SalvaEco

by Worldchanging San Francisco local blogger, Britt Bravo: Would you live a greener life if you knew which coffee shops served fair trade coffee, or where to find environmentally sustainable office supplies, or what farmers’ markets and CSAs were in the Bay Area? You’ve probably spent some time on the Internet doing searches like, “fair trade” “San Francisco” “coffee” “cafe.” Eventually you come up with a site or two that has some suggestions, but you have a feeling that there are more options (we live in the Bay Area for heaven’s sake!), but where to find them? Now you can find answers to a lot of your local green consumer questions in San Francisco Bay Area Greenopia: The Urban Dwellers Guide to Green Living. Greenopia is a printed and online guide of environmentally friendly businesses, services and organizations that covers everything from restaurants, to travel agents, to pest control. According to the inside cover, the guide is not a paid directory, “Companies cannot pay to be included and no sponsorship is accepted. We are not specifically advocating any particular listee; rather we are simply informing you that they performed well in our green filtering process.” I first saw the Los… (more)

(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Stuff at 2:38 PM)

by Worldchanging Austin local blogger, GFoster: Will Wynn, the Mayor of Austin, publicly presented his homegrown adaptation of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” slideshow for the first time on Thursday May 31st to an audience in City Council Chambers. This was the first of many presentations Mayor Wynn is scheduled to make as one of 1,000 citizens trained by Mr. Gore’s Climate Project. The Mayor’s presentation includes graphics, information, and rhetorical styles drawn directly from the hard-earned successes of Mr. Gore’s internationally-honed presentation. The Frost Bank Tower by Wylie Maercklein Wynn is able to poignantly bring the realities of climate change disconcertingly close to home with examples drawn from the everyday city environment. While talking about an image taken from the International Space Station which shows the troposphere as the merest thin protective shield about our planet, Wynn says, “…it’s only twelve miles from here where I’m standing straight up to the top of the sky. That’s from here to the Arboretum.” Or again, when helping his audience visualize the massive height of the (now collapsed) Larsen B ice shelf: “…as tall and half again as the Frost Bank Tower.” Wynn draws upon the audience’s still tender experiences of the… (more)

(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Climate Change at 2:34 PM)

EBay UK is getting on board the Fair Trade bus. The company just launched a portal that allows shoppers to easily find Fair Trade certified goods on the site. The interface is Flash-based, rather nifty and easy to use.

Browsing around, you can find information in the dozen or so Fair Trade sellers listed on the portal now (many of the UK's pioneering Fair Trade brands are there) as well as information about Fair Trade broken down by region. Each region highlights a Fair Trade artisan cooperative with its story and photographs. A couple of clicks in and your taken to the familiar eBay product listing where you'll be able to easily stay in the Fair Trade realm of eBay UK with quick links to all certified sellers as well as category links.

Editor's note: Since we missed the weekend review last week, we thought we'd give you a double shot this week.

On Memorial Day Weekend, Americans gear up for summer with BBQs, road trips, and camping. This year, for a twist on the Memorial Day camping trip, I attended the Sasquatch Music Festival at the Gorge Ampitheater in the middle of Washington. The twist was that the festival was carbon neutral, and so was our transportation.

The Gorge Ampitheater is an impressive venue. On the edge of the Columbia River Gorge, the sun sets just behind the stage and the seating is on grass-covered hillside. The view is spectacular, and since Michael Franti and Spearhead were playing, I had to go.

I was thrilled to find out that the concert was carbon-neutral, through a partnership with Sustainable Energy Partner's Carbon Harmony program (which we covered here). And since my boyfriend and I just got our "volksvegan" waste vegetable oil powered VW van up and running, we made most of the trip carbon-neutral as well!

My problem with The Lazy Environmentalist, green radio host Josh Dorfman's self-proclaimed "guide to easy, stylish, green living" isn't that it lacks information. It's actually a quite comprehensive guide to supporting green companies. I dog-eared multiple pages so I could visit websites of the companies in which I was interested. But it's not so much a guide to green living as it's a guide to green buying. I guess the tone set forth from the brief introduction rubbed me the wrong way:

These innovators make it easy for us to integrate environmental awareness into our lives. They understand that while so many of us are concerned about the environment, we don't always have the time, energy, or inclination to do something about it.

