Princeton Environmental Film Festival

The 2017 Princeton Environmental Film Festival will be held March 28 – April 2, 2017. The Festival is sponsored by the Princeton Public Library and is held annually at 65 Witherspoon Street in downtown Princeton, New Jersey, with additional special events offered throughout the year.

Founded in 2006, the PEFF’s mission is to share exceptional documentary films and engage the community in exploring environmental sustainability from a wide range of angles and perspectives.

The film screenings are free of an admission charge and accompanied by a Q&A with film directors and producers, as well as talks by invited speakers visiting the festival or by those who live here in our community.

Birds of May trailer from Hundred Year Films on Vimeo.

Check out the full schedule of films, but one film that caught my attention is "Birds of May." It is a 30-minute film directed by Jared Flesher that will have its New Jersey premiere at the festival. It tells the story of the federally threatened rufa red knot bird and its annual visit to the Delaware Bay.

Following the movie, a Q&A with the director, and a presentation by shorebird biologist Larry Niles and Conserve Wildlife Foundation’s David Wheeler will be held. Wildlife art by James Fiorentino, and poetry readings by the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Program, featuring Cynthia Arrieu-King and Catherine Doty will also be part of the screening. The event is part of “Because We Come from Everything: Poetry and Migration,” a series organized by the newly formed National Poetry Coalition.

This screening is March 26 at 7 p.m. in the Community Room of the Princeton Public Library.

Oil Explorartion in the Arctic

This week, Shell Oil announced it will end oil exploration off of Alaska's Arctic Coast "for the foreseeable future. Groups such as the Sierra Club see this victory as showing that even the most powerful corporations in the world can be changed when faced with grassroots pressure united to protect the wildlife and wildlands.

Shell abandoned its Arctic drilling plans in part because strict regulations required to drill made it untenable, and summer drilling just one well with disappointing results, combined with low crude prices.

Everything from tweets, Facebook posts, calls, comments, protests and kayaktavist actions shined a spotlight on the corporation and the Obama administration.

But another oil company, Hilcorp Alaska, is working to obtain permits to drill in the Arctic Ocean.


Click here to tell President Obama to cancel all oil and gas lease sales in the Arctic (via Sierra Club)

8th annual Princeton Environmental Film Festival

The 8th annual Princeton Environmental Film Festival, sponsored by the Princeton Public Library will run from January 30 - February 9, 2014. All screenings are offered free of admission and will be in the Community Room of the Princeton Public Library unless noted otherwise.

The festival's mission is to engage the community in examining environmental sustainability from a wide range of perspectives via this annual presentation of exceptional documentary films.

The screenings are accompanied by Q&A with film directors and producers, and/or talks with guest speakers. Films exploring topics from climate change to rooftop farming and more shine a light on issues that are important to all of us.

There will also be a panel discussion "Farming at the Edge of Nature" on February 1 at 4 pm.
A group of farmers and naturalists from our region will talk about their farming practices, philosophy, ethics, business models, challenges and their optimism for the next generation who are embracing working closely with the land. Many on the panel are also visual artists and the presentation will exhibit their photography focused on their work. This session will also feature the opportunity for a Q&A and networking.

The panel features: Alec Gioseffi, Adam Martin and Lauren Nagy, Cooperative 518; Lindsay Napolitano and Johann Rinkens, Fields Without Fences; Jared Rosenbaum and Rachel Mackow, Wild Ridge Plants, Growers and Stewards of Native Plants; and Steve Tomlinson, who works at Great Road Farm.

Jared Flesher, documentary filmmaker and Edible Jersey editor will be the moderator of the panel. Jared is an award-winning reporter, photojournalist and documentary filmmaker, with a focus on the topics of energy, agriculture and ecology. His last two documentaries are “The Farmer and the Horse” (2010) and “Sourlands (2012.) His latest film “Field Biologist” is in production and will be released later in 2014. A trailer previewing this film will be featured during the session.

