From multiflorum at gmail.com Tue Jul 1 10:43:39 2008 From: multiflorum at gmail.com (jim mcdonald) Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2008 10:43:39 -0400 Subject: [SusDet Announce] Can Weeds Help Solve the Climate Crisis? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ah, some perspective to put things into a clearer light.... thank goodness for a shift in our perceptions about "weeds" and "invasives" away from the current one which views them as a cause of environmental crisis to one that sees them as a response, not only to tell us that our actions are causing problems, but to actually helps solve some of those problems. Yeah, its ecological heresy, I know... but ~anyone~ who is involved in the issue of invasive species NEEDS, in my opinion, to look beyond the "These plants are bad and we need to get rid of them by any means" mindset into a more educated, more nuanced understanding of what they're actually doing FOR us. -- jim mcdonald ~herbalist (and heretic)~ (248) 737-3589 www.herbcraft.org -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://forests.org/shared/reader/welcome.aspx?linkid=102130 Can Weeds Help Solve the Climate Crisis? By TOM CHRISTOPHER Lewis Ziska, a lanky, sandy-haired weed ecologist with the Agriculture Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, matches a dry sense of humor with tired eyes. The humor is essential to Ziska's exploration of what global climate change could do to mankind's relationship with weeds; there are many days, he confesses, when his goal becomes nothing more than not ending up in a fetal position beneath his battleship gray, government-issue desk. Yet he speaks of weeds with admiration as well as apprehension, and even with hope. It is easy to share the admiration and apprehension when you consider the site that Ziska planted with weeds in downtown Baltimore in the spring of 2002. Tucked in next to the city's inner harbor, the site is part of a barren expanse of turf rolled out over a reclaimed industrial landscape. This unfertile scrap seems an unlikely choice for growing anything, but Ziska saw in it, ominously perhaps, a model of where the global habitat as a whole is headed. "Ingenuity," Ziska says, "may be the mother of invention, but poverty is definitely the father." For some time, he had wanted to create in a laboratory setting the elevated temperatures and increased concentrations of atmospheric CO2 predicted for the mid-21st century by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the leading international scientific authority on the subject. Carbon dioxide has received a lot of attention as a greenhouse gas, a major cause of global warming. But it is also, along with water, light and nutrients, one of the four essential resources for plant growth. The effect that boosting this gas's concentration in the atmosphere will have on plants is very poorly understood. The facilities for testing the effects of CO2 enrichment in Ziska's lab on the U.S.D.A. research campus in Beltsville, Md., were limited. His best option there was a growth chamber, essentially an airtight, climate-controlled, artificially lighted aluminum box about as spacious as a walk-in closet. Ziska had something more ambitious in mind, but his budget, which has been cut repeatedly by an administration seemingly intent on minimizing attention to global climate change (his lab has been reduced to 3 researchers who study climate change and agriculture, from 10 in 1999), wouldn't support the construction of special facilities. Then it occurred to Ziska that the complaints made by residents of nearby Baltimore about summer in their city - the exhaust-laden air and the way in which buildings and pavement soak up solar energy to create an abnormally warm "heat island" - could be put to good use. When he checked, he found that in fact the temperatures in Baltimore run 3 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer on average than those of the surrounding countryside, and the concentration of CO2 in the local atmosphere (440 to 450 p.p.m., or parts per million by volume) is well above the current global average. This, coincidentally, matched almost exactly what the panel on climate change predicted for the planet as a whole 30 to 50 years in the future in its "B2 scenario," a middle-of-the-road projection that envisions continuing greenhouse gas increases but also some success in abatement programs. By comparing three sites - an organic farm in western Maryland, a park in a Baltimore suburb and the one by the inner harbor - Ziska planned to study three circumstances: the present (on the organic farm), the mid-century future as predicted by the climate-change panel (in Baltimore) and something in between (the suburban site). He took soil from the organic farm, which already contained seeds of 35 common weeds, and with it created uniform beds at each of the sites, urban, suburban and rural, so that the growing medium and weed population would be the same throughout. What happened over the next five growing seasons surprised even him. Not only did the weeds grow much larger in hotter, CO2-enriched plots - a weed called lambs-quarters, or Chenopodium album, grew to an impressive 6 to 8 feet on the farm but to a frightening 10 to 12 feet in the city - but the urban, futuristic weeds also produced more pollen. Even more alarming was the way that the increased heat and CO2 accelerated and perverted the succession of species within the plots. Typically, a cleared area in the Eastern United States, if left to itself, returns to native woodland. This process varies with the site and circumstances, but in its archetypical form fast-growing annual weeds cover the soil first, playing the role of what ecologists classify as "pioneer plants." These gradually give way to longer-lived perennial weeds, which are in turn replaced by shrubs and trees. In the natural version of this process, the pioneers and their successors are species indigenous to the area, and the woodland's restoration takes decades. But what Ziska observed in his urban plots was ecology on amphetamines, a nearly completed succession to trees by the end of five years, with a domination by invasive weed trees of the most troublesome sort: ailanthus, Norway maples and mulberries. Five years after the creation of the plots, the biggest ailanthus in the rural test site measured about five feet tall. The city site boasted a 20-footer. The suburban plot was following the city's lead, though it lagged a couple of years behind. As a scientist, Ziska was excited by his experiment's striking outcome. As someone who has spent his career battling weeds, though, he was frightened by the implications. Weeds already cost U.S. farmers about 12 percent of their harvest, exacting an estimated annual loss of $33 billion. What would be the additional cost in the future, not only to farmers but also to foresters, land managers and gardeners, of beating back supercharged weeds? Still, even as he contemplated this, Ziska says he couldn't repress a certain admiration. He traces his interest in weeds to an epiphany during his undergraduate years at the University of California at Riverside: noticing a weed springing up through a crack in the Southern California pavement, he was suddenly struck with wonder at any organism that could flourish in such a hot, dry, hostile environment. That may become an essential talent, it occurred to Ziska, given the way our planet is going. Taking the long view, it becomes apparent that the events in Ziska's plots were just another twist in the more than 10,000 years of joint history, ours and the weeds'. We have been intimately linked since Neolithic times, for in a fundamental sense weeds are a human creation. "Weed" is a subjective label applied as a matter of personal judgment, a point that becomes obvious when you consider how many "noxious weeds" - plants now marked for destruction by federal, state or county authorities - were deliberately introduced into North America by individuals convinced of their beauty or utility. The ailanthus tree, for example, currently regarded as one of the most troublesome weeds of our urban habitats, was brought from China to eastern North America in the 19th century for use as a fast-growing shade tree and is said to have been introduced into California by Chinese immigrants who valued its medicinal properties. There are countless definitions of weeds, ranging from the hardheaded one necessarily observed by farmers, that a weed is any plant that interferes with profit, to the aesthetic (a popular gardener's definition of a weed is "a plant out of place"), to Ralph Waldo Emerson's sanctimonious assertion that a weed is "a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered." But all agree on the central criterion: to qualify as a weed, the plant in question must be viewed with disfavor by humanity. Simply put, any plant, if we dislike it, becomes an intruder in our landscape and so a weed. Arguably, then, there was no such thing as a weed until mankind developed the need to discriminate, which came with the development of agriculture in the Neolithic era, around 9,000 B.C. In fact, many of the wild grains like red rice or wild oats that are among our most troublesome agricultural weeds today were valued food sources until we graduated from the hunter-gatherer stage of our existence. Much has been made of our scientific triumph in breeding modern crop plants from those wild ancestors. The transformation of an east Asian wild grass (red rice) into the crop that provides 20 percent of humanity's caloric intake is extraordinary. What generally goes unrecognized, though, except among weed scientists, is the extent to which we also made weeds what they are. Coexistence with mankind has given rise to the sort of tough plants that flourish despite the worst we can do - hoeing, pulling, burning and, more recently, spraying the fields with herbicidal chemicals. Weeds have adapted to every means we used to exterminate them, even turning the treatments to their own advantage. Attacking a Canada thistle (actually of Eurasian origin and a regular entry in "worst weeds of North America" lists) with hoe or plow, for example, may destroy the plant's aboveground growth but leaves the soil full of severed bits of fleshy root, each of which may sprout a new plant. A result of this history is that crops and weeds embody diametrically opposed genetic strategies. Over the centuries, we have deliberately bred the genetic diversity out of our crop plants. Creating crop populations composed of clones or near clones was an essential step in achieving higher yields and the sort of uniform growth that makes large-scale, mechanized cultivation and harvesting possible. Because weed populations live as opportunists, however, they must include individuals with the ability to flourish in whatever type of habitat we make available. They also need diversity