Treehugger: Hyperion's Drive Clean to Drive Change Initiative

Treehugger: Hyperion's Drive Clean to Drive Change Initiative: "Hyperion, a Santa Clara, California-based business management software company with offices throughout the U.S., recently launched a program that that makes our hearts thump. We’ve heard of tuition reimbursement and flex-spending accounts, but Hyperion’s newest initiative helps employees purchase fuel-efficient cars for their personal use in order to help create a cleaner environment. Under its Drive Clean to Drive Change program, the company will reimburse employees $5,000 for driving vehicles that achieve 45 miles per gallon of gasoline, or the equivalent. Now that’s a cool company. And in America, it could make a big difference.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the United States pumps out about 22 tons of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere per person every year. That’s about twice what other industrialized nations, including Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom produce. Switching from a car that gets 20 mpg to one that gets 45 mpg can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by as much as three tons per person per year. A very good start. TreeHugger hopes that more companies will follow Hyperion’s lead."

what the [online] world thinks about global warming

Here is an excerpt from an article on global warming policy, originally published in the UK's Independent. This morning it ranked on technorati as the 48th most discussed topic in blogs worldwide. Below the excerpt I've posted quotes from groups and blogs in response.

Shining Light in Dark Corners: "The global warming danger threshold for the world is clearly marked for the first time in an international report to be published tomorrow - and the bad news is, the world has nearly reached it already.

The countdown to climate-change catastrophe is spelt out by a task force of senior politicians, business leaders and academics from around the world - and it is remarkably brief. In as little as 10 years, or even less, their report indicates, the point of no return with global warming may have been reached.

The report, Meeting The Climate Challenge, is aimed at policymakers in every country, from national leaders down. It has been timed to coincide with Tony Blair's promised efforts to advance climate change policy in 2005 as chairman of both the G8 group of rich countries and the European Union.

And it breaks new ground by putting a figure - for the first time in such a high-level document - on the danger point of global warming, that is, the temperature rise beyond which the world would be irretrievably committed to disastrous changes. These could include widespread agricultural failure, water shortages and major droughts, increased disease, sea-level rise and the death of forests - with the added possibility of abrupt catastrophic events such as 'runaway' global warming, the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, or the switching-off of the Gulf Stream. [...]"

Two blogs summarized at technorati:
INDC Journal:
"...[people talk] about or snidely mock the dire proclamations of environmentalists as "junk science" trotted out for political purposes. And sometimes, they're right. But I have a problem with right-wing commentators that immediately lurch to attack stories like this in absolutist terms: Climate change: report warns point of no return may be reached in 10 years, leading to droughts, agricultural failure and water shortages..."

from Country Store:
"Who's up for an "End of the World" scam? Ruh oh! It's Countdown to global catastrophe :The global warming danger threshold for the world is clearly marked for the first time in an international report to be published tomorrow - and the bad news is, the world has nearly reached it already..."

from comments on a blog called Right Voices:
"Human beings have no effect on global warming. The Earth warms and cools in cycles. It’s been happening long before we Humans were around, and it will always continue, wether we are here or not. There is not a damn thing we can do about global warming, so why worry about it as if we can somehow change it….like Al Gore does in his book"

"I am positive that in 10 years, little will have changed as far as global warming is concerned. These Scientists are wrong, just like they always are…this reeks of something put out there by the Environmentalist nut jobs. Weren’t they saying that we wouldn’t have an Ozone left in ten years, and that was about ten years ago? I guess we didn’t destroy it after all….maybe because we can’t you tree hugging morons, just like we can’t do anything to add or take away from Global Warming."

Comments at slashdot:

"I live in Michigan, US. I want global warming about now. It's about 0 degrees here. The sensor in my tire froze and broke now saying my car has low air pressure in the tires. I step out side and feel my noze hair freeze. BRING ON THE GLOBAL WAMING!!!!!! I need to thaw out."

"Since we've already reached the threshold... I'm buying a Hummer!"

