Super Eco

Photo credit: | spoon |, flickr

Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words, especially when marking change that occurs slowly and gradually. This is why we mark the top of our kids' heads every year on the back of a door, charting evidence of their steady and sometimes explosive path toward adulthood. We know they're growing up—pant cuffs from last fall are suddenly at the ankle now—but we didn't see it happen on a day-to-day basis.

It's much the same with the Earth. Changes are occurring all the time, but without pictorial evidence it's hard to tell.

1. Deforestation of the Amazon. Yikes. Want graphic evidence of what we're doing to the rainforest? First, trees are cleared along roads, both legal and illegal. Small farmers move to the area, claim land along the roads, and start clearing it for crops. After a few years, the soil is depleted and erosion has occurred from heavy rains and the fact that the trees are now gone. Crop yields fail, so farmers convert the land to cattle pasture and clear more forest for crops. Eventually the whole thing fails: the farmer has cleared all his land; it's no longer producing, so he sells to big cattle farmers who consolidate all the small holdings. Have a look; you can see the changes in just 8 years, from 2000-2008.

2. The Case of the Disappearing Glaciers. Again, photos don't lie (unless we're talking about what's in fashion magazines). Photographers Brad Washburn and David Arnold created a joint exhibit, Double Exposure, illustrating the dramatic disappearance of many of the world's glaciers. Washburn, a mountaineer, started documenting some of the world's great glaciers in the 1930's. Between 2005 and 2007, Arnold revisited many of the same spots in the Alps and in Alaska, at the same time of year as the original photos, to re-photograph and document the changes. And the changes are startling.

Go ahead, climate change deniers, say all you want. We have pictures that tell the story.

Photo credit: mwri, flickr

It's strawberry time across most of the U.S. Strawberries are easy to pick (only a little backbreaking) and for a few hours' work you'll be rewarded with heaps of the reddest, juiciest, most delicious strawberries you've ever tasted. (Hint: the tiny ones are the sweetest) Don't worry about picking too many: they disappear fast! And you can always pick extra and make your own jam (easier than you think).

Pick-your-own season is here. You probably live near more farms than you realize, farms that welcome you in with sun-ripened green arms, offering fabulous fresh produce for far less than you'd pay at the store for that quality. Common PYO crops are berries (strawberries, blueberries, blackberries), apples, and pumpkins.

PYO farms often use organic growing practices, too, so it's a total win-win for everyone: you get high-quality, relatively inexpensive produce, the farmer gets his crop picked and sold, and you support local farming and sustainable agriculture. Plus, picking is a delicious and fun day out for the family!

Find a comprehensive list of PYO farms by state and county here (also includes lists of farms outside the U.S.). The site also has a harvest calendar that gives you a good idea of when various crops are ready for picking; contact your local farms to be sure.

Make it a practice to find ways to reuse everything at least once: http://bit.ly/E7yev

Photo credit: stevendepolo, flickr

Which is greener, frozen veggies or canned? After a little investigation, it turns out that this is one of those loaded questions like, "When did you stop beating your wife?"

Energy Use. If you just want to talk about the energy expended in making the packaging, preparing the food, and then storing/transporting it, there's no clear winner. Frozen food wins in the packaging-making department, but it takes more energy to can than freeze food. But if that food sits in your freezer (as opposed to on a pantry shelf), storing it uses more energy. The winner? According to Treehugger, it's pretty much a dead heat.

Now things get sticky.

What's in that can? For one thing, fewer nutrients. According to the FDA, a third to half of certain key vitamins are wiped out in the canning process. Then there's botulism. Bulging cans? Uh uh, back away slowly. And there's the question of the can itself: they're no longer seamed with lead, but many cans have a lining that includes Bisphenol-A.

Frozen food isn't exactly safe, either. The are major breakdowns in the safety of our food supply, as evidenced by the recent peanut butter salmonella outbreak, e.coli in the spinach, and the like. Salmonella? Turns out it's in frozen pot pies, too, though maybe you never heard about that. And frozen food makers would like to shift the burden of safety upon us, the consumer. Hey, it's so much easier that way! Simply direct us to "heat properly," cross your fingers, and you're golden. Problem is, we're not going to use an internal read thermometer to check the temperature of our pot pies and family-sized lasagnas and Hungry-Man Dinners. We expect frozen food to be sterile. Safe.

Best answer? Grow your own food. Invest in community-supported agriculture. Buy from local farmers. Those options don't work well for everyone, but the more we support them, the easier it will all be. But buy the best produce you can. And then get on the case of your elected officials, because a safe and nutritious food supply is a basic right we all can expect.

