Kendra Pierre-Louis's posts on Justmeans

Green Fireworks Go Green

Kendra Pierre-Louis — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 08:00:06 GMT

With the dog days of summer just a hair's breath away, thoughts naturally wander to what for many of us is the period at the end of a sentence filled with potlucks, cookouts, and swimming: namely, fireworks.From our neighbor to the north's Canada Day celebrations, to the Cannes Fireworks Festival, to the Sumida River Fireworks Festival in Japan, to our very own 4th of July celebrations, for people around the world celebrating summer often involves pyrotechnics.Unfortunately, fireworks, though pleasing to the eye, are heavy on the earth. They often contain a heady mix of benzenes, heavy metals, pechlorates and sulfur oxides. These endocrine disrupting, cancer causing chemicals don't merely disappear upon eruption - as spectators we breathe them in and they trickle into nearby water supplies as well as into the soil where they can become a persistent problem.It is welcome news then, that army pyrotechnic experts have found a way to turn green fireworks (as in the color), well, more green(as in sustainable). According to an article in the April issue of Nature, the army has a vested interest in making fireworks less toxic because they use them regularly in everything from celebrations to in the field. Current methods involves lighting barium nitrate, a toxic substance when eaten or inhaled that can cause muscle tremors, vomiting, diarrhea, kidney damage and even death, and polyvinyl chloride (PVC), an endocrine disruptor which amongst other things can cause reproductive abnormalities. Researchers, have discovered however, that by submitting born carbide - a less toxic , readily available and cheaper to boot chemical - for the barium nitrate that the result was a less toxic flair.Now we just have to tackle the rest of the color spectrum.Photo Credit: < a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/pixellou/4764542385/" target="_blank">Lisa Williams

Easy Ways to Green Your Home

Kendra Pierre-Louis — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 12:12:00 GMT

According to the U.S. Green Building Council, the building sector comprises roughly half of all the green house gas emissions released in the US, with roughly 25% of that coming from on site use of fossil fuels. For most of us who aren't in a position to either build a home from the ground up, or engage in costly retrofits that though may save money in the long run do not fit into our budget in the short-term, it can often seem like there isn't much we can do to reduce the carbon footprint of our homes.And while it's true that short of swapping ones home for a tumbleweed tiny home, most of us would be hard pressed to drastically slash our carbon emissions in short order, there are small steps we can take right now to reduce our carbon load.Take for example the humble roof. Its black (at least in the US) color attracts heat in the summer months, forcing those of us in warmer climates to pump the air conditioningin order to overcome this solar heat gain. In fact, 15-30% of air conditioning costs go simply to overcoming the heat brought in by black roofs.Yet there is a simple way of reducing this effect.Simply paint your roof white. White roofs, because they reflect the sun's rays, reduce building heat-gain substantially. Whereas a black roof can become as much as 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius) hotter than surrounding air temperatures, white roofs increase only a mere 10-25 degrees Fahrenheit (5-14 degrees) Celsius above daily ambient temperature. This isn't an intellectual exercise either - New York City Utility ConEdison found that painting the roof of one of its facilities white greatly reduced electrical use. Even Wal-Mart's gotten into the act - painting the roof of its Las Vegas facility white.Similarly, purchasing a water heater insulator - one with an insulating value of at least R-8 at a cost of 10-20 dollars - can shave roughly 10% off of one's monthly energy usage. Adding a bottom board of rigid insulation further reduces energy use up to another 10%.Finally, inexpensive, easy to install low-flow shower heads can reduce home water consumption and energy costs by as much as fifty percent without sacrificing water pressure.There you have it - three cheap, easy, ways of greening your home. What are you waiting for? Hop to it.Photo Credit:Walmart Stores

American Power of the Fossil Variety

Kendra Pierre-Louis — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 22:57:21 GMT

A Simpsons-esque squat yellow house sits in the shadow of a looming nuclear power plant.A B.P. refinery in Southern California hangs a massive American flag hanging from its endless structure pipes and turrets.A quaint Iowa village with a neatly laid out square, large verdant trees, and modern windmills in the distance.These images and more are captured by Prix Pictet Growth Winner Mitch Epstein in his photographic series entitled "American Power".The series, described by the photographer as an examination of "how energy is produced and used in the American landscape." Says the author:"Made on forays to energy production sites and their environs, these pictures question the power of nature, government, corporations, and mass consumption in the United States."The effect for the viewer is a haunting sense of isolation and wanton destruction that comes with fossil fuel use, and hope for a better future embodied in alternative energy.In other words, without being preachy, or standoffish, the piece educates and elevates and is worth a rowdy discussion amongst friends.Photo Credit:Mitch Epstein

So Fresh and So Clean

Kendra Pierre-Louis — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 22:26:07 GMT

What often gets lost in amidst the discussion of our use of fossil fuels is this - fossil fuels are incredibly dirty. Burning fuel for energy rarely results in pristine, fresh air.This is why in January of this year the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) finally issued a ruling that will phase out permits for the most polluting grades of heating oil - No. 4 and No 6. These oils, according to a report by the Environmental Defense Fund, although they make up a mere 1% of the oils burned in New York City emit more soot pollution than all of the city's cars and trucks.In other words by dealing with a mere 1% of the city's problem, we can drastically improve the city's air quality.Shockingly, some 41 years after the nation's first Earth Day there is still a lot of similarly low hanging fruit. A handful of tiny changes effectively applied can do much to usher in sustainable development and work towards environmental conservation.Another example?In 2002 when Ireland externalized the true cost of plastic bags (like the kind given out at supermarkets), by charging a 15 cent plastic bag tax, the nation's use of plastic bags declined some 90%. These, after all, are the same plastic bags that choke wildlife and contribute to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.Sometimes, the biggest steps we can make, are the smallest steps.Photo Credit: Kate Ter Haar

