By Andrew Williams •
February 4, 2009
Fifteen-year-old Bostonian Jordan Star has emerged as the surprise driving force behind a bill to ban the cruel practice of ’surgically silencing’ cats and dogs by removing their vocal cords.
Star, a freshman at Needham High, decided to take action after coming across a dog that had been debarked and abandoned. “It was just horrible,” he said of the dog’s struggle to get his attention. “It was just like a hoarse, wheezy cough. In a shelter, all they are is a mutilated animal, which makes them harder to adopt.”
By Sean Sullivan •
January 31, 2009
There’s gold in them thar hills!
But to mine it you first must find it, and a revamped website now provides an extremely easy way to do just that. While all that glitters is indeed not gold, this precious resource is far more valuable – wind.
3Tier’s website tool FirstLook allows average Internet users to mine their neighborhoods for wind power potential. Users familiar with Google Maps will feel right at ease with the software, which offers wind assessment for all of North America. For those of us fooled by intentionally vague oil and gas ads, that region includes the US, Canada and Mexico.
Users can type in their town and state, and the site will direct a cursor to the spot. The wind prospector then zooms in for a more detailed view of the resource’s potential for that area. For greater precision, coordinates can be fed into the search in lieu of a town or state. FirstLook essentially puts a push pin in the area of the user’s choice, providing detailed reports of wind resources at that site.
By Sean Sullivan •
January 17, 2009
Someday, the Cape Wind story will become a major Hollywood blockbuster.
Or at least a two-part television miniseries starring Ed Begley Jr. On the Discovery Channel.
The effort to build an offshore wind farm - it would be the US’s first - has thus far been a roller coaster ride for advocates and opponents alike.
If that movie is ever made, this Jan. 18 will occupy a turning point in the story’s script, the day the jury levees its verdict before a rapt courtroom. Here and now, the date stands as a milestone in the life of the Cape Wind drama, marking the release of the farm’s final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).
The report is an exhaustive seal of approval of sorts, the final official analysis of how the wind project would likely affect its environment.
The federal Minerals Management Service assembled the report, an 800-page tome touching on every aspect of the wind farm - from expected effects on local economies and energy supply to its influence on bat and bird populations.
Adverse effects according to the report, would be mostly negligible or minor with a few moderate effects expected.
By Timothy B. Hurst •
January 17, 2009
Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick announced a plan to get ten percent of the state’s energy from wind energy by 2020.
By Sean Sullivan •
January 10, 2009
Mark the date.
Planners and volunteers met yesterday to brainstorm for this year’s annual Boston GreenFest, a celebration and education of all things environmental. The fair at City Hall Plaza, which will take place Friday and Saturday this August 21 and 22, includes hundreds of exhibitors and sponsors and promises to be the greenest and fullest showing yet for the Massachusetts festival.
Bright, abundant sunshine and strong winds pervaded the city during the late-morning meeting, natural resources that seemed good omens for the summer festival and that will undoubtedly be featured in solar and wind power exhibits there.
The informal Boston GreenFest committee, comprised of occupations and talents as varied as insurance professional, fundraiser, student and community activist, discussed the character and message of the event, as well as its participants.
“The broadest scope possible is the answer,” said Dr. Karen Weber. “We believe the message has to get out in the broadest sense possible.”
Weber heads Foundation for a Green Future, the organization hosting Boston GreenFest.
By Susan Kraemer •
January 2, 2009
A Massachusetts man - faced with no power in the recent ice storm, powered up the family Prius to create enough electricity to run the essentials; the fridge, the lights, the TV, the wood-stove fan to manage during the power outage, creating 17 Kilowatt hours of energy for three days.
2008 was a banner year for sustainablog, and we want to end it as strongly as we started. So, for the next twelve days, I’ll take a look back at some of the best and most memorable posts from the past year.
Let me start off, though, by expressing my immense gratitude to all of the writers who contributed during 2008. This was our first full year as a multi-author blog, and I couldn’t have been more pleased with the way it turned out. Some of the writers I’ll mention have moved on; others on coming on board. I’m grateful for the inspiration you’ve all brought to the blog over the past year, and look forward with anticipation to what the new year brings us.
January 2008
Like New Year’s fireworks, January started off with a bang. Here are a few great posts to remember:
Here’s a heart-warming story about a great kid with an eco-conscience: “Recycle Boy to the Rescue.”
Featured on the blog at Modern Eco Homes, the story describes how a young boy in the Boston area has become a one-kid recycling industry.
Ben, a fifth-grader, spends his post-school afternoons and weekends bicycling around his neighborhood in search of bottles and cans. He’s become such a regular sight in the area that some residents put out all their recyclables in their backyards until Ben can come and pick them up.
When the Greenbuild International Conference and Expo opens in Boston next week, many members of the public will get their first glimpse of Project FROG’s revolutionary, zero-energy and fast-deploying FROG Zero classroom.
Based in San Francisco, Project FROG plans to showcase the FROG Zero structure in Greenbuild’s “School of the Future” exhibit.
Yes, drying laundry outdoors is becoming acceptable, even desirable, again. So it was only a matter of time before creative green types started looking for something more attractive than a commercially produced metal drying rack or plain old rope clothesline.
That’s why Groton, Massachusetts, resident Katharine Bell came up with the idea for a Clothesline Design Contest. The Groton Grange and Groton Local, a group that promotes sustainable living, ran with it, and the contest ended up 20 entries, including one from Australia.
Among the many other distinctions San Antonio residents can point to, they can now add one more: their city will boast the first utility system in the U.S. to capture and sell methane gas generated during sewage treatment.
The San Antonio Water System (SAWS) Board of Trustees last night approved what they call a “truly innovative contract” with Ameresco, an “independent energy solutions company” based in Framingham, Massachusetts. Under the 20-year lease and operating agreement, Ameresco will build the pipelines and other facilities needed to collect and distribute methane gas produced from the city’s sewage. In return, SAWS gets a 12 percent royalty on the open market methane sales.