to cope with the wide range of punishments we inflict. A patch of Canada thistles, if it is to survive when the farmer switches from hoeing to herbicides, must include individuals that develop a resistance to the chemicals over time. Weed populations that lacked the necessary genetic diversity faded from our fields, lawns and waste places; historians of agriculture can cite many such casualties. The survivors are an astonishingly plastic group of plants. James Bunce, a plant physiologist with an office down the hall from Ziska's, has been studying the effect on dandelions (that nemesis of the suburban greenskeeper) of atmospheres artificially enriched with CO2. He found in a series of trials that populations of the familiar weed evolve, changing physically to take advantage of this sort of resource enhancement, within the space of one growing season. "When you change a resource in the environment," Ziska said recently, sitting in his compact office, "you are going to, in effect, favor the weed over the crop. There is always going to be a weed poised genetically to benefit from almost any change." Ziska, together with Bunce, has been testing the effects of changing CO2 concentrations on a range of crop and weed species. Wending his way through a basement full of pumps, filters and boxlike aluminum growth chambers, Ziska showed himself to be a connoisseur of atmospheres. Peering at the instrument panel outside one growth chamber, he noted a CO2 concentration of 310 p.p.m. "That's a 1957 atmosphere, the year of my birth," he said. What he and his colleagues have found, he said, is that weeds benefit far more than crop plants from the changes in CO2 and that the implications of this for agriculture and public health are grave. Tests with common agricultural weeds like Canada thistle and quack grass found them more resistant to herbicides when grown in higher concentrations of CO2, making them harder to control. Ziska hypothesizes that this may be a result of faster growth; the weeds mature more rapidly, leaving behind more quickly the seedling stage during which they are most vulnerable. This promises to be an expensive problem for farmers, who will have to spend more on chemicals and other anti-weed measures to protect their crops. (Herbicides already cost farmers more than $10 billion annually worldwide.) But enhancing CO2 levels, Ziska has found, not only augments the growth rate of many common weeds, increasing their size and bulk; it also changes their chemical composition. When he grew ragweed plants in an atmosphere with 600 p.p.m. of CO2 (the level projected for the end of this century in that same climate-change panel "B2 scenario"), they produced twice as much pollen as plants grown in an atmosphere with 370 p.p.m. (the ambient level in the year 1998). This is bad news for allergy sufferers, especially since the pollen harvested from the CO2-enriched chamber proved far richer in the protein that causes the allergic reaction. Poison ivy has also demonstrated not only more vigorous growth at higher levels of CO2 but also a more virulent form of urushiol, the oil in its tissue that provokes a rash. According to Ziska, the steady increase in atmospheric CO2 since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution may have already had a major impact on the growth of at least one supremely costly weed. Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum), a native of central Asia, is believed to have been introduced into the United States accidentally, as seeds in soil used to ballast ships or as a contaminant in agricultural seed, in the mid-1800s. Since then, its ability to flourish in dry habitats and its prolific seed production (a single plant can bear as many as 5,000 seeds) has helped it to overrun 100 million acres of Western rangeland, an area larger than the state of Wyoming. In doing so, cheatgrass has displaced more nutritious native grasses, reducing the quantity of livestock a given acreage can support. Cheatgrass has also diminished the land's value to wildlife, which also finds the introduced plant unpalatable. The spread of cheatgrass has been widely attributed to the degradation of native grasslands by overgrazing - cattle prefer and selectively eat the native grasses - and more especially to its exceptional combustibility. Periodic fires are an integral part of the rangeland ecology, but when the rangeland is still dominated by native grasses, fires occur in some areas at average intervals of every 60 to 110 years. In areas overrun by cheatgrass, however, fire sweeps through every three to five years. While cheatgrass can tolerate such frequent burns, the native flora cannot. Cheatgrass's combustibility is inherent in the plant's pattern of growth. Sprouting in the fall, it resumes growth at winter's end to mature and set seed in early summer, whereupon the plant dies, leaving a tuft of dry, highly flammable leaves through the following dry season. Ziska and his colleagues discovered, though, that the weed's flammability seems to have been greatly augmented by the increases in atmospheric CO2 that occurred during the period of cheatgrass's spread through the West. The scientists grew the plant at four concentrations of CO2: at 270 p.p.m. (the ambient level at the beginning of the 19th century, before the Industrial Revolution), at 320 p.p.m. (a 1960s level), 370 p.p.m. (a 1990s level) and 420 p.p.m. (the approximate level predicted for 2020 in all the climate-change panel's estimates). What they found was that an increase of CO2 equivalent to that occurring from 1800 until today raised the total mass of material (the biomass) each cheatgrass plant produced by almost 70 percent. In addition, the composition of the cheatgrass changed as the CO2 level increased, the tissues becoming more carbon-rich so that the plant leaves and stems are less susceptible to decay. In a natural setting, this would mean that the dead material would persist longer, adding yet more fuel for wildfire. More fuel, with a longer life - Ziska says that the rise in greenhouse gases we have already achieved may have played a decisive role in the spread of a weed that has already transformed the ecology of the Western United States. The situation seems likely to worsen too. The cheatgrass that Ziska grew at the CO2 level equal to that projected for 2020 increased the plant's biomass by another 18 percent above current levels. Global climate change, it seems, will further stoke the rangeland wildfires. "There's no such thing as natural selection," Ziska confides. He is not, he hastens to explain, a creationist. He is merely pointing out that the original 19th-century view of evolution, the one presented by Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace, is obsolete. Their model presented evolution as a process taking place in a nature independent of human interference. That is almost never the situation today - even at sea, where less than 4 percent of the oceans remain unaffected by human activity, according to a recent article in the journal Science. This interference with nature has set the stage for the success of a growing category of weeds, one exemplified by cheatgrass: invasive plant species. These are plants that evolved outside a local or regional ecosystem but were at some point released into it, typically by human action. Some invasives, like cheatgrass, arrived as hitchhikers and stowaways; others, like kudzu, were introduced deliberately. (A Japanese species, kudzu was planted by state and federal agencies to control soil erosion throughout the Southern states in the 1930s and '40s.) In any case, the invasive plant species share a quality of aggressive, explosive growth in their new homes and the ability to outcompete the native vegetation of forests, grasslands and wetlands - areas that we are accustomed to think of as outside the sphere of human influence. Popular opinion has treated the invasive plants as botanical illegal aliens. The Environmental Protection Agency has labeled them as the second-greatest threat to the continent's biodiversity, exceeded in their impact only by outright destruction of habitat. Major resources have been devoted to the spraying and rooting-out of invasive plants in the belief that their removal would enable an ecological revival. Roughly $45 million, for example, is spent every year in the unsuccessful attempt to stop the spread of a single European wetland weed, purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria). New research, however, suggests that invasive species, at least in some instances, aren't so much the causes of environmental degradation as eco-opportunists taking advantage of disturbed habitats. Or, as the biologist Andrew MacDougall of the University of Guelph, Ontario, puts it, the invasives may behave more as "passengers" than as "drivers." This is the conclusion he reached in a pair of studies, one of an oak savanna in British Columbia and the other of degraded prairie in southwestern Saskatchewan. MacDougall had not intended to focus on invasive plants when he began studying a Nature Conservancy Canada property on Vancouver Island. An 86 acre remnant of oak-studded grassland, this sanctuary exemplified a type of open savanna habitat that was once common in the area but that was nearly eliminated by agriculture and sprawl. MacDougall's original interest was in the native flora; this Nature Conservancy sanctuary is a biodiversity hot spot, hosting more than 100 species of plants and animals at risk in British Columbia or nationally. Despite this land's protected status, MacDougall found that the native plant community was failing, the rarities becoming rarer. The young ecologist blamed an invasion by several foreign grasses for this decline. Initially, he supposed that simply removing the foreigners would prompt a renaissance of the native grasses and wildflowers. The actual response was quite different. For three years MacDougall removed the invasive grasses from plots he outlined within the reserve. In some plots, he did this by mowing or burning; in others, he removed the weeds entirely. Yet the native flora didn't rebound significantly. In some cases, the decline of the native plant species instead accelerated, and the fundamental character of the flora within the plots began to change, with woody plants encroaching on the formerly open, grassy areas. MacDougall concluded that rather than serving as drivers of change, the foreign grasses were functioning more in the role of passengers, merely filling in as the natives disappeared. In fact, the foreigners seemed to be serving a stabilizing role. By blocking light from reaching the soil, they inhibited the germination of tree and shrub seeds. Keeping the brush at bay in this fashion preserved the open character of the savanna habitat so that the remnants of the original savanna wildflowers, grasses and wildlife could at least survive. In light of these