Every minute, we lose 36 football fields-worth of forests. Are we living out Dr. Seuss’s environmental fable, “The Lorax”?
WWF recently released their 2011 “Living Forests” report. Based on data showing that over 230 million hectares of forest could disappear by 2050, the report proposes a universal goal of “zero net deforestation and forest degradation” (ZNDD).
The report states that we are exceeding Earth’s biocapacity by 50 percent. Human demand is “overshooting” the planet’s ability to produce renewable resources and absorb CO2. At our current rate of resource use, we will need two planets to live on by 2030.
When Rush Limbaugh says “jump,” the Speaker of the House apparently says, “Can I do a flip, too?” John Boehner courageously supported ending taxpayer subsidies to Big Oil for 12 hours, as CP noted yesterday.
Obviously Boehner heard from Big Oil about his claim that oil companies are “not paying their fair share.” But Think Progress has the story of someone else Boehner heard from:
As the White House and Democratic lawmakers congratulate Boehner on having “seen the light,” right-wing mouthpiece Rush Limbaugh is choking on Boehner’s betrayal. Aghast that Boehner failed to defend Big Oil’s slick situation, Limbaugh said that, were he a Republican political leader, “I would defend Big Oil“
Amazing that a nut like Rush can have this type of power. This situation is one that should make Boehner cry is eyes out.
I recommend the fava bean for home gardens because it's versatile, hearty, and produces a high yield. With nutty, creamy, and slightly sweet flavors, the bean can be grilled, roasted, or slow-cooked and complements a wide variety of cuisines. Plant it in early spring, after the last frost, in soil rich with organic nutrients.
The fava bean thrives in partial shade, sowed about a half-inch deep and four inches apart, against a wall or trellis. In dry climates, it's crucial to lightly water the plant consistently, as opposed to soaking it at odd intervals. If you harvest the bean when it's young, it's sweeter and more delicate. As the pods grow larger, the beans get an earthier flavor and firmer texture.
Only way to make this dish is if you or a good friend grow kale two years running. It's best with a local beer that's light on the hops.
The kale you see in the pan above was planted in the spring of 2010, harvested through July - at which point leaf-chewing bugs made it unappetizing - and let to resurrect after the snows of a Pennsylvania winter had melted. This semi-perennial aspect is key: the first pickings off a year old kale plant have none of that peculiar kale off-taste that some dislike and which is most prominent in the heat of summer. No bug holes either.
Wash the leaves. Tear into thirds and place in plan. Add salt and a bunch of olive oil.
Pour half the beer on the Kale and half in your mouth; cover tightly, and cook for maybe 20 minutes - until the glistening green has about faded away. Definitely: stop cooking before it looks like canned spinach or canned kale.
Add more fresh-ground black pepper than a TV cook would advise and let it sit covered, until ready for dinner. Sometimes I add tomato slices half-way through.
Kelly makes kale pesto...
Worth a try. Always need an excuse to have a brew on a work night.
The U.S. is already cultivating 165 million acres of genetically modified crops, up 7 million acres from just two years ago. Modified seeds and large monocultures in general, are monopolizing our nation's agriculture system like never before and crop after crop are deemed "safe" by the USDA. We're headed full speed down a dark, winding road and it seems we're driving blindfolded. And most recently, according to a story on Grist, the USDA is starting a new program which will outsource environmental impact statements on biotech crops to the GMO industry. Obviously, biotech companies are thrilled with the idea.
Once the industry conducts its own crop environmental impact statements, which will no doubt paint a glowing picture of each Round Up Ready gem, it will present the assessment to the USDA in the hopes that they will approve the assessment.
Can you say "fox guarding the henhouse?"
Why would this happen? Come on do you really have to ask - it's all about cash in the pocket.
As said before - we consumers will never win as long as the lobbyists and CEOs are in control of our nation.
