The City of Brotherly Love will be showing its nature-loving side this coming Sunday during GreenFest Philly at 2nd and South streets. The event, sponsored by Toyota and produced by the Urban Green Partnership, will feature a green film festival, an introduction to the Girl Scouts of America’s new Go Green Initiative and displays by some 200 enviromental groups and businesses.

About 25,000 people are expected to attend this year’s GreenFest Philly. This year’s theme is “food” and booths are expected to help educate the public on how to buy locally, eat vegetarian, grow your own food and support farmer’s markets.

Toyota will present the third generation Prius with its solar-panel roof. The green film festival will show Robert Kenner’s well-reviewed Food, Inc., and Miss Earth Pennsylvania will host an eco-fashion show. Performers will include Carolyn Malachi, PaperTrees, Singing for AJ, Bohemian Sunrise and April King.

And the environmental group, 350.org, will be advocating for support as it prepares both for an International Day of Climate Action in October and for the world climate talks in Copenhagen in December. (See their human-powered photo below.)

Another special activity at Philly GreenFest will allow guests to create their own pottery using local and recycled clay. Attendees will also be able to get a nutritional evaluation, if they bring a list of everything they’ve eaten over the last three to seven days.

The festival will run from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Other sponsors, beyond Toyota, include: Dhyana Yoga; Zipcar; Juju Salon & Spa; Mugshots Coffee & Cafe; Sustainable Business Network; Kate Svitek Memorial; WMGK; Yoga Living, Grid Philly.

(Photo of Greenfest 2008 by Jen Bendik.)

By Barbara Kessler

While Americans nestle in their homes this holiday break, environmentalists will be watching and waiting for a thumbs up or down on the status of the polar bear, whose predicted foreshortened future holds little to celebrate.

The Bush Administration, under court order to make a decision after the National Resources Defense Council and others sued on the bears’ behalf, has proposed designating the arctic animals as “threatened” and is expected to announce its decision before the deadline of Jan. 9, 2008.

But environmentalists are worried that the government either won’t grant the protected status, will ask for an extension or will fail to designate that the bear needs “critical habitat,” i.e., arctic ice, to survive (because that would require taking action against global warming). They further fear that the administration will make their potentially unpopular pronouncement while Americans are distracted by the holidays.

Trying to avert that scenario, the National Resource Defense Council has launched another in its series of Polar Bear SOS’s asking for contributions to help it keep the issue before the public. The public can also send an individual letter supporting polar bears to Secretary Dirk Kempthorne of the Department of the Interior on the NRDC website.

The NRDC and other environmental groups want the polar bear declared to be threatened (they’d prefer “endangered” status) because the loss of its arctic habitat combined with hunting is accelerating the bears’ decline in the wild. Some 22,000 bears remain, but their habitat is literally “melting,” putting it on a trajectory for extinction in the next generation, said Serena Ingre, NRDC press secretary for state outreach.

The iconic animal’s survival is so closely tied to global warming because rising global temperatures have reduced the polar ice cap by 40 percent over the last 30 years, stripping the polar bear of range, Ms. Ingre said. Further, warmer seas around the North Pole have diminished the sea ice that the polar bear depends upon for hunting.

See a poignant video of the polar bear at You Tube.

As the holiday count-down begins, and hordes of already wiped out, over-worked parents lurch into their annual late-night mall marathons, many are haunted by concerns over toy safety. With more than 23 million recalled this year, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the questions are obvious:

What’s safe, what’s not? How does a person really know? And what might consumer watch-dog groups find next year in the toys that we bought this year?

One way to learn more about hazardous toys is to regularly check sites like HealthyToys.org, W.A.T.C.H., or the CPSC’s recall list; or to sign up for email updates from your pediatrician. (W.A.T.C.H. has published a worst toys of 2007 list. Curious George, right, was recalled in November for excessive levels of lead paint on his face.)

But if there is anything positive to emerge from this year’s toy scare (and there isn’t much) perhaps it’s that Americans are being reminded to pay closer attention to what their children play with. As a result, they’re reminded that less can be more. Much more.

