Column Descriptors: Link Listings, Resources, Blog Postings, Navigation

  • Select Ads

  • Events

    • Beat Global Heat
      Saturday, July 26th is going to be hot! The first ever Beat Global Heat Backyard Festival will see a series of small scale concerts independently organized by people like you across Canada.
    • Earth Hour
      Earth Hour 2009 aims to reach more than one billion people in 1000 cities around the world, inviting communities, business and governments to switch off lights for one hour at 8:30pm on Saturday March 28 and sending a powerful global message that we care
    • Earth Run: Run for your planet
      Earth Run helps raise awareness and funds for environmental organizations and initiatives.
    • United Nations Climate Change Conference Copenhagen 2009
      The sessions (COP 15) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is open to Parties of the Convention and Observer States (Governments), the United Nations System and observer organizations duly admitted by the Conference of the Parties.
    • World Car Fee Day
      Every September 22, people from around the world get together in the streets, intersections, and neighbourhood blocks to remind the world that we don't have to accept our car-dominated society.

  • Statistics

    • Ethanol Clean Air Facts In 2004, ethanol use in the U.S. reduced CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 7 million tons, equal to removing the emissions of more than 1 million cars from the road.
    • Greenhouse Gases Emissions per Km Full-size SUVs, minivans, pickup trucks and the like emit about 40 per cent more greenhouse gases per kilometre travelled than do passenger cars.
    • How to Pick a Better Bulb If every household replaced just three 60-watt incandescent bulbs with CF bulbs, the pollution savings would be like taking 3.5 million cars off the road!
    • Last exit for the Holocene era The Holocene epoch is that blessed time of stable, warm climate (but not too hot) and unchanging sea levels in which human civilization was born and grew to its present size.
    • Urban Sprawl Sprawling land development is gobbling up the American countryside at an alarming rate -- around 365 acres per hour according to government figures.

  • Select Ads

    • View My Portfolio

» 2009 » April

April 22 is Earth Day

Posted: Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 • Author: Xander
Categories: Participate • Comments: Awaiting Comments

Earth Day NetworkEarth Day Network was founded on the premise that all people, regardless of race, gender, income, or geography, have a moral right to a healthy, sustainable environment. Our mission is to broaden and diversify the environmental movement worldwide, and to mobilize it as the most effective vehicle for promoting a healthy, sustainable environment. We pursue our mission through a combination of education, public policy, and consumer activism campaigns. Our campaign and programs are predicated on the belief that an educated, energized population will take action to secure a healthy future for itself and its children. Earth Day Network has a global reach with a network of more than 17,000 partners and organizations in 174 countries. More than 1 billion people participate in Earth Day activities, making it the largest secular civic event in the world.

Source: www.earthday.net

More Info: The History of Earth Day

LS » It’s Earth Day, a day to think about our planet. What are you going to do?

The dirty green line

Posted: Monday, April 6th, 2009 • Author: Xander
Categories: Articles: Energy Issues • Comments: Awaiting Comments

The dirty green lineErecting new transmission lines for solar and wind power is a boon to coal-burning utilities and a drain on our wallets. What’s an environmentalist to do?

With a boost of billions in the economic stimulus plan, the White House plans to double the nation’s supply of renewable energy in the next three years. There’s big talk in Congress of creating a national renewable-energy standard, which would mandate that utilities get a chunk of their power from green sources like solar, wind and geothermal. So long dirty energy, hello green future.

Yet as renewable energy finally takes its place as a national priority, a tripwire lurks in the rosy scenario: transmission lines. No less an authority than President Obama is promoting the goal of building thousands of miles of new transmission lines to move power from the Great Plains and Mojave Desert to the nation’s energy-hungry cities and ‘burbs. And he’s got plenty of political might behind him.

The power companies lobbying for new lines compare the notion of a national grid to the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has brought legislation to help create what he calls a “electric superhighway.” Large environmental groups, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society, have joined the wind and solar industries in championing the expansion of the transmission grid.

Not all environmentalists, though, are buzzing about the expansion. …

Source: www.salon.com/…

LS » Nothing is seems to be easy, you’d think setting up a bunch of solar panels in a barren desert and then transmitting the energy back to the urban areas would be a good renewable energy option, but of course transmission lines suck and despite the beauty of the above picture, transmission lines are an eyesore at best and a public health hazard at worst. This article brings a new phrase to the sustainability lexicon, “distributed generation” which means that the generation of energy needs to be distrubuted around the country and thus close to the users of the energy.