“Mary/Mary” is a large-scale self portrait in oil on reused wood panels. The painting explores the feminist archetypes of the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene or woman as both holy mother and Earth mother. For more info visit www.ShawnDellJoyce.com
By Shawn Dell Joyce
Our children are growing up in a vastly different world from the one in which we grew up. By the time they graduate, much of what we taught them will be obsolete. Our country is in a period of transition, moving away from dependence on fossil fuels to a greener future. Let’s prepare our children by transitioning them and their school environment.
The Eco-Schools USA program is part of an international program led in the U.S. by the National Wildlife Federation. The program sets up school-based action teams of students, administrators, educators and community volunteers. Schools become certified by achieving a series of goals that must be implemented by students, faculty and administrators.
More than 270,000 schoolchildren in Ireland are taking part in the Green-Schools program, which is in its 13th year. Irish youths are leading initiatives on litter, waste, water and travel. Successful schools are recognized at successive levels, from bronze and silver to the highest award — a green flag. Once a school has received four green flags, it is considered a green school.
“Our Green Schools committee has been led by Transition Year students since 2005, and we received our first Green Flag in 2006,” says Anna Kavanagh, a geography teacher in a green school and author of “Green-Schools Meeting the Challenge of Climate Change.” “We’ve been calculating the ecological footprint of the school, which looks at our impact on all of nature’s resources. We’ve introduced recycling bins into the classrooms, carried out renovations to fit the school with energy-saving light sensors, got a compost bin, and planted over 1,000 spring bulbs.”
“We’re going for our third flag and we’ll be focusing on water conservation and quality,” says Eimear Noonan-Tracey, a 16-year-old student in a green school. “It’s about encouraging people to use water wisely, turn off taps, and be aware of pollution, such as that caused by slurry washing into rivers.”
Eco-school programs are democratic and participatory, engaging our children as active participants and citizens of the world community.
Students and staff can work together to reduce litter and waste and run the schools in environmentally conscious ways. Students take home an increased environmental awareness that affects their families and communities, also helping to transition them.
The process engages our children in actively working toward solutions. Children take control of their own environment, learning and making decisions about how to improve both their home and school environments. This is empowering to children, who often are made to feel powerless and frustrated by big issues, such as climate change.
At a time when school budgets are being cut, this type of program pays for itself and helps the schools save money. Reducing energy and water waste in schools will also reduce utility bills. Being an eco-school means taking responsibility for environmental stewardship and participating in the world community. Students can link up to other eco-schools around the world and share environmental information and culture.
The first flag focuses on litter and waste, implementing various initiatives to reduce waste and combat any litter problems they may face. On average, schools have reduced their waste by more than 60 percent, and some schools are operating at zero waste. Once a school receives the first flag, it moves on to the next theme, energy, before tackling the areas of water and travel. Each theme builds on the previous one, and all themes are worked on continuously until they become integrated into the rhythm of the school day.
“I’m doing this because I worry that the world we leave behind won’t be habitable for our children,” Kavanagh says. “We can’t forget about their future.”
To get your school involved, visit http://www.nwf.org/ecoschools and then enlist help from other parents, students, teachers, administrators, PTA members and school environmental clubs.
By Shawn Dell Joyce
Recent hikes in the costs of fuel oil and natural gas have many of us looking to alternative sources for home heating. But what is the “greenest” alternative? That is a tough question because it depends on where you live and what fuel is abundant locally. If you live in the Midwest, corn is more abundant than wood and may have less of an environmental impact because it doesn’t have to be shipped to you.
If you live in the woods, then wood is a logical heat choice for you and is carbon-neutral, meaning that burning the wood doesn’t add any more carbon to the atmosphere than the tree would have sequestered during its lifetime. Most people who live in the woods can use windfall trees and standing deadwood and don’t ever have to cut down a living tree. However, if we all burned wood, it quickly would deforest our country and add to climate change dramatically.
Biomass heat is gaining in popularity and can be a greener choice in some cases. Corn pellet stoves and wood pellet stoves look the same and heat equivalently. Because they are highly efficient, they don’t need chimneys; instead, they can be vented outdoors by 4-inch pipes through outside walls. You also can tie a corn stove to your thermostat so that glow plug igniters automatically light it. It has a hopper capacity big enough to hold several days’ worth of corn. Both stoves use blowers to create vacuums inside the stoves, keeping smoke from seeping into your home.
What you burn is also crucial. Wood smoke can contain many tars, creosote and other chemicals that degrade our air quality. Burning wood as hot as possible helps reduce contaminants in the smoke. Corn burns so cleanly that you won’t see a wisp of smoke from the stovepipe. However, corn requires many chemical inputs to grow and can be environmentally devastating.
