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Governor Schwarzenegger:
"...the world's governments alone cannot make progress, the kind of progress that is needed on global climate change. They alone cannot do it. They need everyone coming together, everyone working together. They need the cities, they need the states, they need the provinces and the regions. They need the corporations, the activists, the scientists and the universities. They need the individuals whose vision and determination create movements. They need everybody out there.
So ladies and gentlemen, let us regain our momentum, let us regain our purpose, let us regain our hope by liberating the transformative power beneath the national level.
That can be the great contribution of Copenhagen -- that could be the great contribution of Copenhagen.
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"...the world's governments alone cannot make progress, the kind of progress that is needed on global climate change. They alone cannot do it. They need everyone coming together, everyone working together. They need the cities, they need the states, they need the provinces and the regions. They need the corporations, the activists, the scientists and the universities. They need the individuals whose vision and determination create movements. They need everybody out there.So ladies and gentlemen, let us regain our momentum, let us regain our purpose, let us regain our hope byliberating the transformative power beneath the national level.
That can be the great contribution of Copenhagen -- that could be the great contribution of Copenhagen.
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Here's an example of a public private partnership that can 1. Help the environment.
2. Help a city reach its targeted sustainability goals.
3. Help sustain small businesses and entrepreneurs.
Freedom Waterless Carwash Partners With Long Beach City For Pilot Program
Please contact greenbloggerinfo at gmail with any questions.
VIDEO HERE ></object>
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"Mark Twain once said, 'Whiskey is for drinking, but water is worth fighting for," said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger at the signing of the historic water reform legislation November 6, 2009.
Introducing and speaking alongside the Governor was L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
Video courtesy of HeadingtonMedia.
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The $2 billion, 390 MW power plant will be one of the first hydrogen-fueled electricity plants in the world with carbon capture and sequestration.
The company is part of the Hydrogen Energy group of companies owned by BP Alternative Energy and Rio Tinto. It will partner with Occidental Petroleum; the largest natural gas producer and the third-largest oil producer in California, which will use its sequestered carbon dioxide in a nearby oilfield.
The project draws on a number of technological breakthroughs to pioneer post-carbon fossil energy. While carbon dioxide has long been used to enhance oil recovery, it has not come from a power plant before now.
A coal gasification process will produce the fuel to power the plant, not with coal but with hydrogen gas. About 190 million standard cubic feet of hydrogen daily will run the gas turbines, which is another technological first: getting hydrogen to power a gas turbine.
The technology will capture 90% of the carbon dioxide before combustion and inject it into a local oilfield for sequestration and enhanced oil recovery. The gasification block will capture two million tons a year of carbon dioxide produced; and send it four miles in a pipeline to Occidental Petroleum’s Elk Hills oilfield; to aid in oil recovery.
The remaining 10% of the carbon dioxide emitted, at 250 pounds per megawatt-hour, according to the application, is well below the 800 pounds per megawatt-hour of electricity emitted by even a state-of-the-art natural gas plant, which is about half that of traditional coal-fired plant. (California’s emissions performance standard forbids emissions over 1,100 pounds per megawatt-hour, ruling out most coal plants.)
The application is among those currently under review, along with about 10 GW of solar thermal applications for California. The status of all applications is in this (pdf) map. Despite the fact that the US itself has not passed carbon-limiting legislation, the US will still get some post-carbon fossil energy from a major oil company.
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A Green Cooking Demonstration in honor of Thanksgiving, in preparation for Copenhagen.
VIDEO </object>
Hey, Obama, are you listening? 'Cuz the last we heard, people gotta EARN a Nobel Peace Prize!
Link to video: Do The Green Thing
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Recyle, Reuse, Rejoice!
