This is from a post on the Greenpeace web site:

1. Carpool, cycle or use public transport to go to work.
2. Prefer products packaged without plastic.
3. Buy organic fruits and vegetables (fertilisers and pesticides are based on oil more often than not).
4. Buy beauty products (shampoo, soap, make-up) based on natural ingredients, not oil.
5. Prefer localy produced products (less transport involved).
6. Buy clothes made out of organic cotton or hemp – not from oil derivatives.
7. Use non-disposable items in picnics and summer festivals.
8. Quit bottled water.
9. Fly less.
10. Demand that your government encourage renewable energy instead of oil.

I think these are great ideas. Let’s do it.

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There was a recent NYT article about Peak Oil and the Transition Movement “Imagining Life Without Oil, and Being Ready,” by John Leland, June 5, 2010. The following is taken from a response to the article by Transition Milwaukee.

For the Transition Movement is not a random gathering of tree-hugging “doomers” playing survivalist. We are a group of educated, committed, and knowledgeable citizens who are working to cut our individual dependence on fossil-fuels without unrealistic faith in unrealized renewable energy programs. We are taking these individual efforts and joining together in local communities to help others decrease their dependence on fossil fuels. Most significantly, we are beginning the difficult work of establishing larger (yet still local) strategies, plans, models, and skills to help our communities wean themselves from oil and other greenhouse-gas creating energy sources.

This would have made for an interesting story. For the flimsy and predictable caricatures found in the Times article notwithstanding, the Transition Movement is unique in its approach. Unlike most environmental movements, which are most likely to ask for little more than checks and signatures from their members, the Transition Movement realizes that we need to rework our entire food, transportation, and housing infrastructures and that in the absence of real government leadership at this point, we need to start this work ourselves. The fact that an end of cheap oil will also spell an end of the effortless global transportation of goods and services means that in a post oil age, localism will become increasingly important. The lack of federal or state leadership, therefore, is in some ways an asset, as grassroots community change may precipitate a more resilient sense of local independence and self-sufficiency. But unlike survivalist groups, Transition is not about dropping out our running for the hills. It is about community transformation and transitioning.

This sort of community effort leads to tremendous hope and joy, and a sense of growing momentum. In Transition, we are confident and optimistic as we see the results of our efforts to increase the number of community gardens, our creation of small-scale energy cooperatives, and our support for strengthened local economies. But members of the Transition Movement do not believe that the challenges we face will be simple to overcome. There is not a flaky or dreamy sense that we can simply rewrite local energy policy, or actualize in our communities a post oil infrastructure by the mere virtue of the collective enthusiasm of our local grassroots efforts. We acknowledge the difficulty; we understand the degree to which industrial society is not only addicted to oil and other fossil fuels, but the extent of its collective denial about our energy supplies as well as the consequences of an energy shortage or oil price spike.

But because of our careful study of issues of energy and the economy, politics and the environment, we have elaborated a detailed and thoughtful view on what a successful post-oil energy descent strategy might look like; and because we see very little action in this direction, we have no choice but to begin working on its implementation in any way we can, with hope and cautious faith in the momentum that our models and examples of joyful resilience might help build. In the face of Peak Oil, we believe that collective genius and ingenuity, our resolve and commitment, and the potential strength of our communities remain far from their peak. We believe that this sort of emphasis on community will not just help us survive; they might allow us to truly thrive.

Transition Milwaukee

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We are seeking volunteers to coordinate Delaware Valley-wide service where each environmentally significant title (film) can be rotated around all Counties in orderly fashion and shown in libraries or other buildings open to public (churches? schools?) on regular basis so that anyone missing film at one site can go to another near-by site the next day or so.

Please email Kathryn or call 610-565-5289.

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A CSS is very much like a CSA. CSA is community supported agriculture and CSS is community supported seafood. Both are concerned with sustainability and building a local sustainable community. I’ve been involved with a CSA called Red Hill Farm for a couple of years. Last fall, I became involved with a CSS called Otolith. I have had a great experience with both.