At a congressional hearing on Friday designed to lay the groundwork for an effort to delay critical EPA toxic pollution standards, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) claimed that reducing emissions of toxic mercury, sulfur dioxide and soot would not bring health benefits. Though conceding he is “not a medical doctor,” Barton offered the “hypothesis” that EPA estimates of the benefits of its proposed air toxics rule are “pulled out of the thin air” because there is no “medical negative” to the pollution:
To actually cause poisoning or a premature death you have to get a large concentration of mercury into the body. I’m not a medical doctor, but my hypothesis is that’s not going to happen! You’re not going to get enough mercury exposure or SO2 exposure or even particulate matter exposure! I think the EPA numbers are pulled out of the thin air!
Barton denied decades of science and the experience of anyone who has ever lived downwind of a polluting facility, noting the factory and plant owners on the panel didn’t know of any workers inside their plants that have gotten sick from the pollution.
“I guess he forgot that the people most in risk of getting poisoned — babies — don’t work in factories,” Clean Air Watch’s Frank O’Donnell responded. “This is pretty appalling stuff, since Barton and colleagues will probably soon be voting on legislation to delay toxic pollution cleanup.”
Please don't play politics with our health and lives!
Was there ever a man who was wrong more often about more stuff than Glenn Beck? I know history has its share of demagogues, but Beck is certain to go down as one of the most profoundly prolific. Yesterday, he revived an old meme that conservative politicians love to lob around -- that the green movement is trying to indoctrinate your children! Trying to turn them against you! Even, as Beck exclaims in the video above, trying to get them to kill you! His target? Powershift, the event that gathers thousands of young climate and clean energy leaders from around the nation.
That's the tenuous link Beck tries to draw between the radical movements of the 60s, including the Weather Underground from which he draws his quote, and the extraordinarily peaceful gathering of college students and community leaders at Powershift.
I knew2 it. Powershift assassins! Stay away from me all who went to DC this past weekend! Glenn wouldn't lie!
The Sora is a new electric motorcycle by Lito Green Motion, a Canadian company. It looks fairly badass and thanks to its 12 kWh advanced lithium-polymer batteries, it has an electric range of 300 kilometers (185 miles) and a top speed of 200 kph (124 mph).
If I wasn't so scared of speed and so cheap (can't afford a $40k plus bike) i would love to have this to get to work. Wind hitting my face, bugs getting in my teeth - on second thought....
A more primitive radar would conclude that the planet Earth is angrier than usual this year. Japan is still in a radioactive daze from the seventeen inch shove it suffered and lots of people in Carolina are surely shaking their heads over this weekend's visitation of wrath. Is it possible that climate change and Jesus are one and the same? Let them figure that out in the little cinderblock roadside chapels next Sunday before they all trundle over to the Nascar track.
"People really dislike a lot of the repellents available now," Dolan says. "They don't like the odor they have, they don't like the greasy feel they give. And a lot of people are just concerned about putting man-made chemicals on their skin."
That's why the CDC is pushing hard to develop a completely natural insect repellent made from a chemical called nootkatone, which is found in Alaska yellow cedar trees and citrus fruit.
Dolan says nootkatone "is nongreasy, dries very quickly, and it has a very pleasant, citrus-y grapefruit odor to it."
He recently demonstrated its effectiveness as a mosquito repellent, rubbing some on his hand and then sticking it into a cage containing 50 hungry mosquitoes. When he holds the treated hand near mosquitoes, they try to get away in the opposite direction as fast as they can.
Even after five minutes, Dolan has no bites on his nootkatone-treated hand.
Nootkatone is also effective against ticks, and scientists think it will work against bed bugs, head lice and other insects, too.
Moreover, nootkatone is so nontoxic you could drink it. In fact, it's already an approved food additive, officially classed as "Generally Considered Safe." It's also a natural ingredient in some foods.
"If you've had a grapefruit, you've consumed some nootkatone," Dolan says, "or drank a Squirt, for instance."