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thing. The hard truth is that people who are very talented might be shuttered this year. It’s a real shame to see Christian Lacroix going into bankruptcy proceedings in Paris, and almost on the same day see Veronique Branquinho shutting her business. These are two immensely talented people with enormous conviction who shouldn’t have done anything any differently, but the system hasn’t worked for them at this moment. So in that sense, I don’t think the shake out is a great thing because it means that only the best will survive. I think a lot of really great people are having a really hard year and people who I don’t necessarily think have a lesson to learn from it. The same as people who are suffering from personal setbacks, they weren’t necessarily over-spending or living a false life, they were just trying to get by and a whole lot of things conspired against them.I do think that fashion designers and companies will come out of this year with a different perspective on how they operate, how they control their production, how they control their wholesale network and hopefully the industry will be stronger for it.YS: Do you think that because of the financial distress, it will affect the way designers will market themselves?SS: Well advertising has taken a hit. Designers are not advertising the way they used to. Were those gorgeous campaigns and the number of them necessary? Shot by just a few photographers… It made fashion really exciting to people and made fashion a fun industry to be in. And a fun industry for the public to engage in. There’s not a designer out there right now, who’s not re-evaluating the way they market and merchandise their collections and how they put their message out there. The interesting thing is that because of style.com there’s such knowledge of fashion. Before you didn’t have to work every day to have people be aware of your work.When I started at Vogue, you kind of had to figure out how you were going to do it. Maybe there was a cable show that showed a bit of a runway show… The idea that you could know the name of a model that wore Look 12 at Prada was impossible, unless you were in the business. Now anyone can go online and see a show, and know that Natalia was opening the show, and get the details and see the bag up close. So there’s an incredible knowledge of fashion right now. So a lot of marketing just has to build on that. So I imagine things will be done differently in the way that people will position themselves.Right now there’s so much emphasis in the industry on the pre-Fall. Right now, we’re starting to see Resort in New York and those collections are the real money-spinners for companies. They hit the stores in November and stay full price much longer than the traditional Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter collections. In the past these were seen as the ”real” clothes collections, not the catwalk ”follies.“ And I think there is more direction in them now than ever before. Because there is more scrutiny. They also, go into stores at the moment that people who are in the mood to spend, spend. So I think in the last few years there’s been a greater emphasis on pre-fall or pre-spring or resort and I think that will continue. And more companies doing that if they can, delivering into the stores four times and therefore not staking it all on two seasons. And if two seasons go drastically on sale they have double the opportunity to sell.YS: The ultimate goal of the Innovative Fashion Council is to support more sustainable fashion design and practices. Do you think it is still only seen as a trend?SS: I would hope it’s not just a trend, and that the economic crisis wouldn’t be a reversal and we’re still moving forward. There have been other trends in the fashion industry that challenged issues of sustainability. Those too were valid concepts.Many, many other people have been heartened by the fast-fashion, the explosion of really directional, fun retail environments where clothes are extremely on target, on trend and affordable, and often designed by real luminaries in that market. I mean, I hear Jil Sander is doing clothes for Uniqlo and I hear the clothes are amazing. That said, the whole notion of fast-fashion is not 
exactly at one with the issues of sustainability. Do we need all those things for clothes we buy on Friday, to wear out at a club on Saturday and toss out by the next Friday? And where are they going? Those clothes may start to be made with organic fibers, made in different factories and made in line with ecological goals and a more conscious set of parameters. We’ve just seen this with Target and their collaboration with Loomstate. Rogan Gregory really pushed to have Target source differently.I want people to buy the right things at the right price for the right reasons. But I understand designer fashion that is fairly priced, and made artisanally and directional and exciting. Designers like Rodarte, the Mulleavy sisters, and Isabel Toledo are making these amazingly beautiful clothes and these clothes are not inexpensive. And to many people it doesn’t make sense to wear a dress that costs $1,900. But on the other hand, she’s doing something incredibly sustainable. She’s wearing someone who sourced the fabrics properly, made it beautifully, worked on it by hand and paid her workers fairly. I want to encourage people not to spend more than they can afford, but to spend the right amount of money and wear it a lot. And when you’re done wearing it pass it down, rework it, figure out how to integrate it into the next thing they want to do, chop it up, even make it into pillows! I don’t know, but I want people to figure out how to work with their clothes in a more sustained way—whatever their clothes are, it may be the Loomstate Target collection—whatever! I just want them to love it beyond the moment they bought it.YS: What about educating the designers in sustainable design concepts like William McDonough’s book “Cradle to Cradle?” SS: We a
