Rooftop Gardens

A cool powerpoint presentation on Rooftop Gardens...
http://cooplearningsol.com/echo/701001/

Bee Gardens

How to make your garden bee-friendly.
Urban Bee Gardens

Food Revolution

An article from Michael Pollen on the On Earth site about decentralizing our food system.

Happy Spring

Spring has sprung! Hurray! Time to once again look to more outside activities. Seeing all the blooming plants, watching the birds and other little animals draw my attention to admiring nature rather than setting at a desk and computer all day. It is a shame to waste glorious days cooped up inside.
Spring brings us into the growing season. The First Lady is getting into the spirit with starting a vegetable garden at the White House. Roger Doiron's wish is coming true. This is a smart move for them. It will help spread the message of eating healthy, locally grown, organic foods. She is getting children involved, which will "plant the seeds" for healthy living as they grow up. I hope we see more of these types of stories in the news. Americans need to get their hands dirty again, touch the soil. There is a positive effect to the human spirit in touching, seeing, and smelling the land and the fruits of their labor. Plus, the food taste really good too.

Cars Suck

Sorry, time for a little rant here...
As much as I would like to not depend on automobiles, our family does own and use them. I still see them as an evil necessity in our lives. I know, the auto does provide a way to transport one or more people and much cargo long distances quickly. What I don't like (besides the pollution and waste they produce) is all the stuff that goes along with them.
OK, here is the cause for my rant - yesterday while looking for a parking space at a local shopping center, another person in their car backs into mine. I am stopped, waiting for cars in front of me to move, and this person backs out of an aisle to my left and into my front left fender. My two kids were in the back seat, and fortunately no one was hurt. What this really brings to mind is the inconvenience that a situation like this brings about. What was a minor fender bender has left me and the kids a bit shaken up, and phone calls to the insurance company, and later getting the car repaired. I do have to say, I have my insurance through AAA, and they have been extremely helpful so far. Which raises the point of how much money is spent in providing this mode of transportation. We pay plenty in car payments, insurance, gas, registration, and maintenance and repairs.
What about the alternatives? Let's say that our family decides to sell the cars, and look for other ways of transportation. In our city we have the metro bus and trolley system, and the trains for longer trips up the coast. We could probably get monthly transit passes for the 4 of us for about or a little cheaper than the car and insurance payments per month. The problem we would be left with is the convenience of the car would not be there. Our bus schedule leaves quite a bit to be desired. The trolley system is great, except it doesn't go anywhere you need it to.
I commute by bicycle, but I cannot see the bike taking the place of the car for the rest of the family right now.
I know that this is a lifestyle that we have chosen, just like most of the country. If something happened today that took away our cars, we could get by. We are fortunate to live in an area where we can get around if needed. I know plenty of people in rural areas would have a much tougher time. Car culture is ingrained in our society pretty well. All of the inconveniences that go along with having the convenience of the car are just accepted as "normal". I at least realize that this "normal" is a fallacy, but haven't quite figured out what to do about it.
If you have read my rant, thanks for taking the time.

Grow Your Own, Mr. President

Here is a cool little video urging President-elect Obama to convert the White House lawn into a vegetable garden, complete with time-lapse photography on what the author Roger Doiron did.
(http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009021.html)

This raises a good point about our fascination with green manicured lawns. Most of this precious land would be better served growing something useful, like stuff we can actually eat. Victory Gardens were popular once, it's time to bring them back!

Instead of buying vegetables that have most likely traveled thousands of miles to your door, why not grow them in your own garden? Don't have your own yard? Then see if you can go in on a community garden.

There is no reason why everyone cannot grow their own.

Exurbs and Transportation Woes

NOW on PBS video called "Driven to Despair". This video looks at the life of a family living in the exurbs and compares it to the living in the city. It focuses on how the high cost of gasoline has affected those with long commutes. It also shows how more public transportation has the ability to make a difference, if given the chance. Great video to watch!

The Change Has Begun.