I only wish this was written in a less-than-serious voice. In my mind, if you don't have the "time, energy, or inclination" to do something about the environment, than you can hardly classify yourself as an environmentalist. You are looking to alleviate guilt for your conspicuous consumption, a culture of consumption that is devastating our planet. It's exactly the "culture of convenience" that's waging all-out war on our resources. Consider this passage from the chapter on cars:

There really is something for everyone–even those who drive Hummers, the most colossal of all urban assault vehicles…By offsetting the carbon dioxide emissions spewing from your car's tailpipe, TerraPass offers Hummer drivers eco-salvation.

Eco-salvation for Hummer drivers? A little too, oh, oxymoronic, for my tastes. Lazy is definitely geared towards a more high-end clientele, despite it's mention of Wal-Mart as an organic clothing retailer (Yeah, I know what you are thinking…I can't trust them quite yet, either).

Stepping off of my soapbox, for those of us who do have time, energy, and inclination to do something to lighten our footprint still have to buy goods and services, and Lazy provides a well-laid, well-written plan to finding greener versions of those goods and services. If you have to spend money, you might as well spend it on more sustainable products, right?

Don't ever pass up the opportunity to judge beer. Ok, I know you do that anyway, but I'm not talking about your personal opinion of Pabst Blue Ribbon. It turns out that real-life beer competitions require amateur beer judges to work alongside the pros. Apparently, amateurs provide useful feedback to brewmasters with their 'average Joe' opinions.

And that's where I come in.

May 19th was the 25th annual Heart of the Valley Brewfest held in Corvallis, Oregon, featuring home-brewed beer from all over the Pacific Northwest. It was two days of beer drinking fun and *hard work* – no really, judging beer takes skill, concentration, and stamina (not to mention a fully functioning olfactory sense).

I had none of these, but still managed to hold my own. What's exciting about being an amateur judge is how much you learn about beer, and quickly. "It was good" is not going to cut it, and adopting a complicated beer vocabulary is highly encouraged. It's also exciting to have an excuse to start drinking beer at 9 a.m., which is when the judging started.

Today the three remaining activists made their way safely down the construction crane – ending their occupation of the Olkiluoto, Finland, nuclear plant construction site.

You can read a (2nd hand) update from one of the climbers on the Greenpeace UK blog or read our feature story for more info.

And here’s the news from Kaisa (Greenpeace Finland):

The climbers came down because they saw they had achieved already a lot. They managed to raise wide discussions about the problems of nuclear in general, and the problems of this particular reactor. They were able to get attention to the other side of the story…

Continue reading Olkiluoto nuclear plant protest ends…

When Apple CEO Steve Jobs made his “A Greener Apple” statement he acknowledged that Apple fans expected more from Apple. We wanted to send him a permanent memento and reminder of the great work many Apple fans had sent us via our Green my Apple website. But Steve is obviously a busy man – how to get a suitable memento to him in an appropriate manner?

Continue reading How to get a green message direct to Steve?…

Posted by Greenpeace team (at the last day of the International Whaling Commission, in Anchorage, Alaska)

The functional extinction of an entire species the Baiji dolphin – got just fifteen minutes of fame (or maybe less) here at the International Whaling Commission meeting. The Vaquita, the Mexican dolphin likely to become extinct in the near future got about as much notice. No time at all was spent on the estimated 3,288 cetaceans that have died worldwide as bycatch since the 59th IWC meeting began, plus the incalculable
deaths from other human causes like ship strikes, pollution, bycatch and climate change.

Continue reading The IWC ends: But what about the Baiji and the Vaquita?…

Posted by Greenpeace team (at the last day of the International Whaling Commission, in Anchorage, Alaska)

The functional extinction of an entire species the Baiji dolphin – got just fifteen minutes of fame (or maybe less) here at the International Whaling Commission meeting. The Vaquita, the Mexican dolphin likely to become extinct in the near future got about as much notice. No time at all was spent on the estimated 3,288 cetaceans that have died worldwide as bycatch since the 59th IWC meeting began, plus the incalculable
deaths from other human causes like ship strikes, pollution, bycatch and climate change.

Continue reading The IWC ends: But what about the Baiji and the Vaquita?…