We Green Westport

The Pickens Plan has created a buzz in the media. A story of an “oil” man now focusing on sustainable sources.

The Plan calls for building new wind generation facilities that will produce 20% of our nation’s electricity and allow us to use natural gas as a transportation fuel. The combination of these domestic energies can replace more than one-third of our foreign oil imports. And we can do it all in 10 years.

What are your thoughts?

It Eats CO2 for Breakfast

POISON IVY is one of those weeds proliferating like mad as rising levels of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide heat up the atmosphere. Researchers at Duke University who studied the weed between 1999 and 2004 in a controlled forest area near Chapel Hill, N.C., where high levels of CO2 are pumped into test plots, found that poison ivy not only grew more vigorously, but also produced a more toxic form of urushiol, the resin that causes its rash.

So let’s reduce our carbon footprint to fight poison ivy. Reducing carbon emissions - a much better solution than an herbicide.

No Ice At The North Pole: Polar Scientists Reveal Dramatic New Evidence of Climate Change

It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year.
The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic - and worrying - examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. Scientists say the ice at 90 degrees north may well have melted away by the summer.
There are other indications that the Arctic sea ice is showing signs of breaking up. Scientists at the Nasa Goddard Space Flight Centre said that the North Water ‘polynya’ - an expanse of open water surrounded on all sides by ice - that normally forms near Alaska and Banks Island off the Canadian coast, is much larger than normal. Polynyas absorb heat from the sun and eat away at the edge of the sea ice.

Inuit natives living near Baffin Bay between Canada and Greenland are also reporting that the sea ice there is starting to break up much earlier than normal and that they have seen wide cracks appearing in the ice where it normally remains stable. Satellite measurements collected over nearly 30 years show a significant decline in the extent of the Arctic sea ice, which has become more rapid in recent years.

The signs are there. Isn’t it time we all took steps to reduce our carbon footprint?

Workers shifting to 4-day week to save gasoline

When Ohio’s Kent State University offered custodial staff the option of working four days a week instead of five to cut commuting costs, most jumped at the chance, part of a U.S. trend aimed at combating soaring gasoline prices.

“We offered it to 94 employees and 78 have taken us up on it,” said university spokesman Scott Rainone.

The reason is simple: rising gas prices and a desire to retain good workers. And while so far only the university’s custodians are eligible, Rainone hopes the option will be offered to all departments — including his own.

Telecommuting and work-week changes are nothing new. Talked about for years and years with technology offering glimpses of “can be done.”
Now is the time to look at these options. It will save us all money (one day less travel), cut down on that dreaded “windshield time”, and cut our emissions. Sounds like a three way winner.

would be devastating.  How devastating?  The Guardian points out that…

People’s initial response to the idea of a bee-less world is often either, “That’s a shame, I’ll have no honey to spread on my toast” or, “Good - one less insect that can sting me.” In fact, honeybees are vital for the pollination of around 90 crops worldwide. In addition to almonds, most fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds are dependent on honeybees. Crops that are used as cattle and pig feed also rely on honeybee pollination, as does the cotton plant. So if all the honeybees disappeared, we would have to switch our diet to cereals and grain, and give our wardrobes a drastic makeover.

According to Albert Einstein, our very existence is inextricably linked to bees - he is reputed to have said: “If the bee disappears off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left.”

So the cause of this colony collapse problem?

The answer is probably overwork, coupled with various environmental factors that are the flipside of pollination on an industrial scale and intensified food production.

However one beekeeper feels otherwise.

“It’s those new neonicotinoid pesticides that growers are using,” he says. “That’s what’s messing up the bees’ navigation system so they can’t find their way home.”Honeybees have a sophisticated dance language they use to communicate with each other in the hive. Until Karl von Frisch unlocked the mysteries of this dance - his discovery won him a Nobel prize in 1973 - we didn’t fully appreciate that bees returning to the hive laden with nectar and pollen will tell their sisters (all worker bees are female) where they got their supplies by doing a dance that points to the location of the flowers in relation to the sun’s position.

Tests have shown that the pesticides Hackenberg refers to can interfere with the bees’ communication and orientation skills, and also impair memory.

An issue we should all be concerned about.

It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit….

We have no energy strategy. If you are going to use tax policy to shape energy strategy then you want to raise taxes on the things you want to discourage — gasoline consumption and gas-guzzling cars — and you want to lower taxes on the things you want to encourage — new, renewable energy technologies. We are doing just the opposite.

Are you sitting down?

Few Americans know it, but for almost a year now, Congress has been bickering over whether and how to renew the investment tax credit to stimulate investment in solar energy and the production tax credit to encourage investment in wind energy. The bickering has been so poisonous that when Congress passed the 2007 energy bill last December, it failed to extend any stimulus for wind and solar energy production. Oil and gas kept all their credits, but those for wind and solar have been left to expire this December. I am not making this up. At a time when we should be throwing everything into clean power innovation, we are squabbling over pennies.

These credits are critical because they ensure that if oil prices slip back down again — which often happens — investments in wind and solar would still be profitable. That’s how you launch a new energy technology and help it achieve scale, so it can compete without subsidies.