Meat Glue, Pink Slime and Food Transparency

Kendra Pierre-Louis — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 21:53:07 GMT

It takes someone with quite the cast iron stomach to hear the words "meat glue" and think "I want some of that".There's a decent chance, however, if you've eaten meat, you've likely bitten into something held together by meat glue.Why yes, meat glue is not the product of dystopian novel but is rather a very real product.Officially meat glue is a transglutaminases enzyme derived from pig and /or beef blood. When sprinkled on scraps of meat, which are then pressed together using plastic wrap or a mold, the result is a structured steak.It's molecular gastronomy gone awry.While it's still far less gross than pink slime - the fatty slaughterhouse trimmings once relegated to pet food, that are now thrown into a centrifuge to remove fat, and treated with ammonia to reduce spoiling that comprises most American hamburgers - it suffers from similar problems.Namely, meat glued steaks have higher bacterial counts than normal steaks. This is structural. In meat most of the bacteria lies on the outer surface. Since meat glue steaks are comprised of many pieces of meat, some of those outer surfaces end up in the interior of the steak. The outside bacteria goes inside. And, since they don't have require labeling, unaware citizens can easily undercook the steaks exposing themselves to potentially serious health risks.Meat Glue - once you get past the name - is not that gross. We have, after all, molded scraps of waste meat together for centuries.It's called sausage.What is problematic, however, is the hidden nature behind meat glue. It's a transparency problem in which it is decided that individuals simply don't need to know what they're eating.And that's problematic.Photo Credit: Sarae

Go Daddy CEO Kills an Elephant; Tweets About It

Kendra Pierre-Louis — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 20:57:38 GMT

Bob Parsons, CEO and Founder of the internet domain registering and web hosting service Go Daddy.com - famous for sexist and vaguely misogynistic commercials - recently posted a video of himself killing an elephant.It's an understatement to say that the reaction has been one of mostly outrage.PETA, has called on conscious supporters who have websites registered with Go Daddy to switch domains, while internet registering service Namecheap is donating 20% to savetheelephants.org for every new transfer made by end of day on April 1, 2011.If you're like most people you may be confused as to how killing an elephant - never mind filming it - could be legal. These large lumbering mammals that can easily consume upwards of 1000 pounds of food a day, communicate ultrasonically, bury their dead, and are a biodiversity keystone species are positioned as vulnerable on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list.It has been known since at least 2009 that Zimbabwe has been culling its elephant population of roughly 80,000-100,000 elephants. However, the practice and the method - using rich big game hunters who pay for the privilege of killing the elephants and posing with a picture of their prey (they can't take home elephant parts as trophies) - has been viewed as uniquely controversial.While Bob defends his action by arguing that the elephant was a problem elephant, consuming the crops of already hungry villagers, this belies the fact that at least part of the problem is human encroachment (under the Mugabe dictatorship). There are, says the World Wildlife Fund, far less violent methods of dealing with elephant encroachment beginning with planting crops that elephants dislike, and using natural deterrents such as chile pepper.Since Zimbabwe is benefitting financially from the culls - in addition to taking payment from foreign hunters, they also sell ivory legally to China and Japan - there's little effort being undertaken to deal with this issue from source. Human encroachment is at least, in part, the reason why elephant populations have become problematic.All of these issues aside, shooting an elephant and tweeting the video is just in poor taste. It might be hard for a man whose company made its bread and butter objectifying women to recognize the line of taste, but in general killing a sentient animal that moves at an average rate of about 4-miles an hour behind a vague defense of environmental conservation and sustainable development in a country run by a military dictator who kills and enslaves his own people is weak and definitely not an example of individual or corporate social responsibility.Photo Credit:Mark Lee

The Earth's Lungs Gasp: The Effects Amazonian Drought on CO2 Emissions

Kendra Pierre-Louis — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 23:06:09 GMT

Called the lungs of the planet, the Amazon rainforest absorbs some 1.5 billion metric tons of CO2, every year - except when it doesn't.In 2005, during a 'once-in-a-century' drought and again in 2010 during another still more severe drought, the Amazon stopped absorbing carbon dioxide and started to release it.Why?Normally the Amazon absorbs CO2 as a consequence of photosynthesis - the trees breathe in carbon and release oxygen. Yet in years when unusual weather patterns drastically reduce Amazon rainfall, the result is trees that grow more slowly (reducing their absorption of CO2), and some trees that simply die. Not only do these dead trees not absorb CO2, but as they rot they release their stored CO2 back into the atmosphere.This is problematic. According to a February 2011 Scientific American Article:"The bigger-picture view, however, is that the Amazon has experienced two '100-year' droughts in the past five years, and there is good evidence that the forests are not adapted to drought ... and the bigger trees die first," he said. "There is little doubt that continued droughts of this magnitude and frequency will change the structure of these forests and their ability to sequester carbon from the atmosphere."The article goes on to say that last year's drought may have released as much as 5-billion metric tons of CO2. Roughly the same amount of carbon as stored over the course of 3 years.Even more disturbing is the fact that despite the return of the rains the Amazon's greenery has not returned, suggesting that the Amazon is still absorbing less than its usual amount of CO2.And that's bad news not only for environmental conservation and biodiversity - but for everyone who breathes.Photo Credit: Ivan Mlinaric

