Since I am still on a roll today I want to share a video that I think is a very concise, powerful and easy to understand and translate into action!
It is about 9 minutes long but it is probably one of the best videos I have posted on any of my blogs in the last 5 months.
The video also speaks for itself so please watch and enjoy!
Thursday, July 29, 2010
GreenNote
***This event already took place***
OK, so I am running behind but it is good that I learned about this and I can be prepared and ready to pay attention next year when this event comes around again. Since this is still a good event to promote and one that has some good ideas for other and future events I am posting it anyway!
A flurry of posts today here at Enviro-Sustain, which is appropriate because of the multiple day lapses I have had lately in posting. This post was inspired by one of the numerous weekly emails I receive from Seattle Weekly each week. In particular it was the Green Card Newsletter that I received several days ago and the GreenNote event as this post is titled that caught my attention.
This isn't really like any of my previous posts as it is not about an article or website or even a current event like other posts have been. This is about the GreenNote event and how they are promoting "green" as a way of hosting an event.
You can explore the event more, which is headlined by Amos Lee with some of the links in this email but here are a couple of tid-bits:
The event will have 100% compostable food and drink concessions
Sustainable and/or vegetarian concession menus
Fundraising for local environmental non-profits
Check it out!
OK, so I am running behind but it is good that I learned about this and I can be prepared and ready to pay attention next year when this event comes around again. Since this is still a good event to promote and one that has some good ideas for other and future events I am posting it anyway!
A flurry of posts today here at Enviro-Sustain, which is appropriate because of the multiple day lapses I have had lately in posting. This post was inspired by one of the numerous weekly emails I receive from Seattle Weekly each week. In particular it was the Green Card Newsletter that I received several days ago and the GreenNote event as this post is titled that caught my attention.
This isn't really like any of my previous posts as it is not about an article or website or even a current event like other posts have been. This is about the GreenNote event and how they are promoting "green" as a way of hosting an event.
You can explore the event more, which is headlined by Amos Lee with some of the links in this email but here are a couple of tid-bits:The event will have 100% compostable food and drink concessions
Sustainable and/or vegetarian concession menus
Fundraising for local environmental non-profits
Check it out!
The Swinery
So, I am changing gears from the recent petro-carbon postings and going back to highlighting a local sustainable business. In fact, I will soon be living in the same neighborhood in West Seattle as The Swinery and this will be a fun business to frequent. 
They also have a Swinery blog here.
I will let you do a little searcching around their website but here is one of their vows:
"We VOW: to support and honor our local Farmers/Ranchers.
Too often in our current Chef focused culture the preparer is glorified and the producer forgotten. Our meats come from just a 300 mile radius and we are dedicated to insuring that local producers are successful. We also explain the farms and the farmers, and give you all of the information you need to make and informed sustainable decision. "
They also have a Swinery blog here. Oil Everywhere!
Oil spills are everywhere, last week I posted about spills in Nigeria, there was the spill in China, of course there is the Gulf spill and now in a Michigan river. I read about this yesterday but I read a different article today and here it is.
Just a brief post with article.
Just a brief post with article.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Natural Gas Flaring
OK, so I am on a roll today and will keep posting until I lose the momentum. This post is about natural gas flaring, which I had heard of and was only minimally aware of but I have been reading about it this morning. Here is a brief description I found in an article from Oilwatch Africa, it is an article linked in the previous blog from today:
WHAT IS GAS FLARING?
*Geology dictates that some of the richest deposits of oil sit together with deposits of natural gas. Gas flaring is the practice of burning off that natural gas when it is brought to the surface in places where there is no infrastructure to make use of it. In the 1960s and 70s, "worthless" gas was continuously flared at oil wells from Texas to Saudi Arabia. At its peak, the practice pumped about 110 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year — about 0.5 per cent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions.
Since then, the practice has been reduced, largely because companies have realised the commercial potential of the gas. Pressure to reduce flaring increased again when negative impacts of burning the gas became better understood and efforts began to reduce the CO2 emissions driving climate change. However, flaring is commonplace in Nigeria, where an estimated 40 per cent of gas produced is burned off – about 2.5 billion standard cubic feet per day. Worldwide, the gas lost to flaring could meet one third of the EU's natural gas needs each year.
Here is a little more information about flaring.
WHAT IS GAS FLARING?
*Geology dictates that some of the richest deposits of oil sit together with deposits of natural gas. Gas flaring is the practice of burning off that natural gas when it is brought to the surface in places where there is no infrastructure to make use of it. In the 1960s and 70s, "worthless" gas was continuously flared at oil wells from Texas to Saudi Arabia. At its peak, the practice pumped about 110 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year — about 0.5 per cent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions.