Hmmmm. Grapefruit and vodka?
I guess rather than compost the grapefruit skins I'll rub on my skin - see if it works.
Tim DeChristopher committed one of the most famous acts of climate activism in the nation: by bidding on a parcel of land that oil and gas companies were keen to snap up during a midnight hour auction put on by the Bush administration (and of course, being entirely unable to pay for it), he inspired the fledgling, next generation green movement to fight back. DeChristopher gave the final keynote speech at Powershift, an event that draws 10,000 green activists from across the nation to Washington DC. In his speech, DeChristopher implored the attendees, mostly young students and organizers, to move beyond campus activism and to engage in more direct civil disobedience.
And his plan is certainly a bold one -- to send waves of activists to mountaintop removal mines, day after day, in order to shut down their operations and force the government's hand on the issue -- and it very well may appeal to an anxious group of students who are growing frustrated with the inert political climate in Washington...
Van Jones is one of the most exciting and effective green leaders in the nation -- and it's precisely because his message, that fighting for clean energy, social justice, and job growth is best done in unison, stands to rouse wide swathes of the nation to the cause. He's already made a powerful impact, first by working to bring good jobs to neglected urban areas, then by penning a bestselling book on the green collar economy, and finally, by joining the Obama administration as its green jobs adviser. Of course, someone with such an effective, powerful message was bound to stir the ire of corporatist conservatives, who lead a smear campaign that ended in his ouster from the White House. Since then, Jones has laid low. So it raised some optimistic eyebrows when he was given billing as a keynote speaker at this year's Powershift (a gathering of 10,000 students and young leaders in the clean energy movement).
Jones had a few inspiring words for the youth at Powershift. And the first were: "I'm baaaaaaack!"
Jones also made some emphatic calls for the students to reinvigorate activism. One line in particular caused a stir: "if you have a smart phone, you have more computing power than the US government had when it put man on the moon.Stop using them as toys, and start sing them as tools to change American ... You have to make a decision not to wake your turn."
Very glad to see he is back. hey Beck, what do you have to say about Jones' speech?
In his 2010 book, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, environmental scholar and activist Bill McKibben writes of a planet so devastated by global warming that it's no longer recognizable as the Earth we once inhabited. This is a planet, he predicts, of "melting poles and dying forests and a heaving, corrosive sea, raked by winds, strafed by storms, scorched by heat." Altered as it is from the world in which human civilization was born and thrived, it needs a new name—so he gave it that extra "a" in "Eaarth."
The Eaarth that McKibben describes is a victim, a casualty of humankind's unrestrained consumption of resources and its heedless emissions of climate-altering greenhouse gases. True, this Eaarth will cause pain and suffering to humans as sea levels rise and croplands wither, but as he portrays it, it is essentially a victim of human rapaciousness.
With all due respect to McKibben's vision, let me offer another perspective on his (and our) Eaarth: as a powerful actor in its own right and as an avenger, rather than simply victim.
Eaarth is now responding to humanity's depredations in a similar way: by warming the atmosphere, taking carbon from the air and depositing it in the ocean, increasing rainfall in some areas and decreasing it elsewhere, and in other ways compensating for the massive atmospheric infusion of harmful human emissions.
But what Eaarth does to protect itself from human intervention is unlikely to prove beneficial for human societies. As the planet warms and glaciers melt, sea levels will rise, inundating coastal areas, destroying cities, and flooding low-lying croplands. Drought will become endemic in many once-productive farming areas, reducing food supplies for hundreds of millions of people. Many plant and animal species that are key to human livelihoods, including various species of trees, food crops, and fish, will prove incapable of adjusting to these climate changes and so cease to exist. Humans may—and again I emphasize that may—prove more successful at adapting to the crisis of global warming than such species, but in the process, multitudes are likely to die of starvation, disease, and attendant warfare.
