It's not easy going green

A great article in the Wall Street Journal looks at the City of Boulder's efforts to reduce it's environmental footprint.

From the Wall Street Journal:

BOULDER, Colo.—This spring, city contractors will fan out across this well-to-do college town to unscrew light bulbs in thousands of homes and replace them with more energy-efficient models, at taxpayer expense.

City officials never dreamed they'd have to play nanny when they set out in 2006 to make Boulder a role model in the fight against global warming. The cause seemed like a natural fit in a place where residents tend to be politically liberal and passionate about the great outdoors.

Instead, as Congress considers how to encourage Americans to conserve more energy, Boulder stands as a cautionary tale about the limits of good intentions.

Read the full article here.

How Green Is Your Grass?

We spent the better part of last week at The Telluride Bluegrass Festival. During the festival, we had the pleasure of running and judging How Green is your Grass? - a creative campsite challenge. This contest encourages Festivarians to raise the bar for sustainable camping by honoring campsites that excel in achieving the highest level of sustainability, cleanliness, and creativity during their stay at the festival. There were daily winners each of the four days that are now finalists for the grand prize. Daily winners enjoyed a prize package that included Chaco gear, Clif Bars, and New Belgium Beer. Stay tuned, the winer of the 2009 How Green is your Grass? competition will be announced on the next "Notes from the Planet" email.

In addition to the campsite challenge, the entire festival embraced sustainable living. For example, Eco Products donated compostable bags that were handed out by camp hosts at each of the campgrounds. The New Community Coalition (TNCC) coordinated stations called CRT (Compost, Recycle, Trash) and they were able to provide trained volunteers the entire four days at each station to direct waste to the proper receptacle. Also, Renewable Choice Energy was able to offset all of the travel the bands did to get there. Each year Planet Bluegrass continues to find new and exciting ways to challenge Festivarians to leave their concert space better than they found it. Hats off to everyone who participated in making this years festival a supreme success in sustainability!

Safe Travels...Kate and Tracy

Putting Nature in the Constitution

I ran across this article a friend had sent me a few weeks ago. It was published in the LA times. Here is an excerpt:

"This month, Ecuador will hold the world's first constitutional referendum in which voters will decide, among many other reforms, whether to endow nature with certain unalienable rights. Not only would the new constitution give nature the right to "exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution," but if it is approved, communities, elected officials and even individuals would have legal standing to defend the rights of nature. "

This was interesting to me on many levels. Having been to Ecuador several times, I have witnessed how (as the article also mentions) the physical geography of the country is very interwoven with the culture and history of its people- the mountains, the rainforest, the coast, the Galapagos! The country is about the size of Colorado and is extremely biologically diverse.

Working for Leave No Trace, we are constantly in dialogue about how we communicate our organizational mission, our programs, who we are, what we do and how it fits into the bigger [environmental] picture. I think everyone here would agree that we feel it's important to protect our open spaces for future generations, to share these bits of our cultural and history with our children and so forth, but, could it be so simple as we have an ethical [legal?] responsibility to?

Here is a link to the full article: http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/scimedemail/la-ed-nature2-2008sep02,0,4624476.story