By Bill Sullivan
Green Right Now

Image: cleanenergyweek.org

Legislators wrestling with health care reform, job concerns and a spiraling federal deficit have another group vying for their attention in Washington this week. Thanks to a hastily thrown-together coalition, it’s Clean Energy Week, with environmental activists and business leaders descending on Capitol Hill to press for money for more and better green initiatives.

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By Sommer Saadi
Green Right Now

New Yorkers have gotten pretty good at finding new places to grow plants: rooftops in Brooklyn, abandoned rail lines in Manhattan, and now they’re conquering the tops of old shipping containers.

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From Green Right Now Reports

Real estate developer and author Frank McKinney has built opulent mansions, including a $24 million oceanfront estate called Acqua Liana in Palm Beach that he promotes as the biggest green certified manse in the world .

But the Florida real estate entrepreneur also has been building sustainable housing for the poor for many years, including in Haiti. (Which is why we’re skipping the discussion today about whether ginormous homes like that Palm Beach manse are truly green, and will accept that this house, certified by the U.S. Green Building Council and Energy Star, occupies a special rarified category.)

Caring Village residents in Haiti, before the earthquake

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From Green Right Now Reports

Miss America Pageant contestants have been known to be green with envy when the winner is announced, but how green are they the rest of the time?

GreenTwithTamara.TV is trying to find out.

The Web TV portal is running a contest to determine which Miss America contender best embodies the notion of “Green is Gorgeous.” Host Tamara Henry has interviewed all 53 contestants about what “being green” means to them. Voters can check out the answers by using an interactive map.

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By Sommer Saadi
Green Right Now

Ben Flanner’s farm grows lush in summer with rows of squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce. And during all seasons, it provides a visual feast: a perfect view of the Manhattan skyline.

Rooftop Gardens in Brooklyn

That’s because Flanner’s farm is on top of a vacant three-story warehouse building in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

A 6,000 square foot slab of concrete covered in more than 30 varieties of fruits and vegetables (not to mention the herbs) is unusual, but it’s no longer rare. Communities are pushing for greater access to locally grown food, but with land in the city so expensive, non-profits, restaurants, residents and entrepreneurial farmers like Flanner and his partner Annie Novak are turning to the city’s most under-used and readily available spaces: its rooftops.

Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, a 145-corporate-member green roof and walls industry association, reported a 35 percent increase from last year in the number of constructed green roof projects nationally, which totaled more than 3.1 million square feet. That number is likely to increase as more city farmers discover, as Flanner and Novak did, that rooftop farms can be profitable ventures.

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By Sommer Saadi
Green Right Now

Brooklyn’s Rooftop Gardens, run by Ben Flanner and Annie Novak, has seeded more than produce. It is helping an urban neighborhood develop its own food network.

This past October, as Annie Novak delivered her final workshop of the season, about 30 loyal volunteers and green roof enthusiasts sat atop the warehouse and listened in to the lessons learned from Rooftop Farms’ first harvest.

Novak says these plants grew well: peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, radishes, kale, swiss chard, and the herbs

And these not so much: The squash did terribly, Novak says, and she warns that the shallow soil (an average of 6 inches) reduced the number of fruits per plant

She shared lessons learned, like the tangles involved in mulching with organic hair.

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Green Right Now Reports

Greenpeace doesn’t want American citizens to forget who’s stalling progress on climate action, namely, entrenched industrial polluters.

Greenpeace at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Building (Photo: Robert Meyers)

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By Ashley Phillips
Green Right Now

Ajamu Brown, 32, was raised in Central Brooklyn amongst families who immigrated to the U.S. in search of a better life.

While growing up watching his community suffer from the effects of crack cocaine, AIDS, a failing educational system, and poor housing, Brown decided he was going to make a difference. He headed to upstate New York where he received his degree in speech communications from Ithaca College. After graduating, Brown joined the Peace Corps as a volunteer on HIV/AIDS education and outreach.

“During that time I learned a lot about Namibia’s delicate eco-system. It was difficult to witness the high rate of human and environmental degradation, but I learned how important it was to have bottom-up strategies and community support in solving problems that will create sustainable solutions,” Brown said.

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By Chris Reinolds
Green Right Now

Beekeeper Laura Johnson enjoys tending to her buzzing friends, but the real motive behind her hobby is stopping the decline of honey bees.

Bee Colony Collapse Disorder has been threatening bees, and the crops they serve, around the world for the past several years.

So Johnson, an organic gardener in suburban Atlanta, decided it was time to jump into honey.

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Green Right Now Reports

Rallying for a clean energy bill in Massachussetts, noted climatologist Dr. James Hansen told students this weekend that they must take the future in their hands.

Massachusetts Sleep Out (Photo: Ian McClellan)

“Our universe is incredibly unjust and inequitable for young people and future generations. ” Dr. Hansen said. “Unless someone can change the direction, young people are really in trouble. Our governments are not taking actions or planning actions that will achieve this.”

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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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