New Haven Schools to Generate Power

New Haven Schools are considering generating power on site to save energy, according to this article in the New Haven Register (see excerpt below):

With energy bills heading north of $10 million a year, city schools are considering generating electric and thermal energy on-site, a move that has the potential to save $1 million over the next decade.
New Haven’s would be the first school district statewide to experiment with the refrigerator-sized energy plants, although there are nursing homes, apartment buildings and hospitals in Connecticut and the Northeast using the technology.
The Board of Education would contract with Massachusetts-based Aegis Energy Services to install six co-generation plants at Conte/West Hills Magnet School, John S. Martinez School, Hill Regional Career, James Hillhouse and Wilbur Cross high schools and the Sound School.
Aegis would own the generators and sell power back to the schools at a rate 10 to 12 percent less than United Illuminating.
The natural gas-powered generators produce steam, which the schools would use to heat water, specifically the swimming pools at five of the six schools selected to receive the generators. The Sound School does not have a pool, but its temperature-controlled tanks are heated year-round.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Eco-Movies in Wallingford

Free movies on environmental topics are being held at First United Methodist in Wallingford. Start time is usually 6:30. Contact Al Satton for info/directions. The schedule is below:

FUMC Community Film Series Schedule

February 1st
An Inconvenient Truth (2006) Rated PG Director Davis Guggenheim. Al Gore’s passionate campaign for the environment is documented. He presents global warming facts without being too political. He did win the Nobel Prize!!

February 8th
Who Killed the Electric Car? (2006)
Amid ever-increasing gas prices, this documentary delves into the short life of the GM EV1 electric car. How could such an efficient, green-friendly vehicle fail to transform our garages and skies? Through interviews Chris Paine (former EV1 owner) seeks to answer the question. This documentary is quite informative and entertaining.

March 7th
Too Hot Not To Handle (2006) Rated G Directors Maryann DeLeo and Ellen Goosenberg Kent. Documentary on how global warming effects our environment and the measures needed to reverse the trend.
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Pop Wars: Cans vs. Bottles

What is better for the environment, soft drinks in bottles or cans? Salon has the facts in this article (excerpt below):

The amount of petroleum used in making the 50-gram (g) and 2-liter bottle is around 325 g, and the resulting greenhouse gas emissions from its manufacture are around 825 g. An aluminum can made from virgin materials results in the emissions of 280 g of carbon dioxide. Does this mean that the can is better? Well, keep in mind that the bottle holds more beverage, so we need to take that into account. You would need to buy 5.6 cans, almost a full six-pack, to equal the volume of the bottle. The 5.6 cans would be responsible for 1,568 g of carbon dioxide emissions. So it looks like the 2-liter bottle results in about half of the greenhouse gas emissions of the equivalent amount of cans. Is this the end of the story? What about transportation emissions?
Let's assume that both beverage containers are filled in the same facility and shipped to the store with the same truck. The bottle weighs 2.05 kg when full (2 liters plus 50 g) and the 5.6 cans weigh 2.084 kg (2 liters plus 84 g). This means that the cans require slightly more fuel to transport than the bottles. That's two strikes against cans. How about a third strike? Soda bottles often find a second life in my favorite winter garments, as some clothing brands manufacture fleece in part from recycled plastic, which is melted into pellets and extruded into fine fibers. Try doing that with aluminum.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.

Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Stop Bleeding Energy

Salon has an article about saving energy by cutting off "energy vampires" in your home (see excerpt below). The article mentions using energy monitors, which are available at our partner site.

There are insomniacs in our homes that work late at night and run up the electricity bill. They are not the classically overworked American who pops melatonin or Tylenol PM. They are microwave ovens, computers and TVs. They are half of our appliances, electronic equipment and associated chargers that suck down power even when they're turned off, in sleep or standby mode. A typical house hosts around 50 such insomniacs, and though individual devices use minuscule amounts of electricity, in the aggregate they're an astonishing and pricey burden.
This "vampire energy loss" represents between 5 and 8 percent of a single family home's total electricity use per year, according to the Department of Energy. On average, that's the equivalent of one month's electricity bill. Taken across the United States, this adds up to at least 68 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually; that's the equivalent output of 37 typical electricity-generating power plants, costing consumers more than $7 billion. This wasted energy sends more than 97 billion pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere; on a global scale, standby energy accounts for 1 percent of the world's carbon emissions, according to Alan Meier of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, based in California.
"When a consumer thinks the device is off, it should be using as little power as possible," says Meier. "But in their haste to get products onto the market, manufacturers don't make those modest design improvements, and we, the consumers, pay the price in unnecessarily high standby power use."
Luckily, there are a number of new gadgets that make it easy to thwart vampire energy loads. For places with clusters of cords like a home office or entertainment center, use a Smart Strip. By monitoring power consumption, the strip detects when computers or stereos are off and powers down, eliminating energy usage in all peripheral devices such as printers. Another option is the Isolé power strip, which uses a motion sensor to turn off six of its eight outlets if it hasn't detected anyone in the room for up to 30 minutes.
To ascertain what appliances are sucking the most power, you can buy a Kill a Watt power meter, a nifty gadget with a wall outlet that measures the watts, volts, amps and kilowatt-hours of a given device when off or on. I bought one and spent a fun-filled few days discovering the power my appliances were wasting. While my electric toothbrush and cellphone charger suck less than a kWh per day (around $5 a year), my VCR, which I seldom use, takes three times that much. I don't have a plasma TV, but if you do, it's likely using over 1,400 kWh per year (the equivalent of about $160) if plugged in but not technically "on," according to a 2005 Department of Energy report. A Federal Energy Management Program Web site supplies information about the standby power wattage of office equipment such as computers, fax machines and printers.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Connecticut January Global Warming Events