Bill McKibben is right: we no longer live on the "cozy, taken-for-granted" planet formerly known as Earth. We inhabit a new place, already changed dramatically by the intervention of humankind. But we are not acting upon a passive, impotent entity unable to defend itself against human transgression. Sad to say, we will learn to our dismay of the immense powers available to Eaarth, the Avenger.
Mother Earth/Gaia is truly not a passive victim. Reminds me of...
I would be pissed at what we do to the planet. I would also be pissed if someone served me Chiffon margarine (it was a staple in mt parent's fridge - sorry to say).
The best way to learn about your soil's health is to get a soil test through your local cooperative extension service or at a local nursery. However, there are a few simple things you can do to get a general idea about your soil's health. One of the best ways to find out more about your soil is to observe what's growing well in it.
Different weeds thrive in different conditions. Note that we're not talking about one or two weeds here. If you're seeing several of the same weed in an area, that can give you a good general idea of what type of conditions you have in that spot.
My "culprit":
Purslane:Purslane's thick, fleshy leaves are actually edible and a very good source of omega-3 fatty acids, iron, and calcium. If it's thriving in your garden, you likely have soil that is high in fertility.
High fertility and food source - I always use purslane in salads. So can these really be called a weed?
Image via WikipediaI found the engineer/conductor of the Crazy Train - Rand Paul.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee may have entered a new era of partisanship.
The committee famous for working across party lines faced heavy resistance yesterday from Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky as it marked up its first legislation of the new Congress.
The tea party favorite voted against bipartisan energy efficiency and hydropower measures from panel Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) and ranking member Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).
The efficiency measure (S. 398 (pdf)), which would strengthen and improve energy efficiency standards for a number of consumer products, drew particular attention from Paul. He offered an amendment that would remove the enforcement authority from a broad law that imposes efficiency standards on a number of products. The bill under consideration yesterday would amend that law to add the additional appliance standards.
"I think that to be consistent with a free society, we should make them voluntary," Paul said of the standards, before launching the committee into a discussion of Ayn Rand's 1937 novel "Anthem" about individual choice.
Rand Paul - shoveling coal into the Crazy Train furnace. Full steam ahead to a FREE SOCIETY. Not a healthy air or water society but...
I am a big fan of vermicomposting. It can be done indoors or out, and it's still fun, even after all the time I've been composting with worms, to watch my apple cores and coffee grounds turn into amazing, nutrient-rich vermicompost. If you're looking for an even easier way to compost with worms, consider installing a worm bucket right in your garden bed.
- Get a plastic 5 gallon bucket with a lid. These are cheap at most home centers. If you have a bucket from cat litter or laundry detergent, these will work well too. - Cut the bottom out of your bucket, and, if you have a large drill bit, drill several 3/4" to 1" holes all around the bottom quarter of your bucket. Doing these two things allows your worms to come and go as they please -- which is exactly what you want. If you aren't able to drill holes, it will still work, so don't let that stop you. - Place your bucket in your garden bed, sinking the bottom quarter of it down into the soil. Now you can start filling the bucket with kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, tea bags, crumble egg shells -- anything you'd add to a traditional worm bin. Put the lid on, and you're done.
The whole point of this particular composter is to take work off of you, the gardener. You add your food scraps to the bucket, keep it covered, and end up with better, more fertile soil, thanks to the worms. They make their way into your bucket to eat, then head back out into your garden bed where they deposit castings, adding nutrients to your garden and improving the soil. Anything that improves my soil and turns waste into something useful, with no work on my behalf, is a win in my book (lazivores, unite!)
Effective and simple - that's for me. Now if someone will drill the holes and bury the buckets...
Syngenta, Swiss manufacturer of the herbicide Atrazine (very popular with US farmers but banned in Europe) and the widely-used fungicides Bravo and Daconil (formulations of chlorothalonil, a molecule similar to other long-banned pestsicides, but still available everywhere) has encountered some new eco-tox information about it's chlorothalonil-based formulations that might potentially lead to increased regulatory scrutiny. It kills frogs. At the tested concentration, most of the frogs.