“We’ve been striving to have more family time anyway,” says Kara Stamper, a Centreville, VA, mother, whose daughter Georgia is 8 and son John Henry is 6. It seems that as the recalls have continued (from Aqua Dots to Thomas the Tank Engine to Dora the Explorer to Go Diego Go, recalled for lead paint) a parallel recall is occurring – a recalling of simpler times that, over the long haul, could prove good for the environment, both inside the home and out.

“There was (recently) a national ‘Turn-off-your TV week,” ‘ Stamper says, “and we had a week of reading together and playing Yahtzee and Trouble and we danced in front of the Christmas tree and we lit up our fire. Georgia even said, ‘Mommy, we’ve rediscovered all our old board games.’ ”

Denver parents Judy Walgren DeHaas and Peter DeHaas, who have children ages 12 years old and 18 months, have always tended a fairly organic household, buying their kids locally made goods whenever possible, being mindful of materials, supporting artisans in their area. But these days, the DeHaases call the manufacturer or visit online checklists every time their younger son, Theo, is given a new toy.

“I’m not buying any toys unless they’re wooden and made in the U.S.,” she says, clearly concerned and frustrated by the lack of protections and regulations. “We’re also getting Theo a large set of Legos. And for Christmas, I’m asking for clothing and books for him.”

Nobel prize winner and former presidential candidate Al Gore came under fire earlier this year when a think tank accused him of having a home in Nashville that used 20 times as much electricity as the average household nationwide.

Drew Johnson, president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, said at the time, “As the spokesman of choice for the global warming movement, Al Gore has to be willing to walk the walk, not just talk the talk, when it comes to home energy use.”

This is no longer the case. The Gore family recently completed a green renovation of their Tennessee mansion, according to a report from the Associated Press this week.

The former Vice President has had all the home’s incandescent lights replaced with compact fluorescent bulbs, including those on his Christmas tree. He has put in solar panels, a rainwater-collection system and installed geothermal heating.

The house was given the second highest rating for sustainable design by the U.S. Green Building Council. The AP reported that these improvements cut the home’s summer electrical bill by 11 percent.

A Gore spokesman did not disclose how much the Gores spent on the renovations, but admitted that the family is fortunate to be able to afford the extensive repairs which might be financially out of reach for some Americans.

Utility records show the Gore family paid an average monthly electric bill of about $1,200 last year for its 10,000-square-foot home, according to AP reports.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference kicked off in Bali this week, where bloggers report that the tropical heat is keeping everyone viscerally aware of the topic at hand. The conference brings together representatives from more than 180 countries and hundreds of journalists and environmental activists. The plan is to hammer out goals for beyond the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012.

Australia, under the new leadership of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, got a standing ovation when it finally ratified Kyoto at the opening of the Bali conference. Australia and the United States had been the only large industrialized nations that failed to ratify Kyoto, in which nations around the world agreed to greenhouse gas emission reductions. The Bush government has maintained that voluntary guidelines, rather than set limits, would work better, and they’ve been cleaving to that position at Bali. One Greenpeace observer noted that the U.S. delegation press conference was a through-the-looking-glass experience in which spokespeople voiced “delusional beliefs in non-existent miracle technologies and assertions that voluntary targets are more effective than mandatory ones and blah, blah, blah.”

Blah, blah, indeed. Hopefully, the now-isolated blah-blah United States (that’s the official U.S. as opposed to the “other” U.S. full of concerned citizens whom the activists say they’re representing) won’t become a laughingstock at Bali, where a turn around in attitude could mean a lot.

Greenpeace’s Climate Blog is a good read — and it includes thoughts from the group’s mascot Polar Bear, who reports he/she(?)’s quite hot there. But for the straight dope on Bali (that’s on not from Bali), go to the United Nations’ website on the conference. It has daily updates and webcasts by UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer.

(Photo courtesy of Greenpeace/Rante 2007.)

While others dither about how to make coal-burning electricity plants cleaner and inch toward green electricity, replacing coal with cleaner (but still problematic) energy sources such as hydro-electric and nuclear power, the world’s largest Internet company wants to hop skip ahead to find really clean, safe, sustainable energy.

