Was It Green? EarthFest 2008

On Saturday, May 24 2008 I attended Boston’s 15th annual EarthFest at the Hatch Shell on the Charles River Esplanade along with 50,000 to 100,000 other Bostonians.

This annual event was presented by Whole Foods Market and Radio 92.9 and it was, as always, free to the public. The main artists: Cake, Cracker, The English Beat, and BoDeans all preformed on a solar-powered stage this year. And Cake, a band from Sacramento, California, pledged to record its next album entirely with solar power. Cake also gave away a tree to a volunteer and as a contingent asked her to take a photo with the tree every few years and send it to their website – “no matter how old she got.”

In addition to the music there were many vendors giving out freebees like organic energy drinks, granola, coffee drinks, yogurt, reusable bags, energy bars, raffle stubs for LCD televisions - and even hugs were free.

Local companies and non-profits staffed booths showcasing their ideas for a more sustainable community and environment. I took a picture with the IzzItGreen mascot, picture to right. IzzItGreen is a ratings and review site that asks, "Is it good?" and "IzzItGreen?" about a businesses products and actions. IzzItGreen believes “the answers aren't always in a book, or on the internet, or buried under a pile of dirty laundry (although sometimes they are). Answers often sprout from curious folks and their communities, connections, and conversations.”

I wonder if IzzItGreen reviewed EarthFest how would it score. Speaking anonymously a local government official said: “There was rampant consumption taking place [at EarthFest] without really any thought to it. The recycling containers were poorly marked and poorly distributed. There should have been separate containers for all sorts of recycling not just plastics and paper, but also food waste and packaging - if you took a look at the lawn after the last show [Cake] it was littered with crap - how easily people forget they were actually at EarthFest.”

You’re not green just by attending EarthFest, you’re not green if you just blog about it. Being green means seriously taking a look at what you do and how your actions will have an effect on the environment. EarthFest 2008 was an opportunity for individuals to enjoy the great weather, listen to live music, get a few freebees, but it also served as a reminder that environmentalism, conservation and “going green” are significant issues that affect all of us.

Find the original article published here: Volunteer-Boston, OYFP’s Blog.

Truth or Consequences

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Imagine for a minute, just a minute, that someone running for president was able to actually tell the truth, the real truth, to the American people about what would be the best — I mean really the best — energy policy for the long-term economic health and security of our country. I realize this is a fantasy, but play along with me for a minute. What would this mythical, totally imaginary, truth-telling candidate say?

For starters, he or she would explain that there is no short-term fix for gasoline prices. Prices are what they are as a result of rising global oil demand from India, China and a rapidly growing Middle East on top of our own increasing consumption, a shortage of “sweet” crude that is used for the diesel fuel that Europe is highly dependent upon and our own neglect of effective energy policy for 30 years.

Cynical ideas, like the McCain-Clinton summertime gas-tax holiday, would only make the problem worse, and reckless initiatives like the Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep offer to subsidize gasoline for three years for people who buy its gas guzzlers are the moral equivalent of tobacco companies offering discounted cigarettes to teenagers.

I can’t say it better than my friend Tim Shriver, the chairman of Special Olympics, did in a Memorial Day essay in The Washington Post: “So Dodge wants to sell you a car you don’t really want to buy, that is not fuel-efficient, will further damage our environment, and will further subsidize oil states, some of which are on the other side of the wars we’re currently fighting. ... The planet be damned, the troops be forgotten, the economy be ignored: buy a Dodge.”

No, our mythical candidate would say the long-term answer is to go exactly the other way: guarantee people a high price of gasoline — forever.

This candidate would note that $4-a-gallon gasoline is really starting to impact driving behavior and buying behavior in way that $3-a-gallon gas did not. The first time we got such a strong price signal, after the 1973 oil shock, we responded as a country by demanding and producing more fuel-efficient cars. But as soon as oil prices started falling in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we let Detroit get us readdicted to gas guzzlers, and the price steadily crept back up to where it is today.

We must not make that mistake again. Therefore, what our mythical candidate would be proposing, argues the energy economist Philip Verleger Jr., is a “price floor” for gasoline: $4 a gallon for regular unleaded, which is still half the going rate in Europe today. Washington would declare that it would never let the price fall below that level. If it does, it would increase the federal gasoline tax on a monthly basis to make up the difference between the pump price and the market price.

