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Vol. 11 Issue 24…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…June 15, 2008
Intuit's Vibe
Erylynn's Poem
By Erylynn
Global Warming isn't hard to explain
It leaves Mother Earth
Crying with
excruciating pain.
This hurts our planet in every single way
The changes could leave us
All in sorrow and
dismay.
We need to stop it now
So the temperature doesn't rise
People, plants, and
animals would be in demise.
Changes in temperature
Due to the depleting ozone layer
We really don't need
it so show us that you care.
Mother Nature can't do it all
So let's give her a rest.
We all need to try
and do what is best.
Our planet earth is precious and can't be replaced
We need to act now or
our home will be erased.
About
Me: Erylynn is a student is Ms Dore's fifth grade class (Hawaii, USA).
Ms. Dore's students wrote poems on global warming as part of Green/Eco-Kids Say
It With Words. For more of the poems, stories and ideas about the environment
from kids worldwide, visit www.childrenoftheearth.org.
A Visionary Green Community
Cadmus Construction is an
architectural design, landscape, construction and development shop. Its current
project is Weatherford Place, a 1.6 acres site bordering Crossville Creek in
Roswell, Georgia. When completed, the green community will include eight homes
or EcoCrafts, designed to a platinum LEED (Leadership in Energy and
Environmental Design) level, green space, a community gazebo, back-up generator
and garden.
Simone du Boise, an architect, business partner Dan Downey and designer Denise
Donahue are the visionaries behind Weatherford Place. At Cadmus, according to
Donahue, "We don't think the world needs another developer or builder or
general contractor or even another architect. We think the world needs
environmental stewards."
These environmental stewards are creating a first of its kind 'solar community
of net-zero energy homes.' Each residence will generate more power than it
consumes and use less energy than typical homes. According to du Boise,
"the solar energy generated gets put on the power grid. Georgia Power
credits each home for the power it generates."
With careful attention to every detail from lighting to plumbing, each of the
eight state-of-the-art green homes will contain an underground cistern to
capture rainwater, a manual dumbwaiter to move laundry and other items from
floor to floor, as well as monitors and sensors to track fuel efficiency and
environmental conditions.
The visionary green community is named in honor of Louis Weatherford, who
originally owned the property. A gardener/farmer, Weatherford recycled seeds
from the vegetables and fruit he grew. To continue the cycle of life,
homeowners at Weatherford Place will receive a bag of seeds from his garden and
become lifetime members of the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper.
According to Donahue, "This is the beginning of a movement. It's about
making something good happen in the world." For more information on this
visionary green community, visit www.weatherfordplace.com.
(Source: Residences a new definition for green community by Maria Saporta, The
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 06/09/08)
Dr. Tim Sparks:
Phenologist
Fascinated by the work of phenologist,
Robert Marsham (1708-1797), Dr. Tim Sparks has single-handedly revolutionized
the approach to studying climate change. Phenology is the study of the timing
of natural events. Marsham, who recorded 27 signs of spring in 1736, left a
legacy continued by successive generations of his family well into the 20th
century. Their recordings provide a wealth of knowledge about how spring is
influenced by prevailing weather conditions. Today, this information is hugely
important in the effort to understand climate change.
The holder of four degrees -- BA in statistics, MA in applied statistics, MA in
operational research and PhD in environmental sciences-- Dr. Sparks'
serendipitous encounter with Marsham's recordings of spring events in Norfolk,
England showed a clear behavioral response by plants and animals to changes in
environmental temperature (phenology). After studying large numbers of data
sets on plants and animals, Sparks corroborated Marsham's data, and based on
the trends, he concluded springs began arriving earlier in recent decades. His
observations included tree leafing, flowering, migration of birds, spring
appearance of insects and amphibians, as well as lawn cutting, bird egg laying
and so on.
A researcher with the Centre for
Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, Sparks is currently
working on a diverse range of topics including migration and breeding of white
stork in Poland (with Piotr Tryjanowski) and migration of lepidoptera. One of
the key developments spawned by Dr. Sparks' work came in 1998 with the creation
of the UK Phenology Network, run by the Woodland Trust and CEH. The network
documented that birds arrive 3.7 days earlier than they did in the benchmark
year 2001, while nesting is now taking place on average eight days earlier.
There are also growing numbers of reports of over-wintering house martins and
swallows, birds that normally migrate south to Africa for the winter.
