Steve signs the Kyoto Protocol

"I promise to meet Kyoto standards or buy carbon offsets!"

 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that the level of greenhouse gas emissions in 1990 was adequate for sustaining lifesystems on this planet. Due to improved carbon emissions accounting individuals like myself can now be a part of the Kyoto Protocol.


Sweet spankin’ sustainability Batman, I’ve joined the ranks of the Kyotoers. No longer do I have to parade around in uncertainty wondering if I’m an envirobaron. We’ve reached a point in our civilization where I can now pretty accurately gauge how much greenhouse gasses I am personally responsible for emitting.

By the end of this year, I will have emitted around 11,000 pounds of carbon dioxide according to an average of National Geographic’s and Terrapass’ carbon calculators. (NG had me at 10,018 and Terrapass had me at 12,000 pounds of CO₂ released this year.) That isn’t great, but it’s not too shabby for an aspiring environmentalist.

According to my calculations last month, I found that last year individuals emitted around 15,418 pounds of carbon dioxide on average and the acceptable level of CO₂ emissions was around 6,424. So with the global population steadily increasing I figured that people could safely emit around 6,000 pounds of carbon this year.

Obviously I didn’t make that target, however, I did purchase 5,000 pounds of carbon credits to make up for my overage. In an ideal world, we wouldn’t have to purchase carbon credits. Our existing infrastructure would allow us to live our lives as close to carbon neutral as possible, but because our energy infrastructure is assy and ailing, purchasing carbon credits are a good start for offsetting greenhouse gas emissions in the future.

How carbon credits work: You spend money today to purchase green infrastructure projects for the future. For example, I gave my money to the company, Terrapass, so that it could divvy up my contribution into the various clean energy projects it provides capital for in the future. Like a microfinancing scheme, a bunch of people pool money together to purchase or invest in a good. Under the leadership of Terrapass a bunch of people and I are investing in greenhouse gas trapping projects or clean energy projects that will exist in the future.

Terrapass sells credits in 1,000 pound increments for $5.95. To be honest, that price tag seems a bit low and arbitrary to me, but how do you know? At the moment I’m taking a small leap of faith, assuming the money truly gets funneled to the places it’s supposed to get funneled to and that the carbon credit prices are fair and logical.

One day we will live in a world where there is a global cap and trade, or carbon credit market, where prices will fluctuate depending on supply and demand. Until that day comes, voluntary carbon purchasing for venture capital projects will have to do for me.

Fun Fact: “Between 1990 and 2006 Sweden cut its carbon emissions by 9%, largely exceeding the target set by the Kyoto Protocol, while enjoying economic growth of 44% in fixed prices.  

One step closer to perfect information

Image obtained from treehugger.com

Sometimes I get the feeling that I’m operating in a closed system. Like there’s an upper bound on the amount of mental or physical resources I can devote toward the seemingly limitless goals and aspirations that flood my everyday life. It’s like you can grasp your own glass ceiling and you want to shatter it to bits, but you’re worried that your world will shatter with it. Or worse, you’re ready to shatter your world and aggrandize, but you’re not sure how. 

This is what the music binge is for. You listen to a song you like on Pandora, type the name in YouTube, paste the link in Zamzar, and then voila you have a sonic boom of expression waiting in your email inbox. Do it twenty times over, and you’ve got the match, the spark, the chitty and bang, bang of a verifiable  personal renaissance.

I love the music binge. It shakes up my present and gives old hopes a new spin. The current hope is a quest for perfect information, but it starts small with my everyday choices. I want to be able to understand what it means to dry clothes on a clothesline instead of a dryer, to take the bus instead of driving, to compost instead of throwing away biodegradables, etc. Screw the abstract numbers, I need tangible figures that an everyday Steve can grasp. 

Okay. Carbon dioxide emissions are a good start. I did a little research to figure out how much carbon dioxide I can responsibly emit each year to be able coexist in our natural heritage.