The rising cost of oil has already set in motion some interesting trends. Driving is down and public transit use it up.
Sales of larger vehicles are declining, which is putting American auto manufacturers in trouble. For years, they have relied on larger vehicles (SUVs) to make most of their profits. With slipping sales, they now have to focus their energy on smaller fuel efficient cars. Even scooter sales are on the rise.
Mass transit is enjoying an increase in riders, but many cities are now experiencing growing pains. They are having trouble keeping up with the demand, and funding is not able to keep up.
We are now trying to catch up to cope with a problem that began many years ago. Unfortunately, we did not heed the warnings until it hit us where it counts - the bottom line. Now that we are beginning to realize the real cost of energy, there is scrambling to figure out how to deal with it. We have been building sprawled out subdivisions for the past 50 years, assuming there would always be cheap oil to allow everyone to drive anywhere they pleased. As a result, we will now have a difficult task ahead if we want to offer alternatives to everyone driving their own vehicle everywhere. Some people will choose to move closer to where they work, or closer to the central part of a city. But, what about the millions of families who are stuck out in suburbia? How do we undo 50 years of sprawling development? It would take years to get good public transit out into the suburbs. Not everyone will be able to move into the city.
Perhaps shopping more locally will start to make sense. Instead of driving 30 miles to Wally World, we might do our shopping at the local grocery, drug, and hardware stores (if you are lucky enough to even still have them). Maybe you will choose to visit the local sites on your vacation instead of driving 500 miles to visit something out of state. Maybe you will dust off that old bike setting in the garage and see if you can use it to visit the local grocery or convenience store.
Even some outsourced jobs may start coming back to America, as transporting goods across the world may become cost inhibited. We may see more locally grown food instead of having our lettuce shipped 3000 miles. We may even have to buy more seasonal fruits and vegetables, since we may not be able to afford produce grown and shipped from countries around the world.
It's probably too late for America to make a smooth transition into living with high energy costs, but hopefully enough people have the common sense to start making adjustments on their own.

3 Years Ago

3 years ago today my grandfather passed away. I still think of him often. Thinking of his life has caused me to reflect a bit on some current stuff going on in our country.
I just read an article in the paper about a push for more urban areas to allow residents to raise chickens. Several cities had previously banned residents from keeping chickens, but there has been a growing effort to get those bans lifted. Many cities now allow up to 6 chickens to be raised on a residential property, usually with the consent of neighbors. The owners get the obvious benefit of fresh eggs, but the chickens also help to control weeds and bugs, and they fertilize the ground. This is just one of the latest parts of a growing trend of people wanting to raise their food closer to home. Many are returning to growing a vegetable garden in their back (or even front) yard. More are making a conscience effort to seek out locally grown food and locally raised animals for diary and meat. With the ever increasing cost of gas and diesel, transporting food long distances is making less economical sense. Locally grown food also is usually fresher and better tasting. There is also a lesser chance of an outbreak of a deadly disease from locally grown or raised food. Even if there is an outbreak, the number of consumers affected is much, much less than food grown or raised on large factory farm environments.
If you cannot raise or grow the food yourself, at least try to get the know the people who do. These people are certainly not in this business to make a lot of money, they want to see people eating fresh, healthy food. Go out and visit a farmer's market the next chance you get. Maybe you can even find tomatoes there!

Biofuels are NOT the answer.

The full Time/CNN story here:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725975,00.html
March 27, 2008
-by Michael Grunwald

A few quotes from the article:

..."several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it's dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline."

"Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year."

..."using land to grow fuel leads to the destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands that store enormous amounts of carbon."

"The environmental cost of this cropland creep is now becoming apparent. One groundbreaking new study in Science concluded that when this deforestation effect is taken into account, corn ethanol and soy biodiesel produce about twice the emissions of gasoline."

"People don't want to believe renewable fuels could be bad," says the lead author, Tim Searchinger, a Princeton scholar and former Environmental Defense attorney. "But when you realize we're tearing down rain forests that store loads of carbon to grow crops that store much less carbon, it becomes obvious."