Since then, the practice has been reduced, largely because companies have realised the commercial potential of the gas. Pressure to reduce flaring increased again when negative impacts of burning the gas became better understood and efforts began to reduce the CO2 emissions driving climate change. However, flaring is commonplace in Nigeria, where an estimated 40 per cent of gas produced is burned off – about 2.5 billion standard cubic feet per day. Worldwide, the gas lost to flaring could meet one third of the EU's natural gas needs each year.
Here is a little more information about flaring.
Oilwatch Africa
Since my first post of the day was about Nigerian oil spills, I would like to stay on the same continent and post about a group and their website: Oilwatch Africa 
On their site I read an article about the gas flares in Nigeria that are visible from space but have been illegal since 1984.
They also have more information in an overview of oil in africa and an area with publications.
Oil Spill
OK, so I bet you thought I would be posting about the gulf oil spill...or the spill in China that didnt make the news until several days after it started...you are all wrong. I read an article today about oil spills in Nigeria. It surprised me to find out that approximately each year there is an oil spill in Nigeria the size of the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska was!!! It also notes that there are about 2000 spill sites that are yet to be cleaned up.
Just a brief post but something that is important but very much out-of-sight and out-of-mind for the US.
Just a brief post but something that is important but very much out-of-sight and out-of-mind for the US.
Friday, July 16, 2010
Tree Hugger
So the other day I posted about another website run by Discovery and today I will post about another of their sites, treehugger.com. This site can be a little overwhelming in the volume and breadth of information available but hopefully finding a category or two of interest makes it less so.
I selected to look at the green basics section first and read the piece on all you need to know about "paper or plastic" which was an interesting read. I think you may be surprised by the conclusion to the piece if you read it!
The second area I looked through was the travel and nature section. I ended up reading a piece about getting feral cats to stop eating endangered birds.
There was also an interesting piece from today that was about China's carbon emissions and I have posted about that in the past.
I selected to look at the green basics section first and read the piece on all you need to know about "paper or plastic" which was an interesting read. I think you may be surprised by the conclusion to the piece if you read it!
The second area I looked through was the travel and nature section. I ended up reading a piece about getting feral cats to stop eating endangered birds.
There was also an interesting piece from today that was about China's carbon emissions and I have posted about that in the past.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
100 Places
I have seen this site before but I watched a couple of the 1 minute videos today and wanted to share it. This is from the Planet Green site run by discovery.com and are the "100 places to remember before they disappear." As I mentioned each video is only a minute long and are on a number of places. The first one I watched today was on the Kalahari Desert, the second was Tuvalu. 
There is a map that you can explore a little with to see where some of these places are and get a snippet of information about.
Some of these places are ones you might not think of like Tokyo or the River Thames in England.
Grow Food
After a near week-long absence from this blog I am back!
Short post here about a site called GrowFood that a friend forwarded to me a week or so ago.
This site helps people looking to experience or help work/learn on an organic farm find farms near them and it helps farms and farmers who need help get the feet on the ground that they need. While searching through the farms I looked at several that I thought were interesting and some of them have their own sites or blogs that were fun to explore.
Short post here about a site called GrowFood that a friend forwarded to me a week or so ago.
This site helps people looking to experience or help work/learn on an organic farm find farms near them and it helps farms and farmers who need help get the feet on the ground that they need. While searching through the farms I looked at several that I thought were interesting and some of them have their own sites or blogs that were fun to explore.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
ReVolt - WorldWatch
OK, since the post yesterday was more of a teaser than an full post, I will continue and add a little more about WorldWatch and I will also feature their ReVolt blog today. Hopefully you have had a moment to check their site but if not you at least know from yesterday that they have four blogs.
Here is the mission statement for WorldWatch: "Worldwatch Institute delivers the insights and ideas that empower decision makers to create an environmentally sustainable society that meets human needs. Worldwatch focuses on the 21st-century challenges of climate change, resource degradation, population growth, and poverty by developing and disseminating solid data and innovative strategies for achieving a sustainable society."
I think that statement is really a more thorough version of this blog, as Enviro-Sustain is simply a personal pursuit.
OK, on to ReVolt!!! If you follow the link above or in yesterday's post you will see the first post so I won't spotlight that one but rather I will focus on one from June 29th titled Research We Wish We Didn't Need. This artlcle on their blog illustrates how climate change has a much ibgger consensus among climate researchers than the public believes there is and that climate change research should be considered more straight-forward than it has been in the past.
I followed this by linking to an article from Feb. 11th titled Arab Leaders Begin to Recognize Climate Change Impacts. In this article moderating positions of some oil producing nations in the Middle East as well as non-oil states who have realized climate change impacts are illustrated. Also the impact of sea level rise and diminishing freshwater from the Euphrates and Jordan rivers.
There is more to both of these posts than the few points I highlighted here and I really enjoy the WorldWatch blogs so hopefully you will too.