I reasoned that by taking the total amount of environmentally acceptable carbon emissions and dividing them by the global population it would yield the acceptable amount of carbon emissions per person. I found out that last year every human being should’ve emitted around 6,424 lbs. of carbon. (People actually emitted around 15,418 lbs. on average.) To see the math, click here. 

In honor of Thanksgiving, I have a metric to be thankful for. The world speaks in pounds of carbon dioxide and it turns out when cars burn one gallon of gasoline it releases about 20 lbs. My Annabel drives about 25 miles per gallon. By checking my trusty driving log I see that I’ve driven about 5,252.6 miles. To date I’ve burned about 4,202.8 pounds of carbon. To see the math, click here.

 

This is good news for our planet because I drive a lot of miles to see family, friends, and to bolster quality leisure time. I haven't crashed through the 6,424 pound average yet, so I think it would be very possible to emit carbon at the responsible environmental levels provided in the Kyoto Protocol.

I kind of want to hug a koala or high five a polar bear, but this is only a small step. I know that I have a long way in my quest to better understand how each of my habits plays into my overall carbon footprint. I know that transportation is only a portion of my energy budget, however, this knowledge is taking me in a direction that I like. The closer I get toward perfect information, the sooner I can get better, freer, and chart a course to true life, liberty and happiness. 

Carbon and population figures were given by the following websites:

http://www.thinkglobalgreen.org/CARBONDIOXIDE.html

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762181.html

Thus began the Financial Crisis

I recommend the first 8 pages.

Never have I had a bulls-eye appear so readily, nor have I been so misinformed. I’m beginning to wrap my head around the origins of the financial crisis, after I found out something pretty enlightening. Check this out:

Today Bill Clinton is synonymous with deregulation. He signed the Financial Services Modernization Act into law, which effectively repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, a law that prevented commercial banks from merging with investment banks. 

The truth of the matter is Bill Clinton was hamstrung when he signed the Act. Earlier in his presidency he rebuffed an attempt to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act, and he was always against deregulation. 

However, on April 6, 1998, Citicorp took the Glass-Steagall Act into its own hands. Citicorps announced its merger with Traveler’s Insurance to become Citigroup, the largest financial conglomerate in the world. It was empowered to sell securities, take deposits, make loans, underwrite stocks, sell insurance, and operate an enormous variety of financial activities, directly violating the Glass-Steagall Act. 

Citicorp knew that it was in violation of the Act when it merged with Traveler’s Insurance, yet it merged anyway because of a loophole. The new Citigroup was allowed a five-year window for the law to change or be repealed.

It was after this merger where the most powerful banking lobbies in the country bombarded politicians with millions of dollars’ worth of contributions. They seduced Congress and won. 

In November 1999, the necessary bills were passed 54-44 in the Senate and 343-86 in the House. In the ensuing days the final bipartisan bill moved through the Senate, 90-8 and the House, 362-57. Those margins made it veto proof. 

Even if President Clinton wanted to stop the legislation, we would have gotten overrun by Congress. I still think he should have vetoed the damn thing anyway to exonerate himself, yet we’d be in trouble either way.

I highly recommend reading “A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Lehman Brothers.” I haven’t read much of it yet, but it’s elucidated a festeloon’s worth already. 

Also, I’m new to this game, but I can’t help the feeling that a collapse round two is coming our way. I hope that I’m wrong, but we when I look at the recent bankruptcy of MF Global and its criminal ledger level, and note the impending collapse of Italy and Greece, I see blustery weather coming straight towards us.  

I personally believe we don’t have the kind of political system anymore that could fix an economic downturn. I say this because I understand that money buys policy in this nation. Money will probably continue to do so until the Supreme Court’s decision for permitting unlimited campaign contributions is reversed. 

Just a question, do any of you loyal blog readers know anything about purchasing gold? Not investing in it, but actually buying the real thing.

P.S. I know this is an environmental blog, and I will get back to that soon. This just blew my hair back and I felt like sharing. Kind sentiment for kind people.

