Enviance Blog

Earth Day 2012: A Look Back, And Thoughts on What is to Come

Today, 175 countries around the world join Enviance in celebrating the 42^nd annual Earth Day, a holiday that has helped garner support for pieces of environmental legislation like the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act.

We wanted to take a look back at progress made since Earth Day 2011, and provide our thoughts on the coming year.

We’ve seen some unexpected shifts in supporters, and opponents, of clean energy: In August the U.S. military, perhaps the most conservative organization in the country, set aggressive goals to become 25 percent renewable by 2025.

On the flipside, we saw environmental groups including the Sierra Club and National Resource Defense Council file a lawsuit to stall a renewable energy project, pitting allies against one another.

What about emissions and carbon reduction?

A report showed that the 10 Northeast states participating in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) reduced carbon emissions in 2011 to their lowest level since 2009, and at a whopping 34 percent less than the RGGI cap.

What’s best is that, according to the report, this was achieved “without significant investment in new electric generation.” Encouraging news for our friends in the power industry.

Also, just last month the EPA proposed its first carbon emission standards for new power plants, which would replace a number of planned coal plants for cleaner-burning natural gas and renewables.

What will the rest of 2012 bring?

California, the eighth largest economy in the world, will hold its first carbon permit auction on November 14. It has the potential to generate more than $1 billion in 2012 alone and, if successful, could provide the template for national cap and trade legislation.

Speaking of national legislation, what will the impact of our next President be? President Obama has already made significant environmental progress, and if elected a second term, his motivation will shift from re-election to legacy, and environmental progress will increase even further.

That said, if Mitt Romney is elected, we would have a President who acknowledges the need to reduce carbon emissions, but is also extremely pro-business – would he be able to implement national cap and trade legislation?

What do you think the biggest environmental advances have been over the last year? Let us know in the comment section below!

Blog update - have you noticed our new look?

You may have already noticed we made a few changes to the blog. We gave the homepage a facelift and are adding new regular features like climate policy updates and interactive polls to better educate, enlighten and engage our readers. Based on the success of our Earth Day Blogathon, we also are incorporating more guest contributors, interviews and video chats to share the thought leadership and perspective of industry luminaries.

We invite your feedback. Please let us know if you have any ideas we should address or if you are interested in contributing to the blog. Thanks for reading and we look forward to hearing from you.

The Enviance Team

A Thank You to Today’s Bloggers

We would like to extend a huge thank you to all of our dedicated guest bloggers who shared their thoughts and opinions today as part of our first annual blogathon event!

We’re very proud to have assembled such an eclectic and educated group. We had industry analysts discussing obstacles to environmental conservation like ‘green fatigue,’ sustainability advocates wondering where all the rooftop solar panels are, and cleantech reporters explaining why feed-in tariffs give cleaner forms of energy the best chance to scale.

Our contributors were able to provide but a brief glimpse at the myriad of worthy environmental causes out there. But there was one common theme to today’s posts—get involved! Be active, immerse yourself in whatever pursuit you find the most compelling, and take action toward making our world a better and cleaner place.

Thank you again to our bloggers for sharing their thoughts with us, and to our readers for giving them an audience. We look forward to seeing you all again next year!

 

Happy Earth Day,

The Enviance team
Twitter:@Enviance

Recap of Earth Day events around the world

 

A Billion Acts of Green – that’s the theme for Earth Day 2011, and the goal this year is to do just that – register one billion environmentally-geared actions around the world to show how people from all different geographies and cultures can come together for a similar cause.

 

We hope you agree that Enviance’s act of green – uniting industry pundits and thought leaders to blog about their environmental passions every hour on the hour – was a success. Let’s look at some of the other actions people have taken to show their dedication to the environment:

In our nation’s capital, Washington D.C., The National Zoo hosted a zoo “cleanup party,” collecting litter, aluminum cans, candy wrappers and other trash to be recycled and disposed.

In the hustle and bustle of New York City, outdoor fairs dotted all around the city are hosting kids’ environmental activities, green businesses and environmental organizations to spread the word on how they’re helping green mother earth.

