Anglican Leader Wins Award for Environmental Work

According to an article on the British-based Christiantoday.com, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has received an award for his environmental efforts.

The Parliamentary Renewable and Sustainable Energy Group (PRESAG) acknowledged the Archbishop of Canterbury’s contributions and gave recognition to the work that the Church of England is doing to promote sustainable energy issues to the public and to policy makers.

PRESAG brings together politicians from across the parties and senior industry stakeholders to promote sustainable energy issues in Parliament and the wider political community.
The Church of England is currently promoting a national campaign called Shrinking the Footprint. Spearheading the campaign, Dr Williams has said: “For the Church of the 21st Century, good ecology is not an optional extra but a matter of justice. It is therefore central to what it means to be a Christian.”
For more information on this please visit: http://www.shrinkingthefootprint.cofe.anglican.org/

Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 22 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Scroll down for links to the national organization and your local chapter.

Weather Channel Tackles Climate Change

A story in the New York Times reports on The Weather Channel's take on Climate Change. Here is an excerpt:

“If The Weather Channel isn’t talking about climate change and global warming, who is?” said Kaye Zusmann, the vice president for program strategy and development for the network. “It’s our mandate.”
The network, which had been gearing up for the opening of hurricane season on Friday, sees the engagement with the issues surrounding climate change as important for content and for business.
“We have a point of view, and we think it’s really important to articulate why it’s happening. Secondarily, it’s good business,” said Ms. Wilson, the network president. “Many consumers want to know, ‘What should I do?’ ”
The lightning rod for controversy, so to speak, is Heidi Cullen, the network’s resident climate expert.
In December, she raised the ire of Fox News and others by writing on her weather.com blog that the American Meteorological Society should not give its “seal of approval” to any meteorologist who “can’t speak to the fundamental science of climate change.” (There are now more than 1,700 comments on that one post.)
Dr. Cullen, a tiny woman who speaks with conviction, said she believed that people were “finally seeing climate connected to weather,” but that a lot of information still needs to be disseminated. “If you turn on the local forecast, you wouldn’t necessarily know that global warming exists,” she said.
Far from being intimidated by the political backlash, Dr. Cullen and executives at the channel say they have embraced the issue of global warming. Dr. Cullen is host of the weekly show “Forecast Earth,” formerly named “The Climate Code” where she has entertained such guests as former Vice President Al Gore. She also appears on the channel’s other programming with segments on hybrid taxicabs in New York City and the development of more fuel-efficient aircraft.
The network’s other programs have also directly engaged the elephant in the room — or, in this case, the polar bear on the melting ice cap: a recent anniversary roundup of “The 100 Biggest Weather Moments” listed global warming as No. 1. And the network is training its meteorologists so that they can discuss long-term trends as well as five-day forecasts.
“Weather information on an on-demand basis is the foundation of what we do, and a deeper experience on an emotional level brings us to life.” Ms. Wilson said.
Besides sections devoted to travel, golf and pets (yes, pets), the weather.com Web site also has interactive features like blogs and user-submitted videos — as well as consumer-information sections that give users tips on how to prepare for a severe storm, or how to reduce a carbon footprint.

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Think Globally, Eat Locally

Eating organic is soooo 90s. Locavores--those who eat food grown locally (within a 100-mile to 250-mile radius, depending on who is setting the standards) are the standard bearers for the newest green trend, according to an article in the New York Times.

