Author: Shermakaye Bass

By Shermakaye Bass
Green Right Now

Some of today’s younger greensters may not realize it, but on April 22, Earth Day is officially two generations old. That’s older than many who are organizing and promoting the holiday’s global events this year — events that are expected to draw more than one billion participants world-wide, including a mass gathering on the National Mall on Sunday, April 25.

The purpose of the Washington, D.C. , demonstration, marking Earth Day’s 40th Anniversary, is to push Congress to pass a 21st century climate bill — which is bringing the holiday full circle, returning it with razor-sharp focus to what spawned the first celebration in 1970: a cry for long-term political change on American environmental policy.

That first Earth Day started at the end of a violent and disjointed decade, with a call from progressive legislator Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson (1916 to 2005). Most people agree that Earth Day grew out of Nelson’s observation of an oil spill on the beaches of Santa  Barbara in the summer of ‘69.  As archival material from Nelson’s 25-year-plus political career puts it, the senator saw college students staging Vietnam-related teach-ins and thought: Why not do that with environmental issues? Why not create awareness and eco-education platforms, backed by a grassroots community?

When the first Earth Day rolled around several months later, thousands of colleges and schools participated. In fact, an estimated 20 million Americans demonstrated in some form, whether among throngs of thousands in New York or Philadelphia or in some individual way, making it by many accounts the largest demonstration in U.S. history.

As Nelson marveled after the fact, Earth Day “organized itself. …”  The senator, who twice served as Wisconsin’s governor, had the innate savvy to make the Earth Day contingent a big tent, encouraging people to acknowledge the fledgling holiday ”in any way they want.”

That first Earth Day spawned a decade of ground-breaking policy change, including formation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in December, 1970; and passage of the Clean Air (1970) Clean Water Act (1972) and the Endangered Species Act (1973). (Yes, these were the  Nixon years, a period of environmental advancements.)

Forty years later, activists and climate experts believe Americans are at a similar cross-roads. As pro-environment legislators and President Barack Obama strive to tighten environmental regulation and others try to thwart it, Earth Day organizers are promoting the holiday as a clarion call: a demand for policy change and political action.

They want a strong 21st century climate/energy bill that reduces greenhouse gas emissions to slow climate change and reduce demand for energy. They want it soon, from Congress, where the U.S. Senate is considering a controversial climate bill that seems in danger of pleasing neither environmentalists or climate change opponents.

Pushing for Climate Action…

Passage of a strong bill that would seriously curb carbon emissions, remains the hope of environmentalists, youth groups and many others who want climate change addressed.  They see it is imperative that our country quit talking and sand-bagging and enact a comprehensive bill that will include ways to solve climate change, be that a cap-and-trade system, carbon taxing or other measures.

Climate activists point to rising carbon in the air, which scientists say is triggering chain reactions that will bring catastrophic consequences — the floods, drought, desertification and damage to water systems and oceans we’ve all heard discussed.

People like Earth Day co-founder and one-time national director Denis Hayes, along with many other veteran activists, believe that this particular president and Congress need to act now on climate change, despite a large degree of polarity in American society.

They hope this Sunday’s demonstration on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., brings a groundswell for change that goes well beyond recent years’ commemorations of the revered secular holiday (the most celebrated, according to multiple sources, in the world).

Traditionally, the event has been unifying and symbolic, an effective awareness campaign marked by local fairs and festivals. But this year’s intensity and intent are different.

Earth Day, 2010 won’t be just a quick feel-good moment of turning off the porch lights, unplugging coffeepots or forgoing the lawn sprinkler for a day. It’s a full-on push for legislation, action, say organizers.

As Hayes, director and CEO of the Seattle-based Bullitt Foundation , wrote on April 15 in a Yale University magazine, the environmental movement of the past few years (decades, even) has tiptoed around big-money interests and dirty-fuel purveyors, diluting the substantive non-partisan alliance that marked the movement in the early 1970’s.

This year’s Earth Day, then, is pretty much like no other.

As Hayes puts it in the Yale Environment 360, the 2010 holiday coincides with the most serious Congressional climate-bill debate in years. The debate involves several options, including Hayes’ preferred path, the Cantwell-Collins bill (introduced to the Senate in December, 2009), as well as the better-known Kerry-Lieberman-Graham bill, now before the Senate (more detail below).