Wood pellets burn the most cleanly but are not necessarily as renewable a resource as corn.
Look for corn that is grown locally and has low pesticide and fertilizer use, such as transitional corn, for a truly environmentally friendly alternative fuel.
There are also multi-fuel stoves, which burn almost anything that fits in the 2-inch hoppers. This type of stove may be a good choice if you live in an agricultural area. Farmers are discovering a new use for waste crops, such as wheat shafts and hulls, cornstalks and moldy hay. These crop wastes can be pelletized and sold as biomass heat pellets for multi-fuel stoves. This may be a local source for home heating fuel in areas where wood is expensive and corn is needed as food.
Many farmers have started growing biomass crops, such as switch grass, specifically to pelletize and burn them for home heating use. You can use grass pellets in pellet stoves, as well as in high-efficiency wood stoves. If you have enough land, you can make grass pellets out of just about any type of hay or straw. You even can use last year’s moldy hay bales to make next year’s pellets. Finding a pelletizer may be the hardest part of the process. Some farmers in New York pitch in together and rent one. You could make your own pellets and save substantially on home heating. This could become a popular home-based business that helps wean Americans off fossil fuels so that they can enjoy real homeland security.
Traditional open masonry fireplaces aren’t effective or efficient heating devices. A traditional fireplace draws in as much as 300 cubic feet per minute of heated room air for combustion and then sends it straight up the chimney. This is the same as having a 4-foot hole in your wall that is sucking your precious heat straight outdoors! Only high-efficiency fireplace inserts have proved to be effective in increasing the heating efficiency of older fireplaces. The insert functions like a wood stove, fitting into the masonry fireplace or on its hearth and using the existing chimney.
Silvermine Lake in Harriman, plein air painting of fall foliage from one of the prettiest sites in Bear Mountain!
By Shawn Dell Joyce
We are enduring a $45 million dollar advertising campaign touting “clean coal” and the solution to America’s energy crisis. This is an attempt by Big Coal lobbyists (in this case American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity) to “greenwash” Americans into believing a lie that coal can ever be clean.
Don’t believe the hype!
Most of our coal is extracted through mountaintop removal mining which involves clear cutting the forests and scraping away the topsoil, blasting up to 800 feet off the top of the mountain, and gouging out the coal with gigantic earth moving machines. This mechanized process replaces human miners with technology, and causes millions of tons of “overburden” (mountaintops, trees, and topsoil) to be bulldozed into adjacent narrow valleys, and clog streams. Just obtaining the coal is a dirty, polluting process.
Burning coal is a major contributor to climate change. Coal puts 80% more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than burning gas according to Greenpeace. Burning coal also spews pollutants like mercury which is highly toxic and poses a ‘global environmental threat to humans and wildlife,’ according to the United Nations. Coal-fired power and heat production are the largest single source of atmospheric mercury emissions. There are no commercially available “clean coal” technologies to prevent mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants.
The coal industry’s main strength and selling point is that coal is cheaper than renewable energy like wind, or solar because many of the costs of burning coal are hidden or externalized. These are costs that we will pay as individuals, like asthma in young children from the air pollution caused by burning coal. Climate change is another externalized cost of burning coal that is difficult to quantify. How much does the loss of a mountaintop, or Appalachian culture and community cost?
The coal industry estimates that cleaning up fly ash would cost as much as $5 billion a year. If every coal-fired plant in the U.S. added carbon capture and sequestration technology or implemented other (unproven) “clean coal” technologies, that figure could easily double. We would pay that price through higher energy costs.
Coincidentally, the EPA released a study last week claiming that it will cost Americans $22 billion, or roughly $100 per family each year, to meet the goals of the Climate Bill currently debated in the senate. We will pay either way. The big question is what we will get for our money, a transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy or a temporary band-aid solution courtesy of Big Coal?
Locally, we still get half our electricity from coal, but we have entrepreneurs like Jim Taylor with promising projects like Taylor Biomass, Walden’s hydroelectric dam, and Montgomery’s mill that still generates hydropower as well. Soon we will have cul-de-sac communities sharing large photovoltaic arrays, and maybe even wind turbines dotting pastures where cows graze. Let’s support and develop local renewable energy sources and keep our energy dollars in the local economy.
Shawn Dell Joyce is an award-winning columnist and founder of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery. Shawn@zestoforange.com
By Shawn Dell Joyce
The “safe” level of carbon emissions in the atmosphere is 350 parts per million (ppm), according to NASA scientist James Hansen. We are currently at 385ppm. “Safe” meaning avoiding the most disastrous effects of climate change like sea level rise that swallows the world’s coastlines, and a radical redistribution of ground water making farmlands into deserts. Basically, we are making our home inhospitable to humans and most other species on our planet.