Tragedy of the Commons

The Tragedy of the Commons has appeared prominently in several of Dr. Klineberg's recent lectures. I've posted some resourced that might help you more fully understand the allusion. Here is a link for the full original text, which first appeared in Science in 1968, and I've pasted a portion of the Wikipedia entry on the topic below.

Tragedy of the commons - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "The tragedy of the commons is a metaphor used to illustrate the conflict between individual interests and the common good. The term was popularized by Garrett Hardin in his 1968 Science article 'The Tragedy of the Commons.'

In Hardin's article, the Commons is a shared plot of grassland used by all livestock farmers in a village. Each farmer keeps adding more livestock to graze on the Commons, because it costs him nothing to do so. In a few years, the soil is depleted by overgrazing, the Commons becomes unusable, and the village perishes.

The cause of any tragedy of the commons is that when individuals use a public good, they do not bear the entire cost of their actions. If each seeks to maximize individual utility, he ignores the costs borne by others. This is an example of an externality. The best (non-cooperative) short-term strategy for an individual is to try to exploit more than his or her share of public resources. Assuming a majority of individuals follow this strategy, the theory goes, the public resource gets overexploited.

The tragedy of the commons is a source of intense controversy, precisely because it is unclear whether individuals will or will not follow the overexploitation strategy in any given situation. [...]"

On making eco-friendly cleaning products

On making eco-friendly cleaning products |
By Umbra Fisk |
Grist Magazine | Ask Umbra | 24 Jan 2005: "I'd like to start making my own environmentally friendly cleaning products for my home. Are there any books or websites you would recommend for cleaning 'recipes'?"

"You'll be disappointed if you were expecting elaborate, paella-like recipes to replace the commercial products we're told are essential to germ-free living. Turns out the steel wool has been pulled over our eyes. Without even turning to my research stacks, I can tell you that all homebrew cleaning recipes invoke four simple ingredients: white vinegar, castile soap, baking soda, and water. [...]"


my note: I can also vouch for the value of vinegar in cleaning, which has shown to disinfect as well as, if not better than, bleach. Because it disinfects by causing a hostile living environment (ph) rather than killing, vinegar doesn't cause antibacterial immunity problems among bacterial flora. Aside from protecting the water supply and not contributing to the chemical industry, we also use it in our home because bleach is the leading cause of calls to poison control. If my kids get a hold of the vinegar, nothing bad happens. And as to her floors comment: black tea (because of its tannins) finishes floors better than any chemical.

poignant in light of yesterday's lecture

Yesterday Dr. Klineberg said hunters are usually to first to take action if an environmental problem affects their game. Maybe this recent disclosure will boost efforts to clean up and protect Gaveston Bay?

houstonpress.com | Over the Limit? | 2005-01-27: "...Speckled trout collected at sites around Upper Galveston Bay last year contained elevated concentrations of PCBs, a widely used industrial compound that was banned decades ago based on links to brain damage, reproductive defects and other health problems....

"Such an advisory, if issued in line with the trout's migratory patterns, would be the first widespread health warning the state has ever posted for a major game fish in Galveston Bay. It could potentially hobble the local sport-fishing industry.

'I think [the effects] would be pretty profound,' says Ted Venker, a spokesperson for the Coastal Conservation Association, which represents many local fishermen. 'It's one of the bay's big three fish: flounder, redfish and speckled trout. That would create a big stir.' [...]"

allAfrica.com: South Africa: Environment Reporting Still a Grey Area

allAfrica.com: South Africa: Environment Reporting Still a Grey Area: "...The review finds that only three out of 50 global companies surveyed assess their balance sheet's implications of key environmental and social risks, despite this information being increasingly important to analysts, investors lenders, insurers and reinsurers. [...]"

let's get personal

Tomorrow registration at Rice closes, so I think we've got the class stabilized. I'd like to introduce myself in a little more depth and invite you all to do the same. If you're brave enough, tell us who you are, why you're taking the class, and what you would like to gain from the class and/or this blog.

