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Tag Archive for 'Environmentalism'

L.A.! #1!

Published on May 1, 2007 in City Life and Environmentalism. 0 Comments

… in dirtiest air in America, that is.

The American Lung Association released their annual “State of the Air” report today. And while generally, things are better, they still ain’t so good. Especially here in the Los Angeles - Long Beach - Riverside area, which has the worst air in the entire country.

And not only did we take home the prize in one category, but we ranked highest in smog and all three categories of air pollution - ozone, long-term particulates, and short-term particulates.

All the more reason to get up into those mountains every once in a while …

L.A. River Revitalization

Published on April 23, 2007 in City Life, Environmentalism and Politics. 0 Comments

L.A. Observed - an excellent blog on the state of newspaper journalism and other media here in the City of Angels - has a nice video covering a short tour of the L.A. River, courtesy of the Friends of the L.A. River.

It’s a six minute mini-history of the revitalization efforts, very well done and very interesting. Worth checking out - especially if you’re excited about one of the potential Next Great Civil Engineering Projects here in the US of A.

Grist’s 2nd Annual Earth Day List

Published on April 20, 2007 in Environmentalism and Web Sites and Apps. 0 Comments

The smirking eco-punsters over at Grist have assembled an excellent ‘best of’ list for their extensive collection of excellent enviro-stories over the past year. And, for your convenience, they’re all organized into simple “Best” categories, like “Greenest Mayor” (Salt Lake City?!? Wow) and the “Depressingest Study in Science” (no seafood by mid-century).

And of course, this being Grist, they make time for jabs at those things worthy of them, such as:

Biggest beneficiary of the corn ethanol boom: Archer Daniels Midland

Second biggest: politicians in need of something green-sounding to say

Third: nope, just the two

And they offer up this photo as their “Amusingest Photo-Op:”

… which is sad, because the first time I saw it, I thought it was a Photoshop. Sigh.

Great reads abound over at Grist.

Earth Day Plans?

Published on April 20, 2007 in City Life and Environmentalism. 0 Comments

Anyone have any interesting Earth Day activities planned for this Sunday?

Southern California seems to have its fair share of events going on, from the usual festivals and coast clean-ups to an attempt at the World’s Largest Hug in Laguna Beach.

Earth Day LA has a comprehensive, city-by-city list of what’s going down, when and where, although I have a feeling I’ll be doing my own thing with a peaceful solo mountain hike.

Last year, I went down to San Diego’s EarthWorks in Balboa Park, which had a great mix of folk music and cutting-edge solar and home-grown electric automobile technologies on display.

If you end up going to a festival, just make sure you remember that this is about more than just drinking organic cold cider while you listen to a family bluegrass band and get warm fuzzies from picking up a pamphlet on solar heating. Whatever lifestyle changes you’re inspired to make have to happen year-round to make a difference. And they don’t even have to be drastic to have an impact (see, CFLs below).

Oh, and make sure you’ve got your patchouli tolerance beefed up.

Let There Be Light

Published on April 18, 2007 in Environmentalism and Gadgets and Gear. 1 Comment

Remember this coming Sunday is Earth Day. And remember, if you’re near a Home Depot store, to swing by and pick up one of the one million free compact fluorescent bulbs the chain is handing out as part of its Eco-Options Campaign.

Installing CFLs in your home or apartment is one of the easiest ways to ‘green-up’ your lifestyle. They last ten times as long as regular incandescent bulbs, can use up to 75% less energy, and work with your existing fixtures. The main problem people seem to have with them is they’re more expensive up-front than that old 19th Century technology, but now that the Depot’s giving ‘em away for free, you’ve got no excuse.

Home Depot estimates its Million Bulb Giveaway will result in $12 million in saved energy costs and eliminating 196 million pounds of CO2 - which is like removing 70,000 cars from American highways.

Awesome!

41 Pounds

Published on April 12, 2007 in Environmentalism and Web Sites and Apps. 4 Comments

41 pounds is the amount of junk mail the average American gets each year. And if you’re like me, I’m betting that 99% of that mail goes unopened.

41lbs.org is an especially green consumer group that promises to get you off of almost every mailing list for five years. It costs 41 bucks, and almost half of that goes directly to environmental groups - American Forests, WildWest Institute, New American Dream, and Friends of the Urban Forest.

According to the site,

To produce and process 4 million tons of junk mail a year, 100 million trees are destroyed, 28 billion gallons of water is wasted, and energy equivalent to 2.8 million cars is spent â€“ which produces greenhouse gases and more global warming.

Sounds like that’s worth the cash, right? If not, I know I’ll just be happy to not get three dozen credit card applications every other day.

Federal Judge Blocks Mountaintop Removal Ruling

Published on March 27, 2007 in Environmentalism and Politics. 2 Comments

Well, would you look at that?

Federal Judges in West Virginia just overturned an old ruling that made mountaintop removal permits easy to obtain — even without getting an environmental impact statement.

Hopefully, this is the start of a broader investigation into this practice and its effects on the surrounding environment…

ViceTV on Mountaintop Removal

Published on March 27, 2007 in Environmentalism, Web Sites and Apps and in the media. 1 Comment

Google Earth files and pictures are great, but nothing does the injustice of Mountaintop Removal like full-motion video.

Luckily, ViceTV takes care of that for us, with a five-part mini-documentary called Toxic West Virginia.

Eco-Chick was kind enough to embed the first episode of the series, which has some nice production value to it. Well worth checking out.

Via Treehugger.

10 Most Magnificent Trees

Published on March 21, 2007 in Environmentalism and Web Sites and Apps. 1 Comment

We couldn’t call ourselves treehuggers if we didn’t occasionally link to great pictures of trees.

Neatorama just posted a list of the ten most magnificent trees in the world — some of them individuals, and others just groups or whole species.

I’m sure there’s no scientific method to the list, but it’s always interesting to read up on some of the world’s lesser known areas. And half the list is in California, which is cool by me.

Missing Mountains

Published on March 16, 2007 in Environmentalism, Politics, Web Sites and Apps and in the media. 4 Comments

Google Earth is a great program. You can use for anything from casual sightseeing, browsing a hike, or spying on your neighbors. Now it’s also being used as a visceral visual aid for a continuing environmental tragedy that somehow continues to go unnoticed.

“Mountaintop Removal” is the surprisingly accurate name for a popular type of mining in Appalachia. Basically, to get at coal veins, the top of a mountain is deforested and exploded, with the debris pushed into neighboring valleys. The coal is processed, leaving huge lakes of toxic slurry behind, and then the mine operators plant some non-native vegetation and move on to the next mountain.

Obviously, this causes some problems. Deforestation increases the risk of landslides, and several slurry ponds have burst through their dams or through old mine shafts, wreaking havoc on the communities below them. The 2000 Martin County Sludge Spill contaminated the drinking water of 27,000 people and was 30 times larger than the Exxon Valez spill.

As the push for “clean” coal escalates in the coming years, mountaintop removal is likely to increase … unless more people know about it. And that’s where Google Earth comes in.

I Love Mountains hosts a comprehensive Google Earth “Memorial For the Mountains,” which shows the mountains before and after mountaintop removal mining began. It’s also got detailed information on each mountain, written by local residents, maps of all the sludge dams in the mountains, and an overlay of the larger mining sites on top of major cities — so us urbanites can get a good idea of just how huge these things are. Here’s one of the mines nearly covering the entire island of Manhattan: