I’m making No Impact – Join the No Impact Project with me today!

Remember that mean old article from the New Yorker where Elizabeth Kolbert blasted No Impact Man and other people who apply a set of limitations to their life and then write about it to make a statement?  She critiqued them for being fairly self-serving and not really making a difference.

Well No Impact Man Colin Beavan, the main target of her article, decided to show her exactly what his example can accomplish by setting up the No Impact Project, where regular folks like you and me can try to live with no impact for a week. Testing out some of the steps of Colin’s year-long experiment can introduce us to new ways that we can make a difference in our own lifestyles. And as I mentioned last week on Blog Action Day, the cumulative small steps can make a big difference.

So join the No Impact Project today – you’ll get a pre-survey, a great guide anyone can use for how to approach different areas of your life every day, and daily check-ins to find out how you’re doing. The thing is it  starts TODAY, Sunday October 18th, so hop to it!

I’ll be posting my experiences throughout the week, so stay tuned!

 

Blog Action Day for Climate Change

Thursday the 15th is Blog Action Day for Climate Change.

Bloggers across the world are dedicating their blog posts to talking about climate change.

It’s a big deal – almost 8,000 blogs are registered and they reach more than 11,000,000 people. Even TMZ is pitching in.

If even half of these blog’s readers make a choice to make a change, the impact would be phenomenal.

There are a lot of people making the argument that changing our consumer choices isn’t enough, that choosing to buy recycled or to buy local or to buy green is not the paradigm shift necessary to make the changes we need.

But the pragmatic truth is, most people are only willing to make the changes that are accessible to them. The trials and tribulations of the likes of No Impact Man, who spent a year living at zero environmental impact, inspire people to see what they can sacrifice and how they can alter their lifestyle choices, but also serve to demonstrate what most of us aren’t willing to give up to get to that zero impact. By choosing to consume wisely and by choosing to consume less, we do reduce our impact. And if the we is the 11,000,000 readers and writers of blogs on Blog Action Day, then our choices can and will contribute to the ongoing battle towards a liveable future.

There are so many great sites that tell you ways that you can affect climate change, like An Inconvenient Truth’s site, No Impact Man himself, and countless others. Everything from giving up beef to giving up your car, from switching to CFLs to switching to pedal power adds a raindrop to the bucket.

And if you’re moved to go beyond shifting some of your daily decisions, then you can commit more.

On October 24th, 350 is having a Day of Action for Climate Change. Check out their site to learn why the number 350 is important and what you can do to help get to  350.

You can join local  communities too, like the org I volunteer for, Green Edge Collaborative, where we present new ideas and get eco-minded folks together to share their stories.

I hope you make your own action for Blog Action Day, even if it’s just turning off the tv or the computer. After you read this blog!

 

An All Day Buffet with Slow Food and Charity:Water

All Day Buffet hosted a conference yesterday called The Feast at the Times Center, bringing together do-goody types from across sectors and fields to share ideas and stories.

I got there  just in time for lunch (Sustainable Party provided the banana leaf plates) ,and the afternoon panels. Joshua Viertel is the amicable and gifted president of Slow Food USA, who shared his own path towards foodie-ism (through stints herding, baking and fishing for a living) and the unique position his organization is in now, as for the first time the young slow food, pro-food movement finds itself with a sympathetic administration. He left us with a powerful call to action when he told us that Obama stated he was willing to act on affecting change in our agricultural and food systems – if he saw a grassroots social movement supporting it. “Our duties  as citizens have expanded,” he said, and I know I walked away thinking that demonstrating support for the causes I believe in  is more important than ever.

Charity:Water folks came on to share their work on raising awareness, raising funds, and changing the game in terms of bringing clean drinking water to communities where women typically spend three hours a day walking to water wells and waiting in line to get as much water as they can carry.  When they return to their homes, Becky Straw said, they must decide what to do with their  water – laundry, bathing, cooking, or drinking – all needs that compete for for  the two precious jugs they could carry back from the well.

After party brought us all to Green Spaces, the eco rent-a-desk enterprise for enviro startups. I must admit I loved the 44 North vodka – real Idaho potatoes.

 

Obama’s First UN Speech – Climate Change!

Broc Obama, from elephantjournal.com

It’s Climate Week in NYC, bringing together 100 world leaders for the highest level discussion on climate change ever and laying the ground work for the even bigger Copenhagen Climate Conference known as COP15.

