Progressive Wednesday

Update: Re-treeing western New York

Over the past few months you've read about the destruction of nearly a third of the trees in Erie County due to the early October snow storm. And you read about the efforts of many small organizations such as Re-tree WNY and individuals to repopulate the Buffalo area. If you need a quick refresher, click here or here. To this point most of that effort has been raising money to pay for the massive conservation effort. But to celebrate Earth Day, yesterday, the boots were on the ground.

For the first time this year the temperature broke 70 degrees and, as reported by WGRZ.com, hundreds of volunteers showed up at Delaware Park in Buffalo and planted more than 400 new trees. It's a small step. But that's what we're all about here at Progressive Wednesday. You have to plant the first tree before you can plant the 10,000^th.

But the fundraising efforts aren’t over. Please consider making a small contribution to Re-tree WNY if you haven’t already. And if you have, thank you on behalf of all the residents of planet Earth.

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WGRZ.com is also offering a free oak or sycamore tree valued at $100 to 20 groups or individuals. So if you have had a tree damaged during the storm, write them an email telling your story. They'll be giving out one tree every day from April 26th through May 23rd, making it easier for you to make “treeish– progress. Bravo, WGRZ. Bravo

A bank concerned about a different kind of “green–

I use HSBC bank to do all of my personal banking. When I looked around they had all the features, free checking, free Internet banking, no minimum monthly balance, that most of the big banks boast. Plus they really gave us a great rate on our mortgage and their headquarters are right here in Buffalo.

But as I walked in to my local branch today I noticed a pamphlet sitting on the counter. This one advertised perks that I have never seen from any bank, earth friendly bank accounts. HSBC is offering a free Green Living Kit to any one who opens up a new personal account and makes three online bill payments before July 25. The kit includes:

• A Carbonfree^TM compact fluorescent light bulb to save energy.
• 15% off coupon from thebulb.com.
• ChicoBag, a reusable shopping bag.
• One free issue of The GreenGuide^TM from National Geographic – the go-to source for green living.
• One year free subscription to The GreenGuide^TM
• 10% off coupon to shop at Lime.com – the online home of green living.
• 20% off coupon for Organic Bouquet.
• TerraPass certificate for 1,000 lbs of greenhouse gas reductions to offset your environmental impact by funding clean energy and efficiency projects.

That would be the same TerraPass we told you about this Wednesday.

HSBC is even donating $15-$30 for every product purchased up to one million smackers to environmental charities. The charities include:

• Zoological Society of Buffalo
• Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy
• Genesee Land Trust
• Friends of the National Arboretum
• SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF)
• National Arbor Day Foundation

We spend enough time telling you about the evils of corporations and asking you to hold them accountable. But sometimes they actually do good things. So if you have an HSBC near you, stop in and check it out. Then consider making the switch. Making true progressive policies work for you is just as important as changing the policies that aren't.

The Grandeur of Earth Day

Problem:

Earth Day is April 22, and recognizing and reacting to this day couldn't be more important. Why? Because the planet, as we know it, is dying, its heart is slowly stopping, and we needn't look farther than a mirror to see who's to blame.

But we're powerful. We're creative and resourceful and brilliant: lest we forget, we landed on the moon, we invent and reinvent language, we split the atom, we adopt forgotten children as our own. Most importantly, we are, at our core, good. And like metaphoric doctors with a metaphoric defibrillator, it's shocking how quickly we can bring the planet back to life.

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Make Progress:

Eventually, the bugs — blasted things that they are — are going to take over the planet. Our species is going to cease being. At Progressive Wednesday, we'd like to put that headstone for humanity off for as long as possible.

Much like our bodies, which regulate themselves to maintain homeostasis, the planet is one giant organism. Rain, bees, and rabbits help plants grow and reproduce. The plants help oxygenate the air, reduce greenhouse gases, and help protect glaciers and icecaps, the largest reservoirs of freshwater on the planet. Rivers thrive, so the fish thrive, so the bears thrive. Right now in a city near you, cats are killing rats. And the rats– ¦ well, we've got no idea what they do except keep alleys company. Let's just say that the interconnectivity of all species of life is a bit mind-boggling and that biodiversity lies at the core of this connectivity. We think it's safe to say humans don't even completely understand its importance.

To liberally quote the 19th Century poet Gerard Manley Hopkins:

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

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[But] all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

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And for all this, nature is never spent.

Nature is never spent. There's hope, my peeps. And because at our best we're stewards of the environment, it's time to right this ship of ours a bit. That's how we celebrate Earth Day around these here parts. That's how we celebrate our planet's unfathomable grandeur: we protect it.