Climate Change Stakeholder Meeting on Building Fossil Fuel Use
The next state public stakeholder meeting to improve CT's climate plan will be held on
When: Thursday, January 24, 2008
Where: Middlesex Community College from 8:30 a.m- 12:30 p.m. What: The focus of the meeting is greenhouse gas reductions in the area of home heating and building energy usage. Come hear presentations from speakers and offer your suggestions and input on what should be done. Directions are posted at http://ctclimatechange.com/stakeholder.html
If you plan to attend, please RSVP to c4info@ctclimatechange.com (in part to ensure the right amount of planet-friendly food is available!)

FOCUS THE NATION- Climate Teach-ins
On and around January 31, 2008, Focus The Nation, an unprecedented educational initiative around the issue of global warming, is coming to more than 1000 campuses in every state of the nation. Find CT events: vist http://www.focusthenation.org/actionmap/?type=state&stateprov=ct to find the over 30 Connecticut-based events including events at the UConn schools, Yale, and Wesleyan and more with interesting and noted speakers, panels and discussions. Highlighted events here: http://ctclimatechange.com/Events.htmlAlso look for a streaming national webcast on Wednesday January 30th at 8PM called the "2% Solution" which will be screened at many of these schools. http://www.focusthenation.org/2percentsolution.php

Featured event: US Congressmen to speak at CCSU on 1/30/08
At Connecticut Central State University (New Britain) on Wednesday January 30th look for a panel with US Representative Larson and Murphy from 7-8PM and ask questions on what Congress is doing to achieve needed reductions (15-20% by 2020 and 80% by 2050) and have polluters pay for their pollution.http://www.ccsu.edu/ccsuclimate/symposium.htm

Hearing on draft Connecticut Electricity Plan
What: The 2007 CT energy bill calls for the creation of a new energy plan which puts efficiency before new power plants. The reconstituted Connecticut Energy Advisory Board (CEAB) is currently seeking public comment on a draft "Integrated Resource Plan" plan in writing or at a public hearing. Help put CT on a new energy path by commenting on and supporting the parts of the plan which talk about dramatically increasing efficiency and question sections which suggest turning to new nuclear plants.How to help:Email rsmith@cleanwater.org to receive talking points to help you with testimony as soon as they are completed.Submit public comments by 2/7/08: Submit Comments by emailing G. Deans at gdeans@cerc.com or mailing comments to CEAB in care of G. Deans at CERC, 805 Brook St., Bldg. 4, Rocky Hill, CT 06067.
Testify before the CEAB: A public hearing will be held on February 13, 2008 in Room 2D of the Legislative Office Building in Hartford at 4 p.m.Read a summary of the plan by the CEAB here
Read the plan itself here
Stay up to date with the Connecticut Energy Advisory Board's activities here: http://www.ctenergy.org

Westport Connecticut's Quest to Go Green

This New York Times article concerns the efforts of the Connecticut town to shrink it's greenhouse gas footprint. (See excerpt below):