The big guns are all here making headlines: Obama’s first UN speech is at this conference, sharing the US’s climate progress and promises with the world:

We’re making our government’s largest ever investment in renewable energy — an investment aimed at doubling the generating capacity from wind and other renewable resources in three years. Across America, entrepreneurs are constructing wind turbines and solar panels and batteries for hybrid cars with the help of loan guarantees and tax credits — projects that are creating new jobs and new industries. We’re investing billions to cut energy waste in our homes, buildings, and appliances — helping American families save money on energy bills in the process.

HuffPo has a transcript of the full speech, which continues to outline recent proposals to create national policy on fuel economy and the House’s recent climate bill, and to call for urgent international action to address climate change. According to Mark Mardell’s BBC liveblog of the conference, “polite and pretty brief applause follows.” Is this the mark of a room full of dignitaries from around the world, so different from the US’s standing ovations or screaming townhalls that greet the President and his policies when addressing the homefront? Or, in the midst of managing economic turmoil, a politically and bureaucratically complicated health care reform, and the growing critique of foreign wars, is climate change just not at the top of the Obama agenda in a way that he can dedicate the full power of his intellect and will to addressing it here and now? Reading the speech wasn’t quite as rousing a call to action as I’d hoped. Regardless, his commitment to the environment and to basic science, outstrips Bush’s by several lightyears, so at least there isn’t the US obstacle to the international will to get this done.

 

This Week in NYC: Green It Out at Dutch Fest, Watch for Floating Pod People, and Movies Movies Movies

Pioneers of Change

In which my people (the Dutch) take over Governor’s Island, bringing our special flare for art, environment, and quirk to the tiny island. You’ll find artists, designers and performers all over the car-free island, in the former military barracks and forts, where they’ll be hosting interactive works including a screening room about urban farming, a repair workshop, a sloooooow food cafe, and a piece mapping local natural resources for sustainable building.

September 17-20th
Governor’s Island
Free

Solar-Powered Film Series

It’s the last official weekend of summer – celebrate it by watching these great environmental docs powered by the sun! Solar panels power everything at Solar1, including the projector and the popcorn machine. Come out to see A Sea Change, about how the acidification of oceans is affecting local communities, the Oscar-nominated The Garden, about a band of community gardeners fighting the big developers trying to shut them down, the world premiere of Burning the Sun about the very first solar panel company in Mali. Speakers include local activists, filmmakers, and educators. Enjoy the beautiful East River view, brews from Brooklyn, and more.

PS – there are always surprises – last week electric cars showed up for the screening of Who Killed the Electric Car?

Solar Powered Film Series
September 17-19
Solar1, E. 23rd and FDR
Free

And while you’re gazing out over  the East River, look out for this odd creature:

The infamous Yes Men of WTO-pranking fame have created life-sustaining Survival Balls so that we humans don’t have to have anything to do with nature! Melting ice caps, polluted skies, climate change – none of it matters anymore! They’ll be floating a few down the East River for NYC’s upcoming Climate Week talks.

And you don’t have to be a UN dignitary to participate; dozens of events have cropped up around the city to address the issue of climate change. Get a full list here.

 

Van Jones, Health Care and What’s Next

Green jobs czar Van Jones’ resignation on Sept. 5 is a right-wing triumph. Jones is a black Ivy-educated lawyer who has chosen a life of radical activism, fighting the power to make a difference in poverty and environmentalism. Through sheer force of mediated will, the right wing media ruined his opportunity to make a difference from the inside.

In the Bush era, when war protests of hundreds of thousands of people barely got news coverage, and progressive perspectives were distorted, squashed, or worse, Jones made a difference on a local front. He fought police brutality, offered legal services to victims, set up organizations to give political voice to black youth, and in the meanwhile racked up recognition from radical orgs like Time Magazine, Reebok, and the World Economic Forum.

I love people who are able to bridge disciplines and clarify relationships that Should Be. Van Jones is a master of that – making a green economy a centerpiece of his work to fight poverty. He has said:

“There should be a moral principal that says, let’s green the ghetto first…and give the young people standing on the corner the opportunity to put down those hand guns and pick up some caulking guns.”

He sounds like a powerhouse, someone who can navigate many slippery bureaucracies to make his vision manifest. And it’s a sad day when someone with so much gusto gets shot down by that hairless polar bear, Glenn Beck.

