The Natural Patriot

One of these days I really have to write another real post, instead of sending out hat tips to other sites (as important as that is), rehashing my own posts under different cover, and other sleight-of-hand.

But for the moment, I note that Wren has invited me to answer a few questions in association with kindly featuring the Natural Patriot at the Nature Blog Network, a cool site that aims to be the “nexus for the nature blog community, the portal through which readers and publishers alike can locate the very best nature blogs on the net.”

The interview is here. Thanks Wren!

Thanks to Ava at the Reef Tank web site for republishing the Natural Patriot’s post on “Approaching the Ultimate Limits“. You can find it here. For those of you interested in marine biology generally, and tropical aquaria in particular, there is a lot of interesting stuff at the Reef Tank. Dive in!

. . . is up at Cephalopodcast — this month’s round-up of blue bloggers (meaning ocean-themed, as opposed to morose and crooning about lost love or some such ill).

Not blogging obviously.

Eek, it’s been a scandalously long time. In fact I should probably begin today with an explicit announcement that the Natural Patriot is not dead yet (”I don’t want to go on the cart!” — free virtual salute to the first reader that identifies the source of that quote. I know, it’s not that difficult, I’m just blatantly fishing for signs of life in my readership).

So, in the interest of delivering on the title of this post, a few events from the summer that is rapidly drawing to a close, none especially memorable, but for what it’s worth:

1) I finished my sabbatical. I am tempted to say that it ended with a whimper rather than a bang, since I spent most of it sitting around in my sweatpants at the kitchen table editing manuscripts and what not instead of in some intellectual salon in Paris or London. Or even Madison, Wisconsin.  By the end I was actually ready to come back just to talk to real humans again. On the other hand, I did get a few things done, though inevitably not as much as I’d hoped. Made two more field expeditions to the Caribbean, which was cool. But more about that later. If I have time . . .

2) Took the lad to summer camp in the mountains of western North Carolina. Then drove home and hung out as a couple for 2 weeks. It felt pretty strange to be honest, a premonition of the empty nest looming in six short years. On the other hand, we woke up when we wanted and got to go out on dates for a change. That was great.

3) Family vacation in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Not somewhere I would normally have thought to spend summer vacation but my sister and her family got a week at this house as part of some charity auction deal. OMG. Perhaps you’re familiar with the Sundance catalog — all this trendy western clothing and jewelry and stuffed leather furniture priced at about an order of magnitude more than any reasonable person would consider it worth? This house could easily have been a set for the catalog — I honestly expected Robert Redford might knock on the door for a cup of sugar, or more likely some single-malt scotch. Fantastic place, loads of large ungulates of several species, clean (albeit thin) mountain air, trout. I may well describe it in more detail in a subsequent post if I’m suddenly seized by a surge of motivation.

4) Returned a few days ago from seeing the Red Sox live in Fenway Park for the first time (we saw the Paw Sox there last year). This was, without exaggeration, one of the principal highlights of the boy’s life as his universe more or less revolves around the Red Sox. Plus they won. I was struck the first time I was in Fenway by how initimate it is — a tiny park by today’s imperial “Chuck E. Cheese-Palukaville Memorial Stadium” standards.

5) My Macbook Air, after ~15 months of constant frustration, finally died. Hard drive damaged. This caused much indigestion until I finally got a new hard drive and was able to restore the files from my time capsule, though it still sounds like its grinding meat at 110 degrees F whenever it’s running. Many hard lessons have been learned along the way. I considered writing a post entitled “My bitter divorce from Apple” but I am giving them another try. Like a battered wife. Plus it’s not Apple at large but that beautiful, stylish, but utterly anemic and substanceless, Air that is the problem. Hence I have a new MacBook Pro on order.

Right. Now that I’ve re-established contact with the virtual world, stand by for something of substance in the not too distant future. And thank you for your attention.

It’s a thrill to host this week’s Carnival of the Green — and especially fitting as the world is beginning to turn green again here in my neck o’ the woods in the temperate zone of the northern hemisphere.  Last night I returned from a trip (with some anxiety about getting the carnival of the Green under control, I must confess), got in my truck and drove home. When I opened the door in the dusk I was greeted for the first time this year by one of my favorite sounds, that telltale music of spring, the chorus of spring peepers from the swampy sloughs and puddles in the nearby woods. And I knew we were turning the corner. I had to close my eyes and just stand and drink it in for a while.