Photo credit: bunchofpants, flickr

Oh, wait. They already do. A testimony to the weird and wonderful world of global biodiversity, these giant earthworms are giving people the shivers in Australia and in the Amazon, two places where we already expect a high degree of interestingness where animal life is concerned.

In 7th grade, sorry to say, I dissected an earthworm. It was about 8 inches long, which was really quite bigger than I require in an earthworm. These biosteroidal guys? Are about TWENTY-TWO FEET long. Imagine finding one of those in your bed. Here's a quote about them you might like: "They can sometimes be heard in their habitat making gurgling sounds as they move underground."

Okay. Moving on.

Other Really Big Species you might like:

• Giant starfish near New Zealand.
• Remnants of giant bird poo, also in New Zealand. We're assuming that a giant bird was somehow involved.
• Giant octopi, populating bad dreams everywhere.
• Giant squid, also in New Zealand. Anyone notice a trend here?
• Amazonian giant peccary. And a peccary is a ... quick! Bird? Fish? Something furry? Quick, before it eats you!
• Giant fairy shrimp. Ahem. From, uh, Idaho. (Idaho?)
• Giant elephant shrew. Presently in Philadelphia, because that's where all the best giant elephant shrews are found.
• Giant lobster. From Madagascar. Anyone else thinking about butter now? (These babies would eat YOU before you got them into a pot.)
• Galapagos giant tortoise. Clearly intended as the predecessor to the riding mower.

We sure live in a wonderful world, don't we? Let's keep it that way and do what we can to conserve the amazing diversity on the planet. Many giant species, like the giant earthworms, are in a threatened status.

Bake bread at home: it's green, healthy, and easier than you think! http://tinyurl.com/r2rggc

Photo credit: rcsmit, Wikimedia Commons

Cities have some of the coolest eco things; not everything green starts out in the country. Sustainable living is urban living; density promotes sustainable practices like walking and biking and taking public transit, drastically reducing carbon emissions. It also promotes community. And sustainable urban living is also a breeding ground for cool eco practices. Here are three trends worth watching:

1. Bike sharing. In cities around the world, public bicycles are made available to the community (residents and tourists alike) to rent for a nominal fee (or a refundable one) and use to get around the city. Notable and large-scale bike-shares include the Vélib' program in Paris, Stockholm City Bikes in Stockholm, Call a Bike in Munich, SmartCity Bike DC in Washington DC, Cityräder in Helsinki, ByCyklen in Copenhagen, and the brand-new Bixi in Montreal. In addition, there are community bike programs around the world like the Green Bike Trust in New Zealand, where for $20NZ (about $10US) you can buy a bike—and then sell it back for the same amount when your holiday is over.

2. Vertical gardening. Look up!

3. Urban rooftop beekeeping. Sweet!

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Yesterday, Judge Sonia Sotomayor was nominated by President Barack Obama to the Supreme Court. This is big news by any account, because the Supremes help shape policy, not only judicially but socially, for years to come. Decisions made now, or over the coming years, will help create our future.

So what kind of a green future can we expect from Sonia Sotomayor if she's confirmed? How eco-friendly is she? There's not much to go on. She ruled against the EPA and in favor of fish in Riverkeeper vs. EPA where she argued that the the Clean Water Act maintains that the EPA can’t weigh costs and benefits in deciding what the “best technology” is for protecting fish that are sucked into the cooling water intake structures of riverside power plants. Bad news for the fish: Sotomayor's decision was overturned by the Supremes in Entergy Corp. v EPA.

Sotomayer has shown where she stands on the issue of how stringent environmental protections have to be and at what cost they will come. This will come in handy down the line when industries are forced to clean up their acts and when other climate-change policies start hitting the industrial fan.

Moving? Get used boxes from Freecycle or Craigslist: http://bit.ly/ogWO0

Photo credit: Jack Journey, Tumbleweed Tiny House Company

Death to the McMansion! We didn't need six bedrooms anyway, did we? Or a media room. Or a kitchen the size of Delaware. Good thing, because the home-building industry is building smaller now. Oh sure, for them it's all about staying afloat in an economy where no one's buying super-sized houses anymore, but in the green world it means one thing: new homes have a smaller footprint. They're greener.

Less square footage means less to heat and cool. It means fewer resources used in the building. It means less to maintain. And it signifies a trend that we're learning to simplify our lives, to use less, to walk more lightly on the planet.

In a National Association of Homebuilders survey, 88 percent of home builders say they're going to be constructing smaller homes. This is after topping out last year at a whopping average of 2,629 square feet in 2007, from just 1,660 square feet in 1973 (the house I grew up in had 1500 square feet and seemed vast). New homes being built today are averaging 11% smaller than the McMansion high of just a year ago, a significant downward trend.

Is it a trend that will last? We'd like to think so. Do we really need more than this?