re seeing biodegradable shoes, not just Nike, where if you drop off your shoes, they’ll remake it into something else. So we’re seeing that. And designers, such as Stefano Pilati at YSL doing collections out of old fabrics he found around. He just launched that collection at Barneys New York. I think it’s a fantastic model for how luxury goods should be working right now. But I also think designers are receiving an enormous pressure from retailers and consumers to make things at a less expensive price point, to broaden their price points, to offer entry level price points. And often what that means is to go overseas and China’s environmental standards are not necessarily the best. It’s not necessarily the quality; the real issue is that a designer is trying to work to a sensitive way to their customer and to the world. And it’s an awful lot of balls in the air.Some will say they’ll use an organic fabric, but if you don’t produce in an up-to-date factory with environmental standards, does it matter if it’s an organic fabric if you’re using chemicals to process it? Kind of, I don’t know but it’s like the set of decisions that we’re all facing in our everyday and I just think that the more everyone is conscious of those choices the better off we’ll be. And every designer out there is thinking that way. They know the customer understands the value of conscious production. It’s not yet at the same place as food, where people will buy the ugly but organic apple. Fashion people still want the nice looking thing. But they know that an ethical back-story adds value for consumers. Whether they can take all their impulses and put out a product that the consumer can afford remains to be seen. But, they’re all trying to. They think endlessly about sourcing, and they have to know fabrics are so expensive now.And partly because a number of people working now are working at the top of their game are young people. They are part of a generation that grew up with an environmental consciousness. People such as Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough of Proenza Schouler, Phillip Lim and Derek Lam - these guys don’t stand apart from their generation. So, no I don’t think it’s a trend; it’s just going to take some time to sort itself out. Luckily there are a lot of people right now who know a lot about sourcing and the issues who are working in the industry right now, such as Rogan. As long as people continue to talk about it, it will be okay.YS: Do you think that hosting a sustainability conference would be a good idea? SS: It’s hard to get people to come. Designers are very busy these days, going to stores and connecting with the customers. Everyone knows the more designers are out in the stores, the better the sales are. I don’t think there has been a time where designers have worked more frenetically here in New York or in Europe. I know I did a panel for UCLA's Hammer Museum, where I brought together Rodarte's Kate Mulleavy, Adriano Goldschmied, Christina Kim and Tom Binns. They’re all artisanal designers. They found it was very useful for them to talk about the choices they have to make everyday. YS: It seems as if there is a disconnect, people wanting to be sustainable and not knowing what to do?SS: Certain questions can be answered by others, such as “I need a source in Peru” but how you choose to go about imagining who you are as a designer has to come from you. I think there’s great value in knowing what your signature is, what your point of view is, how to render it, who is going to appreciate it, how far you can take it and being content with that and scaling it to that. And making great choices that allow you to do it in a way that it’s good for you. In the Bay Area, for instance a company that I think is fantastic is a ceramic company from Sausalito called Heath. Everything that Robin and Cathy have done makes sense. And they’ve just opened a huge store in L.A. in the midst of a recession, but it’s the right store. They truck things down twice a month so they always know exactly what is selling and what to produce. They manufacture locally, they partner with Chez Panisse and Blue Bottle, and other artisanal lifestyle choice businesses that they are part of. They opened at Opening Ceremony in Japan. They are the height of the fashion life, as uber-fashion as you can get without necessarily being a fashion business.YS: What do you think of the San Francisco emerging designer scene?SS: When I come here I usually go to Modern Appealing Clothing and see what they carry. I think there’s no reason to do Paris in San Francisco, or Fifth Avenue in San Francisco. You have to do something that connects to San Francisco. I don’t think San Francisco needs a fashion week, I don’t even think L.A. needs a fashion week. You have to do something that makes sense here. I think it’s probably true that if you want a larger audience you’ll probably have to go to New York or even L.A. Full post can be read at: http://ifcsf.blogspot.com/2009/11/conversations-with-fashion-innovators.html
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By: Charlene Brown
On behalf of the "Give Light" Initiative, I wish you an eco-holiday and to ask you to join in using solar powered lights this holiday to help reduce demand on the power grid and reduce your carbon footprint; And, of course, reduce your electric bill year after year.
Another objective of the Give Light Initiative is to help those who are without electricity to light their windows this season. Full program details and solar light samples are online at www.lookinggreen.org.
And for every ten solar light sets sold, we will give a gift of light to a needy family in the neighborhood.
Give Light Initiative Goals:
d. One million solar powered LED lights distributed (10,000 strings of 100 LED bulbs each)
e. One million watts saved during the holidays, and up to 10,000 hours of light for years to come
f. Two Hundred Thousand dollars to benefit local non-profits and needy residents
g. Three Thousand solar light strings gifted to needy families in the neighborhood
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By: Green Blogger
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By Linda Buzzell
Psychotherapist, co-editor "Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind"
Read more at: Huffington Post
Permaculture's popping up all over. It's really catching on with young green activists like Juno star Ellen Page, who recently took a break from Hollywood to talk on the Ellen DeGeneres show about her experiences studying permaculture design in an eco-village near Eugene, Oregon.
Teen Hollywood
Page told Teen Hollywood "It's about living in a holistic way with the earth and reintegrating our lifestyles with the natural cycles ... It was amazing. Anyone at all who has a passion for it can learn about it and use it in their lives in so many different ways ... like peeing in a bucket and using it on your compost. Pee is an excellent source of nitrogen."
