Green Options

I can appreciate Walt Disney World copyrighting their park.  After all, they’re largely responsible for just about every inch of it, from the sculpted bushes to human-engineered lakes and waterways.  Obviously, it’s well established that biotech companies currently have every right to own and patent new forms of life.

But when I was passing through Pebble Beach on the spectacular Monterey Peninsula of California, a friend mentioned that I could NOT photograph [...]

State of the World 2010 is on book stands, just in time for President Obama’s State of the Union address, though I’m not sure he’s read it given his talk of economic growth to create more jobs in businesses that require more stimulus spending and more government oversight.
I’ve regularly blogged on our state of the economy, an economy inexorably based on the same life support systems that sustain every creature on Earth. At its root, the economy should be about caring for our planet in much the same way that Pope Benedict has recently proclaimed that we must care for Creation. “The different phenomena of environmental degradation and natural catastrophes, which unfortunately occur all too often, remind us of the urgency of dutiful respect toward nature, recovering and valuing a correct relationship with the environment each day,” said Pope Benedict (as quoted by the Catholic News Agency).
Our economy should be about sustainability and restoration of our fragile planet, not greed and never-ending growth. Our sense of fulfillment or happiness is rarely found at America’s Mecca (the mall). Nor will we be able to charge it on our credit card. When it comes down to it, we can buy what’s no longer available: clean water and air, healthy soil, a vibrant local community, a safe place to raise a family.
Pope Benedict’s message is along the same lines as the perspectives shared in Worldwatch Institute’s latest, authoritative flagship book, State of the World 2010: Transforming Cultures: From Consumerism to Sustainability (W.W. Norton). Without an intentional cultural shift – one that values sustainability not consumerism — no pledges from government or advances in technology will be enough to prevent the preventable calamity of climate change and ecological collapse, destined to forever change how we live on this planet. We must rediscover a story of living and working, quite different from the present consumption and material wealth-driven one that often defines meaning, satisfaction and acceptance for so many of us, with dire consequences for ecological systems and the billions of people who have been called the “have-nots” in the so-called developing world.

While the U.S. Postal Service bleeds red with billions of dollars in financial loses ($3.8 billion in 2008), they keep earning environmental accolades for their green roofs and energy conserving initiatives. Today, some post offices are even LEED certified by the US Green Building Council. As I wrote about last week, the US Postal Service has always been on the leading edge with respect to experimenting with fuel efficient vehicles – even if they’ve been unsuccessful in garnering the widespread adoption of these alternatively fueled vehicles outside their test markets.

So what gives? How could the US Postal Service be in such dire straits with all their green initiatives and their “fleet of feet” making deliveries door-to-door on foot?

Failing to Adapt to Change

This shouldn’t be new news: For years, Americans have been moving away from hard copy to electronic forms of communication. Many of us have gotten fed up with the piles of unwanted mail solicitations and catalogs by the pound by getting our names and addresses on “Do Not Solicit” lists with the Direct Marketing Association. We’ve opted out of banks’ direct marketing schemes for credit cards and insurance. We’ve signed up for electronic bill pay. So, I would have thought that US Postmaster John Potter would have recognized these changes, having grown up with the US Postal Service and having been at the helm since 2001.

If you’re going to deliver half the world’s mail, you might as well do it with fuel-efficient vehicles, and, of course, deliver it on foot in as many communities around the country as you can.

While stymied by financial losses ($3.8 billion in 2008), the US Postal Service continues to commit resources and practice innovation when it comes to adopting fuel efficient delivery vehicles. After all, they had an all-electric delivery vehicle on the road – in 1899 (manufactured by the Winton Company).

Today, three-wheel electric vehicles, called T3s (seen to the left), are being tested as possible replacements for traditional gasoline delivery vehicles in Florida, California, Texas and Arizona. The T3 has a range of 40 miles, a maximum speed of 12 mph and a load capacity of 450 pounds. Powered by two rechargeable modules, the T3 has zero tailpipe emissions and costs 4 cents a mile to operate.

Leading the way for the green evolution for the Hilton Garden Inn franchise, the Hilton Garden Inn Gatlinburg, drawing inspiration at the doorstep of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, has embarked on the fast-track to bring this upscale hotel into the green business movement. Opening in May, 2009, this 118-room hotel is nestled across the street from the rumbling Little Pigeon River in downtown Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and offers a spectacular view of Mount LeConte in the distance, often sculpted by clouds and mist.