One film that interests me is "Tiny: A Story About Living Small" produced and directed by Merete Mueller and Christopher Smith (2013, 62 minutes) which is the story of Christopher Smith who, approaching his 30th birthday, decides it’s time to plant some roots. He impulsively buys a 5-acre plot of land in hopes of fulfilling a lifelong dream of building a home in the mountains of Colorado. With the support of his girlfriend, Merete, he sets out to build a Tiny House from scratch despite having no construction experience.

WildEarth Guardians

WildEarth Guardians is across the country from New Jersey, but they have a mission that we can certainly identify with in NJ. Its mission is to protect and restore wildlife, wild rivers, and wild places in the American West. They have four programs focusing on wildlife, wild places, wild rivers, and climate and energy and are headquartered in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The species they protect may sound a bit more exotic than some of our Garden State species:

• Black-footed ferret
• Black-tailed prairie dog
• Canada lynx
• Gunnison's prairie dog
• Jaguarundi
• Mexican gray wolf
• New Mexico meadow jumping mouse
• Ocelot
• Utah prairie dog
• White-sided jackrabbit
• Wolverine

That wolverine is a candidate for endangered listing (North American subspecies Gulo gulo luscus).

The more we learn about wolverines, the more we find to admire. These reclusive loners were celebrated by Native Americans as powerful, all-terrain, all-season masters of the frozen North. Also called “mountain devil” and “carcajou” (French for “evil spirit”), wolverines, according to some, make the Tasmanian devil look like a sissy. Wolverines, perfectly adapted to their high-elevation habitats, will traverse miles and miles of deep snow and rough terrain in search of food. They can kill prey many times their size and will fearlessly defend food against much larger competitors. While this ultimate survivalist is more than capable of providing for itself, it has no defense against climate change. Global warming is reducing its habitat and now threatens to extirpate wolverines in the United States south of the Canadian border.

Fighting Green Projects

From an article in The New York Times comes this fringe idea that ecological and environmental projects are part of a worldwide plot.

"Activists Fight Green Projects, Seeing U.N. Plot"

Across the country, activists with ties to the Tea Party are railing against all sorts of local and state efforts to control sprawl and conserve energy. They brand government action for things like expanding public transportation routes and preserving open space as part of a United Nations-led conspiracy to deny property rights and herd citizens toward cities.

They are showing up at planning meetings to denounce bike lanes on public streets and smart meters on home appliances — efforts they equate to a big-government blueprint against individual rights...

The protests date to 1992 when the United Nations passed a sweeping, but nonbinding, 100-plus-page resolution called Agenda 21 that was designed to encourage nations to use fewer resources and conserve open land by steering development to already dense areas. They have gained momentum in the past two years because of the emergence of the Tea Party movement, harnessing its suspicion about government power and belief that man-made global warming is a hoax.

It's not unlike the 1960s wave of environmentalism that hit the United States being seen as a hippie/treehugger/liberal movement only. I thought most of that had gone away as public interest groups, hunters, anglers and other "mainstream" groups began to work towards ecological sanity.

I guess I was wrong.

Read the rest of the article at
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/us/activists-fight-green-projects-seeing-un-plot.html

Edward Abbey

Edward Abbey writing in a fire tower

 
It's the birthday of writer and environmentalist Edward Abbey, born in Indiana, Pennsylvania in 1927. He is one of the most colorful (and somewhat controversial) of the modern day environmentalists.

Meet Edward Paul Abbey, twentieth-century polemicist and desert anarchist, a character of elaborate contradictions and eccentricities whose words either infuriated or delighted his readers.

In a career spanning four decades, he wrote passionately in defense of the Southwest and its inhabitants, often mocking the mindless bureaucratic forces hell-bent on destroying it. "Resist much, obey little," from Walt Withman, was this warrior's motto.

