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28 Aug 2005 @ 18:29, by astrid. Environment, Ecology
[link]
I love it! In Upsala,(among other placer in) Sweden, this kind of co-creativity has been implememted by the City for decades, if not 'always'-which really might be the case!
In Upsala; Celcius' Angstroem's Linne's etc Home/University- town, in the Public City Park ( like the Central Park in New York ) there's Fruit trees all over and the Public is allowed to eat/harvest the Fruit of the trees as it sees fit/as it pleases them! I have enjoyed many a delicious apple and pear from these - by now - very old trees. More >
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 24 Jul 2005 @ 22:24, by koravya. Environment, Ecology
Little things change along the way.
Migration patterns.
Breeding seasons.
Diet.
Let us count the ways.
Let us count the days.
***---___///
Here are a couple of articles,
shedding a little thoughtful light,
through the clouds of distractions.
******-_/ More >
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29 Jun 2005 @ 20:51, by raypows. Environment, Ecology
Biodiesel Takes It's Place at the Pump in Portland, Oregon
Portland Tribune [link]).
Biodiesel takes its place at the pump Interest in auto fuel, and its availability, increase in Portland
By JEANIE SENIOR
Jun 28, 2005
Portlander Mark Forster made the switch to biodiesel two fill-ups ago, when he drove his diesel-powered Volkswagen Jetta to SeQuential Biofuels' public pumps in Northwest Portland.
It was a decision based on environmental considerations, Forster said, but it coincidentally met a challenge extended by his employer, KPFF Consulting Engineers, urging workers to find ways to make their commute environmentally friendly.
Forster said his car "seems to run exactly the same" when fueled by biodiesel an alternative fuel made from vegetable oil or other fats but with an exhaust smell that's "more pleasant" than when it runs on diesel. He paid $3.10 a gallon for 100 percent biodiesel, about 50 cents a gallon more than the present cost of petroleum diesel bought at a station that's not particularly close to where he lives.
"But I figured it's worth it," Forster said.
With crude oil prices soaring and environmental concerns growing, demand for biodiesel "is growing very fast," said Tyson Keever, a partner in SeQuential. A driver must have a diesel car to use it, however.
It costs less to buy a blend of either 5 percent or 20 percent biodiesel, mixed with petroleum diesel fuel. Even a small percentage of biodiesel will lower polluting emissions, Keever said.
And it's possible that prices could go down a bit in Portland after a joint venture, which includes SeQuential, opens the state's first big biodiesel manufacturing facility in Portland late this fall. The multimillion-dollar project has the potential to produce about 4 million gallons of vegetable oil-based fuel in a year.
"That sounds like a lot, but we use 2 million gallons of diesel in the state in a day. We've got a long way to go," Keever said. The new partnership involves SeQuential Biofuels LLC of Oregon, Pacific Biodiesel of Hawaii and several private investors including country singer and biodiesel advocate Willie Nelson.
Presently, the biodiesel SeQuential sells is shipped by rail tank car from the Midwest.
The plant will get its raw material from a number of sources, including about 50,000 gallons of cooking oil a year from Salem-based potato chip maker Kettle Foods. That will have to be augmented by other oil, ideally made from crops grown in Oregon, Keever said. "This has a tremendous potential for giving a boost to our region's agricultural economy," he said. Kettle Foods is among several Oregon companies that use biodiesel fuel in their company vehicles.
Soybeans, canola, rapeseed and mustard seeds all can be used to make oil for biodiesel, he said.
Nationally, although biodiesel is sold in all 50 states, it represents only a tiny share of the fuel used in diesel engines. About 55 billion to 60 billion gallons of diesel fuel are used annually in the United States, but the total sales of biodiesel last year was only about 25 million gallons, according to Amber Thurlo Pearson of the National Biodiesel Board.
Some users, like Forster, are attracted to biodiesel because it's less polluting than diesel; others like the idea that it's produced domestically. Brian Jamison, one of the co-founders of Portland's Go-Biodiesel Cooperative and the owner of two diesel engine cars, said the switch to biodiesel meant "freedom."
"It's hard to describe just how great it feels" to fuel a car with biodiesel, he said.
The co-op, with about 80 members, will start producing biodiesel on a much smaller scale than SeQuential later this year, using what Jamison calls a "beautiful home-built biodiesel processor" located in the Johnson Creek area of Southeast Portland.
Its capacity is about 100 gallons a day, "but it would be very easy for us to expand our production," he said.