The Hilton Garden Inn Gatlinburg offers more than window dressing in terms of their green efforts. That’s why, when the final points are tallied, it will likely earn Silver LEED certification.
A few of their eco-innovations include:

• Rainwater retention on site with parking lot pavers, capable of absorbing 100 percent of the rainwater. The pavers were acquired within 500 miles of the site and are non-reflective, reducing the heat island effect.

With all the talk of New Year Resolutions, many involving losing a few pounds (and inches off our waistlines), perhaps one approach to the holidays is to get off the couch (and away from the TV). Participate in an active community event like cross-country skiing, dance, or some participative sport. Or escape to the woods for a hike, not hit the mall.

My son and I returned to Mayor Daley’s Chicago Sports Fest at McCormick Place again this year. Produced by the Mayor’s Office of Special Events, the Chicago Sports Fest offered activities for young and old alike, though most the activities were for young people. My son timed himself on a 40-year dash and we competed in a stationary rowing event. We both joined in a two hour game of floor hockey (can’t remember the last time I had so much fun hitting around a puck). We both broke a sweat.

Most of us have heard on NPR’s Marketplace that the GMO-giant, Monsanto — a sponsor of the program — is “committed to sustainable agriculture…Produce more. Conserve more.” Obvious greenwashing, if you ask any farmer at a local farmers’ market or people committed to growing with nature, not synthetic chemicals. For more examples of greenwashing, see the Greenwashing Index from EnviroMedia and the University of Oregon.

We arrived just as the sun was setting over the rolling, snow-covered hills of southwestern Wisconsin, an auburn glow fading as the sun became masked by clouds rolling in from the west. My family, including my mom, passed through the doors of the red, 5,500 square foot, barn-like Farwell Hall of the Folklore Village, located just outside Dodgeville. We were here to usher in the holidays by celebrating Saint Lucia’s Day one day early (in Sweden, it’s held on December 13).

Greeted by Melissa Leef, our convivial host and guide for the afternoon’s Swedish Sankta Lucia program, my family planned on staying for their community potluck, a St. Lucia candlelight ceremony with a singing performance by costumed children, and an evening of dance (with the guidance of a dance instructor-caller) later that evening. The evening program turned out to be a blend of the traditional rural Wisconsin “house party” – for which we host at least once a year at our Inn Serendipity – and small town community gatherings common among church or other social groups.

With all the talk of sales, black Friday, Cyber Monday, and such, the program offered by the Folklore Village harkened to a time where the holidays we’re less about stuff and more about love, sharing, and community.

Whether you’ve been forced to take unpaid furloughs, reductions in pay (or increases in insurance premiums and out-of-pocket medical expenses) or find only one person in your household with a job instead of two, you’re not alone in having to rediscover how to live on as much as 50 percent less in household income.

According to Kenneth Couch, a University of Connecticut economics professor who studies worker pay issues, displaced workers who eventually find a job may experience pay cuts as much as 40 percent. It’s no surprise the latest productivity numbers nationally are as high as they are; corporate America is getting more work out of their employees for the same or less amount of hours and, of course, paying those who do have a job less.

What thousands of Americans have discovered is that you can actually thrive by getting by with less, a large part due to adopting a more sustainable approach to living and working, often, for yourself.
Here’s a few approaches I’ve discovered while writing ECOpreneuring, Rural Renaissance, and Edible Earth:

So who doesn’t love this planet?

Unless you have a few screws loose (or living in extreme poverty or managing to survive in a war zone or some similar predicament), at some basic level, you gotta love living on Earth – for its beauty, sustenance, and mystery. But how are we taking the responsibility to protect, preserve or restore our increasingly degraded planet?

That’s what Dr. Helen Caldicott sets out for her readers of If You Love This Planet: A plan to save the Earth (a revised and updated second edition from W.W. Norton). Climate change, ecological collapse and the damage wrought by the ever expanding global, economic system dominated by big corporations and big government demanded an update of her first edition in 1992.

If You Love This Planet sounds a compelling alarm to the damage one species has managed to cause to the fundamental life-sustaining biological processes on Earth – along with our placid, if not direct, exploitation of our own species for economic gain, power grab, or as a result of omitted (or outright deceptive) information. That species is, of course, homo sapiens. Caldicott’s hard-hitting book dives into the diagnosis and causes, followed by a practical prescription and offers a few simply stated cures.

Dr. Caldicott, a pediatrician, knows her stuff, as the founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility and a widely recognized champion for nuclear disarmament. She explains how the planet, like a human body, is an organism with “a natural system of interacting homeostatic mechanisms.” If one is diseased, others start to fail.