Westport, with its beachfront parks and leafy neighborhoods where the populace naturally tilts green, is ahead of the game but hardly unique in trying, in its own small way, to address climate change through public and private action.
“Our big job is to tell people they can do something,” said Carl Leaman, a former selectman who is chairman of the group, formed a year ago. “Many people acknowledge there’s a problem and they don’t know what to do. So the first thing we did was come up with the carbon footprint and then came up with ways to reduce it.”
The carbon footprint, the measure of human impact on the environment in terms of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, was 18 tons per person per year — relatively high because Interstate 95 passes through town. The goal was to find ways to reduce it by a ton a year for the next three years.
That’s doable if enough people do relatively painless things like replace three light bulbs with compact fluorescents (300 pounds), drop thermostats to 68 from 70 (2,000 pounds), take shorter showers (350 pounds) and turn off electronic devices they’re not using (1,000 pounds). You get 6,000 pounds by trading in a standard car for a hybrid, but even in Westport, not everyone is ready to ante up for a Prius.
That’s added to various public initiatives, like solar panels at fire headquarters, no-idling policies for most city vehicles. The agenda item Thursday night was the showing of “Everything’s Cool,” a documentary about the long, slow trudge toward an understanding of the enormous stakes of addressing climate change.
It’s both breezy and sobering, whistling its way past the edge of despair, arguing that the Bush administration and shills for the oil industry have kept a fake debate going about whether global warming is real as a way to suck the passion and urgency out of doing anything about it.
So when the author and environmentalist Bill McKibben laments in the film that the financial world, with its thrilling booms and crushing busts, its plucky efforts to ward off recessions, its fevers and chills, seems more real to us than the natural world where we live, you could see people nodding throughout the room.
CLIMATE change, after all, was cited as an issue in the 1950s. Its dangers were noted in a report to President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s. It was a Time magazine cover story in 1987.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Convenient Showing of An Inconvenient Truth

An Inconvenient Truth returns to the big screen at Cinestudio (Trinity College) in Hartford. Here is the Cinestudio write-up:

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH (PG)Tue Jan 29 @ 7:30(2006) Directed by David Guggenheim, based on a presentation of Al Gore. Featuring: Al Gore.Not to lessen the positive rewards of making An Inconvenient Truth for former V.P. turned activist Al Gore (like winning the Academy Award® for Best Documentary and receiving the Nobel Peace Prize), but the more amazing impact of this eye-opening film has been the turn in public determination to pay attention to the threat of global climate change. If you've only seen it on DVD, now is the chance to experience the power of its visually stunning evidence of a planet in danger. You may even be inspired to urge the U.S. to get on board with the Kyoto Treaty - or to elect a President who will. 100 min.

CINESTUDIO 300 Summit St

Hartford CT
Telephone: 860 297 2544

Fax: 860 297 5126

Showtimes: 860 297 CINE

Visit http://www.cinestudio.org/ for the latest movie listings! Donate at http://www.networkforgood.org/

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.

Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Global Warming Teach-Ins

The Hartford Courant is reporting that thousands of schools, colleges, and other organizations, including some in Connecticut, will participate in a national teach-in on global warming on January 31. An excerpt of the story is below:

Students in Missouri will truck in 15 tons of coal. Wesleyan will serve a "sustainable" dinner, while kids at the Laureate Elementary School in San Luis Obispo, Calif., are using worms to compost the remains of their lunches.Central Connecticut State University invited all the presidential candidates, but none of them can make it. But that's OK: The clowns from Middletown's ArtFarm will be there to perform their show, "Circus for a Fragile Planet."They all will be a part of Focus the Nation, a nationwide effort later this month to teach students and policymakers about climate change and prompt them to act.
With an urgency — and a sense of irreverence — reminiscent of the anti-war movement of the 1960s, a group of activists from Portland, Ore., has recruited students at more than 1,000 college campuses, K-12 schools, civic organizations, church groups and private companies to conduct a massive "teach-in" on global warming Jan. 31."It's kind of overwhelming," said project director Eban Goodstein, an economics professor at Lewis & Clark College in Portland. "This started out as a project with just two of us, and now we have 10,000 volunteers around the country. … All we have to do is tell people about this and they get excited. People are really recognizing the critical nature of the times we are living in and looking for a way to be leaders."The goal is to bring 1 million or more students into a nonpartisan discussion on global warming and encourage them to fight for solutions, said Alexander Tinker, one of the group's organizers.Events are being scheduled by at least 40 Connecticut schools and organizations, including all six University of Connecticut campuses, the four regional state universities, Yale, Wesleyan, Trinity, Connecticut College and many others.The events will begin with an interactive webcast, "The 2% Solution," on the night of Jan. 30, billed as a discussion of what people can do about global warming. Jan. 31 will be a day of workshops, classes and discussions leading up to forums with national and local political leaders.Starting Jan. 21, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, students can vote at the Focus the Nation website for their top five solutions for global warming. The leading solutions will be delivered Feb. 18 by student teams to congressional offices around the country during the Presidents' Day congressional recess.State environmental Commissioner Gina McCarthy will be the keynote speaker at CCSU on Jan. 29. The school has been planning its activities for a year and has a packed a three-day schedule with speakers and events, said Charles Button, an assistant professor of geography who has been involved in the project from the beginning."The 2% Solution" webcast is being produced with support from the National Wildlife Federation, hosted on Earth Day Network TV — an online TV channel — and will be broadcast live from the University of Central Florida in Orlando.The webcast's name refers to what organizers say is the amount by which greenhouse gas emissions would have to drop each year in developed countries for the next 40 years to minimize the damage from global warming. That's a goal also seen in the environmental policies proposed by several presidential candidates.