Education: The Hidden Subsidy

Kendra Pierre-Louis — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 13:07:15 GMT

Across the United States funding for public education is being slashed.In Florida, Governor Rick Scott is proposing 1.75 billion dollars in cuts (or roughly 10% of the education budget) while three years of budget cuts have left California's schools some 17.5 billion dollars poorer.While much of the attention of these budget cuts is focused on the teachers (who are often losing their jobs) or the students (who are increasingly packed into overcrowded classrooms in schools that are financially struggling to keep the lights on)-what is often ignored is the hidden subsidy that education provides to businesses, the economy and society writ large.Benefits that are crucial to sustainable development and that are being eroded in this latest wave of budget cuts.Take for example crime.Education and crime share an inverse relationship - the more educated your populace the less likely they are to commit crimes (especially violent crimes) and the more likely they are to stay out of prison.According to a 2007 report by the Justice Policy institute, a 5 percent increase in male high school graduation rates would produce an annual savings of almost $5 billion in crime-related expenses.In other words, the less we invest in education the more we spend on prisons.Further, public education amounts to free training for businesses. Reading, basic arithmetic, and general computer skills are all skills that an educated populace possess and that, consequently, businesses do not have to spend in training their workers. As a 2007 World Bank report points out, though why schooling affects economic growth one thing is certain: education spurs on economic growth.By reducing education support we are reducing both quantity (by increasing the drop out rate) and quality of education, which has long term repercussions for municipalities tax base (better educated people earn more and thus pay more in taxes).Finally, educated individuals engage more with social structures. From turning up to vote to showing up to the community's school board meeting, educated individuals are more socially active.Is our educational system perfect? Of course not - but the question of how to fund education is about more than balancing budgets, it's about balancing the short-term needs of the present with the long-term social and economic needs. And that balancing act has to be a part of the discussion.Picture Credit:Hash Milhan

Green Roofs Take Root in North America

Kendra Pierre-Louis — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 20:42:11 GMT

Some 21,000 succulents call the roof of New York City's Con Edison's three-story Learning Center in Long Island City, Queens. The facility - some pales in comparison to the 2.5 living roof atop the Postal service facility in mid-town Manhattan. Meanwhile Chicago, the city that plays host to more green roofs than any other US City, added some 600,000 square feet of green roofs last year bringing their total coverage to a whopping 7 million square feet according to a December Yale Environment 360 article. The city of Toronto even went so far as to mandate that new buildings above a certain size will have to cover at least 60% of their roofs with vegetation.Green roofs - roofs that are covered with vegetation -are hot, and for good reason.According to research conducted by Con Edison and Columbia University on Con Edison's Long Island City green roof, the average winter heat loss was some 34% lower under the green roof than under the black roof, while the summer heat gain was 84% lower on the green roof than under the black roof.In other words - green roofs keep buildings warmer in winter, reducing the need for heat, and cooler in summer, reducing the need for air conditioning.That's a cost savings that over the 25-50 year life span of a roof will bring considerable cost savings, even including the increased cost of building a green roof.The USPS's facility will reduce the building's operating costs by some $30,000 dollars a year.In addition, a green roof, despite costing roughly twice as much as a regular flat roof can last 3x as long.Green roofs also provide a hidden subsidy for cities. By filtering rain water they reduce storm water runoff, and the same effect that helps keep the buildings cooler in summer also help to reduce the heat island effect. Green roofs help keep cities cool. They also provide much needed biodiversity corridors for insects and birds.Cost-effective and environmental - what's not to like?Photo Credit: Arlington County

Legislating Away Food Safety

Kendra Pierre-Louis — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 11:27:26 GMT

In the 1973 science fiction movie Soylent Green starring Charlton Heston as New York Police Detective Robert Thorn, we find ourselves in a dystopian version of our current society. In the movie efforts at sustainable development have failed, resulting in an environmental collapse stemming from global warming and overpopulation. Food, as we currently know it, is in short supply. The majority depends on processed food products manufactured by the Soylent Corporation - Soylent Red, Soylent Yellow, and the new, recently introduced Soylent Green. This latter Soylent is touted as being ultra-nutritious made, as it is, from pulverized plankton and because it is also far tastier than its red and yellow cousins it is extremely popular. There is however, a nasty realization when Thorn discovers that (spoiler alert) Soylent Green is not made from plankton but rather from ground human bodies. Soylent Green, in the now oft quoted line, is people.From Upton Sinclair's The Jungle to Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation what's repeatedly been shown is that as long as people don't know how their food is produced, they can easily be coaxed into eating substances that border on hazardous. Similarly, as long as food producers - from farmers to corporations to restaurants - know that they can hide behind a veil of secrecy, the pressure to do increasingly harmful things to our food supply in a global market that clamors for cheaper and cheaper food is omnipresent (hence melamine in baby formula). When it comes to food safety, transparency is the ultimate antiseptic.Yet, a spate of recent legislation seeks to move towards less - not more - transparency in food production. A trend that is horrible for sustainable development.In Florida Senate Bill 1246 would make it a a first-degree felony for anyone to "photograph, video record, or otherwise produce images or pictorial records, digital or otherwise" without express written permission of the farmer or the farmer's representative. A first-degree felony by the way is subject to up to thirty years of jail time and is, in the eyes of the Florida Senator who proposed the bill equivalent to someone who committed vehicular homicide and left the scene of a car. Yes, murder is equivalent to snapping a picture of a Florida farm.A similar bill has been introduced in Iowa, Iowa House File (HF) 431. The Iowa bill differs in that in most cases it's a misdemeanor, not a felony and it goes on to say that anyone who copies or facilitates the distribution of said material (sorry YouTube) would also be guilty under Iowa law.Meanwhile in Michigan, - HB 4306, would mandate that all Michigan public schools have to privatize their food service programs. This not only kills the burgeoning Farm-to-school program, but it would also put school children at the mercy of companies that have been known to play fast and loose with student health.While there's a lot of prognostication as to the reasoning behind these bills - from making it difficult, for example, for citizens to photograph confined feed lots, capture farmers engaging in visible but illegal behavior such as enslaving their workers, or snap a picture of a GMO test farm, to simple cronyism - what these laws have in common is rendering opaque a process that should be crystal clear.Photo Credit:

Sinking Islands, Nuclear Power, and Social Costs

Kendra Pierre-Louis — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 22:37:26 GMT

When it comes to climate change, the island nation of the Maldives, a double chain of twenty-six atolls nestled in the Indian Ocean some three hundred plus miles from its nearest neighbor, India, is widely believed to be a bellwether. With an average elevation a mere three feet above sea level - the same elevation by which sea level is predicted to rise over the next century - the Maldives are on a fast track to obsolescence.While the nation is constructing an exit strategy - most notably the creation of a man-made island called Hulhumal - it's also in a paradoxical situation. The islands current economic survival is highly dependent on carbon-heavy resort tourism, with visitors and resources flown in from around the world. Points out a recent Conservation Magazine Article:The country desperately depends upon the carbon-powered prosperity that's heating up the atmosphere and raising sea levelsit is a microcosm of an unsustainable societyrunning out of space, running out of potable water, running out of time. It imports nearly everything and exports only trash (recyclables, to India) and a dwindling catch of tuna. In Mal, population density has doubled since 1980; with 75 percent of the demographic under the age of 35, it has the potential to do so again in short order. Nasheed [the Maldives President] has compared the Maldives to Saudi Arabia"They have oil, we have tourism"; like an OPEC nation, the Maldives has a toxic relationship with its primary resource.While few people, except perhaps residents of the similarly low lying nations of Tuvalu and Kiribati, can directly relate to having struck such a Sisyphean bargain in which their economic survival is inversely correlated to their actual survival, this is not a situation unique to the Maldives. Many of us sit a world away uneasily watching Japan's nuclear catastrophe. Like the Maldives, the Japanese made a decision to grow their economy today and worry about their continued survival later and now after the devastation of an earthquake, and a tsunami they are sadly facing a nuclear catastrophe.My goal is not to wag a finger at the Japanese. Both the Sunlight Foundation and Mother Nature Network have released maps showing that in the United States, for example, many of the nuclear power plants are located in areas of significant seismic activity. While in France during a 2003 heat wave 17 of the nuclear power plants dependent upon to, in part, provide the electricity to help cool the population, had to be turned off or significantly scaled back because of overheating issues.Yet when these events happen - ranging from a radiation leak, to a partial meltdown - we immediately argue faulty design or human error. While this may technically be true, it beggars the question can we design a nuclear facility that has neither of these risks?Nuclear supporters would argue that inherent in life are risks, and that is true, but when we talk about risks, much as when we talk about climate often those who take the risks and those who must bear the cost of that risk are two separate group. Whether nuclear makes sense from an environmental conservation or a sustainable development perspective involves complicated assessments that do not begin and end with its lack of carbon emissions.Points out Mohamed Nasheed the first democratically elected president of the Islamic Maldives, "Once or twice a year, we are invited to attend an important climate-change eventoften as a keynote speaker. On cue, we stand here and tell you just how bad things are. We warn you that unless you act quickly and decisively, our homeland and others like it will disappear before the rising sea, before the end of this century. We in the Maldives desperately want to believe that one day our words will have an effect, and so we continue to shout them, even though, deep down, we know that you are not really listening." Since nuclear power first became possible in the 1950's not a single decade has gone by without at least a partial reactor meltdown. In six decades of trying we have yet to get it right - we've been just lucky enough to not get it terribly wrong. As we gaze with a mixture of shock, horror and hope, at the plight of our Japanese kin - are we listening?Photo Credit:

China's Growth Conundrum

Kendra Pierre-Louis — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 20:55:14 GMT

In a recent press briefing following the annual meeting of the National People's Congress, China's Premier Wen Jiabao publicly stated that China's current growth pattern is unsustainable. Over the course of the two-hour talk that laid out China's 5-year plan for economic development, Jiabao stated that despite the country's overall average annual rate of growth of 11.2%"We are keenly aware that we still have a serious problem in that our development is not yet well balanced, coordinated or sustainable."[emphasis my own]That's right, China's leadership has admitted that despite prodigious growth - it's growth has not been sustainable.Jiabo goes on to say "This manifests itself mainly in the following: growing resource and environmental constraints hindering economic growthlarge income gapan irrational industrial structure, continued weakness in the agricultural foundationsignificant problems containing food safety."In other words, growth - even remarkablegrowth - has not solved China's development problems. It has, in the case of the environment, even exacerbated some.He goes on to say that the solution lies in making agriculture the foundation of the economy, expanding social programs such as education, and taking steps to conserve resources and protect the environment.Although Jiabao stops well short of eschewing the growth paradigm, it is refreshing to have a world leader - one heading the world's second largest economy - admitting that when it comes to solving a country's environmental and social problems, when it comes to developing - the solution does not lie merely in more economic growth.Photo Credit: lkiller123