The co-op's biodiesel, which members initially will be able to buy for $2.25 a gallon, a price including state road taxes, will be made from used deep fryer oil, donated by area restaurants.
"You would look at some of the oil and say, 'There's no way you can make biodiesel from that,' " Jamison said. But what emerges is clean biodiesel and a layer of glycerin, which is used to make bar soap.
Members of the co-op might be considered biodiesel evangelists: They've been speaking at schools, universities, corporations and state agencies to promote the use of biodiesel. Jamison said some people in the group already have been making their own biodiesel, and most of them drive cars fueled by biodiesel. Others have converted their diesel cars to run on SVO, the popular name for straight vegetable oil that hasn't gone through the chemical conversion used in making biodiesel. It does have to be filtered, however, and to burn SVO, a conversion kit that can cost about $2,000 has to be installed in a
car. It includes a separate fuel tank and a heater for the oil, which can get viscous in cool weather. Biodiesel is sold in the Portland area at SeQuential's pump at 11330 N.W. St. Helens Road, and at card-lock stations at 4505 S.E. 17th Ave. and 3537 N.W. St. Helens Road. Star Oilco sells biodiesel at a station at 232 N.E. Middlefield Road. More >
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 16 Jun 2005 @ 17:35, by jazzolog. Environment, Ecology
In this living world
the body I give up and burn
would be wretched
if I thought of myself as
anything but firewood.
---Ryonen
Teach me, like you, to drink
creation whole
And casting out myself,
become a soul.
---Richard Wilbur
Truth is not far away. It is nearer than near. There is no need to attain it, since not one of your steps leads away from it.
---Dogen
Tuesday's storm rolls in.
Photo for The Athens Messenger by John Halley.
I've recently given up all attempts to understand the weather. I didn't say predict it. Somehow I still believe we can do that. I said understand it. Maybe you can---and do---but my mind is hopeless at it. The Old Farmer's Almanac this year has an exhaustive article about How The Oceans Affect Our Climate. Pages 88 - 102...with lots of pictures and charts and diagrams. And arrows. All about La Nina and El Nino...and how to tell them apart, and which is happening when, and what they do to us. I read it all, over and over. I couldn't understand a word of it. I look at the swirling ocean, and know there's a tide coming in and going out. I look at the whirling clouds, and know there's wind blowing this way and that. That's about it for me. More >
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 13 Jun 2005 @ 22:52, by raypows. Environment, Ecology
Bottom line. Water is the most valuable natural resource (beside air). Whoever controls water rights controls the people. Petroleum use is an issue but I don't see it as the primary resource. It is a distraction, slight of hand to styeer public attention away from the birthright of clean and abundant water supplies.
500 Anti-Coca-Cola Demonstrators Arrested in India
PLACHIMADA, India, June 9, 2005 (ENS) - Hundreds of community residents and supporters marched to the Coca-Cola factory gates in Plachimada, Kerala on Wednesday to demand that the plant be permanently shut down.
The protesters were met by a large cordon of police officers, and about 500 people were arrested. Police beat a woman protester, who was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment, eyewitnesses said. All protesters were released by the end of the day.
The protests, organized by the Coca-Cola Virudha Samara Samiti (Anti Coca-Cola Struggle Committee) and the Plachimada Solidarity Committee, comes two days after the local village council, under pressure from the Kerala High Court, conditionally renewed Coca-Cola's license for three months.
The Coca-Cola bottling plant in Plachimada, Kerala was the scene of a demonstration Wednesday. (Photo courtesy Coca-Cola India) The Coca-Cola bottling plant in Plachimada has remained closed since March 2004 because the local village council has refused to renew Coca-Cola's license to operate, citing the company for causing severe water shortages to the community.
On June 5, the local village council renewed Coca-Cola's license for three months and with 13 conditions.
This move follows the April 8 decision of Kerala High Court which permitted Coca-Cola to extract up to 500,000 liters of water per day from the common groundwater resource at its Plachimada facility.
The High Court decided that Coca-Cola could extract the groundwater since there is no law regulating groundwater extraction for such purpose in India. "In the absence of such a law, it makes it difficult to protect natural resources from such predatory behavior by private companies," said indigenous people's rights activist C.R. Bijoy.
"This issue is about much more than the extraction of water by Coca-Cola itself," said Bijoy. "The issue is about who has the fundamental decision making power over the use of natural resources, and it is about the survival of the people."
Plachimada women walking to obtain water for their families. (Photo courtesy India Resource Center) But the company today rejected the three-month conditional licence issued by the Plachimada village council, describing it as a violation of the High Court order.
