It's Easy Being Green

It looks like, at least temporarily, gas guzzling trucks and SUV’s produced by General Motors will be singing their swan song.  Today, GM has announced they will shutter 4 GM plants that produce trucks and SUV’s as sales sag even more as the price of oil continues to climb.  CEO Rick Wagoner also indicated that GM may stop producing the ultimate gas guzzling vehicle all-together: the Hummer.  That would be music to my ears!  Every time I see a Hummer driving down the road all I can think about is the ultimate symbol of greed, phony power and wastefulness as it rolls on by.

During his comments, Wagoner indicated that he thinks the shift to smaller more economical vehicles is going to be permanent.  I couldn’t agree more with Mr. Wagoner and feel like possible this American auto manufacturer is looking ahead and not back at their past.  Smaller, more efficient vehicles have been the mainstream in dozens of other countries around the globe and I think it’s about time we make them more available here as well.  There is more good news when it comes to alternative fueled vehicles too.  Waonger said that the board of GM approved the production of the Chevy Volt, the new electric concept car that was unveiled awhile back.  Apparently the electric car will be available beginning in 2010.

The Volt won’t be all electric but with a large, re-chargeable lithium-ion battery pack, Chevy engineers say the plug-in can travel up to 40 miles on just the electric charge alone.  They estimate that during peak energy-usage hours it will cost you a mere $0.80 to recharge the battery.  During off-peak just $0.40.  If you travel longer than 40 miles the hybrid engine will kick-on and help power you to your destination at what engineers say would average 100 miles per gallon of gas.

By cutting production of SUV’s and trucks, GM hopes to save more than $1 billion a year.

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By now, just about everyone has heard about the mysterious dilemma plaguing our world’s pollinators.  Honey bees are dieing off in vast numbers and no one is truly quite sure why they’re vanishing.  Some scientists have started hypothesizing what is behind the drastic decline in bee populations.  Some have speculated cell phone signals, a virulent disease and even pollution as a cause.  Now one group of researchers is looking into the bee dilemma with a unique, grassroots approach:  The Great Sunflower Project.

The project is led by Gretchen LeBuhn, an associate professor at San Francisco State University.  LeBuhn says she’s interested in broad areas of conservation and the bee is one of her most interesting subjects.  If you sign up to help LeBuhn’s research project, they will send you a packet of wild sunflower seeds.  Once you plant them and have sunflowers, the researchers will email you a particular weekend that you are supposed to head out into your garden and watch your sunflowers.  Twice per month you will plant yourself in your yard so you can record how many bees visit your sunflowers within 30 minutes.  Then you record the data and send it back to the researchers.  The goal is to find out where exactly bees are in trouble and what areas don’t seem to be impacted by the mysterious death.

I think the project is a great way for anyone who understands the impacts of bees on our life.  It’s said that one out of every three bites of food has been visited by a native pollinator and if they totally disappear, we’ll be in some major trouble.  Just think about the things you can learn by participating in this research.  If you have children it would make for a great summer project, something for them to focus on come away with a feeling that they’re helping to make a difference too!  If you want to sign up, visit the Great Sunflower Project website and join the research.  Hopefully together we can make a difference!

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Would you believe that it is possible to have a floating greenhouse in New York that actually produces food? Well it is and the full scale greenhouse operation on the Hudson River in New York has once again opened its doors for all to see. The project is called the science barge and is a prototype of a sustainable urban farm. It also serves as an education center. Last year, more than 3,000 school students made their way through the Science Barge.

So what makes the floating greenhouse so special? Inside the greenhouse they grow tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce with zero emissions and no runoff into the Hudson River. The barge is powered by solar, wind and biofuels and harvests irrigation water by filtering from the Hudson River and catching rainwater. The developers say the Science Barge requires 7 times less land and 4 times less water to grow than conventionally grown crops. In a city like New York, land has skyrocketed to the point that it would be nearly impossible to grow food in town. Riverfront barges could be the answer to the dilemma. Some studies have also suggested that there is enough rooftop space in New York to grown enough food for the entire city.

What are the hopes? The non-profit group New York Sun Works wants to demonstrate that it is possible for cities to reduce their global footprint by looking at ways to provide their own food. They say most land in cities is contaminated and shouldn’t be used to grow food anyway. That’s why they think they’re hydroponic growing system is the best, most sustainable way to grow! If you’d like to learn more about the project or how to visit, head over to The Science Barge website.

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Today is my birthday and my girlfriend bought me one of the best birthday presents ever! She picked up this little device called a Solio. It’s basically an array of 3 solar panels that open up like a flower. The panels have an internal battery and produce enough power to recharge just about an cell phone or mp3 player you might have on the road with you. It’s great because while you’re driving, you can harness the power of the sun right on your dashboard. You can also take these devices out into the field and not have to rely on an wall power or other random outlet to recharge your phone.

I’m super excited because over the last month I started travelling more for my job. It can take me to some really remote, out of the way places and this is one simple way I can make sure I have power for all my portable devices while living a little greener! I can’t wait to take it out with me on the next trip to see just how well it works. If you’d like to learn more about the Solio line of products, head on over to the Solio website.

