30 days to Copenhagen

The Barcelona Climate Talks, the last international climate meeting before the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen are concluded. It hasn’t been an smooth ride for sure. This is the final Press Briefing by UNFCCC(*) exec. secretary Ivo de Boer:

(*) UNFCCC: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

Beauty of the moment

Indian Summer 2009 in the Village

Docu @ The Dome: Liquid Assets

Another Green Film Night sponsored by ACE. The venue this time will be The Dome in Rosslyn (former Newseum and future Arlington Culture Center) and the Film: Liquid Assets, a documentary that tells the story of essential infrastructure systems: Water, Wastewater and Stormwater.

Screening: Monday, October 19, 7:00 p.m. at the DOME in Rosslyn, 1101 Wilson Blvd, 22209.

Worth a Nobel prize

Elinor Ostrom [1], Nobel Prize for Economics 2009, gives her take on how to achieve sustainable development and go beyond the tragedy of the commons. Enjoy:

Flight of the Monarchs

Beautiful Monarch Butterflies, this evening in the Prairie Wildflower circle of the H-Courtyard

[slide show]

It’s about oil. Not the salad kind.

“Author Peter Maass has spent eight years trying to understand the politics and economy of oil production across the globe. The result is his new book, Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil, in which Maass tries to explain what we do for oil and what oil does to us. As you’ll hear in his interview with anchor Jeb Sharp, it’s not a pretty picture.”

Listen to a short interview with Maas about the book on PRI’s The World.

Ivy-league lawns go organic (how about us?)

© New York Times

And very smartly, cost effective and successfully so. On the first 25 acres of Harvard University lawns, compost and compost tea not only produce a greener green but also a definitely higher quality, healthy lawn compared to the areas treated with never ending cycles of aggressive fertilizer and pesticide applications.  While discussing our lawn problems, we have heard from many sources that big properties can’t really afford organic lawn-keeping. And if they can, then the results will be mediocre at best.

Friday afternoon

garden and cosmos | running the fire [M09] | shutterspeed and aperture

projection [*]| life on mars

The seductive elegance of public transportation

© wikipedia.org

Yesterday I had a long conversation with a critic of the Columbia Pike Streetcar [Pike Transit] project. We exchanged salvos of figures and talked about lots of details. It was impressive however to observe how such a focus on single “trees” made us both literally oblivious of the “forest”. A while later,

Don’t take your car to work today! (please!)

Sep. 22 : Car free in metroDC | Arlington’s car free diet | Metro: Trip Planner | Maps: Rail & Bus | Schedules | ART: Map & Schedules | Ridesharing | BIKE Arlington | International Car Free Day |

If we all (DC metro) left our car at home today, then “by the end of that day: The air would be free of 60,000 tons of CO2 and 238 tons of other chemical byproducts created when a spark meets gasoline. Seven million gallons of gasoline would have been preserved at a savings of about $18.5 million. Several hundred people would have avoided those close encounters of the worst kind, the 244 daily traffic crashes. One hundred twenty-two people wouldn’t end the day injured. And at least one person (statistically, 1.19 persons) wouldn’t have died in a car crash” (Washington Post, Sep. 20, 2009)

TAKE THE PLEDGE TO BE CAR FREE TODAY

Connecting People: a look over that pond.

Try Transit-week has started today. And tomorrow, Sep. 22, is CAR FREE DAY…. which is like taking the relay from the European Mobility Week that will be ending tomorrow. A nice idea overseas is the continent-wide competition between cities to provide alternative means of transportation to their citizens. This is how a finalist’s bid-video looks like: The city of Almada is just a drive over the bridge from the portuguese capital Lisbon (this sounds familiar doesn’t it?):  

Check also this year’s (08 submissions) other finalists:

Try Transit this week!

September 21-15 is the second Virginia-wide “Try-Transit-Week“, sponsored by the VA Department of Rail and Public Transportation: “During Try Transit Week, Virginians are encouraged to stop driving alone and try one of the variety of transit options available such as bus and rail service, carpools, vanpools or telework.” This year, If you take the pledge to try public transportation you can win a year long free pass to use the transit service of your choice.  So, where will you go ?

Smart as in Sustainable.

An IEEE video on the need to advance on the update of our current national power grid with smart grid technology:

In the meanwhile, Dominion is investing $600 M in

Citizens from more than 90 nations

(*)

Tree Canopy Fund Awards AV 12 Trees

© Robert O'Brien, www.tamu.edu

Grounds and ERC Seek Tree Stewards!

Thanks to a grant from the Tree Canopy Fund (TCF), which aims to restore and increase the county’s tree cover, 12 trees valued at $1,855 will put down roots in Arlington Village this fall or winter. The TCF will also cover the cost of planting the trees, estimated to be approximately as much as the trees themselves. Arlington Village needs only to care for the trees, especially in times of drought. Grounds and ERC invite interested Villagers to inquire about tree stewardship to complement our existing grounds maintenance.

