My sister says weird stuff

My sister, who lives in France, said: "In Paris, if they see you with a plastic bag at the store, they kill you!"

I hope this is a figure of speech. I hope she meant, "They kill you... with their eyes."

Earth Hour is tonight

Earth  Hour is in about two hours (8:30 p.m. everywhere). Other places have already celebrated.

LONDON (AP) - Europe's best known landmarks - including the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben and Rome's Colosseum - have fallen dark, joining a global climate change protest, as lights were switched off across the world to mark the Earth Hour event.

Millions of people were turning off lights and appliances for an hour from 8:30 p.m. Saturday, in a gesture to highlight environmental concerns and to call for a binding pact to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Italy's Leaning Tower of Pisa and buildings across Germany and a host of nations went dark. Amsterdam cut the lights at most city buildings .

While France's Eiffel Tower briefly dimmed its lights for security reasons - switching off for five minutes, rather than a full hour - other city landmarks, including the Arc de Triomphe were in darkness for the duration of the protest.

And this guy has a  list of things to do in the dark (wink, wink).

Is a Clean Energy and Climate Bill Next?

I just received a list email from Repower America (a group started by Al Gore) that said climate change should be the next reform, after health care. Or, as they put it, "We Got Next."

I guess a lot of people are standing in line now that health care passed: Immigrations reform, Banking reform, and Climate Change, come to mind.

Of course, this will all depend on whether Americans embrace the health care reform. If they do, they'll have the stomach for taking on a new legislative fight. So, President Obama and legislators will likely spend the next few months campaigning to win hearts on health care (and votes in November). Whoever "Got Next" will have to wait. That's my opinion. What's yours?

Blogs about buying less

Here are two blogs I like that relate to my column about buying less stuff we don't need. One is Cheap Like Me, and the other is Small Note for a Simple Home, in which the writer said this about becoming aware of our addition to consumption:

I gradually noticed that I was spending more and more time thinking about things to buy. I wasn’t spending a lot of money, but the idea of adding more started to consume my thoughts.

She has some good tips to resist the urge to shop (click on Read More below).

Oops: Forgot to post yesterday's column!

From the El Paso Times:

Buy Less; Shop In Own Closet
By Louie Gilot

EL PASO -- Last column, we talked about "precycling," which amounts to avoiding packaging and disposables so you don't have to recycle them later. Precycling fits into a broader strategy called the three Rs -- reduce, reuse and recycle. Much of this strategy can be summed up with two words: Buy less.

It's hard to do because, thanks to the relentless messages from advertisers, we equate shopping and spending money with entertainment. But some people are resisting the desire to acquire, saying there are better ways to spend one's time and money.

In the 1990s, activists came up with Buy Nothing Day(in the United States, it's on Black Friday). Zombie mall walks (Photo) and other activities were designed to encourage us to be more than mindless consumers. The green movement has tagged along, pointing out that the manufacturing, use and disposal of these impulse purchases add to our growing environmental footprint. Even organic cotton takes water to grow, and its transportation emits greenhouse gases.

I personally stumbled onto the "buy less" philosophy not because of green nudges but because of the economy. About two and a half years ago, I put myself on a shopping moratorium, and I haven't bought new clothes since then.

Office Depot reusable bag

I don't know why but I like this Office Depot reusable bag. It's the color of a brown paper bag and it has this shy little branch. It looks organic. I had to have it!

Self-diagnosis: Carborexia

I think I diagnosed myself with carborexia.

Carborexia: An extreme "dark green" attitude to environmental issues. This can show itself in several ways, such as excessive recycling, but in particular it refers to an obsessive desire to reduce one's personal carbon footprint. The term first appeared in an article in the New York Times on 17 October. The adjective is "carborexic".

Just kidding, I'm totally fine. I can stop whenever I want.

Transmountain expansion; No wildlife corridors

It's not just the border wall that doesn't take wildlife mobility into account. A proposed TexDOT expansion of Transmountain Road in El Paso, from I-10 West to the entrance of the State Park, will change the two-lane, undivided stretch to a four-lane road with a divider. But the project -scheduled for next year- doesn't include a wildlife corridor. Too expensive, says TexDOT.

As the blog El Paso Naturally points out, it's dangerous for wildlife and motorists alike. A better way would be to build dirt lined culverts for the animals (mule deer and javelinas, among others) to cross the road. You can send your comments to TexDOT before March 24 at mtelles@dot.state.tx.us or  http://www.docstoc.com/docs/29484478/TXDoT-Transmountain-Expansion-Comment-Form.

More poppies photos!

So gorgeous!

The poppies are here

Look at these gorgeous poppies, right on time for Poppy Fest Saturday, courtesy of the blog El Paso Naturally.

Poppy Fest is 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the El Paso Museum of Archeology, 4301 Transmountain. Admission is free.

The Border Wall's environmental footprint

While I'm at it talking about the border wall, there's a whole slew of environmental impacts caused by this thing. (The Obama administration seems intent on finishing the job and continues to build in the few spots where the Bush administration ran out of time.)

People with No Border Wall testified at a government listening session in El Paso last week about some of the damage.

For one thing, the wall can act as a dam as it did in Nogales in 2008 (photo), preventing drainage and flooding one side. Customs and Border Protection say they are working on the drainage problems and that they have installed gates for animals to cross. Environmentalists say the "gates" are only big enough for cats and they are only at one spot in the Rio Grande Valley.

A list of other impacts follows. (Also, since I'm probably going to get comments about my use of "wall" instead of "fence," let me just say this. Have you seen the thing? It's a solid structure that, in many places, is not see-through. That's a wall  in my book.)

Illegal mammals?

