today'snews

So in the hazy bay area air I read and heard some good green news recently. Elizabeth Kolbert's article in the New Yorker talks about a small island becoming energy independent. Her original series in the magazine a few years ago was a catalyst for my own environmental awakening. It was an incredibly bleak portrait of climate change that later became "field notes on a catastrophe", a book I own a signed copy of but have yet to work up the courage to read. In this piece she talks about how change actually happens. I like the vision of plucky farmers competing to see who can produce the most energy, also how the organizer worked with the existing tendencies of the community to create peer pressure to change. Social engineering against climate change! I'm going to be thinking about how to harness this when I go back to school in the Fall.

In a local parenting paper the editors looked at their carbon footprints but I can't find it online...

Today I heard on NPR that a garden is being planted in Civic Center, San Francisco. They are tearing up lawn and planting veggies! Very cool. Apparently an artist started this garden project. Another instance of the intersection of art and environmentalism.