By John DeFore

Once upon a time, the only humans who lived in trees were such fictional folks as Tarzan and the hero of Italo Calvino’s charming romance The Baron in the Trees. That was before the “tree-sitting” phenomenon, in which activists climb into trees threatened by development and refuse to come down.

The population of real-life tree dwellers shrank this month as the last two participants in a 20-year-old protest agreed to leave their perch in Northern California redwoods.

As the story was reported locally, the protest ended after bankruptcy put the Pacific Lumber Company under new ownership. Humboldt Redwood Co., which took the company over, committed to a sustainable-harvest policy that the Associated Press says “promised to spare any redwood that sprouted before 1800 with a diameter of at least 4 feet. It also pledged to avoid clear-cutting, a practice that the timber giant aggressively practiced under its previous owner, Maxxam Inc.”

Humboldt president and chief forester Michael Jani trekked out to the occupied trees himself to make the promise explicit, and the activists are taking him at his word. Last week, the final tree-sitters in Humboldt County gave up their temporary homes, including a 300-foot tree at least 1,500 years old where 22-year-old Billy Stoetzer had lived (in a hammock shelter) for almost a year.

Organizers tell reporters that they’ll keep an eye on the area to ensure that promises are kept. Since Humboldt Redwood is owned in large part by the owners of The Gap, they’d have plenty of opportunities for high-profile protest if things were to change.

For more information about old growth redwood forests, see this National Park Service webpage.

(Photo: National Park Service.)

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By Kelly Rondeau
It’s back to the books for kids across America and going green in the classroom has never been so easy. With the help of a popular program called the Go Green Initiative, teachers have quick and simple access online to all the tools and resources needed to green a classroom, an entire [...]

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By Harriet Blake

In his new tome Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution - And How It Can Renew America (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008) Thomas Friedman pulls no punches on his concerns for the country’s future. The title — Hot, Flat and Crowded — refers to the planet’s global warming crisis, the rise of the middle class throughout the world and over population — and he says to counter that, “green” must become the new “red, white and blue”.

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By Catherine Girardeau

This coming Labor Day Weekend, San Francisco will celebrate the intersection of taste, sustainability and social justice that is the Slow Food movement. Non-profit educational organization Slow Food USA is throwing a four-day party they’re calling Slow Food Nation.

SFN’s Executive Director Anya Fernald hopes the debut event, expected to draw some 50,000 people, will reach out beyond the obvious coalition of foodies, health-nuts and environmentalists to, “build momentum and demand for an American food system that is safer, healthier and more socially just.” Highlights of the festival, which runs Friday through Monday, will include the:

• “Slow Food Rocks” concert, serving up not only Gnarls Barkley and the New Pornographers but gourmet beer and locally-grown and locally-produced food;

• 50,000 square feet of “taste pavilions” for which nationally-recognized regional food experts have hand-picked authentic gastronomic specialities from every state;

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By Barbara Kessler
While some global warming activists despaired over Congress’ failure to launch the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act last week, the We Campaign (founded by Al Gore and comrades to promote action against global warming) forged ahead.

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By Barbara Kessler

Wonder how the gray wolves are faring since they were “delisted” from protection under the Endangered Species Act? One of the three Rocky Mountain states with a significant gray wolf population, Idaho, is having meetings to determine the rules for the hunting of the wolves this fall.

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By Michele Chan Santos

On a quiet street in the tree-covered city of Rollingwood, a suburb of Austin, Texas, sits a house designed to epitomize everything technology and modern design can do to make a home environmentally friendly and safe for families with children.

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By Barbara Kessler

Green washers are taking consumers and taxpayers for a joy ride of deception that will have real costs, both environmentally and economically, if the companies aren’t exposed. So says Greenpeace, the venerable environmental watchdog group, which used Earth Day to unveil its new website against green washing, stopgreenwash.org. The website [...]

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Earth Day reverberated around the world on Sunday, with festivals from Tokyo to Barcelona to San Francisco. In the United States, the key urban festivals attracted crowds of thousands as entertainers blasted music in New York City’s Central Park, the Mall in Washington D.C. and Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.
But while the day was [...]

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By John DeFore
Standing out in the current wave of books about the environment — dire jeremiads, thoughtful analyses, and green-leaning coffee-table books — is a compact but weighty tome that is largely uninterested in conveying to readers any kind of “the time is now!” urgency. Rather, American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau released April [...]

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By Harriet Blake
You’ve just moved to town and somehow you still have too much stuff. The Salvation Army is about 20 minutes down the road. But perhaps there is someone closer who could use that antique desk or the comfy but well-worn recliner? And with the price of gas and all those carbon emissions, that [...]

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By John DeFore
Fires that broke out Monday in Maltby, Washington, outside of Seattle, consumed three new luxury homes and damaged a fourth (firefighters were able to save the fifth). The culprits, if preliminary evidence is to be believed, consider themselves environmentalists.

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