Dr. Sparks found that insects are particularly sensitive to temperature
changes, resulting in some species being spotted two weeks earlier. One of the
most identifiable signs of spring is frogspawn, amphibian's breeding cycle is
now estimated on average eight days earlier than it was five years ago. In
southern England, oak leaves are sprouting 26 days before they did in 1950.
Swallows, sparrows, great tits and robins are laying eggs a week earlier on
average. Lesser celandines, commonly thought of as the first spring plant, are
flowering 3 weeks earlier than in the 1950s, with poppies a fortnight earlier,
and stinging nettles 10 days ahead of historical patterns.
Sparks, et al's study published in the journal Global Change Biology,
shows changes to the continent's climate were shifting the timing of the
seasons. The team examined 125,000 observational series of 542 plants and 19
animal species in 21 European countries from 1971 to 2000. Spain, which is
growing hotter more quickly than any other European country, has experienced
the most pronounced change, the report found. Biologists in the UK, augmented
by data supplied by the UK Phenology Network and other members of the public
over the past 30 years, have built up a mounting body of evidence that suggests
spring is arriving earlier.
Dr Sparks commented, "Not only did we clearly demonstrate change in the
timing of seasons, but that change is much stronger in countries that have
experienced more warming. Many plant species grow throughout Europe, so, for
example, a direct comparison of the flowering date of wild cherry which is two weeks
earlier in the UK compared to that in Austria which is only 3 days earlier is
possible with this huge data-set." He continued, "In the past,
climate change skeptics were able to cast doubt on studies that suggested the
timing of the seasons was changing with accusations that scientists were
"cherry-picking" data that supported the global warming theory. But
after using 125,000 sets of observations on 542 plant and 19 animal species in
21 countries, the evidence is now incontrovertible.
Today, I'm heavily involved in COST Action 725, a partnership that looks at
plant phenology in Europe. We produced a major paper (Menzel et al 2006) that
was featured in the latest IPCC report. It clearly showed spring comes earlier
across Europe. We have also just produced a book, "The History and
Current Status of Plant Phenology in Europe," which will be a major
reference for the future.
Also, I'm intimately involved in a pet project, which is the 2008 tercentenary
celebration of Robert Marsham FRS." Dr. Sparks' work is included in the
report to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as evidence that
climate change is actually occurring. Read more about the history of global
warming at www.blackwell-synergy.com, www.ceh.ac.uk and http://news.bbc.co.uk.
By John Burl Smith
Many in the United States believe
the present economic and environmental crisis is a temporary inconvenience or
an overblown "tempest in a tea pot." They are convinced that somehow
the situation will turn itself around, and the country will return to its
former glory and power. Trapped in this 1960's mind-set, they dream of being number
one in everything from industrial production to GDP. They long for the days
when smokestacks at steel mills boomed, cars by the thousands rolled off
assembly lines in Detroit and Schlitz beer cans littered the nation's
roadsides. For them, air pollution was a group of "flower children"
smoking weed at a rock concert. As Morpheus told Neo in the movie The
Matrix (1999), "You're living in a dream world."
Today, only those with vested economic or political interest still maintain
"global warming" is not the single greatest threat to human survival
facing the planet. Approaching the tipping point faster than anyone imagined
when Ronald Reagan used environmentalists as a gag line, those who study the
effects of global warming on the polar ice caps aren't laughing. Survival of
the planet has moved beyond whether one drives an SUV, uses sun screens or turn
off lights in unused rooms. Although such things will help, reversing the
current warming trend will require a complete mind-set change about energy and sustainability.
A green world mind-set is a must to counter the notion that it is man's duty to
subdue the earth. That "man against the elements" mind-set must be
resoundingly rejected by all. No single nation or group of nations has the
right to claim dominion over parts of the earth for economic advantage to the
detriment of other earth inhabitants. Sustainability means responsibility. The
17th century colonial-manifest destiny belief that military might
gave countries the right to take resources and people from countries to make
life easier for its people must be rejected by the international community
also.
The dream world existence in the movie The Matrix is not too unlike
the machine dominated mind-set of those running the world today. In their view,
people are using up resources that should go to more important things, like
war. War is antithetical to a green world. The green dream is about building a
sustainable world for the future.
Dreaming of unlimited use of fossil fuel, strip mining the earth's crust, and
using the atmosphere as a dumping ground for incinerated residue, these
dreamers are opposed to the green-for-all world that will save our planet. The
green dream links the idea that a clean environment and economic growth are
compatible. Moreover, the green dream insist that jobs should pay a living
wage, offer training, promotional opportunities and economic security, while
providing reasonable profit margins. To solve the problem of global warming, we
must invest in people, communities, the inner city, and infrastructure, as we reconstruct
the US economy.