Appalachia brings in the year!

The Appalachian Trail stretches for 2,181 miles and is within 550 miles of two-thirds of the US population. It is on this trail where Pomp, Sacagawea's firstborn son invented bowling.



Ostensibly it’s about the exercise, making an event out of a new hike. But the reality is, I go hiking to breathe again. Where the clutches of man are few and far between, I feel my senses wake up. The deleterious ether that clouds my awareness somehow dissipates when I’m out there in the throes of beauty. 

But far better than reawakening my senses in an isolated Walden Pond sort of way, I shared my most recent hike along the Appalachian Trail with the woman I can’t stop thinking about. Through the course of our relationship, Ileana has come to be the glorious goofball who makes me laugh, the patient listener who seems to always find the right words to say, and an inexorable source of energy for me.

If you’re rolling your eyes over the mushy sentiment, then you can put on sunglasses, or wear two pirate eye patches, because I don’t want to see it. Ileana and I just celebrated our one year anniversary and it’s been a year filled with moments that I’ve spent my whole life searching for. 

She’s not only put up with my Gaia cravings like camping in December, my lack of an extant garbage can, my distaste for heat in the winter or air conditioning in the summer, she’s openly embraced the sentiment…she likes my eco-quirks, and for the record she might be more of an environmentalist than I am – I know this to be true when it comes to her ethical food purchasing. 

Vink visits, Mourning Wood, the trail's somber grove.

So, I left the Midwest a little over a year ago, and though I love and miss my family and the people to death, I will never fully miss the place. Highways and arterial byways carve up the flat landscape, while strip malls and poorly insulated dwellings rise along their dissections.  Where the land hasn’t been claimed by cement or residences, corn and soy trample over anything that once smacked of glorious untamed grassland. (Chicago’s an enjoyable exemption, but anyhow)

That’s not to say that there’s not sprawl or land use change out here, however, there are vast patches of untamed land relatively nearby where people like me can regain their breath.  And this past weekend, I breathed so vigorously that I realized, I could spend my life trying to defend and experience places like this. These wild spaces are where people build their dreams. It was here in the Shenandoah’s where I first found the unquenchable spark for adventure in my woman, where my best friend and I nearly scared each other senseless sharing ghost stories in the pitch black, and where I felt my happiness bubble go Sumo. 

I may never acquire the prescience to see the future before it unfolds, but it’s sure damn brilliant getting to enjoy the present in Gaia’s country with the woman I love.

Known for their communal spirit and their striking ability to be still in the presence of danger, blades of Shenandoah switch grass huddle together through the onslaught of wind, water, and sun scorch.

Ring around the Housie

 Starting in Lafayette Park, a band of good-natured individuals and I surrounded the White House to protest the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline. We rallied behind the fact that we were a significant portion of Barack Obama's base, and are optimistic at our chances of getting him to shut down the pipeline.

Thousands of my kind of people wrapped around the White House today, to raise their voices (and their posters) in opposition to the Keystone XL Pipeline. 

People could be heard chanting, “Hey Obama, We Don’t Want No Pipeline Drama,” and “Stop the Pipeline, Yes We Can.”

Joining in the latest saga of American Politics: Jobs vs. Justice, I protested by raising the question: “What would Sweden do?”

Basically, hoping to evoke a little humor and raise the question, “If the Swedes wouldn’t do it, then why should we?” I got a lot of laughs, six people stopped and spoke Swedish with me, I may be featured in two environmental blogs, but on a more important note, I got a taste of the fervor that is coursing through Americans lately. 

At the moment, I’m one of many who feels that social justice in our nation is being held in check by the dismal economy. The only thing any politician wants to talk about are positive economic indicators, like new jobs created or lower unemployment rates. Yet, there are people like me everywhere that are questioning the smoke screen of economic indicators. 