"Why is so much money still being poured into such a misguided enterprise? Like the scientists and environmentalists, many politicians genuinely believe biofuels can help decrease global warming. It makes intuitive sense: cars emit carbon no matter what fuel they burn, but the process of growing plants for fuel sucks some of that carbon out of the atmosphere."

"There was just one flaw in the calculation: the studies all credited fuel crops for sequestering carbon, but no one checked whether the crops would ultimately replace vegetation and soils that sucked up even more carbon. It was as if the science world assumed biofuels would be grown in parking lots. The deforestation of Indonesia has shown that's not the case. It turns out that the carbon lost when wilderness is razed overwhelms the gains from cleaner-burning fuels."

..."the market drives behavior, so without incentives to prevent deforestation, the Amazon is doomed. It's unfair to ask developing countries not to develop natural areas without compensation."

My guess is that there will not be a magic solution to the eventual decline of oil production to allow us to continue consuming the extraordinary amounts of energy that we have become accustomed to. There is always going to be an ugly side-effect of any energy source that allows us to do the amount of work that we are able to with cheap oil.

As far as I am concerned, biofuel should be the burrito that you eat after your bike ride.

The Good and Bad for Bicycle Parking

Just saw two stories on Carectomy about bicycle parking, one good and one bad. First, the good. At the San Fransisco baseball stadium, Giants' AT&T Park, the S.F. Bicycle Coalition helps to offer valet parking for bikes at events there. People who rides their bikes to the park don't have to worry about finding a place to lock up their bikes. There is covered storage for about 200 bikes available.
Now for the bad. The New York Times recently moved their office to a new building. This new building was promoted to be green and sustainable. The designers seemed to have left out one relatively small, but important, aspect - bike parking. Several Times employees commute by bike, and at their old building they had good parking. At the new office, they have none. For a while, a friendly security guard let one worker bring in his bike through a freight elevator. But, that suddenly stopped. Out of frustration, some employees began locking their bikes to parts of the building outside. Eventually, the Times created a small room to store bikes for employees, but seems to be inadequate for number of commuters, and requires a permit.
To me, this is just another example of big businesses touting that they are green or environmentally friendly or sustainable, but overlook some of the most simplest and obvious things we can do make a real difference.

Nature Bats Last

"Nature bats last" - a quote from Joel Staunton of Polyface Farms.
How true this is when we consider the forces of nature, especially during this time of wildfires throughout southern California. Whether it be floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, droughts or wildfires, these Mother Nature wake-up calls reaffirm the fact that humans cannot completely control the cycles of our natural world.
Me and my family were in close proximity to the fires in San Diego county, but thankfully not directly in harms way. It is always very disheartening to see anyone's home and property destroyed. During this fire it happened over and over, almost to the point where it became mind-dumbing to see it on TV.
We try our best to make comfortable living spaces for ourselves. Our houses protest us from the elements and provide a home for our family, pets, and belongings. Over the years our homes have continued to encroach on the wilderness. Doing so provides cheaper land for building houses and lets us live closer to nature. Of course, this comes at a cost. In doing so, we place ourselves closer to the potential destructive forces of nature.
In and of itself, wildfires are not a bad thing. It is just one of natures many cleansing cycles. The fire burns away the old overgrowth, provides natural fertilizer, and even allows some seeds to germinate. The problem for humans is that we like to live near this wilderness, so we become more vulnerable to its forces. We must accept that we can try to protect ourselves from these forces, but ultimately we do not bat last.

Little Things - Let Air do its Job

Another quick "Little Things" note. When you have things that need to dry, let the air do its job and dry them for you. When you wash your hair, let the air dry it instead of running a hair dryer. When you wash dishes, just leave them in the rack to let the air dry them. If you use a dishwasher, stop it before the dry cycle starts and just open the door. When you wash clothes, hang them outside on the line when possible. If you are concerned about them being too stiff from drying on the line, you can run them in the dryer for just a couple of minutes to soften them up. Besides using much less energy than drying clothes in a dryer, your clothes should last longer too. You don't have the dryer wearing out your clothes while they get tumbled around.
Anything that can be dried by air, let it. It's free after all.