findings, MacDougall says, he came to believe that the primary cause of the native flora's decline was human intervention. Before European settlement, fire periodically cleansed the soil surface of dead plant material. Suppression of fire since settlement had allowed a thick layer of litter to accumulate, and the foreign grasses cope better with this than do the natives. The relevance of this discovery to an era of global climate change has become apparent in MacDougall's subsequent research in the Saskatchewan prairie. These grasslands were infiltrated with crested wheatgrass, a species from the Eurasian steppe. Again, the foreign grass was blamed as the driver in the decline of the native flora. MacDougall, however, says he believes the invader's success is largely derived from climatic change over the last half-century. Weather records reveal that spring warmth in this semiarid region is coming earlier than it used to, and the season's rain is more consistent. The wheatgrass, which awakens from winter dormancy earlier than the native grass species, has gained a competitive advantage from this change. MacDougall says he believes that a North American grass species could be found that could compete successfully in the altered climate and would also (unlike the exotic) interact beneficially with native wildlife. He admits, though, that replanting this prairie would be a big endeavor, that it would require as much effort as the 19th-century pioneers gave to taming the prairie habitat. Whether the will and resources exist for this seems questionable, especially as habitat disturbance spreads around the globe, creating many similar situations. MacDougall says he is hopeful that the climatic changes projected for this century won't exceed the tolerance of most native plant species. He admits, though, that the spread of the exotics suggests that they are more genetically diverse and thus better able to cope with environmental change. MacDougall clearly doesn't like the prospect, but he admits he can imagine a future so generally disturbed that we may well be grateful for what he calls the "positive services" - the aggressive adaptability - of the botanical aliens. It was a Tuesday in early January, but the temperature in center city Philadelphia had reached 65 degrees, and rosettes of dandelion leaves were starting to sprout flower buds in the neat bed of mulch outside the Sheraton Society Hill hotel. Inside, in a meeting room set up with chairs, screen and PowerPoint projector, the membership of the Northeastern Weed Science Society was equally disturbed. These are, by necessity, conservative people. A mixture of university researchers, county agents and representatives of the herbicide industry, the attendees had the look of farmers or foresters temporarily off their land - clean-cut, tanned, tending toward the wiry. Most looked distinctly uncomfortable in crisp sport jackets and polyester blazers that, you suspected, had spent the 12 months since the last annual meeting in a closet. If the members looked like farmers, that was because it is farmers they serve, and they had clearly absorbed the wary ethic of that profession in which sudden change, whether of weather, markets or government policies, is almost always for the worse. The day's news surely confirmed that prejudice. The second day of this year's annual meeting was devoted to a symposium on weeds and global climate change, and the speakers were outlining a future in which many of the members' current strategies will be irrelevant or ineffective. The keynote speaker, Cameron Wake of the University of New Hampshire's Climate Change Research Center, did little to put the audience at ease. Wake is a charismatic man who has traveled the colder regions of the world - the Canadian arctic, the Greenland ice sheet, Antarctica and the high mountains of Central Asia. On these trips, he collects ice cores, whose analysis enables him to reconstruct histories of past atmospheric and climatic changes. His soul patch, pink shirt and pink tie made him a minority of one in this room. He dealt firmly with an audience member who asserted that the climatic warming is nothing new, that records from imperial Rome indicate that citrus and other warm-weather crops were then far to the north of their current ranges. Wake pointed out that local archaeology can't change the global data set, which proves that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is at its highest point in more than 650,000 years and that the rate of increase is accelerating. Subsequent speakers got down to cases. Andrew McDonald, an agricultural scientist at Cornell University, had used the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's high projections for CO2 levels at the middle and end of the century to create an atlas of potential weed migrations in cornfields in the Eastern United States. If these projections prove accurate, Kentucky, by the end of the next one to three decades, should have a climate (and weed flora) resembling that of present-day North Carolina; by century's end, it will have shifted to a regime more like that of Louisiana. Delaware, over the same period, will be transformed to something first like North Carolina and then Georgia, while Pennsylvania will metamorphose into West Virginia and then North Carolina. Florida will become something unprecedented in this country. Field observations indicate that these transformations are already under way: another speaker pointed out that kudzu, "the weed that ate the South," has already migrated up to central Illinois and by 2015 could be extending its tendrils into Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Even more sobering were the figures that the biologist Brent Helliker of the University of Pennsylvania flashed on the screen. First, he used maps taken from an ecology textbook to show the way the last ice age drove various forest types southward. Then came a map Helliker created, suggesting that the current warming seems most likely to change the ranges to which forest trees are adapted - the areas where the black spruce, for example, grows now, are likely to become better suited to broadleaf trees. He asked the question that was on the lips of every one of his listeners: Can the forest adapt so drastically in a space of just decades? Helliker announced that he had no answer to that question, and his talk was over. During a break between talks, Lewis Ziska was surprisingly upbeat. With the challenges, he insisted, come opportunities. Kudzu, for instance: Ziska has been seeking financing to study its potential as a source of biofuel. Kudzu roots, as much as 50 percent starch by weight, seem ideal for ethanol production, while the plant's supercharged vines, which can grow a foot a day, would be an abundant source of alternative energy. This would be win-win: we develop an alternative to fossil fuels and, at the same time, create a financial incentive to root out a particularly troublesome weed. Developing techniques for managing weeds in a time of global climate change will be essential to the world's agricultural future, and the U.S.D.A. researchers, though they have been starved of essential financing, lead the world in this field. (There is one exception, Ziska admits; his Web searches have revealed that marijuana growers have an amazingly detailed knowledge of how CO2 enrichment affects their crop. But as Ziska points out, they don't publish in scientific journals.) Possession of this expertise could be a great economic asset to the United States, both for the protection it could provide to our own harvests and as an intellectual export that is sure to be much in demand in other countries. Ziska says that he worries about mankind's ability to feed itself in a fast-changing future. Paradoxically, it is weeds, he says, that can provide solutions. They have helped us deal with lesser crises in the past. When diseases and pests overwhelmed our domesticated food crops, it was to their wild relatives - plants that mankind has been battling for millennia - that plant breeders turned. Because weeds have more diverse genomes, it is easier to find one with the proper genetic resistance to a given threat - and then to create a new hybrid by breeding it with existing crops. An answer to the Irish potato blight of 1845-6 was eventually found among the potato's wild and weedy relatives; a wild oat found in Israel in the 1960s helped spawn a more robust, disease-resistant strain of domesticated oats. Weedy ancestors of our food crops, Ziska predicts, will cope far better with coming climatic changes than their domesticated descendants. Coping, after all, is what weeds have always done best. As last year's climate- change panel report, Climate Change 2007, made clear, we have already set in motion far-reaching and unstoppable changes in regional temperatures and precipitation and in the composition of our atmosphere. No matter what actions we take, these changes will continue for decades. If we are to avoid disaster, experts agree, we will need to be tenacious but flexible, ready to identify and exploit any opportunity in what will be a challenging, even hostile situation. In this new world that we have made, weeds, our old adversaries, could be not only tools but mentors. At which point, if Ralph Waldo Emerson is to be believed, weeds by definition will cease to exist. Tom Christopher writes frequently about horticultural and environmental topics. Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/29/magazine/29weeds-t.html From ecadvocate at gmail.com Fri Jul 4 17:48:00 2008 From: ecadvocate at gmail.com (m c) Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2008 14:48:00 -0700 Subject: [SusDet Announce] Fwd: Summer Beer Festival In-Reply-To: <486e652f.1e048e0a.19ec.ffff8f7eSMTPIN_ADDED@mx.google.com> References: <486e652f.1e048e0a.19ec.ffff8f7eSMTPIN_ADDED@mx.google.com> Message-ID: <8518b0ba0807041448x32270635q8bf26695fbbb3c6d@mail.gmail.