Trader Joe's on the right path

Trader Joe's moving to sustainable seafood

Food you buy at Trader Joe's is the good stuff, right? Eco-friendly and healthy? Unfortunately, that's not been the case for their fish—but that's changing, as Trader Joe's announces plans to offer only sustainable seafood by the end of 2012. Greenpeace's mock web site attacking Trader Joe's appalling lack of sustainability went viral, pushing the grocer to take action. Trader Joe's had previously ranked an abysmal 17th on a list of seafood sustainability at major supermarkets, scoring below chains such as Wal-Mart, Target and Costco.

Rank below Costco and Wal-Mart? Wow - not very good. At least by 2012 they'll be on the right track. Question is - why is it taking so long?

Three steps back

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

WTF: Obama Expands Offshore Drilling Far Beyond Bush

Well, we knew the announcement was coming, and sure enough, here it is: Obama has unveiled his offshore drilling plans, and to the eyes of the environmentally conscious, it ain't pretty. Matt already detailed most of the provisions, which were revealed last night in a leak to reporters. But in case you missed it, the new plan opens up vast swaths of American coastline: some on the east coast and some around Alaska for drilling--a more expansive offering to oil companies than even Bush ever authorized.


Obama's Offshore Drilling Plan
According to the LA Times, here are the biggest implications of the new drilling plan:


Eventually open two-thirds of the eastern Gulf's oil and gas resources for drilling.


Proceed with drilling off Virginia, provided the project clears environmental and military reviews.


Study the viability of drilling off the mid- and southern Atlantic coasts.


Study the viability of drilling in Alaska's Beaufort and Chukchi seas -- areas hotly defended by environmentalists -- but issue no new drilling leases in either sea before 2013.


Pundits and commentators are scrambling to rationalize Obama's move: some say it's a political olive branch to conservatives, some say it's intended to help persuade moderates to consider comprehensive energy reform. Bradford Plumer notes at the Vine that it may be a preemptive measure to quell public furor when gas prices rise above $3 this summer, as they're expected to do.


The move is certainly political--as noted just about everywhere, most of the oil won't be available for 10-12 years, and some of it likely never at all. And there's only 120 million barrels estimated to be found off the coast of Virginia--hardly enough to even put a dent in US dependence on foreign oil.

Playing politics with the environment and our future?

Too stupid to save ourselves

Image via Wikipedia

James Lovelock Says Humans 'Not Clever Enough' to Stop Climate Change

Climate Change is War: We Need More Authoritarian Action
Jumping right into the hook, Lovelock proclaims that,
I don't think we're yet evolved to the point where we're clever enough to handle as complex a situation as climate change. We're very active animals. We like to think, 'Ah, yes, this will be a good policy,' but it's almost never that simple. Wars show this to be true...climate change is kind of a repetition of a war-time situation. It could easily lead to a physical war.

In the end Lovelock concludes, it's going to take a a catastrophe such as the Pine Island Glacier in Antarctica collapsing and rapidly raising sea levels or dust bowl conditions throughout the American Midwest to actually get humans to act on climate.

He's right. We just don't care. We care more about Tiger Woods, American Idol... We need a disaster to move us off our couches and away from the TV.

Following the money

Koch Industries Funding Anti-Climate Agenda, and Now Democratic Senators

Oil and gas giant Koch Industries is doling out more and more money to Democrats as it works to turn the polar ice caps into puddles in bipartisan fashion. Formerly regarded as a staunchly Republican funding machine, Koch has given nearly 30 percent of its overall campaign dollars to Democrats so far this year.


Some of that largesse ended up in the coffers of typically environment-friendly members, including Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR). As E&E News reports ($ubscription req’d) and The Wonk Room relays, Senator Lincoln has collected $10,000 so far this year from Koch Industries, and Senator Baucus has collected $5,000.


Why are Senators Lincoln and Baucus accepting this dirty energy money from Koch? In the League of Conservation Voter’s scorecard of pro-environment members for the 2nd session of the last Congress, Senator Lincoln scored 91% and Senator Baucus scored 100%.




Koch hasn’t had a change of heart or any moral epiphany about its contribution to global warming and planetary demise. So why are these Senators suddenly taking oil and gas money from one of the world’s worst polluters?


As we reported previously here at DeSmog Blog, Koch and its affiliates have funneled millions of dollars to industry front groups who contend that global warming is a liberal conspiracy rather than a scientifically proven fact. Koch-funded groups wage war on science and spout oil and gas industry lies to confuse people into believing that the status quo is just fine, which suits Koch’s oily bottom line perfectly.