Today was so refreshing, because I was surrounded by thousands of people who were able to voice their opposition to indicators that only told one side of the story. In unison, we protested to bring down a vessel for dirty energy and we demanded that Obama reaffirm his support to his constituent base. 

See videos soon. I wish I had a Mac, because the videos would be up right now.

The Pipeline Picture

The pipeline would transport tar sands from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, creating somewhere in the realm of 6,000 jobs, according to Cardno Entrix, the contractor hired by the State Department to run the pipeline’s environmental review process. 

Yet environmentalists and people like me vehemently oppose this proposition, because the tar sand extraction process has extremely adverse ecological impacts. Tar Sands extraction requires the clear-cutting of Canadian forests and the refining process releases more carbon dioxide than traditional petroleum.

Farm bill not evil, what?

As a planet first kind of guy, I’ve always had my suspicions about the Farm Bill. I figured that Congress was using the bill as a tool to hand out transfer payments which disproportionately favored the lobbying powerhouses. I thought factory farms were making out like bandits at the expense of everyone else.

The truth is, that’s not really the case. When the 2008 farm bill expires next September, it will have doled out only 15 percent of its total appropriations to support growers of select commodities, and less than 1 percent on livestock or poultry (of which may be morally dubious).

The big ticket item of the 2008 farm bill, was the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), or Food Stamps, which will have consumed around 67 percent of the total appropriations included in the bill.

Despite the stigma and the harsh criticism about the Farm Bill propping up the undesirables of agriculture, appropriations numbers seem to portray a far less dramatic picture. If you’re interested in the numbers, check out this pdf (scroll to page 6).

The plight of the next farm bill is underway as of Friday and it may take about two weeks according to Environmental Blog Ecocentric.  The upcoming farm bill will offer $23 billion less in appropriations as the federal government tightens it belt to save $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years. 

They’ve occupied my hope

Occupy Chicago protesters rally for economic equality in Grant Park, the same spot where Obama delivered his '08 victory speech. Whether its hope, or hopelessness, we're in for an exciting ride.    

Visionaries, protesters make my world better, greener

I’m poor just like everybody else, but thanks to Groupon I’ve got my Sunday edition of the Washington Post. Thanks to net neutrality, I’ve got my free podcasts, and thanks to the world wide web, I have 24-7 access to liberty as it currently exists and transforms. But what I’m crazy thankful for now, are the visionaries that have led us to where we are at this moment:

Ali Tarhouni: University of Washington Economics Professor turned rebel finance minister who helped orchestrate the robbery of the Libyan National Bank and helped finance the Libyan revolution.

Julian Assange: The Australian ethical computer hacker and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks who exposed millions of classified documents after the launch of WikiLeaks.  

Anonymous: The loose band of hackers who commit honorable terrorism. They are the most notorious group of net activists who hack organizations, corporations and agencies that they deem debauched. They're the Web's bona fide Boondock Saints.  

And most of all, OccupyWall Street. Don’t let Time magazine, the Washington Post, or any other newspaper or periodical simplify them into a political movement. Occupy Wall Street is a band of individuals who are seeking a more effective society with a more egalitarian distribution of wealth. Their political orientation is irrelevant, but their message is resolute. Fed up with the economic disparities that have arisen from the social elites’ dominance of our political, economic, and earth systems, they will protest, unceasingly until justice is served. 

As an environmentalist in training, I see hope in their movement and in their trend. Once the corporate playing field is leveled or kept in check, lobbying power could greatly diminish. This could have all sorts of good environmental implications. Stronger regulation on CO₂ emissions, an actual domestic energy plan, who knows…

Occupy Wall Street is burgeoning and with Arab Spring in the back our minds rebellion seems way more possible today than at any point I can pull from in my lifetime. I can’t help shake the feeling that the fall of Gaddafi, could accelerate the disintegration of the US.