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Sierra Club - Southeast Michigan Group Date: Fri, Jul 4, 2008 at 10:54 AM Subject: Summer Beer Festival To: Sierra Club - Southeast Michigan Group The Sierra Club is looking for volunteers to work a few hours at the Michigan Brewers Guild Summer Festival. In return for your efforts you will receive a free wristband to enjoy some of Michigan's finest beers! Here's the scoop: The Festival has contacted the Sierra Club to assist making this a 0% refuse event. Volunteers will be asked to direct festival attendees towards the proper recycling bins at a waste collection station. These "refuse managers" will be given a T-shirt with the Sierra Club logo. After working 3 hours, volunteers can trade in their volunteer wristband for a Drinking wristband ( A $30.00 value!) They are also welcome at the post-festival party for free food and beer. You may also be asked to help out at a Sierra Club booth promoting Global Warming Solutions. The Festival is Friday July 25th 4-9pm and Saturday July 26th noon-6pm. It will take place at Riverside Park Depot Town in Ypsilanti. Please contact Greg Burke gregoryjamesburke at yahoo.com and make sure you tell him you are from the Sierra Club. He will give you further details as well as scheduling your shift. Environmental activism and good beer? What are you waiting for? Mitch Mitchell This an approved event by the SEMG Ex-Comm To adjust your Sierra Club email preferences, please reply to this email with a description of your wishes. Thank you. Sierra Club 85 Second St., 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://sustainabledetroit.org/pipermail/announce_sustainabledetroit.org/attachments/20080704/50b17b65/attachment.html From jacob at warmtraining.org Mon Jul 7 11:40:47 2008 From: jacob at warmtraining.org (Jacob Stevens Corvidae) Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 11:40:47 -0400 Subject: [SusDet Announce] Energy job posting... Message-ID: <487238FF.7090400@warmtraining.org> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://sustainabledetroit.org/pipermail/announce_sustainabledetroit.org/attachments/20080707/f77e4451/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: file:///C|/DOCUME%7E1/ADMINI%7E1/LOCALS%7E1/TEMP/nsmail.txt Url: http://sustainabledetroit.org/pipermail/announce_sustainabledetroit.org/attachments/20080707/f77e4451/attachment.txt From multiflorum at gmail.com Tue Jul 8 00:20:54 2008 From: multiflorum at gmail.com (jim mcdonald) Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 00:20:54 -0400 Subject: [SusDet Announce] july herb classes and events with jim mcdonald Message-ID: hi all... got a few classes and events coming up in the next few weeks to share... THIS WEEKEND (7/11-7/13)... Herbalist Matthew Wood (author of the Book of Herbal Wisdom, the Practice of Traditional Western Herbalism and the Earthwise Herbal) is in town and will be talking about plant and animal signatures on friday night from 7 till 9:30 for $25. On saturday and sunday he'll be discussing the liver, gall bladder and urinary system. Cost for the weekend (which includes friday) is $225. Contact me for details & directions... be aware that space is limited; first come first serve... ---~---~-~-~~--~----~-~--~~---~--~~-~----~-----~-~~~----~- Saturday, July 19th from noon till 1 First aid at your feet... using common herbs for bites, burns, scrapes & scratches offered at the Yule Love It Lavender Festival in Leonard, michigan Join me once again to talk about the wonders of plant medicine at Yule Love it Lavender Farm... very little is as divine as standing in Iris's sunny lavender fields in July... the cost for both Friday and Saturday is only $7; which allows you to see other cool michigan herb folk like Coleen French, Jan Burns (both on Friday), and Iris herself. More info here: www.yuleloveitlavenderfestival.com ---~---~-~-~~--~----~-~--~~---~--~~-~----~-----~-~~~----~- Sunday, July 20th from 11 to 6ish Midsummer Medicines... Michigan's Medicinal Plants At Upland Hills Ecological Awareness Center in Oxford $50/$40 in advance The summer sun draws forth the medicinal virtues of many plants that grow in field and thicket; join herbalist Jim McDonald to explore the medicinal virtues, identification, folklore and preparation of many of the beautious wild weeds surrounding Upland Hills EAC in Oxford . The information presented will be both specific and practical, based on Jim's fourteen years experience in gathering, preparing, and using herbal remedies, and provide a basis for participants to incorporate what they have learned into usable skills with which to maintain and restore health. Some of the plants to be covered include Yarrow, Wild Bergamot, Motherwort, Saint John's Wort & Ox Eye Daisy. ---~---~-~-~~--~----~-~--~~---~--~~-~----~-----~-~~~----~- Saturday August 2nd Planting the Future in the Great Lakes Bioregion A United Plant Savers conference at Upland Hills EAC, Upland Hills School and the Karen Joy Theater $70/$60 United Plant Savers members This is going to be a spectacular treat; herbalists from Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin and Ontario will come together to teach about how to honor, respect and preserve the plants we use as medicines. The schedule of classes and teacher bios are now all up aliong with registration information at the united plant savers site: http://www.unitedplantsavers.org/index.php?cntnt01articleid=32&cntnt01returnid=15&mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0 Please preregister for this event via the link above, and *please pass along the word* - if we want to see more events like this in our backyard (especially important as travel become a LOT more expensive), we need to support them. I can also answer questions about the event, the classes and the (really cool) teachers. I hope to cross paths with you sometime soon; blessings... -- jim mcdonald ~herbalist~ (248) 737-3589 www.herbcraft.org From ecadvocate at gmail.com Tue Jul 8 23:24:35 2008 From: ecadvocate at gmail.com (m c) Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 20:24:35 -0700 Subject: [SusDet Announce] Fwd: Take Action: Speak Our for the Arctic In-Reply-To: <662066486.-1558567918@org.orgDB.mail.democracyinaction.org> References: <662066486.-1558567918@org.orgDB.mail.democracyinaction.org> Message-ID: <8518b0ba0807082024l7a55a3dtdae198fe872ad51e@mail.gmail.com> Michigan residents who sign on to this prove to officials that it's not just a California thing and that we won't be tricked into saying yes to drilling under the false promise of keeping our assembly and engineering jobs. Please sign. (and edit the letter to include a mention of "PHEVs") Mike Cohn ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Pacific Environment Date: Tue, Jul 8, 2008 at 4:28 PM Subject: Take Action: Speak Our for the Arctic To: ecadvocate at gmail.com Call Congress Today to Say No to Offshore Drilling! Join citizens across the country in asking their representatives to protect offshore waters from drilling. Dear Friend, Today, concerned citizens across the country will call or email Representatives urging them protect the Arctic's offshore watersand other special places from drilling. Together, we will inundate offices with calls and emails to demand that Congress stand up to Big Oil and protect these areas for future generations. Call or email today! As calls and emails flood these offices, staff people from environmental and community organizations will head up to Capitol Hill to meet with key members of Congress. Let your representative know that you oppose offshore drilling because: - *Drilling will not lower gas prices today or solve our energy crisis. *Even the U.S. Energy Information Administration has said that massive exploitation of new oil deposits will not produce oil for nearly a decade and then will not lower gasoline prices by more than a few cents per gallon. - *Expanded drilling threatens wildlife* including whales, polar bears and walrus. - *We need real solutions that will end our dependence on oil once and for all. *It's time to take back the giveaways to Big Oil and secure our energy independence by investing that money in clean, renewable energy, energy efficiency, increased public transportation, and the technologies needed to get our cars going further on a gallon of gas. Email or call your member of Congress today and tell him or her not to open the Arctic and other special places to drilling.Dial *202-224-3121* and ask for your Representative's office by name (You can also look up your Representative at www.house.gov.) Once you've taken action, please consider asking your friends, family, colleagues and neighbors to join you. Click here to email a friend. For the Pacific Rim, The Pacific Environment Staff -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://sustainabledetroit.org/pipermail/announce_sustainabledetroit.org/attachments/20080708/36a457e6/attachment.html From fred111 at hotmail.com Wed Jul 9 11:19:43 2008 From: fred111 at hotmail.com (fred jones) Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 15:19:43 +0000 Subject: [SusDet Announce] Please unsubscribe me. In-Reply-To: <8518b0ba0807082024l7a55a3dtdae198fe872ad51e@mail.gmail.com> References: <662066486.-1558567918@org.orgDB.mail.democracyinaction.org> <8518b0ba0807082024l7a55a3dtdae198fe872ad51e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Please unsubscribe me from this list. thnx. fj Date: Tue, 8 Jul 2008 20:24:35 -0700 From: ecadvocate at gmail.com To: enviro-mich at great-lakes.net; o2-michigan at lists.riseup.net; announce at sustainabledetroit.org Subject: [SusDet Announce] Fwd: Take Action: Speak Our for the Arctic Michigan residents who sign on to this prove to officials that it's not just a California thing and that we won't be tricked into saying yes to drilling under the false promise of keeping our assembly and engineering jobs. Please sign. (and edit the letter to include a mention of "PHEVs") Mike Cohn ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Pacific Environment Date: Tue, Jul 8, 2008 at 4:28 PM Subject: Take Action: Speak Our for the Arctic To: ecadvocate at gmail.com Call Congress Today to Say No to Offshore Drilling! Join citizens across the country in asking their representatives to protect offshore waters from drilling. Dear Friend, Today, concerned citizens across the country will call or email Representatives urging them protect the Arctic's offshore waters and other special places from drilling. Together, we will inundate offices with calls and emails to demand that Congress stand up to Big Oil and protect these areas for future generations. Call or email today! As calls and emails flood these offices, staff people from environmental and community organizations will head up to Capitol Hill to meet with key members of Congress. Let your representative know that you oppose offshore drilling because: Drilling will not lower gas prices today or solve our energy crisis. Even the U.S. Energy Information Administration has said that massive exploitation of new oil deposits will not produce oil for nearly a decade and then will not lower gasoline prices by more than a few cents per gallon. Expanded drilling threatens wildlife including whales, polar bears and walrus. We need real solutions that will end our dependence on oil once and for all. It's time to take back the giveaways to Big Oil and secure our energy independence by investing that money in clean, renewable energy, energy efficiency, increased public transportation, and the technologies needed to get our cars going further on a gallon of gas. Email or call your member of Congress today and tell him or her not to open the Arctic and other special places to drilling. Dial 202-224-3121 and ask for your Representative's office by name (You can also look up your Representative at www.house.gov.) Once you've taken action, please consider asking your friends, family, colleagues and neighbors to join you. Click here to email a friend. For the Pacific Rim, The Pacific Environment Staff _________________________________________________________________ The i?m Talkaton. Can 30-days of conversation change the world? http://www.imtalkathon.com/?source=EML_WLH_Talkathon_ChangeWorld -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://sustainabledetroit.org/pipermail/announce_sustainabledetroit.org/attachments/20080709/035f313b/attachment.html From jacob at warmtraining.org Fri Jul 11 09:38:19 2008 From: jacob at warmtraining.org (Jacob Stevens Corvidae) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:38:19 -0400 Subject: [SusDet Announce] [Fwd: Garden Tour Aug. 6 - Detroit Agriculture Network] Message-ID: <4877624B.2030809@warmtraining.org> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://sustainabledetroit.org/pipermail/announce_sustainabledetroit.org/attachments/20080711/2098e658/attachment.html From jacob at warmtraining.org Fri Jul 11 10:18:44 2008 From: jacob at warmtraining.org (Jacob Stevens Corvidae) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:18:44 -0400 Subject: [SusDet Announce] Farm Shares In-Reply-To: <242503.66278.qm@web54206.mail.re2.yahoo.com> References: <242503.66278.qm@web54206.