Will Someone Get the President a Reusable Water Bottle?
As I was watching the CNN yesterday, I couldn’t help but notice that President Barack Obama drinks bottled water. Here is video coverage of the President’s town hall in Green Bay, Wisconsin June 11, 2009.
The swig in question takes place later in the meeting during the Q & A portion, but you can clearly see the bottle at about 5:22 into the clip.
So, there I was, jiving on the President’s thoughts about health care reform (which should have happened in the 1990’s, if not sooner — thanks, GOP!), and I was a little taken aback when I saw Mr. Obama take a swig from a clear plastic water bottle without a label. And that struck me as funny, too. His press appearances are like TV shows in that they will not show a brand name — unless the company making the brand pays for it.

...from twilightearth.com
And I wasn’t taken aback like I was shocked or offended because I am so granola and self-righteous about it…but more taken aback because I am surprised that no one has gotten to him yet about bottled water. I understand that the man travels a lot, and maybe it is easier on his system if he drinks only one kind of water, but then again, water is water and bottled water comes from all kinds of sources, so I kinda doubt that he insists on drinking only one “brand” of water. And hi, he’s a smoker, so it’s not like it’s a taste thing.
I guess it’s more of a situation where a subtle difference may make a larger impact due to the person making the difference. If Barack Obama showed up in Green Bay with his own water bottle (BPA Free, of course), that would make a subtle statement. A statement not only to the people attending that Town Hall meetin’, but also to anyone watching the coverage. He doesn’t have to pose with a fancy-schmancy stainless steel reusable water bottle or take a long dramatic drink from it, either, though that would be funny if done in the right way.
But of course, much like Michelle Obama’s White House garden, I’m sure that some bottled water industry group would start throwing a fit about how tap water is endangering the safety of nation’s water supply…
Need a water bottle yourself? Check out Gardenaut’s extensive review, and I like that site, so I’m linking to it.
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But wait, that figure for plane travel does not take into account radiative forcing, which is the increased effect of carbon in the higher altitudes. Most people estimate radiative forcing as increasing the efficacy (or warming effect) of carbon emissions by 2.7 — the numbers vary a bit lower and higher depending on who you talk to, but since I’m using Carbonfund’s numbers, I’m also going to use their radiative forcing number of 2.7.
However, the so-called environmentally-friendly train comes with a cost, both monetarily and time-wise. Let’s say we do take that trip from Seattle to Miami — it would take 3 and a half days, going through Chicago, then Washington DC on the way to Miami. It would cost
I know, I know, everybody is talking about 
For instance, according to the map, Napa Valley wines are big emitters due to the lengthy road journeys from California to the East Coast markets. But those same California Cabernets are shipped via boat to Asia and Australia, and thus the cargo ship shipping lowers those per bottle emissions. So, you must figure out where your wine is from, and then figure out a better way to get a buzz.
Oil shale does not contain oil, per se. It contains kerogen, which contains hydrocarbons. But it’s a bit of a process to get those hydrocarbons, which means it costs more to get those hydrocarbons. And we all know what it means when a form of energy costs more than good ol’ gas or coal — it is not going to fly with the American public.
Oil shale is a great way to finish destroying the West. This is what the Powder River Basin looks like after coal.

And when it comes to the large light-duty truck category, the trade-in truck only has to get one MPG better than the lower 15 MPG threshold to qualify for the $3500 voucher. If you upgrade to a large light-duty that gets 2 MPG better than your last truck, then you get the full $4500 voucher for that new 17 MPG truck.
Maybe all remember the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing (or maybe not, Michael Phelps…), and if you do remember than perhaps you also recall that the city of Beijing went to some lengths to curb its air pollution during the course of the Games.
You see, that’s the funny thing about air-bourne pollution. It doesn’t stay still like land-based pollution. Oh, wait, land-based pollution doesn’t stay put, either. It leaches into the water supply. Huh, maybe we should just try harder
Despite my 


Nike? Really? Isn’t Nike exploiting cheap labor in Southeast Asia to make $100+ basketball shoes? I thought I wasn’t supposed to support Nike.
I had originally planned on starting this thread in Early April, but a family thing had me effectively offline all month. So I’ll try to pick up the pieces of my failed planned to keep you all abreast of the developments in my garden and *ahem* plow ahead.
Now the former…Perhaps overly ambitious, I began gardening with a bang. I was renting a farm house at the time, and hey, it’s a farm. That first garden became a beast, and ultimately led to a lot of mistakes on my part and on the part of bad luck. My next garden was an easy-to-manage raised bed of 24 square feet. If you take one piece of advice from all of this self-indulgence, start small.
Also, last year I put in peas — lots of peas. I love peas, and they are seriously the easiest veggie to grow. Not only that, but pea plants fix nitrogen into the soil and if you dig the spent plants into the ground after your harvest, they break down into “green manure.” So, really, if you cannot do anything else this year, put in some peas.
And somewhere I read that garlic should go into the ground in the fall, so I put in some garlic bulbs from my kitchen that were starting to grow little crowns. I try to only buy organic garlic, so I hope they were okay to stick in the ground. What’s the worse that can happen, right?
Well, methinks that the show was on National Geographic, because starting tonight National Geographic Channel premieres Garbage Moguls, a show about that same company. And on Earth Day, now that is foresight!
In addition to info about Garbage Moguls, I noticed that the website has some DIY projects using trash. Click on the “MORE” option on the site and you can learn how to make things yourself with something that you’d be throwing away. These beads made from cookie wrappers look good in a digital image, but I have to wonder how they look up close. Only one way to find out…
The
So, chemicals pesticides and fertilizers are responsible for mankind’s advances in other “fields”…ok, sure, I’ll buy that a constant food supply does allow for surpluses, which would in turn lead to wealth that would be able to fund research and the arts. But a lot of studies are showing that there is very little real advantage to conventional farming methods, and that often the health of the soil is degraded over many seasons as the farmers are throwing chemical nutrients into the soil hoping that the plants will absorb them before they leach through the soils into the groundwater supply. If the nutrients are not staying the soil, then the soil turns to dust.
That Midwestern mother would be better off teaching her kid about seasonality and how local produce is more often than not the produce at the peak of its nutritional load. Better yet, she could plant a strawberry patch with her child and then freeze extra berries for March, or make the berries into jam to have all year like my mom did.







And get this…the study of using plants to clean the air all started with NASA in the 1960’s. The materials used in the enclosed environments in space are synthetic and the VOCs off-gassed were making people sick. An environmental scientist named Wolverton started studying how plants could clean up toxic waste, and he found that simple houseplants can be really effective little cleaners of indoor air pollution. Today, Wolverton’s company is 
It’s funny that she’d advocate for GMO’s over population control. If there will be a shortage of food in 2030 that will affect 1 billion people, and the population at that time would be around 9 billion, why not instead try to promote family-planning and reduce the future population by one billion people? Problem solved.