Daily Loaf

After all the efforts from people around the globe to get our world leaders to listen up and take action against climate change in December in Copenhagen, it looks like things aren’t going to be changing any time soon.

Yesterday, President Obama and leaders from the rest of the world’s top economic powers finally fessed up that they don’t believe major progress concerning climate change can be achieved by the end of the year.
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Earlier this week, the UK’s climate chief and leading authority on global warming, Lord Stern of Brentford, released a report on the raising of cattle and pigs, and how its production greatly affects greenhouse gases and climate change. Bentford said that, “Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world’s resources. A vegetarian diet is better.”

Stern reports that meat production at about 18 percent of global carbon emissions. He also hopes that “a successful deal at the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December would lead to soaring costs for meat and other foods that generate large quantities of greenhouse gases.”

This is proving to be yet another topic to send Glenn Beck on a tirade. Beck plays the meat-loving victim and asks, “Are we going to stand for that? Are we going to put up with this?” He also goes on to mock the Meatless Monday movement and makes it sound like more of a punishment for school children than something that would help teach them to make healthy food choices.

Video after the break:
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Last Saturday (October 24) was the International Day of Climate Action — the biggest day of grassroots action on global warming ever. People from over 180 countries participated in different ways to show our world leaders that we want them to establish stricter rules on global carbon emissions when they meet in Copenhagen in December to reach an agreement on a new climate treaty.

There were over 5,200 events staged internationally and over 19,000 photos taken of the various events that day — from the US to India, Australia to Iceland. See photos submitted to Greenpeace, the Huffington Post, TreeHugger, and check out 350.org’s page for photos and current updates of the movement.
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This Saturday, October 24, 2009, is the International Day of Climate Action - the biggest day of grassroots action on global warming ever. Why are people speaking out on this day, you ask?

People are trying to make their voices heard over wanting stricter regulations on global carbon emissions, so we can try to curb global warming before it gets out of hand. This December in Copenhagen, many world leaders will be attending the Climate Conference to reach an agreement on a new climate treaty. Environmental activists want them to know that they mean business and want things changed now, before it’s too late.

That’s where 350.org comes in:
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If you’re interested in clean energy solutions, climate change, and the environment, be sure to attend the Repower America event tonight in St. Petersburg:
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Join the Audubon of Florida on October 23 and 24 in St. Petersburg for the 2009 Audubon Assembly and Dialogue on Coastal Conservation and Climate Change. See below for more information:

Celebrated oceanographer Sylvia Earle, Ph. D., is the Assembly’s keynote speaker. The two-day program brings together conservation leaders and scientists—as well as policy makers, and business people from across Florida to discuss strategies to protect our coasts, birds, and wildlife, and secure our quality of life.

Come and enjoy two days of Audubon fellowship. Connect with nature and birds on expert-led and self-guided field trips. Celebrate Audubon chapter milestones, too: St. Petersburg Audubon turns 100 and Clearwater Audubon is 50 this year. Deepen your knowledge at exciting learning sessions. And share your stories of how climate change is affecting your life and the places you care about. See the full assembly schedule. Receive a discount for early registration.
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[Tampa, FL-  Sept.21, 2009]  Tonight I attended the global premiere of the film The Age of Stupid. I was invited to this event by my friend Ingrid Esteves, a French national who doesn’t understand how the U.S. could back out of the Kyoto Treaty, or why we’d want to be as stupid as Napoleon and start wars on two fronts at the same time. Yes, there’s lots of ’stupid’ to discuss in our age, but let’s talk about this outstanding film first. This film is ambitious in several respects. Firstly, there’s the way it premiered.

The film opened globally tonight in synch with a star-studded live screening event in New York. Before the film began audiences were able to watch VIPs arrive at the Manhattan premiere by bike, rickshaw, electric car and sail boat via a satellite link that broadcast the event to 700 cinemas in 50+ countries. The celebrities then walked a green carpet (made from recycled soda bottles) to a solar powered cinema tent in downtown New York.
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Welcome to On the Radar, where we preview up-and-coming arts events to mark your calendar for. Next Monday, you can check out The Age of Stupid, an eco docu-drama directed by Franny Armstrong (McLibel, Drowned Out).

