On Sunday, September 7, Philadelphians and those from surrounding communities (including me) will be celebrating all things green at GreenFest Philly. The festival coordinators expect about 20,000 people and their reusable water bottles to descend upon the Headhouse Square section of the city located on Second Street between Lombard and South Streets.
>> Read the rest of this post at Sustainablog.org
This is a guest post by Claire Fawcett, a former resident of Philadelphia who now works for a non-profit in Oakland, California.
Some envision environmentalists as wealthy, Burkenstock-clad radicals who have no awareness of the “real” issues affecting the average American. Though this stereotype is inaccurate, it is promoted by environmentally unfriendly politicians to ostracize the green movement. Thus, the majority of the population is left feeling that it doesn’t possess the passion, the time, or the money to participate in preservation.
Luckily for those of us who proclaim ourselves environmentalists, more and more non-profits in Philadelphia are pitching conservation from a different angle to people who may not immediately consider themselves green. The Energy Coordinating Agency, the Partnership CDC, the Enterprise Center, and other community based organizations promote environmental initiatives through proving that conservation isn’t only friendly to the environment but also helps to fight poverty.
Building sustainable enterprise. Protecting the environment. Investing in social equity.
Doesn’t sound like your bank? That’s because it probably isn’t. The soon-to-be-new e3bank in Philadelphia is positioned to be the first green triple bottom line bank in New England.
From infrastructure to product and service offerings, everything the organization is involved with will be built upon the triple bottom line values of people, planet and prosperity. The bank is mobilized around a green economy and a sustainable environment, as well as supporting growing consumer and business demands around these issues.
“A commitment to the future is embedded in the DNA of e3bank,” chairman Sandy Wiggins said. “The financial industry has a large role to play in the societal shift to a sustainable world. The emerging green economy needs to be fueled by financial products and services specifically designed to accelerate its growth, and serviced by financial experts who ‘get it’ and who understand the urgency of this shift.”
Now here’s a heart-warming story to make us forget, at least for a time, all the depressing stats regarding U.S. workers: a guy who spent 37 years as the mailroom supervisor for the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadephia has received, as a thank-you … his very own species of catfish.
Frank Gallagher, who oversaw the academy’s mailroom for nearly four decades and earned a reputation as the go-to guy for learning who was doing what — “They used to call me ‘the grapevine,’ ” Gallagher said — has been immortalized as the inspiration for Rhinodoras gallagheri, a new species of catfish described Mark Sabaj Pérez, a fish scientist with the academy.
Why have gas prices risen to nearly $4 a gallon (or more) in the U.S.? Is it oil speculation? Rising demand? Or the first signs of peak oil?
Whatever the cause (and there’s good reason to blame all three to some degree), most so-called experts these days aren’t expecting oil prices to drop anytime soon. In fact, Newsweek this week features a sobering article titled, “The Coming Energy Wars,” that predicts we’ll soon see oil prices top $200 a barrel. When that happens, the authors warn, we can expect everything about our daily lives to change.
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