So the COTG turns 170 this week (in weeks, that is). Not sure how many dog years that is, but it’s pretty ripe vintage for a blog carnival. For those irregulars who may not know, the Carnival is organized by Treehugger and you too can enjoy the honor of hosting it — see details here. Slots are going fast for January 2010 so act now. Operators are standing by!

The Natural Patriot is proud to receive the baton today from last week’s host, Turning Transparent in a Green World, and will dutifully pass it on next week to The Enobling Journey.

Disclaimer: Any comments of a curmudgeonly, cynical, politically incorrect, or otherwise potentially disagreeable nature are solely the responsibility of the Natural Patriot and should not be construed as representing Treehugger, The Carnival of the Green, my in-laws, or anybody else.

Right. Now that we’ve got all that out of the way, let’s get down to all the green news that’s fit to print.  Or perhaps all the green news that fits.  Something like that.

News you can use

Jen, from the Clean Bin Project has sussed out The Recyclepedia — a resource where you can find out about what different recyclable materials are are, and where you can recycle them.  If you happen to live in British Columbia, that is. For the rest of this there is still some useful generic information on, for example, what polystyrene is. Alas, if only we had such a forward-thinking community in rural Virginia.

In the time-honored tradition of the Carnival of the Green, we have this week a wealth of tips concerning how to avoid waste or turn it into something useful.

Sigrid at A1 How To provides a list of useful information and reading about environmentally safe cleaning products.

Cara at Repurposeful discusses 14 ways to repurpose plastic packaged fruit containers (colloquially known as “clamshells”). Instead of throwing them in the recycle bin, they can be given new life in a variety of way — at least 14. Check it out.

Beth from the Fake Plastic Fish blog considers the dilemma of what to do with those plastic gift cards one encounters everywhere these days. Turns out there is an outfit that collects and recycles them into — you guessed it, new gift cards.  Perhaps other products too.  They have set up collection centers at stores and will also take cards by mail.  This strikes me as an interesting potential case study for a pervasive question in many green ideas, that of life cycle costing — do the benefits of this recycling program outweigh the energy used in accomplishing it?

But what about recycling cars? Lisa at the Greener Pastures: Personal Finance blog reports on the US Federal Government’s program to get old, inefficient, gas-guzzlers off the road, and simultaneously make the ubiquitous and politically popular attempt to stimulate the economy.  The program was formerly called by the homey name of “Cash for Clunkers”, but is now referred to with the official title of Voluntary Retirement of Fuel-Inefficient Vehicles, perhaps in order to put people to sleep as they kill the program.  Evidently the program is now on hold for reasons detailed by Lisa in her post.

Not sure whether this qualifies under the current heading but we also have a summary on how to get started with conserving electricity in the home (for beginners).

Just when you’d thought you’d heard everything, Paul at Triple Pundit draws our attention to a somewhat unique approach to conservation, a new printer font with holes cut out of the letters (no, I am not making this up). It saves 20% of the ink.  So now if we can just get the whole world to use it . . .

But the coolest of all the gadgets I’ve seen this week is so-called solar ivy, discussed by Mack at Green Light Reflections. The concept substitutes traditional fixed solar panels on a building with a flexible covering of small, thin, flexible solar “leaves” that can adapt to most buildings and even turn in the wind to capture wind energy.  Whether this could generate significant quantities of electricity is not clear from the post but it sure sounds ingenious.

And, as St. Paddy’s Day approaches, here are some tips on how to make that day greener in the more modern sense, courtesy of Chris at Lighter Footstep.

Some philosophical perspectives

Now where did I put that soapbox?  Oh yes, here it is. At the risk of offending some of our contributors, I am reminded in many of these discussions of a talk I recently heard by Tom Friedman, commenting on the swollen torrent of information we are bombarded with daily on “simple steps to go green”.  His contention, which resonates very strongly for me, is that this is not a revolution, it’s a party.  When, he asks, was the last time you saw a revolution where nobody got hurt? We’ll know the green revolution has come when nobody talks about being green any more — when reducing waste and using resources efficiently has become so important to competition in the marketplace that if your products and services are not truly in harmony with the environment, your company goes under. Sadly, I suspect we are still a long way from that day.

