So today’s “International Blog Day,” where bloggers’re supposed to link to 5 blogs we find interesting. Fun! My five recommentations:

The Worsted Witch gives you “Hex and the City: Knitting, lit crit, illustration, design, environmentalism, and fair trade.” Can’t ask for much more than that! Plus, Jasmin, the witch herself, designed the header for green LA girl. Green illustrators rock!

So I’m biased cuz Summer’s a friend of mine. Still, Summer’s BTC Elements blog‘ll show you how even the caterpillars in LA wear shades and black gloves. Plus, you can get an excellent recipe for salad dressing –

Read what Carl Pope, exec director of the Sierra Club, is thinking, in Taking the Initiative. You’ll get everthing from updates on current enviro legislation to defensive posts on the Sierra Club’s decisions to endorse controversial candidates…

Pro-choicers: Keep in touch with what’s happening via Bush v. Choice! In case some of you Cali peeps didn’t know, we have another anti-choice proposition on the ballot for Nov. Vote no on Prop 85!

And lastly — You gotta love Dinosaur Comics. It cheers me up every day, so I don’t care if you don’t think this actually fits the blog criteria –

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Got a green biz, or thinking ’bout starting one? Then you might wanna get in on the Sustainable Business Training workshops coming up.

Cleaner Production International (CPI) — which put together a Sustainable Business Networking thing in July, is working with Sustainable Works to offer of training courses on Sustainable Business topics.

So — You’ve got 2 events to pick from:

On Sept 18, you can take a 1-day course — “Communicating Sustainability” — which’ll cover the history, organizations and best practices used by leading companies and agencies to inform stakeholders about their sustainable and green practices. Cost, $195.

And between Sept. 19 - 21, you can take part in a 3-day Green Business Boot Camp workshop. That’s a “Mini-MBA” immersion into the nuts and bolts of managing sustainable performance. Cost, $550.

So I’m not a biz gal, and I don’t have that kinda moolah. But if you do and wanna take part, register by Sept 12.

Both course’s’ll be held at the UCLA Faculty Center. If you’ve got questions, call Susy Holyhead, Director of the Business Greening Program at Sustainable Works at 310.458.8716 x 2.

Tags: ucla, sustainable, business, losangeles

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The new Chief Operating Officer of TransFair USA — the nonprofit that licenses US companies to sell fair trade products — is Dave Rochlin.

I guess Steve Sellers, the former COO of TransFair USA, has left? I’d heard rumors he was going to leave for a while, but I’m not sure when exactly Steve moved on.

In any case — According to the press release, Dave Rochlin’s held positions at Signature Wines, Reel.com, Netcom (now part of Earthlink), Del Monte Foods, and AC Nielsen.

Tags: transfair, fairtrade

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The Nation’s running a forum titled “One Thing to Do About Food,” featuring suggestions from activist-minded foodies.

What to do? We’ve got lotsa ideas here. Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, and Wendell Berry, poet and novelist, point to consumer knowlege and activism as deciding factors.

Marion Nestle (NYU prof.), Troy Duster and Elizabeth Ransom (both sociologists) focus on kids. Marion wants to end “all forms of marketing foods to kids–both visible and stealth,” while Troy and Elizabeth want schools to adopt a “engaged learning approach through agricultural production and consumption.”

Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, wants people to pay attention to the Farm Bill, which he things should be called the Food Bill.

Environmentalist Winona LaDuke sez we need to recover a cultural relationship to food. Carlo Petrini, founder of the International Slow Food Movement, wants to focus on gastronomy, making food good, clean and just. Vandana Shiva, physicist-ecologist, argues “Citizens’ food freedom depends on biodiversity.”

As for farming: Peter Singer has a simple solution: “Don’t buy factory-farm products.” Eliot Coleman argues for organic farming. Jim Hightower sez food should be “agrarian, small-scale and local.”

Def. worth a read — Just pick an action to focus on and try not to get overwhelmed :)

Tags: food, organic

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Is it just me, or are govt. emails practically undecipherable?

I got one from the California Air Resources Board (ARB) a few days ago, saying it’s having a meeting to discuss “development of the federal 8-hour ozone and fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) attainment plans.”

What the hell are “federal 8-hour ozone and fine particulate matter attainment plans”? For that matter, what’s “PM 2.5″?

One thing’s clear from the email: A meeting’s happening on Oct. 12 in Sacramento to discuss this stuff. What’s unclear is what it’s about and whether or not the public’s invited.

After much head scratching and internet research, this is what I’ve gathered:

As a part of the Clean Air Rules of 2004, the EPA needs to make sure specific air quality standards are being met at the state level. Two of these are the “8-hour ozone” and “PM 2.5” standards.