Americans must wake up from the nightmare of fossil fuel, global warming and
mounting unemployment and believe they can have the green dream of a cleaner
environment. The next president must push congressional debates on climate
legislation toward investing in energy efficiency and alternative energy
sources that will not only sustain the environment, but create green job
opportunities. The goal should be to solve the global warming problem and
simultaneously fight poverty. The world must go green!
By John Burl Smith
The United Steelworkers (USW)
union and the Sierra Club came together in 2006 to form the Blue-Green
Alliance. This partnership was joined by the Natural Resources Defense Council
(NRDC), and Green for All, which launched the national Green Jobs for America
campaign. Speaking at a press conference in 2006, representatives called for a
national effort to develop renewable energy to fight global warming. The goal
is to create over 820,000 new, good-paying jobs and put the US back on the path
to economic growth and prosperity.
The plan is to use teams of grassroots activists to conduct a series of public
events, such as the release of independent studies that highlight areas where
tens of thousands of new green jobs will be created in states hard hit by high
unemployment. The Renewable Energy Policy Project has already released one such
study, Job Opportunities for the Green Economy at www.peri.umass.edu/Green_Jobs_PERI.pdf.
It takes a state-by-state look at existing jobs skills across a wide range
of occupations and income levels that would benefit from America's transition
to a clean green economy. The report quantifies the number of skilled workers
in six categories of green industries - building retrofitting, mass transit,
fuel efficient automobiles, wind power, solar power, and cellulosic biomass
fuels.
The report found that states East of the Mississippi, such as Florida,
Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Virginia, to name a few,
stand to gain nearly 170,000 new jobs manufacturing wind turbine and almost
93,000 jobs making parts for solar power equipment, if the US commits to just
these two green energy sources. Green jobs are not only those that produce a
green product designed for a specific environmental purpose, but also include
existing jobs that involve a green process or a green purpose. Biotech and
chemical workers making products that are beneficial to humans or the
environment, such as water filtration, purification and storage systems are
examples.
The green revolution isn't just about creating new and different jobs; it's
about revitalizing our cities through investing in existing structures rather
than demolishing them and building new ones. It is about job security. Making
homes, offices and factories more efficient, which not only saves money,
represents a huge growth opportunity for the people who build our communities
and keep them running. Energy efficiency is a largely untapped resource that
can save consumers and businesses money on their energy bills and cut global
warming emissions, while creating tens of thousands of new jobs.
We're talking about jobs that
cannot be shipped offshore, everything from construction to computing, like
architects, engineers, drywallers, lighting contractors, insulators,
electricians and carpenters, jobs that will pay lasting dividends to the US economy.
The blue-green alliance is conducting petition drives calling for green jobs,
clean energy solutions and fair trade agreements. Go to www.bluegreenalliance.org/gjfa and
read more about the green dream, sign their petition, then call or write your
congressional representatives and the president. Demand that they turn the
green dream into a reality.
The Next President's First Task (Excerpts)
*By Robert F. Kennedy
Jr.
Last November, Lord (David)
Puttnam debated before Parliament an important bill to tackle global warming.
Addressing industry and government warnings that we must proceed slowly to
avoid economic ruin, Lord Puttnam recalled that, precisely 200 years ago,
Parliament heard identical caveats during the debate over abolition of the
slave trade. At that time, slave commerce represented one-fourth of Britain's
G.D.P. and provided its primary source of cheap, abundant energy. Vested
interests warned that financial apocalypse would succeed its prohibition.
That debate lasted roughly a year, and Parliament, in the end, made the moral
choice, abolishing the trade outright. Instead of collapsing, as slavery's
proponents had predicted, Britain's economy accelerated. Slavery's abolition
exposed the debilitating inefficiencies associated with zero-cost labor;
slavery had been a ball and chain not only for the slaves but also for the
British economy, hobbling productivity and stifling growth. Now, creativity and
productivity surged. Entrepreneurs seeking new sources of energy launched the
Industrial Revolution and inaugurated the greatest era of wealth production in
human history.
Today, we don't need to abolish carbon as an energy source in order to see its
inefficiencies starkly, or to understand that this addiction is the principal
drag on American capitalism. The evidence is before our eyes. The practice of
borrowing a billion dollars each day to buy foreign oil has caused the American
dollar to implode. More than a trillion dollars in annual subsidies to coal and
oil producers have beggared a nation that four decades ago owned half the
globe's wealth. Carbon dependence has eroded our economic power, destroyed our
moral authority, diminished our international influence and prestige,
endangered our national security, and damaged our health and landscapes. It is
subverting everything we value.
