Energy Quiz

How well do you know America's Energy? I just took the We Campaign's America's Future quiz and was surprised at what I learned about the power and potential of renewable energy. You can take the take the quiz from the We Campaign.

Florida Approves Largest Solar Power Plant in the U.S.

Florida's Public Service Commission has approved plans to build the largest commercial solar power plant in the United States. SunPower has been selected to build the largest solar photovoltaic power plant in the United States, a 25-megawatt power plant in DeSoto County, Florida and is expected to go on-line in 2009. According to Treehugger, SunPower will install the highest efficiency solar panels on the market as well as the SunPower Tracker system, which tilts toward the sun as it moves across the sky. Two other facilites were also given the green light, one at Martin County and one at the Kennedy Space Center. Red Green and Blue also has some additioinal information on the plan as well as other renewable energy devleopments in the United States.

Dead Baby Penguins Washing Ashore

Hundreds of dead baby penguins have been washing ashore off the coast of Rio de Janeiro over the past two months. The penguins are being swept away from the icy shores of Antarctica and washing up dead on the beaches of Rio. According to Michael Astor with the Associated Press, there have been more penguins (approximately 400) this year than any other year. One of the reported causes could be overfishing which causes the penguins to swim further from shore to eat and in turn they get caught up in the strong ocean currents. The article also states possible causes could be pollution as well as ocean current changes because of more cyclones due to climate change. Most of the penguins that are washing ashore are babies that have recently left the nest and are not strong enough to out swim the strong ocean currents.

Ghost Flights

British PM Gordon Brown blasted airlines that were operating Ghost Flights without any passengers in order to secure terminal slots at the busy Heathrow Airport. BMI Airline has denied the claims that they are planning on operating empty or near empty flights in order to secure the terminal slots. British Airways was caught last year doing almost the same thing with it's flights from Britain to North America. There was a flight a day traveling from Britain to the U.S. or Canada with only the pilots and cargo. With skyrocketing fuel costs, you would think the airlines would stop absurd practices that waste them money and not to mention harm the environment. No wonder we are starting to have to pay for any checked baggage with some airlines.

Green Tip: Greening Your Office

There is a good article on Chelsea GREEN about Greening Your Office. The article is taken from a book titled Greening Your Office From Cupboard to Corporation: an A-Z Guide and is available here. I am not sure how good the book is, but the article is worth a read.

Challenge From Al Gore

At a speech on July 17th, Al Gore made an Environmental Challenge that is being compared to the challenge that John F. Kennedy made in reference to the moon. Al Gore is challenging the nation to produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun and other Earth-friendly energy sources within 10 years. According to the New York Times, "Gore's approach, which would require abandoning old-fashioned, coal-fired power plants, goes beyond what even the most audacious scientists and entrepreneurs have proposed, as a means, he said, of jolting the world out of old ways of thinking." I have posted video of the speech below and there also a transcript available.

Polar Bears Killed in Iceland

While I was on vacation there was a story about a polar bear that swam more than 200 miles from either Greenland or a chunk of Arctic ice to Skagafjordur, Iceland where it was shot dead by the police "in case" it proposed a danger to humans. Apparently they did not have the correct tranquilizer and could not wait 24 hours for the correct one to be flown in. This was disputed by a chief vet who said the necessary drugs were in the trunk of his car, they just needed to wait for the correct tranquilizer gun to be flown in. There are some videos of the bear on You Tube which I refuse to watch as well as pictures of the killers posing proudly with their prize. I was outraged to think this bear swam all that way from Greenland in order to survive only to be shot dead. THEN when I thought it could not get any worse, another polar bear, again presumed to have swam over 200 miles from Greenland was shot less than 2 weeks later by the same police. Between the melting ice, starving, and being shot, the poor bears don't stand a chance.

Polar Bear Petition

From the We Can Solve It Campaign: The Bush Administration has until May 15 to decide whether to place the polar bear on the Endangered Species list. Tell Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne that the polar bear, and its fragile Arctic habitat, requires protection from the effects of global warming. Sign the petition today.

Sigg Bottle Update

So far I am very pleased with my Sigg bottle purchase. I pretty much take it with me everywhere I go so that I always have a drink with me and am not tempted to buy one in a plastic bottle. At first I had problems with the water not staying cold enough and then I found ice cube trays for water bottles. I am considering buying a sleeve for the bottle to assist with keeping it cold. It is also a great conversation starter at work. Most people at work just carry the usual company supplied mug or soda bottle from the machine. My blue aluminum bottle stands out and I get comments which I can quickly turn into conversations concerning the need for reducing the amount of bottles they use and some of the dangers of BPA. A few co-workers have even said they are going to buy one. If you have not bought one yet, I highly suggest it, especially if you have watched the videos on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch I posted about earlier.