We get home grown vegetables and herbs and fruit (raspberries and blackberries) from the farm. And we have an opportunity to buy other locally produced items from other farms, like chickens, turkeys, eggs, butter, milk, corn, potatoes, apples, peaches, and so on. And we get fresh seafood from Otolith. We’ve had salmon, king crab legs, prawns, and rockfish. Each come at a different time of the year. Salmon came in the late fall early winter. Crab legs and prawns came in early winter. Rockfish came in late winter. Something is always available.

I saw mention of CSF in a recent Red Hill Farm newsletter. What is a CSF? Well, that is community supported fishery. There was an article about a place in Maine where some members of Red Hill Farm get their seafood. Here is the article:

Update on Port Clyde Fresh Catch CSF—Melinda here! I found out that the Port Clyde Fresh Catch CSF (Community Supported Fishery) will ship individual orders to our area. This is the season for Maine shrimp, which are smaller, sweeter, cleaner, and more sustainable than most any other shrimp, either domestic or imported. I ordered ten 1-lb packages of headless, frozen, raw shrimp (I wanted the shells for making broth) for $4.75 per lb, plus $15.00 2-day shipping (in a cooler w/ ice packs). That comes to $6.20 per lb delivered, which is a great price for wild-caught, sustainably managed shrimp. However, if I do it again, I’ll probably get whole frozen shrimp @ $1.40 per lb, plus $15.00 shipping. The season for Maine shrimp is usually Jan to Mar, though it may extend till May this year according to the NYT (see here). For Port Clyde Fresh Catch, see here.

I checked out their web site (and you should too) and found they have a certain variety of seafood available. But then I wondered, looks like you have 2 choices to get sustainable seafood. One that is local (Otolith) but who gets their seafood from Alaska and the other is at a distance (Port Clyde Fresh Catch, Maine) who fish locally and ship their seafood to us down here a day or two away.

So, in my quest to learn more, I asked Amanda Bossard, from Otolith, the following questions:
Why did you start Otolith?
Why did you pick Alaska instead of New England?

Here is Amanda’s reply.

I started Otolith in response to 3 things:

1.) Awareness of market share consolidation of existing seafood distribution organized by a limited number of high interest public companies, (3) to be exact, all having transactions with trawl harvest vessels to maintain larger than sustainable abundance of seafood harvested annually. These same companies buy from sustainable fisherman and have felt unmotivated to design marketing campaigns to reflect the actual gear type or origin of the seafood they sell, there-by putting sustainable fisherman at risk for the company’s gain.

2.) My increased awareness over the years of the devastation of trawling on our oceans and its affect on seafood prices, market stability and diminishing quality of seafood. [not to mention the communities that get destroyed when the trawl fleet can no longer find the fish they once decimated in local areas] I hadn’t found my real motivation until I realized the threat to us all who enjoy highest quality seafood and wish to continue to depend on its abundance for the long and the short of it with as little big highs and lows of availability or price in the interim.

3.) My professional awareness of the growing importance of “otolith capture data” and a sense of its potential to add credibility and financial strength to any responsible seafood business willing to assist in supporting the tools and practices necessary to one’s own viability not merely as a marketing tool to look good but as a function of the assurances of the products [seafood] sold and a hard look at the promise of a brand. It seems to me that the power of branding is going to be essential to the traceability of seafood. It is apparent to informed fishery management professionals that the overwhelming volume of seafood sold is too great to know much at the dinner table unless someone has been keeping excellent track of your dinner since it was harvested.