The 8-hour ozone thing basically monitors ground-level ozone (which can cause serious health problems including harmful effects on visibility and ecological functions) levels for 8-hour periods. The PM2.5 thing monitors teeny pollutants in the air (fine particles less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter), which’ve been associated with premature mortality among other serious health effects.

Both those levels have to be kept under a threshold. Cali didn’t meet this threshold for 8-hour ozone OR the PM2.5, so we need to send in State Implementation Plans (SIPs) — plans for how we’re gonna get under the threshold — to the EPA in 2007 and 2008, respectively.

Which is why we’re having the meeting, aka symposium. There, ARB staff will compare Cali’s emission-reduction standards to federal standards, outline how those standards might be met using current science, then discuss the options and strategies that California might employ to reduce emissions to meet these standards.

And After the meeting, the ARB staff will propose a final strategy at a public meeting in Spring 2007.

Whew! At least ARB let me know I can contact Carol Sutkus of ARB’s Planning and Technical Support Division at 916.322.1229 or csutkus@arb.ca.gov with more Qs. I’ve duly left her a message, asking whether the public’s invited to this meeting and if a location and time’s been decided on yet.

Below’s the body of the email, just to illustrate how hard the thing is to decipher:
___

On October 12, 2006, Air Resources Board (ARB) staff will hold a symposium in Sacramento to discuss development of the federal
8-hour ozone and fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) attainment plans. A meeting notice and further information will be sent out prior to the meeting.

The focus of the symposium will be to outline the State’s standing in relation to the federal standards, what current science is telling us it will take to meet the standards, and discuss the statewide strategy under development to find the emission reductions needed to demonstrate attainment of the standards. At the symposium, ARB staff will discuss options under consideration to reduce emissions from sources under State and federal control, including sources addressed in the Air Resources Board’s Goods Movement Emission Reduction Strategy and Diesel Risk Reduction Plan.

The State Implementation Plans (SIPs) for 8-hour ozone and PM2.5 are due to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2007 and 2008 respectively. ARB staff will propose a final strategy before an ARB public meeting in the Spring of 2007 at which the Board will consider the proposal as an addition to the California SIP.

If you have any questions or need more information, please contact Carol Sutkus of ARB’s Planning and Technical Support Division at (916) 322-1229 or csutkus@arb.ca.gov.

Update, 9/3/06: Carol called me back! Yes, the meeting’s open to the public — no reservation necessary. The event’ll likely run from 9 am - 5 pm at 1001 I St. in Sacramento, and will also be webcast for those who can’t be there. More info about the webcasting addy and the exact times to come –

Tags: air, california, environment, pollution, arb, epa

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Another fair trade committed dude I met via the internets: J. Pierre, who’s launched OMO — Organic Means Organic.

The site has discussions on the nitty gritties organic activists love, i.e. “The Whole Foods Problem: Friend or Foe?”

OMO’s also putting together a directory of fair trade and / or organic coffee shops — sorta like me (mine’s here)! We’re collaborating a bit, sharing listings and such, but we have different ideas for what we want to do.

J.Pierre’s seriously on top of things — He’s even put lil maps together for some of the state-wide listings. I, on the other hand, wanna hold out till I can make things really pretty and really user friendly.

What I want to do with my list: To create a searcheable, Google map mash-up of places that serve mostly fair trade coffee. This way, people could browse the list by zip code, and, ideally, rolling the cursor over a location would give some quick info about when it’s open, whether they have wifi, etc. — along with a link to a review of the place.

I envision something like the pizza map on Slice. Check it out — It’s really pretty and really easy to use.

But of course to do this, I need serious outside help — or if it’s something I could possibly learn to do myself, I need someone to point me in the right direction to a book or online course or something — Any ideas?

Tags: map, organic, fairtrade, directory, google

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A series that runs every Tuesday, where I ask questions unrelated to the environment, fair trade, or local politics that I’ve been wondering about but haven’t been able to google the answers to. Any advice is appreciated.

So 365 Ways to Save the Earth tells me: “Take the train rather than the plane.”

Oopsie — cuz I just booked a plane ticket to visit my sis over Thanksgiving…

But I read on — The book sez: “Avoid traveling by plane for journeys less than 300 miles.”

Which I s’pose isn’t hard to do — Even a trip to San Francisco’s well over 300 miles. Las Vegas is slightly under, but I always carpool there anyway — though maybe I should consider the train?

Of course, you can go really core, like 28-year-old Babs, who opted against a 22-hour flight from her place in mid Walesto Australia, where she’s gonna be a bridesmaid in a wedding.

