeks”, adding that the wells “can take six months or more to drill”.
When we think about sustainable living and renewable energy it’s easy to first think about solar, wind and electric vehicles being powered by photovoltaic systems, ion batteries and recharging stations. The possibilities are limitless. These solutions are crucial as the country continues to go green. One idea that is getting increased attention is rainwater harvesting.
Rainwater harvesting is the accumulating and storing, of rainwater. Rainwater collected from the roofs of houses, tents and local institutions, or from specially prepared areas of ground. In some cases, rainwater may be the only available, or economical, water source. Rainwater systems are simple to construct from inexpensive local materials, and are potentially successful in most habitable locations. Roof rainwater can be of good quality and may not require treatment before consumption. Although some rooftop materials may produce rainwater that is harmful to human health, it can be useful in washing clothes, watering plants and in other tasks.
There are a number of types of systems to harvest rainwater ranging from very simple to the complex industrial systems. Generally, rainwater is either gathered from the ground or from a roof. The rate at which water can be collected from either system is dependent on the plan area of the system, its efficiency, and the intensity of rainfall.
Going green is a way for us to rethink about how we live…Things that make you go
A fake oil tycoon. The biggest sports event in the world. A Formula One racing team. What do they have in common? They’re all part of branding initiatives by solar panel makers seeking to make their names in a fast-growing industry.
The biggest news that heralded the first day of Intersolar North America, a solar-energy trade show and conference in San Francisco July 11-15 that drew more than 20,000 attendees, was a video of Larry Hagman, who played a Texas oilman in the old nighttime soap, Dallas. German solar panel maker SolarWorld managed to lure national media and local bloggers to a press event with the promise that a “former oil tycoon will give a keynote address calling for radical change within the U.S. energy market.”
Some reporters thought SolarWorld would produce someone who made a fortune in black gold. In real life. But Hagman showed up instead in the video, which contained the slogan “shine, baby, shine,” a solar counterpoint to Sarah Palin’s “drill, baby, drill.” Read More
Is a $200 million innovation experiment where businesses, entrepreneurs, innovators and students
share their best ideas on how to build the next-generation power grid – and just might get funded.
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BP Fall Fashion
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Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins
Green For All
As Senators enter the final rounds of negotiations on the climate and energy bill,
big utility companies are apparently making unconscionable demands that threaten the
health and safety of all Americans.
From trading carbon limits for relaxing smog, mercury and acid rain pollutants to
bargaining away Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to protect America from
dirty air and water, *these demands are unacceptable*.
And, if the bill limits the ability of the EPA to enforce greenhouse gas regulation,
or worse limits its ability to enforce regulation of mercury and ozone, the American
people will suffer immediate and long-term health consequences, from asthma to early
death.
The American people deserve a climate and energy bill that not only improves air
quality, but also creates jobs that will help pull the economy out of recession.
This bill is in danger of doing neither.
If the Senate can get this right, this historic climate and energy bill will
maintain our clean air protections, while opening the door to a new era: one in
which our nation is no longer addicted to dirty, dangerous fuels; no longer
dependent on overseas supplies of oil; and finally able to put millions to work in
clean, new industries.
Ever heard of Freiburg in Germany? It is a city of 200,000 inhabitants nestled near the intriguing Black Forrest. It has the distinction of being known as the world’sgreenest city. In 1994, Rolf Disch built the Heliotrope. The epitome of living with renewable energy and a sustainable lifestyle, the Heliotrope was the world’s first home to create more energy than it uses, as it physically rotates with the sun to maximize its solar intake. Rolf Disch is a German architect, solar pioneer and environmental activist who has contributed greatly to the advancement and efficiency of solar architecture internationally.
Robert Disch
Both Freiburg’s high quality of life and distinctive local culture contribute to the city’s green reputation. Its “green city” moniker is overwhelmingly the result of an intense commitment to environmental sustainability on the part of the city government, local businesses, and Freiburgers.
Freiburg’s history as a green community began over 40 years ago in the late 1960s with the introduction of a citywide sustainable transportation policy. Catalyzed by the anti-nuclear movement of the 1970s, Freiburg began to explore renewable energy alternatives and environmentally friendly development over the subsequent decades. Today, local government policies encourage the development of an environmental economy in Freiburg; nearly 10,000 residents are currently employed in green industries, contributing over 500 million Euros to the economy each year. Freiburg is the largest city in Europe to have a Green Party mayor, Lord Mayor Dr. Dieter Soloman. Living in Freiburg, it is impossible to miss the proof of the city’s commitment to environmentalism. The city of Freiburg exhibited at the InterSolar show in San Francisco. – Michael Fisher, ‘11, contributor.
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OBAMA SIGNS OFF ON NATIONS’ LARGEST SOLAR PROJECT
SOLANO SOLAR POWER PLANT – ARIZONA
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QUESTPOINT GOES MOBILE – Beta
Just log in from your iPhone, Blackberry or mobile device to get the latest stories, audio and video.
Just Google QuestPoint on your mobile. Then click the link!
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In Deepwater: A report back from the Gulf with Riki Ott and Diane Wilson
“I went to Iraq believing in the mission, and now I realize we were lied to,” Juan Beltran says in this video “We can’t be dependent on oil.” When Juan was deployed to Iraq, departing from his wife and daughter, it was with a wholehearted belief in the good of serving his country. Tragically, a helicopter crash broke Beltran’s neck, leaving him quadriplegic. Now, back home, he views the war in a much different light. Wanting to move toward a sustainable future for his family, and set an example others can follow, Beltran has enlisted the help of generous volunteers to turn his Chino, California property into an eco-friendly, self-sufficient farm.