Here is the mission statement for WorldWatch: "Worldwatch Institute delivers the insights and ideas that empower decision makers to create an environmentally sustainable society that meets human needs. Worldwatch focuses on the 21st-century challenges of climate change, resource degradation, population growth, and poverty by developing and disseminating solid data and innovative strategies for achieving a sustainable society."
I think that statement is really a more thorough version of this blog, as Enviro-Sustain is simply a personal pursuit.
OK, on to ReVolt!!! If you follow the link above or in yesterday's post you will see the first post so I won't spotlight that one but rather I will focus on one from June 29th titled Research We Wish We Didn't Need. This artlcle on their blog illustrates how climate change has a much ibgger consensus among climate researchers than the public believes there is and that climate change research should be considered more straight-forward than it has been in the past.
I followed this by linking to an article from Feb. 11th titled Arab Leaders Begin to Recognize Climate Change Impacts. In this article moderating positions of some oil producing nations in the Middle East as well as non-oil states who have realized climate change impacts are illustrated. Also the impact of sea level rise and diminishing freshwater from the Euphrates and Jordan rivers.
There is more to both of these posts than the few points I highlighted here and I really enjoy the WorldWatch blogs so hopefully you will too.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
World Watch
As I said yesterday I wanted to highlight this site but I will be short as I will probably post something about one of their blogs tomorrow. WorldWatch is a website that I came across last week. They have four blogs, ReVolt, Nourishing the Planet (which I shared yesterday), Green Economy, and Transforming Cultures.
Look for more about these blogs and the rest of World Watch tomorrow and Friday.
Look for more about these blogs and the rest of World Watch tomorrow and Friday.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Nourishing the Planet
Today I want to spotlight a blog from WorldWatch Institute, which is a site I would like to highlight later this week but today I really enjoyed a couple of articles in their Nourishing the Planet blog. The article that started my journey today was Kickstarting Livelihoods With Improved Water Management and then I followed the link in the article to this blog. 
The second piece I read was an innovation of the week segment from February about getting water to crops in sub-Saharan Africa. I then read another innovation of the week segment from May titled Feeding Communities by Focusing on Women.
The more I read, I could see how I was snowballing through interesting topics and I needed to take a breath and just post what I had found so far. I will continue to explore and I will share updates from time to time when I see something of special interest.
Friday, July 2, 2010
China Winds
OK, so yesterday I had an article about cities in China but in the process of reading/posting that I found another article that I thought was worthy of posting about as well. I felt I needed to wait a day to do so though.
In particular this article was about how China could power itself with wind alone, if it so chose to! This would be an incredible improvement on the current power generation from coal sources that contributes to clouding and filling many areas of China with smog.
A short post about this article but hopefully that entices you to click through and read at least part of it!
In particular this article was about how China could power itself with wind alone, if it so chose to! This would be an incredible improvement on the current power generation from coal sources that contributes to clouding and filling many areas of China with smog.
A short post about this article but hopefully that entices you to click through and read at least part of it!
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Smarter Cities
The NRDC has a site called Smarter Cities and there are a number of interesting things on this site. This is a relatively fun site to poke around in and find areas of interest and interesting things that are happening. Here is the What are smarter cities? section
There are also city profiles - here is the profile for Seattle.
A short post here since this site is best explored rather than linked to multiple places.
There are also city profiles - here is the profile for Seattle.
A short post here since this site is best explored rather than linked to multiple places.
Cities in China
OK, sorry for the near week-long break on the blog but I have still been accumulating material, just not having time to post it!
Today I read an article that came from World Changing, in their email newsletter/update from earlier this week. The article titled A Climate Neutral China was pretty awesome! Here are a few stats to reel you into reading the article - By 2030 China will have 220 cities over 1 million people, for comparison, Europe has 35!
They may build as many as 50000 skyscrapers in this time as well.
Here is a link to one of the coolest web graphics I have ever seen anywhere and this is in the article if you go to read it as well.
The article expands and goes into the necessity for planning these cities to be green, powered by green energy and have sustainable food sources, etc. The article is longer than most that I link to but this one is about one of the best articles I have ever read - it doesn't hurt that I have an interest in China anyway!
Today I read an article that came from World Changing, in their email newsletter/update from earlier this week. The article titled A Climate Neutral China was pretty awesome! Here are a few stats to reel you into reading the article - By 2030 China will have 220 cities over 1 million people, for comparison, Europe has 35!
They may build as many as 50000 skyscrapers in this time as well.
Here is a link to one of the coolest web graphics I have ever seen anywhere and this is in the article if you go to read it as well.
The article expands and goes into the necessity for planning these cities to be green, powered by green energy and have sustainable food sources, etc. The article is longer than most that I link to but this one is about one of the best articles I have ever read - it doesn't hurt that I have an interest in China anyway!
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