By Catherine Girardeau
Green Right Now

Despite the derailing economy, California voters got on board for reviving train service in their state November 4th by passing state proposition 1A — a $10 million bond to begin construction of a fully electric rail system running 220-mph trains between San Francisco’s Transbay Terminal and Union Station in Los Angeles.

The bond is a vote of confidence from the public and a down payment on the $40 billion-plus project that plans to run high-speed trains from Sacramento to San Diego. The plan’s boosters say it will create jobs, relieve air and highway congestion, and help the state meet its legislative mandate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 30 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

While detractors like the San Diego Union-Tribune’s editorial board said California’s budget woes make spending billions of dollars on a massive transportation project not only ill-advised, but “potentially the biggest boondoggle in California history”, proponents called the victory a landmark for high-speed rail nationwide.

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By Harriet Blake

The benefits of a rooftop garden are not only environmental, but extend to the human spirit. At the Ulfelder Healing Garden atop Massachusetts General Hospital’s Yawkey Cancer Center, those benefits are realized.

The 6,300-square-foot foliage-filled healing garden gives cancer patients and their families a much-needed retreat and helps the hospital conserve energy at the same time. It is just one of the many Boston sites included on tours during this week’s GreenBuild International Conference, a large annual gathering of builders and remodellers sponsored by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).

Bringing green design into health care and hospital building is a growing trend across the U.S.. At Dell Children’s Medical Center, which opened in Austin, Texas in 2007, green has been the focus from the ground up. In fact, says spokesperson Matilda Sanchez, the hospital is waiting to hear if they have achieved “platinum status” in the Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) program sponsored by the USGBC. Among the many green elements at Dell is a four-story interior healing garden with a waterfall that starts on the top floor, as well as a three-acre healing garden with a labyrinth that can be seen from many of the hospital rooms.

“Dell is setting the bar for hospital buildings,” says Sanchez. “While we were still under construction, many other hospitals looked at what we were doing. There was even a delegation from Australia who came to get ideas.”

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By Kelly Rondeau

Move over Seattle, Portland, and Austin and other green heavyweights — make room for some like-minded, newcomers.

Columbus, Ohio; New Orleans, La., Syracuse, N.Y., and Louisville, Kty., residents might not be wearing Birkenstocks and basking under solar tubes. But they are living in some of the growing number of mid-sized, Middle American cities that are making impressive green strides, changing their attitudes and getting smarter about eco-choices.

Syracuse, led by Mayor Matthew Driscoll, is becoming a greener “Emerald City” of New York with its sustainability website, partnerships with area universities and a solid number 17 placement for 2008 on Popular Science’s list of the 50 Greenest Cities in the U

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By Harriet Blake

By now, most people are familiar with the ubiquitous bright green (and blue and pink) totes that supermarkets are touting to replace hard-to-recycle plastic bags.
Many customers dutifully carry them to and from grocery shopping each week, often receiving 3 to 4 cents in return. But what about those folks who are less conscientious?

Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City has a solution: charge shoppers six cents for each plastic bag they use. The mayor’s proposal is a work in progress, but environmental groups are pleased.

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By Barbara Kessler

The cork is off the champagne on the presidential election - and many environmentalists who’ve felt stifled by the Bush Administration’s indifference, hostility or lukewarm interest in ecological issues, including global warming, are giddy with new possibilities.

Frances Beinecke, head of the non-profit Natural Resources Defense Council, sounded buoyant in an address on the NRDC website: “Barack Obama’s election is a huge win for everyone exhausted from playing defense. Count us among them. It rekindles our hope that environmental protection may be restored to its rightful place as a treasured American value.”

Gene Karpinski, head of the League of Conservation Voters, was no less ebullient. “America embraced change today. And the planet will be better for it,” he announced.

Karpinski noted that, along with Obama, the nation also elected some environmental-minded senators, such as cousins Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Tom Udall (D-N.M.), from a family with a long conservation history.

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By Barbara Kessler

Every spring, as sure as the sun warms the cedars and the birds flock back from Mexico, Lee Clauser leads a stealth group of intense adults dressed in khakis and boots to the edge of a wild thicket near his house in north central Texas.

They creep into the brush, quietly unloading their weapons of mass observation.

