>> Starting this winter, L.A. plans to seed clouds to boost rainfall. Critics call the measure desperate, pointing out that public funds may be better used for water conservation measures, as the results of seeding are unpredictable and could cause landslides.
>> New eco-channel Planet Green gets a thumbs down from Troy Patterson at Slate.com: "Planet Green turns the entire Earth into a lifestyle accessory, often to uniquely awful effect." Troy does concede that "Some of the home-improvement shows are engaging and impressive, and a forthcoming show called Greensburg, about the reconstruction of a tornado-ravaged town in Kansas, has promise."
Smokey Bear's back with a new series of public service advertisements that encourage you to "Get Your Smokey On" by practicing fire safety habits. Odd feature of the main TV spot: Smokey gender morphs!
A girl metamorphoses into Smokey -- who warns some boys about forest fires in a girly voice -- before turning back into a girl. Then Smokey with a boy's voice comes on to say the usual "Only you can prevent wildfires" line.
I'm guessing the point of the ad is that everyone (women included!) can do like Smokey and educate others about forest fires. I don't remember this gender-morphing happening in the past though -- and Smokey really has a long past, having been around since 1944. Anyone remember a past campaign when Smokey was female?
We've certainly had a lot of fires in SoCal of late, so Smokey's advice, if not new, remains relevant. If you're bored at work, Smokey Bear's website features a vault with posters, as well as radio and TV spots since the '40s.
>> L.A. city offices aren't installing CFLs fast enough, says city controller Laura Chick, who found only 102 out of 958 buildings managed by the city's General Services Department have installed energy-efficient fluorescent lighting. Installing just those bulbs costs about $5 million -- and saved the city $1.5 million off the city's annual electricity bill. Earlier: Energy Week: Roundup of savings
>> Why're people still fighting over the Expo line? Steve Hymon writes about his chat with Damien Goodmon, who's leading a group trying to force a chunk of the Expo to be built underground instead of at grade. "I asked Goodmon why he thinks high school students –- many presumably pretty smart kids –- will get hit by the train at Farmdale when there will be crossing gates.... He rejected the comparison to Blair [High School, located 2 blocks from the Gold Line light rail] -– saying many more students will cross tracks at Dorsey. He also rejected my assertion that his own argument over environmental justice and racism has a sour tinge -- that perhaps he's suggesting that Dorsey students, many of whom are minorities, aren’t smart enough to stay off active railroad tracks."
>> More solar for SoCal. Southern California Edison plans to buy 245 megawatts of power -- enough electricity for about 160,000 homes -- from solar plants to be built in the Antelope Valley by ESolar Inc. The plants are expected to begin operating in 2011.
>> No, nuclear isn't cheap, clean energy, writes Joseph Romm in Salon. "Nuclear power still has so many problems that unless the federal government shovels tens of billions of dollars more in subsidies to the industry, and then shoves it down the throat of U.S. utilities and the public with mandates, it is unlikely to see a significant renaissance in this country. Nor is nuclear power likely to make up even 10 percent of the solution to the climate problem globally."
Hopefully the program will expand, because it'll be a nice, convenient, eco-friendly recycling option for those of you storing old TVs and VCRs in your garages. In the meantime, you can take advantage of Best Buy's haul-away and pick-up program; the company will pick up and recycle your old electronics if you buy a replacement from one of its stores.
Best Buy will also pick up your items without your buying a replacement -- if you're willing to cough up $100 for the service. A better option, in that case, would be to recycle the e-waste via Staples for $10 (downside: no TV take-backs) or via your nearest city e-waste recycling center (downside: inconvenient hours). Here's your full range of options for getting rid of e-waste in eco-fashion.
While reading about Best Buy's test program, I found out more about some of the company's other cool eco-programs that have already been instituted in all stores. Did you know that each Best Buy has a recycling kiosk at the front that will accept small items for free recycling? The stuff you can recycle there ranges from the more common ink cartridges, rechargeable batteries and cellphones, to more difficult-to-recycle products like CDs and DVDs.
I have a huge stack of CDs collected from press kits (many companies use CDs to distribute images) over the last few years, and will be making a trip to drop them off this week!
If you're a fan of David Byrne, you likely already know he had a little cycling accident and broke a couple ribs earlier this month. That snafu notwithstanding, Byrne's a big bicycling advocate -- and he promotes the biking life in "Transport," the latest episode from Sundance's "Big Ideas for a Small Planet."
"Transport" showcases the bicycle in a segment that centers around Portland, where bicycles even get their own signals at busy intersections. Find out what bike-friendly initiatives have been implemented in other cities, then see how those ideas stack up to the suggestions L.A. bicyclists have for improving the bike lifestyle in L.A.
The episode also highlights some MIT people inventing urban commuter cars that are electric, stackable, and can be rented with the swipe of a credit card -- much like those luggage carts at airports! These rentable cars aren't on the market yet, but green car geeks can still see what may be coming down the pipeline.
The show airs tonight at 9 on the Sundance Channel. If you missed previous "Big Ideas" episodes, you can catch up via iTunes. One of my favorite "Big Ideas" episodes -- "Grow" -- actually aired last week. The short program covered everything from xeriscaping to green roofs. Did you know green roofs can lessen urban runoff, create habitat for insects and birds, reduce energy use (primarily by cooling the building naturally), provide food, and triple the life of the roofing material? I don't actually have a roof to green, but I'm wondering if I can turn my balcony into a green roof-like surface ...
So factory farmed meat gets a lot of bad press -- but if you're not quite sure what the problem with the unnatural meat is, 'The Simpsons' can help you out. (via The Ethicurean)
In “Apocalypse Cow,” Bart gets to know a "scrappy little misfit" of a cow called Lou when he joins 4H. Unfortunately, Lou gets sent to a feedlot -- and more fortunately, the storyline educates viewers about growth hormones, slaughterhouses, and, um, Casablanca.
For more factory farming fun, watch The Meatrix, a cute short animation feature by Sustainable Table. My favorite character's Moofius.
Need a more realistic, less cartoonish video to get you concerned about factory farming? Check out the videos from the Humane Society that got Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co. in Chino, Calif., in trouble -- and precipitated the biggest beef recall in history.
Want pragmatism? Then try "Climate Change In Our World" -- put together by British environmental and meteorological offices -- which shows us medium-case climate scenarios for the future to encourage level-headed preparation for what's to come.
But that's boring, no? If you want the drama of worst-case scenarios that evoke fear and panic, you have to turn to the U.S. -- and even better, to U.S. television.
"Earth 2100," a 2-hour ABC News special set to air this fall, will show how "the 'perfect storm' of climate change, resource depletion, and population growth could converge with catastrophic results." And in case the scary science isn't doom and gloom enough, ABC wants you to imagine and create an even scarier scenario -- on video.
For this "massive online game" that'll be "played" in stages until the "Earth 2100" show airs, ABC doesn't want the boring pragmatic stuff. You're to "imagine the unimaginable," then create a video "report" about it and send it to ABC. These videos "will be woven into an evolving web-based story, and the best ones will be used as the spine of the network primetime show."
First round: What will 2015 look like? ABC sets out a basic scenario for filmmakers to work from, and it doesn't sound good: We're still in Iraq, still not doing much as a nation to address climate change, still building more coal-fired power plants. Closer to home, "wildfires are raging out of control in Colorado and Southern California leaving thousands of people homeless."
Inspired? Make a video "report" and send it in by June 9. The scenarios that emerge from those videos will then be used to create the basic scenario for 2050, and so on for 2070 and 2100.
Just to be clear, despite my poking fun, I'm not saying "Earth 2100" will be a bad show necessarily. It's quite possible that doom and gloom scenarios may spur people into action, though they tend to leave me rather disillusioned and lethargic. It's just that I found "Earth 2100" rather humorously over the top, finding out about it right after trying out the sedate British "Climate Change In Our World." Both are about looking to 2100, both about spurring people to action. But the vastly different approaches seem rather symbolic of the differences I often see between the U.S. and U.K.
"Project Runway" fans: Did you know there's an online shoe design reality show? "FN Shoestar," sponsored by Nine West, recently challenged its designers to create sustainable uppers for a sandal. The result: Pretty crunchy-looking shoes.
