Green Options

Candy giant MARS, parent company of M&M’S®, DOVE®, MILKY WAY®, SNICKERS®, 3 MUSKETEERS®, and TWIX®, turned on a huge new solar array (a “solar garden”) at its headquarters in New Jersey today. No matter what you think of candy food like this, it is good to see such a company going solar. Popular with millions, billions perhaps, and about as mainstream as you can imagine, this is a good step for solar’s more widespread use across the country.

This facility is PSEG Solar Source’s first large-scale solar project. It is one of the largest solar projects in the state of New Jersey, which is already 2nd only to California in its amount of installed solar capacity. The MARS headquarters adjacent to the solar garden is the workplace of about 1,200 employees and is where M&M’S® Brand Chocolate Candies are manufactured.

When I first read the news that NASA was going to start experimenting on monkeys with radiation to study the effects of deep space travel, my heart sunk. As an anthropologist who has studied non-human primates I have seen up close the emotions, the feelings, and the physical qualities we share with our evolutionary cousins. My mind went back to shooting chimps into space, not caring if they lived or died. To cruel (and now illegal) experiments of all kinds performed on our closest living relative.

Now NASA is planing to irradiate squirrel monkeys. Scientists are particularly interested in studying how the radiation impacts the monkeys’ central nervous systems and behaviors over time. Messing with the monkeys brains. Oh great!

The proposed experiment is called LIFE -Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment–and will be placed aboard Phobos-Grunt, a joint Russian-American mission to Phobos, the largest (and innermost) of Mars’s two moons (the smaller being Deimos). If all goes according to plan, it will be the first time living creatures from Earth will be sent intentionally beyond our Earth - Moon system.

Wind power is a great, effective way to make energy, but only when the wind blows. Or if you can find the open space to plant large wind farms that tear apart birds, bats, and low-flying hot air balloons. There are also many people who would hate to live in the shadow of one of these wind farms. But what if the turbines were 1,000 feet in the air?

This is the idea behind a conceptual wind turbine in the sky built by Magenn Power Inc. Called the MARS (Magenn Air Rotor System), this system utilizes an inflatible rotor that floats high above the air without requiring a tower, just a tether.

July 20th, 2009 was the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11’s historic flight to the moon, where astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first human beings to walk on the moon. 40 years ago, space flight inspired such awe that astronauts were hailed as heroes and celebrities by men, women, and children alike. 40 years later none of us, besides the most avid space fanatic, would likely to be able to name one astronaut in service today.

Despite the tragedies of Space Shuttle Challenger, and later Columbia, where the world is shocked into being reminded of the inherit dangers of sitting on 1 million gallons of rocket fuel, or re-entering the earth’s atmosphere at 1,870 miles per hour. We all see space flight as mundane because the vast majority of space flights since Apollo 11, have been mostly conducting seemingly routine scientific experiments. Now don’t get me wrong, I believe in the importance of science in space, but these experiments don’t exactly inspire awe in the general population like, oh say, a manned mission to Mars would. We also don’t have the fever of beating those damned Ruskies because they might go to space and blow us all up, which we had during the height of the cold war when Apollo 11 touched down on the lunar Sea of Tranquility.

After writing my post earlier this month about genetically engineered ingredients and animal cloning, I was given the opportunity to speak with Lisa Bunin, Campaign Coordinator with the Center for Food Safety.

We spoke about some exciting new developments in the fight against genetically modified beet sugar.

On February 12, 2009 several food safety, environmental, and corporate watchdog groups launched the Non-Genetically Modified (GM) Beet Sugar Registry.

Last year, several major oil companies got together and produced two commercials that tried to convince Americans that the more CO2 we produce, the merrier. We breathe it out. Plants breathe it in. It's part of the circle of life. Just like that Elton John song! CO2 is our life-supporting friend, they said. We need as much of it as we can get. Thankfully, those ads were laughed off the air.

They did,

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