Please welcome today’s guest poster, Jamison.

I will confess without hesitation: I’m horrible about giving credit where credit is due. I remember Dianne dragging me to a Save the Bay event, spending hours and hours doing back-breaking labor, planting native plants, all to save a little cove and then driving home past major polluters with a feeling I’d accomplished nothing at all. Dianne, like most of the Greenists, appreciates the little victories. I guess in the end it comes down to your definition of what a little victory is. So when I say it’s time to celebrate a little victory, realize it’s coming from a place of great cynicism and doubt about the future of the world. And if I’m telling you that you’ve accomplished something important, it’s probably a pretty big deal.  Read more…

Please welcome today’s guest poster, Jamison.

Image credit: theresilientearth.com

If you aren’t from the South, you’re probably completely unaware of kudzu, but down here it’s referred to as the “plant that ate the South.” A few decades ago, Southerners were having trouble with erosion, so they found this awesome quick-growing plant from Japan. And man, did it work like gangbusters — it grabbed onto the soil and held everything in place. And then something unexpected happened: it tried to take over the entire country. It killed off trees and even tried to overtake people’s houses. The stuff couldn’t be stopped easily.

For years, scientists have tried to turn lemons into lemonade with this plant. They’ve actually made some fairly decent progress. Lately they’ve started looking at it for bio-fuel feedstock, hoping to turn an ecological disaster into a vast source of fuel for the country. Unfortunately this story isn’t going to have a happy ending.  Read more…

I know Allie just mentioned her own search for the right kind of car that suited her needs, that car being a station wagon. The Modern Hubby and I are in the middle of our own search for a vehicle to replace his 15-year-old Nissan Altima that is falling apart before our eyes and has gotten far too expensive and difficult to manage. Like Allie, we’ve decided to go the station wagon route as we also have two dogs that travel frequently with us and need the cargo space for our frequent trips to Home Depot but aren’t a fan of the lack of fuel efficiency when it comes to SUVs.

While we’re looking at some of the same cars Allie took a look at, we’ve also got the option of Toyota’s brand-new Prius V, which is basically a standard Prius with a station wagon-like cargo space on the back. And after fully investigating, we’ve discovered the Prius V is only slightly more expensive than the comparable gas options we’re looking at but with far better fuel economy, and the math works out so that we’d make back the difference in price in savings on gas in a couple of years.

But like any green-minded sensible consumer, I’ve set out to do my research on all the cars, and I am absolutely blown away by the amount of conflicting information that’s out there. Hybrids can be great! Hybrids aren’t worth it. Hybrids help reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Hybrids have a negative environmental impact because of their batteries and production. So which is it?

Read more…

If you’ve been following The Greenists for awhile, you may remember that I was on a quest to replace The Crapmobile, my low-end compact SUV, with a vehicle that would be affordable, fit two large German Shepherds in the cargo area, get reasonably good gas milage, and be an all-round nice to drive, reliable way to get from point A to point B.  After months of research and test drives, I was starting to feel like I’d have an easier time finding a unicorn to ride to the grocery store.

Because I believed I’d need to replace my SUV with another SUV to get the kind of room I needed for the dogs, my car research turned up dead end after dead end.  I’d get excited about a certain SUV, only to see it in person and realize that despite it’s gargantuan size, there was barely any space behind the backseat for the dogs.  Plus, I didn’t want to drive something enormous, and I didn’t want to pay an arm and a leg for a car, or for gas.

And then, it dawned on me.  Hey, remember those things people drove in the 80′s and early 90′s before SUVs?  You know, those cars with the big back ends?  Yeah, those things.  Station wagons!

You guys, we need to bring back the station wagon.  It is a brilliant, brilliant vehicle format.  My new car gets way better gas milage than The Crapmobile, is easy to park, fun to drive, has all sorts of great creature comforts, and plenty of room in the back for the dogs (more than my compact SUV had).

I can hook seatbelt harnesses to the car seat anchors in the trunk area, so I don’t even need a heavy, noisy dog grate anymore, and my dogs are safe and secure.  I gave up four wheel drive, but a lower profile, excellent IIHS crash ratings, plus traction and stability control, means that I feel much safer in my new two-wheel drive car than I ever did in my old four-wheel drive vehicle.  And, since the seats fold down, I have enough room to haul large purchases (we fit a tree in my car last month!).  The back seat area is perfectly roomy and comfortable, and the front seats are brilliant (and heated!).  And all of this for a starting price that is ten thousand dollars less than the “affordable range” SUVs I’d been researching!

I love my car.