While he was alive, attempts to label him in conventional terms nearly always fell short because he was neither left-wing nor right-wing, nor was he an outlaw. Abbey was a genuine rebel who simply did not believe in the moderns industrial way of life. He wrote against the grain, always choosing the path of the greatest resistance. Beginning in the 1950s, he depicted the Southwest not as a virgin utopia peopled by rugged individualists, but as a region under siege because of government and corporate greed, its people at risk of being cut off from the primary wellspring of their spiritual strength - the wild places. He's been dead for a while now, but the legend keeps in growing.

-- from Epitaph for a Desert Anarchist

He decided to hitch-hike cross-country, knowing that he might be drafted when he turned 18, and he fell in love with the West. He did get drafted, and spent a couple of years in Italy, then went to the University of New Mexico on the GI Bill. He worked as a seasonal ranger in national parks, and he published his first few novels.

Abbey was working as a school bus driver in Death Valley when he decided to write down an account of his time as a park ranger at Arches National Monument near Moab, Utah. It was published as Desert Solitaire in 1968.

In 1975, he published The Monkey Wrench Gang , the story of four irreverent, beer-drinking, gun-wielding, fun-loving characters who will do anything it takes to stop developers from coming in and destroying the West. The book was a best-seller, and its popularity made Desert Solitaire a best-seller, as well.

He became known for his advocacy of environmental issues, criticism of public land policies, and anarchist political views. Writer Larry McMurtry referred to Abbey as the "Thoreau of the American West".

In July 1987, Abbey went to the Earth First! Rendezvous at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon where he was involved in a heated debate with an anarchist communist group known as Alien Nation over immigration. The incident is a chapter in his book Hayduke Lives.

Controversy continued when in 1987 the Utne Reader published a letter claiming that Abbey, Garrett Hardin, and the members of Earth First! were racists and eco-terrorists. Abbey was extremely offended, and demanded a public apology, stating that he was neither racist nor a supporter of terrorism. Abbey said that  as far as "eco-terrorism," he supported tactics that were trying to defend against the terrorism he felt was committed by government and industry against living beings and the environment.

In 1984, Abbey went back to the University of Arizona to teach. 

Edward Abbey died on March 14, 1989, at the age of 62, in his home in Tucson, Arizona from complications from surgery.

He left a message for anyone who asked about his final words: "No comment." He also left instructions on what to do with his remains: Abbey wanted his body transported in the bed of a pickup truck, and wished to be buried as soon as possible. He did not want to be embalmed or placed in a coffin. Instead, he preferred to be placed inside of an old sleeping bag, and requested that his friends disregard all state laws concerning burial.

"I want my body to help fertilize the growth of a cactus or cliff rose or sagebrush or tree. No formal speeches desired, though the deceased will not interfere if someone feels the urge. But keep it all simple and brief." 

He requested gunfire and bagpipe music, and "a flood of beer and booze! Lots of singing, dancing, talking, hollering, laughing, and lovemaking."  (You can read online what happened to his body after his death.)

More at http://www.abbeyweb.net 

40 School Greening Projects for the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day

Earth Day Network and environmental educators worldwide are committed to making our schools more sustainable. Through school greening projects, they make our school yards, facilities, and curricula healthier, more efficient, and more enriching.

Installing solar panels, building school gardens, installing efficient lighting fixtures, conserving water, and implementing environmental curricula are just some of the ways in which we do this. They each create engaging learning spaces across the globe while reducing their carbon footprint.


What is a Green School?

Green Schools are the most effective agents for enacting significant positive environmental and educational change in schools and communities. School greening is quickly becoming more than a trend; rather, it is now the method of choice for providing healthy, comfortable and productive learning environments while saving energy, resources and money.

A green school improves the health and energy-efficiency of the school facility, ensures science-based environmental and civic education in the classroom, implements healthy food choices into the cafeteria, promotes alternative means of transportation, and expands recreational choices and opportunities for all students.

