I think that there really has to be some regret amongst some Americans that Arnold Schwarzenegger is legally unable to become an American President, because at the moment he seems to be one of the few politicians in all of America willing to do anything about the environment.
When Schwarzenegger took the stage Friday in San Francisco at a Commonwealth Club event, celebrating California’s success in its global warming fighting leadership, the once-action star did not pull his punches. "We know that Washington is asleep at the wheel. We cannot look for leadership there,” so "We are not waiting for the federal government."
It’s refreshing that just a few hours of online browsing can open your eyes to so many creative, innovative and hard-working green groups across the country. The only downside is that there are so many good individuals and organizations out there, it’s hard to write an in-depth profile of each of them. So I’m introducing a new feature today called “Picks of the Week,” a roundup of some of the most outstanding green initiatives I’ve discovered over the past seven days.
It took almost 10 years and $500 million to plan and complete, but the California Academy of Sciences’ new ultra-green museum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park is ready to open. The public will be able to get its first glimpse of the building — dubbed a “masterpiece in sustainable architecture” — starting at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 27.
So what’s so green about the new facility? Almost everything, from basement to rooftop. The building is designed to earn the top level — platinum — of LEED certification for green construction. A “living roof” will boost insulation and prevent 2 million gallons of stormwater runoff each year. A canopy of solar cells will generate 213,000 kilowatts of electricity each year, enough to meet 10 percent of the museum’s needs. And radiant-floor heating and denim insulation will keep temperatures comfortable while minimizing energy consumption.
The San Francisco Vegetarian Society (SFVS) is a non-profit organization that has been working in the Bay Area for over 25 years promoting a vegetarian diet as a healthful and humane way of life.
Run entirely by volunteers, the Society hosts events throughout the year such as vegetarian potlucks, picnics, dining out and lectures. The Society has been instrumental in popularizing the words vegetarian and vegan in the Bay Area. As a result of their work, professionals from many fields promote the benefits of a vegetarian diet, versus the old warnings of dire consequences. Read the rest of this entry »
If you’re pondering your next choice of vehicle, then Santa Monica’s AltCar, the Alternative Energy and Transportation Expo, is the place for you this weekend. The event features 100 eco-friendly vehicles for test drives and for sale, including:
zero-emission electric cars and trucks
hybrids
plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, rated in excess of 100 miles per gallon
vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells, natural gas, propane, biodiesel and ethanol
Looking for a real job, one that not only pays you but pays dividends for the planet as well? Well, if you’re in California, or open to moving there, a free “Green Jobs Guidebook” becomes available online tomorrow.
Developed by the Environmental Defense Fund in partnership with the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, the electronic guidebook can be downloaded here starting Sept. 25.
And if you’re looking to publicly advocate for the creation of more green jobs, why not join the Ella Baker Center’s Saturday, Sept. 27, Green Jobs Now! rally and concert? The event, part of the center’s Green-Collar Jobs Campaign, is scheduled for 1 to 4 p.m. at Mosswood Park in Oakland.
While an overwhelming amount of media attention has been focused (rightfully so) on the past week’s financial meltdown on Wall Street and beyond, another looming crisis is getting center-stage focus this week in Sacramento, California: peak oil.
A slew of speakers and experts in everything from geology and energy to finance and business is meeting through tomorrow to address what could one day make the Lehman Brothers collapse look like a picnic in the park: declining oil production coupled with rising demand and prices on a global scale. The 2008 Sacramento Peak Oil Conference kicked off yesterday.
Bill McKibben has announced his support for San Francisco’s Clean Energy Act (Propistion H). Prop H promises to move San Francisco towards 100% renewable energy in just three decades.
Palo Alto, San Francisco and East Palo Alto (then, coming to a city near you)–Each year, the eleven year-old UN Association Film Festival chooses a theme related to the UN Charter, and this year it is “Blue Planet, Green Planet”.
Numerous other human rights issues will be addressed as well, but the environment and our collective relationship to it will be explored in all sorts of creative ways. And if you think that documentary films are like the “talking heads” we used to sit through in elementary school, be prepared to be very pleasantly surprised.
Between October 19th and 26th, the Festival will screen 41 documentary films from as many countries. Having seen at least a couple of the films every year since the Festival’s founding, I can tell you that great storytelling is great entertainment, and real life stories can be even more engaging than fiction.
The smell of green permeated the air at the just concluded AlwaysOn Going Green 2008 conference but in this case the green represented all the VC and biz dev money floating around the conference. Not that great green ideas and discussion didn’t emanate from the various panels but this crowd certainly didn’t bring out much tree hugger sentiment.
The early sessions including the solar breakthrough panel talked about various advances with items such as the Mono-crystalline silicon solar cells yet the dialogue seemed rather staged and lacked energy. The abundant clean green water session provided a more interesting discussion with some honest quips such as “The water industry is dysfunctional. Like a train wreck.” The also suggested that many water companies use Pyongyang economics, which with all the worldwide water riots and price gouging makes one thing that this water situation will only continue.
The Agricultural Revolution discussion shocked us more than anything. From the outset the panel consisting of David Cope, President & CEO, Purfresh Inc., Michael Dowgert, EVP Marketing & Business Development, Netafim, Richard Hamilton, CEO, Ceres Inc., and Rengarajan Ramesh, General Manager, GE Water & Process Technologies managed to fill the discussion with ideas of Genetically Modified crops and commodity crops as the saviors to our economic, energy and food shortage woes. Whoa. We thought we walked into the wrong conference! The panel basically wrote off the local-sustainable food buying trend as
something not serious. They discussed that there might be a way to buy Chilean grapes with herbicides and Richard Hamilton uttered, “Sometimes you want to buy produce at a farmers market and other times at WalMart. That comment brought a slew of comments from the live chat room display including one chatter who wrote, “Hamilton (Ceres) is scary.”
What the heck are these guys making up this Green panel anyway? We might as well had four guys from Monsanto up there uttering the benefits of GMOs and how much benefit they bring farmers. Ceres and Mendel Biotechnology who made the Going Green Top 100 companies have investers/partnerships with, among others, Monsanto. Oops did someone not do their green due diligence homework? Maybe they could add Exxon-Mobil as a top green company for next years conference.
Think globally, act locally has been a mantra for the environmental movement for decades. At EcoLocalizer, you can find local news and information about citizens, organizations and businesses that are taking positive green steps forward in their neighborhoods and communities.
I think that there really has to be some regret amongst some Americans that Arnold Schwarzenegger is legally unable to become an American President, because at the moment he seems to be one of the few politicians in all of America willing to do anything about the environment. 
