EnviroPolitics Blog

Top environmental/political news – July 11, 2007

NJ Politics

Corzine questioned on use of campaign e-mail accounts The chairman of the state Republican Party demands that Gov. Jon Corzine explain why he and a top aide have been using campaign e-mail accounts to conduct state business, and whether the public record is being properly preserved Star-Ledger

NJ Environment

EnCap blows key deadline EnCap Golf Holdings failed Tuesday to meet a deadline to supply $16M in additional security to ensure full cleanup of Meadowlands landfills, a New Jersey Meadowlands Commission spokesman says Bergen Record
State OKs DuPont pollution monitoring plan The DEP approves a DuPont Co. plan for continuing an investigation into contamination from chemicals used in stick- and stain-resistant products at its sprawling Chamber Works News Journal

PA Environment

Successes and ‘maybes’ for Governor’s energy package Rendell and Republicans agreed on solar power, but other decisions were put off until September Inquirer
Energy program still source of debate Parts of the governor’s energy program are included in the budget compromise but other parts face a future fight Patriot News

PA Politics

Politicians explain budget impact So what did PA taxpayers gain by enduring a partial state government shutdown on Monday? Herald Standard Lancasteronline

New York/Nation/World

Compromise eyed on congestion pricing NY Sun
Golf course lands in Yorktown’s hands Journal News
LI gets federal funds for green spending NY Newsday
Compromise measure on global warming NYT Bloomberg

These are just a few of the stories that appeared in yesterday’s EnviroPolitics.
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Living in a McMansion, leading a McLife?

The following book review caught our attention today:

“In her groundbreaking bestseller The Not So Big House, architect Sarah Susanka showed us a new way to inhabit our houses by creating homes that were better — not bigger, Now, in The Not So Big Life, Susanka takes her revolutionary philosophy to another dimension by showing us a new way to inhabit our lives.

“Most of us have lives that are as cluttered with unwanted obligations as our attics are cluttered with things. The bigger-is-better idea that triggered the explosion of McMansions has spilled over to give us McLives. For many of us, our ability to find the time to do what we want to do has come to a grinding alt. Now we barely have time to take a breath before making the next call on our cell phone, while at the same time messaging someone else on our Blackberry. Our schedules are chaotic and overcommitted, leaving us so stressed that we are numb, yet we wonder why we cannot fall asleep at night.

“In The Not So Big Life, Susanka shows us that it is possible to take our finger off the fast-forward button, and to our surprise we find how effortless and rewarding this change can be. We do not have to lead a monastic life or give up the things we love. In fact, the real joy of leading a not so big life is discovering that the life we love has been there the entire time. Through simple exercises and inspiring stories, Susanka shows us that all we need to do is make small shifts in our day — subtle movements that open our minds as if we were finally opening the windows to let in fresh air.

Sounds interesting, doesn’t it? I think I’ll order a copy, right after I publish this blog entry, finish today’s EnviroPolitics e-newsletter, update my website and attack the hundreds of emails and cellphone messages that have piled up in the last 24 hours…. Gotta get that book!

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Grass is good – Yes or No?

“The LEED standards for sustainable construction discourage lawns because they require not only watering but also mowing — and gas-powered lawn mowers are a significant source of air pollution. “

So reports the Chronicle of Higher Education’s Buildings & Grounds blog. But the post goes on to report that “as colleges begin thinking in terms of reducing their carbon footprints, grass doesn’t look so bad after all.”
“Grass — like trees — does a great job of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, according to landscape architects who took part in a session on open space at the annual meeting of the Society for College and University Planning…In hot weather, they added, grass helps keep an area significantly cooler. “

Read the entire article here

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Aloha, Welcome to the Tour de Trash

Governing.com’s Idea Center profiles the city and county of Honolulu’s Tour de Trash, an award-winning program that offers free, full-day tours of different recycling sites in an effort to facilitate educated public discussions and decision-making on recycling and waste management initiatives.

Apparently, the program has lots to show, as Honolulu recycles more than 600,000 tons of waste each year, and has one of the nation’s highest recycling rates at 35 percent.

The City Department of Environmental Services staff conducts six tours a year of recycling processes at various workplaces including hotels and restaurants; a wastewater treatment facility; waste-to-energy plants; construction and demolition landfills; and facilities that recycle rubber, aluminum, glass and plastic. The tours sell out every year and have earned the program a 2007 Outstanding Achievement Award from the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

For more information on Tour de Trash, click here.

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Who built the first green building on Capitol Hill?

The Senate? The House of Representatives? The EPA?
The Sierra Club?

No, no, no and no. It’s the Quakers.

The Friends Committee on National Legislation (the Quakers national lobbying arm) has transformed two Civil-War era buildings across the street from the Senate into a green building that has cut their energy consumption in half.

Considering that buildings account for 50% of U.S. energy consumption and 40% of CO2 emissions, that’s quite an accomplishment–one that others, including government, might well emulate. Click here for a virtual building tour.

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Great timing for New Jersey’s global warming law

Supporters will tell you that New Jersey’s new law pushing the
state toward a greater use of non-fossil energy production, like
solar and wind, is just-in-time legislation, considering the heel-
dragging in corporate-owned Washington. But the signing of the
“Global Warming Act” was also a brilliant example of public relations timing.

Governor Jon Corzine’s PR team arranged to have the bill signed at a news conference in the Meadowlands where reporters from across the country were converging on Giant’s Stadium to cover Live Earth, a series of worldwide concerts promoted by former Vice President Al Gore to spread word of “climate crisis.”

Lest anyone fail to link the two events, the Corzine team invited Gore to attend the public signing. The resulting coverage gained New Jersey (and Corzine) international attention.

Here are just a few of the stories the event produced: Forbes, ABC News, Gannett, Reuters, Associated Press, Star-Ledger, The (Bergen) Record .

The new law calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020–a 17 to 20 percent reduction, followed by a further reduction of emissions to 80 percent below 2006 levels by 2050. New Jersey is only the third state in the nation make greenhouse gas reduction goals law.

While the state’s environmental-activist community worked hard to get the bill through the Legislataure, one group was issuing a post-enactmenet warning. Bill Wolfe, executive director of the watchdog group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, noted that state lawmakers last month removed mention of a program that would have required cuts at power plants and jettisoned plans for a fee on industry that would have paid for the state to monitor emissions.

“The goals are well and good, but there is no implementation, there is no regulatory program to meet the goals and there’s no funding in place,” Wolfe said.

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