Trees to be planted include Hybrid Elm, Sourwood, Black Gum, Yellowwood, Scarlet Oak, Red Bud, and Autumn Brilliance Serviceberry. Ten of the trees will be approximately 1 ¾” to 2” caliper (trunk diameter measured 6” from the soil). Two others will measure 8 to 10 feet tall.

S|L stands for Street Light!

Have you noticed white sprayed circles marked with S|L along S. Edgewood St., 16thSt. S and S Barton St.? Well yes, they are coming: New Street Lights! We have talked about them some time ago and we have had a presentation at a board meeting almost a year ago. Past July the Arlington County Board approved to fund $3.3 million worth of projects proposed by the Neighborhood Conservation Advisory Commission within our County’s Neighborhood Conservation Program. The Columbia Heights Streetlight project was one part of this with a cost of $357,000. The new “Carlyle” lights will replace the old “Colonials” we have today. No doubt, this is an improvement of the overall appearance of our streets. It’s also obvious that this public investment is almost exclusively to the benefit of our AV residents.

Women’s Garden Cycles: Faces from the New Farm

3 intrepid women on a three month long bike ride from Washington DC to Montreal; aler-retour: 2000 miles [blog]. They went out to visit and discover the new local and community supported agriculture. The ACE sponsored Green Film Series at the Shirlington Public Library will be showing their film “Faces from the New Farm”, on Aug. 31, 7pm. Admission is free.

Is your bike registered with AV ?

Admin says that it will begin to remove unregistered bikes from the bike storage room after Aug. 31.

Please check that your bike is registered with AV and carries the green oval sticker with a number on it. If in doubt, call the office: 703-920-1000

Big Apple’s elevated meadows

NYC, Meatpacking District, Metro 14th St, walk west, you can’t miss it: The High Line… Lawn? … manicured hedges, liriopes, and nandinas?… it all seemed so terribly outdated and tired after an evening walk along the most beautiful native, wild meadows I’ve ever seen in a city. I took some photos, there are hundreds more. Food for thought walking down S Edgewood St. this evening.

[Climate] Change and human behavior

© 2009, apa.org

A few weeks ago we were writing about the Global Warming’s Six Americas. The discussion was about how perceptions of global warming are stratified  across the American population. Those who read the report may have noticed the relative absence of conventional, segmentation criteria like “income” or “level of education”. Environmentally alarmed citizens could be as well educated or equally well off as climate change skeptics. Instead, other, far less “clear cut”, criteria like personal beliefs, attitudes and perceptions about threat and time seemed to be dominating the demographics. Now, the American Psychological Association (APA) comes to shed more light on how we perceive climate change (and for that matter, most types of ‘change’) focusing on human behavior. The APA’s report entitled: Psychology and Global Change: Addressing a Multi-faceted Phenomenon and Set of Challenges was released yesterday.

Heavy digging in neighboring Country Club

Residents along our property limit to the Army Navy Country Club and many pool users are complaining about loud construction noise, removal of trees and heavy dirt moving and terrain regrading going on the neighboring Country Club property. We have some information about what is happening: The golf course is being expanded and re-landscaped for quite some time (2 years) now. This year the project reached our fence. Unfortunately trees had to be taken down because they cast shade on the turf or are otherwise considered an obstruction.

btw… about the turf

Yes, it’s Arlington Village’s ad infinitum revolving discussion focus: the dear turf. I stumbled upon these 21 lawn care tips from Paul Tukey, a recognized expert. Nothing you haven’t read about before but put together and summarized very nicely. Check slide Nr. 10 for advice on how to deal with bare spots.

Also: A trailer for the upcoming documentary “A Chemical Reaction” about how Hudson, Quebec, Canada, has become the first town in North America to ban common lawn and garden pesticides.

In search of viable solutions II: The Sun

“Within 6 hours deserts receive more energy from the sun than humankind consumes within a year” [Dr. Gerhard Knies]

If Dr. Knies got his math right (no doubts sofar) then the tiny red square on the map represents the area required to collect the solar energy needed to satisfy global yearly power demand. With existing solar-thermal power generation technologies!

In search of viable solutions I : The Wind

Talking about alternative and renewable energy resources environmentalists often tend to be cautious and “realistic” with respect to the reach of their proposals. The sheer magnitude of the global energy demand is indeed intimidating for somebody with “just a bunch of wind turbines” in his portfolio.

Thereby the true potential of wind power generation is grossly underestimated. A recent paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science reveals astonishing facts:

Tranquility base here

NASA | 1969