The benefits of green schools are now well established and range from significant reductions in greenhouse gases to impressive energy cost savings, improved student test scores and higher teacher and student retention, as well as very impressive improvements in children’s health. Studies have demonstrated that green schools greatly reduce student sick days, significantly improve the health of students with diabetes, asthma and other respiratory illnesses, reduce social inequity, enhance student motivation in both the short and long term, and provide an educationally rich setting.

Despite what many people think, green schools cost on average less than 2% more to build than a traditional school, yet the payback often occurs within only a few years due to the energy savings alone. A green school typically utilizes 33% less energy and 32% less water – enough savings to hire two additional full-time teachers.

Ultimately greening America’s schools presents an extraordinary cost-effective opportunity to improve the health and educational settings for all students, increasing school equality and competiveness while reducing long-term health and operational costs.

More at http://www.earthday.net/greenyourschool



Green School Primer: Lessons in Sustainability (Architecture)
Teaching Green - The High School Years: Hands-on Learning in Grades 9-12
A Guide to Green School Success: A Maryland Initiative
Ecological Design and Building Schools: Green Guide to Educational Opportunities in the United States and Canada

 

Green Schools and Environmental Education

Earth Day Network's successful history of working with teachers, PTAs, students and school administrators has led them to develop a long term, national campaign on green schools.

The National GREEN Schools Campaign, in partnership with the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and The Clinton Foundation, aims to green all of America's K-12 schools within a generation.

A school becomes “green” through a variety of means.  By having more sustainable, energy-efficient, low-resource-using school buildings and school yards, our nation saves energy, reduces carbon emissions, and saves money.

Earth Day Network sees environmental education as a core of its mission and is a globally recognized leader in the fields of environmental education and green schools. Their education programs carry a successful history of providing educators, students and the general public with resources and solutions to create a healthier, more sustainable planet.

The online Educators’ Network is a free tool connecting over 25,000 educators with hundreds of environmental education curricula and resources. The newest curriculum unit, released for the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day, is a comprehensive study of the history of the environmental movement, complete with standards-based lesson plans and multimedia resources.

Our Education grant programs are changing the face of environmental education on a global scale. Schools involved in our grant programs are saving money, reducing pollution and improving their communities – proving our potential to help prepare students for the 21st century learning environment.


Earth Day Network's Environmental Education Program is one of the most innovative and successful in the U.S., providing tools to educators and students for integrating environmental issues into core curriculum across disciplines and grade levels, in and out of the classroom.

A variety of lesson plans are available online in the themed areas of:

• Sustainability
• Climate
• Natural Resources and Wildlife
• Energy
• Civics Education
• Thoreau
• Organics and Food
• Other
• Monthly Lesson Plans

Earth Day #40 is April 22

Forty years after the first Earth Day, the world is in greater peril than ever. Will
2010 be a turning point to advance climate policy, energy efficiency, renewable energy and green jobs?

The Earth Day Network is trying to galvanize millions to make personal commitments to sustainability.

Earth Day 2010 is a pivotal opportunity for individuals, corporations and governments to join together and create a global green economy.

You can join the more than one billion people in 190 countries that are taking action for Earth Day. Your actions don't have to be big or gobal or political.

Some personal pledges on the Earth day website include simple things like:

• I will collect plastic bottles when I see them on the ground and recyle them.
• Stop using plastic water bottles and get your water from the tap and carry it in a reusable bottle.
• Go out on your own or with friends & family and pick up garbage around your community for 3 hours.

If you think it's time to stop protecting polluters and enact comprehensive climate legislation that will create American jobs, cap carbon emissions and secure our nation’s future, then look at next Sunday, April 25, when Earth Day Network will organize a massive climate rally on The National Mall to demand Congress pass strong legislation.

The Climate Rally will include notable speakers Reverend Jesse Jackson, film director, James Cameron, AFL-CIO President, Richard Trumka, Olympic gold medalist, Billy Demong, producer, Trudie Styler, author, Margaret Atwood, NFL player and television personality, Dhani Jones, environmental photographer Sebastian Copeland and many more.

