Logging in New Jersey State Parks?

"Those in favor of the bill mention forest stewardship, which is also a valid concern."

New Jersey has introduced a bill in its state legislature that could allow private companies to begin logging operations in state parks.  Not surprisingly, this bill has strong viewpoints on either side, but environmentalists are very concerned about the potential impact this bill could have on wildlife and public access to parks.

Among the top concerns cited for this project, which would entail a five-year contract, are public access during logging operations, the environmental impact on slopes, wetlands and waterways, and the potential for deer overpopulation in logged areas.  Those against the bill worry that logging practices would create “horrible-looking” public lands.  Opponents call for revisions to address these issues and ensure the bill really works to protect public lands, as it claims to do.

Those in favor of the bill mention forest stewardship, which is also a valid concern.  In Oregon, areas where logging was forbidden in order to protect endangered species became vulnerable to forest fires and thousands of acres were lost.  Thinning trees is supposed to help stop the spread of the pine beetle, a pest that can decimate forests.

Many believe, and perhaps rightly so, that the real reason for this bill is to increase revenues for the state.  Selective logging can do that while helping promote forest health and stop the spread of disease and pests, but all too often the forests are logged too heavily, which results in poor forest health, noxious weed takeovers, and a host of other problems.

What do you think?  Is logging in New Jersey state parks a good idea or bad?

Reducing Grain Consumption to Help Fight World Hunger

In our rich Western culture, we Americans take for granted the ready availability of food, especially meat.  Most of us were raised on a meat diet, and many of us eat meat every single day.  While meat is a tasty and easy source of protein, the cost of all that meat is more than just the dollar amount we pay at the store.

More than half of the world’s grain production is used to provide feed for the animals destined for our table.  Animals such as cows are taken from their pastures, shipped to feedlots and fed a high concentration of corn and other grains to fatten them up and create that marbled taste we Americans have come to love.

In the meantime, people in countries all over the world are facing food shortages, droughts and famine.  Our seemingly bottomless appetite for meat is driving up the costs of grain, which is a staple for people in many countries.  Of course, the mainstream media doesn’t mention this to us, because we tend to like having the wool over our eyes.

Once you become aware of the effects of food shortages, high grain prices and starvation across the world, it is difficult to close your eyes again.  That next bite of grain-fed beef from the store might not be so tasty if you imagine the starving face of a child in another country whose family cannot afford to buy a sack of rice.

The answer is not necessarily to stop eating meat, but to choose your meat sources more carefully.  Grass fed meats have a better concentration of fatty acids and critical nutrients, and they require no expensive grains to prepare them for eating.  Not only can grass fed meat be better for the world, it is also better for your health.

Plant a Tree When a Child is Born

Bringing a child into the world is a momentous occasion.  It should be celebrated long and loud, because nothing is more sacred than our children.  One of the ways you can celebrate the new arrival is to begin the tradition of planting a tree in their honor.  New life begetting new life... isn't that a poetic way to celebrate?

If you do not have the room for a tree, you can plant a special plant instead.  Roses and other plants with a long life make great celebratory plantings.  Your child will enjoy having a special tree or plant in their name as well, and you can compare the growth of the two from year to year.  Imagine having a photograph to document the way they grow and change every year.

In many cultures, burying the placenta is also a tradition.  When my daughter was born, my midwife suggested we plant a tree over the placenta, so that the thing that nurtured our child until she was born would also nurture a tree as it grows.  I love that idea and think it is a tradition we will take up for all of our children.  You can freeze the placenta until the ground thaws if you have your baby in a cold season, as we did.

You can plant any tree or plant that has a special meaning to you, or you can plant a food-bearing plant or tree.   Fruit or nut trees make great trees to plant for this occasion.  Celebrating the life of your child by planting a tree that also gives life is a perfect circle.