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <48776BC4.50905@warmtraining.org> Hi Charles, Yes, it's a great concept -- commonly called a CSA or Community Supported Agriculture. The primary CSA serving Detroit and the northern subs in Maple Creek Farm. They're great and please tell them I sent you. Danny and Michelle are the farmers and my house was their drop off site in Detroit for years. They're great. You can find them at www.maplecreekfarm.com I believe Tantre Farm from Ann Arbor also has a drop off site nearby at the Zen Temple in Hamtramck. You can contact them for details at http://www.detroitzencenter.org/contact.htm I hope you don't mind, but I'm copying this to the Sus. Det. listserv so others can followup on this too, if they're interested. Jacob -- Jacob Stevens Corvidae Green Programs Manager jacob at warmtraining.org WARM Training Center Promoting Affordable, Sustainable Communities Since 1981 www.warmtraining.org 4835 Michigan Ave. Detroit, MI 48210 313.894.1030 x.119 Tropical Green wrote: >Hi Jacob, > >Recently I was reading about buying shares in local farms for $800 and they deliver produce to your door for the rest of the year. They were saying not having to sell their produce frees them up to spend more time on farming. I can not remember where I saw the information on it. Was it in one of the Sustainable Announce listings? If not do you know of any family/local farms that are doing this? (I think they were in Capac) >Thanks >Charles > > > > > > >No virus found in this incoming message. >Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com >Version: 8.0.138 / Virus Database: 270.4.7/1545 - Release Date: 7/10/2008 6:43 PM > > > > > From gvendena at igc.org Fri Jul 11 10:28:13 2008 From: gvendena at igc.org (Greg Vendena) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:28:13 -0400 Subject: [SusDet Announce] Farm Shares In-Reply-To: <48776BC4.50905@warmtraining.org> References: <242503.66278.qm@web54206.mail.re2.yahoo.com> <48776BC4.50905@warmtraining.org> Message-ID: <48776DFD.4000807@igc.org> Charles (and others interested in Detroit CSA), That Zen center / Tantre Farm CSA is in its second year right now, my family has been getting a 1/2 share for both years... its really good stuff. They now have an organic store and cafe where you pick up the share so you can also purchase other items you may need; I am pretty sure they are booked for this year, but you will want to contact them about next year so you can get on the list. For this year, you can find their booth at Eastern Market - still all organic from Tantre Farm. Here is an old email from Myung Ju (aka Hillary): Dear CSA members, Thank you for joining CSA this year with the Zen Center and Tantre Farm. This year, we plan to travel to the farm every Thursday afternoon, work a bit that day, wake up early Friday, and harvest the shares. In addition, we will be harvesting and bringing back additional produce to sell at EAstern Market and for temple use. Please join us throughout the season as you are able. CSA shares will be available for pick up at the Zen Center on Saturdays between 9am-5pm. Pickup on Friday will be available, when we arrive back from our work day...probably after 2pm. Balances on the shares are due May 1. Please bring the cash or check to the Zen Center by then. Feel free to contact me with any questions. Myung ju 313 779 8574 or 313 366 7738 -------- best wishes, Greg Vendena Jacob Stevens Corvidae wrote: > Hi Charles, > > Yes, it's a great concept -- commonly called a CSA or Community > Supported Agriculture. The primary CSA serving Detroit and the northern > subs in Maple Creek Farm. They're great and please tell them I sent you. > Danny and Michelle are the farmers and my house was their drop off site > in Detroit for years. They're great. You can find them at > www.maplecreekfarm.com > > I believe Tantre Farm from Ann Arbor also has a drop off site nearby at > the Zen Temple in Hamtramck. You can contact them for details at > http://www.detroitzencenter.org/contact.htm > > I hope you don't mind, but I'm copying this to the Sus. Det. listserv so > others can followup on this too, if they're interested. > > Jacob > > -- > Jacob Stevens Corvidae > Green Programs Manager > jacob at warmtraining.org > > WARM Training Center > Promoting Affordable, Sustainable Communities Since 1981 > www.warmtraining.org > > 4835 Michigan Ave. > Detroit, MI 48210 > 313.894.1030 x.119 > > > > > Tropical Green wrote: > > >> Hi Jacob, >> >> Recently I was reading about buying shares in local farms for $800 and they deliver produce to your door for the rest of the year. They were saying not having to sell their produce frees them up to spend more time on farming. I can not remember where I saw the information on it. Was it in one of the Sustainable Announce listings? If not do you know of any family/local farms that are doing this? (I think they were in Capac) >> Thanks >> Charles >> >> >> >> >> >> >> No virus found in this incoming message. >> Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com >> Version: 8.0.138 / Virus Database: 270.4.7/1545 - Release Date: 7/10/2008 6:43 PM >> >> >> >> >> >> > > Too many SusDet Announce emails? > Set your account to digest mode at http://sustainabledetroit.org/mailman/listinfo/announce_sustainabledetroit.org > If you turn digest mode on, you'll get posts bundled together, instead of singly when they're sent. > ______________________________________________________________________________________________ > announce mailing list > announce at sustainabledetroit.org > http://sustainabledetroit.org/mailman/listinfo/announce_sustainabledetroit.org > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://sustainabledetroit.org/pipermail/announce_sustainabledetroit.org/attachments/20080711/ea351cdc/attachment.html From ecadvocate at gmail.com Fri Jul 11 17:56:09 2008 From: ecadvocate at gmail.com (m c) Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:56:09 -0700 Subject: [SusDet Announce] EV World Insider w/some Detroit news Message-ID: <8518b0ba0807111456r4a3304bdt75ece8a81db3499a@mail.gmail.com> Next Prius to be assembled in Fremont CA w/GM partnership (San Fran/Oakland/San Jose burb) First Chevy Volt to be assembled in Hamtramck (Detroit) at existing GM/Cadillac plant. *EDITION: 8.24 | 10 Jun 2008* *Platinum Sponsors* Corporate Sponsorship Info FEATURES *The Pickens Plan* Pair of videos highlight plan to reduce American oil independence. 10 Jul 2008 *Rethinking Urban Mobility* Bicycles need to be an integral part of every city's transportation plan 09 Jul 2008 *Reevaluando ?El pico del litio o el litio en abundancia?* Una contestaci?n a Keith Evans y a Willaim Tahil en el discusi?n del carbonato de litio 08 Jul 2008 *A Smarter Urban Mobility* Computer animation shows how MIT's Smart Cities carshare scheme might work. 07 Jul 2008 *Ford's Vision for Better Electric Car Batteries* ACG Series: Senior manager Ted Miller offers Ford's perspective on the future of battery technology. 06 Jul 2008 *If Iran and Brazil Can Do It...* Energy independence isn't an impossible dream but it does require choices. 05 Jul 2008 WEB SITE INDEX More Feature Stories More Headlines Insider Commentaries EV Forums Owner Journals Guest Blogs Book List Critical Links Premium Subscribe PDF Library Opinion Polls Web Links Syndicated RSS/XML Feed Photo Archive Audio Files 3D Jigsaw Puzzles EVents Calendar Energy Prices/Stocks Metric Converter Manage Email Subscription Advertising/Media Kit TOP 20 NEWS LINKS Click here to view the complete listof all the stories archived on EV World in the last seven days. *GM Readies Preproduction Volt Electric Car for September Unveiling* *Source:* NY Times *Published:* 07 Jul 2008 Unnamed sources inside GM say it is rushing showroom-ready model in hopes of distracting attention from company slumping sales and talk of bankruptcy, reports NY Times. *Next Gen Prius to Get Solar Panels* *Source:* Trading Markets *Published:* 07 Jul 2008 The high-end trim lines of the redesigned Prius will have solar panels on the roof, which will supply part of the 2-5 kilowatts needed to power the air conditioners. *Time to Bring the EV1 Out of 'Mothballs'?* *Source:* Detroit Free Press *Published:* 07 Jul 2008 Automotive journalist John McElroy suggests GM revive the EV1 and with it, its credibility. *What Is GM Thinking?