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10 Ways Recession Can Help the Environment
Fion MacCloud, Finance Markets
This is a special guest post from Fion from Fair Home, on discussing how we can improve our impact on the environment.

As the world economy begins a slowdown, stock markets threaten to crash, and the USA slowly slips into recession, it’s too easy to look at the negative personal impacts of negative economic indicators.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom - recession could do wonders for the environment.

Here are 10 ways this could be helping provide a positive respite to the planet:

Reduction in Landfill ...
Fewer Mobile Phones sold ...
Reduced Sales of SUV’s ...
Fewer Plasma TV’s sold ...
Reduced Oil Burning ...
Fewer people killed in the streets ...
Less shipping ...
Less need for biofuel ...
Fewer People going on holiday ...
Consumption of Inefficient food products reduced ...
(28 January 2008)

Re-Energize Texas Summit: Activating Texan Youth for Change
Calvin Sloan, Energy Bulletin
This past Friday, February 8th through Sunday, February 10th of 2008, student activists concerned about the approaching effects of manmade global warming from across the state of Texas gathered together to learn and strategize at the University of Texas at Austin.

The estimated 225 attendees of the Re-Energize Texas Summit were engaged in training programs and information sessions throughout the weekend, and attended speeches made by an array of concerned citizens.

From city mayors to religious leaders of both eastern and western philosophies, the keynote series provided students a variety of perspectives and opinions on the failed system that has led to our current climate crisis and the many other exploitive foreign and domestic policies America myopically has been pursuing.

With support from progressive organizations like Public Citizen and the National Wildlife Federation, members of the UT club, the Campus Environmental Center, were successful in creating an educational and inspirational event for grassroots change. Now armed with knowledge and motivation, these young Texans are returning to their respective campuses ready to transform a grassroots movement based upon empirical fact and democratic participation.

The speakers featured were:

Mayor Will Wynn, Mayor of Austin, 2007 Austinite of the year, key member of the U.S. Mayors Council on Climate Protection
Dr. Camille Parmesan, professor UT - Austin, author and reviewer of reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
Ted Glick, coordinator of the U.S. Climate Emergency Council, 1Sky
Gary Hirshberg, President and CE-YO, Stonyfield Farms Inc
Rev. Lennox Yearwood, a minister, freedom fighter, hip-hop connoisseur, peace and community activist, and CEO Hip-Hop Caucus
Peter Illyn, Founder and Executive Director of Restoring Eden: Christians for Environmental Stewardship
Jim Hightower, National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author
Br. ChiSing, an ordained disciple of Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, spiritual director of Interfaith Mindfulness Ministries in Dallas, Texas
Tom ‘Smitty’ Smith, director of Public Citizen’s Texas division

Excerpts from speeches can be viewed here

(12 February 2008)
Conference website
Related story from : News 8 Austin

The One-Tonne-Carbon Lifestyle
Kiashu, green with a gun ("permaculture, democracy, and a future for the world")
I wrote about goal emissions for the world to avoid catastrophic climate change of about one tonne per capita of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions from household sources - that is, the sources you and I can control.

Is this achievable? Yep.

1. buy electrical power from other sources preferring in order: wind, geothermal, solar, hydroelectric, landfill gas or natural gas, waste burning, bagasse. Don't even think about nuclear or coal.

2. use cool drinks and fans not airconditioning, jumpers and hot drinks not heating, hang washing out to dry, change to CFLs and pull plugs out on appliances not in use

3. Don't fly in aircraft at all.

4. bye-bye cars: for a journey under 5km, walk. Under 15km, bike. Over that, public transport.

5. consume mainly fresh fruit and vegies, grains and legumes, avoid processed containerised food ...
(7 February 2008)
Recommended by Sharon Astyk.

Making conventions environmentally friendly
Ilana DeBare, San Francisco Chronicle
magine a stack of a hundred plastic name badges, resting on top of 600 disposable water bottles, 1,200 Styrofoam cups and plastic utensils, thousands of pages of printed brochures and handouts, and an untold number of promotional geegaws such as plastic pens, mouse pads and magnets.

Then multiply that by a million.

And drive it all to landfills throughout the country.

That illustrates just part of the environmental impact of America's convention and meeting industry - a $107 billion industry that serves 136.5 million people attending 1.2 million business events each year.

Because the industry is so varied - with events ranging from 50,000-person technology conventions to 20-person company retreats - no one has reliable data on the toll taken on the environment by all these gatherings.

And for decades, convention planners and participants have worried more about things like convenience and cost than about how their meetings are affecting the planet.

But over the past year, a small but growing number of meeting planners are taking steps to reduce waste and environmental damage from their events. In fact, green meetings have become a hot topic at conventions of people who plan conventions.
(10 February 2008)

Don’t Let the Green Grass Fool You
Alex Williams, New York Times
... Attitudes, Mr. Tidwell said, changed, too [after the release of Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” and last summer’s Live Earth concerts]

“In the American suburbs, people are suddenly literate in the language of carbon emissions and carbon footprints,” he said. “I’m hearing it in most mainstream places.”

... If the United States is ever to reduce its carbon emissions, suburbanites - that is, roughly half of all Americans, said William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution - are going to have to play a big role. And lately, they are trying.

Since 2005, the mayors of hundreds of suburban communities across America have pledged to meet or even beat the emissions goals set by the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty to reduce greenhouse emissions.

In November, Levittown, N.Y., the model postwar suburb, declared its intentions to cut carbon emissions by 10 percent this year. And a few suburban pioneers are choosing solar heating for their pools, clotheslines for their backyard, or hybrid cars for their commute.

But the problem with suburbs, many environmentalists say, is not an issue of light bulbs. In the end, the very things that make suburban life attractive - the lush lawns, spacious houses and three-car garages - also disproportionally contribute to global warming. Suburban life, these environmentalists argue, is simply not sustainable.

“The very essence of the post-Second World War America suburb militates against ‘greening,’ ” said Thomas J. Sugrue, a professor of history and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. “Given the almost complete dependency of suburbanites on the car, it’s an uphill battle.”

...Despite the efforts of individuals and whole communities to reduce the carbon cost of suburban life, the broad trends in American life have been moving in the opposite direction for decades. The average single-family home nearly doubled in size from 1970 to 2005, to 2,434 square feet. Americans commuting to work by car travel farther as suburbs sprawl (an average 12.1 miles in 2001, up from 8.9 miles in 1983), in vehicles whose average fuel efficiency has improved little.
(10 February 2008)