But what the heck IS permaculture, besides peeing into a bucket?
Permaculture is an ecological design system based on deep observation of nature, and can be applied to gardens, farms, landscapes, homes and also to "invisible systems" like communities, economies, societies, our psyches and even our spiritual practices. It's a path towards sustainable living that is patterned on the way nature works, and can be applied in rural, suburban and urban areas.
Permaculture was invented in Australia in the 1970s by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren and is just now really catching on around the planet. The word "permaculture" is an abbreviation for "permanent agriculture" or "permanent culture."
NaturalNews.com reports that "Permaculture is a way of living; it involves sustainability, ethics, community living, harmony with nature, appropriate technology, organic living, organic farming, etc. It is a way to integrate nature and people in the most sustainable way."
"In permaculture, ethics and design principles are used to help us make good decisions for the people and the environment." NaturalNews also tell us that Permaculture follows three ethics:
Care for the land: Actions to protect the environment and improve it. Earth should be seen as a whole.Care for the people: It involves the physical and psychological aspects, for example providing food and shelter, natural medications, reduce daily hard work, and provide equal opportunities for all people.
Care for the future: It is very important if we want to conserve our resources. Some of the aspects that it involves are recycling, planning, cooperation not competition, supporting local economy, and the use of renewable energy and resources.
My husband and I took the Permaculture Design Course a few years ago and found it incredibly useful and eye-opening. (No peeing in a bucket during our class, though!) What we learned was that the permaculture principles can be applied to every aspect of your daily life as you move towards a happier, more nature-connected and sustainable way of living.
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Here are a few resources for those who would like to learn more about permaculture:
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First and last, the purpose of Blog Action Day is to create a discussion. We ask bloggers to take a single day out of their schedule and focus it on an important issue.
A: For Aqua. In the great white north, we have an abundance of the most important resource of all things life on the planet. The majority of Canada’s power production (just under 60%) comes from hydroelectricity. In Ontario, Nuclear and Hydro combined represent 75% of power production – all of which is non carbon emitting. (*Source: laforet.ca)
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By Wesley Cronk
Has Mom Been Teaching Me to Go Green?
Writing a paper about sustainable development the other day, I reached the conclusion and needed one final sentence to tie everything together. Struggling to come up with something witty I was picking every last corner of my brain until out of leftfield an old piece of parental advice came to mind: treat others the way you want to be treated.
Actually using this phrase as the last line in my paper would have been a disaster so I left it out. Put in context it made absolutely no sense. This did give me the chance to stop and wonder for a while though. Could my parents have been giving me better advice than I had realized this whole time? Have they been giving me tips for being green this entire time?
After spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about this vague possibility, I realized that a lot of “momisms” are surprisingly applicable to living sustainably. Here are some of the better ones:
· “Treat others the way you want to be treated”: Exact opposite of the “not in my backyard” mindset that Americans often possess, consciously or not. The perfect example of this is in China, where workers wearing little protection process 90% of the electronic waste that we produce. Laden with toxins and heavy metals, the recycling process is extremely hazardous. Mom would not like the way we are treating the developing world.
· “Money doesn’t grow on trees”: Mom’s way of condemning deforestation? Sounds like it to me.
· “Close the door behind you, we don’t live in a barn”: Sometimes accompanied by the “we aren’t air conditioning the neighborhood” line, Mom was teaching me energy efficiency before I knew what energy was. My parents being serious about weatherization could explain why we had so much caulk in the garage.
· “I’m not your personal taxi service”: Mom was apparently preparing for climate change before Al Gore. Explains why I rode a bike so many places when I was younger.
· “I brought you into this world and I can take you out”: This was less motherly advice than it was a reality check for when I acted up. Regardless, it holds true on the largest scale. Earth has nurtured humanity to this point and has the ability to wipe us out. Lucky for me my Mom couldn’t punish me with climate change.
I admit that the entire concept of this post is a bit of a stretch but I wanted to follow through with it because I did come to some realizations during this exercise. American society has developed an out-of-sight, out-of-mind attitude that has let us stray from some fundamentals. Would you be upset with China dumping their toxic waste in the park near your house? I’m sure they aren’t happy with us when they get cancer from ours.
Mom was right about more than I want to admit. If you are ever trying to think of a way that you can live ‘greener’ try going back to the basics and consider that motherly advice you stored away in the archives of your mind. Just don’t tell your Mom that she was right or you will get a momism that you don’t want: “I told you so.”
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