• Earth
• Animals
• Air
• Water
• Plants

The Grandeur of Earth Day: Earth

Earth:

I thought about calling this one “The Whole Shebang, Baby,– but that seemed a bit much. But it seems to us that the first step in being willing to adjust our lifestyles to meet the relatively simple needs of our planet, our fellow humans, and our fellow earthlings (i.e. marsupials, marigolds, marmots, maples, etc.), well, that first step is to witness the scope of the problem.

Since a hefty chunk of progress is knowledge, we're going to ask that you spend one minute (if that) and take the Earth Day Footprint quiz by clicking this sentence.

I was stunned by my above-average results. It's catalyzed my new actions. It's making me change my prideful ways.

The Grandeur of Earth Day: Animals

Animals:

Okay, my pretties. This one is easy as making macaroni and cheese. (Mmm– ¦ mac and cheese– ¦.)

But first, let me say this: in my lifetime, 15 species of animals have gone extinct.

According to the World Conservation Union, another 15,589 are at risk of extinction. But are we to blame? Chew on this one: “[over the] past 400 years [we] have seen 89 mammalian extinctions, almost 45 times the predicted rate, and another 169 mammal species are listed as critically endangered.– I believe that falls under the category of “Yes.–

So, on Tuesday, we told you about Good Search, the search engine fully powered by Yahoo, which donates half of the profits from ad revenue to the charity of your choice. So, this week, we're asking that you only use Good Search to crawl the web, and select the WWF (the World Wildlife Foundation) as the charity. If nothing else, there's this to love about the WWF — they forced the World Wrestling Federation to change their name to the WWE! What's not to love?

But you want the skinny? It goes like this: the 45-year-old, non-political, global, independent, and multicultural World Wildlife Foundation strives to conserve and protect the planet's biodiversity, promote cutting our oodles of pollution, and make sure that we use our natural resources in a sustainable fashion. How? Well, they “are currently funding around 2,000 conservation projects and employ almost 4,000 people across the planet.– And they work closely with the locals in every area where a project is focused.

Their main goal is lofty and lovely: “To stop the degradation of the planet’s natural environment and to build a future in which humans live in harmony with nature.–

Harmony you say? Well, if you promise to use Good Search to raise some cabbage to help the WWF protect our animals — pandas to pachyderms — we'll let you listen to two lovely tunes sung and strummed by lovely folks. (Okay, we'll let you anyway, but use Good Search. Cool? Cool.)

“Train From Kansas City” by Neko Case http://media.anti.com/neko_case/the_tigers_have_spoken/Train_From_Kansas_City.mp3

“The Dark Don't Hide It” by Magnolia Electric Co. http://www.scjag.com/mp3/sc/darkdonthideit.mp3

The Grandeur of Earth Day: Air

Air:

To make a bad play on words, our air is starting to seriously blow. The average American, that's you and that's me, spews about 15,000 pounds of carbon dioxide every year into the only air we've got. How? By moving our bodies from A to B without using our legs. By cranking the heat in the winter and revving up the A/C come August. By buying, well, by buying just about anything, since those “things– — Legos, Eggos, leggings, and eggs — only come to be through production that burns fossil fuels.

If you really want to face the atmospheric music, use this carbon calculator or this one or this one or this one. From these sites, you can find easy things you can do around the house to reduce the poisonous emissions from fossil fuels. Remember: doing something is better than nothing, because each of our little “somethings– add up, baby, they add up. We've mentioned some of these before (just click this sentence to see what we're talkin' – ˜bout). This week, we've got a different suggestion: purchasing off-setting carbon funds from Terra Pass.

These aren't exactly the oft-discussed emission trading (sometimes referred to as “carbon credits– ), though those are better than doing jack squat. Even entire governments are falling into the mind-trap that suggests that emission trading makes it okay to burn more fossil fuels. It doesn't. The idea is to still minimize our use of fossil fuels, and not just for the environment, but for economic and political reasons as well. The less we rely on oil from countries that don't play nice (though, we're not exactly one to talk these days), the less we'll end up, theoretically, embroiled in trade conflicts at best, and at worst, more wars.

But, Terra Pass is something to consider snagging. Even if you own a hybrid car, you're still pumping carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses into the only air we've got. These are poisons. They will kill you, and they will kill our air, which will in turn kill the water, the plants, other animals.

