Sustainablog

Like millions of Americans, we’re celebrating July 4th, Independence Day.

However, we’re celebrating this national holiday by focusing on the many aspects of our life that, in various ways, have led us to quite a different vision for a sustainable tomorrow – complete with local, renewable energy and lots of delicious meals harvested within ten miles of where we live – if not from our own kitchen garden.  Sometimes we even celebrate July 4th with a rainbow.

Here’s how our Independence Day is different — and yours can be too:

•  Be energy independent by generating all our power with renewable energy systems.
For a vast portion of the United States, there is enough solar and wind energy to completely meet our needs right where we live.  True, adopting renewable energy will require an investment either personally or for your business if you work from home.  But with present Federal tax credits and many state incentives, the time couldn’t be better.  We completely power our Inn Serendipity Bed & Breakfast and Farm with solar electric and wind turbine systems.  In fact, we overproduce renewable energy to the tune of about 4,000 kWhs (kilowatt hours) a year.  We share the surplus with our neighbors.

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Two weeks ago, we took a look at news from the Congo involving “conflict minerals”: armed groups have exploited the mining of materials such as tin, tungsten, gold, and tantalum, and the people who live near these resources, to fund their fighting. Since then, I’ve had a chance to communicate with David Sullivan, a research associate with the Enough Project, about the issues surrounding the situation in the Congo. David addresses the multiple atrocities — human and environmental — surrounding the trade of these materials, and the actions you can take to ensure electronics manufacturers are aware of these issues.

sustainablog: Oftentimes, situations like these arise from limited economic opportunities. What other means of making a living are available (or could become available) to people in the Eastern Congo? Are there options for these people that couldn’t be as readily exploited by armed groups in the area?

David Sullivan: Impoverished Congolese miners and their families are often entirely dependent on their meager income from mining, and they currently have few viable economic alternatives to lift them out of this indentured servitude. What could be the most promising alternative to mining is agriculture, but the threat of violence often forces Congolese farmers to abandon their fields to flee for safety.

Efforts to end the trade in conflict minerals absolutely must be accompanied by international support for livelihoods and economic opportunities in eastern Congo. Rebuilding roads is a key opportunity, so that other sectors can benefit from trade. Infrastructure projects with guaranteed labor at decent wages can help lure miners out of conflict mines and create opportunities for demobilized combatants. Larger firms can raise miners’ living standards if independently verifiable mechanisms are put in place to ensure that the corporations are not contributing to armed groups, and health, safety, and labor standards are observed at mining sites. International investment should be stepped up in agricultural development initiatives in eastern Congo, which mining has displaced in recent years.  Good models for agricultural investments in mining areas exist in Sierra Leone. Other livelihood initiatives, such as small business development projects, should also be promoted. All projects should be designed in close partnership with miners themselves, and should also be followed up with education initiatives for miners.

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Editor’s note: Brenna Dardolph is a student at the University of Kansas who recently finished Prof. Simran Sethi’s course Media & the Environment.

When we were seven, my good friend Julia’s parents finally quit smoking. The cause? Their little first grader’s nagging. As part of her elementary school curriculum, Julia was learning about the perils of smoking. It was her concern that finally convinced her parents to kick the habit.

As much as we believe parents shape their children, rarely do we consider that the opposite may be true. But the British government apparently does. Recently, seventeen local councils called on citizens, including children as young as seven to become the nation’s environmental watchdogs– to be on guard for littering, noise pollution and other environmental infractions. Participants in programs like “Eyes for Islington” in Islington or the “Junior Street Champions” in Luton receive information about collecting evidence and reporting environmental crimes. As a writer in the Independent pointed out, it is a chance for Britain’s youngsters to leave their computer games, get out their notebooks and commit themselves to a better community.

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Do you recycle your cell phones? It’s a great practice for insuring that toxic materials in those old phones don’t make their way into the environment. But what about the other side of the cell phone lifecycle? Do you know where the materials come from?