The "Hindu" newspaper reports that in a letter to the council on Wednesday, the company said that, "the grant of licence for a period of three months is arbitrary and in violation of High Court order of April 7, 2005 and as further clarified on June 1, 2005." The company said the council's limited permit and 13 conditions were issued "in total disregard of the Rule of Law and also the judicial determination."
The Anti Coca-Cola Struggle Committee and the Plachimada Solidarity
Committee have vowed not to allow the company to re-open its plant in Plachimada.
"The people of Kerala will not allow the factory to reopen," said R.
Ajayan, convener of the Plachimada Solidarity Committee. "Coca-Cola must respect the wish of the community, and the community does not want the plant to restart."
The community in Plachimada has been experiencing severe water shortages after Coca-Cola started operations in the area, and the remaining groundwater as well as soil has been polluted as a result of Coca-Cola's bottling operations, the protesters say.
The company was distributing its solid waste to farmers in the area as fertilizer, until it was found to contain high levels of lead and cadmium, the protesters said.
Coca-Cola India denies this charge and says the waste distribution has been stopped and all unused bio-solids have been recovered from the farmers. The bio-solids are stored at the Plachimada plant "pending agreement with the local authorities on their disposal," the company said.
Protests against Coca-Cola are not limited to Plachimada. Here, more than 1,500 people marched against Coca-Cola in Mehdiganj, near Varanasi, November 24, 2004. (Photo by Amit Srivastava courtesy India Resource Center) "Allegations that The Coca-Cola Company is exploiting groundwater in India are without any scientific basis and are also not supported either by the government authorities who regulate our water use in India, academics, or the local communities in which our plants are located," the company says.
"We believe the allegations are motivated more by an anti-globalization agenda, rather than by those with genuine environmental concerns," the company says on its website.
The India Resource Center, which supports the Plachimada Solidarity Committee, makes no secret of the fact that it is against globalization. "India Resource Center is a project of Global Resistance," the organization says. "Global Resistance works to strengthen the movement against corporate globalization by supporting and linking local, grassroots struggles against globalization around the world. Our goal is to ensure that those most impacted by globalization are engaged in and at the forefront of the movement against corporate globalization."
The company says that its water use in Plachimada does not deprive the community of water. "Within approximately five kilometers of the Kerala plant, for example, there are about 200 open shallow wells. Coca-Cola uses only two open shallow wells within the plant. In the same area there are nearly 150 bore wells. There are only six bore wells within our plant and the Coca-Cola plant uses no more than three bore wells at any one time."
But the community of Plachimada has been engaged in a three year battle to hold the Coca-Cola company accountable, and local and international support for the campaign continues to grow rapidly, organizers say.
In addition to seeking the permanent closure of the plant, the protesters are demanding that "the Coca-Cola company accept the authority and jurisdiction of the village council, and stop challenging the village council."
The Supreme Court of India is set to hear an appeal from the village council shortly, and the Coca-Cola company has not decided whether it will reopen the plant, according to media reports.
The organizers of Wednesday's protest have indicated that they will increase the pressure on the company locally to ensure that it cannot re-open. More >
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17 May 2005 @ 10:04, by lugon. Environment, Ecology
Howtos are a good thing. Recipies, manuals, stories ...
I'm helping a small community. They want to grow a howto about recycling animal waste into biogas and compost and much more. Just imagine, where I live we (humans) are about 2 million people - all of us producing waste every day.
Now, how fast can changes go? Here's my bet: we'll have a working version of the howto by mid-august 2005, and there will be 100,000 hectares (about 200,000 acres) emerging from that before the end of 2005 (there are already other initiatives before the howto). It might be 10,000,000 hectares before the end of 2006. That's 100,000,000,000 square meters in all, or about 12 square meters per person for the whole Earth. Not a bad start.
And why? Because it pays. More >
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 13 May 2005 @ 13:57, by scotty. Environment, Ecology
I know that I'm always advocating seeing good despite all the seeming bad that seems to be our daily lot ... that doesn't mean though that I have my eyes closed and live on a cloud over there in never never land LOL !
I realise that things really are getting quite bad - and if we don't soon do something about it very soon our kids won't be able to breath clean air drink clean water or eat healthy food !!
So instead of just talking about it - I've decided to take a wee stand and actually try to do something for the earth every day !
I'm going to pay just a wee bit more attention to what I buy for example ... maybe choosing something which has recyclable packaging for instance ! I'm going to Stop using supermarket plastic bags (they're all over the place here in Guada - fields beaches roadsides - it's almost as if they're multiplying overnight !)