Here in our hometown, San Diego, we got started early with EarthFair 2011, “the world's largest free annual environmental fair and Earth Day Celebration,” on April 17, which featured eco exhibitors, a special kids’ activity area, entertainment, the Children’s Earth Parade, the eARTh Gallery art show, and the Cleaner Car Concourse.

Now that Earth Day has gone global, let’s take a look at acts of green around the world:

Our neighbors to the north in Vancouver, B.C. hosted a Earth Day Parade today, where locals come dressed in costumes on bikes and skates, all culminating in a festival featuring live music, a green student art competition, crafty activities, and special guest speakers.

In Beijing, China, INBAR is hosting a bamboo planting event to raise awareness of the vital connection between forests and people.

In Malaga, Spain, activists who love the water gather to "Dive for Earth Day" as a part of the Project AWARE Foundation, which involves underwater cleanups and marine debris prevention, environmental training for divers and education programs for kids and more.

The possibilities are endless for giving back to the world. What was YOUR act of green today?

Water, Water Everywhere?

By Angela Fuller, writer

I was asked to be a guest blogger as part of the Enviance Earth Day Blog-a-thon, with a post that responded to one of five topics that I think is the most important environmental issue. How do I pick just one? I contemplated that question so long I almost missed the deadline!

With that said, I decided clean water was the most serious environmental issue I could address. We tend to take clean water for granted, especially those of us who live in the United States. While I steer clear of plastic bottled water, I’m generally confident that I can find access to clean drinkable water at any time of the day, unlike so many around the globe.

But having lived in a beach city in Southern California for several years, I can honestly say that if you take the time to volunteer to clean a beach or a wetlands park, you’ll soon realize just how endangered our water truly is, not to mention the impact it has on marine wildlife. None of us can survive without clean water. None of us... not human, not animal.

Bodies of water that are used as toxic chemical dumping grounds and floating ocean garbage patches larger than the state of Texas are just two of the issues that we must continue to address – not just to debate, but to find workable ways to clean up the damage done as well as protect the water for our future.

In my opinion, the key is in education. I’ve posted links to videos on The Great Pacific Garbage Patch on my own blog, as well as uploaded pictures of trash collected on a beach cleanup day to my Facebook page. I do this because I want my friends and family to be as concerned about clean water as I am. I do this because I believe, as Maya Angelou once said, “When we know better, we do better.” Showing a dying bird suffocating from remnants of an oil spill off the Gulf Coast, or a dissection of the contents a fish’s stomach that has ingested bits of plastic bottle caps isn’t “fun” for me, but if it makes one person stop and think before tossing a water bottle or it inspires someone to start a grassroots campaign to make chemical companies more accountable for their toxic waste, then it’s worthwhile. If each of us educated just one other person, imagine the possibilities.

Better yet, imagine the possibilities sitting on the shore of a sparkling blue ocean, whose tide brings nothing to land’s end but frothy waves, sand and a few seashells.

Angela Fuller is a freelance writer and virtual assistant who has written more than 100 eco-related articles online for eHow, Associated Content from Yahoo! and other similar sites. She also maintains her own eco-friendly blog at FreeandGreenStuff.blogspot.com. Twitter: @GreenVerbs

Providing an Action-Platform for Today’s Environmentally-Conscience Generation

By Kenneth Pavloff, Eco Preservation Society

Each day the environmental news headlines report an endless stream of gloom and doom: nuclear disaster, climate change calamity, food and water shortages, rising sea levels, mass extinction, rainforest destruction, plastic suffocating our oceans and massive coral reef degradation. Where does it all end?

For many, the news is so frightening that they deny that it is even real. When coupled with peoples’ daily economic struggles, it is understandable why people become cynical and check out. With cynicism comes a sense of hopelessness, and with hopelessness comes inaction. If there is one thing we cannot afford in our struggle to reclaim our planet from the destructive legacy of the industrial revolution, it is inaction.

