Seacoast NRG

World-renowned author and activist Bill McKibben will speak at the South Church on State Street in Portsmouth on Sunday, July 20, at 4:00 p.m. McKibben is returning from a sustainability conference in Sweden and the G8 summit in Japan.  The South Church event is sponsored in part by RiverRun Bookstore, Slow Food Seacoast, the South Church’s Minds Alive! and Green Sanctuary programs, and the Rye Energy Committee.

I missed this entirely.  While they were in Sweden, I must have been at the beach.  From the Portsmouth Herald a week ago Sunday, a nice article about Burt Cohen and Skye Maher, Portsmouth residents who attended the International Eco-municipality Conference in Sweden last month.  Cohen and Maher are also organizers of the Piscataqua Sustainability Initiative, which hosted the area’s first Sustainability Fair earlier this spring.

Portsmouth Green Drinks is an open social event for those interested in building a sustainable society, and in meeting and making new friends along the way.  Events are held every third Thursday of the month.  July’s event will feature both a presentation by Green Alliance, and a teleconference call with Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope, green jobs leader Van Jones, and another special guest.  They will talk about how we can achieve a clean energy future that creates green jobs and a healthy economy.

This event is held in conjunction with the Sierra Club’s nationwide Lightbulbs to Leadership campaign, a national night of action on global warming and green jobs.

Place:  The Portsmouth Brewery (a Green Alliance member business).

Date/Time:  Thursday, July 17, starting at 6 pm.

PS:  free food!

If you haven’t seen the latest animated film from Disney/Pixar, Wall•E, you really should.  And do take your children.  Far more than an entertaining love story, Wall•E takes a satirical jab at our obsession with bloated consumption.  How interesting it might have been if Disney had decided to forgo the usual merchandising tie-ins to make an even bolder statement about the stuff in which we find ourselves drowning.  But I guess you need to be a lefty propagandist to think the way I do.  Instead, just look at all the cute plasticy crap you can buy!

[sigh]  Do go see it anyway.

Green Alliance is a partnership of local businesses and environmental advocates, with a mission to promote and foster profitable, sustainable businesses that also have minimal environmental impact.  Partners in the alliance include, among others, Simply Green, provider of BioHeat heating oil, Purely Organic Lawncare, provider of organic lawncare services, Clean Air Lawn Mowing, Key Heating and Air Conditioning, and the Alliance’s Director, community activist Sarah Brown. 

Brown, has long been an advocate for environmental causes in the Seacoast area, including the founding of the Green Alliance Co-op and the Kittery Energy Committee’s Bioheat Co-op (pdf), both of which are open to new members.

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) reported recently that April 2008 marked the sixth consecutive month of declining vehicle miles traveled on US highways.  In April, the FHWA recorded 1.4 billion fewer highway miles driven than during the same month last year.  April itself was also down 400 million miles compared to the prior month of March 2008.  Travel on all public roads, not just highways, is down an astonishing 30 billion miles since November 2007. 

Stated another way, in the adult (driving) population (consisting of approximately 218 million people at least 20 years in age), driving is currently dropping at a rate of roughly 275 miles per person, per year.

Some blog about making a difference, while others actually go out and do it.  The New Amsterdam Project provides human-powered delivery services in Boston, using custom built bicycle “trucks”.   Founded in 2006, NAP has clients and 10 rider-drivers in the Boston-Cambridge metro area, and, according to the Portsmouth Herald, is looking to expand into Portsmouth.

While the continuing rise of gas prices shows no sign of abating, the Cooperative Alliance for Seacoast Transportation (Coast) is reporting that bus ridership in the Seacoast area remains on a record pace, with 390,000 trips estimated for 2008, an increase of 4% - 5% over the system’s record year in 2007.  Coast expects that 2008 will mark the sixth straight year of record-setting ridership.

I had the good fortune to attend part of the UNH Energy Conference, held June 20-21 at the UNH Durham campus.  I went there not for purposes of work or networking, but simply to learn about more geeky energy stuff.  I was not disappointed, and judging by the reactions and enthusiasm I saw, I believe the other 300 or so registrants–three times the expected number–felt likewise.

This video, of a wind turbine in Holland that self-destructs in a particularly high wind, has been available on YouTube for several months now.

A slow motion version of this video is shown here.