The above was from July 2009. Now from Greenpeace

The company’s founder, Fred Koch, who once earned $5 million building oil refineries in the Soviet Union during Joseph Stalin’s reign, was a co-founder of the libertarian John Birch Society. Charles G. and David H. Koch, two of Fred’s four sons, each now own 42% of the company’s stock. According to 2009 Forbes rankings, the Koch brothers are tied for the 19th-richest person in the world, and for ninth-richest American, each worth between $14 and $16 billion, more than George Soros or the founders of Google.


The Koch brothers use three foundations to spread Koch Industries’ influence, including support for roughly 40 organizations that doubt or downplay climate change or otherwise oppose policy solutions to build a clean energy future. Greenpeace also notes that Koch Industries has been the largest oil and gas industry contributor to electoral campaigns since the 2006 election cycle, and its done its fair share of lobbying as well.


The Greenpeace report notes Koch’s role in funding the Institute for Energy Research, which was behind the Danish study that attacked the viability of wind power. Greenpeace also points out the role that Koch’s web of climate denier groups played in supporting, disseminating and promoting the Spanish study attacking green jobs, including AFP, IER and the Heritage Foundation.

Following the money - oil and gas wallets need to keep their coffers filled and denying the impact of fossil fuel use is essential.

Way past the tipping point

Made by Hand

Made By Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throw Away World

I'm a creator by nature and consider myself a bit of a DIYer. I always have to be doing some sort of craft and my life has been filled with projects from knitting sweaters to painting huge canvasses, from sewing quilts to hemming my own clothes, from building bookshelves to gardening to scrapbooking to making soap and candles to spending hours in a dark room (which has now been turned into hours on photoshop). But I can honestly say that for all these projects, only a handful were done in order to fulfill a need. The projects keep me curious and entertained, they turn into but they aren't necessarily done in order to reduce a reliance on mass produced goods. Much of the time, if I need something, I buy it rather than build it. Why?


While reading Made by Hand this past weekend. Why not make something myself? Much of the time it's because it's quicker and easier to just buy it, or I think that I can't make it myself. But the essence of Do It Yourself culture boils down to the idea that if you can't make it yourself, is it a necessary item, or is it as satisfying of an addition to your home?


Frauenfelder realized that the stress and spin of daily life is grating. But by simply doing things for yourself - things you don't think you can do - you can seriously slow down, and find so much more joy, satisfaction and time, in your day. He writes that many people skip making things for themselves because of fear - a fear of failure, or of not knowing that something can be done by hand.


Made By Hand is a wonderfully inspiring read and makes turning to a make-centric way of life feel not only approachable, but utopian. Coming out on May 27, 2010, you can grab a copy on Amazon for $17.

The reviewer also posted:

So after reading the book, I made a list of all the things I have thought about doing, but haven't done yet out of fear of messing up, impatience, or laziness.


1) Make my own yogurt
2) Sew a shirt
3) Make preserves from local berries
4) Make my own bread
5) Whittle something really cool, though I haven't decided what yet
6) Re-sole my boots

In looking at the list, I feel pretty good. I've done the yogurt, preserves, bread and tried whittling. Repaired a shirt but never sewed one. Repaired my shoes but never resoled them.

The only things I fear doing myself is working with electricity. Not a fear of failure but a fear of electrocution.

Drop that "Chicken" nugget

If you could find the chicken in that piece of technology. I thought chicken bones are bad for you?

Carl Lewis Knows

Anthropocene man

Image via Wikipedia

Earth 'Entering New Age of Geological Time'

Humans have wrought such vast and unprecedented changes on the planet that we may be ushering in a new period of geological history.

Through pollution, population growth, urbanisation, travel, mining and use of fossil fuels we have altered the planet in ways which will be felt for millions of years, experts believe.
It is feared that the damage mankind has inflicted will lead to the sixth largest mass extinction in Earth's history with thousands of plants and animals being wiped out.


The new epoch, called the Anthropocene - meaning new man - would be the first period of geological time shaped by the action of a single species.


Although the term has been in informal use among scientists for more than a decade, it is now under consideration as an official term.

The big question is - Will Man survive in the New Man Epoch?

Shoes required?

Let Children Run "Barefoot" this Spring in VivoBarefoot Kids!

Playing in tide pools barefoot is a fond memory of my youth, so was climbing on rocks that scattered Maine's rocky coast; much to my dislike, the latter required shoes. This spring children can run wild--barefoot but not--in Terra Plana's VivoBarefoot shoes, with a thin puncture-resistant sole.

So you buy shoes to make it feel like you are not wearing shoes? Why not save the money and just go barefoot - for real! Barefoot shoes - an unnecessary purchase for running in the grass.

Everyone is in on the act

Even Triscuits by Kraft is promoting Home Farming.