Because it is so heavily used on peanuts (per the USGS summary above) and because it is either a strong 'dermal sensitizer' and/or a strong 'skin irritant' (there are formal but controversial distinctions) my hypothetical question is "are peanut allergies only caused by peanut proteins or are they potentially associated with something else?" Anyone know?
If you're not comfortable waiting for the science and regulatory deliberations, eat organic veggies and nuts.
Toxic to frogs - interesting question concerning peanut allergies. Of course, I think an allergy is the latest of our worries.
Of course eat organic or grow your own - without pesticides/herbicides/inorganic fertilizers. Wish I could grow peanuts.
The Senate voted against this yesterday: As expected, the House of Representatives voted yesterday (255-172) to prevent the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act--something which was decided to be within its mandate and authority by the Supreme Court back in 2007 and approved by the Obama administration in 2009.
The vote went down roughly along party lines, with 19 Democrats joining Republicans in voting to handcuff the EPA and no Republicans voting against the bill. Six people did not vote. Given that the Senate and the President oppose the bill, it's unlikely the bill will become law.
Okay, so it won't pass. But they will try and try again - bacause it is to the benefit of their wallets.
At an EPA hearing last summer, representatives from Koch Industries argued that moderate levels of the toxic chemical dioxin should not be designated as a cancer risk for humans.
When members of Congress sought higher security at chemical plants to guard against terrorist attacks, Koch Industries lobbyists prowled Capitol Hill to voice their opposition.
And when Congress moved to strengthen regulation of the financial markets after recent collapses, Koch Industries — a major commodities and derivatives trader — deployed a phalanx of lobbyists to resist proposed changes.
Charles and David Koch, the owners of the country’s second-largest private corporation, are libertarians of long standing, who contend that government regulations, taxes and subsidies stifle individual initiative and hamper American competitiveness. In recent years, the Kochs have played an increasingly public role as financial angels for conservative causes, politicians and foundations.
What’s not so well-known is the activity of Koch Industries in the trenches in Washington, where a Center for Public Integrity examination of lobbying disclosure files and federal regulatory records reveals a lobbying steamroller for the company’s interests, at times in conflict with its public pose.
Read the entire article to learn more about these guys and their not so friendly attitude towards our environment.
Know thine "enemy" oh Mother Earth.
Less than a year after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the U.S. government has begun issuing new permits for deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Pundits think that despite a pause in the "nuclear renaissance," the same thing could happen to nuclear power plants in the wake of Fukushima, at least outside the U.S.
The culprit? Dwindling supplies of cheap energy -- and everything else. Peak Everything, the title of peak oil pundit Richard Heinberg's 2007 book, is about many of our favorite subjects: shortages of clean water, livable climate, some minerals, wild-caught fish, and of course cheap fossil fuels, principally oil.
In the face of these shortages, governments that lack the imagination to push for a portfolio of renewables are falling back on the devil they know: ever more challenging sources of oil, including the Arctic, ultra-deep reservoirs, and Alberta's tar sands, as well as nuclear power and natural gas.
This beautiful, functional idea comes via Annette at Potted. She built a low wall from cinder blocks, attaching them to each other with a weather-safe adhesive. The blocks are lined with wire hardware cloth, then a layer of broken block covers the hardware cloth to keep the soil in each section. She has planted the wall with succulents, which makes since because this would probably dry out fairly quickly. I can also see it planted up with Mediterranean herbs, such as rosemary, thyme, and oregano, which prefer things a bit on the dry side.
I have the space all set. The plants chosen. Can anyone drop off some FREE blocks?