The Climate Rally will also feature live music from Sting, John Legend, The Roots, Jimmy Cliff, Passion Pit, Bob Weir, Willie Colón, Joss Stone, Robert Randolph, Patrick Stump, Mavis Staples, Booker T, Honor Society and Tao Rodriguez-Seeger.

The first Earth Day was a success because 20 million Americans demonstrated their outrage for the state of the environment. Climate change is only one of about a dozen core issues that Earth Day hopes to address, including conservation and biodiversity, clean water, green schools and environmental education.

FOR YOUNG READERS

It's Earth Day! (Little Critter)
Earth Day (Rookie Read-About Holidays)
Earth Day: An Alphabet Book
Biscuit's Earth Day Celebration
Fancy Nancy: Every Day Is Earth Day (I Can Read Book 1)
Earth Day (Ready-to-Read. Level 1)
Dora Celebrates Earth Day!: Little Green Nickelodeon (Dora the Explorer)

Backyard Corridors

Freedom to Roam is an environmental program at Patagonia.com to preserve and protect big wildways for large animals.

What is a backyard corridor? What does it mean to animals that live near you?

Some wildlife is probably roaming through your backyard, neighborhood, or town. Different animals require different roaming areas and migration corridors. One animal may require one square mile while another may need 1,000 square miles.

Patagonia selected eight corridor hotspots – each one connected with an iconic animal species - to represent a diverse array of species and habitats, across our entire country.  Hotspots Map

The 3 pressing problems for wildlife corridors are:

1. Global Warming and its effects on habitat (drought, flooding, glacier melt, warming temperatures).

2. Human development, including housing sprawl, energy and resource extraction, population growth, expanding urban areas, and highways and freeways.

3. Diverse and competitive land-use across large corridor areas, including the rights of private landowners, parks and their uses, national forests, the needs of recreationists.

What can we do to help? Create, restore and protect wildways or corridors linking animal habitats, parks and other protected areas and migration routes.


Corridor Ecology: The Science and Practice of Linking Landscapes for Biodiversity Conservation
Linkages In The Landscape: The Role Of Corridors And Connectivity In Wildlife Conservation

Alliance for New Jersey Environmental Education

The Alliance for New Jersey Environmental Education (ANJEE) was formed in 1985, by a group of 25 NJ environmental educators committed to using environmental education as an instrument for change.

A privately supported, non-profit organization, ANJEE's members range from teachers of New Jersey's school districts, professors and administrators in universities and colleges, environmentalists in museums, zoos, and nature centers, to professionals of governmental agencies and corporate settings.

Although their professions in the environmental and other fields are varied their chief reason for membership in the Alliance is to network with others who care about developing and conserving New Jersey's natural habitat and resources.

The ANJEE's 25th Annual Conference: A Celebration of Environmental Education will be held January 28-30, 2010 at the Wyndham Princeton Forrestal Hotel and Conference Center in Plainsboro, NJ.

Sailing Trash Plastic Across the Oceans

Computer generated image of Plastiki

The adventurer and environmental storyteller, David de Rothschild, and a crew of leading scientists, adventurers and creatives are to set sail over 10,000 nautical miles across the Pacific from San Francisco to Sydney on a 60-foot catamaran made from post consumer plastic water and soda bottles and self-reinforced PET.

The 3 month journey is intended to inspire, educate and activate people to move towards a smarter more sustainable planet 2.0 way of living that can include. Its time to rethink waste as a resource.

The adventurer and environmental storyteller David de Rothschild and a handpicked crew of leading scientists, adventurers and creatives are to set sail over 10,000 nautical miles across the Pacific from San Francisco to Sydney on a 60-foot catamaran made from post consumer plastic water and soda bottles and self-reinforced PET.

By undertaking this daring expedition over three months, David and his Plastiki crew are on a mission to inspire, educate and activate individuals, communities and business’s to start moving towards a smarter more sustainable planet 2.0 way of living that can include waste as a resource.