From rural areas to urban communities, home farms are sprouting up all over the country. And it's only just begun. Triscuit has created this site with help from Urban Farming, a non-profit organization, to help build a home farming community where both beginners and more seasoned gardeners can dialogue and gather information towards their common mission: to reap food that is deliciously fresh, penny-wise, healthier for themselves and the planet. It’s about home farming, and the everyday joy that grows out of it. So join us and let’s get farming!

On their boxes they also have basil or dill seed cards. Basil on Regular and Dill on Reduced Fat. The big plus on the site - Paul James is the "resident farming expert." Loved him on TV!

Survival

Image via Wikipedia

Richard Heinberg on Life After Growth : TreeHugger

Richard Heinberg invented the term "Peak Everything," a term we have used a lot on TreeHugger. He has written nine books on the subject of how "resource depletion and population pressures are about to catch up with us, and no one is prepared."


He concluded his recent talk in Toronto with the statement "Every crisis is an opportunity, and we are about to enter the biggest opportunity of our lives."
He is grimly optimistic, and as the slide shows, believes "life can be better." but before he gets to that upper of an ending, we have a downer of an introduction- a litany of what we are running out of (oil, soil, phosphates, natural gas and even coal).


We have reached the end of economic growth as we have known it. The "growth" we are talking about consists of the expansion of the overall size of the economy (with more people being served and more money changing hands) and of the quantities of energy and material goods flowing through it. The economic crisis that began in 2008 was both foreseeable and inevitable, and that it marks a permanent, fundamental break from past decades--a period in which economists adopted the unrealistic view that perpetual economic growth is necessary and also possible to achieve.
But he does believe that we can transition to a new economy that isn't based on growth.


The only reasonable response, it seems to me, is to act as if survival is possible, and to build resilience throughout society as quickly as can be, acting locally wherever there are individuals or groups with the understanding and wherewithal. We must assume that a satisfactory, sustainable way of life is achievable in the absence of fossil fuels and conventional economic growth, and go about building it.
Talk about "Opportunity"! Heinberg sees the Transition movement as a beacon in this calamity, and concludes an essay on his site that pretty much says what his talk did:


Call it Transition, call it cultural survival and renewal, call it what you will, it is the only game in town for the foreseeable future.

Green Boot Camp

From Eco-Zero to Eco-Hero

Let's face it: being green is not always easy (despite what Kermit once said). Whether life gets busy or you simply don't know where to begin. Adopting greener habits can sometimes seem daunting. Well there is something new in town to show you that it's not and you'll learn how step by step.

On Monday, April 5th Your Daily Thread.com is kicking off a Going Green Boot Camp. All earth month long it will dish simple tips that will get you greener. In fact, it will help you turn from an Eco-Zero into an Eco-Hero, even if you've never recycled before. And all in time for the 40th anniversary of Earth Day on April 22nd. That's right.

The boot camp will cover the complete gamut of green living tips guidance ranging from energy usage to sustainable fabrics and everything in between.

Think you're already an Eco-Hero? There will also be advanced tips to help you "earn your stripes" and develop even more green cred.

Work It:

Simply sign up here and you'll start getting your boot camp emails on Monday, April 5th. The boot camp promises to be fun, fresh, entertaining and of course convenient enough to fit into your life.

So what are you waiting for? Sign up for the Going Green Boot camp and become the Eco-Hero you know you have inside you.

>Sign up at Your Daily Thread.

Extending the growing season

Inflatable House Has Traditional Form

We love buildings that tread lightly and leave no trace, that give us a little extra room when we need it. (see all of our garden shed offices) Everyone has seen inflatable domes those jumping structures that kids love so much, but Altro Studio has come up with a more conventional house form made of modular, cellular sections that zip together. It could be the perfect inflatable garden shed. (For working in, not storing sharp tools)
It looks quite comfy, and full of natural light. Although, this was built a couple of years ago; people might worry now about living in a vinyl shed. The designers write:


Once the length of the house has been determined, each module is concluded in non-inflatable plugging panels, that can contain a door or window as needed. These last elements themselves, which allow for the ventilation of the internal space, are characterized by a side zip closing system.

With my luck the local woodpeckers will switch to plastic, start drumming on the side - loving the sound - and pop holes into the structure. Still would love to take a chance. This would be much easier to install - and take down.

Jerusalem Artichoke Risotto

From Bostonist:

Jerusalem Artichoke Risotto


1 lb Jerusalem artichoke (also called sunchoke)
2 cups uncooked risotto
2 cups dry sake
2 cups vegetable stock
1 cup water
1 cup local milk
1 T chopped marjoram
2 T parmesan or more to taste
Ground sea salt and ground pepper to taste
Mayer lemon is a nice seasoning too, if you happen to have one


Wait to peel the Jerusalem artichokes until just before you start cooking them, as they turn brown very quickly!