I picked Alaska because I knew a great deal about many practicing sustainable fisherman who qualify to harvest on behalf of Otolith based on gear type, fishery, and quality handling practices. Initially, I realized in 2004 when my daughter and I were living on board our fishing vessel and eating salmon nearly twice each day that some salmon was not as healthful as other salmon. This was an awareness that stemmed from contamination related illness reported in the Alaskan news among certain native communities in AK who routinely subsisted on the same diet which was feeding my family. Their problems were becoming a community concern which the community to which I belonged didn’t have in common with them. I was curious about this immediately. I also knew that if I were to begin to market the best of all seafood available I had better start with what I knew and not try to bite off more than I could chew by trying to sample and test the entire east coast looking for a needle in a proverbial haystack.

On that note I have recently returned from Massachusetts with the goal of finding a local lobster fisherman to benefit from the relationship with a CSS shareholders group. This has only now just begun and it will be an extensive process to bring on board total strangers from pilot east coast gear type fisheries to research further into their harvests for the benefit of their stability and the market’s demand for more information and transparency about the seafood they eat. I certainly agree with the mind set of anyone who insists on knowing more about the seafood they eat, I always do. My life has benefited through my access to great seafood. My awareness of reality facing our seafood industry has not changed my respect and appreciation for seafood rather reinforced and strengthened it. I seek to discover how to make a for-profit seafood company with a real backbone for credible healthful sustainable seafood which will stand the best chance of weathering the storms of diminishing harvests and stand in the face of re-investment to increase harvest efficiency while beginning new re-investments for fuel efficiency by its fisherman. This is no small challenge. Otolith will need to be receptive to many changes as long as they are positive. Otolith’s clients and customers will need to be focused on the goal and committed to knowing more about their seafood to assure clients are getting the seafood they want for their money.

Thank you,
Amanda Bossard
Otolith Sustainable Seafood

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Delaware County, especially the wealthier suburbs, is pedestrian-hostile. The lousy conditions faced by anyone who has to get around in the suburbs without a car are a disgrace. Every borough (town) west of Upper Darby and Lansdowne is an island in a sea of inaccessible townships.

A reasonable goal would be for every road within a half-mile of a major transit intersection to have a sidewalk on at least one side, and preferably both.

A step in this direction would be to create a text registry to which pedestrians in the county can post each hazardous walking situation after they have navigated it. These would then be added to a Google Maps app, managed by some entity in the county, region, or state— say, DVRPC or PennDOT.

When a sizable number of these sites are catalogued and verified, the agency could start to generate a plan for making walking and transit a viable alternative to the car, not a last resort. In the meantime, it would also be helpful to create a text-based listing that could be accessed via most cell phones.

I already have several intersections in mind. One is Lansdowne Avenue and Providence Road in Yeadon, which is the sole reason my wife cannot bike to work in Lansdowne. Another is— well, anywhere in Nether Providence, which despite all its wealth, regularly subjects its many children and car-less citizens to extremely hazardous conditions.

Several aspects I didn’t mention above:

1. When you look at the people using Septa and trying to walk under these conditions, the racism and classism in this situation are blatant.
2. The municipality, region, or state should bear responsibility for sidewalks along major thoroughfares, not property owners. That’s just silly, and I’m guessing it’s the main reason the situation is so bad.
3. As bad as it is here, Chester and Montgomery Counties are even worse. It’s the wealthy areas saying, “If you can’t afford a car, you don’t deserve to be here, even to visit or work.”
4. In a variety of ways, our cars are killing us. We have to make it a lot more appealing to go places without the car, and use transit and our feet instead.

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Hello all:
Jaclyn and some other folks last week were wondering how they might support climate change legislation. One such way is to support a new jobs bill which includes HOMESTAR, a program to make american homes more efficient through auditing and retrofitting them to be more efficient. HOMESTAR Gold level has provisions in it which give homeowners cash incentives to make changes. the home performance industry is doing its best to see this legislation gets passed. they are also trying to reframe the unfortunate phrase “cash for caulkers”. This legislation goes well beyond caulk and helps to homeowners to afford a home performance process while reducing emissions.