Related Links:

Focus The Nation

CCSU Focus The Nation

UConn Focus The Nation

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Polar Bears Casulties of Our Oil Addiction?

Is the Bush Administration willing to sacrifice Polar Bears to continue to feed our oil addiction? That's the contention of this article in Salon (see excerpt below)

By 2050, two-thirds of the world's polar bears will have vanished, as a result of global warming melting their icy habitat, according to scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey. There may no longer be any polar bears at all living in Alaska, their only home in the United States. Still, this stark prediction, revealed in September 2007, after a yearlong review of the impact of melting sea ice on the Alaskan bears, hasn't inspired the Bush administration to list the bear as even a threatened species, much less an endangered one, under the Endangered Species Act.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, responsible for listing mammals as threatened or endangered, has been one of the most politically compromised scientific divisions in the Bush administration. It didn't consider extending federal protections to polar bears until it was petitioned, and subsequently sued, to do so by a coalition of environmental groups back in 2005. Now it admits that polar bears are "likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future," and explained recent delays by citing the complexity of the decision: It has never before had to designate a species as threatened because of global warming.
But critics say that Fish and Wildlife hasn't made a ruling yet because another agency within the Department of Interior, the Minerals Management Service, is on the verge of handing out oil and gas leases in vast swaths of the polar bears' remaining habitat. The Endangered Species Act prevents the federal government from taking actions that harm protected species. "At the same time the administration is illegally delaying a decision on the polar bear listing, it is also racing to sell some of the polar bear's most important habitat in the Chukchi Sea for oil and gas development," said Andrew Wetzler, director of the Endangered Species Project at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
On Thursday, the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming will hold a hearing on the polar bear listing and controversial oil leases. Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., who chairs the committee, said in a statement: "The Bush administration is once again putting the oil cart before the polar bear. On the one hand, the Interior Department is dragging its feet on protecting the polar bear, while opening up new oil and gas drilling in sensitive polar bear habitats on the other."
Details of the oil development were announced earlier this month. The Minerals Management Service plans to lease 30 million acres for oil and gas drilling in the Chukchi Sea, where about one-fifth of the world's remaining polar bears live. The lease sale will take place on Feb. 6, which could allow it to go through before any plans to protect the polar bears get in the way. "Short of sending Dick Cheney to Alaska to personally club baby polar bears to death, there's not too much that the administration can do that is worse for polar bears than oil and gas development in their habitat," says Kassie Siegel, director of the climate, air and energy program for the Center for Biological Diversity.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.

Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

The Case Against Bottled Water

An article in Salon (excerpted here) does a great job of explaining what's so bad about bottled water.

First, the manufacturing of plastic bottles, which are often made from nonrecycled virgin material, requires vast quantities of petroleum, and only 12 percent of this material is recovered for recycling. The total mass of an empty 1-liter bottle is around 25 grams (this varies from brand to brand) and it is made from PET (polyethylene terephthalate). One kilogram (1 kg = 2.2046 lbs.) of this type of plastic requires around 6.5 kilograms of oil, uses 294 kilograms of water (this includes power plant cooling water), and results in 3.7 kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions. Based on my calculations, an empty 1-liter bottle requires over 7 liters of water in its manufacturing process, uses 162 grams of oil, and results in over 100 grams of greenhouse gas emissions. (That's about 10 balloons full of carbon dioxide, or how much an average car emits over half a kilometer or one-third of a mile.)
Next, the distribution of bottled water, often by container ship from the other side of the planet (Fiji, Evian, San Pellegrino), is fuel intensive and results in greenhouse gas and sulfur dioxide emissions. Transportation emissions are measured in grams of greenhouse gases (in carbon-dioxide-equivalent units) per metric ton per kilometer. Shipping by container ship emits about 17 grams of carbon dioxide per ton km, while trains release 56 grams per ton km, trucks spew 102 grams per ton km, and jet aircraft belch 570 grams per ton km. So the important factors in transportation emissions are weight, distance and transportation mode. Since we can't alter the weight of bottled water and companies will automatically select the most efficient and cost-effective means of transport, we are left to control the distance component through our consumer choices.
Sales of bottled waters are driven by marketing that creates a perception of luxury, quality and novelty. After all, every brand tastes like, well, water. But you are paying a huge premium to be seen around town with that cool square Fiji bottle or distinctly green Perrier bottle. When you add the cost of packaging and marketing to transportation, not to mention the water makers' huge profits, you are paying two to five times more for a bottle of water than you do for the equivalent amount of gasoline. When compared with the price of tap water, bottled water costs up to 50,000 percent more (and many brands get their water from municipal water supplies).
Bottled water also represents a major ethical dilemma, given that millions of people around the world lack access to clean and safe drinking water.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Ethics and Climate Change

A colleague at North Carolina IPL is recommending the book Moral Climate: The Ethics of Climate Change by Michael Northcott as a great read for people of faith who care about climate change. It is available at Amazon.com.