Keystone Pipeline Project Delayed

In what could be considered a win for the environment, or maybe just a delay of the inevitable, the Keystone XL pipeline has been delayed while alternate routes are examined.  The State Department has said the study could be completed by early 2013.  Some are calling this a political move by Obama to save face with environmental groups and delay until after elections. 

The Keystone XL expansion would build additional pipeline through Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska before joining up with existing Keystone pipeline infrastructure.  It would then extend south of the existing pipeline to continue through Oklahoma and as far south as Houston, Texas.  The delay is intended to examine possible alternate routes that might have less environmental impact.  Environmentalists are fighting to stop the pipeline from being built in the Ogallala Aquifer of the Sandhills area in Nebraska, citing a concern about the impact of an oil spill there.

An alternate route could completely bypass this trouble area and avoid the risk of an oil spill in a major water source.  Currently, control over the project is in federal hands, but Nebraska is pushing for legislation to allow them more of a say in how the pipeline is constructed through the state.  Senator Ken Haar of Nebraska has proposed a bill that would create exclusion zones where pipe greater than eight inches in diameter could not be laid, helping to keep the pipeline out of the Sandhills and other areas.

Whatever the intentions behind the delay, taking more time to examine possibilities is a good thing when it comes to the health of our environment.

Physicist and Skeptic Richard Muller Concludes That Global Warming is Real

While the concept of global warming is by no means new news, it does cause ripples when a batter for the other team suddenly changes sides.  That is what happened with prominent physicist Richard Muller, who concluded that his initial skepticism may have been unfounded after a lengthy review of existing research.

What makes this announcement even more remarkable is that the study was partially funded by the Charles Koch Foundation, which is known for funding skeptic groups and is run by two brothers involved in industries that produce large greenhouse gas emissions.Though the potential effects of global warming on our world cannot be imagined, we can all agree that drastic change to our climate can have major consequences if left to continue unchecked.  The research and findings of these reviews seems to indicate that, despite heavy skepticism, the concept of global warming may very well be correct.

Richard Muller has faced heavy criticism for his change of mind, but hopefully this change will spur some more great thinkers in our world to reconsider the evidence and make appropriate recommendations.

The findings, which have yet to be peer reviewed or published, were presented at a conference yesterday, said to be attended by heavy hitting skeptics of global warming and climate change.  A spokesman for the Charles Koch Foundation says they are “proud to support this strong, transparent research,” and they plan to continue funding research to determine the cause of global warming and begin probing into ocean temperatures as part of the overall research.

 

Man Collects 70 Million Pounds of Trash

This doesn’t even sound possible due to volume alone, but Chad Pregracke has dedicated a large portion of the past 13 years of his life to cleaning up the rivers of America. Since his 17th birthday, Pregracke has collected 70 million pounds of trash—with the help of many volunteers, of course—and is known as the Hardest Working Man in America.

Pregracke has formed over 500 cleanups and is an inspiration to us all. If he can do this—starting at just the age of 17—imagine how much we could all do if we worked together. If we all pledged to clean up a river or stream just once this year, it would surely create a massive impact.

I don’t know about other states, but in Missouri we have a Stream Team program where you can sign up to help clean up waterways, monitor water pollution, and do other volunteer projects to help keep the waters of Missouri clean. So even though this is a central state without ocean access, we still have programs to get volunteers active in water stewardship—so I would imagine that states that actually touch the ocean have even more programs to become involved with. Visit your local conservation department, city hall, or just search for volunteer opportunities online to see how you can help.

Arcology: Superstructures as Sustainable Urban Development

Forward-thinking architect design cities in the sky.

    

Arcology is an urban planning philosophy that was developed by architect Paolo Soleri in the 1950s. Soleri is a native of Italy, but moved to Pheonix, AZ where he founded the Arcosanti Project; an ongoing sustainable urban development using ecocentric engineering and architecture. Soleri believed that urban sprawl and the exponentially increasing population would eventually negate green spaces and force urban centers to begin building vertically. Arcology is part-architecture, part-ecology; using principles of both fields in developing urban spaces that use land efficiently with an eye toward the catastrophic population numbers that seem to be an inevitability.