Bring the sake, vegetable stock and cup of water to a boil. While it heats, peel and dice the Jerusalem artichokes into cubes
Boil the Jerusalem artichokes in the liquid for a couple of minutes and remove, retaining the liquid. This is just to start the process going.
A good risotto pan is wide, to encourage heat dispersal and evaporation, but not too shallow, like most saute pans. Look for a nice heavy frying pan. I like aluminum with a good, heavy core.
In the pan of your choice, saute the onions and garlic on medium low heat for five minutes. Sprinkle lightly with salt and grind in some pepper, and then add the uncooked risotto, and the Jerusalem artichokes, and continue to saute for a few more minutes, stirring often, until they are warmed through and crackling.
Reduce the heat and pour in just one cup of the hot mixed liquids, stirring all the time.
On low heat, continue to stir until the liquid is almost completely gone. The first cup will hit the pan sizzling and go fast, but after that they will take much longer. You could be doing this for a hour, find a friend to spell you if you wish. A good risotto takes time, and you have to pay close attention to the temperature and stick with it to the end.
When you have cooked all of the liquid into the risotto, add the chopped marjoram and the parmesan, and start using the milk, but be very careful to keep the heat low, so you do not burn the milk sugars- you will have worked so hard, only to ruin your beautiful dish very easily.
If you want to do this dish for a dinner party, and see your guests as well, you can take the recipe up to before you add the dairy, and take it off heat. When you start again, add a little water first, to heat it up without burning it, before starting with the milk.
Taste and season before finishing completely.

Now if the rain will stop I'll be able to plant some - plant now and enjoy this risotto in the fall.

We'll all need health care now!

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Secretary of Energy Emphasizes Need for Nuclear Power and Highlights Small Modular Reactors

In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, US Secretary of Energy Dr. Steven Chu wrote that, between the $8-billion in conditional loan guarantees for the first nuclear power plant to break ground in nearly three decades (earlier post), and the new authority granted by the president’s 2011 budget request, the Department of Energy will be able to support between six and nine new reactors in the US.


Perhaps most importantly, investing in nuclear energy will position America to lead in a growing industry. World-wide electricity generation is projected to rise 77% by 2030. If we are serious about cutting carbon pollution then nuclear power must be part of the solution. Countries such as China, South Korea and India have recognized this and are making investments in nuclear power that are driving demand for nuclear technologies. Our choice is clear: Develop these technologies today or import them tomorrow.


That is why—even as we build a new generation of clean and safe nuclear plants-we are constantly looking ahead to the future of nuclear power. As this paper recently reported, one of the most promising areas is small modular reactors (SMRs). If we can develop this technology in the US and build these reactors with American workers, we will have a key competitive edge.

Now we know why they pushed for health care reform. We'll all need coverage when third eyes sprout on our children's foreheads. Okay - an exaggeration. No third eye - just cancer - Whew!!!

Spring is here!

A beautiful warm weekend for prepping the garden and even a little planting. Prepped a new area for potatoes and Jerusalem Artichokes. Planted some greens and radishes. Cleaned out the small pond - the garden just loves that pond muck. And all the goldfish survived the winter - Yeah!

Next weekend? More planting - at least I hope the weather cooperates!

Want to Join Me?

Earlier Springs?

10 more growing days than pre-1970

A symptom of changing climate, Worldwatch shows us that not only are winters in New England averaging three degrees warmer than they did 100 years ago, trees have a ten day longer growing season than they did 40 years ago. And that's not it.


According to the New England Society of American Foresters because of the warming, spring is arriving earlier and rivers are flowing at peak levels sooner than observed before.


The big deal in this is that , under projected high emission scenarios in another sixty years the climate in New Hampshire could well be like that of North Carolina today. Even on low emission growth scenarios, things will be more like Virginia is today.


As to the impact,
[Dave Orwig, forest ecologist at the Harvard Forest] reported that a warmer New England climate would put native habitats and wildlife at increasing risk and force many species to migrate north in order to survive - something trees can do over time, but not necessarily quick enough for forest ecosystems to remain healthy. Climate change could also threaten non-timber forest products such as maple syrup and ecosystem services such as clean water.

Okay I know this is not a good thing - changes to our native species, etc. But there is that nice possibility of a longer growing season for my vegetables!

The Greenhorns

I am very jealous of the greenhouses, the size of the farms, the quality of their produce, their fervor.

CO2 is back on the rise

Concentration in Atmosphere Reaches New Highs in 2010

Well, that didn't take long. After global emissions stalled following the worldwide recession around 2008--even falling in some otherwise heavily polluting nations like the US of A--it looks like everyone can rest assured: we're back on track with CO2 concentrations steadily a-risin' in the atmosphere.