Here is the blurb from the UK site ekklesia.com:

Significant climate change as a consequence of human pollution of the atmosphere looks increasingly likely. Some change is already occurring but quite what magnitude of change will occur and what it will bring to different parts of the world remains unknown. In the face of this uncertain yet impending crisis, does it make sense to speak of a moral response? Michael Northcott argues not only that it does, but that it is an essential weapon in winning the battle against further environmental disaster.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Ecumenical Advocacy Days March 7-10, 2008

Once again Ecumenical Advocacy Days in Washington, DC will offer an Eco-Justice track.
Follow links to learn more.
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Green Resolutions?

Still making your green resolutions for 2008? Here are some ideas from Simple Steps.

Note: The Eco-Justice Blogger is still working on her '07 resolution to carry bags with her to the store. Favorite reuseable bags: Trader Joe's, Price Chopper. (I don't work for Trader Joe's, I swear!)

What's your green resolution?

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.

Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

What Saves the Earth and Sticks to the Roof of Your Mouth?

The answer is, of course, peanut butter, according to this post on the New York Times health website Well (excerpt below):
Can peanut butter save the world and boost your health?
Some people think it’s a start. The Sierra Club magazine this month highlights the Web site www.pbjcampaign.org, which claims eating peanut butter is a good way to go green. The site, which vows it’s not connected to the peanut industry, notes that livestock account for 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. Compared with a burger, a PB&J sandwich saves as much as 2.5 pounds of carbon dioxide, 280 gallons of water and 50 square feet of land, according to the magazine.
Disclaimer: The Eco-Justice Blogger eats a p.b. and j. every morning for breakfast: Trader Joe's Crunchy unsalted peanut butter, Organic Morello Cherry fruit spread, and sprouted multi-grain toast.

What's your fave planetary-saving pb and j combo?

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Rate the Candidates on the Environment

As primaries and caucuses unfold around the country, it's time to learn how your favorite presidential candidate stands on environmental issues. Check out the scorecards at the League of Conservation Voters website.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.

Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

FTC Takes On Carbon Offsets

Are you getting enough bang for your buck when you buy carbon offsets? The United States Federal Trade Commission is exploring that very thing in a series of hearings on green marketing, according to the New York Times story excerpted below:
Corporations and shoppers in the United States spent more than $54 million last year on carbon offset credits toward tree planting, wind farms, solar plants and other projects to balance the emissions created by, say, using a laptop computer or flying on a jet.
But where exactly is that money going?
The Federal Trade Commission, which regulates advertising claims, raised the question Tuesday in its first hearing in a series on green marketing, this one focusing on carbon offsets. As more companies use offset programs to create an environmental halo over their products, the commission said it was growing increasingly concerned that some green marketing assertions were not substantiated. Environmentalists have a word for such misleading advertising: “greenwashing.”
With the rapid growth of green programs like carbon offsets, “there’s a heightened potential for deception,” said Deborah Platt Majoras, chairwoman of the commission.
The F.T.C. has not updated its environmental advertising guidelines, known as the Green Guides, since 1998. Back then, the agency did not create definitions for phrases that are common now — like renewable energy, carbon offsets and sustainability.
For now, it is soliciting comments on how to update its guidelines and is gathering information about how carbon-offset programs work.
Consumers seem to be confronted with green-sounding offers at every turn. Volkswagen told buyers last year that it would offset their first year of driving by planting in what it called the VW Forest in the lower Mississippi alluvial valley (the price starts at $18).
Dell lets visitors to its site fill their shopping carts with carbon offsets for their printers, computer monitors and even for themselves (the last at a cost of $99 a year).
Continental Airlines lets travelers track the carbon impact of their itineraries.
General Electric and Bank of America will translate credit card rewards points into offsets.
Most suppliers of carbon offsets say that the cost of planting a tree is roughly $5, and the tree must live for at least 100 years to fully compensate for the emissions in question. By comparison, an offset sold by Dell for three years’ use of a notebook computer costs $2.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Iowa Bishop Calls for Climate Dialogue

The Rt. Rev. Alan Scarfe, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Iowa, is calling for a year-long dialogue about energy and climate change in Iowa in today's DesMoines Register (see excerpt of editorial below):