Blame Steven Chu, then, because when it comes to America's energy predicament, the president has been woefully misinformed. Mr. Obama pawned off a roster of notions and proposals already product-tested in the public meme-o-sphere. Almost everyone of these ideas is inconsistent with reality, based on faulty premises, or represents some kind of magical thinking. What they have in common is that they're ideas the public wants to hear, whether they are truthful or not, because we don't want to change the way we live. The central idea in Mr. Obama's speech is that we will reduce our oil imports by one-third in a decade. This is a gross distortion of reality. The truth is that our oil imports will be reduced automatically, whether we like it or not. The process is already underway. The nations that export oil to us are using much more of their own oil even while their supplies have passed peak production and entered depletion. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Mexico have some of the highest population growth-rates in the world. They sell gasoline to their own people for less than a dollar a gallon. At the same time China and India are driving more cars and importing a lot more of the world's declining supply. (China has perhaps the equivalent of a four-year supply of its own oil in the ground, and India has next-to-zero oil of its own)
There are a few things you can state categorically about the US energy predicament and the national conversation we're having about it - including the leaders of that conversation in government, business, and the media. One is that we are blowing a lot of green smoke up our collective ass. None of these schemes is going to work as advertised. The disappointment over them will be massive and probably lead to awful political consequences. Another is that we are ignoring the most obvious intelligent responses to this predicament, namely, shifting our focus to walkable communities and public transit, especially rebuilding the American passenger railroad system - without which, I assure you, we will be most regrettably screwed ten years from now. Mr. Obama had one throwaway line in his speech about public transit and nothing whatever about walkable neighborhoods. The reason for this obvious idiocy is that it's all about the cars. That's all we care about in the USA, the cars. We can't get over the cars. We can't talk about anything except how we'll find magical new ways to run all the cars. This is a very tragic sort of stupidity and if we don't change our thinking about it, from the highest level on down, history is going to treat us very cruelly.
So we are deluding ourselves into thinking that things will work out? Not really our choice at this point. Mother is spinning away and doing a number on us - wild weather, quakes, tsunamis, volcanoes... What do you expect - using up her fossil fuels, destroying her soil, dirtying her water and air. Sure we are doing it in fancy cars, but,,,
For the seventh time in a row, Chairman Doc Hastings (R-WA) of the House Natural Resources Committee held a hearing where he pushed for more domestic production of oil and gas, a proposal known to benefit Big Oil with little impact on gas prices. His colleague on the Committee, Rep. Jeff Landry (R-LA), whose largest single industry contributor is oil and gas, took the opportunity at the hearing to defend the profits of Big Oil.
He and other Republicans argued that the profit margin for major oil companies is commensurate with other industries. But in 2010, Exxon Mobil had $30.9 billion, Shell had $18.28 billion, and Chevron had $19.29 in profits. Bill Graves from the American Trucking Association had to “agree to disagree” with that reasoning.
Big Oil also was defended by the Republican majority witness from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Karen Alderman Harbert.
Keeping the wallets full and the sugar-daddies happy. Nature? When Mother Earth starts paying them, then...
In a response to a lawsuit filed by the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (FTCLDF), the FDA has articulated its belief that there is no such thing as a right to health or to purchase or consume any given food. The FTCLDF has sued the FDA for banning the interstate shipment or sale of raw milk products, alleging that the policy deprives consumers and a food buying group owner “of their fundamental and inalienable rights of (a) traveling across State lines with raw dairy products legally obtained and possessed; (b) providing for the care and well being of themselves and their families, including their children; and (c) producing, obtaining and consuming the foods of choice for themselves and their families, including their children.” In a legal response, the FDA countered that “there is no ‘deeply rooted’ historical tradition of unfettered access to food of all kinds.” As evidence for this position, the agency cites “the dietary laws of biblical times.” The FDA goes further, stating that “there is no absolute right to consume or feed children any particular kind of food [because] comprehensive federal regulation of the food supply has been in effect at least since Congress enacted the Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906. … Thus, plaintiffs’ claim to a fundamental privacy interest in obtaining ‘foods of their own choice’ for themselves and their families is without merit.” In other words, the agency has stated that because Congress has given FDA the authority to regulate food, there is no such thing as a right to acquire any given food.