According to a report from Reuters,

Levels of the main greenhouse gas in the atmosphere have risen to new highs in 2010 despite an economic slowdown in many nations that braked industrial output, data showed on Monday. Carbon dioxide, measured at Norway's Zeppelin station on the Arctic Svalbard archipelago, rose to a median 393.71 parts per million of the atmosphere in the first two weeks of March from 393.17 in the same period of 2009, extending years of gains.
Which means that despite the recession throwing a wrench in the worldwide greenhouse gas-spewing machinery, carbon emissions burning industry is back online. It's still below the pre-recession levels of rise, which had been 2 parts per million a year, but it nonetheless signals that economies reliant on fossil fuel burning have resumed expansion.

So where are the deniers?

Think small

Farmers to DOJ -- "Break up Big Ag"

While farmers were the star of the show at last Friday's antitrust hearing in Ankeny, Iowa, the debate over the monopolization of farming is one where all of our interests are squarely at stake.


Anyone who eats and has a brain should be downright terrified that just a few giant businesses control the vast majority of food available to us as consumers. Perhaps that explains why more than 15,000 people submitted comments in anticipation of the hearings - four more of which are scheduled this year as a joint effort of the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.


Patrick Woodall, a research director for Food and Water Watch, and a panelist at the hearings said, "At the end of the day, farmers and activists could speak truth to power and delivered a tough message to the regulators that action was long overdue, it was time to bust the agribusiness trusts and level the playing field for farmers and consumers. Many audience members, like Marcia Ishii-Eiteman from Pesticide Action Network North America, also challenged the reliance on agrochemical inputs and the false hope of genetically modified crops."


U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said, "This is not just about farmers and ranchers. It's really about the survival of rural America."


He's right, of course, but that's not just some romantic Rockwellesque notion; almost anyone who eats depends on a shrinking number of farmers struggling at the other end of our fork. If they disappear, our freedom to eat what we choose will vanish as well.

Support your local farmer....your local farmer's market...grow your own.

Wabi-Sabi

I finally found the name for the way I view nature, the world (or at least try)....
The Japanese Philosophy of Wabi-Sabi: Seeing Beauty in the Everyday

...I’d recently discovered wabi-sabi, which to me seemed a great umbrella for a lot of the conversations getting under way at that time: Simplicity, slow food, recycling and reuse. In the first wheredo-we-go-now months after the planes hit the towers, I thought Americans might go the wabi way, toward Victory Gardens and plainer living. Instead, we went for easy credit and patriotic shopping; wabi-sabi had to wait.


Hard knocks change a nation. Wealth ebbs and flows, thrift and greed take turns in our cycling consciousness. After 9/11, we shopped. Seven years later, we stopped. “It’s the end of the era of conspicuous displays of wealth,” historian Steve Fraser told the New York Times in October 2008. “We are entering a new chapter in our history.”


Wabi-sabi time.


Wabi-sabi is an ancient Japanese philosophy with roots in Zen, revering austerity, nature and the everyday...


Wabi-sabi has made inroads in Western culture time and again; strains of it can be seen in the lifestyles of the Puritans, the Shakers and the Transcendentalists. It showed up in Arts and Crafts furnishings (a reaction to the overwrought Victorian era) and even in Eames chairs (simple, functional design for the masses).


Wabi-sabi is a logical reaction to a society disgusted with its own excess. (William Morris, father of the Arts and Crafts movement, often railed against the “swinish luxury of the rich,” and many of his lectures could be used on the campaign trail today.) But the beauty in it is that it’s not a bitter condemnation — it’s a change in perspective. Instead of buying, we could make things. We could grow our own. We could put away the credit cards. We could start by taking on the most important tenet of the tea: ichigo, ichie, or “once in a lifetime.” This reminds us that every meeting is a once-in-a-lifetime occasion to enjoy good company, beautiful art and a cup of tea. We never know what might happen tomorrow, or even later today. But in the moment, we could stop to share conversation and a cup of tea. And that sure beats the bad news on TV.

Or as Still in the Stream notes:

The complete term 'wabi sabi' describes a way of life practiced by those who notice and appreciate the significant moments of each day, live fully in each change of season, and connect with nature and those around them in meaningful and gentle ways.

Growing your own

Image via Wikipedia

Seeds of Strange: Beckistan Invades Kunstlerland!

Glenn Beck's latest sponsor, The Survival Seed Bank, is banking on Tea Party paranoia to sell a product it calls the "Full Acre Crisis Garden."


But hang on to your credit card! It turns out that the folks flogging the Full Acre Crisis Garden are nothing but horticultural hucksters, as Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas revealed on Tuesday.