It’s scary to think that the United States as an entity could fail, or even to admit that the United States is failing. (Yet as an entity it could, and as an entity it is.) However, the essence of the United States will never fail. The essence of the United States is what is pushing Occupy Wall Street. The essence is what every American has the fortune of sensing: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

As our liberties have been stymied by the Patriot Act, the Supreme Court ruling, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Bailout, and have been exacerbated by an ineffective Congress and a dismal economy, Occupy Wall Street has become the vanguard of those usurped liberties. Since 9/11 our melting pot has become fervid and Occupy Wall Street could be just the ingredient we need to have everything boil over.

As an emotional being, I hope that the movement doesn’t get stolen by the democrats.  And as cities in the US and those around the world become occupied with protesters, hopefully justice will be served.

The reach of the oil juggernauts

Left: Hiding behind the National Environmental Policy Act, the State Department is outsourcing it's responsibility for a fair environmental review of the Keystone XL Pipeline proposal. The image is a screenshot of a comment I left for the State Department, to read it legibly scroll to the bottom of this post.

I know as a blogger you’re supposed to write about things you’ve done related to your blog’s theme. But for those of you like me who are eco-peripherals, sometimes my little victories are completely nugatory compared to the setbacks we face from the oil juggernauts. 

Right now it appears that the State Department is complicit in a scandal involving these oil juggoes.  The State Department has contracted the private company, Cardno Entrix to run the environmental review process for the Keystone XL pipeline, a proposed 1,700 mile pipeline bringing oil sands from northern Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico. The thing is, Cardno Entrix was recommended to the State Department by TransCanada, the company that is building the pipeline, according to an article in the New York Times.

Because of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which took effect in 1970, agencies are allowed hire outside contractors to perform required environmental impact studies. Yet, choosing Cardno Entrix to perform the impact study and run the environmental review process is a conflict of interest. 

Professor Oliver A. Houck, a law professor at Tulane University and an expert on NEPA, said to the N.Y. Times that Cardno Entrix should never have been selected to perform the environmental study on Keystone XL because of its relationship with TransCanada and the potential to garner more work involving the pipeline. 

To make matters more interesting, TransCanada’s chief Washington lobbyist, Paul Elliot, was a top official in Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign…

I highly recommend reading the New York Times article.

I wish I knew about all of this sooner. I found out Sunday night, that public comments on the Keystone XL Pipeline proposal were accepted until Sunday at midnight. I posted a comment as appears below, but I wish I could have gotten this info out to you loyal blog readers to comment as well. Though the comments don’t have a lot of bearing considering that they are directed to a Cardno Entrix email address. But here was my two-cents anyways: 

“Now that I know the State Department is complicit in contracting a client of TransCanada, I know how meaningless this comment is, however, I type it nonetheless.

Oil sands are not in the best interest of the citizens of the United States. Job creation is a meaningless endeavor if the jobs created damage our national social construct. 

This has gone too far, and it’s time that the President and Secretary of State that I voted for, shut the Keystone XL Pipeline down. Please don’t use the bad economy as an excuse to undermine our natural rights, especially the pursuit of happiness.”

Hanging my laundry in to dry

By using the Tiki Hut as a make-shift laundry lounge, I save $1.75 and about three kilowatt hours of energy every time I hang my clothes and avoid using the dryer.

There’s this scene in Lady and the Tramp where the animation cam zooms skyward and you see all these high rise apartments graciously shaking hands via clothes lines. It’s the night where Tramp is out courting his Lady.

Much in the same vein, I’m courting my quarters in my quarters. Wait what? What I’m trying to say is that every time I hang my clothes in my bedroom to dry, instead of using the clothes dryer, I save $1.75 and about 3 kilowatt hours of energy. That’s a noodle hooving, lip-smacking, good feeling (yep, still on Lady and the Tramp, the pasta kissing scene).

