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Roz Savage is the first to admit she’s not trying to “save the planet.” Despite all the abuses we heap upon it, Earth will be “just fine in several million years,” she says.
We humans, on the other hand, are making it increasingly likely that we’ll “drown in our own filth,” Savage warns. And to draw attention to just how bad we’ve let things get for this Big Blue Marble we call home, she recently rowed — that’s right, rowed — solo from San Francisco to Honolulu.
The 99-day, 2,324-mile trip started near midnight on May 25 and concluded with a pre-dawn arrival on Sept. 1 at the Waikiki Yacht Club.
By Jennifer Lance •
September 1, 2008
On the Big Island’s Hamakua Coast, the 24-megawatt Hu Honua Bioenergy Facility will convert locally grown biomass into electricity. 95% of the area’s residents signed a petition in support of converting the coal burning plant into a biomass facility. The converted facility is expected to stimulate local agricultural business, prevent tens of thousands of tons of green waste from ending up in landfills, and create hundreds of local [...]
By Levi Novey •
July 22, 2008
According to the Associated Press, the government of Chile has chosen to build three new volcano monitoring centers. Several of the country’s 122 active volcanoes have erupted this year, the most notable event being a sustained eruption of the Chaitén Volcano that started on May 2nd.
After the initial volcanic activity began, approximately 4,500 people were evacuated from the town of Chaitén, which sits at the base of volcano. The eruption lasted through various levels of intensity through July, and several amazing, cool, and intriguing photos depict an electrical storm that occurred one evening directly above the volcano. Currently, a different eruption that commenced on July 2nd within the Llaima Volcano has other Chilean communities on alert.
Last week I reported on a story that saw a new bill passed in Hawaii making it mandatory for every new home to have their hot water powered by solar panels. Signed in to law by Governor Linda Lingle, the bill will require all single-family homes built starting 2010 to have a solar panel powering the hot water system.
However Hawaii isn’t the trend setters we may have first thought them to be.
Over at MetaEfficient.com, they have an article pointing to the fact that 90% of Israeli homes already have solar water heaters. It began in the early 1950’s when the Israeli government encountered a fuel supply shortage, and restricted the times when water could be heated. In response, the people decided that they would start heating their own water using solar panels.
It’s one thing to be appalled by the monstrous accumulation of millions of square miles of plastic waste spinning slowly in the North Pacific gyre. It’s another thing entirely to build an ocean-going vessel out of plastic waste and set out across the sea to call attention to the environmental catastrophe.
That’s exactly what two men, one from California and one from Hawaii, are now doing. The two — Marcus Eriksen, a Ph.D., Gulf War vet and director of research and education for the Long Beach-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, and Joel Paschal, a former businessman in Hawaii and a one-time employee of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — are sailing across the Pacific in a homemade vessel, Kon Tiki-style, to “raise awareness about plastic fouling our oceans.”
Oregon: the land of volcanoes, beautiful coastline, forests…and trash? Unfortunately, that might be the case if Hawaii gets its way.
According to the Portland Tribune, Honolulu is quickly running out of space in their main landfill. In order to prevent overflow, the city has hatched a plan to send ships full of garbage up the Columbia River in Oregon, where trash will be put on trucks and trains headed to the Columbia Ridge Landfill.
It may seem strange that Hawaii wants to send its trash to a state known for being so environmentally conscious. Interestingly enough, that’s exactly why they want to do it.
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.
All new homes built in Hawaii will be required to install solar hot water heaters beginning in 2010, cutting energy costs by 30%. The state of Hawaii has a goal of at least 70 percent renewable energy use by 2030. “Achieving this goal is nearly impossible without widespread use of solar water heaters,” Hawaii Sierra Club director Jeff Mikulina says. “The solar roofs bill [...]
It’s been said that all politics is local, but environmentalism works the same way: knowing that far-flung parts of the world face environmental problems is one thing, but seeing environmental problems in our own backyards makes us take things far more personally. It’s NIMBY in reverse.
In the U.S., every state in the Union — from California’s legal hassles with the feds over its greenhouse gas emissions standards to Georgia’s water struggles — faces its own unique [...]
As the biggest global warming polluters gather for a 2-day meeting in Honolulu this week to hammer out a post-Kyoto agreement, the tiny state of Hawaii is taking some of its own big steps to curb emissions.
Hawaii has unveiled a plan to become the first state to get the “vast majority” of its energy from renewables and become “America’s model” for a 21st century energy system. Currently, Hawaii is the most oil-dependent state, relying [...]
I cover the renewable energy beat here at Green Options, and I particularly enjoy writing about the states, communities, and businesses that are showing great leadership on advancing a clean, efficient, and innovative energy system for the 21st century. Although I agree that global warming and the related energy problems do require a federal goals, it is heartening to see citizens around the country taking action in spite of Washington.
This week brings a lot of
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