The Bridge to Nowhere

Image: liheng, flickr

If you live in Vermont or northern New York State today, the lead news story is the demolition of the Crown Point Bridge that crosses lake Champlain. No, it wasn’t demolished in a terrorist attack. It WAS spectacular, even seen through snow showers. Why did it happen? Quite simply, the elected leaders in the states of Vermont and New York did not keep up with maintenance over the past eight decades. More than 3400 vehicles crossed the bridge every day, connecting people to jobs, activities, products and other destinations. A couple of months ago an inspection revealed that the bridge was unfit for travel. Now us taxpayers will foot the $65 million bill to dredge up the pieces from the lake, remove the almost half-mile of bridge and build a new one. The good that will come from this project includes recycling thousands of tons of metal and having a new structure that will be pedestrian and bike-friendly and safer.

Now as we wind down one year and begin another, it’s a good time to recycle some of your old stuff too. My picks for the smartest products are the Dynamo Flashlight/Radio/Phone Charger and the Smart Strip advanced power strip. Both will save you money in the new year, make you greener and provide years of service!

Video: tricky9981, youtube

The world is a big cold place, let’s face it. Bt humans are not the only inhabitants of Earth who care about the environment. Felines everywhere are meowing about climate change. When our cat Frankie saw this video his jaw dropped and he dropped his kibble. Frankie instantly became inspired and turned his focus to the environment. With leadership like this little tiger we can expect more cats to be speaking out against climate change. You don’t believe me? Check this out!

Video: 1minutetosavetheworl, youtube

Image: glennfay36, flickr

Recently Middlebury College was named one of the top green campuses in the U.S.. I am proud to say that my alma mater, the University of Vermont is also a rising star in environmental awareness and action. For one, the VSTEP Club is behind a campus ban on sales of bottled water. This blog has examined the commercialization, ownership and control of a substance that we all need for survival (water). Water is controlled by large corporations and the industry leaves a significant environmental footprint involved in manufacturing water bottles, bottling water in places that have sketchy water quality standards, and the carbon footprint involved in transporting millions of water bottles around the world, not to mention the “Pacific garbage patch”, plastic in fish tissues and other examples of epic pollution of plastic. Now UVM is leading the way on a new front.

The UVM Bookstore is selling Smart Strip advanced power strips at a pretty good clip. Smart Strips are the new power strips that automatically shut off devices that suck electricity even when the devices are turned off. Computer printers, fax machines, DVD players, audio systems, even phone chargers use electricity needlessly as long as they are plugged in and not in use. The average computer system uses 260 watts of electricity per hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year! TV’s and entertainment centers can use even more!

Based on Efficiency Vermont and US Department of Energy Data each Smart Strip saves an average of 113 kilowatt hours each month, which translates to 3.4 pounds of CO2 a month or over 40 pounds of CO2 gas pollution saved per year! In dollars, one Smart Strip on average saves over $150 each year on your electricity bill! That is eco-fashon savings!

The first 100 Smart Strips the UVM Bookstore sells will will save close to $15,000 in electricity per year and will keep two tons carbon out of the atmosphere during the same time. Over the next ten years, those savings will be astronomical. THAT is something to cheer about!

Want to join the Go Green And Save Gold party? Buy Smart Strips ‘locally’ and support Vermont at the UVM Bookstore and of course right here at LoveEarthAlways.com!

Image: Lake Champlain, glennfay36, flickr

Now that the historic meeting in Copenhagen has begun, it is important to keep climate change in perspective. As Dan Tefft @TreeBanker on twitter says, “We can live with out oil, We can’t live long without water” Two international reports predict a “water bankruptcy” and a crisis even greater than the financial meltdown now destabilizing the global economy. The World Water Forum, which will be attended by 20,000 people in Istanbul, Turkey will hear stark warnings of how half the world’s population will be affected by water shortages within 20 years, with millions of people dying and increasing conflicts over dwindling resources.