So in the glory and spirit of Monday, September 19, the day where I hung in my clothes in to dry, I’m going to honor my friend Dan Killacky who left me with his own moment of Zen:  

“Well, 'donkey' is 'burro' in spanish. and a little donkey is a burrito. in burritos there are beans, which are known as the magical fruit. magic in the middle ages often involved alchemy. in alchemy you try to convert various materials to make gold. so see, you're Golden! a Golden Ass! (i had to bring back the donkey)"

Please send Dan (dkillack@gmail.com) an email if you appreciate his friskiness, and remember that being green can save money and the environment.

We don't need jobs, we need joy

Orange vested kayak lady exemplifies the spirit of adventure that Americans will rally behind in the 2017 coup d'etat. Wild spats of good measure, leisurely pursuits, and a robot economy will guide the new American way of life.

It’s a sad time to be an American. You can’t vote for Obama in the next election if you look at the financial advisers he has appointed, the laundry list of promises he has yet to fulfill, or his overall cowardice in addressing a domestic energy plan. You can’t vote for Perry or Romney because their austerity measures will erode our already diminished tax base, resulting from Dubya’s tax cuts. 

Our nation’s staring down a 100 percent debt to GDP ratio, and both the liberal and conservative camps want to cut waste…I say cut it all. Let’s shake up the whole melting pot! They’re having some serious fun over there in Libya. You know, if we didn’t have to worry about fluffing up our resumes for jobs we don’t actually want by supporting an economy that’s chomping through mother nature, we could all live life well.

The UK’s got a wind turbine project in the works that will provide energy to over 700,000 homes. Think of how many tiki huts in Hawaii, dude ranches in Texas, or split-levels in Seattle we could energize with renewable energy. We could take all of our soon to be double-dip-recession-jobless-folk and turn them into the avant-green: heroes that use their brawn to create a new carbon free economy. As a glory perk, they will earn a share of renewable energy they’ve created with their labor power.  

Anyway, Obama’s going to lose the upcoming election because he’s trying to create jobs. Everyone knows that leisurely pursuits are far more fun and interesting than work, especially in this day and age. Who wants to work, when robots could be manning all of the mundane levers of society? What kid wants, or what parent wants to send their kid to a crummy city public school, when they could stream a top-tier education off the internet for free? 

We don’t need jobs we need exciting vacations, pursuits that push us to the limits of our mental faculties and physical capabilities. We don’t need to hump part-time or deplorable jobs for decent statistical standing. We need good people to stand behind good values, and we need a whole load of fun. Life is too short to spend slaving away in jobs yielding marginal personal growth or conquest. As a fulltime AmeriCorps “volunteer,” fully charged by draining your tax dollars, I will be running for benevolent eco-fascist in the wildly exciting 2017 coup d’etat. 

At gunpoint my Green Berets will force you to build solar, wind, and geothermal installations. With weapons pressed to your backs we will make you build a nationwide fiber optic infrastructure. You will be forced to have internet in your home. You will have to take free classes. You will pay for your greenhouse gas emissions and I will sneer and laugh diabolically as you suffer. 

Okay, time to study for the GRE, because I’ll need a master’s degree to find part-time work. Unfortunately, the robots and green energy needed for my subsistence do not yet exist and I must work.

Until 2017!

Head over heels out West

In beautiful Spokane, Washington, the residential High Street, overlooks a chasm of sheer beauty. Ears pop during scenic drives through this landscape.

The star smattered skyscape still sings to my soul. Less than a week ago I looked into the abyss and found nothing staring back at me. They neither guided nor misled, proffered nor quieted, steadfast and brilliant the cosmos just were, and so were we. John, his bride Teresa, Ileana and I were just fixed elements of a grand composition. Yet, sentient, aware, and alive, with eyes swimming through the endless sea of stars, a manifold of possibility unraveled.

Out there, under Gaia’s vibrant visage I could be anyone. James Cook crossing the Western Pacific, John Muir mobilizing Teddy Roosevelt to start the National Park System, or happy as a clam Steve Bert, present explorer of the West, avid dreamer, and lucky companion of the beautiful Ileana Vink.