You Can Take it With You

There is an interesting experiment going on at Public Radio's Marketplace. Their program host Tess Vigeland has taken upon the challenge of carrying around her personal trash for two (2) weeks. Everything that she would normally throw away now goes into a black trash bag that she carries around with her nearly everywhere. I say everywhere because there are limits, such as not taking the bag into restaurants or stores. But, she carries her bag from home to the office and back home every day. There is some thought provoking reading on her blog. It causes me to pause and think about just how easy we have it. We simply throw our garbage into the big trash container outside and once a week the garbage is hauled away and we never have to think about it again. It just magically disappears. The sad truth is, however, that it does not disappear. It ends up in landfills that are nearing their capacity. The waste in landfills do not decompose like many of us would think. It mostly putrefies and seeps into the ground, often contaminating underground water. Waste in the landfills also give off methane gas, since the matter breaks down in anaerobic conditions. What does not end up in landfills can get washed downstream and pollute rivers, lakes, and our oceans.
Tess does have a bit of an advantage. She has a compost pile in her backyard, unlike most people. She is able to place most food items in it. The one exception is no animal by-products (meat scraps, bones, etc), so when she inadvertently bought a whole chicken from the market, she forgot that she would be carrying it around with her for the next week or so.
If everyone had to take on this challenge it would really get us thinking about the amount of stuff we consume and just toss away. Well, at least I hope it would.

Back to School Traffic

With the start of the new school year comes lots more morning and afternoon traffic. In my neighborhood I see the long lines of cars waiting to drop off kids in the mornings. It is rather funny in some ways how parents, either knowingly or not, seem to abandon all sense of traffic laws around schools. They seem to be narrowly focused on the objective of getting their child as close to the entrance to the school as possible. This is often accomplished by double (or triple) parking in front of the school, pulling in to neighbors driveways, and making illegal turns of all sorts. It just seems like total chaos the first fews days or weeks of school. My daily commute takes me by a high school in the mornings. I am amazed at how many parents park in the bike lane along the street to use it as a drop-off zone. They also ignore traffic safety at the intersections by making left turns onto the already too crowded side road of the school, often blocking the intersection. This makes for interesting navigation around the school on a bike. Unfortunately there is no real alternate route, as this is the only road the crosses over a couple of canyons. There does not seem to be a good place for dropping off kids around this school, but after all this is a high school. It is not like the parents must make sure the kids are dropped off right outside the entrance. I think they can be trusted to walk a block or two if they can be dropped off on a nearby street.
Maybe there is not a good solution. The school was built when there was not nearly as many people and houses in the neighborhood. I am sure they did not anticipate the amount of vehicle traffic there would be when it was built. It's the same for many of the elementary and middle schools around, too. Of course, most kids back then also walked to school. Hmmm...now there's a crazy thought.

Have a Car Free Day

September 22nd is "World Carfree Day". This is a day when people should try to make it through an entire day without using their automobiles. It is on a Saturday, so many people should not need to worry about getting to work. I am sure most people don't know about this day, and wouldn't care if they did. But for those of us who do, it gives us an opportunity to think about our options to driving a car - at least for one day. Maybe you won't go anywhere, maybe you'll just walk down the street to a neighborhood store or visit a neighbor. Maybe you will dust of the bike and go for a ride. Some might even give public transit a try, if it exists in your area.
It would be way cool if the entire world actually did go car free for one day. Just imagine...