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Saturday was Arbor Day in case you missed it.  It is always seems like Arbor Day gets a bit overshadowed by Earth Day earlier in the month so I was even surprised when it popped up on my calendar just a day or two before the weekend.  In celebration of Arbor Day, The Arboretum at Flagstaff opened their doors for free on Saturday.  We trucked out there to see what was springing to life on the garden grounds.  It’s still been very cold at night but a lot of their penstemon plants are sprouting up along with various other native perennials right now.  Obviously nothing is in bloom but it was kind of fun to see the garden in that stage of awakening from spring.  Whenever I go out there I sit in awe of the amount of land they have and imagine what we could do if our garden could stretch that big.  Maybe one of these days, wherever we land, I will start an arboretum of my own to pass on to future generations just like Frances McAllister did here in Flagstaff.

On Sunday, our itch for green-thumb domination continued.  We headed to Home Depot and a local plant nursery to pick up lots of flowers, vegetables and seeds.  Some natives and cool weather perennials are okay to go outside in our cold nighttime temps.  But everything else will move in and out of the house for another month until the threat of a late frost has disappeared.  We expanded our herb collection to include chocolate mint, pineapple mint, apple mint, lemon balm and lavender.  All of them smell amazing when you prick a leaf.  We purchased a couple 1 gallon sized tomato plants to shuffle in and out while all of my tomato seedlings catch up to full-size in the window sill.  We picked up some bare root plants too like a concord grape, another hop rhizome for my home-brewing use, elephant garlic and a horseradish rhizome.

We bought some more seeds to plant too.  I have a large box of seeds, some of which are pretty old.  As I’ve been planting them in my starter trays, I’m keeping track of which ones don’t sprout or have a low germination rate.  Then I just toss them into the composter because they’re not going to grow.  So I picked up some pumpkin, sweet corn, rosemary, cilantro, bush bean and cantaloupe seeds.  It’s challenging in the high-mountains of Arizona because our growing season is so short.  It’s only 103 days long!  So, you have to pick varieties of veggies that are often smaller and mature more quickly.

We’re very ready for the gardening season to kick into full swing but we’re finding plenty to do while waiting.  How is your garden growing?  Let us know about what activity you have going with your green thumbs right now!

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Everyone has probably had the big brown truck driven by your local UPS driver drop off a package at some time. But did you know the company has completely redesigned their delivery routes to save gas and carbon emissions? They have and it’s as simple as eliminating most left hand turns from the routes.

With the redesign, UPS chopped about 30 million miles from their deliveries over the course of 2007. That saved the company 3 million gallons of fuel and reduced emissions by 32,000 metric tons. That would be about the same amount after taking more than 5,000 cars off the road. The idea is simple. The more right hand turns you make, the less time you’re idling in traffic producing more carbon emissions and burning more fuel. It’s also a lot safer because you’re not taking traffic head-on like you do when you make a left hand turn.

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I’ve often referred to Phoenix as a cultural vacuum. I was born and raised in that city and every time I go back I sometimes shudder. Now I’m not so worried about the lack of culture in Phoenix but the lack of compassion and care for our environment. Everything in Phoenix is all about waste. The soccer moms driving Hummers and SUV’s speeding down the highway burning oil like it’s going out of style. Lush green yards and sprawling golf courses in a desert that only gets a few inches of rain every year. It’s all waste and it’s hard to look at when you spend so much time trying to green up your own life more than one hundred miles away.

A couple weeks ago we stopped at the Desert Ridge Marketplace in the north Phoenix/Scottsdale area and were shocked about the waste that was put on display for everyone there. In the middle of the food court was a roaring gas fireplace. The thing must have been about five or six feet wide and probably 15 feet long. The sun was shining and the temperature was in the upper 80’s, maybe even close to 90. There was absolutely no need for a fire to be roaring that afternoon, burning natural gas as if it was coming from a limitless supply! The scary thing was, there were people from Scottsdale just parking themselves in front of the fireplace complaining about how cold it was. Give me a break! Go stand in the sun for a moment, it’s almost 90 degrees!

As if that wasn’t bad enough, just ten feet away people were dining on the patio of a restaurant that had an entire bank of a misting system running non-stop. I’m not sure about anyone else but 80 to 90 degrees, in the dry desert of Phoenix, is actually a very comfortable temperature. It’s not too hot, not too cold. People just don’t blink an eye in Phoenix at those types of situations. Places like Phoenix are going to be the first cities that run out of water and are going to be looking to everyone else for help and a bailout. We have to live smarter than that regardless of whether or not you have thousands of dollars to drop in a swanky shopping mall and silicone implants in your chest that are making you cold.

Just to prove how nonchalant the Phoenix metro populous can be, check out the latest cover of the Phoenix New Times. A giant green f-you is emblazoned across the cover with the title “Green Fatigue: Is anyone else tired of eco-chic?” While the article might discuss ways to live a greener life, who would even bother picking it up with a message like that? There’s another hundred thousand pounds of paper going to waste!

Have you seen wastefulness in your city or some place you were visiting? Tell us about it and share your thoughts on it!

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