from 350.org

Posted on 13. Apr, 2013 by Howard Salus in Education, featured, Florida News, Green Business, Green Events

From Duncan Meisel – 350.org [organizers@350.org]

10 days. That’s how long we have to flood the State Department with comments opposing Keystone XL.

For the next ten days our friends across the movement are coordinating a ‘Comment Sprint’ to submit hundreds of thousands of comments against the pipeline — hopefully hitting 1 million in total.

If you’ve already submitted a comment, keep reading: you’re able to submit more than one, and in fact, you should. We want to show that people are opposed to the pipeline for many reasons, all of them grounded in hard facts, so every day for ten days, we’ll focus on a new reason to oppose the pipeline and submit new comments.

The State Department’s review has been heavy on politics and light on science, so the more we focus on the facts, the stronger our case to the President and the public will be to stop the pipeline.

The first day of the comment sprint is today. The first issue we’re focusing on is how the pipeline undermines energy security. We need to clear about one thing: TransCanada wants this pipeline so they can get tar sands oil to export.

President Obama’s job is to decide whether the pipeline is in the US national interest. TransCanada has shown that it’s not. In filings to the State Department and contracts with refiners, they’ve spelled out their plans to pad their profits by exporting it to the international market where it will fetch a higher price — putting more money in the pockets of big oil and accelerating tar sands development in Canada.

Can you submit a comment to the President and State Department explaining the energy security case for stopping the pipeline? Click here to submit your comment: act.350.org/letter/kxl-sprint-day-1/

To hit a million comments, it will take a lot of us pitching in in different ways. At 350, we won’t email you every day for 10 days (more likely 4 or 5), but we will use social media and other tools at our disposal to promote the push every day between now and the 22nd. In particular, we will be relying on our Social Media Team to share crucial info about each day’s issue — if you’d like to join the Team and help super-charge key content over the next ten days, click here: act.350.org/signup/social/

Keystone XL is a climate disaster, and an economic loser. If built, it would carry 800,000 barrels a day of tar sands to export for the next 50 years, leaving a toxic legacy for communities along the route, and a massive carbon footprint on the atmosphere. And we’re going to do whatever we can to stop it.

Thanks for all you’ve done, and all you will do to stop the pipeline.

Duncan

P.S. – If you’ve submitted a comment and would prefer to opt-out of emails about the next ten days of comments, that’s fine too! Just click here, and we won’t send you any more Comment Sprint emails: act.350.org/sign/kxl-sprint-opt-out/ You’ll stay subscribed to 350.org, but we’ll leave you out of updates for the Sprint.

Bill McKibben and 350.org are on a DO THE MATH Tour.

Posted on 11. Nov, 2012 by Howard Salus in Education, Environment, featured, Florida News, Green Business

Dear friends,

The election is over, so now it’s time to really get to work.

Right now I’m in Seattle, where tonight I’ll be getting up in front of a sold-out crowd to kick off the Do the Math tour. We’re not going to sit back this time and wait for politicians, even the ones we like, to get things done — if we want change it comes from us. And it’s coming! I’ve been doing this work for a long time, but tonight feels like something new.

We’re still up against the most powerful industry in the history of the world, but we’re playing to win. After over a year of fighting big oil to a near standstill over Keystone XL and seeing the fossil fuel industry pour hundreds of millions of dollars into this election, we know what we have to do to win — we have to get more creative, braver, and bolder than ever before.

So let’s get started. Here’s what’s happening right away:

Do the Math:

Starting tonight, the 350.org crew and I are on the road for the Do the Math tour. It’s going to be something special, and we hope you can join us. We’ve already sold out 6 shows, and over 15,000 people have bought tickets from coast-to-coast, so get your tickets now if you haven’t already. I recorded a little preview of the tour so you can get a taste of what’s in store: math.350.org

Divestment:

At the same time, on campuses all across the country, students are calling for their colleges and universities to divest from the industry that’s endangering our future. Dozens of campuses already have campaigns underway, and two – Unity College and Hampshire College – have already convinced their schools to divest.

This kind of principled stand by students played a key role in taking down the Apartheid regime in South Africa, and with your help students will once again be a crucial part of ending a great injustice. We’ve launched a special site for students to start divestment campaigns, where you can launch petitions to University presidents, download campaign toolkits, and connect with other students. Click here to get started: gofossilfree.org

Keystone XL:

It’s time to stop the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline once and for all.

Our newly re-elected President has the opportunity to deny the permit for Keystone XL, and should do so right away. We’re not waiting to put the pressure on either — on Nov. 18th, just as we wrap our Do the Math event, we’re hitting the streets of Washington DC with thousands of our friends to show Obama that we expect him to stop the pipeline. We know it’s short notice, but the sooner we make an impression on the President, the sooner we’ll wrap this fight — if you’re nearby, can you join us? 350.org/Nov18

So here goes something. We’re all going to have to dig deep into our reserves of energy and optimism, but we have the power to turn this thing around. Sandy showed us one vision of the future, but not the only one, and it’s on all of us to work for that other future that is still open to us, even when the odds of reaching it feel small.