The Survival Seed Bank claims to offer "the peace of mind knowing that if things were to get scary, that you and your family could still eat." But those vacuum-packed seeds "will be dead within the first year," according to Seed Bank Scams, because "seeds need an airtight, but not airless environment...if you take away all the air, you will kill the seeds."


By embracing the Survival Seed Bank as a sponsor, Glenn Beck is treading on peak oil prophet James Howard Kunstler's turf. Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century, has been warning us to start growing our own food for years.


But Kunstler's message is anathema to the defenders of American Excess-tionalism. In his forecast for 2010, Kunstler predicts that we'll have to learn to live without "all the trappings of comfort and convenience now taken as entitlements":


...we must return to some traditional American life-ways that we abandoned for the cheap oil life of convenience, comfort, obesity, and social atomization...


...The successful people in America moving forward will be those who attach themselves to cohesive local communities, places with integral local economies and sturdy social networks, especially places that can produce a significant amount of their own food.


Note that for Kunstler, growing your own food is just one component of a revitalized local economy, a renewed civic spirit, and a renouncement of our car-based, consumption-crazed culture.


And he's right. We do urgently need to relocalize our far-flung, fossil fueled food chain. We need to reclaim our farmland, empower a new generation of gardeners and farmers, and invest the capital required to "accelerate the transition from an economy based on extraction and consumption to an economy based on preservation and restoration," in the words of eco-preneur Woody Tasch, founder of the Slow Money Alliance.


But you won't find the answers to these challenges in a sealed plastic pipe from a Beck-sanctioned scam artist.

Glenn would never do something as meaningful as saving seeds and growing his own crops. Unless of course it means MONEY and POWER!

Why Create a Better World?

Thanks to Empress of Dirt via No Impact Man.

Image via Wikipedia

Ginger Bug

After success with kombucha, beer and kefir - venturing off into Ginger Beer. The starter? A Ginger Bug - water, grated ginger and sugar that starts actively fermenting in a few days.

Dark and stormy cocktails anyone?

Garden Plans

Image via Wikipedia

The big question of what to add to the garden? Lentils, amaranth, barley, quinoa...? So many choices but at least some good guides from Heirloom Organics. So which crop to add?

Right now I think lentils. But of course that may change. Maybe grow a little of each this year to see which grow the best.

Peak Oil in the Headlines

Image by Rétrofuturs (Hulk4598) / Stéphane Massa-Bidal via Flickr

World Crude Oil Production Projected to Peak a Decade Sooner

Alternative energy efforts received a bit of a boon this week from a study published in the American Chemical Society's journal Energy & Fuels, which revealed conventional crude oil production might peak in 2014--a decade sooner than other predictions have indicated.


The study, from scientists in Kuwait, is based on a modified version of the Hubbert model, which accurately predicted that oil production would peak in 1970 in the U.S. The "multicyclic Hubbert" model takes into account the complexities of oil production cycles in countries, which can be influenced by technological advancements, politics, economic conditions, and regulations.


Many Countries Have Peaked Already
Ibrahim Nashawi and colleagues assessed oil production trends in 47 major oil-producing countries, which supply most of the world's crude oil. Notably, some of the countries have already hit their peak. Canada, the U.S., Mexico, Russia, Norway, the U.K., China, Iran, and Indonesia have all peaked, according to the researchers' calculations.


But there are many countries which are expected to peak after 2014, most notably OPEC member countries, which are expected to peak in 2026; the non-OPEC countries included in this study peaked in 2006.

When the American Chemical Society announces this, will the media notice? They haven't noticed when so many others have talked about the end.

Are we ready to face this? Still so dependent on cars, plastic....

Perpetual Harvest

Image via Wikipedia

Interesting video from Country Living Grain Mill

The fragile nature of the world economy; food sources ever more under corporate control--those are just two of the many reasons we should be growing our own food, year-round! Whole grain guru and former nationally syndicated radio commentator, Jack Jenkins, will take you step by step through the how and why of growing your own food organically. Harvesting food in small spaces; making a self-watering planter; preserving seeds; life sustaining sprouts; making the most of your food storage; lost wisdom from ancient Egypt--and much more. Join us on this nutrient-rich journey loaded with amazing graphics, lush cinematography and life-saving information

A gardening DVD? I'm in.

True cost of products

The Story of Stuff: Externalized Costs and the $4.99 Radio

Walking to work one day I wanted to listen to the news, so I popped into Radio Shack. I found a cute little green radio for $4.99. Pleased with my bargain, I stood in line to pay, but then started wondering: how could $4.99 cover the cost of extracting the raw materials, manufacturing the parts, assembling the radio, and getting it into my hands?