A similar sense comes from Brad at Tri-Freedom, who notes that our environmental problems result from insatiable appetites and are unlikely to be solved by conservation without large new sources of energy.  Personally I could find a few bones to pick with Brad — it seems clear that we will need both massive conservation measures and massive new implementation of renewable energy if we have any hope of weathering what’s ahead.  But his post highlights one of the fundamental dilemmas of our modern predicament: The relentless increase in our average per-capita use of resources as a global society.

The other side of that coin, which just as desperately needs a frank, objective, and forward-looking discussion from across the political spectrum, is the role of exponentially increasing growth of the human population, and how we can humanely stabilize it before we all are  buried.  This was the subject of the Natural Patriot’s most recent post.

A sober reminder of some of the unintended consequences of the waste we generate in daily industrial life comes from Olga at Enviroblog, who discusses a recent report showing that prenatal exposures to environmental pollutants may lead to chronic diseases later in life.  Researchers worldwide are working towards understanding the full spectrum of health consequences of the prenatal, transplacental exposure to chemical pollutants. Lots of food for thought there.

Miscellaneous infomercial-type stuff

I got a number of submissions this week that my perhaps hyper-skeptical tendencies red-flagged as advertising (of various quality) disguised rather thinly as green bloggery. Being somewhat new to carnival hosting, I was unsure about the etiquette on this stuff (I did feel comfortable axing a contribution on “how to make fast cash”). I beg your indulgence if I seem irreverent but I think we all know what I’m talking about.  At any rate, I include some of the entries here on the chance that the products may be useful to some of our readers.  They include:

How to make your own windmill. I find the idea of having a windmill very appealing in a sort of leisurely bucolic way, to go along with the goats that I hope to get one day. But I don’t know if I could handle building one given my rather rudimentary handyman skills.  If I lived in a place like North Dakota where there was an ample and reliable source of wind energy I might well consider this.  I would certainly need some detailed info to get started.  Bottom line: if you want to know how, buy the how-to guide, conveniently offered at the linked site.

Want to get into green engineering?  This site claims it will help you do so. And how about how to pick eco-friendly dinnerware?

Walking the walk

We all talk the talk.  But there are lots of people out there who are really making a concerted effort to live by their principles, despite challenges ranging from minor inconveniences to seismic shifts in the fabric of modern life, and are figuring out how to get along with as little impact as possible.  Many such intrepid individuals are documenting their pilgrim’s progress in the blogosphere and we have contributions from several this week.

I really dug this post from Jen at the Clean Bin Project.  They are trying to go a year without buying material goods (I know it sounds preposterous but I think I got that right) and are documenting it on film.  They have posted an entertaining and thought-provoking teaser of the film-to-be on their 235th day of living this dream (?) right here. I look forward to the feature-length version.

Much of the energy in going green involves how to produce and consume food in a healthy and environmentally sensitive way. Alison from the Home Schoolers’ Guide to the Galaxy, has posted a summary of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)– what it is, the pros and cons, and how to find a CSA provider near you.

On a similar note, Sally from Veggie Revolution reports on two cool women and an idyllic farm:  Grateful Growers Farm.  She has posted a short account, chock full of links, about this pair that’s endeavoring to do everything the sustainable way.  The links in the post might help you find a nearby source for the foods you’re looking for.

Then there is Tiffany at NatureMomsBlog reflecting on Jule Dervaes’ idea that “Growing food is one of the most dangerous occupations on this earth because you are in danger of being free.” Free from the ubiquitous strangling tentacles of the industrial octopus that increasingly controls our every move, by dictating for example the very foods that we are able to find and eat.

Mrs. Green at MyZeroWaste and her family are on a similar journey.  She reports that, according to the Local Government Association in the UK, around 40% of supermarket food packaging cannot be easily recycled. How should this affect our actions? Will it undermine efforts to recycle, or should it make us more proactive about making better choices and working to influence manufacturers to get them to change their packaging? The post has generated a lot of discussion, with over 40 comments.

