Current Green Blog

When you ask most divers why they took up diving, you’ll hear the same thing repeatedly:

1) It’s the last frontier
2) They can’t afford to go to space but they can afford to dive in the ocean
3) They want to experience weightlessness

I took up diving because I am a pragmatic Capricorn:

1) I am afraid of the open ocean. I hate having things around that scare me.
2) This past new year eve I promised myself I would make two commitments to the land. The first was going to be a commitment of time and resource to an organization. (I selected The Woman’s Earth Alliance because I am inspired by the organization’s mission and leaders.) The second promise was that I would focus on one environmental issue that I could have a hands on relationship with. The first thought that came to mind was the images of sea turtles drowning in plastic and getting caught by fishing lines. So I figured what better way to engage than to go into the great mystery of the ocean: source of life, of food, holder of our garbage… and take on the simple project of removing the garbage that I am personally responsible for? (There has to be a stat for that.)
3) I made a new years resolution to have more fun, and I do believe this will fit in that category.

And… the ocean just so happens to be the place whales calls home. I like whales. After all, they are the only mammal that has migrated out of the water, onto land, and back into the water.

I think I feared the ocean because I couldn’t see into it, all I could imagine was a deep dark place teaming with wild creatures prepared and waiting to eat me if I don’t eat them first. Ok, actually, all I could imagine are dead zombies waiting just inches beneath the surface of the water waiting to pull my feet to the bottom of the ocean. But the fact that 71 percent of the planet is covered in water, and that there is this entire world under just under the surface that has volcanoes and deserts and valleys got the best of me~

…so I got my diving certification.  I started at my local dive shop in San Francisco, but my schedule didn’t match up with their open water training schedule so I went down to Monterey for the first two open water dives, and then completed my last 2 dives in Maui. While slightly unorthodox to go through 3 different dive shops for my certification (if this of interest, I appreciated each and everyone: The Dive Shop in SF, the one in Monterey (yeah kelp forest), and then finished the open water certification at the  Maui Dive Shop in Maui (Juan, my teacher, had the patience of a saint)). I actually appreciated and benefited from the exposure to different teachers, different equipment, and different teaching styles. I’ll also confess that given that I got into this due to my deep seeded fear of the deep dark ocean, I liked the one-on-one attention I received in these individual classes, and eventually managed to succeed at what I now refer to as the highly prized skill of selective thinking.

For me, diving begins on the surface: you begin by floating, then release all the air from BC, and then start the process of sinking to the bottom. It’s in that moment when looking through the goggles: in the top half I can see the sky,  in the bottom half I see into the ocean, that I think, “I could die doing this.”

And that’s when I start the process of selective thinking. Just as when you are afraid of heights, they tell you don’t look down, I quickly learned not to look up. It is like the container has disappeared and all of a sudden you are in  a new planet where there is no end of the world (and btw, no zombies).

There are some things that are used on the surface  of the planet that are useless and pointless once inside the belly of the ocean, and time is one of them.  I now understand why they teach you to obsessively check your gauge: because once you enter this other world, it’s easy to forget you need to return.

The things I had seen and feared turned out to be fine: eels and sharks I swam with turned out turned out be harmless, and after swimming past my first shark in the wild, all I had to do was remind myself that it’s name was not jaws.

I became aware that I was the one that could harm this place, and not the other way around. All it took was one moment of carelessness with my fins or fingers, just one touch to the coral and I could kill it. No matter how many times I understand it with my brain, my eyes do not register that that huge rock like structure is by all practical definition an extremely fragile living animal.

It’s hard to comprehend that I was swimming in the belly of one of the sources that sustains this planet.

It’s bazaar to comprehend that we have spent less time and resources exploring the oceans than we have space, that every time the deep water expedition goes down they discover new things.

It’s surreal to imagine that this place which has become a place that feels serene and safe is also a death trap with wayward nets that are killing turtles and dolphins, and that each day it takes in a little more plastics and toxins.

The only rules I need to abide by are don’t run out of air, and stay with my partner. Other than that, there are no rules, road signs, right of way, traffic lines, it’s one of the few places you can go on the planet that isn’t regulated. There is space, plenty of space, space to get lost in, a quiet that allows you to get lost in your imagination, in your thoughts, if you can manage to distract yourself from the crazy foot dance of the fish that can’t swim (who knew?) and the pencil fish, and the moray eel, and the parrot fish, and the dolphins, and the mantas…and somewhere out there, the largest beings that have ever lived on this planet are out there, swimming in the same body of water that I am swimming in.