Whenever I go to buy something I get sidetracked, thinking of how it got here. It's an occupational hazard. I spent a decade traveling around the world, visiting the factories where our stuff is made and the dumps where it goes when we don't want it any more. What I learned makes it impossible for me to look at anything and not see the journey it made through the global take-make-waste system.


The metal in that $4.99 radio was probably mined in Africa. The petroleum that went into the plastic probably was pumped from Iraq, and the plastic itself produced in China. The packaging came from forests in Brazil or Canada. Maybe the parts were then shipped across the ocean to Mexico, where some 15-year-old in a maquiladora assembled the radio. There it was put on a truck or a train and shipped to a distribution center in Southern California, then 500 miles north to my local store.


Four-ninety-nine? That wouldn't pay for the shelf space it took up until I came along, let alone the salary for the guy who helped me pick it out.


That's when I realized: I didn't pay for the radio. So who did?


Who paid for that $4.99 radio? Some people paid with the loss of their natural resources. Some paid with the loss of clean air, with increased asthma and cancer rates. Some workers paid by having to cover their own health insurance. Kids in Africa paid with their future: a third of the school-age children in parts of the Congo now drop out to mine metals for electronics. All along the way, people pitched in, or were forced to, so I could buy a radio for $4.99 -- so cheap that if it broke I could just throw it away.


Who paid for that $4.99 radio? Some people paid with the loss of their natural resources. Some paid with the loss of clean air, with increased asthma and cancer rates. Some workers paid by having to cover their own health insurance. Kids in Africa paid with their future: a third of the school-age children in parts of the Congo now drop out to mine metals for electronics. All along the way, people pitched in, or were forced to, so I could buy a radio for $4.99 -- so cheap that if it broke I could just throw it away.

Consumer madness...I want, I want...the latest and greatest....

Think, simplify.

Sobering Thoughts

Then All At Once from Kunstler

Whatever else one thinks of how we live these days, it's hard to not see it as temporary, historically anomalous, a peculiar blip in human experience. I've spent my whole life riding around in cars, never questioning whether the makings of tomorrow's supper would be there waiting on the supermarket shelves, never doubting when I entered a room that the lights would go on at the flick of a switch, never worrying about my personal safety. And now hardly a moment goes by when I don't feel tremors of massive change in these things, as though all life's comforts and structural certainties rested on a groaning fault line.
It had been one of those eventless weeks when the world pretended to be a settled place. The collapse of Greece seemed like little more than a passing case of geo-financial heartburn. The 36,000-odd newly-unemployed were spun magically into a feel-good story for public consumption, and the stock markets ratified it by levitating over a hundred points. The news media was preoccupied with the Great Question of whether the first woman film director would win a prize, thus settling all accounts in the age-old gender war, and the health care reform bill lumbered around the congressional offices like a zombie in search of a silver bullet that might send it back to the comforts of the tomb.
All in all, it was the sort of quiescent string of days that makes someone like me nervous. I can't help imagining what it was like in the spring of 1860, for instance, when so many terrible questions of polity hung over the country, and hundreds of thousands of young men still walked behind their plows or stood at their counting desks or turned their wrenches in the exciting new industries -- not knowing that destiny was busy preparing a ditch somewhere to receive their shattered corpses in places as-yet-unknown called Spotsylvania, Shiloh, and Cold Harbor. Or else my mind projects to the spring of 1939, when men dressed in neckties and hats sat in a ballpark watching Joe DiMaggio and Charlie Keller play "pepper" in the pregame sunshine, and nobody much thought about the coming beaches of Normandy and the canebrakes of the Solomon Islands.
Everything we know about it seems to indicate that human beings happily go along with the program -- whatever the program is -- until all of a sudden they can't, and then they don't. It's like the quote oft-repeated these days (because it's so apt for these times) by surly old Ernest Hemingway about how the man in a story went broke: slowly, and then all at once. In the background of last week's reassuring torpor, one ominous little signal flashed perhaps dimly in all that sunshine: the price of oil broke above $81-a-barrel. Of course in that range it becomes impossible for the staggering monster of our so-called "consumer" economy to enter the much-wished-for nirvana of "recovery" -- where the orgies of spending on houses and cars and electronic entertainment machines will resume like the force of nature it is presumed to be. Over $80-a-barrel and we're in the zone where what's left of this economy cracks and crumbles a little bit more each day, lurching forward to that moment when something life-changing occurs all at once.

I could have used this today

Growlers! Yum!

NRDC Evaluates Beer Containers: Growlers Win

An $8-ish investment in a growler is one of the best recommendations I can make for any beer drinker with an eco-conscience: it will mean you can fill up with some pretty delicious beer, and it will reduce the carbon footprint of your drinking habits by at least a room full of light bulbs every time.