Putting binoculars to eyes, they look, and listen, for the brilliant Golden-cheeked warbler, and for the reclusive Black-capped vireo. Both songbirds are listed as endangered in the United States, their nesting grounds having been narrowed to a strip of Texas Hill Country that supplies just the right shrubbery and old-growth cedars. The birders, who come from Fort Worth, Dallas, New England, the Pacific Northwest and beyond, know that catching a glimpse of one of these delicate creatures is a rare treat.

“People have come from Europe to see those birds, both species. For birders all over the world, it’s a huge deal,” says Clauser, a retired banker and life-long bird rescue and rehabilitation expert.

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From the Environmental Protection Agency

The 2008 Green Power Leadership Awards were presented in conjunction with the National Renewable Energy Marketing Conference, held October 26-29 in Denver, Colorado.

Green Power Pilot Award

The 46 environmental and social justice organizations, over 700 local groups, and tens of thousands of young people that make up the Energy Action Coalition are leading the way in addressing climate change by creating vast networks of power, winning clean energy victories on campuses and in communities, and building a cleaner, healthier, and just future. In May 2005, Energy Action Coalition launched the Campus Climate Challenge to unite students and young people in achieving 100% clean energy policies on 1,000 campuses over three years. To date, they have reached over 2 million young people through the challenge and over 760 campuses have joined the campaign.

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From the Environmental Protection Agency

The 2008 Green Power Leadership Awards were presented in conjunction with the National Renewable Energy Marketing Conference, held October 26-29 in Denver, Colorado.

Partner of the Year

The University of Pennsylvania buys nearly 193 million kilowatt-hours of wind-generated renewable energy certificates (RECs), an amount equivalent to 46 percent of its total purchased electricity use. The purchase is large enough to have placed Penn on both EPA’s National Top 50 and Top 20 Colleges and Universities purchaser lists.

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From the Environmental Protection Agency

The 2008 Green Power Leadership Awards were presented in conjunction with the National Renewable Energy Marketing Conference, held October 26-29 in Denver, Colorado.

Partner of the Year

Bellingham, Washington, is a coastal community near the Canadian border, rated by several popular magazines as the best place to live in the United States. The community received EPA’s Partner of the Year Award in 2007 and continues to display national leadership in the purchase and support of green power.

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From the Environmental Protection Agency

The 2008 Green Power Leadership Awards were presented in conjunction with the National Renewable Energy Marketing Conference, held October 26-29 in Denver, Colorado.

Green Power Purchasing Award

The U.S. Air Force made an annual purchase of more than 899 million kilowatt-hours, establishing it as the top federal government buyer of green power and ranking it among the largest buyers on EPA’s National Top 50 list. The purchases made by 54 bases consist of a varied resource mix of biomass, wind, landfill gas and solar, delivered by a diverse product mix of renewable energy certificates (RECs), utility-delivered products and on-site systems.

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From the Environmental Protection Agency

The 2008 Green Power Leadership Awards were presented in conjunction with the National Renewable Energy Marketing Conference, held October 26-29 in Denver, Colorado.

Green Power Purchasing Award

Oregon State University’s (OSU) purchase of nearly 67 million kilowatt-hours of renewable energy certificates (RECs) is equal to nearly 75 percent of the total campus electricity consumption. The University’s purchase places the school on EPA’s list of Top 20 College and University green power purchasers. The school funded its purchase through a student “Green Fee” approved during a general campus election, and resulted in a purchase of RECs from a mix of biogas, biomass and wind resources. The Green Fee produced the highest voter turnout in OSU history, with more than 70 percent of voting students supporting the initiative.

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From the Environmental Protection Agency

The 2008 Green Power Leadership Awards were presented in conjunction with the National Renewable Energy Marketing Conference, held October 26-29 in Denver, Colorado.

Green Power Purchasing Awards

City of Houston, Texas — The City of Houston’s comprehensive renewable energy plan calls for the purchase of fixed-price green power, which will help to offset the rising cost of conventional electricity. As part of this plan, the city has bought more than 350 million kilowatt-hours of wind-derived renewable energy certificates, enough to meet nearly 27 percent of its annual electricity needs, at a cost lower than traditional electricity. Houston’s purchase ranks among the largest in the Green Power Partnership, placing the city on both EPA’s National Top 50 and Top Local Government lists.

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