Below is one of several emails we received today on this subject. there are a few links within in the event you wish to take action. Below the email I have pasted a description of this program and what it could do for homeowners.

from Sean (posted on dvslist)
##########################################################
We have just received word that the first jobs bill will likely be finalized in the next 24 hours. The Home Star Coalition has worked hard to ensure that the Home Star legislation is included, but nothing is ever certain (there will likely be other jobs bills after this one). The 400 of you on this email all indicated via the survey last week that you were interested in contacting your Senators. I urge you to email and/or call your Senators today – it will take 5-10 minutes total using the resources below. Once the bill comes out there will be another need for calling and emailing to help pass it, but we must guarantee that we have a bill first! Attached you will find an overview of the most recent Home Star proposal with $ values for incentives on page 2.

**We want to track your success. If you contact your Senators, please just send an email back to me (Patrick.Roche@csgrp.com) using the following template for the Subject line – Subject: “I Called (or Emailed) Senator X and Senator Y” That’s it!

1. Email your Senator: Click here, then enter your zip code to select your Senators. Modify a standard template by adding details about your business. Hit submit!

2. Call your Senator: Look up your Senators’ phone numbers on the Senate Web site. Take a moment to review the attached talking points to stay on message. When the attendant answers, tell them that you are a constituent and would like to discuss how the HOME STAR program is going to help you create jobs in their district. This will likely only take a few minutes per call (but if they want to discuss, talk about your business and happy clients in their home districts!).

Thanks for your help!
########################################################
What is HOME STAR?
• HOME STAR is proposed federal legislation that will create good living?wage jobs in construction and related industries by providing strong short?term incentives for home energy efficiency improvements.

• HOME STAR rewards homeowners for investing in insulation and weatherization, high?efficiency heating and air conditioning equipment, replacement windows and other cost?effective home improvements that can permanently reduce household energy bills.

• HOME STAR was originally proposed by a coalition of business leaders as a cost?effective way to stimulate rapid job creation and jump?start a sustainable market for home energy retrofits. This growing industry will provide good jobs for American workers long after the incentive program has been phased out.

• HOME STAR jobs cannot be outsourced, and materials used in these jobs are on average 90% or more domestically produced.

• HOME STAR is a market?based solution that leverages private investment and consumer spending to stimulate the economy and help us achieve our national clean?energy and climate goals.

• HOME STAR will jumpstart a new American industry that can be market based and sustainable.

Good living?wage jobs for American workers:

• HOME STAR is expected to create 168,000 high?quality building jobs over the next two years.

• 1.6 million construction jobs disappeared during the recession, and the unemployment rate for American construction workers is still over 20% (one in five workers are unemployed). If we don’t find ways to put these people back to work, continued unemployment in construction and related industries threatens to derail our economic recovery.

• Construction materials manufacturing is at 62% of its capacity.

• Home energy retrofitting is hands?on, site?specific work that cannot be outsourced overseas. The necessary skills can be learned quickly by any experienced construction worker. The workforce is out there, so let’s put them to work!

• Stimulating consumer demand for home energy improvements also will create jobs in constructionrelated manufacturing and retail. The sheet metal, caulking, insulation products and other manufactured goods used in energy retrofits are overwhelmingly made by American mills and factories.

Lower energy bills and reduced greenhouse gas emissions:

• Household energy use accounts for more than one?fifth of U.S. carbon emissions – roughly twice the emissions produced by passenger cars. Basic efficiency improvements can reduce energy waste and greenhouse gas emissions in most American homes by 20% to 40%.

• This is not new or experimental technology. Energy retrofits can generate considerable savings using proven techniques and materials – even without installing costly solar panels.

• Retrofitting is the most cost?effective way to reduce household energy costs, and smart investments in energy efficiency will eventually pay for themselves through long?term energy bill savings.

How the proposed HOME STAR incentives will work:

• The HOME STAR proposal calls for the creation of a national program to provide direct rebates to homeowners who invest in qualifying home energy efficiency improvements. At the request of the homeowner, rebate amounts can be deducted from overall job costs at the time of sale and paid directly to the contractor or product retailer after the retrofit work has been completed.