Yes, your friendly neighborhood search engine is getting into the energy game. Google announced Tuesday that it will spend “tens of millions” to fund research into the newest and cleanest ways of producing electricity, including solar thermal power, wind power, geothermal systems and other “potential breakthrough technologies.” The goal of the initiative, called RE<C: Find ways to scale up these renewable energy sources and make them cheaper than coal.

It certainly sounds like a way to trump the game. If coal were no longer the quickest means to an end, it could mean the end of dirty electricity. As for Google becoming a player in this field. Hmmm. It’s a big company; knows a little bit about scaling up and a fair amount about innovation…

Google thinks so too. “We have gained expertise in designing and building large-scale, energy-intensive facilities by building efficient data centers,” said Larry Page, Google Co-founder and President of Products, in a news release.
“We want to apply the same creativity and innovation to the challenge of generating renewable electricity at globally significant scale, and produce it cheaper than from coal.”

“There has been tremendous work already on renewable energy,” Page added. “Technologies have been developed that can mature into industries capable of providing electricity cheaper than coal. Solar thermal technology, for example, provides a very plausible path to providing renewable energy cheaper than coal. We are also very interested in further developing other technologies that have potential to be cost-competitive and green. We are aware of several promising technologies, and believe there are many more out there.”

The research will be funded by Google’s philanthropic wing, Google.org, and focus on producing “one gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal,” which is about enough to power the city of San Francisco.

“We are optimistic this can be done in years, not decades,” Page said. RE<C will hire engineers and energy experts (who will undoubtedly love the project’s coy and geeky moniker) to lead the research and development initiative, which will first focus on solar thermal technology. Needless to say, success for RE<C could lead to significant reductions in the greenhouse gases produced by coal-burning electricity plants worldwide. So we hope that their search produces many pages of fruitful results.

For more on RE<C, its partners and Google’s own efforts to become carbon neutral in 2007, see the Google Press Center news release.

Environmentalists have long been nudging consumers to think about the real cost of the paper products that they use, to understand that toilet paper and paper towels exact a price in the loss of the trees required to make them.

This green price tag is highest when manufacturers of household paper goods use virgin wood products instead of using recycled materials. And yet, some of the world’s largest manufacturers of tissue and toilet paper continue to use virgin wood fibers, raising the ire of nature groups.

Greenpeace Canada and the Natural Resources Defense Council have jointly taken aim at Kimberly-Clark, the world’s largest tissue paper products manufacturer and its associated milling and logging operations that, in their view, are chipping away at some of the world’s largest unspoiled forests, particularly the Boreal Forest in Canada. They say the erosion of that forest is jeopardizing not just the billions of birds that nest there, and some endangered caribou, but literally, the planet.

Kimberly-Clark concedes that about 11 percent of the fiber it procures comes from Canada’s Boreal Forest, but “under our procurement policies, we make it clear that we purchase the wood chips that do not come from those areas of the Boreal that are designated as ecologically significant, old growth areas,” says company spokesman Dave Dickson.

Dickson adds that Kimberly-Clark is making environmental strides by testing marketing new consumer products – tissues, toilet paper and paper towels – made with recycled fibers. (More on that in a moment.)

More from GRN
Help Save The Boreal Forest

Greenpeace, however, is unlikely to be dissuaded until logging stops in the Boreal region.
Now three years into its “brand damage” campaign called “Kleercut” that mocks Kimberly-Clark’s flagship Kleenex brand, the group has achieved some notable successes. Several large companies are no longer buying K-C products and Kimberly Clark has changed how it makes some of its brands in the United Kingdom by incorporating sustainable wood products. Earlier this month, a group of Greenpeace members blockaded the entrance to a K-C processing facility in Everett, Wash., in bus outfitted as a Kleenex box, keeping the issue before the public.

Ultimately, Greenpeace hopes to win over consumers, get them using recycled tissues – and pretty soon.