As people of faith we are called to care for God's sacred creation and everything therein, which the Lord has described as "good." We are charged with caring for the poor and vulnerable around the world through alleviation of global poverty. We are faced with a formidable challenge on both fronts - the effects of global warming.As the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, noted in a recent statement, "The biggest challenge that faces us in terms of global policy at the moment is how we are to find ways of reducing and controlling climate change without eating into the economic aspirations, the proper aspirations of our poorest societies towards prosperity, respect and dignity."
In my own church we have heard from Anglican faithful in Swaziland about how climate-related drought has made it all but impossible to grow food. Our fellow churchgoers in Bangladesh have warned us that rising waters threaten to engulf the homes, places of worship and communities of millions. We must act to protect our brothers and sisters and reduce pollution here at home.After the disappointing response of the Bush administration to the global climate-change conference in Bali, it is increasingly apparent that it will fall to state-level leaders, such as Iowa Gov. Chet Culver, to help prod the United States to address the urgent challenges and opportunities created by global warming.
The good news for Iowans is that our governor made renewable energy a major part of his platform upon entering office. He has shown courage in helping to frame a multistate accord to reduce global-warming emissions. The next logical step for him in showing his commitment to a cleaner future for Iowa and the rest of the world is the convening of a statewide dialogue on energy and the related choices that we must all make.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Harnessing Body Heat

A Swedish company is planning to do just that in order to heat it's offices, according to this article below:

A Swedish company plans to harness the body heat generated by thousands of commuters scrambling to catch their trains at Stockholm's main railway station and use it for heating a nearby office building.
Real estate firm Jernhusen AB believes the system can provide about 15 percent of the heating needed for a 13-storey building being built next to the Central Station in the Swedish capital.
"It just came up at a coffee meeting last summer. Somebody suggested: why not do something with all this heat in the station?" project leader Karl Sundholm said.
About 250,000 people pass through the station every day, warming the air inside with their body heat.
Sundholm said the idea is to have large ventilators in the station suck in the warm air and use it to heat up water, which will then be shipped through pipes to the new office building.
The system will cost about 300,000 kronor (euro32,000; US$47,000) to install, he said.
"All that's needed is a few pumps and some pipes," he said, adding the station is already equipped with most of the required ventilator systems.
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

James Hansen, Uncensored

Terry Gross interviewed NASA climate scientist James Hansen and author Mark Bowen about Bowen's new book Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming. Listen to the interview here.

Read the intro to the program below:

James Hansen, who's widely described as being NASA's leading climate scientists; he's been studying the topic for more than three decades, and he began speaking publicly about the threat of global warming almost 20 years ago.
Just over a year ago, he went public with a charge that made headlines around the world: The Bush administration, Hansen said, had been trying to silence his warnings about the urgency of the need to address global warming.
Now, writer and scientist Mark Bowen has literally written the book on the affair. It's called Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr. James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Green Faith in the Green Mountain State

All Souls Interfaith Gathering has built what they hope is the greenest church ever. Read the full story (and see more photos of this spectacular-looking place) in USA Today.

SHELBURNE, Vt. — All Souls Interfaith Gathering has a reputation for being all-inclusive.
The small congregation, founded in 1999, recognizes just about every faith you can think of. No one is turned away. And that includes Mother Earth.
ASIG prides itself on being one of the greenest churches in one of the greenest of states, and nothing proves that more than its spanking new sanctuary building, which opened in October.
It's a model for ecological correctness: locally harvested wood, bamboo flooring, compact fluorescent lights and a furnace that will heat the facility using grass, corn or wood pellets. The congregation expects to go through 30 to 35 tons of wood pellets this first winter in the new building.
Even the air conditioning is provided by using water from an artesian well.
"I'd like to think we're cutting-edge," says the Rev. Mary Abele, who heads the congregation that numbers 70 but is growing every week. "I suspect some come now because of our environmental practices."

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Burt's Bees and Clorox-Yum!?

Eco-beauty giant Burt's Bees has been eaten by Clorox, and both companies claim it will make Clorox go green. Read an excerpt of the wide-ranging New York Times article here:

Clorox was willing to pay almost $1 billion for Burt’s Bees because big companies see big opportunities in the market for green products. From 2000 to 2007, Burt’s Bees’ annual revenue soared to $164 million from $23 million. Analysts say there is far more growth to be had by it and its competitors as consumers keep gravitating toward products that promise organic and environmental benefits.
In the last couple of years, L’Oréal paid $1.4 billion for the Body Shop and Colgate-Palmolive bought 84 percent of Tom’s of Maine, which makes natural toothpaste and deodorant, for $100 million. Clorox is also creating eco-friendly product lines of its own.
Many corporate leaders have sold their shareholders on green initiatives by pointing out that they help cut costs — an argument that is more persuasive now, while energy costs are sky high. But as companies rush to put out more and more “natural,” “organic” or “green” products, consumers and advocacy groups are increasingly questioning the meaning of these labels.
Clorox, for one, will face plenty of skepticism. Environmentalists have long said that bleach is harmful when drained into city sewers. The disinfectant has become a stand-in for jokes about chemicals and the environment, and a new round seems to have begun this fall when the company acquired Burt’s Bees.
“Who likes Burt’s Bees now that it’s been bought by Clorox?” Alison Stewart, a host on National Public Radio, said in November. “You know, just slap some bleach on your lips, it’ll all be good.”
Clorox executives have been fighting what they call “misinformation” about bleach for years. The company says that 95 to 98 percent of its bleach breaks into salt and water and that the remaining byproduct is safe for sewer systems. And Clorox sells many products that have nothing to do with bleach — including Brita water filters, Glad trash bags and Hidden Valley salad dressings.
Still, after Clorox agreed to buy Burt’s Bees last fall, scores of customers called Burt’s Bees and accused the company of selling out. John Replogle, the chief executive of Burt’s Bees, says he personally responded to customers who left their phone numbers.
“Don’t judge Clorox as much by where they’ve been as much as where they intend to go,” Mr. Replogle says he told them.

Burt’s Bees maintains its founders’ green philosophies. Employees’ bonuses are based in part on how well the company meets energy conservation goals, and there are prime parking spaces for staff members who drive hybrid cars or carpool. It buys offsets for 100 percent of its carbon emissions and is working toward a goal of sending no trash to landfills by 2020.
Mr. Replogle calls his current job a “mission” and says he is trying to reinvent business with an idea he calls “the Greater Good,” based on the founders’ ideals. The premise is that if companies are socially responsible, profit will follow. Burt’s Bees not only prioritizes the natural origin of its ingredients but also emphasizes animal rights, responsible trade, employee benefits and the environment.
Like most natural-products companies, Burt’s Bees has the luxury of charging enough for its goods to pay for such causes. A 0.15-ounce tube of Burt’s Bees basic lip balm, for example, costs $3. The same-size tube of ChapStick, which uses synthetic ingredients, costs $1.69.
Burt’s Bees is not perfect, Mr. Replogle acknowledges. The company obtains all of its beeswax from hives in Ethiopia, so shipping the ingredient across the Atlantic adds to carbon emissions.
LATELY, Burt’s Bees has started to police its industry. The company’s research lab is full of competitors’ products labeled “natural,” and employees of Burt’s Bees test those assertions.
Burt’s Bees has also led a group of companies that have teamed up with the Natural Products Association to create a standard for natural personal care products, complete with stickers to label items that make the cut. To qualify, brands must create products that are at least 95 percent natural and contain no ingredients known to be harmful. The stickers will make their debut in April.
Consumers “walk down the aisle in the grocery stores’ health and beauty area, and they’re confronted with ‘natural’ at every turn,” says Daniel Fabricant, vice president for scientific and regulatory affairs at the association. “We just don’t want to see the term misused any longer.”
To prove his own bona fides, Mr. Replogle grabs a bottle of Burt’s Bees avocado butter hair treatment, squeezes some onto his finger and dramatically licks it off. He then passes the tube to two Clorox executives so they can have a taste.
“If you can’t put it into your mouth, you shouldn’t put it on your skin,” he says. “I’d like to see other companies do that.”

Disclaimer: The Eco-Justice Blogger is an enthusiastic consumer of Burt's Bees products, although I've never actually eaten them.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Oprah Goes Green!

If you missed the original telecast of Oprah's first show about going green, you can see it today or at least read about it on her website.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Climate Change is a Real Bummer

Turns out the old saying is true--thanks to climate change, you can't go home again--at least, you can't go home to the place you're from and experience the same weather patterns of your youth, according to an interesting article in Wired Magazine excerpted below.

Australia is suffering through its worst dry spell in a millennium. The outback has turned into a dust bowl, crops are dying off at fantastic rates, cities are rationing water, coral reefs are dying, and the agricultural base is evaporating.
But what really intrigues Glenn Albrecht — a philosopher by training — is how his fellow Australians are reacting.
They're getting sad.
In interviews Albrecht conducted over the past few years, scores of Australians described their deep, wrenching sense of loss as they watch the landscape around them change. Familiar plants don't grow any more. Gardens won't take. Birds are gone. "They no longer feel like they know the place they've lived for decades," he says.
Albrecht believes that this is a new type of sadness. People are feeling displaced. They're suffering symptoms eerily similar to those of indigenous populations that are forcibly removed from their traditional homelands. But nobody is being relocated; they haven't moved anywhere. It's just that the familiar markers of their area, the physical and sensory signals that define home, are vanishing. Their environment is moving away from them, and they miss it terribly.
Albrecht has given this syndrome an evocative name: solastalgia. It's a mashup of the roots solacium (comfort) and algia (pain), which together aptly conjure the word nostalgia. In essence, it's pining for a lost environment. "Solastalgia," as he wrote in a scientific paper describing his theory, "is a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at home.'"
It's also a fascinating new way to think about the impact of global warming. Everyone's worrying about resource management and the spooky, unpredictable changes in the ecosystem. We fret over which areas will get flooded as sea levels rise. We estimate the odds of wars over clean water, and we tally up the species — polar bears, whales, wading birds — that'll go extinct.
But we should also be concerned about the huge toll climate change will inflict on our mental health.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Nature and Humans Fry Arctic