Happily, taking control of one’s own food supply has a wide range of benefits, from economic savings in these troubled times, to better health, to the palpable spiritual and psychological advantages of self-determination and the nourishing smell of dirt on your hands.  Here in my extended neighborhood of southeastern Virginia, Suffolk is setting up a group of community vegetable gardens, as reported by The Backyard Grower.com. Good work and good luck!

Andy at the Ethical Superstore reports that Cadbury’s decision this week to use Fairtrade cocoa in the manufacture of Dairy Milk has the potential to triple Fairtrade cocoa sales in Ghana, which one assumes will be good for the farmers there, and one hopes also good for the sustainability of their farms.

Eyes on the prize

And let’s not let all the gee-whiz new gadgets and politics and what not distract our attention to the real reason why we are concerned about a greener society: to preserve the only living planet we will ever know and all of the fantastic and astonishing creatures with which we share it.  This week 10,000 Birds has interviewed Jim Lawrence of Birdlife Internataional’s “Preventing Extinction Program” about their activities.  And 10,000 Birds is also putting their money where their mouths are by making a three-year financial pledge to BLI. Hats off to you guys and may others follow.

See you next week at The Enobling Journey!

Carnivals, that is. The latest incarnations are now online. Blue at the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Sea Notes blog. And, on a related note, oceanophiles may also enjoy checking out Rick MacPherson’s links to various marine-themed blogs he likes here . . .

And the Green is at EverydayTrash. Lots to read and think about here. Bon voyage.

Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?

After years — decades even — of resentful servitude to the Bill Gates colossus, after years of barely suppressed ridicule from my spouse who has been a Mac user from the beginning, I have at long last achieved escape velocity. Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a historic moment:

I am posting this from my brand spanking new, cool-as-all-get-out MacBook Air! Yes, the one that you can fit into an interoffice envelope. The one that stopped Charlie Rose (or somebody) dead in his tracks at airport security because the thing is so cool, the TSA guys didn’t believe it was a real computer (they eventually let him through, you’ll be relieved to know). I have become . . . the guy on the right. Or at least, I no longer have to worry, in my darker moments, that I have become the guy on the left.

I don’t mean to rub it in about the Air. I’m just excited to be starting a new life on the sunny side of the street.

The transition has, however, made me realize that the format of the website here is showing some signs of age, now that I can see the light in the new, wider format. The Natural Patriot’s crack engineering department will be on that soon, certainly within the next decade . . .

“The written word is weak.  Many people prefer life to it.”

Annie Dillard

That’s my excuse.  I’ve been living life, rather than recording it.  Ye gods, it’s been over a month.  And here’s my little secret: It feels great!  I’ve been learning a lot as I’ve meandered along, feeling my way, with the Natural Patriot.  But I cannot tell you how refreshing it’s felt to just forget about it for a while.  I don’t want to say that blogging has been a monkey on my back, but, well . . .

People often ask me: “Where do you find the time to blog?”  I answer them honestly: “I don’t!” Time spent doing this is stolen from something else.  Generally sleep, interactions with real humans like my family, and/or productive work.  And deficits of all of those things take their toll.  Recently I’ve been reminded of the value of doing all those things. Hence the long silence.  I don’t mean to whine or anything.  But there it is.

Right.  I am posting this partly in order to quell any fears among faithful readers that I have experienced some sort of tragedy that’s kept me from my rounds here. I haven’t. And the Natural Patriot will be back in the saddle again soon. 

But I also feel I’ve learned an important, small lesson that may be worth sharing.  Based on my experiences of the last month, I can strongly recommend the following general approach.  I will propose it a as three-step program:

1) Turn off your computer. After reading this of course. 

2) Go outside.  Adjust your vision to a world that spans more than 20 inches diagonally and that exists in three dimensions.  Wave some smelling salts under your other four senses and wake them up.  It may take them a while to get going again.  Listen to the spring peepers — I heard them tonight, while planting spindly little tomatoes in our new naked little garden plot in the last few photons of the day (more about that later). If you don’t hear spring peepers, listen to something else, anything — crickets, pigeons, wind. Silence. Stay out if it starts to rain, or if you get a chill.  Feel your body begin to cope with the shiver.  