The Greenpeace campaign (motto: “Wiping Away Ancient Forests”) is time critical because each day, more of the Boreal Forest that spans Northern Canada disappears, and its 70+ year-old trees cannot be easily replaced, nor can its ecosystem be regenerated or replicated. (See the photo above from Greenpeace’s photo gallery of vanishing forests.)

News of Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize on Friday sped around the world faster than a melting iceberg, setting off critics who carped that the former vice president is undeserving, but energizing fans, who buzzed about Gore’s improved chances should he enter the 2008 presidential race (considered not likely) and his new stature as the vindicated, most venerated statesman of climate change.

Environmental groups, meanwhile, received the news of the prize to Gore and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change with a happy sigh and paused in their trenches to reflect on the implications.

“It is with extreme satisfaction that we receive the news that Gore and the IPCC have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,” said Oystein Dahle, Chairman of the Board of Worldwatch Institute and a leading Norwegian environmentalist, in a news release titled “Planet Wins Nobel Peace Prize.”

“With their decision, the Nobel Committee has for the second time signaled that peace with the environment is an essential requirement if we are to have peace between human beings,” Dahle said, speaking from his home in Oslo where the Prize was announced.

Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) called the recognition of Gore and the scientists of the IPCC a fitting tribute. “Al Gore made it OK to talk about global warming over breakfast and dinner tables all across America. He made this unprecedented challenge understandable and the solutions accessible for millions of people. Breaking down the fear, the confusion and the misplaced hopelessness is the key to progress. An Inconvenient Truth has helped unlock doors from Washington to Sacramento, and all the way to Wall Street. Standing on the shoulders of thousands of hard-working scientists laboring to understand and explain the science, he cracked the popular culture code and put global warming at the center of a global spotlight,” Beinecke said.

And the IPCC answered the global warming “deniers” with “indisputable scientific proof” that human pollution is causing climate change, Beinecke said. “The IPCC proved once and for all that the catastrophic results of global warming will be upon us soon if we don’t take decisive action now to reduce our heat-trapping carbon pollution.”

Environmental Defense used the occasion to challenge Congress to pass comprehensive climate legislation.

“After Al Gore stands on the stage in Oslo to receive his award, I think the American public will turn to the leaders of both parties in the U.S. Congress to see where they stand,’’ said Environmental Defense president Fred Krupp. “The scientific evidence that the former vice president and the IPCC have helped drive home tells us there’s no consolation prize for Congress if it fails to act.”

Want to do your part to press Congress to pass climate change legislation? The National Wildlife Federation is running a campaign asking lawmakers to co-sponsor a pending climate change package. You can find out who among your U.S. representatives has signed on and who’s sitting out at the NWF’s Take Action page. California has the most co-sponsors signed up, but discouragingly, the sponsors and non-sponsors breakdown almost to a man and woman along party lines.

Want to see Al Gore run for president? Visit draftgore.com. (Thanks to draftgore for the use of the picture above.)

Copyright © 2007 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

Farm subsidies are one of the most complex topics to plow in Washington. Well, there’s health care….Still, the debate over farm aid is right up there, deep, difficult and with seriously entrenched sides.

The debate even echoes aspects of the argument over the Iraq war. Some say that pulling back on farm subsidies would cause dangerous cracks in the whole U.S. agricultural machine. Others argue that the subsidies support large corporations instead of the individual farmers they were intended to free from financial ups-and-downs.

See the parallel? It’s OK if you don’t. More important is that there’s some potential good news for consumers buried in this tennis match. If Congress were to pass an amendment to the current Farm Bill, known as the Kind-Flake Amendment, some of your taxpayer farm supports will be used to encourage farmers to switch to organic farming.

Yes, you heard right. Some lawmakers want to encourage organic farming. Dare we say that that would be good for the environment, healthy for consumers and possibly even help bring down the price of organic produce?

According to the Cornucopia Institute, a growing number of consumers aren’t just buying organic food for their own health, they’re concerned about the environment and want to support farmers who forego pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. They want cleaner land and water, as well as cleaner food. (Note to skeptics: Find the downside.)

For more information on the farm debate, see the ever-vigilant Mulch website. Here news geeks and other interested parties can see who are the biggest winners of farm subsidies and get a breakdown for their own state.

