Friday Wrap-Up: Into the Wind
October 19th, 2007 | Posted in Activism, Design, Housing, Responsibility, Water
Holy Tornado Batman! It’s been breezy as “all get out” in the Lou the last two days. I don’t really know what that means but I think it makes me sound hip . . . I just blew it, didn’t I? Anywho . . .
Activism | Siege of Amazon Greenpeace activists ends | “Police escorted a group of Greenpeace activists from a remote town in the Brazilian Amazon on Wednesday after hundreds of loggers and townspeople besieged them overnight in protest against an anti-global warming campaign, the environmental organisation said.” | Manawatu Standard | I understand that economics often trump environmentalism, especially in developing areas. But, according to this article, “A United States-born nun and environmental activist, Dorothy Stang, was murdered on a remote jungle track in 2005 by gunmen hired by ranchers.” Uh . . . what ever happened to talking. Here’s to the people who stand up to the man!
Design | Siting, Access to Transit Play an Important Role in Sustainable Design | ” . . . with the average office occupancy of 230 square feet per person, transportation energy use for the average office building is 121 kBtu per square foot, the EBN authors calculate, whereas the operating energy use averages 92.9 kBtu per square foot (or 30.2 percent more) for a typical office building and 51 kBtu per square foot (137 percent more) for a new building . . .” | AIArchitect | Your what hurts? Should have paid more attention at school suckers! Essentially, what this quote is telling us is that more energy is used getting people to and from their offices than in housing those same people over their entire workday. Besides making you want to kill yourself, this article offers another reason why commuting sucks. So, live where you work, work where you live, and encourage people to do the same, and make doing so easier. That last one is for everyone involved in propagating suburban sprawl . . . hope your last thoughts are of transit cards and turnstiles when your SUV catches fire in the middle of a parking lot so big the fire engine can’t get to you in time to save your life. Morbid, I know.
Housing | Rev. Rice gets hammered by Dutchtown residents at hearing | “Twenty-five residents, business owners and representatives of community associations from the south St. Louis neighborhood attended a City Hall hearing to oppose Rice’s St. Louis Renewable Energy Center, which he wants to open on a residential block of Tennessee Avenue. The hearing, which was heated at times with Rice and his critics shouting at each other across the room, was originally scheduled for last month. At the request of 25th Ward Alderman Dorothy Kirner, Rice agreed to postpone it and meet with neighborhood residents concerned that he intends to use the building as a homeless shelter.” | Tim Townsend, St. Louis Post-Dispatch | You may recall I wrote an editorial on the good Reverend’s original announcement. It can be found here. This guy just doesn’t get it, and trying to merge an sustainable energy future with a sustainable housing future is a noble but impractical effort. I don’t want him to fail, but I would like Jebus (the god at who Homer Simpson’s disbelief is aimed) to provide him with an epiphany. I want to believe Rice’s heart is in the right place, but man oh man does his execution leave a lot to the imagination.
Responsibility | The Bottled Water Backlash | “The bottled water industry is on the defensive as restaurant owners and cities are canceling their bottled water contracts and advocating for tap. ” | Michael Blanding, AlterNet | I know I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again, AlterNet is one of the best sources of news and information on the Internet. I’m not going to profess it’s infallible but I would bet good money it gets more right than any major news station. I’m guilty of occasionally buying a bottle of water, but my motivation is portability, not extreme laziness. America has some of the cleanest tap water in the world, at least for now (see below). Tap water provides drinkers with fluoride, something not found in bottled water, and the cost is hundreds, if not thousands, of times cheaper than that of bottled water. Besides mostly being tap water, bottled water is packaged in plastic (which is made from oil) and shipped all over the country (which requires oil). How mind-blowingly inefficient and stupid. Plus, research has also shown that some water bottles leak chemicals into the “clean” water that you eventually drink. The only logical conclusion is that drinking bottled water will cause you to grow extra limbs.
Water | Water, Water, Everywhere | ‘”Nor any drop to drink” was how Samuel Taylor Coleridge phrased it in his “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Avoiding that risk was why Congress, 35 years ago, passed the Clean Water Act and then overrode President Nixon’s veto. For a long time the Act was a great success story. The percentage of polluted waterways fell steadily every year, and by the end of the century about half of the job had been done. But since that time we’ve been going backwards, and the clean water success story is gradually morphing into a new clean water crisis.’ | Carl Pope, Sierra Club | This article by Pope is disturbing to say the least. Apparently farmers, cattlemen and miners are crying in unison that they should be allowed to poison headland water sources that generate 90% of the water and sediment that goes into America’s rivers. Note: the support by cattlemen relates directly to the dairy and cow slaughtering industries. Eat less meat AND have more clean water to drink. Crazy, I know!
Sphere: Related ContentRelated Posts