The UN Says Hippies Were Right: GMO's Are Out, Eco-Ag Is In

Kendra Pierre-Louis — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 11:04:00 GMT

Decades ago, a sizable if motley group of individuals began to reject chemical agriculture arguing that food grown with chemicals was less wholesome, negatively affected the environment and less resilient. Many of these back to-the-land types, long on ideas and short on actual argicultural experience failed in their long-term attempts to implement this counter agricultural movement. However, enough of them stuck around to usher in the modern organic/biodynamic/local food movement.Yet, even as our scientific knowledge of what conventional chemical and genetically modified agriculture is increasingly doing to humans, the land, and biodiversity, we have continued to hitch our survival wagons to the horses of chemical and gmo agriculture. Case in point: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation pump millions of dollars in support of genetically modified technologies such as drought tolerant maize, buoyed by the belief that the future for sustainable development lies in genetically modified technologies.Organic may be good for some people - most notably guilty yuppies - but to feed a growing world population we need more robust technologies, goes the logic.Today, however, Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, has issued a report stating that the future of sustainable development does not lie in chemical ag, but rather in sustainable agricultural techniques.Says De Schutter, "Today's scientific evidence demonstrates that agroecological methods outperform the use of chemical fertilizers in boosting food production where the hungry live -- especially in unfavorable environments." Agro-ecology is the application of ecological science to agriculture to enhance crop yield. Techniques such as the three sisters - planting corn, beans, and squash together - are an example of an ancient agroecological technique. The corn provides structure for the beans to climb, the beans fix nitrogen in the soil for the nitrogen hungry corn, and the squash act as living mulch providing a strong microclimate that help retain moisture and deter pests. Agro-ecology, when intelligently implemented is extremely effective, as the report points out "To date, agroecological projects have shown an average crop yield increase of 80% in 57 developing countries, with an average increase of 116% for all African projects.Recent projects conducted in 20 African countries demonstrated a doubling of crop yields over a period of 3-10 years." That's right, sustainable agriculture has the potential to DOUBLE crop yields over the next 10 years. And it does all of this while maintaining climatic resilience and without polluting ground water supplies. By contrast, GMO technologies have yet to be proven to increase yields in practice. Concludes the report: "Conventional farming relies on expensive inputs, fuels climate change and is not resilient to climatic shocks. It simply is not the best choice anymore today." Photo Credit: Shiraz Chakera

Canadians Are Less Toxic Than Americans

Kendra Pierre-Louis — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 10:52:03 GMT

A recent article in this month's Canadian Medical Association Journal has found that despite similar lifestyles and cultures, Canadians on average have half the level of bisphenol A or BPA in their bodies than their across the border American counterparts.Bisphenol A, most notoriously of plastic water bottle fame, is a chemical widely used in the manufacturer of plastics. An endocrine disruptor which can mimic the body's own hormones, with babies and children particularly susceptible to its effects, BPA has been linked to issues in fertility, neurological issues such as in infant and fetal brain development, poor thyroid functioning and cancer.In October of last year Health Canada, the department of the Canadian government responsible for public health, went so far as to label BPA toxic, while in both Canada and the 27 member states of the European Union, BPA is banned in the use of baby bottles.Although General Mills owned canned organic tomato purveyors have begun to can their tomatoes in BPA-free cans, the chemical is ubiquitous. It appears in most plastic containers ranging from yogurt containers to juice bottles (unless labeled otherwise), and as a non-reactive liner in aluminum bottled and canned products such as soda and soup, baby formula, and even in the lid liner of jarred (as in glass) foodstuffs. New York State passed regulations disallowing bpa in food containers and toysMost tellingly, the levels are highest in the littlest and most sensitive people - children and teenagers.As for right now, scientists are still puzzled as to why Canadians manage to have so much less in their bodies despite similar known exposure risks. One of the only noticeable differences in exposure factors between Canada and the United States is that Canada does not have any chemical plants manufacture BPA prompting the report's researcher Dr. Laura Vandenberg, a postdoctoral fellow at Tufts University in Massachusetts to say that" environmental factors may be key to understanding the differences between urine concentrations seen in the US and Canada".Photo Credit: Nerissa's Ring

Heavenly Creatures

Kendra Pierre-Louis — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 22:56:46 GMT

While sustainable development can often seem serious and even austere, there is a great deal of fun and humor related to sustainable development. After all, once you accept that we live in a world of finite resources, figuring out how best to use those resources involves creativity and ingenuity, or in other words - fun.Take for example, the physical structure of an ancient church. Cities around the world are littered with abandoned churches, either remnants of a more religious era or vestiges before a regional shift in faith. The structures, which are often too historical and too attractive to be simply torn down, and in fact, the construction is often superior to more recent constructions. Rather than allowing these beautiful structures to fall victim to neglect and decay there is an increasing movement to convert churches into living structures more in tune with the current culture of their environs. The results are often beautiful, interesting, and altogether unique.In New York, for example, what was once The Church of the Holy Communion and Buildings, a gothic revival Episcopal Church originally constructed from 1844, was turned into a night club in 1983 after declining parish size led the church to be sold. The club was shut down in 2007 and in spring of 2010 re-opened as a high-end marketplace with more than sixty shops selling jewelry, clothes, and confections.The idea of turning a church into a place of commerce is a popular one. In Maastricht, Netherlands, an 800 Dominican cathedral was converted into a three story bookstore. This feat was accomplished by erecting a multi-story steel structure within the space, allowing the booksellers to full use the space, without diminishing the awe that the space was originally designed to evoke.In Bordeaux, France the local independent theater, Cinema Utopia, is what used to be St.Simeon church. The main ticketing desk and cafe are housed in what was once the church proper while the movie theaters are in rooms in the back that were once rooming quarters.Finally, in Warrnambol Australia they've taken the idea of converting a church to its next most logical conclusion. They've converted a church into a luxury hotel.Photo Credits: Bert K