My name is Annie Feighery. I'm a writer, blogger, mom, and social scientist. I'm passionate about motherhood, social change, and international aid. Although I'm involved in international aid projects, I believe that the most important work we can do for the world is to improve our culture right here in America because the export of our culture is a far greater influence than our international aid. My best shot at improving this culture is to educate parents in order to raise a generation of children in an environmentally sensitive paradigm. Additionally, I'm enthralled with popular culture. I see it as an insightful mirror of our society and the most valuable resource vehicle for social change at our disposal. I feel frustrated that most of the people who want to affect our culture toward environmental or ecological ends never watch a network sitcom or pick up a trend magazine--they don't speak the language of the people they want to change.

My education was in anthropology at the University of Texas at El Paso. I worked in the Houston non-profit world for five years before becoming a full-time writer two years ago. I'm still very involved in non-profits, however, via boards, committees, and volunteer service.

My vision for this blog and the class is three fold:

1) I want the blog to add a dimension of relevance to your classroom and reading lessons through popular culture and media links.

2) I want to provide a gentle exposure to technological means of communication, especially to blogs.

3) I want to create a venue for meaningful experiences, conversations that can change us all.

Christine Todd Whitman on tonight's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

COMEDY CENTRAL TV Shows: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart: "TONIGHT: Author of 'It's My Party, Too' Christine Todd Whitman! Plus Samantha Bee reports on 'Fixing Social Security.'"

She was the Bush administration's first and former head of the EPA. It airs tonight on cable channel 59 at 10 pm. If you miss it, it re-airs tonight at midnight and tomorrow at 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.

United Nations Millennium Development Goals

United Nations Millennium Development Goals "By the year 2015, all 191 United Nations Member States have pledged to meet these goals"

Drilling Plan OKd for Rare Desert Land

I'm from New Mexico. This is a sad decision for the whole state, which fought heartedly to preserve this grassland. Governor Bill Richardson tried every avenue from court cases to a governor's decree to stop the project. I think everyone is most afraid that a significant amount of oil will be found and then there will be no stopping the drills.

Yahoo! News - Drilling Plan OKd for Rare Desert Land: "Overriding objections by New Mexico's governor, the Interior Department announced a final plan Monday for expanding oil and gas drilling on Otero Mesa, a rare desert grassland and one of a handful of places in the western U.S. where opposition to drilling had united ranchers, property rights advocates, hunters and conservationists...

" More than 85% of public comments regarding Otero Mesa favored no drilling. Efforts to forestall drilling on Otero Mesa were led by a diverse coalition of New Mexicans concerned about groundwater, wildlife and the preservation of grazing land.

The rugged and rocky desert west of Carlsbad is home to herds of pronghorn antelope, migratory songbirds and countless Indian petroglyphs.

One of the most contested issues is water — both the quantity used for oil and gas production and the quality of water after it is used. Energy companies pump large amounts of groundwater while operating wells, and the used water is sometimes contaminated with saline or petroleum byproducts.

A study commissioned by the state found that Otero Mesa was the largest source of untapped groundwater in New Mexico. "There is really nothing in the plan that speaks to the issue of groundwater," said Stephen Capra of the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance. Capra said there were no limits on the amount of water that energy companies could pump.

"The bottom line continues to be we are talking about destroying the largest remaining desert grasslands in America for at best a few days worth of oil and gas. That is shortsighted," Capra said. [...]"

Nations Ranked as Protectors of the Environment

The New York Times > Science > Nations Ranked as Protectors of the Environment: "Countries from Northern and Central Europe and South America dominated the top spots in the 2005 index of environmental sustainability, which ranks nations on their success at such tasks as maintaining or improving air and water quality, maximizing biodiversity and cooperating with other countries on environmental problems.

Finland, Norway and Uruguay held the top three spots in the ranking, prepared by researchers at Yale and Columbia Universities. The United States ranked 45th of the 146 countries studied, behind such countries as Japan, Botswana and the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, and most of Western Europe. [...]"

blog press

Blogging in academia is an edge of the trend topic, not often found in the news. However, today's BBC has an article on the topic. Blogging outside of education, on the other hand, is the new favorite topic of newspapers, TV's evening news, and magazines.

Here are a few other places where blogs are making headlines:

An Indian CyberNews site has an article on the blogging response to the tsunami disaster.