Not to dismiss the many global events occurring on April 22, but Sunday’s gathering on the National Mall is epic in its implications and its power to effect change.

Hayes and others who founded the movement say this election year, this era, is a game-changer — not just for the country at large, but for its elected officials.

“…The only way that Congress will act intelligently and boldly on this issue is if we give it no choice,” Hayes writes. “A large block of Americans must make the climate disruption issue an initial voting screen. If a candidate is okay on climate, then we will look at the rest of her record. To move this issue forward, our voices must be as loud as those hollering for the right to carry a Colt into Starbucks or for saving Granny from death panels. …”

….Effective Climate Action

Along with others who support genuine (as opposed to token) reform and no-holds-barred legislation, Hayes believes the best path is the Cantwell-Collins plan.

“Most experts I know agree, in private, that the Cantwell-Collins bill in the Senate is the best climate legislation that has yet been proposed. In fact, it is the only option under consideration that would make a meaningful dent in greenhouse gas emissions in the near term. It places an absolute cap on carbon where it enters the economy; auctions 100 percent of carbon permits; and returns the revenues to the public on a pro rata basis. Moreover, it’s just 40 pages long, while the competing bills contain another thousand pages of loopholes, special interest exceptions, and bad baggage.

“But the so-called eco-pragmatists have one powerful argument against it. They say it can’t be passed. A prominent green leader told me, ‘To pass any climate bill at all, we have to appease coal-state Democrats, shovel as much money as necessary to pro-nuclear Republicans, and buy off the electric utilities.’ That is an apt description of the Kerry-Lieberman-Graham bill now making the rounds in the Senate.”

Continues Hayes in the 360 article:

“This sentiment has been broadly, if reluctantly, embraced by most of the large, mainstream national environmental groups working on climate as well as by the Obama Administration. … But it appalls virtually every environmentalist who lives outside the Beltway. The environmental movement has spent more than a billion dollars trying to pass a cap-and-trade bill, and it is feeling some desperation. The people who contributed all that money expect some results. The pressure to pass something — almost anything — that arguably puts some sort of cap on carbon is intense.”

Hayes concludes that many in the environmental movement are tired of spending money, hope, faith and energy on broken promises, and watered-down legislation that tries to make everyone happy — but ends up disenfranchising almost everybody.

“. … Every draft of the climate bill is weaker than its predecessor,” he writes. “Every draft does a poorer job of putting a reasonable price on carbon. Every draft is larded with more taxpayers dollars for socialized, centralized nuclear power and for “clean coal.” Every draft carries more sweeteners for the utility industry, the automobile industry, the coal and oil industries, and the industrial farmers and foresters.. Politicians who try to ignore climate disruption — and that’s a whole lot of them — need to start losing their jobs next November,” Hayes declares in the opinion piece. “Instead of weakening the bill, we need to change the politics,” he says.

Like his mentor Sen. Nelson probably would have, Hayes (who became Earth Day’s national director in 1990 and took the holiday to global proportions) sees that Earth Day 2010 represents a completely different socio-political environment than existed during that first one in 1970.

Why Earth Day Circa 1970 Worked

Back then, Earth Day was able to unite political opposites and reconcile ideological polarities in the face of one, singular issue: cleaning up the mess that humans had made and passing legislation that would safeguard the environment, and people, for generations to come. Believe it or not, in 1970, members of conservative and liberal camps, rural lifelong naturalists and ivory-tower activists, union movements and corporate CEO’s, Native Americans and bonafide cowboys, if you will, all rallied behind Earth Day.

As Bill Christofferson Nelson’s biographer writes in the progressive Uppity Wisconsin blog’s fascinating history of Earth Day: “That was the genius of Earth Day – tapping the wellspring of environmental concern that was bubbling just below the surface of the national consciousness.”

“When it happened, “It was truly an astonishing grassroots explosion,” Nelson later said. “The people cared and Earth Day became the first opportunity they ever had to … send a big message to the politicians – a message to tell them to wake up and do something. It worked because of the spontaneous, enthusiastic reception at the grassroots. Nothing like it had ever happened before. While our organizing on college campuses was very well done, the thousands of events in our schools and communities were self-generated at the local level.”