It might not make all that much of a difference - but then again it just MIGHT ! It's only a start - maybe it'll catch on !
Here's a [link] for anyone who thinks that maybe they'd like to start making a difference too ! More >
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 1 May 2005 @ 10:44, by jazzolog. Environment, Ecology
Stand in awe, and sin not;
commune with your own heart,
and in your chamber, and be still.
---Psalm 4:4
To sit without emotion, hope, or aim,
In the loved presence of my cottage-fire,
And listen to the flapping of the flame,
Or kettle whispering its faint undersong.
---William Wordsworth
The fact that astronomies change while the stars abide is a true analogy of every realm of human life and thought, religion not least of all. No existent theology can be a final formulation of a spiritual truth.
---Harry Emerson Fosdick
The old photos are of my country grandmother in her garden, and of little Dickie learning about the flowers from Mom.
Whenever I attempt an essay about my early days in Western New York, I usually can expect an email of corrections from my sister, Ann. She seems to remember the facts of what, where, and when better than I do, burdened as I was of course with being such a visionary. And also she's a few years younger than I am. (Correction #1 may come regarding the word "few".) But last evening she wrote me a note requesting some things out of my memory. Here it is~~~ More >
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24 Apr 2005 @ 02:21, by swanny. Environment, Ecology
2005 State of the Biosphere Address
As Nations annually have their State of the Nation Addresses, I think it only fitting
that as a responsible planet that we also have a regular "State of the Biosphere"
Address. Now who is responsible for this and when and how often it might occur is
perhaps up for debate. I think it could be a UN or an Earth Day Network Initiative occurring at least once every 5 years and most probably on Earth Day or April 22.
So in order to get the addresses rolling I will give a short introductory address for this the year of 2005.
State of the Biosphere for 2005
Is the Biosphere any further ahead or better off than it was 20 years ago, is a question that could be asked. It is not a simple question to answer, as the biosphere along with its humans is a rather complex entity.
In some ways no, we have seen the destruction of important and even essential habitat and even the extinction of important species. It is said rain forest is lost on a hourly basis and species lost at a daily rate. So no in this respect the biosphere is still under siege to some degree.
We must make greater efforts then to preserve and sustain at least some standard of biodiversity as it is essential to our quality and standard of life here on Earth.
As well in the years to come the issue of clean and healthy water and health itself will be an issue to. We must all work together to define and promote a healthy environment and paradigm for the world. What this exactly is, is perhaps best described by a balanced and cobalanced relationship between ourselves the planet and the biosphere. Work needs to be done still to educate one and other in this regard.
What is the good news though? Well we have survived some pretty bad world wars and famines and droughts and natural disasters and the cold war and the nuclear age. As well we battled the Y2k situation, and the turn of the millennium and the 9/11 attacks and terrorism and energy shortages and perhaps a kind of attempt at global suicide. Yet genocide's and ethnic cleansing still go on. And actions of bad faith and poor democracy. Our brinkmanship's between our selves have led us at times to certain destruction and devastation and some feel it is only luck that has let us, as humanity and part of the biosphere survive. Now to we have acted fairly well in responding to the natural disasters that have and are occurring. We have conceived and implemented Kyoto and gave considerable aid in the recent Indonesia earthquake and tsunami. And slowly we are beginning to address climate change and the aids crisis. So inroads are being made. We shall though have to continue to progress in order to lessen our eco- footprints on the planet. We will have to address the climate change and the water situation and the energy needs and the decreasing biodiversity and loss of species and habitat. We shall have to practice a more benign symbiosis to this planet we call Earth and home.
And somehow we have developed the internet which is a mixed blessing at times but might prove useful in these regards.
So in conclusion we are doing somewhat okay but it is somewhat relative in some respects. As we reach a kind of global maturity though we will have to pass and teach these concerns to the next generation so that we and our legacy, as a part of the biosphere will impart to the next generations the need and desire in retaining this Earths natural wonder, beauty, health and mystery.
Thank you
A Global Citizen from Canada
Distribute as seen fit
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17 Apr 2005 @ 21:00, by paretokid. Environment, Ecology
The first tragedy -- A couple of weeks ago, we had a big rain that dumped nearly two inches in less than twelve hours. There were a number of traffic accidents, people were hurt and there were also a number of homes with flooded basements. All tragedies of a sort to those involved but not the one that effected me.
[link] More >
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