The Plastiki Expedition will hopefully raise awareness about environmental disasters like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area of the ocean loaded with floating trash that the Plastiki will sail through on its maiden voyage.

The Plastiki will be made of 12,500 two-liter plastic bottles; weigh 9 tons; and will have a composting toilet, on-board renewable energy, and a garden. The design team had a need to invent a glue that eliminates toxic epoxies, so they developed one from cashew sugar nuts.

http://www.theplastiki.com

Ocean Garbage

Image: SEAPLEX, Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition

It may be a long way from the ocean waters off New Jersey, but the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also described as the Eastern Garbage Patch or the Pacific Trash Vortex is a problem that also affects our ocean waters.

The patch is a gyre (any manner of particularly large-scale wind, swirling vortex and ocean currents) of marine litter in the central North Pacific Ocean located roughly between 135° to 155°W and 35° to 42°N.

It is full of suspended plastic and other debris that have been trapped by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre. The approximately 3.5 million tons of trash includes shoes, toys, bags, pacifiers, wrappers, toothbrushes, and bottles – all floating round and round midway between Hawaii and San Francisco.

The garbage patch stays relatively stationary in the North Pacific Ocean because of the North Pacific Gyre’s (AKA the horse latitudes) rotational pattern. This pattern draws in waste material from across the North Pacific Ocean, including the coastal waters off North America and Japan. Then, wind-driven surface currents move floating debris toward the center, trapping it in the region.


The existence of the Pacific Gyre garbage patch received more attention after articles written by Charles Moore, a California-based sea captain and ocean researcher, made it into the mainstream media. Moore, discovered it while returning home through the North Pacific Gyre after competing in a sailing race. After Moore contacted an oceanographer, Curtis Ebbesmeyer, the area began to be studies and was dubbed the “Eastern Garbage Patch” (EGP).

The actual size of the garbage patch is unknown. Estimates range from it being 0.41% to 8.1% of the size of the Pacific Ocean itself. It is often compared in size to the size of Texas.

In NJ, we see the same trash problem in the trash that washes up on our beaches and jetties. The durability and stability of plastic is what makes it practical for product, and what makes it a problem in the ocean. It is estimated that about 100 million tons of plastic are produced each year and that 10 percent ends up in the sea. Though we can blame about 20 percent of that seagoing plastic on ships and platforms, the rest comes from land.

Polythene plastic bags, bottles and containers, plastic drums, expanded polystyrene packing, polyurethane foam pieces, pieces of polypropylene fishing net and discarded lengths of rope are a good part of that garbage - plus an endless supply of plastic products like disposable lighters can be found.

Besides the larger items that we see in the water or on beaches, there are the remnants of those that do degrade. Via sunlight, wave action and mechanical abrasion, plastics break down slowly into ever smaller particles.

These particles join the small pellets of plastic lost at sea which are actually the way new plastics are marketed for manufacturers which make up a good part of the trash patches. Sometimes called "marine tumbleweeds,” huge quantities are found in beach cleanups and are found accumulated in sea areas where winds and currents are weak.

Will we be writing about the Great Atlantic Garbage Patch one day?

• http://www.greatgarbagepatch.org
• http://sio.ucsd.edu/Expeditions/Seaplex/
  
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch
• http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/oceans/

The NJ Keep It Green Campaign

The New Jersey - Keep It Green Campaign is a coalition of 135 statewide, local and regional organizations ranging from sportsmen’s groups and environmental organizations to affordable housing and urban park advocates.

The campaign's mission is to secure a long-term stable source of funding for the acquisition of open space, farmland and historic sites as well as the capital improvement, operation, maintenance, and stewardship of state and local natural areas, parks and historic sites in New Jersey.

This work is guided by the belief that every New Jersey resident deserves well-maintained, accessible neighborhood parks, wildlife areas and historic sites.

