Green Festival 2008 - The San Fran stop

Keith Rockmael — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:41:34 +0000

At the San Francisco pit stop of this past weekends Green Festival, while trying to avoid the masses searching for samples of organic this and sustainable that, one of San Francisco’s green builders Chris Connors mentioned to a few of us attendees, “Wow this festival has gotten big.” Indeed, for those who haven’t attended in a few years – yes, the festival continues to grow faster than FSC certified bamboo.

For those lucky enough not to suffer from green claustrophobia, attendees could choose from a potpourri of Green rock stars – such as Van Jones who spoke about the new green collar economy, the incredibly interesting and sometimes bizarre Paul Stamets who seems like the Fox Mulder of the mushroom world and the dynamic food sovereignty trio of Raj Patel, Eric Holt-Giménez and Miguel Altieri who, among other things, discussed how the food shortage is an ecological issue not just a political topic.

Taking a break from the speakers, we had to cruise the exhibitor marketplace. With so much to choose from we took a look at the numerous additions to the myriad vender booths. Myriad, as in about 50 percent of these companies use this festival for marketing or promote a “green lifestyle”. Okay, we’re not going to call it outright greenwashing but some of these businesses really milk this whole green thing. Of course we’re happy to see new honest additions (or at least venders that we have not seen before here) such as Mozilla and we can and should throw our support behind the community powered, open source FireFox Browser.

With more additions come some subtractions. Most notably, what happened to Burt’s Bees? We heard that the lip balm buzzers got 86ed from the festival because they happened to be owned by uh — who was that again? – oh yes, Clorox. No problem there but then the green playing field needs to be level right? So, that means no Ben and Jerry’s (even if they switched to all organic ingredients). So, what’s the deal with Honest Tea? The Coke owned or partially owned company had booth in the middle of food sample frenzy. What gives?

Biofuels: Energy, Food and People

Keith Rockmael — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:19:19 +0000

Is it going to come down to a choice between eating or driving? Is that what are future holds? If it does, it looks like the driving contingent may win (or in other words many others will lose…or starve). That’s a distorted overview of last night’s EcoNow presentation that highlighted the current and future state of biofuel. Actually I like the term that one of the speakers Eric Holt-Giménez used - “agrofuels” rather than “biofuels” because “bio” means “life” which certainly doesn’t represent these alt fuels.

The event held in Berkeley (where else?) gave Tad Patzek, Professor of Geoengineering at UC Berkeley, Miguel Altieri, Professor of Agroecology at UC Berkeley, Eric Holt-Giménez, Executive Director of Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy, and Judith Mayer, Project Coordinator of the Borneo Project a chance to educate or frighten the audience into what’s happening with agrofuels, whether it’s ethanol, B20, or something else that makes our cars go.

Green Options » altieri

Green Festival 2008 - The San Fran stop

Biofuels: Energy, Food and People