Since I firmly believe that everyone buying a car should do their own researching and test driving, I won’t tell you which station wagon I ended up with, but I will give you a few models to consider:

Hyundai Elantra Touring

• Starts at $15,995
• MPG 23/30
• Cargo volume (cu ft): 24.3 w/ seats up, 65.3 w/seats down
• Fun options: iPod ready stereo, heated seats, power sunroof

Volkswagen Jetta Sportwagen

• Starts at $19,995
• MPG 24/31 (TDI gets 30/42)*
• Cargo volume (cu ft): 32.8 w/ seats up, 66.9 w/seats down
• Fun options: Panoramic sunroof, heated seats, navigation, Bluetooth, MDI interface

For me one of the most exciting parts of green energy innovation is the decentralization of control of energy production. In my earlier article about the production of biogas last month we saw a similar revolution happening.

The rule of the day is the economy of scales: the more of something you make, the cheaper it is to produce. It’s the entire foundation of our modern society, but more and more we are seeing that the centralization of energy production leads to weaknesses in our system that make us very vulnerable to disruption and failure.

Ask anyone who lives along the coast line how stable their electric power grid is and they’ll tell you that if the slightest tropical storm comes along, they are without power for days, or even weeks.

We experience the same vulnerability with our fuel sources as well. Most of our fuel refining happens at coastal ports and the fuel is then shipped inland to repositories that ship it to the individual gas stations you get your fuel from.

What I want to talk to you about today, is breaking that chain once and for all. Read more…

image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/talkradionews/6093961593/

As I hope many of you already know, protests of the Keystone XL Pipeline took place a couple weeks ago in front of the white house.  These protests went on for 2 weeks and over 1,200 people were arrested; including Bill McKibben and James Hansen.  It is quite possibly the largest act of civil disobedience our country has seen in decades.

I wish I had been there.

Not only do I live in the DC area (I’m about an hour away), but I’ve also held a life-long goal of being arrested for a cause I believe in- and this definitely qualified.  Yet for two weeks, I heard the news, I thought it would be a good idea to join in, yet I did nothing.   Why?  Easy- life got in the way.

Everything from missing work would be too complicated, to weekends filling up with schedules and errands, it was always easier to do nothing than it was to commit to something.   Besides, my house already uses 100% wind power, we drive very little, eat (mostly) vegetarian, grow some of our own food, reduce, reuse, recycle, etc, etc.  And what good would come of being arrested, anyway? Read more…

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaumebonet/5126082489/

Remember a few weeks ago, during Shark Week, when I posted about shark finning? In case you don’t remember, or are too lazy to click the link, shark finning is the practice of catching sharks, only to cut off their fins and then throw them back into the water to bleed to death. Many Asian fisherman do this because shark’s fin soup is a delicacy — people pay upwards of $100 a bowl for it — which makes it a very lucrative practice, particularly in China.

Well, there’s good news on that front. California’s state Senate has passed a bill that would ban the trade, sale, and possession of shark fins in the state. It only awaits Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature before becoming a law. Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington already have similar bans.  Read more…

Please welcome today’s guest poster, Jamison.

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aidg/2168751427/lightbox/

Let me tell you a very odd story from our friends in China. China was having a problem in their poor farmland areas. They were losing massive amounts of forests and decided they had to take some sort of corrective action. So they decided to reintroduce biodigester technology – the process of converting organic waste into renewable sources of energy — to the countryside. They built a design that cost about $450 and started installing them for farmers. A third of that cost was covered with government subsidies.

The farmers were expected to provide the labor (digging the hole for the system) for the project, but basically it’s a large underground tank, a bit larger than the average American septic tank. As waste from humans and livestock flows into the tank, it breaks down and produces methane, as all organic waste does, and these biodigesters make it possible to produce more than enough biogas to run their households without need of additional fuels.

The effects have been staggering — most farmers who have the systems have managed to move their incomes from below the poverty line to incomes two or three times above it. Women have been freed up from the painful task of hunting for firewood. The forests around the farming villages have started to replenish themselves. The farmers have the byproduct of the biogas, which is a very effective fertilizer that can then be used to help improve their plant growth to increase their yields.  Read more…

Please welcome today’s guest poster, Amanda Kidd.

Do you want to make an efficient use of water, energy and other valuable resources? Do you want to protect your health and thereby improve productivity? Can you control pollution and environmental degradation to some extent? If the answer to these questions is yes, then why not think about going green? Invest in a green building and help yourself naturally. A green building, also referred to as a sustainable building or a green construction, is an environmentally friendly structure that is designed, built, maintained, operated, renovated, and demolished or reused in a resource-efficient way for the entire life cycle of the building.  Read more…

I’m going to have to do some tiptoeing in this post, but let’s get one thing straight right from the get-go: In no way am I rooting for the ruin of the human race. As a matter of fact and despite scattered claims to the contrary I am a human, so any argument I might make against my own kind would be obviously disingenuous. I even like some people, and I wouldn’t want anything bad to befall any of them. Or myself.

So I don’t hate people, got it?

But here’s the thing: I don’t think you can trump an argument simply by claiming the welfare of X number of people is at stake. Read more…