I was at a listening session with government officials last week in El Paso and I've been meaning to blog about it. It was about the state of human rights at the border and it had a panel on environmental protection. A lot of the talk centered on the environmental degradation caused by security activity and infrastructure (like the border fence/wall) on what had previously been untouched wilderness.

One of the problems is that the border wall that's designed to stop migrants from crossing is also stopping all sorts of critters from migrating, finding food, mates, etc...  And while migrants have ladders and wire cutters, and hopefully soon, a reform of the broken immigration system (but that's for another blog), animals are stuck. Just look at these sad pictures. (More photos and info are available at the Sierra Club, and Defenders of Wildlife.)

(Deer, Arizona. 2007. Anonymous.)

Even the smaller creatures can't pass:

(Toad, Arizona. 2006. Anonymous.)

(Roadrunner, Arizona. 2009. Dan Millis.)

(Javelinas, Arizona. 2008. Kris Schlyer.)

A cougar:

(Cougar, San Pedro. 2010. Anonymous.)

Green toilets

I found this by chance. It's a toilet (supposedly European) that separates Number 1 from Number 2, thereby making it easier to extract nutrients for fertilizer. If it ends up being the toilet of the future, remember you saw it first here.

If that doesn't do it for you, there's always the good old compost toilet.

Letter to Climate Change Denier; Re: Medieval Warming Period

(Clarification: My husband said it's not clear who I'm talking to in this letter. I'm addressing climate change deniers in general.)

Dear CC Denier,

I don't mean to insult your intelligence. I'm sure you are pretty smart, went to college, and all that. I'm sure you are at least as smart as I am. But climate science is really, really complicated. It's not just common sense. So unless you have a PhD in atmospheric sciences or climatology, please stop confusing yourself by watching Glenn Beck (who only graduated high school by the way). And how about showing a little humility? I mean, I don't see you going around speechifying about nuclear physics, right? But suddenly, you're an expert in planetary phenomena?

Lately, you've been talking your head off about the so-called Medieval Warm Period. You think you've finally found your smoking gun because, you've heard, there was a warm period during the Middle Ages. Therefore, warming cannot be caused by the industrial activities of humans. First, climate data from the 800s to the 1300s is, not surprisingly, incomplete and most scientists decline to draw conclusions from them (for instance, data is limited to certain regions in the world.)

Second, even this limited data shows the temperature are higher now and rising faster. Don't believe me? How about the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminsitration that says,  about the Medieval Warm Period,

"In summary, it appears that the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries are likely the warmest period the Earth has seen in at least 1200 years."

Oh, I just heard that you are now talking about climate warming on Mars! You say that since there are no humans on Mars, the warming disproves that Earth's warming is man-made. You must have just gotten a PhD in astronomy or astrophysics, or maybe a job at NASA. Regardless, congratulations. Now you are forcing me to research Mars's atmosphere. Turns out, Mars has its own thing going on with all sorts of factors absent from Earth, such as violent sand storms. Who knew the planets could be so different! Also, the warming was observed on a particular area of Mars and not necessarily globalized.

I'll stop here because I'm out of my league. But I'm sure we'll talk again later. You know where to find me.

Sincerely,

LaGreenga

Photos of my reusable produce bags in action!

Many thanks to Nickie for letting me borrow her sewing machine!

COLUMN: Pre-cycle before you recycle

Pre-cycle and you won't need to recycle
By Louie Gilot
El Paso Times

When it comes to green living, recycle is the word.

But recycling is not a cure-all. First, many products are not recyclable. Second, recycling is not an energy-neutral activity; it takes energy to transport recyclables and to process them for reuse.
That's why advocates say that instead of counting solely on recycling, we should engage in "pre-cycling," in other words avoiding unnecessary packaging at the time of purchase. Pre-cycling is really about pre-thinking your shopping trip and, as always, experimenting.

I started my pre-cycling efforts last week at the grocery store. I headed for the produce corner. I decide on a naked cucumber (not shrink-wrapped in plastic) and put it in my cart. I would wash and peel the cucumber anyway, so I didn't mind it touching the cart. Operation Pre-cycling was going fabulously.
But then I needed apples. Six of them. It's not that I minded having them roll around in my cart with the cucumber, but it would have been a mess trying to round them up at the cashier. And what about a head of lettuce? Somehow it seemed wrong to put this wet, unprotected vegetable in the dirty cart. So vulnerable. Maybe I am just a softy for lettuce.

Star-studded meeting at El Paso Solar Energy Association last night

State Sen. Eliot Shapleigh (photo), Sen. elect Jose Rodriguez and State Rep. Joe Moody were hanging at the EPSEA meeting last night. Shapleigh did his Al Gore-like presentation on the solar potential of El Paso and schooled his successor (Rodriguez) on the finer points of net metering.

I'll blog more on these subjects later, because I have to do some additional research.

In the meantime, I urge you to join EPSEA. It's only $15 a year and things are going to heat up around solar energy (haha) this year. If you care about sustainability and economic development, then you should help the EPSEA turn El Paso into the Sun Capital of the Southwest.

Flooding in Paris

Mon Dieu!

Apparently, this was due to aging sea walls from Napoleonic days...

LaGreenga helps organize a green triathlon, hilarity ensues

I'm really proud to be part of this event, a USATriathlon-sanctioned race at the Tigua Reservation in September. First, it's really ironic because you'll never find me running a mile, let alone biking and swimming.

But the organizers, including a very sporty superwoman type named Gabriela Gallegos who founded Race El Paso, love that stuff. We just launched the Web site, so check it out, especially the "Race Green" page.

It was important for Race El Paso that the race make an effort to respect the environment. Concretely, that means that we took the Pledge of Sustainability from an organization called Athletes for a Fit Planet and committed to a certain number of green actions, such as 100% online registration, reusable race bags and more. This is a great project and I'm proud to be part of it.

Just as long as I don't have to run it...