It’s shown as a “first of it’s kind” worldwide event — simulcast live from a solar tent in New York to select theaters in conjunction with UN Climate Week. The film stars Pete Postlethwaite (pictured) as a global archivist in the future who is wondering why the heck people didn’t get the clue about global climate change and stop it when they had a chance. It features present day news clips in an archive that interweaves six dramatic stories of people from around the globe facing different ecological crises. After the film, there’s a live via satellite panel discussion with the director, Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Gillian Anderson of X-Files fame, Postlethwaite, and field scientists working in the Himalayas and the Indonesian rain forest. Bonus: Thom Yorke of Radiohead ends the show with an acoustic performance of the film’s title track. Mon., Sept. 21, 7:30 p.m., Citrus Park Stadium 20, 7999 Citrus Park Town Center Mall, Tampa, $12.50, visit fathomevents.com for a full list of participating theaters. – Katie Machol

What’s the buzz on the latest issues in the Green Community? Check out what you may have missed this last week:

Eco-adventurer takes ‘Plastiki’ expedition to the Pacific Garbage Patch- Eco-adventurer David de Rothschild plans to sail 11,000 miles from San Francisco to Sydney by way of the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch on his 60-foot catamaran called the Plastiki.

The truth about Van Jones: Communist? Nope. Revolutionary? Hope so. – From what I’ve known about Jones as a person and his work the past four years, I would say it’s pushing it to call him a communist. As for being a revolutionary, he is indeed a leader in the Green Revolution.

What we need to form Florida’s green economy- A green economy, based upon ethics, entrepreneurship and decentralization, would be the way to move forward for this state and our country.
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The Age of Stupid is an eco docu-drama directed by Franny Armstrong (Mc Libel, Drowned Out) and will be shown as a “first of it’s kind” worldwide live event- simulcast live from a solar tent in New York to only 440 movie theaters in the nation, in conjunction with UN Climate Week.

The film stars Pete Postlethwaite (The Usual Suspects) as a global archivist in the future who is wondering why the heck people didn’t get the clue about global climate change and stop it when we still had a chance. It also interweaves six dramatic stories of people from around the globe facing different ecological crises and features present day news clips that are featured in this future media archive.

See the trailer after the jump:
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What’s the buzz on the latest issues in the Green Community? Check out what you may have missed this last week:

Fixing sprawl and redesigning suburbia- Grant Rimbey CNU explores a possible strategy towards improving existing sprawl. Fixing the sprawl that we have, along with sprawl demolition and recycling, are strategies that could be employed in the future as a new green industry.

Nation’s largest solar facility to be in DeSoto County by next year- Florida Power and Light is currently building the nation’s largest photovoltaic plant in DeSoto County, a $173.5 million, 25 megawatt solar generating facility.

Fresh: New Thinking About What We’re Eating screening – What’s wrong with the mega-industrial food industry- Struggling small farms, problems with food safety rules and the mega-industrial food industry, and a film about all of the above.
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Since 2006, one book has held a prominent position in my library, as well as my nightstand because of its eloquence and forthrightness. That book is E. O. Wilson’s The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth.  Environmental books have become as ubiquitous as Florida strip malls, so its position at the top of my all time greatest list (not included in this article) shouldn’t be taken lightly. It’s a small book, which can be easily finished in a day, but it’s packed with such insight that its hard not to refer back to it. It has been my inspiration when I have strayed on past ventures in sustainability and good stewardship of the planet. In fact, many of my dinner guests have been subjected to readings from its pages.  So, I begin my article/commentary/blog in the same vain with an excerpt from the book.

According to archeological evidence, we strayed from Nature with the beginning of civilization roughly ten thousand years ago.  That quantum leap beguiled us with an illusion of freedom from the world that had given us birth.  It nourished the belief that the human spirit can be molded into something new to fit changes in the environment and culture, and as a result the timetables of history desynchronized.  A wiser intelligence might now truthfully say of us at this point:  here is a chimera, a new and very odd species come shambling into our universe, a mix of Stone Age emotion, medieval self-image, and godlike technology.  The combination makes the species unresponsive to the forces that count most for its own long-term survival.  (Wilson, 2006)

That part about the Stone Age emotion, medieval self-image, and godlike technology can fuel a discussion for hours. Welcome to the age of Homo sapiens, especially our last hundred years.
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What’s the buzz on the latest issues in the Green Community? Check out what you may have missed this last week:

Living with the land: Florida’s first Earthship (video) – Eric Stewart gives a firsthand look at Florida’s first Earthship in Manatee County, and gets his hands dirty while helping out.