To sign a petition (at least until the Farm Bill is voted on) supporting the Kind-Flake Amendment and urging your very own Congressional representative to vote that direction, visit the Environmental Working Group website.

The EWG is an established Washington policy and advocacy group working for a cleaner environment in many areas. A few years ago they produced a list of the Dirty Dozen fruits and vegetables that tested as having the most pesticide residues. That list, which also identifies the least contaminated conventionally grown fruits and vegetables, can serve as a guide to what produce you might want to buy only as certified organic. The EWG makes a handy cut out version of the list for your refrigerator door.

The website also explains more about how many pesticides end up on fruits and vegetables.

Granted the medical evidence about the harm that’s cost by traces of pesticides is inconclusive. We know that exposure to large amounts of pesticides is bad for us. Studies have found higher incidences of cancer among certain groups of people, like crop dusters, for example.

We also know that several pesticides in use today are listed as carcinogens. But what remains unclear is what small doses from eating contaminated or inadequately washed produce does. Part of why we know so little, ironically, is because we exposed to so many chemicals, dozens literally, on a daily basis. The EWG, among other groups, generally tell people to pay special attention to the food we feed our young children and expecting mothers.

A great source for more information on organic food, what’s safe and what’s probably not hurting you, is the Nutrition Action Health Letter put out by the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Their July/August cover story Organic Food – Worth the Price? offers some advice and some information that might surprise organic-minded shoppers. The article details concerns about pesticide on produce, but says that fears about antibiotic and pesticide residues in conventionally raised livestock may be unfounded.

Furthermore, the article by David Schardt reminds us that eating fruits and vegetables is a good thing, regardless, because a diet high in plant food has been shown to protect against certain cancers and promotes general good health.

“The bottom line: it can’t hurt to avoid pesticides, but you’re better off eating fruits and vegetables with pesticides than not eating fruits and vegetables.”

Copyright © 2007 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

L'Occitane en Provence and fashion designer Stella McCartney are also expanding into organics.

Read the story: The Wall Street Journal

Just as it seemed there would be little agreement between Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. President George Bush, the leaders, and their G8 counterparts, emerged with a plan in which cutting back greenhouse emissions by 2050 would be preserved as a goal if not a hard and fast commitment.

Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel declared the agreement a huge step forward and appeared in smiling photo ops with President Bush. Ms. Merkel has long championed the idea of getting the world’s top industrial nation’s to agree on limitations, though she had wanted to make the emissions reductions mandatory.

The agreement conceded to Bush, who has resisted strict deadlines for greenhouse gas emissions. It also endorsed his plan to engage China and India, among other high polluting nations, in a series of meetings later this year to set national emissions goals.

Environmentalists and pundits are just beginning to weigh in. Read more at:

The New York Times

CNN.com

ABC News

– By Barbara Kessler

Copyright © 2007 | Distributed by Noofangle Media

President Bush proposed today that the world’s top polluting nations should gather for a series of meetings on the fall to set global targets for greenhouse gas emissions by the end of 2007.

The president’s proposal comes as other G-8 nation leaders plan to discuss global warming limits at their meeting next week in Germany. A German proposal asks the G-8 leaders to rollback emissions limits to half of 1990 levels by 2050, which scientists say is needed to effectively slow global warming.

The Bush administration has been quibbling with the wording and specific mandates in that document, leaving Bush at odds with the other G-8 leaders, especially Germany’s chancellor and Great Britain’s prime minister, who have endorsed the plan.

Given Bush’s track record on global warming, environmental critics saw today’s announcement as the administration’s attempt to detract from the G-8 discussion. Their gripe: That Bush wants to appear to be doing something on global warming, but isn’t so much warm, as fuzzy, on the issue.

He hasn’t supported strict rollbacks on emissions, but favors an laissez faire approach that would allow nations to devise their own curbs, critics said.

A Bush official, however, said the president’s plan could speed action by bringing the key polluting nations together and not waiting for United Nation’s timetables.

Story at CNN.

Copyright © 2007 | Distributed by Noofangle Media