(many thanks to Jack’s Diving Locker for providing the video footage)

After a long weekend at Bioneers where I took in more devastating information about the state of the climate than I was personally prepared for, I am more than looking forward to meeting the rising eco stars celebrated at The Brower Youth Awards. In honor of the awards ceremony this evening, we are staging a “take over” of green channel, and are only featuring Brower Youth Award winners today.

Enjoy the inspiration!

Earth Island Institute established the Brower Youth Awards in 2000 to honor our founder and legendary environmental activist, David R. Brower and to call forth a new generation of leaders.

The annual Brower Youth Awards honor six young people for their outstanding activism and achievements in the fields of environmental and social justice advocacy. Each winner is awarded $3000 and brought to San Francisco for the award week and a backcountry camping trip. The Brower Youth Awards not only promote the accomplishments of these young leaders but also invest in their continued success by providing ongoing access to resources, mentors, and opportunities to develop their leadership skills through Earth Island Institute’s New Leaders Initiative.

Rickshaw Films produced the short videos to introduce the rising eco stars and their work. You can always follow them on Twitter if you want to keep up to date on their shenanigans.

Enjoy.

Hai Vo co-founded the Real Food Challenge (RFC) at the University of California at Irvine (UCI) after he radically transformed his health by learning to eat nutritious food.

Diana Lopez organizes with the Southwest Workers Union for worker rights, environmental justice and community empowerment in San Antonio, Texas. She has fought to clean up military base contamination, organized for energy policies, and in February 2007, along with community members and fellow organizers, started the Roots of Change community garden.

Sierra co-founded Power Past Coal along with forty grassroots activists personally impacted by the mining, processing and burning of coal. As National Coordinator, Sierra united diverse communities to convince President Obama, the Environmental Protection Agency, the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and Congress to enact policies to swiftly and justly transition away from coal.

Robin lives in close proximity to the world’s largest single land storehouse of carbon and most abundant source of fresh water, the boreal forest of the East Shore Wilderness Area in Manitoba, Canada. It has been his mission to simultaneously preserve this valuable area and prevent the mismanagement of public land by putting an end to logging activity within the boundaries of provincial parks in Manitoba.

Alec first saw Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” when he was 12 years old. Inspired by the message, Alec wrote to the organization and applied to be a presenter, but was denied due to his age. Undeterred, Alec created his own presentation and gave it over 30 times before Mr. Gore took notice.

Adarsha recognized the complex relationship between the economy and the environment. In December of 2007, he co-founded Project Jatropha, an organization dedicated to promoting the plant Jatropha curcas as an ecologically friendly and economically profitable crop among the farmers of rural India. Project Jatropha collaborated with Parivarthana, an NGO that helps farmers, and Labland Biotechs, a plant biotechnology company, in order to convince farmers that raising Jatropha was an economically sustainable project.

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Welcome to Bioneers

In the land of mass transit and commuting, there is a bright beacon in the mass transit bump grind and wait system, and it’s called…drum roll please…the casual car pool. It sounds strange when you explain it to your parents, “yes mom, a stranger drives up, and I get their car…”

“Casual car pools” or “ad hoc car pools” are informal car pools that form when drivers and passengers meet – without specific prior arrangement – at designated locations. There are a number of East Bay morning meeting locations, which are listed below.  Drivers drop passengers off at Fremont and Mission Streets (or nearby) in downtown San Francisco.  There is also evening return service from San Francisco to some of the East Bay locations.

Truth be told, it’s become an important source of ideas for blogging these days. Now, the general rule is no talking, but about one out of three cars has people who like that to chat and get to know each other (we start our ride in Berkeley after all).  For example, I befriended Adam Browning founder of Vote Solar by reading him his horoscope during one ride (he has become a trusted resource for helping me understand solar initiatives), I learned about an under reported environmental disaster in Peru (coming soon to a blog near you), and just this morning, I met an icon in Berkeley, THE BERKELEY BIRD HOUSE MAN (he makes all of his bird houses from refurbished materials)! (I’m visiting his gallery next Monday so stay tuned for photos and video). And..I convinced him it’s high time to start making chicken coops so I can purchase one from him!

