Green Options

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Wisconsin’s Governor’s Task Force on Global Warming has recommended that the state achieve 2005 levels by 2014; reduce emissions by 22% from 2005 levels by 2022 (someone one day will have to explain to me the fascination with number alliteration); and finally, it calls for 75% reductions from 2005 levels by 2050.

The task force has also recommended a two-pronged approach, adopting state level support for either a federal or state-level cap and trade program, as well as a series of policy recommendations for several important state industry sectors:

1. Energy Sector
2. Transportation Sector
3. Agriculture and Forestry Sectors
4. Industry Sector
5. Waste Sector

What started out as a innovative, new program to keep old medications out of the waste stream in LaCrosse County, Wisconsin, has grown to become an award-winning initiative now used by more than 30 counties in three states.

Special waste manager Jeff Gloyd created the program in which LaCrosse County began collecting old over-the-counter drugs and prescription medications to keep them out of the regular waste stream. Pharmaceuticals thrown out that way have increasingly seeped into natural waterways and, eventually, human drinking water supplies, raising concerns about environmental and health dangers.

This summer, a group of students from the University of Wisconsin-Madison plans to travel to New Orleans to help restore an urban wetland in the Lower Ninth Ward, a neighborhood decimated by flooding after the post-Katrina levee failures.

The group of nine students expect to study Bayou Bienvenue, testing water, surveying vegetation and researching whether the area could be restored with a diversion dam that would help bring in fresh water and sediment. They also plan to talk with neighborhood residents about their concerns and will even host a crab boil to involve the community.

Editor’s note: The fourth part of the “Human Interaction with Nature” series takes a look at efforts to recover endangered animal species. This post was written by Denzyl Janneker, and originally published on Friday, May 9, 2008.

Baraboo, Wisconsin and Basra, Iraq might have nothing in common, but fighting a war and killing endangered species has prompted a common human response - to do an about turn and nurture that which we have destroyed.

Baraboo is known for efforts in saving its whooping crane population, while Basra is emerging from the ashes of war with a skyline dotted with cranes, symbolizing the reconstruction and development initiatives under way. At least that’s the intention. Two words stand out in either respect: Reconstruction and reintroduction.

Wars aside, what is it about man’s insatiable desire to kill animals, whether it’s for hides, horns or a hunter’s trophy? If only animals were like humans, they’d be completely cynical and sarcastic:

“Well, sir you might as just save me the trouble of running off into the bush and hiding. So load your bolt-action rifle and oh, don’t worry about the telescopic sight since I’m just going to be a few feet away. And when my head’s mounted above your fireplace in say 10 or 20 years from now, you can brag to your guests what a tough contest it was.”

A Great Lakes compact that would prevent the region’s water from being siphoned off into the thirsty Southwest and other dry parts of the country is a little closer to taking effect, now that lawmakers in Michigan have OK’d the deal.

The Great Lakes Water Resources Compact aims to protect the water rights of the eight states bordering the lakes: Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Michigan’s approval of the agreement brings the number of states signed on so far to five: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota and New York.

The always-progressive Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin, has once again offered a worthy — and green — lesson to its print media counterparts across the U.S.

That’s because, as of this week, the daily newspaper is being distributed exclusively online. The Capital Times’ last daily print edition went out on Saturday, April 26.

A Monday article in The Washington Post notes the Madison newspaper, like almost every traditional print paper across the country, has seen a steep drop in circulation over past decades. The switch to an exclusively online edition (outside of a free weekly insert in The Wisconsin State Journal)  also comes with a deep cut in employees  — from about 60 to 40, but the paper promises to continue delivering local and breaking news seven days a week.

“Cows aren’t Legos,” explains Jerri Cook, an organic dairy farmer and writer from the Wisconsin northwoods. “You can’t just rearrange genetic parts and expect it to be a cow anymore.”

Cook, along with her husband, Wayne, currently milk a herd of 25 cows, selling their milk to Organic Valley Family of Farms, the largest farmer-owned organic cooperative in the country. She represents the rural renaissance of farming women today: smart, sassy, steadfastly committed to educating about the importance of sustainable agriculture — and still the kind of gal who would warmly welcome you into her farmhouse kitchen for coffee, cheesecake and conversation.

Farming organically for over twenty-five years, the Cooks represent a small but dedicated group of farmers who have operated under these principles for their entire agriculture career. “Wayne’s family always farmed organically, thanks to his independent grandparents who didn’t want any part in what they saw as the government pushing chemicals,” says Cook with a smile. “I grew up an army brat in Germany and never experienced conventional American agriculture. When you’re never exposed to chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the concept logically doesn’t make sense. We ourselves didn’t want to eat food laced with that stuff; why would we ever sell it to anyone else?”

Back in 1983, when the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) held its first-ever Human Powered Vehicle Challenge, gas was about 81 cents a gallon, peak oil theorists were considered mostly crazy Chicken-Little types and global warming was but a vague and distant threat.

How times have changed.

Today’s circumstances make human powered vehicles sound more appealing than they probably did 25 years ago. Sweat-fueled technology doesn’t consign us to traveling at 20 mph or less, either, or to living our lives within a 10-mile radius of home. At least, that’s what competitors in the 25th annual Human Powered Vehicle Challenge, or HPVC, aim to prove when they meet this weekend at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Starting this Saturday (April 19), localvores in southern Wisconsin will have a new tool to help them find regionally grown and produced fresh foods.

The Southern Wisconsin Farm Fresh Atlas is a free, 40-page guide to farmers’ markets, farms, CSAs (community-supported agriculture), u-pick farms and other sources of everything from locally grown fruits and vegetables to regional eggs, meat, cheeses and even fabrics and crafts supplies. Every farmer or seller in the guide has taken a pledge to protect natural resources, treat animals humanely and provide a safe workplace for their employees.

Crave Brothers Dairy Farm has teamed up with Clear Horizons to run a computer-controlled anaerobic digestion system that generates electricity—enough to run their rural Wisconsin farm and cheese plant and power up to 120 homes from the organic waste of their 750 Holsteins.

Source: Mothering.com 

Ripon College is offering a free Trek mountain bike to new students who come to campus this fall and sign a pledge to leave their cars at home.

Campus officials say their “Ripon Velorution Program” is the first such initiative in the U.S.

A four-year liberal arts college founded in 1851, Ripon College is located in Ripon, Wisconsin. The state is also home to two Trek Bike factories, one in Waterloo and one in Whitewater.