Green Right Now Reports

How many more causes can we shop or tweet for? At least one more, hopes Haagen-Daz, makers of those indulgences so inadequately called ice cream.

Haagen-Daz has been running a campaign to raise awareness about the decline of honey bees due to Colony Collapse Disorder. It’s close to the ice cream maker’s heart, and also should we say vat? , because the bees help pollinate almonds and, obviously, supply honey, both vital ingredients for HD flavors.

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By Harriet Blake

Fact: America has an abundance of food.
Question: So why does anyone go hungry in this country?

A potato gleaning in Virginia (Photo: Society of St. Andrew)

Armed with this simple thought, the Society of St. Andrew (SOSA) took up the cause of feeding the hungry in 1979 with the idea of gleaning fields for salvageable produce.

“We do this in two says,” says Carol Breitinger, communications director. “We use volunteers in the field for hands-on gleaning, or we send out trucks to pick up surplus crops that farmers can’t use and would just end up in the landfill.”

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By Ashley Phillips
Green Right Now

In an effort to bring attention to the nation’s outdated toxic chemical laws, Seventh Generation, the makers of many environmentally safe home products, has partnered with Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families in the Million Baby Crawl. This campaign is asking everyone, moms or not, to urge Congress for stronger chemical regulations.

Erin Brockovich

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By Sommer Saadi and Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

If anyone doubted that there’s a global grassroots movement to fight climate change, they may reconsider after viewing the photos that streamed in this weekend from the International Day of Climate Action.

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By Ashley Phillips
Green Right Now

The US Department of Energy’s 2009 Solar Decathlon showcased the best in solar-powered home design as conceived by colleges students. Over 20 teams from across North America and Europe competed in this year’s competition.

1st Place Solar Home

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By Ashley Phillips
Green Right Now

This Saturday is International Day of Climate Action — a chance for everyone to take a stand on behalf of the planet and possibly participate in one of 4,300 actions that are planned in 171 countries.

350.org began the International Day of Climate Action campaign not only to wake up politicians, but wake up the world. The group wants everyone to know about and understand the number 350, which signifies the level many scientists have identified as the safe utmost limit for CO2 in the atmosphere, in parts per million.

Here are a few unique events around the US:

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By Harriet Blake
As the Nobel Prize Committee noted in awarding President Obama with the Nobel Peace Prize last week, the world is in a better place than it was a year ago.
The world also is in a better place thanks to six young people who are being honored on Tuesday for their heroic environmental efforts. [...]

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By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now

The latest Harris Poll on green behavior in America is a good news/bad news story.

The good news: Most people have done something that’s green, by recycling a computer or cell phone; switching to tap water from bottled; made their home more energy efficient in some way.

The bad news: Only a tiny fraction of US residents (2 percent) own hybrid cars and vast numbers of people have not “engaged” in most of the green activities the survey asked about, like for example composting (only 17 percent do), walking or biking to work (15 percent), or even getting a low flow shower head (17 percent).

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By Harriet Blake

For a fledgling environmental group, Arkansas Interfaith Power and Light has hit the ground running.

The two-week-old organization called on people of faith this week to phone their Arkansas congressmen – Democratic Senators Blanche Lincoln and Sen. Mark Pryor – to urge them to “protect Creation and public health by voting for the Clean Jobs and American Power Act.”

The act, which reached the Senate floor Wednesday, was introduced by U.S. Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA). The legislation aims to help develop clean energy jobs, reduce pollution and protect U.S. security by improving national energy production and fighting global climate change.

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By Ashley Phillips
Green Right Now

Four-time heavy weight boxing champion Evander Holyfield is ready for another fight. Except this time, he is fighting for the planet. Known as the Real Deal in the sports world, Holyfield will also be going by a new nickname, Lean Green Fighting Machine. Friday morning, Holyfield announced that in partnership with Global-NES-Georgia, Inc., he plans to build a 40 acre solar energy farm on his estate in Georgia.

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“I think that each town should have a park, or rather a primitive forest of five hundred or a thousand acres, either in one body or several – where a stick should never be cut for fuel – nor for the navy, nor to make wagons, but stand…a common possession forever, for instruction and recreation” – Henry David Thoreau

America’s most beloved treehugger said it better than anyone more than 150 years ago when he padded around Walden Wood on foot, marveling at the harmony of nature and fretting about its future.

But while Thoreau’s sentiments were lost in the din of industrial progress, they never died.

They are alive in the hearts of many Americans. The Union of Concerned Scientists has brought together some of these modern Thoreaus in an anthology of short essays, Thoreau’s Legacy: American Stories about Global Warming. These vignettes by regular folks worried about global warming, species loss, pollution and the future of our natural spaces may just move you to action in your own neighborhood.

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From Green Right Now Reports

When Jay Leno launches his new prime-time show next week, he’ll include a “Green Car Challenge.”

“We have celebrities in green cars race and we see who the fastest green celebrity is,” Leno said in a statement. “And if some crash and burn, YES!”

Ford said its all-new battery electric Ford Focus will be the exclusive vehicle for “Green Car Challenge.” The battery electric vehicle, specially made for the show, foreshadows elements of the electric Focus that Ford will begin selling in North America in 2011.

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