“…Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We had neither the time nor the resources to organize twenty million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself,” Nelson said

Eventually Nelson achieved the highest honor an American civilian can receive. In 1995, he was awarded in the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton. Among  his many legislative achievements during an18-year tenure as U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. Nelson helped pass the following:

• The 2,000-mile Appalachian Trail Preserve

• Stronger government regulations and controls of mining, including strip mining.

• Fuel-efficiency standards for American automobiles

• Bans on the use of the poison DDT and the defoliant 245T, a.k.a. Agent Orange.

Granted, Sen. Nelson’s accomplishments took place over more than a decade, but the major federal bills he helped push through – – The Clean Air, Clean Water and Endangered Species Acts — were passed over three short years.

Earth Day organizers remind us that Nelson’s legacy is not just an indication of what can be done in relatively short order; it is proof positive that comprehensive change can happen quickly. Given that most international scientists now agree our globe is undergoing dramatic climate change (as Hayes describes it in his Yale Opinion, “we’re cooking the planet”), Earth Day’s 40th anniversary, and the mass demonstration planned for Sunday, April 25, can’t come a moment too soon.

We know from the past that such grassroots movements can be their own tipping point, pushing change far beyond anyone’s crystal ball could conjure. We also know that, 40 years after the first Earth Day, the world is facing an urgent issue that wasn’t even on the radar back then.

The lesson? Change is possible.

• More information about The Climate Rally this Sunday, April 25, at the National Mall can be found on our site and at the Earth Day Network website.

Copyright © 2010 Green Right Now | Distributed by GRN Network

By Shermakaye Bass
Green Right Now

Who’d have thought that silk skirts could change lives?

Marianne Tyrrell suspected they could. A life coach and former delegate to the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development, she’s always known that when women feel visually transformed they often feel mentally changed. Add to that the knowledge that, by looking and feeling good, they are creating jobs for other women across the globe.  Then add that they’re helping the environment — and saving gorgeous vintage silks from certain doom.

That’s a win-win-win-win for  most women. And ditto for the men who care for them!

Two years ago, Tyrrell, an entrepreneur and former attorney in Harrisburg, PA (now based in Boston), founded a line of exotic skirts made from vintage silk saris from India, called EcoQuette . The idea  could have been a one-off for Tyrrell, who bought a vintage sari-cum-skirt while in Puerto Rico a few years ago. But once back on the mainland, based on responses from friends and strangers alike, she realized that something about the skirt had a powerful impact on those who saw her wearing it. When people continued to comment, a light bulb flicked on: Why not find someone to help her fashion a line of skirts from gently-worn saris — items that might otherwise end up in an Indian landfill.

It all happened organically, the wife and mother of five grown children says, explaining what’s become a “festival” phenomenon, as EcoQuette skirts seem to fly off the racks every time she sells them at events. (Her debut event was Earth Day of 2008).

“I am a lawyer, and I was clerking for a 1st Circuit Court judge,” she says, reflecting on EcoQuette’s fast evolution, “and since Puerto Rico is in the 1st Circuit, we would go down sometimes and help that court when they were too busy.”

During one of those trips, Tyrrell bought a striking, multi-colored sari-skirt and wore it as often as she could. She noticed people staring (in a good way), smiling, or simply approaching her to ask where she’d bought it.

“Everywhere I went, people would just flip out! They’d say, ‘That’s so beautiful, where did you get it?’ When I’d tell them that I bought it in Puerto Rico, their faces would just drop, because they probably weren’t going to go to Puerto Rico and buy one. This kept happening, and finally I said, ‘I’m just going to go into business and sell them.’”

In short order, Tyrrell researched online-sales business models, found a supplier of vintage sari based in Jaipur, India – “a woman who gave me assurances of Fair Trade practices that I was comfortable with” — and launched the site. Now EcoQuette is a family affair; both her adult daughters and her husband help with website management and client orders.

By the time she launched her line in ‘08, Tyrrell had left the Circuit Court clerking business, and had gone back to climate-change consulting.