Wired always runs articles regarding blogs, but this one is unusually opinionated, called Like it Or Not, Blogs Have Legs. They've also recently run an article on blogging and journalism and an article on flickr, the cool new photo blogging tool.

The San Francisco newspaper SF Gate had three articles on blogs this morning: one on blogs as personal outlets, one on people getting fired for blogging about work, and one on blogs as a source of news.

An unlikely midwestern source for techy news, the Grand Forks Herald, has this article today on a ND senator-turned-blogger.

Welcome to the Community Involvement Center

Welcome to the Community Involvement Center: "The Community Involvement Center offers several programs to involve students in a variety of service activities. From before classes begin, students can begin their service involvement at Rice by immersing themselves in the Houston community as part of the Urban Immersion Program. During Orientation Week, students volunteer at one of several sites on O-Week Outreach Day. Students who have very busy schedules find the America Reads and Counts Work-Study Program a great way to make money while helping the community. Many students choose to skip the South Padre scene and spend their Spring Break or two weeks in the summer on a group service project. Those looking for jobs or internships in social service or for post-graduate service opportunities such as the Peace Corps find the Good Works Fair to be helpful. There's something for everyone."

Houston's Fifth Ward Community Group Changes EPA Superfund Decision for the Better

MfCA - Press: "The Fifth Ward Chapter of Mothers for Clean Air, a non-profit community-based environmental group, has scored a major success in the clean-up of a hazardous waste site in its community. Comments made by the chapter in response to the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal for clean-up influenced the EPA to change its decision to a more extensive clean-up of the Many Diversified Interests (MDI) Superfund site that sits across the street from an elementary school.

The chapter worked with a consultant, hired through an EPA grant, to submit its technical comments. Chapter members wrote their own comments and also asked other interested parties to write letters. The EPA was “bombarded with a lot of comments...We got your comments and we listened to you,” said Stacey Bennet, Remedial Project Manager for the site. She added, “(the comments) were instrumental in getting EPA to reconsider its proposal.” The site will now be cleaned up to a level that will support the redevelopment proposed by the community. [...]"

Harry Potter (and The Green Press Initiative)

Treehugger: Harry Potter (and The Green Press Initiative): "Market Initiatives was able to get the almost 1 million copies of Canadian Edition of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix printed on 100-percent post-consumer recycled paper. An environmental saving of “39,000 trees, if virgin paper had been used, and more than 27,000 million BTUs of energy - enough to power the average North American home for 262 years.” Go Nicole! What wizardry.

'The mission of the Green Press Initiative is to work with publishers, industry stakeholders and authors to create paper-use transformations that will conserve natural resources and preserve endangered forests.' They do this by advancing awareness in the paper industry, providing a bunch of resources, such as lists of printers, suppliers and manufacturers and backgrounder papers. Additionally they are enroling these same folk to “make formal commitments to eliminate the use of paper with endangered forest fiber and to maximize the use of recycled, FSC certified, and alternative fiber paper that is produced chlorine free.” Authors Fritjof Capra, Alice Walker, and Julia Butterfly Hill endorse their endeavours. ::Green Press Initiative [by WM]

PS. Borrowing a copy from the library would make this the novel even greener. But if you already own a copy, setting up your own lending library would get the same result. And as it happens we have just the resource for you to do that! Check out Delicious Library."

Treehugger: Toyota Eco Buses (Z-Capsule & FCHV-BUS2)

Treehugger: Toyota Eco Buses (Z-Capsule & FCHV-BUS2): "All roads seem to lead to Toyota, when it comes to innovative transport. Personal vehicle use, as in a car, is obviously not as eco-effective as sharing the journey, such as with public transport. Even here Toyota are breaking the mould. Their Z-Capsule bus runs on a low-emission, Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) engine, with a people friendly no-step low floor. But not prepared to stop there, they teamed it with their IMTS project. Intelligent Multimode Transport Systems adjust to changes in demand for services, combining the advantages of dedicated rail lines, with the flexibilty of buses. On dedicated roadways, multiple Z-Capsules can travel unmanned and convoy-like (Toyota call them ‘platoons’) but then be human controlled on a standard street, The driverless trick is possible through magnet markers imbedded in the road. [...]"