     Urban planning has gone through a significant shift in the last decade. Understanding the need for greater consolidation in urban spaces to make energy use, waste management, and utilization of space more efficient. Many mid-sized cities' long-term strategic plans include increasing the number of people per square mile. Orange County, CA, an area of notorious urban sprawl, is using this pproach to make water usage more accessible. Many midwestern cities can no longer sustain suburban development as it encroached on farmland which are many of their states' primary industries. Even larger metropolitan cities are building vertically rather than horizontally, attempting to equalize the pressures of population growth and efficient urban planning with the slowly disappearing natural landscape. Chicago, IL, is a prime example of a suburban population that is slowly being coaxed (through incentives and revitalization projects) back into the metropolitan centers.

     With this gradual movement toward greater population concentration, arcology is becoming a tangible reality. The front-runners in the practical use of arcology are in Asia, where population growth along narrow strips of inhabitable space has necessitated the use of vertical urban development. Southern China's cities are facing dwindling water and food supplies in the face of massively growing populations. Shanghai and Hong Kong have already responded to these growing pressures by building upward, creating skyscrapers that house both commercial and residential functions. Even these cities, however, are not implementing the essential philosophy behind arcology; that of a sustained and self-contained city within a super-structure.

   

One of the best known arcology designs is by Soleri himself, known as the Hyper Tower. The building would essentially house 100,000 people; integrating all of the municipal, commercial, residential, and industrial needs for those individuals within the super-structure. Broken into 8 main "Terras" or levels, the building delineates communities within itself, making heavy use of solar, geothermal, and wind energy as well as large green spaces, gardens, and parks housed within each Terra. Standing at over 1,000 meters high (to give you some comparison, presently the tallest building is the Burj Dubai at 850 meters) and providing everything necessary within that space, it truly is a city in the sky. The Hyper Building does it, however, in .5% of the space of a traditional metropolitan urban setting, and .033% of suburban developments and  the savings from increased efficiency of transportation, energy, waste management, water, and infrastructure is estimated as much as 1000% over present metropolitan municipal costs. The price tag for this arcological marvel: $150 billion.

    

Architects in Japan have proposed an arcological effort in Tokyo, a city notorious for its densely populated compactness. The Tokyo "Sky City" borrows heavily from Soleri's Hyper Building, but uses three towers interconnected at various levels, which scales back the sheer size and engineering of a single super-structure. The buildings house roughly 250,000 people in about a 1/5 the space, and significantly reduces the urban heat-signature. Tokyo's average climate has risen 3 degrees over the last century, which creates a host of meteorogical, and environmental issues. (I think we've all seen pictures of individuals in both Japan and China strolling around with air-filter masks over their mouths and nose)

     Arcologies may seem

like the science-fiction backdrop of some of our favorite movies (Fifth Element comes to mind). True application of arcological structures lays decades, if not more than a hundred years off, but the population pressures of large metropolitan areas are already a reality. In the next century we can expect that the projected population will increase those pressures catastrophically, which is a fundamental paradox in human civilization; as we progress, we destroy the very thing that allows us to progress: our environment. As Soleri remarked, "Swiftness and efficiency are inversely proportional to dispersion. Scattered life is by definition deprived or parasitic." (daaq.net) Sustainable urban development needs to become a fundamental force in the way that we grow our cities.

   

 

Disposable Water Bottles are (still) Evil.

I have to keep reminding myself...

I know you have probably heard it all, already but I figured it was worth a quick reminder after a recent incident at my work. To make a long story short, we buy bottled water for the office and recently made a purchase on Amazon (a local Seattle company) who carries bottled water from another local Company ("Olympic Rain"). The water arrived fast and was priced right, but it was shipped (around 120 pounds) - on ground transportation - from a warehouse in southern California.

