Healthy Lawns, Healthy Lives in Burlingon

Article in today's Free Press about the Board of Health's Healthy Green Lawn Labs project with UVM. I am on the Board of Health and am interviewed...

Although snow blanketed Vermont last week, a working group of the Burlington Board of Health is about to issue this call: Wanted — two Burlington property owners willing this spring to swear off the stew of manmade chemicals many people feed their lawns to keep them as weed- and pest-free as AstroTurf.

LOCAL ISSUE: RENT RISE FOR CITY FARMER MARKETEERS

Over the weekend I read about this in a Front Porch Forum post by Chris Wagner, the market manager of Burlington Farmers' Market. In the Free Press today is an article alluding to that post:- Wagner said in his public letter that the market’s steering committee decided to meet with Kiss, to make sure he understood that the increases would be stressful to the vendors — particularly those just starting out. They met Friday in what Bissell called a cordial discussion.

“He was basically noncommittal,” Bissell said of Kiss. “He said he was going to talk with Wayne (Gross). It was hard to tell where he was going with it.”

“We heard the city supports the market,” Wagner said. “We were glad to have him say it, but I think we expected a little bit more.” Kiss said, “We’re at the beginning of the process, and we’ll move forward to make a proposal.” He said he would talk to Gross about the issue later this week.

Of course Bob Kiss loves 'process,' and is non-committal, although I note a hint of the usual double-speak.

Mayor Bob Kiss said the proposed rent increase from the Parks and Recreation Department is still in flux and will be resolved by late March or early April.

After the city mayoral election, you see.

No doubt the FPF post is making the rounds in the organic granola neighborhoods of Birkenstock... uhm Burlington. Already, under the Kiss administration, the Parks and Rec Dept have been under fire about their procedures. Given that, I don't think it's coincidental that news of the rent rise comes out the week before the city election.

GREEN WEEK

Here are De Stroopwafels, a funky, hilarious duo from the Netherlands...promoting green stuff:

Global Capitalism and Global Warming

Here's a snippet from an essay, Global Capitalism and Global Warming , by Dan DiMaggio and Philip Locker, Socialist Alternative, September 8, 2007

While some blame ordinary consumers for environmental problems, the reality is consumers do not control the resources or hold power in this system. A few hundred multinational corporations control the bulk of the world’s resources and make the most important decisions about what products will be produced and how. It is these huge corporations and their economic and political power, which is the main source of environmental damage.

Continue reading Global Capitalism and Global Warming...
Via GREEN LEFT INFOASIS- thanks.

It's capitalism or a habitable planet - you can't have both

Via The Tomb - many thanks for this:

Guardian - It's capitalism or a habitable planet - you can't have both

There is no meaningful response to climate change without massive social change. A cap on this and a quota on the other won't do it. Tinker at the edges as we may, we cannot sustain earth's life-support systems within the present economic system.

Capitalism is not sustainable by its very nature.

In reality, power concentrates around wealth. Private ownership of trade and industry means that the decisive political force in the world is private power. The corporation will outflank every puny law and regulation that seeks to constrain its profitability. It therefore stands in the way of the functioning democracy needed to tackle climate change. Only by breaking up corporate power and bringing it under social control will we be able to overcome the global environmental crisis.

Read it all: It's capitalism or a habitable planet - you can't have both
By Robert Newman Guardian Thursday February 2, 2006

COMMENT: Let's apply the above to what's happening closer to home. We're all interconnected. (Earth to Vermont? Are you listening?) Burlington can't just operate in its own little bubble. Would that the profit-minded Reprogocrats on City Council keep this in mind in their deliberations on the draft zoning ordinance. Our representatives claim to have Burlington's future at heart, but are short-sighted in their rush to grab all development dollars they can consume.

Green Left Infoasis Interview with Derek Wall

Worth your attention - Tim at Green Left Infoasis has an extensive interview with Derek Wall, green activist, writer, economist, and currently the Principal Male Speaker of the Green Party of England and Wales. Thanks Derek & Tim!

"Green lite" living

James McWilliams, in the Texas Observer, takes a closer look at eat local "icons" Michael Pollan, Bill McKibben, Barbara Kingsolver, Alisa Smith, and J.B. MacKinnon.

But what about Jersey tomatoes?

NEW SCIENTIST - 'Tis the season in Vermont for organic tomatoes, so it's good to know they're healthy for you.

Reflections on Poverty and Climate Change

The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, recently wrote an Op-Ed that was published in the San Francisco Chronicle entitled "Reflections on poverty and climate change." Bishop Schori, who was a professor of oceanography before she became a priest, understands the interconnectedness of all of creation. Her Op-Ed shows how extreme poverty and climate change reinforce one another, but how humanity can meet the challenge head on and solve both. Click here to read the Op-Ed.

Rachel Carson: Green Hero

2007 marks the centenary of the birth of Rachel Carson. The Independent has a profile and an exerpt of her monumental book, Silent Spring -
She was the mother of environmentalism, and in 1962 she published what turned out to be the founding text of modern ecology: Silent Spring. Its title was meant to evoke a time - not far in the future - when the season of new growth would be one in which, to quote Keats, "no birds sing", because they had all died from pesticide poisoning. It was a work which was to be listed - alongside The Wealth of Nations, Das Kapital and The Origin of the Species - as a book which changed the course of history.

Realigning our lives with our food chain

Daily Episcopalian - Barbara Kingsolver isn't one to give advice, she says. She's more the sort to listen to a problem for a while and reply with, "Well, I don't know, what do you think you should do?" On Tuesday night, she greeted a crowd of hundreds who had come to Washington National Cathedral to hear her discuss her family's new book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.Her challenge to the audience was for them to hear out her story—for she is quite a storyteller—and then decide what they should do.

Kingsolver and her family had moved from Tuscon, Arizona, to Southwestern Virginia for the typical reasons: work and family. But there was another reason: food. They wanted to eat deliberately, Kingsolver said, in "the promised land, where water falls from the sky and green stuff grows all around—and to begin the adventure of realigning our lives with our food chain."