Monday, November 12, 2007

“No Idling Zone”
"The school pickup line has become the latest front in a growing school-based environmental movement that has moved far beyond recycling programs and Earth Day celebrations to challenge long-accepted school norms."
Save the Planet: Vote Smart
"I want to get greener, what should I do? New light bulbs? A hybrid? A solar roof?"

Sunday, November 04, 2007

The Farther East River
Mushrooms in Manhattan

Q. At a construction site on West End Avenue at 70th Street, mushrooms (yes, mushrooms!) are growing underneath the construction fence. What kind of soil is necessary for mushrooms to grow?

A. Ah, resilient nature. Roy Halling, curator of mycology at the New York Botanical Garden, said in an e-mail message that he would not expect to encounter mushrooms in a construction site because the soil is mostly mineral. The mushroom fungus requires living or dead organic material to live: for instance, compost, dead wood, manured soil and wood chips. “However,” he added, “at the edge, where some organic material has been pushed aside, it does happen. Just exactly which ones those might be — it is impossible to say.” And not even an expert can tell, sight unseen, whether they are edible, so don’t sample them.

Friday, November 02, 2007

The Green-Collar Solution
“You can’t take a building you want to weatherize, put it on a ship to China and then have them do it and send it back,” said Mr. Jones. “So we are going to have to put people to work in this country — weatherizing millions of buildings, putting up solar panels, constructing wind farms. Those green-collar jobs can provide a pathway out of poverty for someone who has not gone to college.” Let’s tell our disaffected youth: “You can make more money if you put down that handgun and pick up a caulk gun.”
How Green Is My Garden?
"If the government wants to reduce its dependency on imported oil and, in the words of the Department of Energy, “foster the domestic biomass industry,” it has only to stop by my backyard with a pickup."