In America, several obstacles impede the kind of entrepreneurial revolution we
need. To begin with, that trillion dollars in annual coal-and-oil subsidies
gives the carbon industry a decisive market advantage. Meanwhile, an
over-stressed and inefficient national electrical grid can't accommodate new
kinds of power. A byzantine array of local rules impede access by innovators to
national markets.
There are a number of things the new president should do to hasten the
approaching boom in energy innovation. A carbon cap-and-trade system designed
to put downward pressure on carbon emissions is quite simply a no-brainer.
There's a second thing the next president should do, and it would be a
strategic masterstroke: push to revamp the nation's antiquated high-voltage
power- transmission system so that it can deliver solar, wind, geothermal, and
other renewable energy across the country. Even more important, we need to
build in "smart" features, including storage points and computerized
management overlays, allowing the new grid to intelligently deploy the energy
along the way.
The other obstacle is the web of arcane and conflicting state rules that
restrict access to the grid. The federal government needs to work with state
authorities to open up the grids, allowing clean-energy innovators to fairly
compete for investment, space, and customers.
Construction of efficient and open-transmission marketplaces and
green-power-plant infrastructure would require about a trillion dollars over
the next 15 years. For roughly a third of the projected cost of the Iraq war,
we could wean the country from carbon.
The benefits to America are beyond measure. We will cut annual trade and budget
deficits by hundreds of billions, improve public health and farm production,
diminish global warming, and create millions of good jobs. And for the first
time in half a century we will live free from Middle Eastern wars and
entanglements with petty tyrants who despise democracy and are hated by their
own people.
*Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is
president of the Waterkeeper Alliance, a non-governmental organization that
promotes clean water worldwide. This article appeared in the May 2008 issue of
Vanity Fair. Read it in its entirety at www.cwnet.com.
Disgruntled says:
At the end of May, thanks to a court order, the Bush administration finally
released the "Scientific Assessment of the Effects of Global Change on the
United States." Under the Global Change Research Act (1990), the
government is required to conduct and publish an assessment on global warming
every four (4) years. The last report was issued during the Clinton administration
in 2000. Basically, the report reaffirmed what scientists have been warning,
i.e., "human-induced global warming will likely lead to problems like
droughts in the US west and stronger hurricanes." While the Bush
administration badgered scientists to change their views on global climate
change and engaged in obfuscation and procrastination, droughts and fires,
floods and killer tornadoes have ravaged the western and mid-western USA. Had
the government provided the information four years ago and prepared the nation
for the pending disasters, lives and property may have been saved. This is just
one more instanced in which this government has failed to act in the interest
of the American people.
Disgruntled
feels: Trashed! In the US, we love our convenience; we eat fast foods
and use lots of disposable things. US manufacturers produce "durable"
goods with built-in obsolescence. With abandon, we throw away all manner of
things, even some people get tossed to the curb, like garbage, ergo the victims
of Hurricane Katrina. If it is old or just not trendy, out with the trash it
goes. Thus, we generate mountains of garbage. In 1997, US sailor Charles Moore
discovered the 'great Pacific garbage patch, the world's largest garbage dump.
Estimated to be twice as big as the North American continent, its sheer size
alarms scientists and those concerned about the environment. In the middle of
this garbage heap lie the islands of Hawaii, where piles of trash regularly
wash ashore. Most of this garbage is plastic, which bio-degrades extremely
slowly, and when it does it creates a toxic sludge. This trash is an ecosystem
disaster that threatens to increase two-fold in the next ten years, if we
continue to use disposable plastics. Rather than respect and treat planet Earth
as our garden of Eden, our home and life support system, we have trashed it!
Disgruntled
wants to know: The average price of a gallon of gasoline topped $4 this
week. I read somewhere that Americans should consider themselves lucky, because
people in some European countries pay twice as much to fuel their automobiles.
Of course, this revelation did nothing to make me feel better about paying $60
to fill my gas tank. To save on gas, I turned to public transportation. And, while
Atlanta area residents forced to use the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit
Authority (MARTA) train and bus system because they lack alternative
transportation love to grouse about buses that do not run on schedule, the
inconvenience or what have you, MARTA beats filling that gas tank to drive to
and from work, paying for parking and fighting traffic. Plus, MARTA riders do
their part to reduce the pollution. Given the advantages of public
transportation, question is, when will our state and local governments get
serious about public transportation? More to the point, when will those who
have supported public transportation all these years by paying the MARTA
one-cent sales tax, especially South DeKalb County, be rewarded with a train?
Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and Phone Calls
Email http://ucsaction.org....CAFOs Cost Taxpayers
Billions...The news has been full of stories recently about the rising cost of
food. But when it comes to most meat, milk, and eggs sold in the US, consumers
have paid more for years. CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations) are
massive facilities that create costly pollution and public health problems as
they produce most of the nation's food animals. Our new report documents the
billions of dollars of hidden costs that CAFOs foist onto taxpayers and
communities, and the misguided government policies that enable and even
encourage it. From taxpayer subsidies for cheap animal feed to federal programs
that help CAFOs manage their pollution problems, our report reveals how
expensive our current CAFO system really is. The report, "CAFOs Uncovered:
The Untold Costs of Confined Animal Feeding Operations," recommends that
the government provide incentives for more sustainable and efficient ways to
raise animals.
Email www.independent.co.uk...Why flowers
have lost their scent...By Geoffrey Lean...Pollution is dulling the scent of
flowers and impeding some of the most basic processes of nature, disrupting insect
life and imperiling food supplies, a new study suggests. The potentially hugely
significant research - funded by the blue-chip US National Science Foundation -
has found that gases mainly formed from the emissions of car exhausts prevent
flowers from attracting bees and other insects in order to pollinate them. The
researchers - at the University of Virginia - say that pollution is
dramatically cutting the distance traveled by the scent of flowers, making it
increasingly difficult for bees and other insects to locate the flowers.
Already bees - which pollinate most of the world's crops - are in unprecedented
decline in Britain and across much of the globe. At least a quarter of
America's 2.5 million honey bee colonies have been mysteriously wiped out by
colony collapse disorder (CCD) in which hives are deserted.
Email http://tvnewslies.org...Artificial hormones in
U.S. beef linked to breast and prostate cancer...British Veterinary Products
Committee (VPC) member and chemical expert John Verall was appointed to the
government's VPC to represent consumer interests. He recently defied a
government gag order, revealing evidence from the study which showed a rise in
the rates of breast and prostate cancer in the US, where two-thirds of all
cattle are pumped full of hormones.
Email www.reuters.com
World sea levels to rise 1.5m by 2100...By Karin Strohecker...Melting glaciers,
disappearing ice sheets and warming water could lift sea levels by as much as
1.5 meters (4.9 feet) by the end of this century, displacing tens of millions
of people. New research presented at a European Geosciences Union conference
forecasts a rise in sea levels three times higher than that predicted by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) last year, the panel that
shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former US VP Al Gore. Svetlana Jevrejeva
of the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory in Britain said the estimate was based
on a new model allowing accurate reconstruction of sea levels over the past
2,000 years.
Email www.washingtonpost.com...Studies Say
Clearing Land for Biofuels Will Aid Warming...By Juliet Eilperin...Clearing
land to produce biofuels such as ethanol will do more to exacerbate global
warming than using gasoline or other fossil fuels, two scientific studies show.
The independent analyses published in the journal Science, could force
policymakers in the US and Europe to reevaluate incentives adopted to spur
production of ethanol-based fuels. President Bush and many members of Congress
have touted expanding biofuel use as an integral element of the nation's battle
against climate change, but these studies suggest that this strategy will
damage the planet rather than help protect it. One study -- by a group of
researchers from Princeton University, Woods Hole Research Center and Iowa
State University along with an agriculture consultant -- concluded that over 30
years, use of traditional corn-based ethanol would produce twice as much
greenhouse gas emissions as regular gasoline. Another analysis, by a Nature
Conservancy scientist along with University of Minnesota researchers, found
that converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas or grasslands in SE Asia and
Latin America to produce biofuels will increase global warming pollution.
Email www.nytimes.com ...A Hard Plastic Is Raising Hard Questions...By Tara Parker-Pope...Are toxic plastics lurking in your kitchen? It's a question many families are asking after reports that a chemical used to make baby bottles, water bottles and food containers is facing increasing scrutiny by health officials in Canada and the US. The substance is bisphenol-a (BPA), widely used in making hard, clear and nearly unbreakable plastic called polycarbonate. Studies and tests show trace amounts of BPA are leaching from polycarbonate containers into foods and liquids.