Neither Rain Nor Wind Will Stop the Movement

Kendra Pierre-Louis — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 21:26:06 GMT

No, not that movement.One would be hard pressed to know it based on the national press, so focused as we have been on Charlie Sheen's exploits and, naturally, James Franco and Anne Hathaway hosting the Oscars, but there have been two labor protests going on in the United States over the past few weeks.On one side we have union workers and their ally's fighting to avoid having their rights stripped away in states such as Wisconsin, Ohio and Indiana. On the other, we have the coalition of Immokalee Workers fighting to for a fair wage.On February 27th, more than 900 demonstrators marched on a Boston Stop & Shop to pressure the Northeast regional chain to pay a penny more, directly to the workers, for each pound of tomatoes they pick. As we've mentioned before, since 2006 the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a community-based organization of mostly Latino, Mayan Indian and Haitian immigrants working in low-wage jobs throughout the state of Florida, has been working to improve the working conditions of these laborers. Their big campaign has been to get buyers - ranging from supermarkets to fast food chains - to agree to pay one penny more per pound of tomatoes picked. Currently, the workers get paid 1.4 cents for each pound picked; a wage that was hasn't changed since 1978. To make the federally mandated minimum wage while working a 10-hour day, the Immokalee workers say they would have to fill one 32-pound bucket (for which they'd earn between 45 and 50 cents) every four minutes.Stop & Shop, according to a recent Boston Globe article says that it is not their 'place' to enter into wage negotiations with the employees of their suppliers, but rather that they pay market price to suppliers who comply with Stop & Shop's standards. Never mind that with 375 locations in New England and the mi-Atlantic they make up a sizable chunk of that market. Stop & Shop also refuse to negotiate with the worker's secondary goal - getting businesses to adopt a zero tolerance policy towards suppliers who engage in abhorrent working conditions. The Immokalee workers want purchasers to pledge that should it be discovered that a supplier is violating a stated code of conduct that ensures better working conditions, such as you know paying less than a livable wage, or enslaving (sad but true) employees, that those businesses would refuse to do business with that supplier ever again. This would provide the leverage necessary to force the employers to well, provide decent working conditions.Although major restaurants such as Taco Bell and McDonalds have signed onto the Immokalee Worker's agreement, Whole Foods is the only supermarket chain to date that has signed. Stop & Shop joins Trader Joes and Florida based supermarket chain Publix as unwilling to negotiate.Photo Credit: Isa Sorensen

Human Well-Being and the Environmental Paradox

Kendra Pierre-Louis — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 00:17:56 GMT

One of the arguments against environmental conservation is that there is an apparent paradox between environmental degradation and human well-being. In short, when viewed through certain lenses (such as the UN's human development index), human well-being is increasing even as environmental health declines.Scientists and economists expend a great deal of effort trying to untangle this paradox - perhaps most recently in a September 2010 Bioscience article titled Untangling the Environmentalist's Paradox. In the piece the authors propose four possible reasons for this apparent paradox:There's a time lag between improved well-being and the effects of environmental degradation.We've gotten technically advanced enough to separate human well being from environmental health.As long as the ecosystems that provide food remain intact human well-being will increase.We're measuring the wrong variables and economic well-being is actually decreasing not increasing.It is this last argument that is the most intriguing. How do you measure human well-being? The UN's Human Development Index (HDI) while helpful in certain ways, is not an effective measure for arguing against the need for environmental conservation efforts in sustainable development.The HDI is broken into four categories - life expectancy at birth, mean years of schooling, expected years of schooling, and gross national income per capita. The problem, however, with this sort of composite index, is that it hides a lot of factors.For example, life expectancy as an indicator of health is helpful when looking for preventable death, such as from polio or other diseases with which we can easily vaccinate or prevent through proper sanitation. The problem, however, is that in many countries (such as the United States), people are living longer thanks to improved medical technology, but many of those years are sick years.It's questionable if a society that manages to extend the life of its life populace thanks to technology that allows it to mitigate the effects of the diseases that society itself creates is "healthy". Stated differently many of the diseases in industrialized nations - from moderate depression, to type II diabetes, to heart disease, to the rise in autoimmune disorders - are strongly correlated with the structure of said society. Diabetes and heart diseases are strongly linked to how we eat, which itself is strongly correlated to large-scale agribusiness and mass environmental degradation. Similarly, mild-to-moderate depression can often be treated effectively with exercise and improved social connections: things that are eroded in modern American society with its focus on excessively sedentary work and a competitive rather than cooperative culture that erodes social cohesiveness. Furthermore, it's increasingly believed that autoimmune disorders ranging from seasonal allergies to Crohn's disease, in industrial nations are on the rise because people in those nations are too clean. Having co-evolved with a certain number of bacteria, when stripped of those bacteria our immune systems over-react and start attacking our own bodies. We are able to mitigate many of the original negative effects with a panoply of inventive pharmacological agents is a testament (non-ironically stated) to our pharmaceutical industry.This, however, does not mean that we are healthy.In addition, the HDI uses per capita GDP as an indicator of human well-being. The idea is, that as people's income increases their well-being increases. Never mind that in developing nations increasing GDP is correlated with increasing environmental degradation, so that within the indicator itself there is this correlation between increasing human well-being and increasing environmental degradation. It also ignores movements such as that of the Zapatistas in Mexico who very deliberately are eschewing global measures and aiming for self-sufficiency. Says Vandana Shiva:People are perceived as "poor" if they eat food they have grown rather than commercially distributed junk foods sold by global agri-business. They are seen as poor if they live in self-built housing made from ecologically well-adapted materials like bamboo and mud rather than in cinder block or cement houses. They are seen as poor if they wear garments manufactured from handmade natural fibres rather than synthetics. Yet sustenance living, which the wealthy West perceives as poverty, does not necessarily mean a low quality of life. On the contrary, by their very nature economies based on sustenance ensure a high quality of lifewhen measured in terms of access to good food and water, opportunities for sustainable livelihoods, robust social and cultural identity, and a sense of meaning in people's lives . Because these poor don't share in the perceived benefits of economic growth, however, they are portrayed as those "left behind". Finally, this kind of measurement ignores that human well-being is predicated on direct access to ecosystem services beyond the role of ecosystems as a resource base. The emerging field of biophilia, or humanity's innate affinity towards and need for natural systems, has shown that human well-being declines upon separation form natural systems. Lack of access to ecosystem services encompassed in green spaces has been shown to negatively affect our cognitive ability causing difficulty in memory, attention, and self-control. Studies out of Japan, by contrast, have shown that two night three day camping trip in the woods can reduce insulin resistance in type-2 diabetes patients while also increasing human immune function.None of this is encompassed within the values that the HDI uses to indicate human well-being while also excluding harder to quantify indicators of well-being such as happiness, cultural diversity and community cohesiveness.In other words - measuring human well-being is hard. This does not mean that we shouldn't try, but it does mean that we should stop using it as an excuse as to why environmental conservation doesn't matter.Photo Credit: Queralt