Not getting a million-dollar bonus this year? Think local stimulus- Scott Milinder shows us a real stimulus package that will work for us: we all commit to “Buying Local First.” According to recent economic studies, shifting your buying habits to locally owned businesses creates more circulation of money, more economic activity and more jobs in the local economy.

Eco-friendly summertime fashion accessories- Are you searching for a unique and beautiful purse to enhance your summer wardrobe? Then why not consider one of these recycled handbags that are made from recycled items that help to promote a cleaner and healthier world, reports Jen Meier.
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I just participated in a panel discussion on offshore drilling of our Florida beaches, sponsored by the Tampa Bay Beaches Chamber of Commerce. Also joining me were Pinellas County Commissioner Ken Welch, Senator Nelson’s staff Shahra Anderson, and the Ocean Conservancy’s TJ Marshall, as well as two other panelists acting essentially as lobbyists for the oil industry from the Southern Strategies Group – the firm that came close last spring to getting our state legislature to okay oil drilling within three miles of our beaches.

Over and over, their message came across: “Trust us. The oil companies would never do anything to harm your beaches. Honest, we can drill and you’ll never see a spill, nary a drop nor a tar ball. Never mind that Texas beaches, naturally as nice as Florida’s, have almost zero tourism revenue because of the muck and tar balls that ruin a nice walk on the beach there. If we had anything to do with that, we’re sorry, but that would never happen here. We’re much more careful now. Trust us.”

Two problems with this argument:
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Florida, in light orange-yellow on the Dept of Energy map, above, joins some other states without renewable portfolio standards to require renewable energy production.

We are long overdue for a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) in this state (a regulation that requires the increased production of energy from renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal). According to the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, we are not only the most populated state without one, but we are joined by the likes of Alabama,

Mississippi, and several other states not known for their progressive agendas.

In 2008, Governor Charlie Crist signed legislation which required the Public Service Commission (PSC) to develop a renewable portfolio standard by February 1, 2009, which then had to be adopted by the legislature before being implemented.
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What’s the buzz on the latest issues in the Green Community? Check out what you may have missed this last week:

Celebrating Independence Day or creating environmental disaster? – Kelly Rothwell looks at the littered aftermath of Fourth of July celebrations and wonder why, instead of giving back in celebration of their freedom, people decide to light off fireworks, leaving mass amounts of debris in the water and on the beach.

Local Food: Dinner in, and from, the garden at Gateway Organic Farm – Chef Gui Alinat gives information about Gateway Organic Farm’s next “Dinner in the Garden” event, an incredible local foods experience featuring nine Bay area chefs.

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Our economy is unsustainable. That means at some point in the future it will cease to be sustained. People will lose homes and jobs, and lifestyles will change. Sound familiar to our present day scenario? In my previous post I added a link to the Crash Course, a video series about the challenges America faces over the coming 10 years from our oil addiction: our generation gap of baby boomers retiring and not enough workers to pay for their retirement, our incredibly increasing debt, our lack of savings, and our exponential growth due to fossil fuel consumption resulting in a degrading supply of resources as well as destruction of the ecology we depend on for life. Peak Oil was another issue I brought up in a recent blog. All of these issues will bring about future scenarios that can play in multiple ways. (You can watch these videos from my post here.)

The context of this post will follow the future energy descent scenarios created by David Holmgren, one of the founders of Permaculture, as per his website Future Scenarios. These scenarios deal with the responses we can go forward with after the peak production of oil arises. Our country imports nearly 70% of its oil - how can our country continue this path of exponential growth if other countries deteriorate in oil exports?
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What’s the buzz on the latest issues in the Green Community? Check out what you may have missed this past week:

Reconstructing a historic bat tower in Temple Terrace and how to build your own bat roost- Grant Rimbey investigates efforts in Temple Terrace to reconstruct an historic tower for bats, discusses a large community bat roost he designed for the Florida Bat Conservancy, and tells how you can purchase (or build) your own bat roost for your yard.

Summer Solstice: A brief history- Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year, occurs this Sunday- June 21st. Here are a few facts you might not have known about it, from Linda Taylor.