It takes a place like Thompson Pass, in the company of Ileana’s godparents where everything gets thrown into perspective. No, our world is not yet carbon neutral. We still have a long way to go get there. I still am consuming energy at a level higher than most Europeans, but things have been trending in the right direction.

Solar technology is improving, Germany is moving off nuclear power, and the UK is en route to having enough wind turbines to power 700,000 homes.[1] In other news, the internet is still propelling justice, Libyans are nearly free from Qaddafi, and the Milky Way still shines with all of its history and might outside of the urban churn.

---

[1] World Changing: A User’s Guide for the 21^st Century

Big hopes, a little hike (a little vomit)

Greenbrier Learning Center's students stare at a grasshopper in the mitts of Master Naturalist Alonzo Abugattas. Grasshoppers will projectile vomit a brownish liquid when committing to their escapes.

There is no instruction manual on how to lead a symbiotic life. I find myself in a society that is packed with good souls, but derided by circumstance. Even if the wealthiest of us wanted to lead a carbon neutral, positive-impact life, it would require a time machine to transport us to a time where our electrical current flows from clean sources, our materials maintain their integrity as they are recycled for perpetuity, and our food nourishes us as well as our landscape.

Until the day where our survival off income becomes irrelevant, as solar powered wonder-bots take care of our subsistence and we spend our hours doing what our souls yearn for…sailing into the moonlight with the people we love, parachuting into gorgeous gorges, or walking the world to take in her resplendent beauty and countless founts of energy…Until that day, we have to scrape by as a civilization, pretending things like the beach houses and motorcycles we dream to buy could actually fill the void of longing for discovery and adventure, pounding at the nexus of each and every one of us.

While I scrape by, I remind myself that even though I am not an engineer for Vestas or Big Belly Solar, the Secretary of Energy, or the Administrator of the EPA, as a peon I can do little things. And other peons can do little things, and soon enough the minions can maneuver into masters living symbiotically with really cool stuff.

Anyway, as a peon for Greenbrier Learning Center I wanted to get our kids involved in some experiential learning. Because Long Branch Nature Center is la shiztatah and is extremely easy to work with, I facilitated an insect hike with a crazy-interesting naturalist named Alonzo, who turned out to be a human encyclopedia.

Our kids range from inconsolable pricks to the sweetest children on earth, so when seven out of the 18 kids on my team decided to defiantly abstain from the hike, I shrugged it off and was glad that the other kids truly seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Alonzo possessed extraordinary bug catching skills as well as a vast knowledge for all of the creatures he caught. He showed us how to yo-yo a jumping spider. You wait for the spider to hop, because as it does so it releases a thin strand of web. You can grab hold of the web and keep the spider air-bound as it makes its descent.

He caught a sand wasp in his net and then transferred it to a transparent tube, so that we could see one up close. During the process he explained how the sand wasp stung small insects and brought them into their underground holes they’d burrowed in the sand. After the sting, the small insects would be paralyzed and the wasp would lay her eggs inside of the insects. The eggs would hatch and the wasp larva would then feed on the insects. YUM!

My favorite thing that Alonzo showed the groups was grasshopper spittle. When grasshoppers are trapped, they vomit out the grass they’ve eaten as this murky brown liquid.

FINALLY!!!! THE FUTURE IS HAPPENING!!!

Underneath the streets of Masdar City, a completely carbon neutral transit system will transport people around this sustainable stronghold. Learn more about the electric personal rapid transit and Masdar City.

When we take in the glorious cityscapes provided in Star Wars, we all sort of dream that one day we could live in a place as futuristic as Cloud City, or as spirited as the arborescent villages of Endor.

There’s something magical about a place that doesn’t waver in the face of politics or compromise to slow churn of oligarchical enterprise. In tune with that magic, redoubtable engineering is now underway in the United Arab Emirates, on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi.

Surprisingly enough, an almost uninhabitable desert is on track to spawn the cradle of sustainable civilization – a place known as the Masdar City.

Check out the city’s progress!