New Yorker on Complicated Game of Measuring Carbon Footprint

Nice piece looks at the new Scarlet A - having an excessive carbon footprint, whether on the individual or corporate level. This piece looks at how complex though it is to accurately measure something's carbon wastefulness.

"Should the carbon label on a jar of peanut butter include the emissions caused by the fertilizer, calcium, and potassium applied to the original crop of peanuts? What about the energy used to boil the peanuts once they have been harvested, or to mold the jar and print the labels? Seen this way, carbon costs multiply rapidly. A few months ago, scientists at the Stockholm Environment Institute reported that the carbon footprint of Christmas—including food, travel, lighting, and gifts—was six hundred and fifty kilograms per person. That is as much, they estimated, as the weight of “one thousand Christmas puddings” for every resident of England."

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/02/25/080225fa_fact_specter

IAMS Festival 2008

InterAmerican Magnet School, a diverse public school and a leader in dual-language instruction, held its annual Fiesta Cultural March 27, 2008. Here is a slide show on the event. Enjoy!

http://www.webng.com/Gabilondo/iams%20slideshow/IAMS%20test/

Curitiba Exhibit + Cafe Igarai Artwork Up At Metropolis Cafe in Edgewater

Invitation for Metropolis Cafe
Sunday, April 6, 6:30pm to 8:00pm

Dear friends,
We are happy to invite you for the opening of an exciting exhibit at Metropolis Café in Chicago, this Sunday, April 6, 2008, from 6:30pm to 8:00 pm.

Address: 1039 W. Granville Ave, Chicago, phone: 773 -764 0400
site: www.metropoliscoffee.com

The exhibit is about Sustainability in Brazil: a rural and an urban project.
The theme of the rural project is crafts with coffee as a theme by the group Café Igarai.
The theme of the urban project is Curitiba, a city that is a model of sustainability.
Below you will find more detailed information about the two joint exhibits.

Sustainability in Rural Brazil
Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza – an organic coffee farm
Mococa – Sao Paulo

Cafe Igarai is a project designed first for the women who live at Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza, which grew into the neighboring village of Igarai. The women work in the coffee fields but that takes only 4 to 5 months of the year. So the project has the purpose of giving them another source of income. The theme of their embroidery is coffee. They were encouraged to draw what they see, their working environment: coffee trees, beans, cups, terraces, etc. The women are descendants of Italian immigrants so embroidery is very much part of their culture. They knew mostly only cross stitches when they started, but they had a natural talent for learning very fast all the new stitches they were taught.

The exhibit was designed to show and tell who these women are and how they started. We can see their faces, read a little about them. At the bottom of the banners are the original exams at the end of their training course: the new stitches they learned. The embroidered pictures that are for sale for $150.00 are a way to fundraise for them. The fabrics were natural dyed, another of their new skills, and all designs are theirs. Highlighting the importance of original design, natural dyeing and elaborate embroidery and crochet as a means of expression, as well as coffee as a theme is important to encourage them to evolve in a way that supports the development or their own identity. The prices of other items range from $9.00 to $28.00.

Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza sells its gourmet organic coffee to Metropolis Café.
See www.fafbrazil.com and www.igarai.blogspot.com

"Sustainability in the Big City:
What Chicago Can Learn From Curitiba"

This exhibit is an overview of the sustainable city of Curitiba in southern Brazil and lessons it offers our own environmental efforts here in Chicago. Curitiba has been at the forefront in urban sustainability for more than 30 years with outstanding policies in transit-oriented development and bus rapid transit (BRT), sustainable zoning, green space, architecture preservation, affordable housing, recycling and environmental education. This project was funded by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in Architecture and is posted on the Center for Neighborhood Technology's web site. For more information contact Carmen Vidal-Hallett, LEED AP, International Associate AIA at cvidalhallett@gmail.com.

http://www.fafbrasil.com/fafbr/ip.asp?op=C-Metropolis&sc=C&m=xC00200Programs&lg=E

Lessons from South America

The Center for Neighborhood Technology just posted our Curitiba panels on their website (www.cnt.org). The 12 panels, which Carmen and I researched and photographed with support from the Graham Foundation, are all up on the CNT blog at http://info.cnt.org/~annette/Curitiba.pdf. Check the exhibit out - it's an exploration into a city that is trying to infuse sustainability into all it does and also not afraid to engage citizens as participants in that effort. Karen Girolami Callam helped us with editing. Mike and David Tanimura with design and layout. Adriana Lasso-Jimenez with graphic design. Steve Perkins of CNT with content editing. And thanks to Bill McKibben for his enlightening work on Curitiba.

Chicago To Go Dark This Saturday

Gimmicky? Yeah, sure. But a good exercise and way to take collective action to illustrate how excessively we use electricity. In recent years many of our household appliances have gotten much more energy efficient - but at the same time we now own many more and keep lots of them plugged in all night and day. Here's a description of what's up - led by the Windy City - for Sat. March 29: http://afreshsqueeze.com/chicago/articleDtl.php?id=47cef0872bb82.

Rain Garden in March

Here's a pic of the garden we've created at home in Edgewater. Can't wait to start planting again!

Motown Blazes Way in Teen Journalism + The Environment

How do you get urban teens interested in journalism? And to make it an even taller order – in environmental journalism, math and science?

We can all learn from what they’re doing in Detroit. The lessons drawn from the 3rd annual city-wide high school journalism conference (“Steroids, Makeup and Polar Bears: Journalism and the Environment”) that took place Wed. Feb. 27 read like a How To:

* First, invite some 200 DPS students and their journalism advisors/chaperones to take a day away from school
* Host the event at the very impressive Detroit Zoo, which has a great educational facility and interactive exhibits and an amazing array of guest ‘speakers’ from amphibians of all kinds to polar bears and arctic foxes
* Ask a group of high energy experts to organize and manage the program. In this case, vision and leadership came from committed people like Jim Detjen (director of Michigan StateUniversity’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism), Cheryl Pell (director of the Michigan Interscholastic Press Association) and Emilia Askari of the Detroit Free Press
* Shape the agenda around topics that are relevant and news worthy to teen reporters, such as - steroids use, environmental justice, the dangers of make up, global warming and teen depression
* Invite local anchors like Carolyn Clifford and meteorologist Andrew Humphrey to provide truly inspirational opening remarks
* Ask eager young reporters like Chris Lau and Kirkland Crawford of the Detroit Free Press (who aren’t that far removed from high school themselves) to moderate sessions
* Oh, and finally have the whole thing piggyback on the steady coaching and nurturing of local talent by the likes of Erin Hill of the Detroit Free Press who heads the newspaper's inspired high school journalism initiative

Then add the energy, curiosity and giddiness of more than 200 high school students and you’ve got the mix for a winner. The high points of such an event are numerous but one stood out for me. At the end of his talk meteorologist Humphrey asked how many of the seniors in the audience were registered to vote. He then opened his bag and had voter registration forms distributed to all those that weren't.

Successful youth journalism programs like this are, after all, about much more than journalism alone. They're about inspiring young minds and opening up career possibilities but also about kick-starting interest in our communities and country and civic participation in our democratic society.

But what a great place to start.