Organics: How to eat well without breaking your budget- With the increase of demand over organic food in the last ten years you would think that a wide range of these products would be easily accessible. Here’s some some advice from Kelly Rothwell on purchasing healthy, organic food in this region without breaking your budget.
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Below, is an interview I just conducted with Arlen Slobodow, a local filmmaker who just completed a documentary about air pollution caused by fossil fuels in the Tampa Bay area and how it affects our health and the health of our planet. Also, see my last post which goes more in depth about the film.

The following interview was conducted by phone on the evening of Tuesday, June 16, 2009.

Matt De Vlieger (M): How did you get involved in documentary filmmaking?
Arlen Slobodow (A): I have always been interested in social change work and have found mass media a good way to accomplish that. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, I received an email from a local filmmaker, Arlen Slobodow of Public Media Productions, asking me to take a look at a 17-minute video he just completed on public health and the environmental consequences of air pollution in the Tampa Bay area.  Because I am such a supporter of local independent media production, things that inspire action for the public good, and combating big polluters, I thought I’d share it.  Also, be sure to check out my interview with the film’s writer/director/producer, Arlen Slobodow, in my next post.

Video after the jump
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What’s the buzz on the latest issues in the Green Community? Check out what you may have missed this past week:

Stretching your diet and exercise comfort zone: moving through a plateau: contributor Kelly Rothwell lists a few ways to work through your diet and exercise plateaus.

Greenpeace comes to Tampa with bad news about Florida’s emissions: Joshua Michael Poll takes a look Greenpeace’s report that Florida is one of the biggest emissions producers in the world.
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Have you ever heard the Vietnam-era quote, “war is not healthy for children and other living things?” It is a staunchly obvious and painstakingly reasonable appeal that cuts to the ethical core and casualties of war.  I read an article this week that reminded me of it, but instead of war, the murderous culprit in this story is climate change.

A new report by the Global Humanitarian Forum (GHF) says that global warming already kills about 300,000 people a year.  If that projection is not startling enough– or if you have more of an economic mind, and are not much swayed by stacks of human figures—the report also says that climate change costs around $125 billion in economic losses annually.
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It would be interesting to see the readership poll results concerning where we think this country will be 15 to 20 years from now. Perhaps it should include some reference to where we stand with regard to the rest of the world. As you know, just a few of the factors that would influence our view of the future would involve the results of peak-oil, climate change, national debt, inflation, loss of manufacturing, increasing population, state fascism, a broken educational system, an unjust medical system, etc. I can only speculate upon your perspective but, my research does not present a very pretty picture. Chris Martenson says it so clearly with his catch phrase, “The next twenty years will be completely unlike the last twenty years.” (I advise taking the Crash Course.)

Five years ago I read Michael Ruppert’s Crossing the Rubicon and it was instrumental in beginning my search for even more information regarding 9/11 and the list of influences listed above. Michael was an L.A. cop working in narcotics who slowly began to know too much about how drugs come into this country and where the money goes. Seeing corruption at high levels in the country he loved set him on a very interesting journey. The byline for the book was, “The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil.”

This little commentary will concern the thoughts I have about three books I read last month; “Future Scenarios” by David Holmgren, World Made by Hand by James Howard Knustler and Reinventing Collapse by Dmitry Orlov. They were read in that order but in hindsight, Kunstler’s book should have been last. Read the rest of this entry »

Concerns for the disastrous consequences of Peak-Oil and Climate Change are the most obvious reasons for “Going Green”. A great deal has been written about both subjects and it is not my desire to discuss the merits or lack thereof of either topic. You have probably “framed” your own position by now. I do posit the belief (based on the science I have seen) that the global production of sweet crude has peaked and that our species is responsible for major disruptions in the natural rhythms of the earth upon which we depend for survival.

In my last post I referenced Rob Hopkins (and I do so again). It would be well worth your time to listen to his interview if you have not. As an instructor and major advocate of permaculture he has great insight on how we need to approach the future collapse of America. The “Transition Initiative” is a methodology he and others have devised to help the communities of villages and hamlets in the U.K. understand the risks of complacency and move toward post-carbon solutions. They say that it is not merely going back to the past in terms of lifestyle but it has all the appearances. Read the rest of this entry »