Honeybees, Human Burns and Sustainable Development

Kendra Pierre-Louis — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 16:59:22 GMT

Sometimes people think of environmental conservation as an after thought rather than a critical component of sustainable development. Yet environmental conservation is critical to sustainable development. Why? First, because of biophilia, or humanity's innate need for natural systems- as in nature calms us down and revs our immune systems. But also because, the resulting biodiversity, serves as the springboard for human ingenuity.Take for example, burn wounds. Severe burn wounds are notoriously difficult to treat. Our skin, the largest organ in the human body, serves as a protective barrier between the outside world and us. Stripped of that barrier, we become a vast open wound susceptible to infection. For complex reasons, once a burn reaches a certain size and depth our own inborn abilities to repair the wound are minimal. Skin grafts, or the transplanting of skin from one portion of the body (or from a donor) to another part of the body ,help fill the void but they aren't an ideal solution. The reality is that victims of serious burns face an uphill battle of infection and scarring.One of the cutting edge treatments for dealing with the dressing and the healing of burn wounds lies not in complex biotechnology, but rather in a foodstuff so ubiquitous it's available on six continents and dates back to antiquity. It's even been found in the tombs of the Egyptian Pharaohs.The future for burn victims may very well lay in honey.There is, however, only one problem.Worldwide, honeybee populations are declining. Between habitat loss and fragmentation, colony collapse disorder, and a myriad of other environmental factors we are losing both the volume of bees and the diversity among bees. North America, for example, plays home to some thirty-five hundred bee species. Most of us are only vaguely aware of the (European) honeybee and the bumblebee.As scientists narrow down what forms of honey (ask any beekeeper there are thousands) and what properties of honey best serve as dressings, worldwide bees are in a struggle for their very existence. This has repercussions beyond the burn unit - bees pollinate 80% of fruits and vegetables.We need the bees.On a similar note, on the Eastern coast of the United States bats are dying of a mysterious illness commonly referred to as "white nose" syndrome. Their death, is not merely a loss because bats are cool (how could Batman exist without bats?), but also because a bat eats upwards of 600 insects in a single hour. As fears of global warming and the spread of tropical mosquito borne diseases such as malaria grows, we will need our insect eating friends more than ever.And that says nothing of the growing field of biomicry.Natural systems serve as our grounding force, our source material and our inspiration; of course we need to preserve them.Sustainable development cares about environmental conservation, because unlike our mad mad accounting system it doesn't believe that nature is fungible. Nature, cannot, in its entirety be substituted.There is an argument - a compelling one - that environmental conservation is important because life, even non-human life, has its own intrinsic value outside of its utility to humans. In a culture, however, that is ever focused towards the balance sheet, that is a difficult argument to quantify. That natural systems have quantifiable benefits - many of which remain to be discovered - is a baby step towards at least getting natural systems on the balance sheet.Photo Credit: Todd Huffman

EcoATM Promises to Make Recycling Electronics Easier

Kendra Pierre-Louis — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 19:51:03 GMT