To ease the burden on the less well-off, “anyone earning under $80,000 a year would be compensated with a reduction in the payroll taxes,” said Verleger. Or, he suggested, the government could use the gasoline tax to buy back gas guzzlers from the public and “crush them.”

But the message going forward to every car buyer and carmaker would be this: The price of gasoline is never going back down. Therefore, if you buy a big gas guzzler today, you are locking yourself into perpetually high gasoline bills. You are buying a pig that will eat you out of house and home. At the same time, if you, a manufacturer, continue building fleets of nonhybrid gas guzzlers, you are condemning yourself, your employees and shareholders to oblivion.

What a cruel thing for a candidate to say? I disagree. Every decade we look back and say: “If only we had done the right thing then, we would be in a different position today.”

But no politician dared to do so. When gasoline was $2 a gallon, the government never would have imposed a $2 tax. Now that it is $4 a gallon, the government should at least keep it there, since it is really having the right effect.

I was visiting my local Toyota dealer in Bethesda, Md., last week to trade in one hybrid car for another. There is now a two-month wait to buy a Prius, which gets close to 50 miles per gallon. The dealer told me I was lucky. My hybrid was going up in value every day, so I didn’t have to worry about waiting a while for my new car. But if it were not a hybrid, he said, he would deduct each day $200 from the trade-in price for every $1-a-barrel increase in the OPEC price of crude oil. When I saw the rows and rows of unsold S.U.V.’s parked in his lot, I understood why.

We need to make a structural shift in our energy economy. Ultimately, we need to move our entire fleet to plug-in electric cars. The only way to get from here to there is to start now with a price signal that will force the change.

Barack Obama had the courage to tell voters that the McCain-Clinton summer gas-giveaway plan was a fraud. Wouldn’t it be amazing if he took the next step and put the right plan before the American people? Wouldn’t that just be amazing?

The Alpha Geeks

By DAVID BROOKS
In 1950, Dr. Seuss published a book called “If I Ran the Zoo.” It contained the sentence: “I’ll sail to Ka-Troo, and bring back an IT-KUTCH, a PREEP, and a PROO, a NERKLE, a NERD, and a SEERSUCKER, too!” According to the psychologist David Anderegg, that’s believed to be the first printed use of the word “nerd” in modern English.

The next year, Newsweek noticed that nerd was being used in Detroit as a substitute for “square.” But, as Ander-egg writes in his book, “Nerds,” the term didn’t really blossom onto mass consciousness until The Fonz used it in “Happy Days” in the mid- to late-1970s. And thus began what you might call the ascent of nerdism in modern America.

At first, a nerd was a geek with better grades. The word described a high-school or college outcast who was persecuted by the jocks, preps, frat boys and sorority sisters. Nerds had their own heroes (Stan Lee of comic book fame), their own vocations (Dungeons & Dragons), their own religion (supplied by George Lucas and “Star Wars”) and their own skill sets (tech support). But even as “Revenge of the Nerds” was gracing the nation’s movie screens, a different version of nerd-dom was percolating through popular culture. Elvis Costello and The Talking Heads’s David Byrne popularized a cool geek style that’s led to Moby, Weezer, Vampire Weekend and even self-styled “nerdcore” rock and geeksta rappers.

The future historians of the nerd ascendancy will likely note that the great empowerment phase began in the 1980s with the rise of Microsoft and the digital economy. Nerds began making large amounts of money and acquired economic credibility, the seedbed of social prestige. The information revolution produced a parade of highly confident nerd moguls — Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Larry Page and Sergey Brin and so on.

Among adults, the words “geek” and “nerd” exchanged status positions. A nerd was still socially tainted, but geekdom acquired its own cool counterculture. A geek possessed a certain passion for specialized knowledge, but also a high degree of cultural awareness and poise that a nerd lacked.

Geeks not only rebelled against jocks, but they distinguished themselves from alienated and self-pitying outsiders who wept with recognition when they read “Catcher in the Rye.” If Holden Caulfield was the sensitive loner from the age of nerd oppression, then Harry Potter was the magical leader in the age of geek empowerment.

