Today’s topics: Department of Natural Resources, Energy, Food, Funding, Global Warming, Great Outdoors, Habitat, Mercury, Mining, Transportation, and Water.
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Promoters of large-scale factory livestock farming like to argue that their model of agriculture is a natural progression—an example of free market efficiency succeeding. What they don’t want the public to know is that factory-scale production of pork, beef, poultry and milk benefits greatly from a silent, but powerful, government subsidy. As a paper out of Tufts University shows, this subsidy may be indirect, but it has had a significantly negative impact on our farmers, our communities and even our landscape. (more…)

Boulder, Colorado became the first city in the nation to put a municipal tax on carbon emissions. Fifty-eight percent of voters approved a carbon tax based on the amount of electricity used by the customer. Bills are expected to be about $1.33 extra per month for residential customers and $3.80 for businesses. The anticipated $1 million per year gathered from the tax will be used by Xcel Energy, the local utility, to fund energy audits and energy efficiency advisors for homeowners. Xcel gets most of its electricity from coal, although customers who participate in Xcel’s Windsource program will not pay the tax.

Erwin Werm’s “Fat Car” is genius.

As environmentalists, we often work for social change. And we love writing reports, holding press conferences, building coalitions, grassroots organizing, and laying the groundwork to create movements for social change. And, for the most part, we’re good at it.

We aren’t always so good at remembering to include popular culture in that social change equation. Culture…art, music, film, theatre, literature, magazines, television, hit websites…that can get a bit fuzzy. These outlets don’t often produce the measurable results that look so nice in foundation reports; you can say how many people came to an exhibit or a movie, but good luck quantifying “behavior change” from “Fat Car.”

Chances are, nobody is going to see “Fat Car” and immediately feel a strong urge to take a walk. Nobody is going home and saying, “Honey, I saw ‘Fat Car’ and now we’re selling the car.” That’s not how culture, or social change, works. Changing culture takes time; one “Fat Car” isn’t going to do it. Picture this: the women of Desperate Housewives walk to the grocery store rather than take their SUVs. Popular music that glorifies bicycling rather than road tripping. A Disney movie called “Light Rail” rather than “Cars.”

Okay, maybe that’s pushing it. Kevin Kling did write a wonderful play about the “21A” bus, however. Take a lifetime of those cultural influences, combine them with the power of dazzling reports, press conferences, and political organizing, and you’ll get social change.

It just isn’t going to happen tomorrow.

Today’s topics: Agriculture, Development, Energy, Northeastern Minnesota, and Transportation.
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Today’s topics: Education, Energy, Habitat, Mining, Recycling, Transportation, Water and Wetlands.
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Today’s topics: Development, Election Effects, Energy, Great Lakes, Solid Waste, Transportation, Water, and Wildlife
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The leadership positions in the legislature are quickly filling.  It looks like there is some good news for the environment and some little flags that give me pause.  I am hoping for you input on the players as well.
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A common argument in favor of large-scale industrialized agriculture is that it is just plain more efficient, and thus deserves to succeed. But measured by the amount of energy it takes to produce each calorie of food, the industrial farming system is anything but a lean, mean food-producing machine. In 1940, the average U.S. farm produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil fuel energy it used. By 1974, that ratio was 1:1, according to Richard Manning, writing in his book Against the Grain. These days, the calories-to-calories ratio is more like 3:1, according to David Pimentel, a Cornell University entomologist who has studied the environmental impact of various agriculture systems. That’s right: it takes some three calories of energy to produce just one calorie of food, according to Pimentel’s estimates. And that doesn’t even include the energy expended to process the food and transport it to our supper tables. When both production and distribution are taken into account, it takes 10 to 15 calories of energy for every calorie of food energy produced, according to data published by the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems at the University of Wisconsin. (more…)

Reporter Stephanie Hemphill of MPR reports for the Great Lakes Radio Consortium on an angle most observers never think of: how wind turbines are rising up as an important part of the shipping industry in the port of Duluth. Great photos in the story’s slide show give a good idea of the scale of turbine components that are being shipped halfway around the world.

Why do most wind turbine companies still manufacture in the EU, when American states are clamoring to bring manufacturing here? One reason highlighted in this story is the unreliability of the American market because of inconsistent public policy. One good example is the on-again/off-again Federal Production Tax Credit, again set to expire in 2007.

An Indian company that’s fighting the uphill battle of wobbly U.S. renewable policy is Suzlon Energy, highlighted in the story, and growing its business in Pipestone, Minnesota.