And here is the key:

3) Keep doing this for a while.  The real world works on a very different time scale than the virtual one. Seeds need time to grow and all that. Sleeping outside for several nights in a row helps a lot.

There’s a lot I could tell, and I may yet do so, about recent activities.  Backpacking with the lad was good, for example.  I may return to that.  For now, however, I want to get back in the queue (is that the correct spelling?) because Earth Day is this week and I feel some sort of mystical Naturally Patriotic duty not to allow this most sacred of occasions to pass without comment of some sort.  Even if I am listening to spring peepers with the computer off. 

For now, I will close with only one item of news related to both my activities of the last week and the upcoming Earth Day, primarily for my local homies.  As many of you know, Governor Kaine of Virginia has established a Commission on Climate Change and charged it to hold a series of meetings to figure out and advise him on what is going on in this state, where we are headed, and what we can do about it. 

The third meeting of the Governor’s Climate Change Commission will be held on Earth Day, 22 April (day after tomorrow), and is open to the public.  I strongly encourage all Virginians who can attend to do so, and to make your voices heard on this critical issue.

The meeting will be held at the University Center of The College of William and Mary.  The agenda, presentations, location, and other information can be found here. The meeting runs from 10:00 Am to 5:00 PM, with public comment at the end.  I will be one of those making a presentation, in my case on impacts of climate change on coastal ecosystems and living marine resources.  I’ve been told that the last meeting in Charlottesville attracted a strong student presence and the Commission took their comments very seriously.  This is a chance to make democracy work — please do your part if you can.

Thank you for your attention, and your patience.  Y’all come back. 

Tired of sifting through the virtual world for interesting stuff?

Blog carnivals in two pleasing, environmentally friendly colors are now online. Get your blue at Kate Wing’s blog, host this time around of the tenth monthly Carnival of the Blue, which covers the waterfront as the saying goes . . .

 . . . and your green at Confessions of a Closet Environmentalist, this week’s host (they’re a bit ahead of us above the tide line). Good stuff at both venues.

Top ten list - Excellent!

I am honored to have received the Excellent blog award, bestowed after a rigorous screening and review process, and accompanied by a handsome prize consisting of the right to display proudly a small jpeg image on my website (see below left, and in the sidebar).

The honor was bestowed by the venerable Coturnix (aka Bora Zivkovic) at “A blog around the clock“.  For those less familiar with the minutiae of blog history, Bora is a pioneer of science blogging.  His multifarious accomplishments include (1) serving as the Online Community Manager at PLoS-ONE (Public Library of Science), the rapidly growing open-access biology journal that encourages online commentary; (2) conceiving the idea for, and editing, the inaugural two issues of “The Open Laboratory: The Best Science Writing on Blogs“, which have been made available to Luddites in old-fashioned paper format, available here; (3) co-organizing the (first?) North Carolina Science Blogging Conference, which drew a large number of premier science bloggers , journalists, scientists, and educators from around North America, and which I will definitely want to attend next time around.    

An honor such as this comes with responsibility of course.  And in the characteristic pyramid-scheme modus operandi of the blogosphere, mine is to finger ten more blogs that I deem “excellent!”  I am of course delighted to do so.  Thus, in no particular order:

Growth is madness. It’s the economy, stupid.  And the people (yes, us) that keep cranking it upward.

Trinifar. More than food for thought - a feast for thought.

The other 95%.  Wide-ranging essays, musings, and news related to the bizarre and multifarious creatures that populate our earth.

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.  Amen brothers and sisters!

The Beagle Project.  A clever premise, which provides scaffolding for some interesting discussion.

Earth Forum.  More than just a blog — it’s an encyclopedia too!

Framing science.  And politics, etc.  The power of words, for good and ill.

Environmental economics.  WWA (Wonks with attitude). Actually makes economics interesting.

Children and Nature Network.  OK, I cheated — it’s not a blog.  But I love what these guys are about and what they’re doing.

Blogfish.  One of my early inspirations in blogging. A pioneer at the interface of marine science, conservation, and outreach.

There you have it.  Tag — you’re it!