It is time again for the Goldman Environmental Awards – honoring global grassroots activists. North America winner Lynn Henning is profiled below. She is a leader in the movement to hold factory farms accountable for the environmental damage they do, and she follows in the proud tradition of last years winner, Maria Gunnoe, whose crusade to end mountaintop removal for coal mining continues. Great article in today’s Chronicle.
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I suppose a lot us think we’re pretty far removed from our explorer past – we don’t get up in the morning ready to hike through the wilderness, foraging for our food, looking for clean water to drink or shelter to warm up in if the elements are harsh.
Do we?
We do get up in the morning, but how many of you have everything planned out; where you are going to have lunch, what are you going to do when you need a drink, that sort of thing. I mean think about it – if you are looking for some cheap eats or you are thirsty in your cube, what are you going to do? Hit the vending machine? The water fountain? A local restaurant that sells pork siu mai 3 for $1.50?
We are all urban explorers in our civilized wilderness, and it makes sense to from a sustainable standpoint to act that way. I try and carry around this most days when I remember:
It is amazing how much waste this little urban camping get up reduces. The water bottle and coffee cup are pretty obvious – at this point everyone should know that bottled water is more expensive than regular tap – and San Francisco tap water is some of the best water you can drink world wide. So let’s be conservative and say that beat up red aluminum bottle replaces 100 plastic bottles each year, and it is 3 years old….
I drink at least a coffee a day 5 days a week, so over the course of a year that is about 250 of those little white lids I do not use, plus another 250 cups & cardboard cup sleeves and a whole bunch of those straw or wooden stirrer thingies (I just use one of my chop sticks)
The wooden utensils, aside from the just mentioned coffee stirring functionality, save on countless plastic knives/forks/spoons that come with whatever lunch I happen to scrounge up – be it cheap chow mein or a pasta salad, maybe some soup if it is especially foggy in the City.
The bags are a big one; San Francisco was the first large city in US to ban plastic bags from groceries – a brilliant move to keep them from ending up in the ocean among other places. And I give props to private companies like Whole Foods Market for offering brown paper bags instead of plastic for produce, that or reusing a plastic one both help us use less. Plus the reusable cloth bag is great for gathering or hunting: whatever tickles your fancy.
Now I screw up and forget my urban exploring kit from time to time, but whether it is the cup I do not use, or the bag I do not have to take, or the coffee stirrer thingy I replace with my chop stick, I feel a bit better about my day. It is not the end, but its another step in the right direction.
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One under-publicized but relatively simple approaches to combating climate change through building principles are white roofs. I agree with the basic logic behind white roofs, specifically that they can help keep buildings cooler by reflecting sunlight; it reduces the “heat island effect” associated with urban development; and by reflecting the sun’s rays it can help to cool the atmosphere. Think of your ice chest, the one you keep your beer in. What color is its top? Yeah, white. Same idea, just with houses.
Here are some shots from the top of one of my buildings in San Francisco:
Standard Tar and Gravel roof, very old school. And let me tell you, if you are up there on a sunny day, it is flippen hot. Here are my neighbors:
Lots of different roof types and colors, the first looks like a silvery modified bitumen type, light colored but not white. The next is a black and then brown but still dark roofing material, and its the color alone that matters. Multiply those roofs over the whole city and that is some serious heat being trapped. According to many media outlets,so lets pick the LA Times, globally roofs account for 25% of the surface of most cities, and asphalt another 35%. “If all were switched to reflective material in 100 major urban areas, it would offset 44 metric gigatons of greenhouse gases” LA Times Sept 2008. Full science behind the claim can be found from the 2008 Edition of the Journal Climate Change.
This is in general well known stuff, pretty common sense, (see Ice Chest example above) and in general still not well appreciated. There are those who argue for really space aged approaches to climate change, like the Geoengineers who sound really cool with plans to do things like “mimicking the effect of large volcanoes by spraying sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to diminish solar radiation”. But for me, I prefer practical things that can be done right now.
Well, it won’t save a gigaton, maybe a few hundred pounds over the next 20 years, but my contribution on the eve of Copenhagen is a new white roof. It was a necessary repair, the roof was leaking, and it has real environmental value too. When the time comes, I will whiten up my tar and gravel roof above as well. And that is how it should be. If you own older buildings like I do, or an older home, eventually you will need to put on a new roof. When you do, do your part, make it white.
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