It turns out that many of the minerals in that phone have an ugly story behind them, similar to that of blood diamonds. TakePart.com, a project of Participant Media, produced the PSA above as part of a larger campaign to educate the public about the role “conflict minerals” such as tin, tungsten, gold, and tantalum play in funding armed groups fighting in the Eastern Congo. According to Raise Hope for Congo, a campaign of the Enough Project,

The conflict in eastern Congo, the deadliest in the world since World War II, is being fueled by a multi-million dollar trade in minerals that go into our electronic products from cell phones to digital cameras. Over five million people have died as a result of the war, and hundreds of thousands of women have been raped in eastern Congo over the past decade. The armed groups that are perpetuating the violence generate an estimated $144 million each year by trading in [the above-mentioned] four main minerals…

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Manchester, Tennessee- The first day of the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival, a day which has traditionally been a day of travel and arrival for most festival attendees, greeted an estimated crowd of seventy-five thousand music fans from around the world with some good old fashioned southern rainshowers. And this wasn’t a light rain, by any definition. The rain, which began shortly after the four-day festival’s first performances, didn’t dampen the mood of the smiling festivarians, but it didn’t help the speed with which people were able to enter the festival grounds and set up their encampments.

The elements may have slowed the entrance for many, but delays were nothing like those in years past. In 2002, for example, at the inaugural Bonnaroo, it took this author about 18 hours to cover the last 45 miles! Read the rest of this entry »

Need another reason to spend time on Facebook? Or, just getting tired of Mafia Wars, Kidnap!, or even Willy’s Sweet Shop? Today, Timberland and changents officially launch yet another excuse for playing on FB rather than getting your work done: Earthkeepers Hero: Mission Possible.

I’ve played around with the app for a couple of days now, and, yes, I see how it could get addictive. Playing off the spy thriller motif, you’re presented with “missions” that revolve around an action/activism scenario, and give you a green trivia question to answer. There’s a definite social media aspect to it: you can recruit “backers” from your Facebook friends (which you’ll need for higher-level missions), and even get clues from real Timberland Earthkeeper Heroes such as Christopher Swain, Cate Trotter, Sami Nerenberg, and Nate Bastien.

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So, what exactly are green jobs? The answer to that question largely depends on an individual’s skills, training and experience: construction workers, computer programmers, and public relations professionals could all find themselves labeled as green collar in the right circumstances. For Dave Foster, a former official with the United Steelworkers, the phrase has a specific definition: ”A green job is nothing more than a blue-collar job with a green purpose.”

Today’s Post-Dispatch provides us with yet another example of how organized labor and mainstream environmental groups are joining forces to promote a green economy. Writer Steve Giegerich took note of steelworkers and Sierra Club members marching together recently to protest the loss of jobs at Granite City, Illinois’ U.S. Steel plant. As you can see in both the video above, and the article, blue collar workers around the country increasingly “get it”: green industry provides one of the most promising means of rebuilding a manufacturing economy in the United States.

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Things must be getting serious. At least for the planet and the environment. What else would explain the plethora of eco documentaries hitting the film festival circuit or that will hit mainstream theaters in the near future? Many of these green docu films cast a waving finger along with charts and graphs about what will happen to the planet in the future if we don’t act now. The Age of Stupid works a bit in reverse.

The Age of Stupid takes place in the year 2055 with a man called the Archivist (Pete Postlethwaite) sitting in a Noah’s Ark type storage tower with a collection of famous art, pairs of animals, and enough computer servers to make Google envious.  The tower exists because the world has turned into a fiery, and flood ridden disaster area. The Archivist  searches through archived video footage to see where man went wrong after having the opportunity to change things. The film takes futuristic standpoint of looking at the present (like right now). Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by David Gilbert, http://www.uncontacted.com/

A documentary or any feature film, like a good dessert, needs good texture. Some docs offer light delicate flavors, while others serve up crisp tawdry offerings but Crude, the latest feature documentary from director Joe Berlinger (Brother’s Keeper, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster) brings a feel so viscous its some wonder that the film and the emotions within it don’t just ooze into the theater.

And why wouldn’t the film be viscous with center of the film swirling around a legal case about the black gold being pumped out of the jungles of Ecuador. Some have called the case the “Amazon Chernobyl” but whatever the name, Berlinger delves head first into this the David versus Goliath story that circles around one of the longest and most controversial legal (not to mention environmental and human rights) cases ever. Read the rest of this entry »

Host Sean Daily talks with environmental politics blogger Tim Hurst, editor of RedGreenandBlue.org and publisher of Ecopolitology.org, about his writing and the role of new and social media in environmental politics and activism.

[Courtesy of our friends at GreenLivingIdeas.com]

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