The Internet has revolutionized the way we share information. Young environmentalists are aggregated and assembled by ever-changing new technologies and mediums. The youth of the 21st century are more globally informed and educated now than in any time in our history. Social Media (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) is just the beginning of this global communications wave that has connected all of us.

The millennial generation is more astute and in tune with the challenges facing our planet. They understand that they cannot trust the older generation to solve the problems they have left behind. The good news is that they are smarter and better equipped to face these challenges, more importantly they are connected and united in ways unimaginable in the past. They are all focused on change and innovation, biodiversity, conservation, and education. They hold themselves accountable for taking direct actions that help their passionate causes.

People all over this planet, especially the next generation of educated and highly motivated youth, are on the threshold of creating new business and environmental opportunities for their future. They are socially and environmentally conscious, teamed with an extremely bio-friendly lifestyle, are politically-active, and possess an Earth-friendly activism unseen since the 1960s.

Like all of us, they also focus on the question that is on everyone’s minds. What more can we do?

To this end we are more educated in the needs of recycling and producing and demanding biodegradable products. We conserve our water, power, and fuel. We grow our own community gardens and we install renewable energy sources. We demand political and corporate change. We contribute. But it is not enough based on the serious environmental issues facing Mother Earth in 2011.

Today’s action generation are taking their future into their own hands. They are throwing out the rule book and reinventing new platforms and programs. They are passionate about environmental issues and here at the Eco Preservation Society we are providing them with science based programs and events to meet these objectives and requirements.

Kevin Peterson, founder of the Eco Preservation Society stated, “We leverage the world’s most influential environmental social media network and aggregate people that are passionate about environmental issues by providing them with science based programs and events that enable them to assemble and put their energies to action.”

Now located in Costa Rica, the Eco Preservation Society, a non-profit organization, and others are providing this action generation with the means to make direct change. For more information or if you have any questions please feel free to contact: info@EcoInteractive.org

Kenneth Pavloff is a lifetime High Sierra Mountain conservationist, Eagle Scout and environmental activist. A 20-year career electrical engineer from San Jose, CA he now serves as VP of marketing for the Eco Preservation Society. Twitter:@EcoInteractive

Solar Energy Needs to Begin at Home

By Johnny Pappas, Sustainable Environment Advocate

Recently the State of California Assembly passed a law that would force utilities to buy 33% of their energy from renewable sources. In sending the bill to Governor Jerry Brown’s desk for signature, California legislators, helped to insure that California would continue to be a leader of the clean energy revolution in our country, a revolution that has been stalled by inertia at the federal level. Utilities have sought out large-scale projects in order to help meet the previous benchmark of 20% for their renewable portfolio summary (“RPS”) or amount of energy coming from renewable sources.

By virtue of their size, these utility-scale projects have been located in remote, mostly desert, areas where the power has to be brought back to most users via costly utility lines through sometimes wildfire prone areas. Increasingly these projects have themselves come under fire from environmentalists and Native Americans because of the affect they have on wildlife and sacred sites. As I’ve looked around the rooftops of San Diego County, I’ve often wondered, “Why don’t I see more solar panels?” The answer has always been cost. It costs too much to install solar and takes too long to pay off. It is time for utilities (who need to add to their RPS) and local governments to look inward and upward, upward to our rooftops, and away from remote areas to serve our energy needs. By combining forces and resources, local utilities and governments can help to bring down costs and spread the installation of solar arrays all over; not only in this county but all of California.

Changing building codes to require net-zero or close to net-zero energy buildings would ensure that new construction comes online with the ability to be powered by renewable energy. You might be thinking, “the state and local governments are broke, how can we afford to invest money in renewable energy?” The question isn’t if we can we afford to; the question is how can we afford not to? Investment in solar energy locally is an investment toward a future less reliant on polluting sources of energy and a greener and cleaner California. A solar panel on every roof, think about it, it can happen. More importantly, it needs to happen.

Johnny Pappas is a sustainable environment advocate in North San Diego County. A former member of the Executive Committee and now advisor to the Surfrider Foundation San Diego Chapter, co-founder of the Rise Above Plastics Committee, now an international campaign, Johnny now brings his wealth of experience and knowledge away from the coastal waters and to a rooftop near you! http://www.seasandiego.com. Twitter:@SustainableEnv

The Clean Water Act – Has Regulation Lost its Punch?