• The plan gives homeowners a choice of two types of incentives. The SILVER STAR incentive prioritizes easy and rapid deployment. The GOLD STAR incentive incentivizes deeper energy savings by offering higher rebate amounts for consumers who choose this path.

• SILVER STAR provides rebates for specific energy?saving measures such as air sealing; attic, wall or crawl space insulation; duct sealing or replacement; and replacement of existing windows, doors, water heaters, household appliances or heating and air conditioning equipment. Rebate amounts are up to $1,500 per qualified installed measure, capped at 50 percent of project costs or $3,000 (whichever is less).

• The performance?based GOLD STAR incentive is based on predicted energy savings as determined by a thorough energy audit performed before the work begins. Using proven building science methods, the auditor tests the home’s energy performance, designs a customized retrofit plan in consultation with the homeowner, and calculates the energy savings that will result from the recommended measures. Homeowners can receive $3,000 for modeled savings of 20%, plus $1,500 for each additional 5% of modeled energy savings, with incentives not to exceed 50% of total project costs.

• To prevent fraud and assure quality, HOME STAR requires appropriate licensing and certification for all participating contractors, and a percentage of all jobs will be inspected by a third party within 30 days of completion to verify proper installation.

What you can do to support HOME STAR:

• Call or write to the Senators from your state and your local Congressional Representative.

• Write a letter to your local newspaper.

• Find out more at www.efficiencyfirst.org/home?star.

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Well, perhaps you should site down and wonder or not. Information always surfaces that can be presented in many ways, with different twists depending upon what the author (or perpetraitor) wants you to believe. That’s what the right wing idiots do all the time (Fox News, Russ Limbaugh, Sara Palin and on and on). They tap into the emotions of the common people with outlandish (and misleading) statements and headlines.

There was a recent email thread on the dvslist about an article in the media about a huge oil reserve in North Dakota, western South Dakota, and extreme eastern Montana that has been know about since 1995. It touted that it wasn’t being developed because of the environmentalists.

The Bakken is the largest domestic oil discovery since Alaska ‘s Prudhoe Bay, and has the potential to eliminate all American dependence on foreign oil. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels. Even if just 10% of the oil is recoverable… at $107 a barrel, we’re looking at a resource base worth more than $5..3 trillion.

It was noted that snopes.com posted an article about this and the misleading information in it.

The shale oil is there but will be very, very expensive to get it out.

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From a recent mailing by the Environmental Defense Fund:

Dear Friend,

Out of more than 62,000 synthetic chemicals that are part of our everyday lives, fewer than 200 have been tested for safety.

Thanks to effective lobbying by the chemical industry, laws are written so that every synthetic chemical is “innocent until proven guilty.” The legal burden weighs on those seeking to prove the harm a substance can cause.

Find out more in this month’s Personal Nature column, “Toxic Ignorance is Not Bliss,” by author and writer Dominique Browning.

Human Guinea Pigs

Browning reveals the shocking truth when it comes to potentially toxic chemicals — you’re basically on your own.

“We should be worried about what amounts to a huge, uncontrolled human testing experiment. Without agreeing to it, without understanding it, without even knowing it, we have become the chemical industry’s guinea pigs.”

Topic A of late is Bisphenol A (BPA), found in baby bottles, possibly the water bottle sitting by your desk and plastic dental sealants.

BPA is increasingly suspected of causing a variety of serious ills, yet factories continue to produce six billion pounds of it each year.

In the coming months, Congress may review the process by which we regulate toxic chemicals — or, as Browning points out, mostly don’t regulate them.

This month’s Personal Nature column serves as an engaging and alarming primer.

Thank you for your activism and support,
Environmental Defense Fund

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I sent a letter to the editor of the Delaware County Times in response to an article I read by Gil Spence who criticized clean energy and questioned global warming. His article can be found here. I’ve reprinted my letter below. The actual article can be found here.