Let’s get to work.

Thank you,

Bill & the 350.org team

Announcing 10/17-19 Conference

Posted on 11. Sep, 2012 by Howard Salus in Eco Tourism, Education, featured, Florida News, Green Business

Florida conference draws on Miami-Dade to cope with climate change

by Mr. Herb Hiller

Writer Herb Hiller directs the Sustainable & Authentic Florida Conference. He is co-author of Season of Innocence, the story of the Munroe family and early Coconut Grove; also originator of the Miami-Bahamas Goombay Festival and the Coconut Grove Farmers Market. He lives in DeLand.

I am thinking about what we might do as nonprofessionals to overcome Florida’s unwillingness to cope with climate change. I ask because I’m at work on a conference that seeks answers to this and to other challenges we face in how we live in Florida. Clearly, subdivisions sprawled into wetlands and water re-charge areas have failed. We need an answer to how we engage more of ourselves in public discourse. Too many youthfully retired adults live in gated subdivisions where the politics of their resident associations rank as more important than engagement with their larger communities.

For more than a half-century, Florida has defined the good life as a house in the suburbs beyond the crime and bad air of cities. Florida tax policies long in place favored the steady in-migration of the wealthy retired, and then of everyone regardless of wealth. Was there ever a course available to people contemplating a Florida move that introduced them to their new state? Certainly, neither developers nor real estate agents have wanted to explain about hurricanes or mosquitoes, about a sub-industry of frauds that target the old in this Florida of limited hospitality where the meaning of community is so largely about excluding others.

In a state where every city and subdivision holds itself out as uniquely privileged by its fun-in-the-sun slogans, Florida’s fragmented paradise divides the state itself. I once asked a Miami bank president if he traveled around the state. He said that he likes to take his grandkids to Orlando. Meanwhile, people who live up Highway 27 north of the Miami-Dade County line or north of the Treasure Coast shun Miami-Dade as loud, vulgar and alien.

Our outlooks are limited. Our good life is largely private. Our civic commitment dims.

How can “stand your ground” laws surprise us? Where do we find some undeniably shared outlook that transcends insularity? Response to climate change should supply our answer, yet state government shuns the issue precisely because coping would disturb our comfort. Deniability constitutes the American freedom to ignore.

The conference that will explore answers is Sustainable & Authentic Florida that takes place October 17-19 in Anna Maria Island. Its leaders are authorities in social history, in the humanities, environment, water science, in the New Urbanism and in building genuine community around America. Teams from four Florida places will make the case that Florida already engages well in placemaking and that Florida placemaking shoehorns us into “climate economies,” which is to say, economies organized around response to climate change.

Instead of by slogans, placemaking defines us by a commitment to protect nonrenewable natural and cultural resources. Miami Beach knows about this. At the conference, a Beach team headed by MBCDC’s Denis Russ will tell how the resort area turned itself around after Disney captured its family trade. It celebrated its Art Deco heritage and became world famous all over again.

In the political change that followed, Miami-Dade County in 2010 published its Design for a Sustainable Future introduced by the mayoral assertion that “In Miami-Dade, global warming and climate change. . . are local issues to us.”  The Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce established its Sustainable Business Council

The city of DeLand is deepening a partnership with Stetson University focused after 57 years on 2013 resumption of intercollegiate football at a municipal stadium walking close to downtown. The first substantial new downtown housing between downtown and campus is in negotiation. City and college are carefully thinking through how transit oriented development should take place when also in 2014 SunRail service starts three miles west of town.

Coastal Manatee County, where the conference takes place, defines itself by its refusal to turn its beach and small towns into tourism enclaves, instead marketing to visitors who want to share the local way of life.

Wakulla County this year identifiably launched climate marketing when Gov. Scott signed off on $4.5 million for the state’s first environmental institute at the Crawfordville campus of Tallahassee Community College. Coastal Wakulla is 85 percent in public ownership. Although an older population values wilderness for hunting, younger adults value it as nature capital. Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratories ships specimens around the world for research on sustainability. A Green Guide certificate program at TCC has graduated more than 100 students. The region is reorienting its economy toward resource protection.

Prime mover in the Wakulla initiative, filmmaker Robert Seidler, asserts that coastal Wakulla “will become the first Florida place to create a ‘climate economy’ organized around natural resource protection. This will start redefining the good life in Florida where protection instead of consumption already holds sway.”

 For conference details and registration, http://www.sustainableandauthenticflorida.com.