“My work has always revolved around environmental things, and I decided I was going to do this as part of that. I was only going to do it as a sustainable practice, and only using natural fabrics and vintage fabrics, so that I wasn’t contributing to the production of new material.”

After intensive research, she found a woman in Jaipur who manufactures them for EcoQuette. Tyrrell’s goal, ultimately, is to encourage women in other regions of the United States (and possibly beyond) to handle certain territories, such as in California, the Pacific Northwest and the Austin/Central Texas area, and spread the EcoQuette phenom. By doing so, she will help other women start businesses, thereby creating a trickle-down system of good will, good Earth practice, and hopefully, good income.

In “high season” — May through September, when Tyrrell and company hit a lot of eco/sustainability festivals — EcoQuette earns about $50,000 a month in sales. And when it’s not festival season in the Mid-Atlantic and New England, where she is based, her online sales move at a nice clip. Word is traveling and sales are growing.

“In many ways, these skirts have the power to transform lives. You’re helping women — with income, and to feel better. I really find that when women put on something beautiful, they look at themselves in the mirror and their breath is just taken away. Not typical for American women. They say, ‘That’s me?!’”

Perhaps most gratifying to Tyrrell is that on some elemental level (clothing is definitely elemental), the women who inherit these lush fabrics can find a deep connection to their feminine side, as well as to humanity at large. Because whether you’re buying a vintage dress in a big-city boutique, wearing your late grandmother’s hand-me-down 1940’s hat, or purchasing a skirt made from antique saris, you are donning something that once covered another person’s skin — and very possibly it’s someone with whom you may have thought you had nothing in common.

Men don’t tend to find this notion very moving (often-times, to the contrary!). But for women, Tyrrell says, there is something universally feminizing about it. Call it the Family of Woman.

“The ‘gift,’ ” she adds, lies in realizing what unites us as women. We may think we’re extremely different because we come from different backgrounds, religions or income brackets. But “when they buy this skirt that some other woman has worn, they find a gift in it. It may be a small bloodstain from a finger prick, but somehow they’re connecting to other women,” Tyrrell says.

In discussing how she launched EcoQuette, Tyrrell doesn’t mention the details of her impressive eco dossier. So we’ll do it for her:

While working for ICF International, a consulting firm in Virginia, she was  project manager for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s “Smart Growth Implementation Assistance” projects and also helped integrate ICF’s Smart Growth and Climate Change groups. She also has worked for the Center for Climate Change Strategies and the Environmental Law Institute. And while working for 1st Circuit Court Judge J. Michael Deasy (U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Hampshire), she published an article — “Clarifying the Limits of Lucas: Reasserting the Value of Government Police Power through Land Planning over Property Rights Interests” — which appeared in the Widener Law Journal in 2003. Also in 2003, Tyrrell was a delegate to the 2003 U.N. World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. She also is a Vice Chair of the American Bar Association’s subcommittee on Sustainable Development, Ecosystems and Climate Change.

Copyright © 2010 Green Right Now | Distributed by GRN Network

By Shermakaye Bass
Green Right Now

We of a certain generation remember when most grandparents (or great-grandparents) had gardens. It was part of life, part of a family’s sustainability.

Americans can’t go back in time, especially considering that 82 percent
of us now live in cities. But we can re-claim our individual gardens of Eden, whether we inhabit a Brooklyn condo with rooftop deck, a “zero-lot” home in Houston, or a bungalow in Santa Barbara.

Enter the fast-growing trend of raised-bed-gardening facilitated by young companies like GroOrganic based in Orange County, CA. It’s a one-stop organic-garden-kit-and-seed shop/community outreach/gardening consulting business that will outfit Southern Californians’ gardens from start to finish and maintain them.  GroOrganic also ships smaller kits around the country.

Or check out Naturalyards based in Ashland, OR, a four-year-old co-op that makes and ships gorgeous, durable cedar kits in hundreds of different sizes. Even the venerable “old” Gardener’s Supply Company (circa 1983) out of Burlington, VT, now sells and ships raised-bed kits in two sizes: 3 x 3 feet and 3 x 6 feet.