The organizations are both large and small. There's the Grover Cleveland Birthplace  http://clevelandbirthplace.org near me in Caldwell. There's also Clean Ocean Action http://www.cleanoceanaction.org, a leading national and regional voice working to protect waterways using science, law, research, education, and citizen action.

COA's mission statement is to improve the degraded water quality of the marine waters off the New Jersey/New York coast. They work to identify the sources of pollution and mount an attack on each source by using research, public education, and citizen action to convince our public officials to enact and enforce measures which will clean up and protect our ocean.

http://www.njkeepitgreen.org    Become a fan on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/NJKeepItGreen

Climate Change for Blog Action Day

Today is Blog Action Day. It's an annual event that unites the world's bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion.

This year the topic of discussion is Climate Change, an issue that threatens us all. Small online journals, big online magazines and all the Endangered New Jersey-sized blogs out there in the middle are joining in.

Tamara Giltsoff wrote at PSFK in “Mitigating Climate Change is Hot on the Business Agenda. What About Adapting to it?” and asked "Why is there less focus on adapting to climate change versus mitigating it?" Wise businesses will plan for new futures and generate value from change. Where there is risk, there is also opportunity.

Schools should look at these issues because it affects their students’ lives. How should that new campus building be built? How are you using technology and energy?



Taking action beyond blogging is more important than posting on a blog today. There are 130 countries represented by Blog Action Day bloggers, but more than any other country, action taken by the United States to limit greenhouse gases and build a clean energy economy is needed to achieve a sustainable solution to our global climate crisis. Add your voice and call for bold action now.

In December, world leaders will gather in Copenhagen to negotiate a global response to climate change. As a world leader in greenhouse gas pollution as well as clean energy technology, the United States needs to take bold and urgent action by implementing comprehensive clean energy policies to curb emissions. Sign the petition at hopenhagen.org.

President Barack Obama has said that climate change is an urgent threat, and now is the time for him to lead the United States in confronting climate crisis. This is a chance for people around the world and in the United States to join together in telling President Obama that we want him to lead the United States in taking bold and significant action to reduce greenhouse gasses.

Click here to add your name and call on the U.S. to take action now.

Take a look at The Top 100 Effects of Climate Change. You can “Say Goodbye to Pinot Noir” and expect “More Bear Attacks” and “Malaria Spreading in South America” and probably “More Stray Kitties.” It's a site that might help you and your children think out of the climate box. Big consequences and smaller consequences.

How about Kids vs. Global Warming? It's an organization started by a 12 year student two years ago. Check out their projects.



Blog Action Day has partnered with Al Gore's group the Alliance for Climate Protection to start a global online action addressed to the one country whose actions will most influence the future of our climate: the United States. Learn about climate change in this Google Earth introductory tour narrated by Al Gore, the first in a series of Google Earth tours leading up to the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen in December. For more climate change tours, visit http://www.google.com/cop15

What are NJ's most serious environmental issues?

In our recent online poll of this site's users, we asked: "What are New Jersey's most serious environmental issues?"

Users were allowed to select multiple issues from a list of eight.

The results are:

• 45% water quality
• 42% preserve open space
• 42% toxic cleanup
• 37% air quality
• 34% urban sprawl
• 23% coastal protection
• 21 fish and wildlife protection
• 17 energy (nuclear, wind etc.)
  

The Re-Greening of Cranford

Back a hundred years ago, Cranford was known as the "Venice of New Jersey." It was a town that grew up around the meandering Rahway River.

The river was a main mode of transportation with many residents having boats docked in front of their riverfront homes. About five miles of the 30-mile Rahway River goes through the Township.

Like almost all of New Jersey, Cranford became much more developed and open space, natural resources and habitats disappeared or were endangered.

The river has become a source of significant flooding. Overdevelopment both in the town and in surrounding towns causes stormwater management challenges. Cranford takes a bigger hit than other towns because it lies downstream from most of the 18 towns along the Rahway River.

