by David Burn | Jun 29, 2007 | Food & Beverage, Lowcountry, The Environment
According to The Beaufort Gazette, St. Helena farmer Sara Reynolds, 56, introduced her newly certified organic produce to the public Wednesday at a new market off U.S. 21 behind Gullah Grub restaurant.
photo by Bob Sofaly
The market is still in its early stages, but organizers hope it will include other local farmers interested in growing produce using fewer chemicals.
From noon to 5 p.m. Wednesdays at the market, Reynolds will sell an array of organic seasonal produce including tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, cantaloupe, watermelon, bell peppers and yellow squash for $15 a box.
The mixed produce boxes are roughly enough to add to recipes to feed a family of three for a week and must be reserved in advance.
For more information search Local Harvest, an online directory of organic farms, farmers and farmers’ markets.
by David Burn | Jun 28, 2007 | The Environment
The mental health of 21st-century children is at risk because they are missing out on the exposure to the natural world enjoyed by past generations.
Dr William Bird, the health adviser to Natural England, has compiled evidence that people are healthier and better adjusted if they get out into the countryside, parks or gardens.
Stress levels fall within minutes of seeing green spaces, he says. Even filling a home with flowers and plants can improve concentration and lower stress.
“If children haven’t had contact with nature, they never develop a relationship with natural environment and they are unable to use it to cope with stress,” he said.
[via Daily Mail]
by David Burn | Jun 17, 2007 | Architecture, Music, Nebraska, The Environment
Metropolis Magazine published a feature last September on the rapid acceleration of New Urbanism in Omaha.
The magazine claims much of the groundwork for Omaha’s urban-design plan was put in place by the Omaha Community Foundation, which started working on a vision for the city in 1999. In 2002 the foundation asked Connie Spellman from the chamber of commerce to spearhead Omaha by Design, a nonprofit set up to focus their efforts, and they brought in Fred Kent of Project for Public Spaces to help.
Omaha by Design came up with 73 urban-design recommendations as part of the Omaha Master Plan. The plan encompasses everything from the landscaping of street corners, the design of important civic sites, and streetlamp choices available for neighborhoods to regional development, protection of watersheds, and the creation of a citywide trail system.
“Corporations were realizing that Omaha didn’t have the energy that a lot of young workers were looking for,†Steve Jensen, Omaha’s planning director says. “They’re saying, ‘It’s important to have a city that’s interesting and active—and a little edgy.’†That’s something community leaders appreciate about Saddle Creek Records. According to the Omaha World Herald, the city helped finance Saddle Creek’s new entertainment complex in NoDo. The 56,000 square feet complex consists of Saddle Creek Records, live music venue Slowdown, the Film Streams art-house theater and spaces in which artists can work and live.
Joe Gudenrath, spokesman for Mayor Mike Fahey, said the mayor’s office was “active in encouraging them to locate in north downtown.”
“We didn’t want to take the chance of losing Saddle Creek Records to another city,” Gudenrath said.
by David Burn | May 2, 2007 | Lowcountry, The Environment
Ware County, GA fire blanketing Jacksonville, FL on 4/29/07
We experienced darkened skies in Bluffton today, but I doubt it was anything like what JAX went through on Sunday (and continues to go through).
[via WTOC TV in Savannah]
by David Burn | Apr 29, 2007 | Media, The Environment
Arnie Cooper spoke with award-winning investigative journalist Greg Palast recently for The Sun Magazine. The text is not online, but Palast makes some major assertions that I’d like to share. First he debunks the entire idea of peak oil. He says it’s a myth invented by Shell Oil in 1956 in order to keep oil prices high.
We’re not running out of crude, dude. We’ve got plenty. The question is “At what price?” At twenty dollars a barrel, we’re dead out. At a hundred dollars a barrel? We’ve got all the oil you want.
Cooper then asks him about the need to turn to alternative energy. Palast is for it, but says it’s important to get the argument right. He says the “we’re running out of oil” argument leads directly to nuclear, while sustaining artificially high oil prices.
We won’t get green technology by telling people we’re running out of oil. Oil went up to seventy-five bucks a barrel, and I did not see one solar panel go up in New York City. Not one. We have to stop pumping carbon-based fuels into the air, not because we’re running out of carbon-based fuels, but because carbon will kill us. And it makes us political hostages to bloodthirsty maniacs.
As for the mainstream environmental movement, Palast pulls no punches.
The environmentalists like to talk about “win-win” scenarios. You know: corporations can make money by going green. What a crock of shit. Forget it. If they could do that, they would’ve done it already. Environmentalist Amory Lovins, who’s made millions of dollars working for big corporations, goes around saying, “Everyone wins.” Well, if everyone wins, then how come the skies are black and people in China are dying of arsenic poisoning? It’s bullshit. The only way we can get anything done is by limiting consumption by law and through a national commitment to use less carbon-based fuel. Let’s stop goosing around and clean up the planet.
I like the challenges presented by Palast, but I’m not ready to say business won’t soon profit from green technologies. Ted Turner, for one, believes sustainable energy and other green businesses will deliver wealth akin to what we’re seeing today in communications technology. I agree with Turner, and I agree with Palast’s point that we need to create and enforce much tougher environmental laws. A problem this big needs multiple answers. No single approach will do.
by David Burn | Apr 17, 2007 | The Environment
The Independent picked up on a growing environmental disaster story about the sudden and alarming disappearance of bees.
The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world’s crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, “man would have only four years of life left”.
No one knows why it is happening. Theories involving mites, pesticides, global warming and GM crops have been proposed, but all have drawbacks.
German research has long shown that bees’ behaviour changes near power lines.
Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby.
According to a New York Times story from February, honeybees annually pollinate more than $14 billion worth of seeds and crops in the United States, mostly fruits, vegetables and nuts.
The bee losses are ranging from 30 to 60 percent on the West Coast, with some beekeepers on the East Coast and in Texas reporting losses of more than 70 percent; beekeepers consider a loss of up to 20 percent in the offseason to be normal.
Researchers say the bees are flying off in search of pollen and nectar and simply never returning to their colonies. Presumably they are dying in the fields, perhaps becoming exhausted or simply disoriented and eventually falling victim to the cold.
by David Burn | Apr 7, 2007 | Lowcountry, The Environment
photo by Kristin Goode
In yesterday’s paper, David Lauderdale of The Island Packet dropped in on softshell crab season at the Bluffton Oyster Factory. Lauderdale is a seasoned reporter who cares for the subjects he covers and the real life impact his work can have. Thus, he carefully introduces a native species to the human population.
We’re lucky to still have white bellies, red liners, busters and jack ups around here.
They rake around in brackish Lowcountry waters, performing a springtime ritual not visible from the hill, where all the new neighborhoods are starting to spit tainted runoff into the wetlands.
At this time of year — usually around Easter — the white bellies on female blue crabs start showing red lines. That means they’re about to molt — “bust” their hard shells, jack them up and then pull themselves out of their safe, crusty shells, eyeballs and all.
For a few hours their dull gray shell is soft like sponge, their orange snapping claws limp as noodles. If pulled from the water at the right moment, they’re a delicacy sought the world over.
Note how Lauderdale introduces the whole web of life and personal responsibility message in his second paragraph. He’s a pro.
by David Burn | Apr 1, 2007 | Lowcountry, The Environment
Ben Turner, owner of Native Guide Tours took us on a two-hour May River kayak excursion yesterday. It was a great way to learn some things about the local environment. For one, Ben says pet waste is the biggest threat to the river at the present time. He said people think golf courses are the worst offender, but they’re not because the fertilizer they use for the most part drains back into course holding ponds (by design).
We saw dolphins actively feeding throughout the paddle. Ben explained how the dolphins stun fish by slamming into them with their sides. We also watched as dolphins worked together to corral fish up against sand bars and the river’s banks. At one point Ben said, “Dolphins are all muscle and teeth,” negating the Flipper image we like to hold onto (even as adults). We also saw a stingray, ducks, a variety of seabirds, osprey, oysters, Spartina grass and pluff mud.
At the end of the trip Ben mentioned that the May River had a Triple-A rating when he was growing up here, but it has since slipped to an A rating. He claimed the May needs the help of legal professionals at this time. He said local environmental group Friends of the River does a good job executing its educational mission, but their work needs to be complimented by the threat of litigation to keep unchecked development from ruining the quality of life in Bluffton.
by David Burn | Mar 7, 2007 | Lowcountry, The Environment
Island Packet columnist and long time Lowcountry resident, David Lauderdale, unloads in his front page opinion piece today. He says Bluffton’s natural beauty makes it a unique place to live, and that it’s wrong to apply the same standards here that are relied upon in “Anywhereville, U.S.A.”
Here’s the essence of Lauderdale’s argument:
In the past five years, Beaufort County has issued more than 10,000 building permits in greater Bluffton, and the town of Bluffton issued more than 3,400. Too few people oversaw the environmental impact of all this construction.
Our dear, wacky Bluffton has been turned into a verb. People now refer to unchecked growth as getting “Blufftonized.” Getting Blufftonized means too much, too fast. It means developers set the pace. It means years of citizen outcry goes largely unheeded. It means sitting in traffic. It means do-it-yesterday growth takes control when local governments need to say, “Do it our way, or hit the highway.”
We need the same things today that were asked for a decade ago: a limited-access bypass, secondary roads, interconnected neighborhoods, parks, and a throttle on the rate of growth so it is timed to the availability of roads, schools and parks.
We need to plant tens of thousands of oak trees all over Okatie. We need a land-buying program for Bluffton.
We need strong enforcement of the laws and regulations already on the books.
Personally, I’ve never seen anything like Bluffton. The pace of building is astounding. When we moved here just over two years ago, I said in jest that soon there would be an interstate running from downtown Bluffton to downtown Savannah, replacing the tree-lined two-lane roads. Having taken those roads to and from Savannah yesterday, I can see that my “joke” is fast becoming reality.
by David Burn | Feb 23, 2007 | The Environment
World Changing takes a close look at news that a consortia backed by Airtricity has committed to the construction of a 345-kilovolt transmission loop in the Texas Panhandle. The $1.5 billion Panhandle Loop will bring 4,200 megawatts of wind energy to more than one million homes in Dallas, Austin and San Antonio.
One of the great limitations of the development of renewable energy in America is the transmission infrastructure. Think of the arrangement as a national highway system for electrons, except there’s no national organization. It’s just a patchwork system of private roads built over the years to suit particular needs.
In a perfect world, we’d already have transmission lines intersecting the windiest and sunniest regions across the country and across globe. Unfortunately, most transmission lines weren’t designed with renewable energy in mind, they were built to deliver power from fossil fuel plants.
Texas leads the nation in wind energy production. Nearly one third of the new turbines erected last year went up in Texas. The state also hosts the single largest operating farm in the world, the 735 MW Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center.
The Panhandle Loop will carry more than a third of the total existing wind-genrated capacity in the United States. Eddie O’Connor, Airtricity’s CEO compares the project to constructing a power station greater than the entire generation for Ireland and building it by 2010. In other words, it’s Texas-sized in its ambitions.
