SustainYou

First introduced to us by the Beautiful Daryl Hanna. Check out her site for more good info.

From: Forbes.com

From: The Wall Street Journal

The Power of Green: From The New York Times:

“Well, I want to rename “green.” I want to rename it geostrategic, geoeconomic, capitalistic and patriotic. I want to do that because I think that living, working, designing, manufacturing and projecting America in a green way can be the basis of a new unifying political movement for the 21st century.”

Long live the earth, and all of her countries! 

I  hereby enlist in the green revolution!

The IPCC newest report released today determines with 80% certainly that Climate Change is happening now and it is radically altering ecosystems. 

World scientists are confirming with statistical certainly what we new all along - our earth is warming.  Now it is time for us inhabents of the earth to act! 

IPCC 4th Report Summaries:

Grist

Treehugger

NY Times

I can’t wait till she arrives.  I will pop the sunroof and cruse down the highway at a pint of gas and 38cents  per mile!  Yeehaa, the great outdoors here I come –  my life is fulfilled!

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From the NY Times: 

“The autobahn, though, is statistically safer than highways in many countries, even if its crashes are singularly horrific. Saving the planet, it turns out, may be more persuasive than saving lives.

“Given the pride of Germans about being No. 1 in protecting the environment, this could lead to a breakthrough,” said Peter Schneider, a writer who limits himself to 90 m.p.h. on the autobahn…

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“Horrifying” new ice-core data reveals that around 5 million years ago there was massive melting of the Ross Ice Shelf, destabilizing the Earth’s climate for the following 3.5 million years.   This is how Viereck-Götte and other scientists from the Antarctic Geological Drill team are describing the situation, they are extremely alarmed at the scale of melting which occurred with an increase in average global temperature of only 2-3 degrees Celsius.

The findings from high-tech ice core drilling near Mt. Erebus, Antarctica, also showed that the starting temperature was much lower than today.

“The melting of the Ross Ice Shelf, currently the size of France, would literally leave just a ‘Ross Bay’ as it did 5 million years ago. Not only would the melted ice cause sea levels to rise, it would force land-based ice to shift, breaking up dramatically and cause the break down of the oceans’ global conveyor belt thermohaline circulation system.” said Matthew Wright, Beyond Zero Emissions campaigner.

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I get a lot of emails from U.S.Pirg about petitions and calling senators to support environmental legislation, but this Photographic Petition looks particularly fun so maybe it could be a Coop/Sustain You community activity at the potluck tomorrow! Here’s the email:

“You’ve done a lot of things to communicate with your elected officials in the past: written emails, signed petitions, even made phone calls. But global warming is such a crucial and urgent issue, I think it calls for a special action.
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I belive I can touch the sky.  I think about it every night and day.  When I spread my wings I can fly away….

……..splat.

Yesterday we had our first big snow storm in Minneapolis.  Saturday night we had nearly a foot dumped onto the city.  It was the sight of buried cars, stuck busses, neighbors meeting and helping each other.  Neighbors helping each other. 

In the morning I dug out my car and headed into the Fremont/Gerard alleyway.   Snow was everywhere! In our 2 acre block with 16 houses, 16 garages and many more cars, there was no room for a foot of snow.  There was plenty of room for neighborhood connections.  Read the rest of this entry �

Our Home: Our Food: Our minds:

Our Homes:
For the most part, all new construction in the United States uses drywall to cover interior walls.  Drywall is simply gypsum, lime and other minerals sandwiched between two layers of paper.  While some of the mineral content is recycled, it is the highly processed paper that provides a feast for mold.  It is unknown how many children and families have suffered because of mold in their walls, but it is estimated that 2 in 3 homes have mold problems.  Several pieces of drywall installed just 5 years ago in the co-op basement had mold on the back and had to be thrown out.  We didn’t used to build this way.  Read the rest of this entry �

“Make sure when you do something you are doing it for the right reasons,” a wise, perceptive and humble man said to me last night. It was Dana’s celebration night last night. That rockstar just landed a great job at a rural land use planning (super exciting stuff — that is all way over my head. I’m sure she will tell you all about it).

What are the right reasons? I asked myself, am I doing everything to satisfy my own emotions? Is there such a thing as pure altruism and if it exists is that even a right reason for doing something? How can anyone tell what the right reason is if it is always dependent on an individual’s values?
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Talking with my Co-op housemates Chris and Dana, last night we pondered aloud….. Does the current trajectory of American willpower give hope that democracy will save us? Chris proposed the idea that a benevolent dictator is needed to realign humans on a sustainable path. Was Plato right when he wrote The Republic two millennia ago. Do we need a set of guidelines to guide us to the righteous path. Does the fact that humanity is witnessing global warming while emotionally reaming self interested prove Plato’s hypothesis that democracy is one step before tyranny?
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