The Cranford Environmental Commission was created in the 1970s. In 2006-2007 they won an Achievement Award for enacting the first NJ municipal ordinance to require sustainable building standards for new township construction and existing buildings, based on the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System.

In town, the Commission runs programs such as encouraging homeowners to choose renewable energy through the Clean Power Choice Program as well as energy efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), through the ENERGY STAR Change-A-Light Program.

Blue Heron on the Rahway River

They also created an awareness program about community sustainability called My Green Cranford.

The Rahway River is popular for fishing and the Cranford Canoe Club is a historic spot where residents rent canoes to use on the river. Many homes located on the river have canoes in the backyards and docks on the river.

A 13.5 mile bike path runs through the township, connecting major points of interest. It was built with in 1982 as part of a fuel-conservation program with funds from the Federal Housing Administration. The township also hosts a section of the East Coast Greenway which will run between Calais, Maine and Key West, Florida.

New Jersey Monthly magazine ranked Cranford as its 37th best place to live in its 2008 rankings of the "Best Places To Live" in New Jersey and its "greening" is certainly a factor.

How is your NJ town doing environmentally? Do you have an environmental commission? My hometown in suburban Essex County does - check on the ANJEC site for your town. Click here and find out - the ANJEC website has this information at your fingertips.

Leave No Trace

Leave No Trace is a set of principles for people who participate in outdoor recreation that seeks to minimize your impact on the natural environment.

The movement popularized the phrase "Take only photos, leave only footprints."

Back in the 1970s, the United States Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the National Park Service started to educate their non-motorized visitors (hikers & campers mostly) how to have a minimal impact on the land.

The movement also caught on with the Sierra Club and the Boy Scouts of America. A formal education program was developed in 1990 by the United States Forest Service in conjunction with the National Outdoor Leadership School.

Wilderness areas managed by the U.S. Forest Service actively promote adherence to Leave No Trace principles. Wilderness advocates wanted to protect these areas but limiting wilderness access would probably have actually lost support for the Wilderness Act.

Instead of promoting woodcraft (where wilderness travelers exploit wilderness resources in order to rebel against modern technology), groups went the opposite direction and promoted "Leave No Trace" (where travelers use the latest technology to minimize impact).

The Leave No Trace program is actually managed by the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics, a non-profit organization.

Leave No Trace's 7 principles are:

1. Plan Ahead and Prepare
2. Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces
3. Dispose of Waste Properly
4. Leave What You Find
5. Minimize Use and Impact of Fire
6. Respect Wildlife
7. Be Considerate of Other Visitors

• National Park Service
• U.S. Forest Service
• Bureau of Land Management
• U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Marcellus Shale Webinar

UPDATE to my earlier post
via http://www.grdodge.org/blog/2009/05/07/spotlight-on-marcellus-shale-webinar/

If you are a concerned citizen, funder, or a member of a nonprofit who wants to learn more about this “natural gas rush,” visit the G.R. Dodge website to view a webinar, hosted by Dodge and the New York Community Trust, and presented by Delaware Riverkeeper Network and Riverkeeper, Inc., who are working around the clock to ensure that industrial gas drilling does not threaten the critical water resources of New York, Pennsylvania and downstream water users in the Delaware River Watershed.

Pack It In, Pack It Out

"Pack it In, Pack it Out" is a waste management philosophy of environmentalism. The idea is simple: whatever you bring into a natural area - bags, bottles, trash - must be taken out of the area when you leave.

It is not just removing the trash and biodegradable waste from the natural area, but also the proper disposal of those materials when you get home so that they cause no harm to the ecosystem.

This philosophy is closely related to the broader minimal impact code that is practiced by many environmentalists, naturalists, and conservationists. It has become a part of the philosophy of many organizations that have members who enjoy camping, hiking, trekking, fishing, and other activities that involve entering wilderness areas.

More

• United States Bureau of Land Management
• The Backpacker
• Leave No Trace