By Michael Landkof, Enviance

The proposed inclusion of water pollution in the Clean Water Act has been a continued battle in the past two decades and a topic “on the table” that the EPA and other environmental groups have so far failed to address. The Clean Water Act, passed in 1972, was intended to end dangerous water pollution by regulating every major polluter in the USA. Almost 40 years later, regulators are still struggling to prosecute many of the nation’s largest known polluters because of lack of jurisdiction or because proving jurisdiction would be overwhelmingly difficult or time consuming. About 117 million Americans get their drinking water from sources fed by waters that are vulnerable to exclusion from the Clean Water Act, according to EPA reports.

One of the main issues identified over the years with the Clean Water Act is attributed to its language. Regulatory ambiguity comes from language that limits the Clean Water Act’s jurisdiction to “the discharge of pollutants into the navigable waters” of the United States. The Supreme Court has interpreted that language broadly to mean large wetlands and streams that are connected to major rivers. In the past decade, the Clean Water Act’s effectiveness has been severely jeopardized due to the Supreme Court’s decisions in Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County (SWANCC) v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers back in 2001 and Rapanos v. United States in 2006, both of which cast doubt over the scope of waters protected by the Act, and the subsequent issuance of related agency policies and regulations.

Consequently, it seems many polluters, including ships, are getting away with more and more pollution acts, essentially dismissing themselves from being covered by the Act. According to a recent New York Times article on this topic, in drier states, some polluters say the act no longer applies to them and are therefore refusing to renew or apply for permits, making it impossible to monitor what they are dumping.

In the last three years, some members of Congress have tried to limit the impact of the court decisions by introducing legislation known as the Clean Water Restoration Act. It has been approved by a Senate committee but not yet introduced in the House. The legislation tries to resolve these problems by, in part, removing the word “navigable” from the law and restoring regulators’ authority over all waters that were regulated before the Supreme Court decisions. The proposal is met with a broad coalition of industries and lobbyists who are fighting to prevent congress to vote on this matter. As we near an election year, the prospect of the Clean Water Restoration Act becoming law seems vague.

Until something changes, it seems that the Clean Water Act would continue its downhill slide diminishing our ability to protect the Nation’s water resources from future pollution threats. 

Michael Landkof is a highly experienced and versatile IT professional with a proven track record of managing high profile projects, successful implementations and customer engagements in multiple industries (Life Sciences, Financial, Manufacturing, Oil & Gas, Utilities). A go-getter, continuously seeking new challenging opportunities to contribute to the success of leading organizations. Twitter:@enviance

That ‘Green’ Thing

By Stephen Morrison, Energy Lawyer

When invited to be a guest blogger for Earth Day, I started to think about what I have to contribute.  In the midst of lofty thoughts of being profound and memorable, an old friend sent me an email joke. It ran something like this:

At a store an old woman was told plastic bags were bad for the environment, she apologized explaining: “We didn't have the green thing back in my day. Back then
we returned our bottles to be washed and reused, walked up stairs and to the store, washed diapers and dried clothes on a line, blended and stirred by hand, packaged fragile items in newspaper, not bubble wrap, pushed our lawn mower, drank from a fountain when thirsty, refilled pens instead of buying another, replaced razor blades instead of throwing them away…. We just didn’t have the ‘green’ thing.”

Okay, amusing but also – on reflection I found this a little disconcerting.

Why disconcerting?  My old friend is a bit ‘older’ and I think he saw this humor as a rebuke to ‘greenies;’ those patronizing youths that pester his generation.  He doesn’t appreciate being told to be green, I think he feels he’s earned the right not to be lectured, and maybe he is right.  In circulating this rebuke, I think he is demonstrating ‘green fatigue.’