This. is. awful.

I was assuming that because Amazon and Olympic Rain are both located in Seattle - that the water would naturally come from a warehouse in the Seattle area. Apparently what happened, however, is the water was shipped from Seattle (probably on ground transportation) to a warehouse in California, then stored until it was purchased, then shipped directly back to Seattle for our office to consume.

The amount of energy waste here is almost unfathomable.

Not only is a ton of energy used to make the bottles, pump the water, and send it to distribution centers across the country, but, a whole extra trip (of around 120 pounds) had to be made back to the origin of the product in the end - which is like rubbing salt in my environmental wounds.

So, lesson learned again - water bottles are still evil, energy sucking, environmental vampires.

I question how a situation like this could even make a profit for a company - environmental issues aside. Shipping hundreds of pounds of anything is not cheap - especially water. I wish my office had a water cooler or a sink, but it doesn't and this is the only way. Why does this make sense for any company to do? I just don't get it.

Container Building

Container Building

The idea here is to erect a huge scaffold and then insert modular shipping containers that people can live in. This Nomad Skyscraper was designed by Luca D'Amico and Luca Teslo and includes spaces every 100 feet with parks, walkways and other outdoor spaces. The modules can be moved by plane, truck, train or ship. With these structures in multiple cities, you could travel and take your apartment with you! For more information click here. 

Cleaning Thrift Store Clothes

Thrift stores are pretty great, no matter how you slice it! They preserve our natural resources by recycling perfectly good things instead of buying new ones, keep stuff out of our landfills, and save us a fortune in cash. What's not to like?

One quietly persistent issue with thrift store clothing, however, is how to clean it to make sure everything is, you know. Okay.

I ran into this recently when I hit the local Value Village and found two pairs of jeans in my size for $3 each. Three bucks! These are perfectly normal jeans, too - not bedazzled, or cut weird, overly worn, or "super stretch" material, or anything else unsavory. Honestly I often turn up my nose at the thought of thrift store clothes, but I couldn't resist getting a pair of $30 jeans for a tenth that cost!

Now what?

The sad truth is that thrift stores do not have the time or resources to launder everything before offering it for sale. Most clothes go straight from the donation bins to the sales racks. Occasionally, they may be sprayed with a delousing treatment. High-end clothing may be hung up and steamed to remove any wrinkles. But you have to assume that the clothes you buy have not been treated since the last person wore them.

Step 1: Quarantine
The first thing you want to do with your thrift store clothes, according to Health Magazine editor Dr. Roshini Raj, is bag them up and put them somewhere neutral for two weeks. A garage, a back porch, the basement, etc.

This two week quarantine will starve off any scabies mites that might be in the clothes. Scabies are microscopic insects that are transmitted via clothing and bedding. They cause itching, rashes, and social awkwardness. Two weeks may sound like a long time, but trust me on this. Wait it out. Although scabies are relatively easy to treat, you do not want them!

Step 2: Disinfecting
This is the first of two cleaning stages. You have two options here:

Option 1: Launder the clothing using hot water, and a half cup of disinfectant. This can be bleach, Lysol, or Pine-Sol, whichever you prefer.

Per the manufacturers' instructions, bleach should be proper chlorine bleach, not the newer "color safe" kinds. Lysol and Pine-Sol should be the original varieties, not the scented forms.

Dry your clothes on the hottest setting they can stand.

Option 2: Have the items dry cleaned. This costs a bit of money, but it will kill any lingering bacteria or viruses, and it has a lesser chance of damaging your clothing.

Step 3: Deodorizing
That funky thrift store smell. You know it, even if you can't quite put your finger on it. Get rid of it by washing your clothes a second time.

This time use your normal detergent, and a cup of white vinegar. Dry your clothes as you usually would. The vinegar will kill the thrift store smell dead! (And leave your clothes soft in the dryer, to boot.)

Photo credit: Flickr/Lance McCord

Pages