Watching Earth’s Climate Change in the Classroom

Watching Earth’s Climate Change in the Classroom: "College and high school students can now see how Earth’s climate is changing without leaving their computers.

NASA and other organizations use NASA’s global climate computer model (GCM) to see how Earth’s climate is changing. A GCM calculates many things, such as how much sunlight is reflected and absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere, the temperature of the air and oceans, the distribution of clouds, rainfall, and snow, and what may happen to the polar ice caps in the future. [...]"

HoustonChronicle.com - Texas' guidelines for air toxics among the most lax in the nation

"The state of Texas' science for monitoring air toxics is difficult to explain, even for experts. But all agree on the bottom line: Texas is more lax than almost all other regulating entities in the United States."

click here to read the full article: Texas' guidelines for air toxics among the most lax in the nation

HoustonChronicle.com - State links cancer to bad air in parts of area

"People living in some east Harris County neighborhoods, the East End and parts of Texas City are at greater risk of contracting cancer because of toxic chemicals released by the region's industrial plants, according to a state analysis of 2003 air quality data.

State air pollution monitors in Texas City, Galena Park, Houston's East End, Deer Park, Channelview and at the Lynchburg Ferry detected levels of three hazardous chemicals that, if inhaled during a lifetime, would likely generate 29 to 199 additional cases of cancer in a million people. Under normal circumstances, there is a risk of one additional case of cancer developing in a population of 1,000,000. [...]"

Click here to continue reading State Links Cancer to Bad Air in Parts of Area

a short guide to this and other blogs

Please click here to read What's a Blog and Why do Blogs Matter?

Generally, blogs post new entries at the top of the page and older entries can be found as one scrolls down the page. Each entry is delineated by the bold heading and each day's entries are delineated by the section break. Bloggers set a number of entries to display on the front page and after that number is exceeded, older entries can be found in the archives along the sidebar.

Under posts are links that contain information regarding the entry. First is the entry's author (I'm annie). Most useful, is the comments button. This button allows you the reader to comment on the entry, thereby initiating that interaction that makes blogs so great. Some blogs also have a category that each post falls into. If you like the post topic, you can click on the category to read more like it. I'm not doing categories here, but it's useful if you're mixing personal, educational, and professional entries on one blog.

The time stamp makes the web address in the URL window into a permalink, the URL that directs readers to just that entry on its own page that never scrolls with future entries. Because blogs change every day, if you want to link to a blogger's entry, it's best to link to it via the entry's permalink so your blog readers will be directed to exactly the entry you refer to in your blog. Some blogs' permalinks are a number sign (#) at the bottom of the post, and some are a time stamp (3:54 p.m.) either under the entry heading or at the bottom of the entry.

Along the sidebar, blogs typically contain a blogroll, which is a list of the blogger's favorite blogs and websites to frequent or recommend. In the web culture, links are a unit of power, so a blogroll as well as the links embedded in entries' text are reserved for sites you want to boost. The main reason links are so powerful lies in the methods Google and other search engines use to rank search results. They send out 'bots, programs that crawl through, or spider, web pages cataloging content, and find which sites are linked to which sites and which words were used in the link. The search rank for the word "jew" is a famous example. Last year an anti-Semitic group googlebombed the word. Because I don't want to give this group any links or references [read, power], I don't want to name them or link to them, but look for yourself at the now-second ranked search result for a google search on the word. The anti-Semitic group organized a bunch of sites to put the word on websites over and over again, and to make each occurence of the word a link to the anti-Semitic site. It worked, and their site became the top search result for the word on google. But bloggers came to the semantic rescue and launched a counter-campaign to instead link the word "jew" to the wikipedia entry for the word on thousands upon thousands of blogs. Ironically, because Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written in the public domain via wiki format, the attention helped make the search term one of the longest and most contributed-to entries. In fact, Wikipedia now contains an entry detailing the web event.