But the biggest change was not Silicon Valley itself. Rather, the new technology created a range of mental playgrounds where the new geeks could display their cultural capital. The jock can shine on the football field, but the geeks can display their supple sensibilities and well-modulated emotions on their Facebook pages, blogs, text messages and Twitter feeds. Now there are armies of designers, researchers, media mavens and other cultural producers with a talent for whimsical self-mockery, arcane social references and late-night analysis.

They can visit eclectic sites like Kottke.org and Cool Hunting, experiment with fonts, admire Stewart Brand and Lawrence Lessig and join social-networking communities with ironical names. They’ve created a new definition of what it means to be cool, a definition that leaves out the talents of the jocks, the M.B.A.-types and the less educated. In “The Laws of Cool,” Alan Liu writes: “Cool is a feeling for information.” When someone has that dexterity, you know it.

Tina Fey, who once was on the cover of Geek Monthly magazine, has emerged as a symbol of the geek who grows into a swan. There is now a cool geek fashion style, which can be found on shopping sites all over the Web (think Japanese sneakers and text-laden T-shirts). Schwinn now makes a retro-looking Sid/Nancy bicycle, which is sweet and clunky even though it has a faux-angry name. There are now millions of educated-class types guided by geek manners and status rules.

The news that being a geek is cool has apparently not permeated either junior high schools or the Republican Party. George Bush plays an interesting role in the tale of nerd ascent. With his professed disdain for intellectual things, he’s energized and alienated the entire geek cohort, and with it most college-educated Americans under 30. Newly militant, geeks are more coherent and active than they might otherwise be.

Barack Obama has become the Prince Caspian of the iPhone hordes. They honor him with videos and posters that combine aesthetic mastery with unabashed hero-worship. People in the 1950s used to earnestly debate the role of the intellectual in modern politics. But the Lionel Trilling authority-figure has been displaced by the mass class of blog-writing culture producers.

So, in a relatively short period of time, the social structure has flipped. For as it is written, the last shall be first and the geek shall inherit the earth.

Boston’s 15th Annual EarthFest

Boston’s 15th annual Earth Fest will be held on Saturday, May 24 2008 at the Charles River Esplanade.

This annual event is presented by Whole Foods Market and Radio 92.9 and is free to the public. “EarthFest is a celebration for the Earth featuring great music, family-friendly activities and showcase a host of environmentally friendly products and non-profit organizations. Produced in conjunction with the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, the event draws more than 100,000 along the banks of the Charles at The DCR Hatch Shell.”The Main Stage artists this year include Cake, Cracker, The English Beat, and BoDeans.

Bring a blanket, bring a chair, see you there!

Boston’s Run to Remember 2008

On Saturday May 24th and Sunday May 25th The Boston Police Department and Boston Police Runner's Club will hold the fourth running of Boston's Run to Remember.

The “Run to Remember” is held in honor of Massachusetts law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty. This event is a two day run (one 5 mile road race and one half marathon) in celebration of the fallen officer’s lives as well as a show of respect for their ultimate sacrifice.

The net proceeds benefit Kids At Risk Programs throughout the City of Boston. “Kids At Risk Programs provide safe and nurturing environments encouraging inner city youths to make healthy choices and an alternative to gangs and acts leading to incarceration.” Since 1994, over $500,000 has been raised funding two primary programs for youths:

- Boys and Girls Club Memberships, YMCAs and other after school programs.
- Summer programs and camps for over 600 youths annually.

Join thousands of runners for the fourth annual Run to Remember. This 5-mile road race and half marathon runs through historic downtown Boston will be held in honor of the men and women killed in the line of duty. The event will not only will celebrate their lives, all proceeds from the run will go to benefit Kids at Risk programs in the city. All inquiries into this event can be directed to info@bostonsruntoremember.org

AnswerTips

AnswerTips is a very useful tool that is integrated into this web page and allows readers look up any word or phrase for the best explanation or definition on the web. When a user double-clicks any word a small pop-up window appears with an AnswerTip, which is simply an explanation of the word or phrase. Go ahead, double click: Boston.

For bloggers, this is great because its keeps your visitors (read: you) from wandering your page onto outbound links when looking for information. To learn how to use AnswerTips and to enable it for your blog check out their Blogger Portal.