But if you’re looking for full service and you live in the Southern California area, GroOrganic is the place to go. For around $500 to $1,000, you can have someone from the company come and assemble the kit, pour the soil and plant the seeds, creating an instant garden for erstwhile greenthumbs. You have lots of size options: Raised-bed planters range from 8 ft long x 4 ft wide, to much larger “L” shaped planters. Those who live in other regions or states have a choice of two types of beds, the “GroClassic” and the “GroEasy” — each available in two sizes.

“Our business has just taken off in the past year,” says GroOrganic founder and president Karen Cancilla, explaining that the company’s first anniversary is today, April 1.  “We are already having people call us to franchise (the brand/idea) — we’re looking at requests from 13 different people in other states right now.”

Part of the reason may be due to a lot of good press and celebrity word-of-mouth: Since last year, the company (which actually is now four companies, including the new franchise division) has been featured on Tori Spelling’s reality show, “Access Hollywood”, “Keeping Up with the Kardashians”, and will be used in upcoming episodes of “The Biggest Loser.”

But no one can argue that, with the slow food and Go Local movements, creating a self-contained, sustainable life has become increasingly appealing for average Americans.  And outfits like GroOrganic can make it simple again — actually, much simpler than in our grandparents’ era. Just make a list of the organic produce you’d like to grow (don’t forget to research what grows best in your region, and factor in the sunlight/exposure your site will offer), place the order, and once you’ve assembled your kit and sown the seeds, you’ll be harvesting veggies within a couple of months.

“We can get whatever someone wants,” says Cancilla, whose company will host a raised garden-planter giveaway (ten of the popular 8 x 8 feet containers will be given away; see bottom of story for details) from April 19-23, in honor of Earth Week; . “We’ve never had a request we couldn’t fill. A woman called yesterday for three different varieties of blueberry, and we found all three. I didn’t know there were three varieties of blueberries! We can do the gardens pre-made, pre-painted. We can have them installed, and within three hours you can have a garden growing! Anybody can do this, I don’t care how old or young. You just put it together, like Lincoln Logs almost. … Or we can come out and do it for you if you’re in our area.”

As Cancilla, who grew up with a garden, explains, “A lot of people out there are interested in this type of thing. It reaches a lot of people in so many ways. It gets the community involved. … Neighbors don’t take care of their neighbors anymore and that needs to change. I think we really need to get back to what our grandparents did when they were young.”

Actually, it was her 97-year-old grandmother who inspired the GroOrganic concept. Cancilla says that when she would go to visit Granny in an assisted living home, the two would have little to talk about, and the elder lady was not faring well physically or mentally. Then Cancilla remembered how much she and her grandma had once loved gardening. And, having recently retired from a different business sector, Cancilla thought, “Why not?…”

“I thought, ‘You know, I’ve always loved gardening…and maybe I could offer to put a garden in at my grandmother’s home facility.’ So I said, ‘Grandma, would you like a garden?’ And she perked right up. Before that, she wouldn’t even get up out of bed, and then she started getting up and getting dressed and going out on her own. She has short-term memory problems, but she always remembers that she has a garden there. … I saw the immediate change and we thought, ‘We’re going to go with this!’”

Now, as GroOrganic VP Jennifer DeWitt says, “we are working on installing gardens at many non-profit facilities, such as the Orange County Rescue Mission, Florence Western Medical Center, an HIV housing facility, and in many public and private schools. In addition to installing the gardens, we (host) community educational programs. … Our vision is to help cultivate healthy lifestyles by educating people on the benefits of eating organically by avoiding chemically-treated fruits and vegetable. … Individuals and families can also experience the value of self-sufficiency by growing organic foods in their own backyards.”

• GARDEN PLANTER GIVEAWAY: 10 winners will be chosen from entry letters/emails nominating a deserving individual or family, church, hospital, school, senior healthcare facility, or organization. Interested parties may submit a letter or essay nominating the person(s) or organization to win the garden, explaining why you think they should get a groOrganic garden. Call 888-947-6674 or check out the site for more details. Deadline for entry is April 30th.

Copyright © 2010 Green Right Now | Distributed by GRN Network