* *Source:* Wall Street Journal *Published:* 05 Jul 2008 Holman Jenkins, Jr thinks that pouring 'hundreds of millions into a race to launch an electric car, the Chevy Volt, guaranteed to lose money on every unit sold, begins to seem a peculiar strategy for a company in dire liquidity straits.' *Delaware Grad Students Test 150 Mile Range Electric Car* *Source:* NBC 10 *Published:* 05 Jul 2008 University of Delaware test out vehicle-to-grid and 2-hour recharging time on what appears to be an AC Propulsion Toyota Scion conversion. *Renault Gearing Up to Mass Produce Electric Cars* *Source:* FX Street *Published:* 06 Jul 2008 When batteries become the centerpiece of a new electric car, the current wave of delocalization may reverse. *Some Hybrids Fly Off the Lot, Others Stuck in Park* *Source:* Waco Tribune *Published:* 07 Jul 2008 Some dealerships are selling every hybrid they get. But nationally, sales of gasoline/electric cars are decidedly mixed. *Sunlight Powers His Car* *Source:* Redding Search Light *Published:* 07 Jul 2008 The Xebra electric car travels 25 miles at 30 mph running on solar electricity, but the ride is rough. *How China's Thirst for Oil Can Save the Planet* *Source:* Times/UK *Published:* 08 Jul 2008 The pioneers of green energy report a 'gold rush' mentality as soaring oil prices speed up the search for alternatives. *Tesla Announces Plans for $30K Electric Car* *Source:* Tiger Weekly *Published:* 10 Jul 2008 By 2010, they plan to have the $60,000 model out, and then use profits from that model to fund the production of the $30,000 model in 2012. *Mitsubishi to Begin i MiEV Electric Car Sales in 2009* *Source:* Trading Markets *Published:* 10 Jul 2008 The car is to be equipped with an advanced lithium ion battery developed with partners including GS Yuasa Corp. and will be able to travel around 160km without a recharge for one-tenth the price of a gasoline model. *Driving in LA Is Getting Positively Electric* *Source:* LA Times *Published:* 05 Jul 2008 Lefteris' vehicle, built on the frame and body of a 1971 Porsche 914, is not a hobby car. It's been his daily transportation for getting around L.A for the last 12 months, racking up some 8,000 miles. *The Next Generation of Cars Will Be 'Gas-Free'* *Source:* Motley Fool *Published:* 09 Jul 2008 Morgan Housel visits Tesla's new Los Angeles Showroom and wonders if an IPO is down the road in 2009. *America's Fading Love Affair with the Automobile* *Source:* Guardian/UK *Published:* 07 Jul 2008 The nation of road movies, freeway freedom and dreams of endless horizons is waking up to the reality of soaring fuel prices. *GM Closing In on Release of Its E-Flex Volt* *Source:* Trentonian/Canada *Published:* 09 Jul 2008 George Wand's update on the current status of the Volt range extended electric car program. *Electric Cars? Are You Serious?* *Source:* Gulf Weekly *Published:* 10 Jul 2008 Matt Master, a writer and car tester for Top Gear magazine, expresses his opinion about the viability of electric cars. *Electric Dreams: Cars That Run on 'Nothing'* *Source:* Inquirer/Philippines *Published:* 09 Jul 2008 For anyone who purchases a Roadster, Tesla Motors refers them to a partner company that provides solar power systems. *Japan's Green Car Push* *Source:* BusinessWeek *Published:* 05 Jul 2008 Detroit will have to work hard to catch Japanese automakers in the race to produce hybrids, electric cars, cleaner diesels, and fuel-cell vehicles, writes BusinessWeek in this review of current EV developments in Japan. *Auto Market Evolving From Guzzlers to Sippers* *Source:* Consumer Reports *Published:* 05 Jul 2008 The state of the automotive market is a volatile one and the rapid shift to fuel-efficient cars and hybrids is causing all manufacturers to alter their plans. *John McCain Needs to Learn More Electric Car History* *Source:* New York Daily News *Published:* 09 Jul 2008 Dr. Charles Steinmetz, the 'whiz kid of AC technology' at GE secured 200 patents in his lifetime and advocated the creation of an affordable electric automobile. 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PHOTO OF THE WEEK: GM Co-chairman climbs out of Chevy Malibu that has been configured to function like the Volt. See remarks below. Photo courtesy of fastlane.gmblocgs.com In This Edition: "It Was Electrifying" Lighter is Better Sign of the Times Will GM Buy Cobasys? Will the NextGen Prius be FOB California? A New Meaning for "E" Mail On Your Mark, Get Set... *"It Was Electrifying"* As GM Co-chairman Bob Lutz drove out last week to the company's Milford Proving Grounds to take a Volt "development vehicle" for a spin with its 16 kWh battery pack, he passed a gasoline station. Writing in his Fastlane blog, he said the $4 a gallon price on the station marquee reminded him how important the program he is championing is to the future of GM... and the planet. He also reminded his readers that the vehicle he drove was a converted Malibu and that it.... wasn't calibrated properly, and there are an awful lot of tests that this battery must pass before it's cleared for production. Still, after an eight-mile romp around the track, reaching speeds of 60 mph, Lutz reported the experience 'electrifying,' although he continues to be cautious about progress on the battery front, writing... ...I think it's important to point out that in the six months since we've received the battery pack, we've tested it in the lab, then on the dynamometer, and now on the track. Eventually, if and when we settle on the right battery, our E-Flex System engineers will have a lot of integrating, tuning and tweaking to do before the Volt is ready for prime time. That being said, GM's board last week approved continued development of the Volt. *Lighter Is Better* While Bob Lutz and the Volt team continue to move towards their "late 2010" launch for the Volt "E-Flex" range extended electric car, the McKinsey Company concluded back in December 2007 that if you want to make a serious dent in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, there is a better, more affordable way than either hybrids or biofuels -- both central to GM's current product strategy. The Toronto Globe & Mail reported... Dollar-for-dollar... lighter, more fuel-efficient cars will deliver the greatest environmental gains for the least cost, beating biofuels and hybrid gas-electric cars (to cite two alternatives) by a wide margin. How wide a margin? Method Megatons Saved Cost/Ton Cellulose Biofuels 100 $18 Hybrid Vehicles 20 $15 Improved Vehicle Efficiency 98 $0 "Hybrid electric vehicles," the report notes, "are not a low-cost abatement option." Neither are next-generation plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, which can be expected to deliver more than 100 miles per gallon. ("The new costs [of development]," the report says, "will not be covered by the fuel savings.") What isn't entirely clear is what McKinsey means by the phrase "tested approaches and emerging technologies" when referring to these "lighter, more fuel-efficient" vehicles. I have this vision of the return of the Isetta and 2CV, which in case you weren't aware were very light and fuel efficient vehicles ideal for inner-urban commutes, or in the case of the Citroen Deux Chevaux Vapeur (literally 'two steam horses'), rural off-roading. Legend says the 2CV -- first introduced in 1949 and produced until 1990 -- was designed to "enable two peasants to drive 100 kg (220 lb) of farm goods to market at 60 km/h (37 mph), in clogs and across muddy unpaved roads if necessary," making it one of the first "sport utility" vehicles ever made. Concludes the Globe & Mail, "The McKinsey report is yet another contrarian study that suggests extreme caution in developing heroic, national GHG strategies." *Sign of the Times* Assuming McKinsey's analysis is correct -- or even just in the ballpark -- GM's decision last week to close three truck plants and an SUV plant would be inevitable and will likely be followed by similar decisions by other carmakers responding to plummeting consumer interest in larger, less-fuel-efficient vehicles. In two signs of the times, my younger brother, who works for a small regional air carrier, informed me recently that not only is his company struggling to stay solvent, but in response to strangling fuel costs, virtually every airline is parking jets and laying off employees, as they fight to remain in the air. Then, this weekend my sister drove by to show us her new Hyundai Sonata. She trade in her Chrysler minivan in order to get better fuel economy, as well as a lower car payment. This trend is being repeated across the nation. A service manager for the local Kia dealer told me that business on the showroom floor is good. And what's happening to all the SUV's customers are trading in, I asked? They immediately go to the auction, he replied. Nobody wants them now. *Will GM Buy Cobasys?* While Mr. Lutz was test driving the Volt "mule" -- and there is now speculation that GM has chosen LG Chem/CPI as its battery supplier, though the company asserts it hasn't made a decision yet -- it was having "issues" with its Cobasys manufactured NiMH packs, which CNN Moneyreported are prematurely failing. As a result, GM has had to recall 9,000 Saturn Vue and Aura mild hybrids. Crain'sis now reporting that GM has turned to an outside consulting firm to conduct an audit of Cobasys, possibly in preparation for acquiring the company, largely for its intellectual property. A report in May to the SEC indicated that ChevronTexaco and Energy Conversion Devices (ECD) where in negotiations to sell the company to "an unnamed buyer" -- presumably GM? If GM does buy the company, it will, in effect, be buying back what it once owned jointly with ECD. Then called GM Ovonics, it made the NiMH battery packs for the star-crossed EV1. *Will the Next Gen. Prius be FOB California?* And while we're on a roll with GM, the speculation is -- or is it merely wishful thinking? -- Toyota is in negotiations with its Detroit rival to eventually begin manufacturing the next generation Prius in their jointly-owned Nummi assembly plant in Fremont, California. The San Francisco Chronicle notes that 26% of all hybrid cars sold in North America are in California and three of the top ten cities for hybrid cars registrations are in California: LA (11.6%), San Francisco (7.8%), and Sacramento (2.2%). So, with all those Priuses running about, the following piece of news, courtesy of Felix Kramer, would seem inevitable. Of the initial six companies that will be installing Hymotion'splug-in Prius battery package, four of them are Toyota dealers. Here's the list: Boston: Westboro Toyota Washington, D.C.: Fitzgerald Toyota Minneapolis: Denny Hecker Automotive Group Los Angeles: Toyota of Hollywood San Francisco: Green Gears/Pat's Garage Seattle: Green Car Company Felix's take on this is that he hopes it will compel Toyota to accelerate its "current plans, which at the moment amount to a commitment to deliver 400 PHEVs for fleet evaluation by 2010." My own view is that Toyota will proceed apace, but that other Toyota dealers are likely to join the parade if they believe there's a profit to made from getting in the plug-in upgrade business. That four could very quickly become forty or four hundred (there are some 1,700 independent Toyota, Scion and Lexus dealers in North America). What is yet to be seen is the size of that market. *A New Meaning for "E" Mail* While the United States Postal Service recently reported -- via an article in Sustainable Business -- that its experiment with flex-fueled vehicles was largely a disappointment, the Japanese postal service announced that it would begin switching out its entire fleet of 21,000 short-distance delivery vehicles to electric cars starting this year. Three Japanese car companies -- Nissan, Mitsubishi and Subaru -- are all actively developing battery electric cars, though Japan's postal service didn't announce which company or model(s) they would be acquiring. However, the announcement had a very positive effect on the share values of Furukawa Battery Co., GS Yuasa Corp, Sanyo Electric and Hitachi Maxell. Japan follows France in its decision to switch to electric vehicles for mail deliver. A modest demonstration program by the USPS aborted in the wake of 9/11. Maybe it's time those plans got dusted off again? *On Your Mark, Get Set...