Great, the FDA turns to the Bible. Manna from the heavens?
Where I grew up in the middle of the woods in Charlottesville, Va., we welcomed bugs. Ants, crickets, whatever, it was their home first. But stink bugs, well, they're a different matter entirely. This rancid invasive species attacked my family home with a vengeance and it seems we're not the only ones. According to the Daily Mail, the stink bug epidemic has now spread to 33 states.
Step on a stink bug and you'll instantly regret it because of the atrocious smell emanating into the air. Natives of China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, these creepy crawlers can lay up to 30 eggs at a time, making them hard to stop once they invade your state.
Its full name is the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug and it was accidentally introduced to eastern Pennsylvania in the 1990's. The bug likely made it here aboard cargo containers. In addition to creating an annoyance at home, these little guys have also become an agricultural pest in the Mid-Atlantic states.
According to the Daily Mail:
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has spent $10 million trying to find a way to exterminate them but has so far been unsuccessful.
My pole beans took a hit last year. This year - clean garden and Diatomaceous earth...
Diatomaceous earth is the fossilized remains of microscopic shells that lived in the water and had hard outer silica shells. Food grade diatomaceous earth is organic and safe. To naturally kill stink bugs with Diatomaceous Earth, sprinkle it around crops and plants. Diatomaceous Earth will not cause detriment to earthworms or beneficial soil microorganisms.
Food has become the front line of the battle for sustainable living. Yet while I appreciate the proliferation of blog posts, videos, and books about locavore diets and backyard farming they have, I fear, created a certain ethic around self-sufficiency and the idea of returning to the hard, honest task of working the soil. In principle, I have no problem with that... except that I don't really like hard, honest work.
It's time that the lazy gardeners among us rise up and take an explicit stand. So, for all the folks who find weeding a chore, who would rather be reading TreeHugger than thinning their lettuce, and who never really understood the point in double digging anyway, I offer you a manifesto for lazy gardening. Read on, if you have the energy.
Pick up that beer, sit in the lawn chair, listen to some great sounds and read the manifesto.
With just a few word changes the closing paragraph could be mine...
I have jobs. I have a daughter. And I have a real penchant for sitting in the woods by a creek and watching the world go by. Instead of beating myself up for not growing everything I could grow, I now choose to applaud myself for everything I do grow. It's just another aspect of the lost eco-art of cutting yourself some slack.
Time to put away the seed catalogs and be happy with my plans. Forget the hops, tobacco, white pumpkins and gourds.
This week, a climate hearing was held in the US House of Reps. Six 'experts' on climate were brought in, but only three were scientists. And it turns out that one of the GOP's star witnesses -- a scientist who's been vocal in his skepticism of global temperature records, the physicist Richard Muller, of University of California, Berkeley, didn't quite help them disprove climate change. Quite the opposite, in fact.
As you can see -- and more importantly, as Muller himself has come to believe -- the established data collected by temperature stations around the world are accurate. Muller's independent work confirms that the data on which the majority of the best climate models rely upon is actually quite good.
Which is why it must have pissed off the GOP Reps, who were counting on him to offer testimony skeptical of climate change, when he announced the following: "We see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups. The world temperature data has sufficient integrity to be used to determine global temperature trends."
In other words, Muller's Koch-funded project, which skeptics had hoped would call into question the validity of the data backing the projections of climate models, instead provided even further evidence yet that they are correct. There's even better reason to believe that the climate models are accurate than there was before. It's science, folks.
I hate when that happens! Throwing money at Congress to better your business and then some scientist you paid off mucks things up with the truth. Can't trust those scientists!
Cover of The Lorax (Classic Seuss)Arbor Day 2011: Are We Living Out 'The Lorax'?