The production of six aluminum cans (for any beer snobs out there, don't be thinking you shouldn't bother with cans—great beer can come in a can) consumes the same amount of energy that is used to power a 50-watt light bulb. (Less so when cans are made from recycled aluminum rather than virgin materials—bauxite mining is an environmentally-destructive and energy-intensive process, but it's hard to know which you're getting when you're at the store.)


Even less energy-intensive, however, is the option that can be reused rather than recycled. NRDC says: "Using a growler means you won't need to purchase more bottles or cans, which don't have be manufactured and won't need to melted back for reuse. If growlers are unavailable, choose a keg if there are enough people around to drain the tap."


Growlers are gaining popularity by the day, it seems, so it should be easier to find them for purchase even if you don't live near a store like Bierkraft. Once you have one, if you do live near a store like Bierkraft, you can fill up there, but you can also try your favorite bars, which will often fill up straight from the tap. Bonus: growlers will save you some cash, too.


If you must go with individual servings, opt for cans or glass bottles over brown plastic bottles, which are the least recyclable and are the most polluting to produce in the first place.


Bottom line, again from NRDC: "Whichever option you choose, be sure to reuse whenever possible and when reuse isn't an option, always recycle." Words to live by with all products we use—not just beer.

Just finished a growler of...

Worth keeping the growler in spite of the $1.50 bottle deposit. Have to pick up another one for next weekend.

My New Garden Plans

I have some more property than 1/4 acre but this plan from The Backyard Homestead works for me.

Cooking Bugs Bunny

Image via Wikipedia

Backyard Bunnies: The New Urban Chicken?

Backyard chickens have been the go-to for city-dwellers looking to produce their own hyper-local meat. But, as Good explains, rabbits can be a much easier animal to raise in a small space.


Good writes:


By now we all know that eating a lot of meat--especially factory-farmed meat--isn't very good for the planet. Fortunately for meat eaters, some meats are more sustainable than others. And as it turns out, rabbit is one of the healthiest, leanest, and most environmentally friendly meats you can eat.

If I ever start eating meat again....but Bugs?

Listen to the frogs

Study says herbicide causes frogs' sex change

From the San Francisco Chronicle (reference info follows article text): A powerful and widely used herbicide called Atrazine changes the sex of many male frogs to females and emasculates three-quarters of others, according to research reported this week by a UC Berkeley professor and molecular toxicologist.


The controversy has major political implications because the Environmental Protection Agency had approved Atrazine under the Bush administration after rejecting earlier findings, and agency scientists in the Obama administration are now reviewing that EPA rule. The European Union has already banned Atrazine after concluding that minute levels found in lakes and streams severely damaged amphibians.

But wait, Syngenta claims:

The latest, cutting-edge research shows that atrazine has no adverse effect on frogs. In reviewing the research in 2007, EPA went so far as to say, "the data are sufficiently robust to outweigh previous efforts to study the potential effects of atrazine on amphibian gonadal development" and "there is no compelling reason to pursue additional testing."

So who to believe, a toxicologist or the company making money from the product? My bet is on the frog who is telling us that something is just not right. Something is going on. We should pay attention. 50 years as a product does not mean safety!

Should we be worried?

Chilean Quake Likely Shifted Earth’s Axis, NASA Scientist Says

The earthquake that killed more than 700 people in Chile on Feb. 27 probably shifted the Earth’s axis and shortened the day, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientist said.
Earthquakes can involve shifting hundreds of kilometers of rock by several meters, changing the distribution of mass on the planet. This affects the Earth’s rotation, said Richard Gross, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who uses a computer model to calculate the effects.
“The length of the day should have gotten shorter by 1.26 microseconds (millionths of a second),” Gross, said today in an e-mailed reply to questions. “The axis about which the Earth’s mass is balanced should have moved by 2.7 milliarcseconds (about 8 centimeters or 3 inches).”

Could this be a precursor of the magnetic pole shift some predict  for 2012?

The next birthday card?

I like it!!!!

Greener Gardens - Greener Souls

Image via Wikipedia

How to keep your garden green

The frog was not talking about his garden when he sang "it's not easy being green" he was talking about his soul. Cultivating a green soul is not always easy but it is more worth the doing than just about anything I know.
When it becomes our goal to nurture nature we begin to cultivate a relationship that supports our entire ecosystem.
Remember, if it is poisoning the frogs, birds and insects, then it is probably poisoning us and our kids. So this year take a vow to ditch the pesticides and herbicides and grow a lawn and garden that the frog would be happy to sing his heart out in.

Read the article for some tips too.

I love the idea of "cultivating a green soul." Green is not measured with what we buy, how many green gadgets we have. It is how we view nature, Mother Earth, our life...