Getting to Green

My first assumption was that this was produced unofficially, without the artist's knowledge or permission. I now think I was mistaken.

Obama's been traveling the country making "non-political" speeches about how this Congress can't accomplish anything, so he has to do whatever he can by executive action alone. Unfortunately, Congress seems about to push back against the President's characterization by doing something, and the something they're likely to do is pretty awful.

Consider these three words: alcoholic, chocoholic, shopaholic.

I've been looking at the EPA's 2009 report on Municipal Solid Waste in the United States. It's not a subject that gets most people's attention until the landfill threatens to overflow or the tipping fee goes up, by which time (of course) the major opportunity is already past.

On the Green Schools listserv, last week, there was some small discussion regarding how to coordinate sustainability efforts conducted by student groups with those undertaken by remunerated students, whether work/study or internship. Many campuses have paid student eco-reps, recycling coordinators and the like.

A correspondent recently sent me a link to a Washington Post column. It's a couple of weeks old now, but major news stories still have legs longer than that.

The future, for colleges and universities, will require that we re-establish the local ties that many of us have been moving away from for generations. Operating a campus sustainably -- simply administering, lighting, heating, and plumbing its buildings; feeding their occupants; providing necessary supplies and handling physical output streams -- will require that the institution adjust, adapt, and rethink very much in integration with moves made by the surrounding community.

An NPR story, this morning, reported on the Keystone XL pipeline, protests against it in Washington, and a surprising alliance forming against it in Nebraska. Of course, they felt obligated to let TransCanada -- the pipeline company proposing to build Keystone XL -- have its say.