Dealing with electronic waste, or e-waste, the colorful term for electronic products that have reached the end of their "useful" life such as old TV's, computers, cell phones, e-readers, and mp3 players, is a headache. These carriers of toxic chemical such as lead, cadmium, and brominated plastics, should not, in a perfect world, be tossed in the trash.But getting rid of them the 'correct' way differs drastically from your typical curbside recycling.In New York City, for example, to recycle home electronics one must wait for special seemingly randomly selected 'electronics recycling days' to haul said e-waste to a location that is not necessarily home adjacent. Miss the day or feel less than motivated to trek five miles via train and bus to your e-waste drop-off location and said electronics will likely continue to clutter a home that is only slightly larger than a bed. It's no wonder, then, that so many New Yorkers take advantage of the law and simply toss their e-waste in the trash. It's legal until 2015, though not really desirable, for NYC residents to deal with their mountain of used cell phones, televisions and computers simply by hauling them to the curb.Similarly, although certain retailers do take electronic waste - Staples, for example, takes most used print cartridges, Radio Shack, will handle your old batteries - these are services that either aren't well advertised or to which most consumers are blissfully unaware. Yet, figuring out which stores take what and how best to get it to them becomes still another hurdle in getting rid of something that was far easier to purchase.Stepping into that void is the Coinstar (of coin counting fame) funded EcoATM. Hoping to make a dent into the millions if not billions of small home electronics, such as first generation iPhones, and leveraging market research data that says most Americans would rather recycle their electronics than throw it out, EcoATM serves to act much like the ubiquitous Coinstar (who also own Redbox DVD rental) machines. The automated recycling station takes small electronic devices, assesses their secondary market value, and then gives the customer a choice of trade-up coupon, gift card, cash, or of making a charitable contribution to a selected charity.Customers receive payment for recycling their electronics, while EcoATM either sells the electronics on the secondary market or recycles it (though the latter can be problematic).In both cases it makes sure to destroy the original user's data that was stored on the phone.First piloted in Southern California and Nebraska, the kiosks are poised to go nation wide over the next few years.While this won't do much for larger electronics - the machine is geared towards small hand-held electronics only - or for the really old electronics that have been gathering dusts in our drawers for years (sorry Motorola Startac) - it is a step towards getting this stuff out of our landfills.It doesn't, however, tell us what to do with the power cords.

Breaking the Bank: Why Income Inequality Matters

Kendra Pierre-Louis — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 13:55:30 GMT

This week the Mother Jones website ran an article entitled "It's the inequality, Stupid" that used graphs and charts based on government data to illustrate the growing inequality between the wealthiest Americans (roughly the top 1%) and the rest of us. Perhaps most telling is their graphic illustration which contrasts the likelihood that the average American will be a millionaire (1 in 22) with the likelihood that a member of congress will be a millionaire (nearly 1 in 2). In fact, the median net worth for congressional members is roughly seven-and-a-half times the median income of the average American.How can our congressional members represent average Americans, when on practice they look nothing like them (and that's without tackling the gender issue)?Similarly, last fall the writer Timothy Noah of Slate ran a ten part series on inequality in America that includes this uniquely startling line:But according to the Central Intelligence Agency (whose patriotism I hesitate to question), income distribution in the United States is more unequal than in Guyana, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and roughly on par with Uruguay, Argentina, and Ecuador. Income inequality is actually declining in Latin America even as it continues to increase in the United States. The numbers are pretty grim. A 2007 MIT working paper titled "Inequality and Institutions in 20th Century America" shows that from 1980 to 2005 of the total increase in American's income - 80 percent of that went to the top one percent. In fact according to CNN 10% of Americans control half of the nations worth, while the top 0.1% control 10% of the nation's wealth.And yet, despite the focus on the growing economic rift between the wealthiest Americans and the majority of Americans, there isn't as much attention paid to why we should care. Why does income inequality matter to sustainable development?First, some income inequality isn't inherently bad - it's the driving mechanism of our society. If doctors, for example, didn't earn more than say real estate brokers (who require less education), there would be less of an incentive for doctors to take on the years of schooling (and debt) that it requires to be a doctor. What's problematic, then, is the scale of the inequality. Large income inequalities:Breed corruption - especially in democracies where wealth and political power are often more easily exchange. Furthermore, as the wealthy get richer and increase political influence they can support policies that make themselves wealthier at the expense of others (ahem, doesn't that seem to be the case with much of the legislation currently on the block right now?).Limits social mobility. In fact despite our Horatio Alger mythos of people pulling themselves up from the bootstraps, the United States is the least socially mobile country in the industrialized world. And when people do move between the classes, that direction is generally down - not up. The class you are born into, or the one below it, is the one in which you are most likely going to live and die.Breeds resentment. Studies have shown, for example, that when inequality increases because the people at the top are getting more money, even under conditions where the economy is expanding, those at the bottom don't experience enough increase (if any) in their incomes to compensate for the fact that their share of the economy is decreasing. People want a fair system and a system in which there are large inequalities doesn't feel fair. Trying to convince people that it is fair is pointless, first, because in most cases where there are large income inequalities it's a result of policies that allow such to exist (for example giving large corporations massive tax breaks and not extending those same breaks to small businesses). In other words, large inequalities are often the result of an 'unfair' system. What's more problematic, is that in these circumstances, sometimes the people erupt with violence to fix it: see Latin America. Large income inequalities are anathema to social stability.One could argue that large economic inequalities was worth it if it provided economic or social benefits. Except that it doesn't. Large economic inequalities:Hurt growth. Although there are problems with the economic paradigm of perpetual economic growth, if you're behind the idea that growth is good, then economic inequality is bad for growth. In fact, argues Professor Stephen Klasen in a 2008 piece in the Review of Political Economy, economies with large income inequalities are less economically efficient. As the Slate article points out, countries such as Germany who have managed to grow their economies during the last economic expansion without also expanding their income inequalities are the nations that are faring best in the recovery.It may be nice for the individual to be mega rich - but it's hurting the rest of us.Photo Credit: Angela Chan