 

Truck Farm from King Corn

We’ve seen farms in backyards, on rooftops, in containers, on walls, on barges, but now–on a truck bed! Turned episodic YouTube program! From the fellows who brought you King Corn:

 

What’s Fun This Week: Labor Day

Labor Day. Our beloved last hurrah for the summer. And the weather is going to be perfect.

I’m going to be jetting off to a whole other world of community-built environmental radicalism at Burning Man. Just watch me! I hope to bring back some great new ideas for green living, which I’ll share here.

In the meanwhile, here are some tips for those keeping it local in New York:

Brooklyn Green Team’s Lunching on Labor Day

Get pot-lucky with your favorite borough’s green team and Slow Food USA to support child nutrition, healthy eatin’, and your blood-alcohol content. Here’s the deets:

• Homemade local dishes
• Raffle with Local Prizes (5pm!)
• Cake Walk
• Letter Writing Campaign for Kids & Adults!
• Pinata!
• Drink Specials: $1 drafts of Sixpoint from 3-5pm, 2-for-1 drinks at the bar from 5-7PM
• 4-square, hopscotch, hula hoops and more!

Admission is free, though donations of yummy homemade dishes are welcome!

Monday, Sept. 7th
3-7pm
The Bell House
7th Ave btw. 2nd and 3rd Ave
Brooklyn

Restaurant Week extended to Labor Day!

For foodies sticking around, you can get your dinner on without breaking the bank. Hellloooo, staycation! With restaurant week extended through Labor Day, you can take advantage of great food at doable prices. Restaurants like Cafe Boulud and the Oak Room at Plaza Hotel are rendered accessible for under $25 for lunch. Unfortunately, the NYCGo website where you can suss out what restaurant serves what when doesn’t include “organic” as one of the cuisine choices, so you’ll have to do your own spelunking to discover which of these restaurants are also green. Report back!

 

On The Day the Gmail Died…Is Gmail Greening Email?

Solar-Powered Server Farm in Israel

Today everyone is being affected by Gmail’s server problems – as of July, 146 million people use Gmail every month, and the Twitter, Facebook and blogospheres are on fire talking about how the server glitch is impacting communication.

But let’s take a step back for a minute. 146 million people. With 2GB or more of space. That’s a looooooooot of gigabytes. And even though it’s virtual, it takes a lot of energy and physical space to deal with that much memory. How does Google do it?

Just like there are ag farms and wind farms, big data centers have server farms – huge swathes of land with thousands of servers that feed our insatiable desire for data. These are getting more and more attention for the size of their carbon footprint and other environmental impacts. Keeping the servers running 24 hours is one shot of energy, but it’s keeping them cool that really sucks the juice.

But technology is often the solution for the problem of technology. More after the jump on  a couple of cool data-center projects.

 

What’s Fun This Week: MJ and Watermelons

MJ's birthday RIP

Everyone knows that this weekend is Spike Lee’s Party for MJ in Prospect Park, so my events list will be short! Also working on drumming up support for the Solar Powered Film Series that’s coming up in a few weeks from Green Edge Collaborative, where I’ve been volunteering, so follow at @greenedgenyc for more updates about that.

You can buy cards that look like this from Pine Street Art Works in VT!

WATERMELON MOONSHINE

Rambunctious camping with rockstar farmers!
Even if you go to MJ on Saturday, you might still be able to check out these rad Sunday workshops:

• 11am: Beekeeping with Sam Comfort of Anarchy Apiaries
  NOON: Collective Marketing with Jo Angello of Angello’s Distributing
  1pm: Ricotta Cheesemaking with Peter of Hawthorne Valley
  2pm: Natural Wool Spinning with Ambika Conroy

Saturday August 29th – Sunday August 30th
Smithereen Farm, 286 Pleasantvale Rd. Nevis, NY
Looks like it’s free in exchange for sweat equity!

And if you’re still in doubt, check out these added aphrodisiac qualities of the watermelons!

GREENPOINT FOOD MARKET

If you’re straight into consumption, you get to hold your breath for another couple of weeks. But if you make stuff, sing stuff, cook stuff, garden stuff, it’s time to sign up and be a vendor at Greenpoint Food Market at the Church of the Messiah!

Launch on Saturday, September 12 from 12-6
Greenpoint Food Market
Sign up to be a vendor today!