Green Tip: Eco-Friendly Roses For Mother's Day

With Mother's Day just around the corner, here are four tips from Planet Green for buying Mom eco-friendly roses. The main tip is to buy locally grown flowers to help cut down on emissions. Also, buying organic flowers will keep toxic chemicals out of the house.

Planet Green TV

On Saturday TLC will be airing a preview of the upcoming Planet Green TV that is scheduled to launch June 4th. According to their website, "Planet Green TV will be the first-and so far only-24-hour eco-lifestyle television network." The preview episodes TLC will be airing this evening at 7pm Eastern Time are titled Wa$ted and Greenovate. If you don't get to watch the preview, make sure to check out Planet Green TV when it takes over the Discovery Home Channel on June 4th as well as the Planet Green website.

Green Tip: Pay Your Bills Online

If you are not already paying your bills online, today is the day to start. Paying bills online will reduce emissions since the bill not have to travel to the company being paid, cut down on paper from the check and envelope you will not have to send, and you will save money from not having to use a stamp. Many, if not most, banks do not change any extra money to pay bills online. You can also signup to receive online statements which means reducing emissions as well as reducing paper. If you need copies of your statements for tax purposes, choose online statements and then print out the statements you need rather than having them mailed to you. You can help out the environment while at the same time making your bill paying life a lot easier.

Great Pacific Garbage Patch

In case you have not, Google the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It is a garbage pile in the Pacific Ocean that stretches off the coast of California, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan. The size is estimated to be as "small" as the state of Texas up to twice the size of the United States. It is also referred to as the Plastic Soup as plastic is becoming a large part of the garbage that is circulating the the vortex. The plastic is photo-degrading into polymers that closely resemble zoo plankton, and are eaten by jellyfish thus entering the food chain. This article from the Independent does a good job explaining the basics of the garbage patch and how the soup is actually two lined areas that are known as the Eastern and Western Pacific Garbage Patches. The picture below from Greenpeace depicts the location of the patches (It was discovered later that the currents that are depicted below are incorrect and the actual path of the currents can be found at Ocean Motion).

VBS.TV decided to take a trip out to the area and document what they discovered. There are 12 parts but they are worth watching. As a warning, there is some swearing in the videos. I have posted Part 1 below and the other 11 parts can be found on the VBS.TV website. I encourage you to watch all 12 parts. It's amazing we have not heard about this yet in the mainstream media.

Unlikely Alliances

Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich are two "Unlikely Alliances" who came together to film one of the ads for the new We Can Solve It Campaign. Click the logo on the right of the page to get more info on the We Campaign.

Green Tip: Turn Your Computer Off

Get in the habit of turning off your computer when you leave work each day. According to this article on Planet Green, if every American worker turned off their PC one day out of the year it could save $4.7 million in engery costs and reduce engergy comsumption by 54.3 kilowatt-hours. Each day I am amazed at the number of co-workers who leave their computers on all night or in some cases all weekend. This is something easy to implement and takes very little of our time, but could have a huge impact.

Sigg Bottle

I purchased a Sigg aluminum water container yesterday. I have been using a Thermos mug for several years to try and reduce the number of plastic bottles I use but I decided that it was finally time and worth the money to buy one that does not contain Bisphenol-A (BPA) like the Nalgene plastic bottles. There has been some discussion on whether the inside liner of the Sigg containers contain BPA as well as if the warnings conerning BPA are just a myth. From researching the issue, I decided there was enogh information on the dangers of BPA to lead me to purchase a bottle that did not contain BPA. I was also considering Klean Kanteen because it is made from stainless steel and does not have an interior liner. I found pros and cons to each company but ended up going with the Sigg. Hopefully it will be worth the investment.

BBC Natural History Collection

I did not realize this was out until today. The BBC released it’s Natural History Collection. It contains 17 discs from the Planet Earth, Blue Planet, Life of Mammals, and Life of Birds Collections. I have only seen parts of the Planet Earth and Blue Planet series and have been waiting to purchase them. I will need to look into the Life of Mammals and Life of Birds to see if they are of the same caliber of the other two and worth owning. The lowest price I was able to find was from Overstock.com. If anyone has purchased this set or seen the other two series, feel free to comment on them.

BYOBag at Whole Foods

Whole Foods has been working to eliminate disposable plastic grocery bags in their stores and in honor of Earth Day, they will not longer be available starting today. Their F.A.Q. Section list their goal and what they are trying to accomplish.

Happy Earth Day

I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Earth Day. In honor of Earth Day I am going to attempt to start blogging again. Even though there have not been any updates to the blog in awhile and there is not a lot of content on it, the site is still getting hits. Hopefully I will have better luck at updating this time around.

You can learn all about how Earth Day started and it’s history here and things you to celebrate Earth Day here. The site has many good ideas and tips to get you started but the most important one to remember that Earth Day is Every Day. Do what you can to create awareness and spread the word. More posts to come and it’s good to be back.