A report by the World Economic Forum, which runs the annual Davos meetings of the international business and financial elite, says that lack of water, will “soon tear into various parts of the global economic system” and “start to emerge as a headline geopolitical issue”. Both reports warn that it is already beginning to take effect, over half the world’s population will live in high-risk areas and there will be no way of bailing the earth out of water scarcity.

According to these reports, is eactly the same amount of it on Earth as there was in the age of the dinosaurs, and the world’s population of more than 6.7 billion people has to share the same quantity as the 300 million people during Roman times. Water use has been growing far faster than the number of people. It is expected that by 2030 water scarcity could cut world crop harvests by 30 per cent – equivalent to all the grain grown in the US and India – ashuman numbers and appetites increase.

Already 60 per cent of China’s 669 cities are already short of water and the Yellow River now has only 10 per cent of its natural flow, sometimes failing to reach it’s delta. Glaciers in the Himalayas, which act as gigantic water banks supplying two billion people in Asia, are melting faster as global warming accelerates. Meanwhile devastating droughts are crippling cropland from Australia to Texas.

The World Water Development Report, compiled by 24 UN agencies under the auspices of Unesco, adds that shortages are already beginning to constrain economic growth in areas as diverse and California, China, Australia, India and Indonesia. The report, which will be published today March 16th, also expects water conflicts to break out in the Middle East, Haiti, Sri Lanka, Colombia and other countries. These scenarios are likely to “increase the risk of major national and international security threats”.

We believe that the World Water Forum and World Economic Forum reports and predictions are based on solid data. Human bodies consist of almost 80% water and our food supply is completely dependent on aboundant water. As we stated in the climate change post, shifting crop growing zones will create water-free geographic zones where plenty of water exists now. The water crisis to ensure human survival will create political conflict on a desperate scale. Now is the time to build awareness, develop technology and create resources, conservation practices and change to avoid the future disaster.

Climategate Doesn’t Invalidate 40 Years Of Juried Research!

Image: GlennFay36, flickr

Recently it was revealed that hundreds of emails related to global warming were hacked from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University in the United Kingdom. Global warming deniers claim the documents suggest that scientists are pushing an “agenda” that humans are responsible for global warming while many scientists mainain the sacandal doesn’t undermine the credibility of the scientific data. In the hundreds of emails that were stolen and have been taken out of context, there isn’t actual evidence of such a plot.

The hacked emails involve both American and European research scientists, and according to the New York Times they include “discussions of scientific data and whether it should be released, exchanges about how best to combat the arguments of skeptics, and casual comments, in some cases derisive, about specific people known for their skeptical views.”

The emails also suggest that there were “bitter feelings” involved in the debate between those on both sides of the issue of global warming and the seriousness of the threat. As we know, change is slow in any system, due to a the inherent “dynamic conservatism” in social institutions. Any veteran congressman who has seen his or her important project delayed for decades has experienced this first-had. So it doesn’t seem unlikely that climate change data would immediately be accepted by inherently skeptical scientists, some of whom have biased agendas.

One reputable group of scientists, Real Climate, has posted a response on its blog to the allegations about what information is actually contained in the hacked emails. They say: “More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.”

Despite the lack of evidence of some sort of conspiracy in the scientific community, this scandal has created fodder for climate change denier groups and websites to promote their own agenda that global warming is not real. This comes at a time when international attention on the climate crisis is heightened in advance of the UN climate talks in Copenhagen in December. But let’s use some logic here.

Even though the hacked email activity raises questions about the validity of parts of the IPCC position on climate change, and the ethics of those involved, that doesn’t alter the fact that climate change data has shown high probability of anthropogenic climate change as back as far as 40 years ago! That was before the IPCC, before climate change became mainstream knowledge, before Al Gore, and before the data of climate change became a political issue.

So as the polar ice melts, sea levels rise, fresh water becomes scarce, weather becomes more unpredictable, now is not a time to be distracted by a few scientists with corporate interests and biases. Now is the time to take a leadership role on the data and do the right thing for your children and grandchildren.