Here’s the thing – given all the environmental issues affecting our planet (the changing seas, loss of species, rising temperatures, overpopulation, toxification of the food chain, loss of fresh water, etc.) action on not one but all of these are together our most pressing issue. Action across such a broad range of issues will call upon all of us. Yet stewardship of the planet, our own living space, is becoming a ‘them and us’ issue as people like my friend are becoming opponents, instead of natural allies, of being active in their own right; even as they recognize the common sense of living a ‘more sustainable life.’ He is a perfect example of someone who grew up recycling but is not “green”!

I recall Margaret Thatcher not as Britain’s first woman Prime Minister, but as the first British Prime Minister with a science degree. As an educated, market driven, scientific woman she was, as far back as the 1980s, the first world leader to seriously embrace environmentalism as common sense politics. I think she shocked the then Conservative Party (and its American allies) but she set Britain on better course because of her shift. To address all of our current environmental issues we have got to go beyond the core of those involved in green issues, we have to find and mobilize surprises like Margaret Thatcher and my friend.

If inaction is a risk, perhaps our greatest risk in the face of so many pressing issues, then we need more than just the environmental movement – we need my friend too.

Stephen Morrison is a US and EU jurisdictional lawyer with extensive transactional and regulatory experience gained in private practice, government and in-house roles. Twitter:@EnergyLawyer

NegaWatts Before MegaWatts

By Susan Connell, EcoDog, Inc. and San Diego State University

Now celebrated in more than 175 countries, Earth Day was established in the United States over 40 years ago to inspire awareness and appreciation for our environment. This appreciation can take many forms from acts as simple as planting a seed to researching complex renewable technologies to pursuing far-reaching initiatives involving international treaties and legislation. Large and small, these activities have combined to make our shared environment healthier and greener.

However, the population continues to grow while more nations advance technologically so we can’t rest on the laurels of past efforts. It’s often easy to think that scientists and engineers or governments and utilities will come up with grand solutions to solve shortages of resources or keeping our air and water clean. While many are working on these issues at the highest levels, it’s equally as important to remember that every individual can make contributions to these efforts by stepping more lightly on the planet. When millions of people make even small changes, they can benefit themselves, their communities and the Earth as a whole.

In this time of rapidly increasing energy prices and energy shortages, one especially effective approach is for individuals and organizations to become more aware of reducing their energy footprint by focusing on efficiency. Every watt that is not used — a NegaWatt in casual terms — is a watt’s worth of some natural resource that does not have to be mined, drilled or extracted. It means fewer power plants, less requirement for infrastructure and reduced pollution.

While it’s easy to think that we can eventually address growing needs with cleaner renewable energy sources, even clean energy sources have costs and effects. By putting NegaWatts at the top of the equation, individuals can make significant savings that become truly dramatic when multiplied by thousands and millions. In fact, homeowners or businesses wishing to install solar or other renewable sources will find that focusing on efficiency first can substantially reduce the size (and correspondingly, the cost) of their renewable installation.

Many fear that adopting a more energy efficient lifestyle means sitting in the dark and making huge sacrifices, when in fact many efficiency approaches will have little or no obvious impact on lifestyles and most efforts will have the pleasant result of saving money. As individual awareness increases, innovative companies, utilities and governments are helping to making energy saving technologies more available to individuals and businesses. From low wattage light bulbs and EnergyStar appliances to sophisticated energy monitoring systems for homes and commercial buildings to smart grids and electric vehicles, today’s consumers have many options for reducing energy use. Government and utility incentives can help incentivize these activities to speed adoption, but there’s no reason to wait — we can all get started making small changes immediately.

And what better time to start making those changes than on Earth Day?

A few helpful resources:

US Department of Energy - Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy
US Department of Energy - Energy Savers
California Center for Sustainable Energy
Energy Star
What is energy efficiency - Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
International Energy Agency
US Energy Information Administration
American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy
Energy Saving Trust UK
UK Department of Energy & Climate Change

 

Susan Connell is the vice president of marketing at EcoDog, Inc., a producer of consumer-friendly energy management solutions. She is also an adjunct instructor of educational technology at San Diego State University. Twitter:@EcoDogEnergy