This Saturday, October 24, will be the most widespread day of environmental action in the planet’s history. “The International Day of Climate Action will cover almost 162 countries, with over 1700 big rallies in big cities, and incredible creative actions across the globe: mountain climbers on our highest peaks with banners, underwater demonstrations in island nations threatened by sea level rise, churches and mosques and synagogues and ashrams engaged in symbolic action, star athletes organizing mass bike rides—and hundreds upon hundreds of community events to raise awareness of the need for urgent action,” according to organizers.
For a carbon-fat country like ours to get back to the 350 safe zone means transforming ourselves. “It means building solar arrays instead of coal plants, it means planting trees instead of clear-cutting rainforests, it means increasing efficiency and decreasing our waste,” says the 350 organizers.
Part of the impetus for the International Day of Climate Action is the global treaty currently being hashed out in time for signing at the United Nations Climate Negotiations in Copenhagen this December. Copenhagen may well be the pivotal moment that determines whether or not we get the planet out of the climate crisis, and many activist believe the current treaty to be too weak to reduce current emissions to the 350 safety zone.
Take part in one of these local events and add your voice to the world chorus.
Shawn Dell Joyce is a sustainable activist and artist, and founder of the Wallkill River School in Montgomery, NY. www.WallkillRiverSchool.com
SIDEBAR:
View from Perkin's Tower (Bear Mountain) by Shawn Dell Joyce
By Shawn Dell Joyce
Buildings are responsible for approximately half of U.S. energy consumption and carbon emissions annually and are growing faster than any other sector, according to the U.S. Green Building Council. Forty-three percent of U.S. carbon emissions and 76 percent of U.S. electricity consumption happen in buildings, through heating, cooling, lighting, hot water and appliances.
Twenty-four of the largest and most influential architecture, engineering and development firms based in the U.S., which are responsible for a combined $100 billion in building construction annually, have joined forces with Architecture 2030, a leading nonprofit research organization. The building sector leaders are calling on Congress to pass the building energy reduction targets in Section 241 of the American Clean Energy Leadership Act of 2009 and incorporate timelines to reach carbon-neutral buildings by 2030.
“We — the building sector community — are on the front lines on this one. We have a big job ahead of us, and we need Congress to begin putting into place the code regulations and support necessary to help us get the job done,” said Ralph Hawkins, who is chairman and CEO of HKS Architects.
The building sector leaders have set targets of a 50 percent energy reduction in all new and renovated buildings today, incrementally increasing to carbon-neutral in 2030. These 24 firms are part of a powerful and burgeoning movement within the business community to push hard for changes that address energy consumption and climate change while opening new markets. On Sept. 22, 2009, 500 corporate executives from firms in about 50 countries issued the “Copenhagen Communiqué,” which calls for climate negotiators to finalize a new international climate treaty by the end of the year.
According to Edward Mazria, who is the executive director of Architecture 2030, “In order for the U.S. to take an effective leadership role on energy and climate change, we must address our building sector, and Senate building energy code legislation, coupled with the 2030 Challenge timelines, will make that possible.”
The climate crisis needs heroes, and Architecture 2030 believes that hero has taken the form of states, local governments and professional organizations.
“They have taken the lead on addressing this crisis,” Mazria said. Already, more than half of our states (27) are developing climate action plans, and 839 U.S. cities have signed the Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement. Also, three regional greenhouse gas initiatives have been established, and the 2030 Challenge has been adopted by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, National Association of Counties, American Institute of Architects, U.S. Green Building Council and others. And the federal government has adopted the 2030 Challenge targets for all new and renovated federal buildings.
Here are a few ways to meet the 2030 Challenge in your town:
—Local governments can amend their codes, as long as they meet or exceed state standards. Ask your town board or council to incorporate the code equivalents, which can be found online at http://www.architecture2030.org, or the Architecture 2030 Energy Ordinance, which was approved unanimously by the council of Santa Barbara, Calif., the first city to officially incorporate the 2030 Challenge into its building energy code. The text is available at http://www.energy.ca.gov.
—If you’re building a new home or building, make it 50 percent more efficient than current building codes require. Check http://www.EnergyStar.gov to find out how and who can help you in your area.
—Invest in more efficient appliances and building equipment. Look for the Energy Star rating, and buy the most efficient appliances on the market. Replace all incandescent lighting with compact fluorescent or light-emitting diode task lights. Having a commercial energy audit will pay for itself in energy savings.
—Offset your building’s energy use by purchasing an equal amount of wind energy to be fed into the electric grid. This is more cost-efficient than having your own wind turbine, in most cases.