Through Terra Pass, you calculate the average greenhouse gas emissions of your vehicle of choice (or the flights you take or the kind and amount of energy you use at home). Then Terra Pass lets you know which level of membership you'll need to help offset your emissions. They use a bulk of the money to help fund clean energy projects – “ wind farms, biomass, and industrial efficiency. The only problem we see on the surface of Terra Pass is that word “Pass.– We can't get a “pass– for our emissions. Our emissions are still being made. With Terra Pass, we're helping to prevent even more from going up to the stratosphere. The less up there, the better.

Need convincing? Reread our TGIF Movie Review of An Inconvenient Truth, then rent the sucker. Honestly, every week I think of the movie at least once when I'm on pause — not reading, not typing, not driving, not chatting it up on my cell, not gettin' jiggy wit it — when I'm on pause and just breathing. I feel thankful. Then I feel a twinge of fear about the future.

The Grandeur of Earth Day: Water

Water:

It turns out, our tap water's in a wee bit of trouble. According to data gathered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and analyzed by the Natural Resources Defense Council, as many as “56 million people [drink] water with arsenic at unsafe levels.– Those figures only represent the 25 states included in the EPA study. And, of course, that's just arsenic.

What else is floating around in my cup of homemade sweetened iced tea?

Chlorine is added to most tap water to kill bacteria, but it also morphs into trihalomethanes, which “have been linked to a wide range of human health maladies ranging from asthma and eczema to bladder cancer and heart disease, [as well as] higher miscarriage and birth defects rates.–

Then there's good old-fashioned fluoride. According to a peer-reviewed study conducted by Harvard, boys who drink fluoridated tap water are five times more likely to get a rare form of bone cancer.

Of course, and unfortunately, there's more. A study conducted by the Environmental Working Group “of tap water tests from 1998 through 2003 for more than 39,000 communities nationwide shows that 260 pollutants were detected in the nation’s drinking water.– That might not be a problem if the levels were limbo-stick low. But, of course, there's a “but.– But the study concluded that the population exposed to levels of contaminants over the health-based limits totals (ugly sounding drum roll please– ¦) 195,275,315. Let's put that into words: one hundred ninety-five million, two hundred and seventy-five thousand, three hundred and fifteen. That's approximately 65% of the country, my people.

Oh, and by the way, some tap water even contains gasoline and rocket fuel. Yes, you read that right. Rocket fuel.

Okay, okay, okay. Enough doom and enough gloom. What's a progressive like yourself to do? Well, to be honest, after shaking off the initial heebies and jeebies, we were stumped for quite a while because the problem is three-fold:

1. The federal government doesn't properly enforce the Safe Drinking Water Act.
2. The federal government doesn't have enforceable safety limits for 141 contaminants found in our drinking water.
3. Many, if not most, local water suppliers suck– ¦ hard.

So, this Wednesday do we work from the top down or the bottom up? We're going to choose the latter. Below you'll find a letter we recommend sending to your city or town council representatives, and your state senators and representatives.

Dear [Whomever]:

I've recently learned about studies conducted by the EPA and the Environmental Working Group that suggests most tap water contains unhealthy levels of contaminants. According to the EPA study, at least 56 million Americans drink and bath their children in water with unsafe levels of arsenic. According to the EWG, over 190 million of us drink water containing levels of contaminants over the health-based limits totals. The problem seems compounded because the EPA doesn't have enforceable safety limits for 141 contaminants found in our drinking water.

All this has me deeply troubled both for myself and my family, but also for those who live both in my area and across the country.

I'm writing to ask you to work toward providing my area with a water treatment facility that runs a reverse-osmosis filtration or a distillation of water. Both of these methods would remove most of the aforementioned contaminants without the need for other chemicals such as chlorine, which has been linked to raised levels of bone cancer in boys.

I would appreciate a response as soon as possible regarding the status of my water treatment facility, and what your office is doing to remedy this growing problem.

Sincerely,

[You]

What can you do in the meantime? You could hope you're not one of the 195 million, but we wouldn't recommend it. There's a lot of debate about filtration systems and distillation of water because these methods remove minerals in water that are good for us. Personally, we lean toward the contaminate-free agua over the mineral-free version. So, you can buy a home filtration system recommended by NSF International, The Public Health and Safety Company, a not-for-profit, non-governmental organization. By clicking this sentence, you'll be taken to the NSF's page regarding home water treatments.

As suggested by NFS International, we'd also recommend contacting your municipal water supplier and request a free copy of their Annual Water Quality Report (or Consumer Confidence Report). Once you have this in your hot little hands, you can “contact your local or state public health department, personal physician, or the EPA’s safe drinking water hotline at 1-800-426-4791 for further information on the health effects and potential sources of the various contaminants found in drinking water supplies.–