* Finally... it's over! What a relief. The oh so very long Democratic primary/caucus season has finally come to an end and the party now has a presumptive nominee: Barack Obama. Whether he's the best person for the job is yet to be seen. This much I can say with confidence: coming from absolutely nowhere, he built a powerful campaign team, raised an awful lot of money from grassroots supporters, and crafted a message of change that inspired millions of voters across ethnic and political lines. Gradually over the months, he defeated -- one-by-one -- the best the Democratic Party had to offer, including now Hillary Clinton. As one pundit put it, those who support him are projecting a lot of our own hopes and aspirations on the man. He is clearly smart, wonderfully articulate (what a relief!) and seems to have a pretty clear vision of where he wants to take the nation, one I share for the most part. My personal view is that come Novermber, he is going to win in a landslide, not because of any shortcomings in the character or capabilities of his Republican rival -- John McCain -- and he does have his share, just ask Cliff Schecter, the author of The Real McCain. The deciding factor, at least from my perspective, is that the majority of Americans are simply fed-up with the current Administration and Republican Party, and the direction they've taken the nation over the last two terms. Together, they've overseen an economy in recession, driven there largely by spiraling energy prices impacting everything from wheat to milk to gasoline, all exacerbated by a horrendously costly (in blood, treasure and goodwill) ill-conceived and intractable invasion and occupation of Iraq. There are still a lot of days and ground to cover between now and the first Tuesday in November. Americans might still surrender their hopes in exchange for the "safe" and familiar. We could become apathetic in the face of wearisome smear campaigns. Poll results could be (and likely will be) manipulated in some key areas. But as long as Senator Obama can continue to be the standard-bearer for American aspirations in the new century, as long as he's willing to speak honestly, candidly and yet hopefully, he will find himself standing in the Oval Office come January 20, 2009 with a "mandate for change." Let's hope he doesn't blow it like his predecessor. Until next time, stay plugged into EVWorld... *Join the Plug-in Vehicle REVOLUTION* Take a minute and complete our plugin vehicle survey at PLUGIN.EVWORLD.COM -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://sustainabledetroit.org/pipermail/announce_sustainabledetroit.org/attachments/20080711/99bfc005/attachment-0001.html From ursa at provide.net Sat Jul 12 11:54:58 2008 From: ursa at provide.net (Ursa Minor) Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 11:54:58 -0400 Subject: [SusDet Announce] [Fwd: BBC - farming in Detroit] Message-ID: <4878D3D2.5030303@provide.net> I love the source...the BBC! Judith http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7495717.stm From ecadvocate at gmail.com Sun Jul 13 20:42:19 2008 From: ecadvocate at gmail.com (m c) Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 17:42:19 -0700 Subject: [SusDet Announce] localharvest.org - see how close you are Message-ID: <8518b0ba0807131742r39849f9awca3b8a7160919b7e@mail.gmail.com> >From Tall Trees Community farm.... Check out www.localharvest.org to find out the many possible farmers close to you! You will be amazed at how many there actually are out there....it's good to see..... Hi Charles, Yes, it's a great concept -- commonly called a CSA or Community Supported Agriculture. The primary CSA serving Detroit and the northern subs in Maple Creek Farm. They're great and please tell them I sent you. Danny and Michelle are the farmers and my house was their drop off site in Detroit for years. They're great. You can find them at www.maplecreekfarm.com I believe Tantre Farm from Ann Arbor also has a drop off site nearby at the Zen Temple in Hamtramck. You can contact them for details at http://www.detroitzencenter.org/contact.htm I hope you don't mind, but I'm copying this to the Sus. Det. listserv so others can followup on this too, if they're interested. Jacob -- Jacob Stevens Corvidae Green Programs Manager jacob at warmtraining.org WARM Training Center Promoting Affordable, Sustainable Communities Since 1981 www.warmtraining.org 4835 Michigan Ave. Detroit, MI 48210 313.894.1030 x.119 Tropical Green wrote: >Hi Jacob, > >Recently I was reading about buying shares in local farms for $800 and they deliver produce to your door for the rest of the year. They were saying not having to sell their produce frees them up to spend more time on farming. I can not remember where I saw the information on it. Was it in one of the Sustainable Announce listings? If not do you know of any family/local farms that are doing this? (I think they were in Capac) >Thanks >Charles -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://sustainabledetroit.org/pipermail/announce_sustainabledetroit.org/attachments/20080713/34fb1eeb/attachment.html From ecadvocate at gmail.com Sun Jul 13 22:15:46 2008 From: ecadvocate at gmail.com (m c) Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 19:15:46 -0700 Subject: [SusDet Announce] environmentalism never hurt so good! Message-ID: <8518b0ba0807131915y2198967ds82b6c19153268588@mail.gmail.com> I've gotten some flack from Detroiters and Berkeleyites with my PHEV Chevy Volt postings on various lists because the Volt isn't "enviro enough" whereas anything with the Prius label on it is ok. To me it seems an odd hypocrisy. Since many "enviros" are completely disconnected from the auto scene it makes sense that anything from GM would be crap. But the truth is that GM's recent car of the year winners, the Chevy Malibu and Cadillac CTS are both Consumer Reports magazine *almost*top picks. That's a major headway in the last few years and it will only get better. The Volt will be made in Hamtramck. The Prius plug-in won't be made anywhere near Michigan. But both do the same thing - save fuel. Do I enjoy punishing GM in other reviews of it's cars and culture? Yes. I relish the opportunity to trash Michigan, it's people and it's cars where appropriate. But I also relish in highlighting success stories where appropriate too. Ideas and truth should stand on their own, not be included in a "pretend there aren't any problems so our few successes won't be tarnished" public relations campaign. For the record, I am an environmental and consumer advocate first and foremost, a car guy second. But I'm not authenticity damaged so you won't catch me masking my body odor with patouli oil. Instead I will "waste" water on "mere bathing" while others "die in the desert in Africa" and not feel any guilt about it whatsoever as my water couldn't have been transported to Africa anyway. I prefer the Prius to any car on the road today. Not for "enviro" reasons, but for oil war and soldier/civilian death and money saving reasons. The "enviro" is an automatic benefit that comes with the rest of it just like a CFL. And being an "enviro" and "car guy" in the same breath means I can spot marketing BS from any company - hippie owned, or GM and Toyota. Toyota now has recalls that never happened while the company was hungry. Now GM is hungry and is actually producing some B and A students like the Chevy Malibu and Cadillac CTS while Toyota is overstuffed with success and is allowing the Camry, Corolla and Matrix interior quality to slide (among other things like Camry V6 transmissions). So here's a dose of human reality, missing the usual "if it's western, it's bad, if it's eastern it's good" pretentiousness: Outside the hippie "enviro" bubble, real people live everyday. If you want to talk to them and get them using less fuel, you have to learn what is appealing to them. Otherwise you, I, we, all end up sounding like some fringe cult - a religion of environmental self flagellation. Click the link to read the backstory of how the Volt got developed and why.... http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/general-motors Mike Cohn -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://sustainabledetroit.org/pipermail/announce_sustainabledetroit.org/attachments/20080713/b5112a41/attachment.html From sarathustra at puredoxyk.com Mon Jul 14 12:36:36 2008 From: sarathustra at puredoxyk.com (Holy Paradox Batman) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:36:36 -0400 Subject: [SusDet Announce] 100% Electric Vehicles Message-ID: <29780a580807140936k7fa26b83p7ed0397b2c5f845b@mail.gmail.com> Hi all -- With all the discussion about the Prius / Volt / [Insert Compromise With Oil Companies Here], I ran across this and thought it might please you as much as it did me. Turns out you CAN buy an all-electric vehicle (that goes hundreds of miles on a charge and over 100MPH, if you're willing to spend a bit)! Best of all, some of them are quite affordable -- about 5K more than they would be in gas-guzzling form, but at $4 a gallon, that's still paying for itself in about a year! Anyway, here's an article all about electric vehicles, how to find them and own them and even pay people to turn your car into one: http://www.squidoo.com/cheap-electric-car There are lots of links at the bottom, as well, to places where you can look for EVs (Electric Vehicles), but this place struck me as the most comprehensive, and the most likely spot for a Regular Ol' Michigander to possibly find the right car -- The EV Tradin' Post in Austin. http://www.austinev.org/evtradinpost/ After I buy one of these, I'm driving it right up to Ford Headquarters and asking them why they can't do what a bunch of mildly-creative mechanically-talented Americans have been doing on their own all this time! (And that's ignoring Johnathan Goodwin, ahem: http://www.puredoxyk.com/index.php/2008/02/20/johnathan-goodwins-not-sick-like-detroit/ --sorry about the link to my site; my writeup was just the easiest article for me to find...there's links to better ones in the post itself.) Peace everyone, "Sara Thustra" -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://sustainabledetroit.org/pipermail/announce_sustainabledetroit.org/attachments/20080714/598835fa/attachment.html From hollyhiker at hotmail.com Mon Jul 14 19:13:49 2008 From: hollyhiker at hotmail.com (Holly Lubowicki) Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2008 19:13:49 -0400 Subject: [SusDet Announce] E-M:/ localharvest.org - see how close you are In-Reply-To: <8518b0ba0807131742r39849f9awca3b8a7160919b7e@mail.gmail.com> References: <8518b0ba0807131742r39849f9awca3b8a7160919b7e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: You may also want to check out Michigan Organic Food & Farming Alliance for farmers in your area at www.moffa.org. Click