Gaylord Nelson, Senator for Wisconsin, was known as the ‘Conservation Governor’ because of “his efforts to expand recreation land and preserve the state’s natural resources”. As soon as he got to Congress, he started trying to get politicians to give the environment more attention. That proved to be an extremely tough job.
On the other hand, during the 60s, teach-ins were much used as a way of protesting, in college campuses. Nelson thought organizing many simultaneous teach-ins related to the environment would help generate awareness about our Earth’s problems, and press the government to act.
Nelson traveled to Santa Monica in 1969, and witnessed the devastating effects of a huge oil-spill. This was the extra push he needed to make up his mind. He was now determined to organize the first ever Earth Day.
According to Denis Hayes, who coordinated the first Earth Day, one of the 1970 event’s strengths was that it was bipartisan. It was co-chaired by Nelson (Democrat), and Congressman Pete McCloskey (Republican).
Hayes also argues that “Earth Day is, by its very nature, a Mississippi River phenomenon. It generates support that is a mile wide but only a few inches deep.” Its mission being to gather people around the environment, sometimes concrete results seem hard to get. Millions of people get to find out about climate change, pollution, extinction and other pressing issues. Yet, even if this increased awareness is interesting, where is it leading us? What will we get? How will we direct all those one-day environmentalists into demanding changes?
The first Earth Day did manage to generate specific results: the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act. That same year, the Environmental Protection Agency was created. Much has happened since that first campaign. Today, environmental problems are even more urgent. Will we demand for the necessary action? Will we profit from this unique opportunity to show our concern?
The event’s organizers have been changing during these 40 years. There is no and has never been a centralized leadership. However, currently, the Earth Day Network tries to group and connect the people and organizations that celebrate Earth Day around the world. The EDN has 20,000 partners and reaches organizations in 190 countries. EDN calls Earth Day “the largest secular civic event in the world”
The ‘other’ Earth Day
The United Nations has a different date to celebrate Earth Day; it’s on the spring equinox, which generally is on March 20th. The tradition was founded by John McConnell in 1969.
The popular North American ice-cream corporation has committed itself to use only fair-trade-certified ingredients in all its flavours by the end of 2013. This is both a huge dare and an opportunity, given the increasing social demands for more sustainable products and companies.
Europe will be the first area to meet this ambitious goal, by the end of 2011. This year, in May, 60% of the company’s flavours in Europe will be fair-trade. And next year, the whole of the flavours will be fair-trade certified.
Ben & Jerry’s was founded by childhood friends Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, back in 1978, in Burlington, Vermont, USA. Since 2005, Ben & Jerry’s has started using ingredients that come from fair-trade sources, adding one fair-trade certified flavour each year, which made it the first ice cream company to certify its ingredients fair-trade.
Clean Energy advocates in the US are coming from every sector. Last week the ‘Hip Hop Caucus’ raped up a week-long tour that started in New Orleans and ended with DJ Biz Markie on the steps of Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. Lisa Jackson, the ‘Environmental Protection Agency’s’ (EPA) Administrator, said that “The tour has been across the country listening to young voices calling for good jobs, lower energy costs and cleaner communities”. Among a host of other speakers was Maggie Fox, CEO of the ‘Alliance for Climate Protection’, who said that “It is clear that our young people and communities of color will benefit from economic opportunities that come from investing in clean energy”.
Meanwhile ‘Operation Free’ is also working across the nation, its mission: to ‘Secure America with Clean Energy’. This coalition is made up of US army veterans and national security groups that promote the link between dependence on foreign energy and national security. They argue that by becoming more energy independent they will reduce dangerous involvement abroad.
![clip_image002[4]](http://sustentator.com/blog-en/files/2010/03/clip_image0024.jpg "clip_image002[4]")
Now, you might not like Hip-Hop and not everyone is a fan of the US Army but the point is that the message cuts across traditional demographics. On an international level the US is not leading the move towards clean energy but the fact that Americans themselves are trying to get organized across the board to push for this shift is a positive sign.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is developing a program to foster energy efficiency in data centers. Starting in June, data centers will be able to apply for Energy Star certification. Operators will first have to go through an online test, and depending on their score, be evaluated by the EPA.
With information technology (IT) growing as much as it is nowadays, data centers are all over the place, and consume impressive amounts of energy. That’s why the EPA’s initiative is most necessary. Data centers will have a way to measure their energy efficiency and show it to others. Besides, the environment is becoming an increasingly important concern for society, so this could work as a marketing strategy for companies.
First, data centers will have to enter specific information online. According to this data, they will be scored on a scale of 1-100. What will be evaluated is the power unit efficiency (PUE), which represents the total power used by the data center, divided by the amount of power that reaches the IT equipment.
A higher score means a more efficient operation. Data centers need to achieve over 75 points to be eligible for obtaining Energy Star. Those who do get the necessary score, are then audited by the EPA, and may get the sought certification.
VIA: Ecogeek
As my plane was leaving LA after TED2010 and I watched the curious man-made landscape of circling streets and repetitive housing, I thought of the provoking book by Stewart Brand called Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto which stated some environmental heresies. The first one, and the one I will examine here, was that cities are green. It is hard to think about New York City, for instance, as a model for sustainability but let’s examine the lifestyle of organic eating, juice sucking, prius driving southern Californians for a minute. They all live 30 to 90 minutes away from their jobs, so each family has at least one car, usually two, with a big commute twice a day. If we do some math with this calculator from the EPA we’ll see that a typical Californian household emits between 20,000 to 35,000 Kg of CO2 a year.