Instead — in an effort to keep her trip as eco-friendly as possible — Babs is taking a 6-week trip via bus, train and ship from mid Wales to the wedding in Australia. She’s blogging about it, of course. [Pic of Babs from Babs to Brisbane]

I haven’t taken a long trip by plane since I was in France in 2002… Got a good long-distance train-riding story to inspire or frighten me?

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So I haven’t gotten rid of my car yet, but Mut (my car’s name) hasn’t added any bad stuff to the environment in the last year.

At least not technically — cuz I bought a CO2 Neutral Certification, courtesy of Drive Neutral. I offset my carbon emissions :)

How this works: Drive Neutral’s part of the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), a group of US companies that made a pact to lower CO2 emissions. If any of those companies don’t meet their CO2 reduction goals, they have to buy “credits” from other companies that exceeded their goals.

And when you buy CO2 Neutral Certification from Drive Neutral, that money’s used to buy some of these CCX credits, driving up their prices and thus making companies work harder to lower emissions.

Yesterday, I got a chance to chat with Jason, CEO of Drive Neutral — and I found out that I must’ve been one of the first people to buy a certificate!

The nonprofit launched in October 2005 — the month when I bought my offset. It all got started when Jason and Kim — then students at Presidio School of Management — presented a case to the school’s board recommending that Presidio become a member of CCX. The board said yes, if the program was made bigger — So Drive Neutral was formed.

And when Jason graduated from Presidio in May 2006, he was hired to work full time. In the works: A website revamp to include — you guessed it — a blog, and to give consumers info for further reducing their carbon footprint, whether by converting to biodiesel, riding a bike, or taking public transportation.

The idea behind Drive Neutral, Jason sez, is to give people an opportunity to be part of the solution when a lot of the information we get tends to be just about the problems of global warming, along with scientific data. “That’s not what the average American wants to get into,” sez Jason.

Which is why, especially since An Inconvenient Truth came out, people’ve been emailing and calling Drive Neutral after finding the nonprofit on the internet, buying credits and asking what else they can do. In fact, while 40-50% of Drive Neutral customers are already hybrid-driving environmentalists, a big chunk of the remainder are people who’re very new to environmental issues. Drive Neutral wants to reach out to everyone, “soccer moms and corporate executives included,” sez Jason.

What makes Drive Neutral stand out among other companies and orgs also offering carbon offsets? For starters, Drive Neutral’s a nonprofit, which a lot of people like. And because Drive Neutral’s attached to an MBA program, it’s run not just an activist body but by a “coterie of MBA students and professors” who’re committed to making Drive Neutral self-sustaining and competitive.

For those who wanna do more research into various offseting options before plunking down the moolah for an offset, I recommend the Q&A with Jason that Treehugger published — and especially the ensuing convo in the comments about the merits and downsides of both CCX credits and RECs (Renewable Energy Credits).

Regardless — If for whatever reason you’re still a car owner like me, get offset :)

Update, 10/23/06. Here’s a post comparing Drive Neutral and Carbonfund, two carbon offset nonprofits –

Tags: car, carbon, offset, ccx, emissions

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I got new flip flops :) Thanks for helping me pick them out!

They’re Toe Foo from Simple Shoes. I was gonna order them online, but Simple’s shoe locator led me to O’ My Sole in Santa Monica. I called them early this afternoon, and they put a pair aside for me –

And now they’re mine! Not only did I get the flippies, but also the shoe bag (right) and the shoe hanger (left) that came with ‘em.

Plus, everyone at O’ My Sole was sweet and helpful –

Tags: shoe, flipflop, simple

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The LA Times gave some room to talking about fair trade and other certification programs for coffee today in an article titled “Green Standard for Coffee Beans.”

Cool — Woulda been even cooler if the article actually had more relevance to the US. Written by a dude for the Financial Times, the info within is very Europe-focused; bits of it, like the parts about Utz Kapeh, really have almost no relevance to the US, let alone Los Angeles in particular.

And the article in itself isn’t v. informative — Basically the article sez there are a buncha different certification programs for coffee, that overall the programs are having positive effects in coffee-growing countries.

Mostly, the article’s concerned with whether the certification programs are tapping into the mainstream, pointing to Kraft, Yuban, and McDonald’s doing some certification, without bothering to examine what the entry of these big companies might mean (potential for greenwashing, etc.).

Eh. Maybe more people will at least learn about fair trade and organic certification, and research the isses for themselves –

Tags: fairtrade, coffee, utzkapeh, rainforestalliance

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