Earth Blog

Yesterday Cinco De Mayo parades marched merrily through cities from Seattle to Kansas City (their celebration featured a Chihuahua parade) and Mexican heritage was celebrated with traditional dancing and music. The Battle of Puebla was fought and won on a May 5th a long time ago but the climate change battle is ongoing and 350.org staged events of their own over the weekend to raise more awareness.

The idea was simply to “connect the dots” between global warming and extreme weather through a series of images featuring dots, and the people and creatures in areas that had been affected or are continuing to be affected by the issue.

"We just celebrated Earth Day. May 5 is more like Broken Earth Day, a worldwide witness to the destruction global warming is already causing," said Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org, a global climate campaign. "People everywhere are saying the same thing: our tragedy is not some isolated trauma, it's part of a pattern."

Today’s study that reinforces what we already know to be true or colloquially stated as “Duh” comes to us from San Diego State University. 

Researchers there have found that millennials, or the generation born in the 1980s and the 1990s, are more focused on fame and money than they are on civic-mindedness, political participation, and giving back to communities. By comparing milennials, Generation X, and baby boomers at the same age -college- they saw the disparities between the generation’s areas of focus. Sadly, the parents of the current crop of college kids could not pass down their ideals.

Today is important because it’s Read Across America Day! A day millions of children across the United States and throughout the rest of the world will celebrate literacy. 

Schools, libraries, and businesses will also celebrate Dr. Seuss’ birthday and host Seuss-centric or Lorax themed activities. The Lorax opens in movie theaters and even though it hasn’t received praise from everyone, parents and educators are using the book and new animated movie as a launching pad to discussing this year’s green theme.

Suzy Amis Cameron knows the right clothes are needed to walk the red carpet. She has had to walk several red carpets as the wife of James Cameron, award-winning director of blockbuster hits like Avatar and Titanic.

In 2009 she founded Red Carpet Green Dress to raise awareness about sustainability and environmental stewardship through design. 

The organization recently announced the winner of their annual gown design contest, Miami’s Valentina Delfino, whose dress concept will be worn by actress Missi Pyle on tonight’s red carpet at the 84th Annual Academy Awards. Pyle is not nominated for an Oscar herself but is part of the cast of the heavily nominated film The Artist.

The United States Forest Service estimates that tree cover in urban parts of the United States is declining at four million trees per year. That’s the same amount of iPhones 4S that sold over a single weekend when they debuted in 2011.  While an iPhone owner could argue Apple and their products are an important facet of technology and urban living, can they prove smartphones are necessary to a city’s landscape?

“Trees are an important part of the urban landscape,” according to Michael T. Rains, Director of the Forest Service’s Northern Research Station. “They play a role in improving air and water quality and provide so many environmental and social benefits. As our Forest Service Chief says, ‘…urban trees are the hardest working trees in America.’

Valentine’s Day was a shopping holiday we covered on the blog and we urged shoppers to buy local and ethical, if possible, when hunting for last minute gifts. Ethical consumerism and the effectiveness of “voting with your money” is being debated and discussed over at treehugger.com and at least one other green blog.

The debate started when Sami Grover posted: ““Why Corporate Fat Cats Love Ethical Consumerism.” He set out to explore the concept of: "Every time you spend a dollar, you are casting a vote."  The widely-accepted idea is this: If you don’t agree with the way a company does business simply stop shopping there and they will change or go out of business as they see their revenues drop. But is that wishful thinking? Grover argues that real change occurs at the political and cultural level. He cautions that ethical consumerism could erode the political activism he believes to be more effective at getting at the core problem. Is he right or wrong or somewhere in between?

The EPA (the job-killing, regulating machine we talk about a lot here on the Earth Blog) has announced the 2012 beneficiaries of their “Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities” program. The program is part of the Partnership for Sustainable Communities that includes the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The Building Blocks program isn’t handing out money to fifty-six communities in twenty-six states- they are providing technical assistance which is a fancy term for information. These communities asked the EPA to come in to help create a plan for improving their town’s infrastructures. 

The EPA explained it best: “The assistance will be delivered in a day-long workshop for each community that will provide ideas on local policies and procedures to improve the local economy, environment, and quality of life. Each community will receive a short ‘next steps’ memo outlining options the community can consider as it moves forward.”  

San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) has been a busy little public utility lately. The company is launching green programs for the 3.5 million people it provides electricity and gas services to faster than you can say “corporate sustainability.”

This week alone SDG&E announced their “Green Button” tool for customers and opened their Energy Innovation Center in San Diego. It all looks like a lot of fun so let’s go in for a closer look!

Do you remember Captain Planet?  If you were a cartoon-watching child in the early 90’s, or the parent of such a child, you probably remember the show. If the details are hazy the end theme song may jog your memory a bit: “Captain Planet, he’s our hero, gonna take pollution down to zero”.  Its official title was Captain Planet and the Planeteers and it was created by Ted Turner, a television media magnate and philanthropist. The original show ran from 1990-1992 and a sequel, The New Adventures of Captain Planet, ran from 1993-1996. The premise was to teach children about environmentalism and conservation with a group of multi-cultural teens who possess magical rings that can summon Captain Planet to help defeat villains and their attempts to destroy the Earth through greed, consumption or pollution.