Each house has to receive (at least) water, electricity and some bandwidth so pipes, copper cables and fiber optics have to be deployed to cover miles and miles of land. Furthermore, all those lawns require massive amounts of water and fertilizers, let’s not forget we are actually on a desert with almost no rain. Each time they need groceries they go to a supermarket, you need quite a bit of them to cover such big areas, and they all need truckloads (literally) of food and supplies. The amount of energy and other resources consumed by this design is monstrous.
The contrast of this way of living with Californian’s love for anything green is startling. At the TED conference we received an aluminum bottle to refill from filtered water dispensers instead of the typical and stupid water bottle. If 1500 persons consume 3 bottles of water a day for 5 days we would have fabricated a mountain of 22500 plastic bottles. Although you could argue that they can be recycled if properly disposed, it takes quite a bit of energy and carbon emissions to turn that amount of slightly used plastic into usable bottles. I personally think that it is a catastrophe that after installing all those water pipes, people everywhere in the world still consume bottled water. The plastic has to be fabricated from oil using energy to melt and take its shape, then sent to a spring, if you are lucky, and then back to supermarkets all over the world. Then you grab those waters, haul them to your trunk, take them home, drink them, throw them away and probably end in a landfill nearby.
TED had also on display Hybrid Cars by Lexus, and although I applaud Hybrid’s oil efficiency I hardly think that they constitute a solution for a zero-emissions, green way of transportation. There were a few Segways and a few bicycles but most people there had arrived either by car (bad) or by plane (the worst), including myself. I took a flight from Buenos Aires, to Dallas and then to LA. The carbon emissions of that flight were roughly 2,825 Kg of CO2. You can calculate them here. As one TED U session said, if you wanted to be green going to TED you would have to go walking.
I’d better start walking now to reach TED2011 on time.
If you like nature and movies, this is a great opportunity for you. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has launched a video competition “Our Planet, our stuff, our choice”. You can participate with your video until February 16th.
The video has to address one of the following topics: reducing, reusing, recycling, composting, and consuming. It has to be between 30 and 60 seconds long. There are four categories of prizes. The first one consists of $2500. The second one, $1500. The third prize, $1000. And lastly if two students (aged 15 to 18) participate together, they can win $500 each.
EPA calls for competitors’ help to create videos that will make people get involved, communicate information, and lead to action.
When addressing the topics, consider the following information. Reducing and reusing has to do with reducing consumption, designing products that last longer, reducing and repairing products. Why is reducing and recycling important? Trash that goes to landfills is a great contaminant. When you reduce, not only are you generating less trash, but by reducing your consumption of new products, you avoid unnecessary production, and avoidable energy usage.
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The fifteenth meeting of the UNFCCC members in Copenhagen, Denmark, started this Monday. It will last two weeks, and will determine the future of our planet. The world leaders gathered there have humanity’s future in their hands. The transcendence of this conference cannot be undermined.
Below we present some of the selected main news of these past two days’ progress.
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UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has shown his optimism that a strong agreement
to fight climate change can be reached in Copenhagen. “From all corners of the globe we see unprecedented momentum for a deal… I’m encouraged and I’m optimistic.” -
An alleged Danish draft proposal for climate initiatives was published by British newspaper The Guardian. Apparently, developing nations are not exactly thrilled with the draft’s content.
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A study released yesterday claims that between 25 million and one billion people might have to leave their homes in the next four decades, due to natural disasters. However, few of them might be able to do so, because of a lack of the necessary means to move to more secure places. The study is from the International Organization for Migration. It adds that in recent years, the “number of people affected by natural disasters has more than doubled”.
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US president Barack Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed a number of agreements to work together on climate change and energy security. This is great news, being the US the second largest carbon-emitter, and India the fourth. The US has already advanced on negotiations with China. The fact that such powerful leaders are starting to jointly address environmental issues is a great sign, and might be of great help to create a stronger and more effective climate deal in Copenhagen.
Some of the initiatives they have agreed on are the following:
The US and India will foster development and deployment of clean energy technologies. An Indo-US Clean Energy Research and Deployment Initiative has been launched. This includes a Joint Research Center. Some of the priorities of this initiative include energy efficiency, smart grid, second-generation biofuels, and clean coal technologies such as carbon capture and storage. Also solar energy, sustainable transportation, and wind energy development.
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The Methane to Markets Partnership is an international initiative that works to investigate and foster cost-effective methods to avoid methane leaks, and to use it as a clean energy source.
This task is an important one. Why? Because methane accounts for 16% of all greenhouse gas emissions that come from human activities. Also, methane, though rarer than carbon dioxide, captures 25 times as much heat. Having a shorter life in the atmosphere, if it is effectively reduced, the impact on climate change could be rather quick and significant.
The M2M Partnership unites the public and private sector. It is organized and works in four main areas: agriculture, coal mines, landfills and oil and gas systems. The different teams work to reduce methane emissions in each of these sectors.
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Many say Copenhagen is our last chance. That if we want to avoid major climatic catastrophe, we need to reach a transcendent treaty, through which countries decide on how global warming will be controlled. As usual, political will is a crucial ingredient in this process. The tools are there, available for us, the technology is there. But what good are these without politicians willing to use them?
As Al Gore says, this climate crisis represents both a risk and an opportunity. Most politicians, I think, are not only not seeing the opportunity for growth this situation represents, but also ignoring the seriousness of the risks we face. There is a general lack of will to take the lead and work on a solution.
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