Blog Entries by Barbara Kessler
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
This summer as I flew over Minneapolis, I looked down fondly at the chain of lakes that beautifies this tidy, progressive city. My second hometown.
I noticed the surrounding land was lush and green. And so were many of the lakes. Wait a minute: The lakes themselves were more green than blue, ringed in pea-soup of algae that was closing in fast on the open water at the middle. This algae-green, sickly green mess set off alarm bells.
I suspected that all those lake-dwellers residing on their hard-fought real estate were sullying the waters by collectively dumping tons of fertilizer on their neat green lawns, which created a super-rich, even toxic runoff. This was hugely ironic, because these striving homeowners had moved there so they could boat, swim and engage in the state sport, fishing fer walleye. Yet their pursuit of the picture-perfect lake house retreat was poisoning the natural environment.
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September 28th, 2009 · No Comments
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
OK, this probably only strikes me as funny, but there’s a site called eNature.com.
Sounds like someone found a way to package up some grass, trees and critters and render it as virtual version of the great outdoors. Sometimes it feels like we’re heading that way, toward a day when all intelligence will be captured inside computers. (Or maybe I’ve just been inside too long today.)
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September 25th, 2009 · No Comments
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
As if the dire predictions about the sad state of the planet aren’t enough, we’re now being treated to gloomy forecasts about whether our leaders have the will to do anything about it.
At the Climate Summit at the United Nations in NYC observers had hoped for a breakthrough pledge or statement from either US President Barack Obama or China’s President Hu Jintao. But the event was long on rhetoric, short on serious commitment and left many advocates muttering their disappointment, mainly because the leaders of the two most polluting nations are still playing chess.
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September 23rd, 2009 · No Comments
Many leaders gathered for the Climate Summit in New York this week.
One stood out, forcing us to glimpse a melancholy future in which those who will be hit first and hardest by global change cry out to the world for help. Shades of the Holocaust.
President Mohammad Nasheed of the Maldives, where 350,000 residents stand to lose their country to sea level rises that are certain to occur as the poles melt, is best heard in his own words:
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September 21st, 2009 · No Comments
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
This week brings a “Summit on Climate Change” at the United Nations in New York City. With so many summits, rallies and special days devoted to discussing climate change, the point of this summit might not be immediately obvious.
The first thing to know is that this is not a negotiating meeting as recent ones in Bonn, Germany have been, or like and the upcoming one in Bangkok will be.
Still it is a part of the run-up to the Copenhagen conference Dec. 7-18, where world leaders will try to reach a new global climate agreement holding all participating nations to specific reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
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September 17th, 2009 · No Comments
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
If you worked a four-day work week, you’d be gearing up to knock off about now, as I write this on a Thursday.
Of course you wouldn’t know I was writing this, because you’d be so darn productive during your four-day work week that you’d never crack a peek at anything on the Internet beyond your work-related reading.
Even if you weren’t loyally plowing away at your desk, you’d still be statistically more likely to read this at home, because you’d be home more. (And if you used your new-found at-home time away from home, well, that’s none of our business now is it?)
Let’s just say that a four-day workweek — whether it was composed of four 8-hour days or four 10-hour days — would provide more leisure time, potentially a very good thing for stressed out Americans with their comparatively higher rates heart disease and health issues. This, in itself, would be enough justification to consider a shorter workweek.
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September 11th, 2009 · No Comments
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
Digging into the palm oil debate, an urgent issue to many environmental groups, our reporter Ashley Phillips found herself slipping into a swamp of material.
For years, there has been a volley of claims and counter claims about the environmental and humanitarian consequences related to palm oil production.
The UN Environment Programme has blamed the massive destruction of rainforest in Malaysia and Indonesia for producing such a volume of manmade greenhouse gas emissions that it ranks behind only the US and China. These gases are released as the native rainforest is cleared to install or expand palm plantations, and it is exacerbated by the slash-and-burn clearing that is a double whammy to the atmosphere — removing carbon-holding rainforest while spewing carbon from massive wood fires.
Seemingly the only thing happening faster than the destruction of the rainforest in Southeast Asia is the consumer demand for palm oil which turns up in every 10th product at the grocery by some estimations.
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By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
At first, I was confused about the resignation of Van Jones, a man so well-suited to his post as the White House Special Advisor on Green Jobs that his tenure should have been long and fruitful. Here was a man who’d founded a human rights organization championing the underprivileged, and then another group, Green for All, that pioneered the idea of re-engaging the working class in progressive new fields of employment like green building and alternative energy. He literally wrote the book on green-collar jobs, The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Solve Our Two Biggest Problems (Harper One 2008) before most people had heard the phrase green collar jobs.
Hearing the news of his resignation over the weekend, I consulted the website of Green for All, the Oakland-based project he co-founded and ran before accepting the White House appointment. GFA expressed sadness and obliquely referred to “the buzz and speculation surrounding this news.”
Clearly, this was a murky issue, and Green For All wanted to avoid the mud.
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By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
One of my pet complaints is finally being addressed, at least partly. Living here in the Barnett Shale region of Texas, where drilling for natural gas is making Swiss cheese of the ground beneath, say, my house, I’ve been sensitive to these reports coming out that link fracturing chemicals to groundwater contamination.
To be fair, natural gas advocates point out that the crevices they’re tapping are typically not at the same level as groundwater. Still, that means they’re either drilling through potential groundwater territory, or above it (think: gravity).
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By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
It’s recipe time! This week at our house we’re defaulting to our simple school time meals, eating faux hot dogs with local corn on the cob, bean and soy crumble tacos, and broccoli stir fry with tofu, as we strive to keep the protein in our veggie diet and still get the kids to athletic practices and club meetings.
But Diane Hatz, founder of Sustainable Table, has some more sophisticated solutions (but still easy, like goat cheese pizza and garbanzo bean burgers) in her blog, “Eat Less Meat — and enjoy it! — reprinted here:
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By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
Green things are starting to shadow us wherever we go, leaping out in unexpected places. Like at the gas station.
Yet this green creep seems so normal. Read our picto-blog and you’ll see what we mean.
This sign, touting how Tom Thumb’s gas stations are now wind-powered, pretty much speaks for itself.
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By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
The global warming group 350.org is touting its new-found fame after founder Bill McKibben appeared on The Colbert Report.
McKibben chatted with the Colb-ster about “350″ — enlightening viewers on the significance of that number and how we’ve got to make that a benchmark if we want to salvage the Earth’s atmosphere.
Today, the group won validation of its goal and its namesake when the United Nation’s top climate scientist said that 350 (alright, it stands for the 350 parts per million of carbon in the air) is a good and appropriate target level for Mother Earth (with healthy humans).
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