"Shoestar" isn't a particularly creative show since it basically copies "Project Runway's" format, down to the inane interviews ("The green challenge is ... definitely challenging," explains one girl). The gaffes are somewhat funnier though, with one girl talking about "fox suede" -- then explaining that "fox" is spelled f-a-u-x.
The designers make eco-mistakes too. For example, Tyvek -- the like-paper-but-stronger-than-paper stuff used to make some FedEx and USPS envelopes -- is no friend of the environment. Like Styrofoam, Tyvek's usually made to create one-use products that unfortunately last forever in landfills (yes, industry people will say Styrofoam and Tyvek are recyclable, but they rarely do get recycled as most cities don't have recycling programs in place for these expensive-to-recycle products that have little to no post-recycling value).
Still, the show covers a bunch of more environmentally-friendly materials used in shoes, so eco-fashionistas might find the episode an interesting crash course in sustainable shoes.
For cute every-day eco-shoes available today, I highly recommend Simple Shoes' ecoSNEAKS, available for both men and women. These are made of hemp, organic cotton, recycled PET, recycled car tire, and 100% post-consumer paper pulp!
I ordered a pair of the “Stop Global Warming” edition Women’s Retire shoes a month ago, partly because $5 from each $60 pair sold gets donated to StopGlobalWarming.org. Just two days later, the shoes arrived at my doorstep via free shipping. Now, I wear them all the time because they're so comfy -- and because they attract a surprising number of compliments, especially considering that they're just sneakers.
The Sundance channel will be featuring eco-fashions on its show "Big Ideas for a Small Planet" tomorrow night, but eco-fashionistas will likely find the program rather bitter sweet. Why? Unless Sundance makes a last-minute major edit to the episode, Nau -- the now-out-of-business sustainable fashion company -- will be one of the three eco-companies featured.
Watching the Nau employees talk enthusiastically about the do-gooder green business model is very bittersweet, knowing that between the taping and the air date, the company became no more. But what's even sadder one Nau exec's comment in the episode about how many Nau employees joined the company by leaving their former jobs of 15 to 25 years, AND taking a 50 percent pay cut. The Nau team "walked over the edge together," the exec says. Indeed they did.
The "Fashion" episode isn't all sad though. Del Forte Denim -- maker of stylish, U.S.-grown, U.S.-milled, and U.S.-made organic cotton jeans -- is also featured and still doing quite well as a company; you can find Del Forte jeans at Avita Co-op, Vie, GreenROHINI, and other local eco-boutiques. An eco-friendly dry cleaning company in Colorado seems to be doing quite well too; CO2 cleaning apparently is quite effective at taking the "blood" out of the costumes from a Macbeth theater production! Watch the episode, then check out eco-friendly dry cleaning services in L.A.
The show airs tomorrow, May 6, at 9 pm on the Sundance channel. If you missed previous "Big Ideas" episodes, you can catch up via iTunes. I especially liked the feature on biodynamic farming in the "Food" episode last week. Thanks to the Benziger Family Winery in Glen Ellen, Calif., I now understand how biodynamic farming differs from organic farming -- sort of.
The show takes a broad look at looming water shortages, covering everything from the pros and cons of controversial desalination methods to the heartwarming story of a river cleanup project to the potential promise of rainfall catchment systems -- systems available now, but slow to be implemented.
So far, the second season of "Big Ideas for a Small Planet" has covered some fascinating stuff. The "Power" episode took an in-depth look at the annual Solar Decathlon competition, where 20 universities compete to create hi-tech, comfy houses that are powered entirely by the sun. Last week's episode, "Decorate," featured Venice's own eco-friendly store and showroom Organic Interior Design, along with the recently-completed Venice Beach Eco Cottages, former crack houses now revamped into gorgeous vacation suites.
The "Water" episode airs tonight, April 15, at 9 pm on the Sundance channel.
As a teenager, Siel sped past Paramount Studios on the 10 Metro bus to get to Fairfax High School. Now she cuts through the concrete jungle of Los Angeles on her pink Townie bike to shop at local farmers' markets and socialize in pre-loved Prada heels. A contributing editor to BlogHer, Siel also keeps a personal blog, green LA girl. Send your burning green questions to greenlagirl@gmail.com.
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