Posts tagged as "environment" - Chris Hardie

I recently met with a local organization involved in environmental education efforts to talk about the status of sustainability education in Richmond and Wayne County.  In preparing for that conversation, I put together a list of what I see as some of the challenges our community faces when it comes to becoming more sustainable and self-reliant: Most high profile community leaders and organizations aren’t modeling awareness of sustainability issues, sometimes even at a basic level. Almost...

I attended a nice talk this morning that tried to answer the question "what is a sustainable community?"  It and some other recent exchanges I've had reminded me that there are a lot of fears we have wrapped up in exploring that question.  Sometimes those fears prevent us from exploring these ideas fully, or from considering new possibilities for our own lives. So I thought I would start an inventory of some of those fears, and see what else you might have to add.  By exploring our fears and understanding...

I've blogged before about turning points in awareness of the issues that we face with regard to "the environment" and the energy crisis. Today I received a postcard in the mail with a photo of a man holding a gasoline pump nozzle up to his head, in an image that unavoidably evokes a suicide act in progress for most Westerners. I, having met Richard Heinberg and read his book The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, of course presumed it was something related to addressing...

When I grow up, I want to get a job (or an internship, or just a stint in the mail room) with Corporate Accountability International, the folks who are behind the recent announcement by PepsiCo that they will label their Aquafina bottled water for what it is - tap water that's been filtered a few extra times. It's good news in the world of truth-in-marketing, and a nice success story for a so-called "corporate watchdog." (Blog entry for another day: why do we need so many corporate watchdogs? Hmmm.) And...

I saw an article today about New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to introduce an $8 congestion fee for drivers who enter Manhattan below 86th Street. As someone who lives in a town where they'll just about pay you $8 to enter the downtown area, I'm not too worried about this trend reaching me anytime soon. But the plan itself is in reaction to a premise that drives so much of our economic development conversations these days: "Advocates [of the fee] say it's crucial for a city that's...

Thanks to Paul Retherford for pointing me to this essay, Beyond Sustainability: Why an All-Consuming Campaign to Reduce Unsustainability Fails. Highlight: Our very approach to solving the “problem” of unsustainability is grounded in a mindset that prevents sustainability from emerging. Always anchored to the past, the future is envisioned as being bigger or better. But such an approach will always keep us rooted in the past. To escape from the past, one must think in an entirely different...

During the Third U.S. Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions that I attended last month, I found myself surrounded by an amazing group of hundreds of people who were trying to make changes in the world to move us (the human species) toward sustainability. While I do not limit my thinking on sustainability to the slogan "be the change you want to see in the world" (article on that is forthcoming), I thought it might be useful to take an inventory of the things I'm doing in my own life to reduce...

I've talked about oil prices and peak oil here in the past (on several occasions, really). You may remember that we had a panel of experts here in November to provide an outlook on the economic health of the area, and one of them said that as long as the price of oil doesn't reach $70/barrel, we'll be okay. Hmm - at the end of the week the price went up to $75 a barrel, a record and people are paying US$4/gallon in some areas. And - oh my - they're actually noticing. Perhaps its just an "Earth...

Last year I made a short video about the raising of a 104-foot wind turbine at the Cope Environmental Center here in town. I've just gotten around to posting it, so you can take a look and let me know what you think. It's a little dramatic and rough around the edges, but it was great to be a part of that experience and get it on film. Thanks also to Evan Agee for his help in some production design, and Geoff Greenfield of Third Sun Solar & Wind Power for the great work and juicy sound bites. If you haven't...

One can't help but notice a headline like that: "Humans spur worst extinctions since dinosaurs" - it might even bring one out of a blogging hiatus. You can read the full U.N. report in various languages, but the summary is that, "[i]n effect, we are currently responsible for the sixth major extinction event in the history of earth." We? Who, me? Wowsers. Considering how brief a time humans have been around in that earth history, we should be pretty proud of ourselves to make such a blip on the ole'...