on the Eating Organically Guide link to see a list of farmers by county. "To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival." - Wendell Berry http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home Date: Sun, 13 Jul 2008 17:42:19 -0700From: ecadvocate at gmail.comTo: o2-michigan at lists.riseup.net; enviro-mich at great-lakes.net; announce at sustainabledetroit.orgSubject: E-M:/ localharvest.org - see how close you are >From Tall Trees Community farm.... Check out www.localharvest.org to find out the many possible farmers close to you! You will be amazed at how many there actually are out there....it's good to see..... Hi Charles,Yes, it's a great concept -- commonly called a CSA or CommunitySupported Agriculture. The primary CSA serving Detroit and the northernsubs in Maple Creek Farm. They're great and please tell them I sent you.Danny and Michelle are the farmers and my house was their drop off sitein Detroit for years. They're great. You can find them atwww.maplecreekfarm.comI believe Tantre Farm from Ann Arbor also has a drop off site nearby atthe Zen Temple in Hamtramck. You can contact them for details athttp://www.detroitzencenter.org/contact.htmI hope you don't mind, but I'm copying this to the Sus. Det. listserv soothers can followup on this too, if they're interested.Jacob-- Jacob Stevens Corvidae Green Programs Manager jacob at warmtraining.org WARM Training Center Promoting Affordable, Sustainable Communities Since 1981 www.warmtraining.org 4835 Michigan Ave. Detroit, MI 48210 313.894.1030 x.119Tropical Green wrote:>Hi Jacob,>>Recently I was reading about buying shares in local farms for $800 and they deliver produce to your door for the rest of the year. They were saying not having to sell their produce frees them up to spend more time on farming. I can not remember where I saw the information on it. Was it in one of the Sustainable Announce listings? If not do you know of any family/local farms that are doing this? (I think they were in Capac)>Thanks>Charles _________________________________________________________________ Need to know now? Get instant answers with Windows Live Messenger. http://www.windowslive.com/messenger/connect_your_way.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_messenger_072008 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://sustainabledetroit.org/pipermail/announce_sustainabledetroit.org/attachments/20080714/9b2f40ed/attachment.html From jacob at ic.org Tue Jul 15 16:22:47 2008 From: jacob at ic.org (Jacob Stevens Corvidae) Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 16:22:47 -0400 Subject: [SusDet Announce] $500 incentive for clean-burning wood stoves in Michigan. Message-ID: <487D0717.7090507@ic.org> For those who haven't seen this, the MDEQ is offering a $500 rebate for buying a new clean-burning wood stove. Fuel supply won't work for many folks in Detroit - for some folks this would be ideal. I believe it's got a limited time, so check it out. From what I've seen $500 would typically cover about half the cost of the stove. http://michigan.gov/deq Jacob -- ?If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.? - Antoine de Saint Exup?ry From jacob at warmtraining.org Mon Jul 21 11:07:35 2008 From: jacob at warmtraining.org (Jacob Stevens Corvidae) Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:07:35 -0400 Subject: [SusDet Announce] 'Food For Thought' Event Thursday - Detroit City Policies: Are they holding us back or moving us forward?] Message-ID: <4884A637.4060200@warmtraining.org> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://sustainabledetroit.org/pipermail/announce_sustainabledetroit.org/attachments/20080721/23f77348/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: file:///C|/DOCUME%7E1/ADMINI%7E1/LOCALS%7E1/TEMP/nsmail.txt Url: http://sustainabledetroit.org/pipermail/announce_sustainabledetroit.org/attachments/20080721/23f77348/attachment.txt From jacob at warmtraining.org Mon Jul 21 13:02:36 2008 From: jacob at warmtraining.org (Jacob Stevens Corvidae) Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:02:36 -0400 Subject: [SusDet Announce] Green conference call for volunteers... Message-ID: <4884C12C.3020309@warmtraining.org> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://sustainabledetroit.org/pipermail/announce_sustainabledetroit.org/attachments/20080721/3c177ed2/attachment.html From lindsay_detroitagriculture at yahoo.com Tue Jul 22 16:57:10 2008 From: lindsay_detroitagriculture at yahoo.com (Lindsay Turpin) Date: Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:57:10 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [SusDet Announce] FOOD FOR THOUGHT - Detroit City Policies: Are they holding us back or moving us forward Message-ID: <844059.36018.qm@web83309.mail.sp1.yahoo.com> Please Post: The Detroit Urban Garden Education Series Presents a 'FOOD FOR THOUGHT' Event: Detroit City Policies: Are they holding us back or moving us forward? Thursday, July 24th, 6-8PM Catherine Ferguson Academy, 2750 Selden What do gardeners need to know about our city's policies related to urban agriculture and food? How do these laws influence what we can and can't do in our gardens? This 'Food For Thought' discussion will bring light to the urban myths suirrounding city laws pertaining to urban agriculture, including keeping chickens and bees in the city. Kathryn Underwood, from Detroit's City Planning Commission, will lead a discussion on how Detroit and other cities support or limit agriculture and community gardens with thier local policies. Malik Yakini, chairman of the Detroit Black Food Security Network, will provide an update on efforts to create a Detroit Food Policy Council. For a complete schedule of Summer classes, please visit www.detroitagriculture.org The Detroit Urban Garden Education Series provides gardeners of all skill levels the opportunity to attend interesting, hands-on workshops on a variety of gardening and garden related topics. The classes, open to all residents of Wayne County, have an organic gardening emphasis and are designed for gardens that are producing food (vegetables, fruits and herbs). Classes are held twice a month at various locations in Detroit. The cost of the class is $3 for participants in the Garden Resource Program and $5 for non-participants. THE GARDEN RESOURCE PROGRAM COLLABORATIVE: The Greening of Detroit, Detroit Agriculture Network, EarthWorks Garden/Capuchin Soup Kitchen, and Michigan State University work collaboratively to support the Garden Resource Program, Urban Gardening Education Series, and Urban Roots. For more information please call Ashley Atkinson at 313-237-8736 or visit WWW.DETROITAGRICULTURE.ORG Lindsay Turpin Garden Resource Program Coordinator 313-365-1568 lindsay_detroitagriculture at yahoo.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://sustainabledetroit.org/pipermail/announce_sustainabledetroit.org/attachments/20080722/7e900f60/attachment.html From ursa at provide.net Thu Jul 24 21:41:43 2008 From: ursa at provide.net (Ursa Minor) Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 21:41:43 -0400 Subject: [SusDet Announce] [Fwd: ScienceDaily: Toxic Chemicals Found In Common Scented Laundry Products, Air Fresheners] Message-ID: <48892F57.4040908@provide.net> Forwarded by Judith --------------- Toxic Chemicals Found In Common Scented Laundry Products, Air Fresheners http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080723134438.htm A study of top-selling laundry products and air fresheners found the products emitted dozens of different chemicals. All six products tested gave off at least one chemical regulated as toxic or hazardous under federal laws, but none of those chemicals was listed on the product labels. From ecadvocate at gmail.com Mon Jul 28 21:11:23 2008 From: ecadvocate at gmail.com (m c) Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:11:23 -0700 Subject: [SusDet Announce] story of stuff video - deprogramming in 5, 4, 3, 2.... Message-ID: <8518b0ba0807281811v57fe794eh55c76351a697d00b@mail.gmail.com> A wonderful little reminder/affirmation tool for the choir, an education tool for outside the choir.... www.storyofstuff.org Mike Cohn PS...my fav part was 11:45 (click CONSUMPTION tab, it jumps to 10 minute mark) where they described the policy behind it all. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://sustainabledetroit.org/pipermail/announce_sustainabledetroit.org/attachments/20080728/1356eb8c/attachment.html From tropicalgreen2003 at yahoo.com Tue Jul 29 17:07:20 2008 From: tropicalgreen2003 at yahoo.com (Tropical Green) Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:07:20 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [SusDet Announce] URGENT: Impeachment Petition Deadline Midnight Wednesday Message-ID: <32950.18287.qm@web54206.mail.re2.yahoo.com> URGENT: need your help - Impeachment Petition Deadline Midnight Wednesday Dear Friends, Because of your vigilance and support for democracy, last Friday was a day of singular importance in Washington. The House Judiciary Committee met to discuss the Bush Administration's abuse of executive power and for the first time the case for Impeachment was discussed in front of a Congressional committee, in depth, at length and with authority. Twenty members of the Judiciary Committee attended the six hour hearing, during which twelve witnesses, including myself and four members of Congress testified. In this hearing I called for the Impeachment of the President for misrepresenting a case for war. This week I will present members of Congress with Impeachment petitions submitted by those of you who have signed the on-line impeachment form. I need your help. In the next few days we must redouble our efforts to get more signatures on the online petition at [Link]. I'm asking each of you to please contact at least ten of your friends to go to www.Kucinich.us now and sign the Impeachment petition that will be delivered by me. Wednesday night is the deadline. Please send out an email to all your friends and family, post this link, http://kucinich.us to your blogs and make this effort count as this is the only petition that I will deliver. Thank you so very much. Dennis Kucinich From ecadvocate at gmail.com Wed Jul 30 01:53:31 2008 From: ecadvocate at gmail.com (m c) Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 22:53:31 -0700 Subject: [SusDet Announce] Story Of Stuff video - deprogramming in 5, 4, 3, 2... Message-ID: <8518b0ba0807292253v33a8b551g42fd68a01694c57a@mail.gmail.com> A wonderful little reminder/affirmation tool for the choir, an educational/inspirational tool for outside the choir.... www.storyofstuff.org Mike Cohn PS...my fav part was 11:45 (click CONSUMPTION tab, it jumps to 10 minute mark) where they described the policy behind it all. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://sustainabledetroit.org/pipermail/announce_sustainabledetroit.org/attachments/20080729/efb0a549/attachment.html