The Power of Green

In January 2006, NYT Op-Ed Columnist Thomas Friedman wrote The New Red, White and Blue where he asserted “living green is not just a "personal virtue," it's a national security imperative.” He went on to argue: “we need a president and a Congress with the guts not just to invade Iraq, but to also impose a gasoline tax and inspire conservation at home. That takes a real energy policy with long-term incentives for renewable energy - wind, solar, biofuels - rather than the welfare-for-oil-companies-and-special-interests that masqueraded last year as an energy bill.”

Near two and a half years later Mr. Friedman is still pushing on. Here is an excerpt from his article The Power of Green:

“One day Iraq, our post-9/11 trauma and the divisiveness of the Bush years will all be behind us — and America will need, and want, to get its groove back. We will need to find a way to reknit America at home, reconnect America abroad and restore America to its natural place in the global order — as the beacon of progress, hope and inspiration. I have an idea how. It’s called “green.”

In the world of ideas, to name something is to own it. If you can name an issue, you can own the issue. One thing that always struck me about the term “green” was the degree to which, for so many years, it was defined by its opponents — by the people who wanted to disparage it. And they defined it as “liberal,” “tree-hugging,” “sissy,” “girlie-man,” “unpatriotic,” “vaguely French.”

Well, I want to rename “green.” I want to rename it geostrategic, geoeconomic, capitalistic and patriotic. I want to do that because I think that living, working, designing, manufacturing and projecting America in a green way can be the basis of a new unifying political movement for the 21st century. A redefined, broader and more muscular green ideology is not meant to trump the traditional Republican and Democratic agendas but rather to bridge them when it comes to addressing the three major issues facing every American today: jobs, temperature and terrorism.

How do our kids compete in a flatter world? How do they thrive in a warmer world? How do they survive in a more dangerous world? Those are, in a nutshell, the big questions facing America at the dawn of the 21st century. But these problems are so large in scale that they can only be effectively addressed by an America with 50 green states — not an America divided between red and blue states.

Because a new green ideology, properly defined, has the power to mobilize liberals and conservatives, evangelicals and atheists, big business and environmentalists around an agenda that can both pull us together and propel us forward. That’s why I say: We don’t just need the first black president. We need the first green president. We don’t just need the first woman president. We need the first environmental president. We don’t just need a president who has been toughened by years as a prisoner of war but a president who is tough enough to level with the American people about the profound economic, geopolitical and climate threats posed by our addiction to oil — and to offer a real plan to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.”

As we enter 2009, we still find ourselves in trouble, at home and abroad. We are in trouble because we have had poor leadership. We have an opportunity to change the course and get our grove back. I’m with Tom: “real patriots, real advocates of spreading democracy around the world, live green. Green is the new red, white and blue.”

Thomas L. Friedman is a columnist for The New York Times specializing in foreign affairs. Picture: Ian Davenport

It's still the economy, stupid.

James Carville, former political strategist for Bill Clinton during the 1992 presidential campaign against George H.W. Bush, originally coined the term “The economy, stupid”. At that time, George H.W. was the strong favorite in the race for the White House until the (Bill) Clinton campaign adopted messaging that echoed the public’s fears of the economic slowdown caused by the stock market collapse on Black Monday in October 1987, and proven in the actual recessions in 1990 and 1991. Why was George H.W. Bush way ahead early in the polls? Because he was seen as having more experience with national security.

It's still the economy, stupid. "From concerns about the economy and the war in Iraq to the perennial topics of Social Security and the health care system, a range of issues are guiding this year's presidential race," CNN.com goes on to list the issues and show the poll results. Many of the polls suggest that the most important, if not the main, issue Americans care about is the economy.

So, we know the economy is a concern and we know the credit crisis is almost certainly the biggest concern lately. But, what exactly is the problem? The problem is that we don’t know where the problems are. As the Economist put it: “There is still vast uncertainty about how much toxic debt remains, and who owns it. This has led banks to hoard money and call in loans.” Until the bad investments are uncovered we don’t know of their existence and banks will remain very conservative. This unknown has created a panic on Wall Street and caused sever cutbacks, speculation and major stock fluctuations over the few months.

One thing is certain, confidence is key and the current uncertainty will certainly lead to further bumps in the road. Hold on and strap in because its still the economy, stupid.