2012 GREENRAISER

Posted on 26. Jul, 2012 by Howard Salus in Business, Education, Environment, featured, Florida News, Green Business, Green Events

The REVERB organization

Posted on 16. Jul, 2012 by Howard Salus in Eco Tourism, Education, featured, Florida News, Green Business, Products

Nancy Powell Radlauer (PowellReviews@aol.com)

The REVERB organization

REVERB, based in Portland, Maine, is a non-profit organization that was founded in 2004 by environmentalist Lauren Sullivan and her musician husband, Adam Gardner of Guster. Reverb provides comprehensive, custom greening programs for music tours while conducting grassroots outreach and education with fans around the globe. In addition to our greening work with bands and artists, Reverb also works to move forward the sustainable practices of music industry leaders, including venues, record labels, and radio stations. They take a positive “work-with” approach and believe that all of us can be active participants in protecting the environment and creating real, large-scale, and measurable change.

To date, REVERB has greened 116 tours and 1823 events, reduced 99,000 tons of CO2; involved 2,579 enviro-groups, and reached 14.5 million fans.

ILLEGAL WOOD GUITARS

Well-known musicians, such as Mick Jagger, Sting, Dave Matthews Band, Willie Nelson, Sarah McLachlan, Lenny Kravitz, Bryan Adams, Maroon 5, Barenaked Ladies, Bonnie Raitt, Raiza Said, and Simon Le Bon, among others, have stepped up to the plate in support of amendments added in recent years to the Lacey Act, aimed at preventing the importation of illegally logged wood from protected forests.

The Lacey Act combats trafficking in “illegal” wildlife, fish, and plants. The Lacey Act now, among other things, makes it unlawful, as of December 15, 2008, to import certain plants and plant products without an import declaration. But last year a bill was proposed in Congress to amend the federal Lacey Act that could significantly ease the regulatory burden on importers of wood.

THE MUSICIANS’ PLEDGE

Widespread illegal logging is placing at risk the wood we treasure in our musical instruments, and thus the future of music as we know it. As musicians dedicated to our art and to protecting the earth’s natural resources, we call on everyone involved in the sourcing, crafting and production of musical instruments to join us in our commitment to eliminate all trade in illegally logged timber and forest products. We will not buy a new instrument without asking where the wood comes from and if it was harvested legally and sustainably.

We support the Lacey Act and other laws that prohibit trade in illegally sourced wood and we oppose the efforts currently underway to weaken the Lacey Act.  We urge lawmakers, suppliers and craftsmen to ensure that our art has a positive impact on the environment rather than contributing to forest destruction. We call on our fellow musicians to do the same.

FAN OUTREACH at CONCERTS

REVERB reaches thousands of music fans every year with a positive, uplifting message of environmental sustainability. Some of their practices include:

• Eco-Village | Festival-like village with environmental displays and activities to educate and engage
• Non-Profit Groups | Environmental organizations hosted at each Eco-Village
• Carbon Offset Program | Allows fans to offset their carbon footprint
• Volunteers | Reverb volunteers coordinated to encourage fans to participate in Eco-Village activities
• Eco-Concert Program | Takeaways for fans describe green initiatives of the tour and tips for action
• Jumbotron Slideshow | Includes eco-trivia, tour greening information, text messaging campaigns
• Greening Website | Custom, tour-specific site on all greening elements taken on tour with resources
• Online Carpooling | Resource for fans looking to carpool to and from shows

BEHIND the SCENES at CONCERTS

REVERB also works behind the scenes with each band or artist to create backstage greening programs with the aim of reducing the overall environmental impact of their tour.

• On-Site Coordinator | Reverb staffer in the tour’s crew to execute and oversee all greening elements
• Green Rider & Venue Advance | Custom rider creation and advancement of greening requests per venue
• Biodiesel Fueling Coordination | Working with production team and drivers to arrange biodiesel fuelings from local and sustainable stock

• Waste Reduction & Recycling | Assistance with with large-scale waste reduction and recycling initiatives
• Hospitality & Catering | Coordination of eco-friendly choices backstage including locally sourced organic food, green cleaning supplies, etc.
• Carbon Offsets | Calculation and neutralization of carbon emissions created on tour

Lauren Sullivan, REVERB Co-Founder                                 

Willie Nelson and the Sustainable Biodiesel Alliance recognize environmental visionaries Adam Gardner & Lauren Sullivan of Reverb by presenting them with the 2009 SBA Visionary Award.                

Get involved!

Whether you’re a fan, non-profit organization, business, or artist we’ve got lots of ways you can connect with the Reverb community. You can volunteer to help them promote environmental sustainability at concerts across the country. If you’re interested in manning a table at a concert or partnering with Reverb to reach the masses, they are ready to collaborate with you. And, as a non-profit Reverb, they rely on the generous monetary and in-kind support of environmentally and socially responsible businesses. If you’re interested in supporting their mission or sponsoring the greening of a tour, visit www.REVERB.org,