Natural cycles are partly to blame for arctic melting, according to an article in Time excerpted below.

There's a natural cause that may account for much of the Arctic warming, which has melted sea ice, ice sheets and glaciers, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Nature. New research points a finger at a natural and cyclical increase in the amount of energy in the atmosphere that moves from south to north around the Arctic Circle.
But that energy transfer, which comes with storms that head north because of ocean currents, is not acting alone either, scientists say. Another upcoming study concludes that the combination of both that natural energy transfer increase and man-made global warming serve as a one-two punch that is pushing the Arctic over the edge.
Scientists are trying to figure out why the Arctic is warming and melting faster than computer models predict.
The summer of 2007, like the summer of 2005, smashed all records for loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean and ice sheet in Greenland. In September, the Arctic Ocean had 23 percent less sea ice than the previous record low. Greenland's ice sheet melted 19 billion tons more than its previous record.
The Nature study suggests there's more behind it than global warming because the air a couple miles above the ground is warming more than calculated by the climate models.
Climate change theory concentrates on warming of surface temperatures and explains an Arctic that is warming faster than the rest of the world as mostly because reduced sea ice and ice sheets means less reflecting solar rays.
Rune Graversen, the Nature study co-author and a meteorology researcher at Stockholm University in Sweden, said a shift in energy transfer explains the thawing more, including what's happening in the atmosphere, but does not contradict consensus global warming science.
Oceanographer James Overland, who reviewed Graversen's study for Nature, said the research dovetails with an upcoming article of his which concludes that the Arctic thawing is a combination of the two.
"If we didn't have the little extra kick from global warming then we wouldn't have gone past the threshold for the change in sea ice," said Overland, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's lab in Seattle.
Other researchers said Graversen's study underestimates the effect of global warming because it relied on older data that stopped at 2001 and wasn't the most accurate.
Overland and scientist Mark Serreze disagree over which effect — man-made or natural — was the big shove that pushed the Arctic over the edge, but they agreed that overall it's a combined effort.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Buying or Selling Green Homes in Connecticut?

In the market for a green home? Do you know of a real estate agent who specializes in helping buyers find green, energy efficient homes? Freelance writer Theresa Sullivan Barger, who specializes in green living stories, is researching a story for The Hartford Courant Home & Real Estate section to see whether there are buyers looking for green homes and agents specializing in finding them. Please contact Theresa Sullivan if you have info.
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Santeria Priests Warn about Global Warming

According to this article in Reuters, Priests of the Santeria religion are prophesying that global warming will cause problems in the coming year. Read about it in the excerpt below:

HAVANA, Jan 2 (Reuters) - Priests offering New Year's prophecies from Cuba's Afro-Cuban religion on Wednesday gave few hints on the future of convalescing leader Fidel Castro and instead warned about dangerous climate change and epidemics.Many Cubans eagerly await annual predictions from the Santeria religion, which is practised by 3 million people in Cuba and uses animal sacrifices to contact Yoruba deities originally worshiped by slaves brought from Africa. Santeria priests, known as babalawos, steered clear of politics in this year's prophecies, instead warning about an environmental crisis, disease and crime.They noted an improving economy and said they planned sacrifices to better the lives of the majority of Cubans."The challenge at this historic moment is not a political challenge ... It is not a social challenge, but the challenge of nature," Victor Betancourt, a Havana priest, said at a news conference.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.
Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/

Free Movie 7 p.m. January 28 in West Hartford

There will be a showing of the 65 minute film, "Green: the New Red, White and Blue" on Monday, January 28 at 7:00 PM at the Hartford Friends Meeting as part of the "Focus the Nation" series of events designed to raise awareness about Global Warming.

The Friends meeting is located at 144 South Quaker Lane,West Hartford.

In "Green: The New Red, White and Blue," Award-winning author and journalist Thomas L. Friedman travels the globe to unravel the tangled web of where Americans get energy, and reveals what viewers can do about their carbon footprint.

The showing will be followed by discussion. Read the full listing here.

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 25 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.

Find discounts on energy saving products at http://www.shopipl.org/