Many drawn to the movement say they have been eating that way for years and had never thought about the implications beyond the flavor. “Initially it was the taste thing for me,” said Robin McDermott, who lives in Waitsfield, Vt., where locavores call themselves localvores. “But now when I think about what it takes to get lettuce across the country so I can eat it in the middle of winter, between the fuel costs and the contribution all the transportation is making to global warming and climate change, I just can’t do it. It’s not sustainable and I don’t want to contribute to it.”
Those who think this is another harebrained scheme of the food fringe may be surprised to learn that locavores are poised to move into the mainstream. Barbara Kingsolver, the best-selling novelist, has written one of three books out this spring about eating locally.
“Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” (HarperCollins) recounts her family’s adventures during the year they spent eating food raised in their corner of southwest Virginia. Her book and others are successors to several earlier books including “Coming Home to Eat” by Gary Paul Nabhan and “Full Moon Feast: Food and the Hunger for Connection” by Jessica Prentice, who coined the word locavore and founded the Web site locavores.com.
Ms. Prentice’s group claims to have started the grass-roots locavore challenges that sprang up in California in 2005. Participants exchange recipes and advice.
Some locavores follow the 100 Mile Diet, created by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon, authors of the just-released “Plenty” (Harmony). They spent a year in British Columbia eating only food grown within a 100-mile radius.
It wasn’t easy. Faced with potatoes, once again, for lunch, Ms. Smith recounts her feeling that “I’d kill for a sandwich.” When Mr. MacKinnon said he would make her one, she couldn’t imagine what he had in mind because they had no local flour for bread. But soon enough he produced greenhouse-grown red peppers and fried mushrooms with goat cheese between two golden brown slices of something. Something turned out to be turnips.
The authors held so strictly to their plan that when they eventually found locally grown wheat they took it even though it was filled with mouse droppings. Mr. MacKinnon painstakingly separated the droppings from the wheat with the edge of a credit card.
The plan outlined in Ms. Kingsolver’s book is much less strict than the one in “Plenty.” The author said that in her attitude toward food she is something between a Puritan (“I’m going to be holy right now”) and a toddler (“I want absolutely everything every minute and the idea of not having fresh peaches in January is sort of horrifying”).
Each member of her family was allowed one luxury item that came from far away. Her husband chose coffee, her children hot chocolate and dried fruit. Spices were Ms. Kingsolver’s indulgence.
“Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” gives no sense of privation or even boredom. Ms. Kingsolver spent a fair amount of time putting foods by when they were in season so that the larder was stocked.
But most readers would have trouble following her program, which included raising much of what the family ate on their farm, including chickens and turkeys.
“We undertook this project because it brings together so many compelling issues of the moment: carbon footprint, global warming, the local economy, the nutritional crisis and community,” said Ms. Kingsolver. “Community is very important to me and every book I’ve ever written is on this subject: what is the debt of the individual to the community?”

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Al Gore Under Attack

Op-ed News.com is reporting on what it refers to as A Far Too Convenient $mear: Part One: namely, an item that appeared on the Drudge report and rapidly metastisized that Vice President Gore has an outsized carbon footprint.

Responding to Drudge's attack, Vice President Gore's office told ThinkProgress:1) Gore's family has taken numerous steps to reduce the carbon footprint of their private residence, including signing up for 100 percent green power through Green Power Switch, installing solar panels, and using compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy saving technology.2) Gore has had a consistent position of purchasing carbon offsets to offset the family's carbon footprint - a concept the right-wing fails to understand. Gore's office explains:
What Mr. Gore has asked is that every family calculate their carbon footprint and try to reduce it as much as possible. Once they have done so, he then advocates that they purchase offsets, as the Gore's do, to bring their footprint down to zero.


The report comes from an organization that calls itself "The Tennessee Center For Policy Research."


As of Feb. 16, the Tennessee tax dept. considers them "not a legitimate organization" because of their misrepresenting themselves involving questions about the group's opposition to a state crackdown on drug dealers.


IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

Eco-tainment: Living With Ed

A reality show on the US network HGTV features the daily adventures of life with actor Ed Begley, Jr., Hollywood's leading environmentalist. Check out viewing times and Ed's green living tips.

N.B. This blogger has seen This is Spinal Tap, which features Ed Begley, Jr. as its ill-fated drummer, dozens of times.

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Dell: Plant a Tree, Dude

Dell Computers, the company who brought us the "Dell Dude," is pitching a new idea: asking consumers to donate $2 for every notebook computer purchase and $6 for every desktop PC. The money would be given to the Conservation Fund and the Carbonfund, two nonprofit groups that promote ways to reduce or offset carbon emissions, to buy and plant trees. Dell also challenged other PC vendors to provide free recycling of used computer equipment.

Dell currently offers free recycling of its computers.
Read more in the New York Times.

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At Swiss Re, It Pays to be Green

The Reinsurance firm Swiss Re has announced that it will offset employee expenses toward reducing their carbon footprint between now and 2011, according to businessinsurance.com. They will reimburse half of these expenses up to $5K Swiss francs (USD 3300, according to an inter-company email message sent 1/4/07.) Qualifying expenses could include use of public transportation, purchase of a hybrid vehicle and installation of solar panels and heat pumps.

In 2003, Swiss Re announced a goal to make its operations carbon neutral by 2013, according to Insurance News Net. Now it is extending its commitment to reducing carbon emissions by supporting changes among its employees. (N.B.: My husband is an employee of Swiss Re.)

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