The Democrats wanted the wind and solar credits to be paid for by taking away tax credits from the oil industry. President Bush said he would veto that. Neither side would back down, and Mr. Bush — showing not one iota of leadership — refused to get all the adults together in a room and work out a compromise. Stalemate. Meanwhile, Germany has a 20-year solar incentive program; Japan 12 years. Ours, at best, run two years.

“It’s a disaster,” says Michael Polsky, founder of Invenergy, one of the biggest wind-power developers in America. “Wind is a very capital-intensive industry, and financial institutions are not ready to take ‘Congressional risk.’ They say if you don’t get the [production tax credit] we will not lend you the money to buy more turbines and build projects.”

It is also alarming, says Rhone Resch, the president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, that the U.S. has reached a point “where the priorities of Congress could become so distorted by politics” that it would turn its back on the next great global industry — clean power — “but that’s exactly what is happening.” If the wind and solar credits expire, said Resch, the impact in just 2009 would be more than 100,000 jobs either lost or not created in these industries, and $20 billion worth of investments that won’t be made….

In 1997, said Resch, America was the leader in solar energy technology, with 40 percent of global solar production. “Last year, we were less than 8 percent, and even most of that was manufacturing for overseas markets.”

On Saturday, April 26 we presented our First Annual WeGreenWestport Awards at the Green Earth Fair held at Earthplace.

The award recipients (First Selectman Gordon Joseloff presenting) were:

Kevin Green : goal is to significantly reduce his family’s dependence on fossil fuels. He has installed solar panels, purchased hybrid vehicles, installed geothermal pumps, tends a compost rich garden and plans on installing a combined heat and power unit.

Westport Wash & Wax : installed solar panels, utilizes an extensive water recycling system, uses only biodegradable washing supplies and uses high-efficiency fluorescent lights.

Patagonia - Westport : a member of “1% For The Planet”, dedicated to protecting lands and waters, markets products made from organic cotton and recycleed/recyclable polyester, supports local environmental groups and causes and has an extensive in-store plastic recycling program.

Matthew Silver : launched a program to educate students and teachers about environmental issues, created a campaign to sell reusable grocery bags with the We Green Westport logo with bag sale proceeds to be used to buy plants for Bedford Middle School.

We congratulate this year’s award recipients for their efforts in Greening Westport. We look forward to our next award recipients. Will you be one of them?

Join us at the Green Earth Fair, at Earthplace, as we recognize two businesses and two individuals for their work in reducing their carbon footprints.

On Saturday, April 26 at 11:30, the We Green Westport Award will be presented to:

Patagonia - Westport

Westport Wash & Wax

Kevin Green

Matthew Silver

Please join us in congratulating them for their efforts!

“An Inconvenient Truth” update

In Al Gore’s brand-new slideshow (premiering exclusively on TED.com), he presents evidence that the pace of climate change may be even worse than scientists were recently predicting, and challenges us to act with a sense of “generational mission” — the kind of feeling that brought forth the civil rights movement — to set it right. Gore’s stirring presentation is followed by a brief Q&A in which he is asked for his verdict on the current political candidates’ climate policies and on what role he himself might play in future.

Click on the link above to see Gore’s latest slides. Approximately 30 minutes, but worth the time.

Power plays from “The Economist”:

WHEN a car has a fuel-efficiency gauge—a continuous display on the dashboard showing the rate of fuel consumption—it tends to promote frugal driving. Trying to use as little fuel as you can, by driving more smoothly and being a little less heavy on the accelerator, can even become a game of sorts. Nissan, a Japanese carmaker, has calculated that fuel-efficiency gauges can reduce fuel consumption by an average of 10%, so it has decided to put them in all its cars.

What if you did the same thing to houses? A variety of products can provide real-time information about electricity consumption. Working out how much energy a house is using is harder than with a car, because electricity meters are generally hidden away in cupboards or cellars, and many people find them hard to understand. So an easily understood real-time read-out, akin to a car’s fuel-efficiency gauge, could make a big difference.

The simplest such devices can be plugged in between an appliance and a wall socket, to display how much electricity the appliance is using. Plug in your toaster, hairdryer or radio and turn it on, and you can see how much power it consumes.

After you have set up the device you get the first shock: why is the house using so much electricity? Walking around and switching things off soon reveals where savings can be made: lights left on during the day, a television the children are not watching and a surprising number of power supplies keeping themselves warm while the things they are connected to are in “standby” mode. It is hard to get a house down to zero. There’s always a fridge, a freezer and forgotten things, such as a television-signal amplifier somewhere in the attic, or things you would rather not admit to (the dehumidifier keeping the classic car dry). Having switched things off, the second shock comes when you walk around turning things on. A washing machine, tumble dryer, dishwasher and electric oven produce alarming figures. And the oft-repeated advice about only boiling as much water as you need in the electric kettle makes sudden sense when you see your electricity consumption jump by 2.5kW.

The first step in reducing your carbon footprint, and your utility bill, is knowing where your money is being spent - AWARENESS. Simple steps to reduce your energy use (Unplugging when not is use…) will help you reduce your carbon footprint, and stop that electric meter from burning a hole in your pocket.