Reclaim Your Street

Back to school time is here for most kids, and there will be much more traffic in neighborhoods as parents rush off to get them to school on time. I live on a fairly busy street as it is, and when school starts I'll see about a ten-fold in the amount of traffic. This makes for a fun bicycle commute some mornings. Thinking of this leaves me wondering what can be done to calm the traffic that goes darting through my neighborhood each morning and evening. The city can and will only do so much. Speed limit signs are nice, if anyone actually notices them and more importantly, obeys them. We have a couple of electronic signs along our street that displays the motorist's current speed. More often than not, the displayed speed is above the limit, usually way above. We have traffic lights and crosswalks at just about every intersection. They bring cars quickly to a halt, and then quickly back up to speed again. My street is busy enough that speed bumps or other traffic calming measures will probably never be an option. And, short of a worldwide catastrophe, I doubt the number of cars will decrease anytime soon. So, I am left wondering what I can do to at least make the average motorist take notice that they are driving through my neighborhood and if nothing else be a little more alert than usual and maybe slow down a bit. I found a site that talks about reclaiming the streets, a do-it-yourself approach. Less Traffic has some articles that discuss this. By creating "intrigue and uncertainty", the motorist is forced to slow down and take an active role in driving down a street. This can be accomplished by getting the residents back out to their streets. The cycle of residents retreating to inside their homes because the streets are too busy and dangerous needs to be reversed. I admit that we currently will not let our children play in the front of the house unsupervised. On our street you rarely see people hanging around in front of their houses. It is a shame and needs to change. Some people have created "living rooms" out of their streets. More people need to take back to the streets - on foot, not in car. Back to school time is the perfect opportunity to raise the awareness to parents, teachers, and local community leaders that children can and need to walk to school. Obesity is continuing to rise, and kids need to exercise. Too bad kids and their parents are too scared to let them walk to school. Walk to School looks like a good program to at least begin to raise awareness. Now I have to see if I can get my local council member and school to participate. And I need to start planning a "living room" for the street in front of our house.

Everyone Needs One of These

Over the weekend I saw this commercial on TV about a little gadget that easily cuts open the plastic casings that many products come in today. Just about everything now comes in that wonderful hard plastic that makes the product look good, but is nearly impossible to open. The little gadget claims it can cut these things open like nothing. It sure did look slick on the commercial. My kids were watching too and my 6 year old son commented that we should get one of those. He also comments that we should get just about everything he sees on a commercial, especially toys. (Yes, kids are very impressionable, and I know he should not be watching that stuff anyway). I make the comment that we should just not buy anything that comes in plastic like that. Now my 8 year old daughter also hears this, and she comments that we would never buy anything then, since everything comes in plastic. Her comment was pretty accurate. So many things comes packaged for convenient display in plastic that it is not funny. It is such a shameful waste. Not only is there a lot of energy used to make this useless packaging, but the disposal of it also makes such a mess. Kids toys can be the worst. Toy makes obviously want their products to be attractive on the shelves, so they are encased in plastic and strapped in with many little wire ties, rubber bands, etc., that it is a parents nightmare just to open them. Last Christmas I know I spent at least half an hour opening just two of my daughters dolls.
I wish manufacturers would stop the gross plastic packaging and place their products in recyclable boxes. I can try to boycott these products as much as practically possible, but I think it will take a united effort to really get manufacturers to change.

Little Things - 50 Little Things

Here is a cool article that lists 50 little things you can do to help the environment and live a healthier life.
50 Ways to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint
Although some of the information is specific to the San Jose/San Francisco Bay area, there are plenty of good ideas that just about everyone can use. Some may be obvious, some may be new to you. It is a great list to refer to for some inspiration.

Little Things - Grow Your Own

What better way to get back to nature than to get your hands dirty and grow your own food? The new revolution is taking place in our backyards and neighborhood garden plots. This article gives some good reasons to grow your own food - (http://groovygreen.com/groove/?p=1657).
With our global economy, food now gets shipped all over the world. We can practically have any type of food available to us year round. But, there is a cost to shipping food around the world. There is the obvious costs of fuel, and then there is the pollution created by shipping, and the potential for global spreading of any number of diseases and illnesses too. When you grow your own food, you know exactly where it came from and what went into growing it. If you are careful and raise your food organically, you can enjoy eating it knowing that you are not putting toxic chemicals into your body. Plus, you are doing a small part to help ease up the consumption of fuels and lower the amount of pollution related to food transport. Sure, your one small backyard garden won't make much difference related to the worldwide consumption of food, but every little bit does help. And, it is when many of us have the same attitude and all do our little parts that add up to a big change. Join the revolution.