Now if only I could work in a way to exercise during commuting time. Oh wait..there’s a way to do that~ and here’s a video of people doing just that in Copenhagen.

It’s Spare the Air Day in San Francisco.

Spare the Air Every Day is the Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s call to action asking the public to consider clean air choices every day.

Single occupancy vehicles are the largest source of summertime air pollution. Sharing a ride and carpooling to work will help the Bay Area achieve clean air AND reduce travel time by unclogging our freeways. Rethink your drive and carpool, take transit, bike or walk to help reduce smog pollution.

Designed to educate about alternative ways to commute to work, they used to provide free passes on public transportation systems. But no longer. What do you think? Do public campaigns like this influence your daily travel habits?

Related links:

Paris on two wheels a day (video)

Foldable Electric Bicycle for Your Urban Commuting Needs

Free Bike Cages Offer Safe Parking for Commuters

Originally created by Rebar, San Francisco art and design collective, PARK(ing) Day is an annual, one-day, global event where artists, activists, and citizens independently but simultaneously temporarily transform metered parking spots into “PARK(ing)” spaces: temporary public parks.

Anyone can participate in PARK(ing) Day, though it is strictly a non-commercial project, intended to promote creativity, civic engagement, critical thinking, unscripted social interactions, generosity and play.

Anyone have any fabulous photos to share with us?

San Francisco’s mayor Gavin Newsom just announced the world’s first airport carbon offset kiosk at San Francisco International Aiport. The Climate Passport Program kiosk will allow travelers to calculate the carbon impact of their flights and purchase offsets.

While I like the concept of carbon offsetting, in everyday practice it feels like a scam. It seems like the first place entrepreneurs go to hijack the term “green” to make a buck off off of people’s green conscious (sometimes known as guilt). Not to mention it’s a high-speed vehicle for loopholes in legislation designed to protect against pollution. With that said, not all programs are bunk, and you can check out an old post for suggestions from our community about carbon offset programs they love and trust.

“The Carbon Offsets purchased through the Climate Passport Carbon Footprint Calculator are sourced from the Garcia River Forest, a conservation-based forest management project located in Mendocino County, California. The project achieves multiple goals including: increased sequestration and storage of carbon in native redwood forests, wildlife habitat restoration, and a sustainable supply of certified wood products.”

In this case, The carbon offsets will go towards the Garcia River Forest which (with your purchase) will be supplied with new Redwood and Douglas Fir trees that absorb and store carbon dioxide. A minimal amount of the kiosk’s offset sales also go to the San Francisco Carbon Fund, which works on local carbon reduction projects like a publicly-owned biofuel filling station.

It just turns out that my coworker Andrew Fitzgerald mentioned that he and his girlfriend are flying to Boston tonight, so I thought I would help them out and test out the system for them.

I entered San Francisco to Boston, 2 passengers, and Viola! It is ready to accept my credit card payment of $48.77 ($24.38 per person).

“No one is saying this is the silver bullet or justifies air travel; having kiosks at the airport mainstreams the idea that you can contribute to environmental projects. We worked with 3 degrees (one of the most well respected offset providers in the US and abide all of the verification and protocols that have been developed. We wanted to bring basic and easily consumable information to a captive audience (in the airport) where they can contribute. -Wade Crowfoot, former mayor advisor now West Coast Political Director Environmental Defense Fund

Ok, so you’ve got to hand it to them, for the cost of an airport dinner, you can rid yourself of some guilt. But really, when you’re rushing through the airport trying to catch a flight do you have time to feel guilt or socially responsible?  Time will tell…

What is Carbon offset?
“A Carbon Offset, also known as a Verified Emission Reduction (VER), represents one ton of greenhouse gas (GHG) carbon equivalent prevented from being emitted into the atmosphere. Carbon Reductions allow you to “balance” your emissions by supporting GHG reduction projects across the U.S.”

Related Content:
Guilt for sale! World’s First Airport Carbon Kiosks in San Francisco
Artificial Trees To Cut Carbon Emissions
Eco-Question: Carbon efficiency or carbon offsetting?

In addition to that offset program, we are working to create a localized carbon fund, so you can contribute to a fund that affects carbon rates in your local region. Earlier in the year we passed an ordinance that all city travel must purchase or contribute to 13% of the cost of the trip to the carbon fund.” -Wade Crowfoot, former mayor advisor now West Coast Political Director Environmental Defense Fund