To the Times:

We all have our points of view, especially when it comes to the environment and climate change, global warming, and health care. When it comes to whether we believe that global warming is real, both sides pull no punches in bringing up facts. Remember the old saying “figures lie and liars figure.” One person can look at something and see it as half-full (an optimist) and another can see it as half-empty (a pessimist).

Mr. Spencer seems to have made statements in a recent column on clean energy that show his lack of understanding of the most basic principles of climate change and energy. As he asked “who do you side with?” Big energy business has used their money to fund research that gives them the answers they want. The government seems to have no ulterior motives in presenting their data and concerns.

Who do we trust? I would like to trust the government and organizations like the Union of Concerned Scientists who don’t seem to have an agenda or ulterior motives like big business. The Center for American Progress, Natural Resources Defense Council and the Political Economy Research Center at University of Massachusetts all provide similar reports. Why don’t people believe these reports? Science proves that global warming is real. If nothing is done, we will suffer the consequences. As Mother Earth has said “if you don’t fix the problem, I will (and you won’t like what I will do).”

We need clean, renewable energy, not just in Pennsylvania, but also in every state in the U.S. and in every country throughout our word. We need to reduce the amount of CO2 that is being put into our atmosphere. To accomplish this, we need a whole bunch of new, sustaining jobs that will help our economy. Pennsylvania needs to be a leader in clean energy and jobs. We can help our country move forward in solving this dire problem facing our planet.

And we in Pennsylvania have already started down this path. Look at the number of renewable energy companies that have come to Pennsylvania in the last several years. Gamesa, the largest wind company in the world, opened up its headquarters in Philadelphia and a wind-turbine manufacturing plant in Bucks County, employing close to 1,000 Pennsylvanians in quality jobs that can’t be shipped overseas. This is a win-win for the economy and the environment. HB 80 is needed to keep Pennsylvania economically competitive, and to protect the health and well being of all residents.

Let’s get our heads out of the sand and support clean energy reform and the promoting of many thousands of jobs that will revitalize our economy.

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While you sleep, while you eat, and while you’re hard at work, vampires lurk in the depths of your home. From morning to night, they are sucking you dry. It’s called vampire power – but for you it’s simply wasted money.

Energy vampires are devices that use electricity even when they are turned off. They can account for up to 20 percent of your electric bill.(1) You can improve your home’s energy savings by identifying and unplugging these energy vampires.

Americans spend $10 billion per year on vampire energy. If we didn’t waste this energy, we could shut down 30 coal-fired power plants – and send every American child to a Jonas Brothers concert.(2)

Did you know that your home-entertainment system can cost you up to $75 per year in vampire energy – even when it’s turned off?(3)

How to Cut Down on Energy Vampires:

• Use the energy-saving features commonly built into most computers.
• Unplug energy-sucking appliances when they aren’t in use.
• Better yet, plug all your appliances and the chargers for your mobile phones and other gadgets into a power strip, and flip the power strip to “off” when not needed. Using a “smart” power strip that automatically shuts off when devices are inactive makes this even easier for you.
• Consider purchasing a “kill-a-watt” device to measure the energy consumption of your household appliances and electronics when turned on or off.
• If you need a new appliance, purchase one that is Energy Star qualified. EnergyStar devices use much less power in the off mode than regular appliances.(4)

What really bites is that you’re the one who is left bleeding as the energy vampires suck you dry. Stop being bled dry. Slay your vampires by taking these actions to save energy and money this Halloween!

Your Mayor Can Help Your Community Do Even More:
Ask your mayor to lead the way to an energy-efficient future that creates good green jobs which support families, can’t be outsourced, and keep money in our pockets.
http://action.sierraclub.org/vampirepetition

Brought to you by the Sierra Club, in celebration of National Weatherization Day.
(1.) Duke Energy – NC
(2.) energystar.gov
(3.) energystar.gov
(4.) energystar.gov

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