Sustainable Bellingham Website

We are in the process of a major update to our website, and are excited about what we have in store to share with you all. Meanwhile the site is currently down.

In the meantime, this is a good time to explore our other online presences.
First, check out our presence at the Post-Carbon Institute's Relocalization network:
http://www.relocalize.net/groups/bellingham

Here you can register as members and participate with us interactively via blogs, forums, Events listings, and News items. You can also explore what other groups in the network are doing. You don't have to be registered to browse these pages, but you must register to participate... http://www.relocalize.net/user/register&destination=node/1274
and then join the Sustainable Bellingham group.

Second, our wiki pages are still up, at least for now. The main sections of our wiki are the CommunityInventory and the SustainabilityDocumentationProject. The CommunityInventory is a project to collect information about local community groups and resources involved in the development of sustainable living in our bioregion. Our SustainabilityDocumentationProject is an ever-growing archive of great articles on the subject of sustainability, collected here for your convenience, and divided into 18 categories.
http://sustainablebellingham.org/wiki/wikka.php?wakka=Home

By the way...if there are people out there who'd like to pitch in to help us get the new website up and running, please let us know!

David MacLeod
Sustainable Bellingham Web Team and Vision Team

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Quote of the Week
"There is no magic bullet. The ramifications for our society are potentially profound. Achieving sustainability may require a fundamental change of values and changes in the way we have been doing things for a very long time."

- WSU sociologist Eugene A. Rosa


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Zero Waste Workshop
Thursday, January 10th, 9am-1:30pm
Broadway Hall, 1300 Broadway, Bellingham

Toward Zero Waste: A workshop in sustainable business practices, sponsored by Sustainable Connections. Join a leadership group of local Zero Waste pioneers including Ryzex, Nature's Path, Samuel's Furniture and La Fiamma, (many of whom say achieving the first 80% of waste reduction is fairly simple and extremely profitable), for a 'how-to' workshop. We promise to provide you with the specific information you need, and lots of promotion for your business, so that you can reduce costs AND waste, and help move our recycling rates in Whatcom County up to a level more consistent with this community's high environmental values, (meaning let's re-set the bar with this one too)!

More info: http://www.sconnect.org/zerowaste

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Workshops this winter in Costa Rica:

Renewable Energy for the Developing World
Overview of all major RE technologies - Classroom, labs, hands-on projects
Rancho Mastatal, Costa Rica * www.ranchomastatal.com
January 21 - 27 , 2008 * Tuition: $750
Lodging/food packages and local information: Tim O'Hara * This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
(This workshop is getting close to full -- register soon!)

Solar Electricity for the Developing World
PV Design & Installation - Special sustainable community experience
February 2 - 10
Fundacion Durika, Costa Rica * www.durika.org
Price: $1,230*
*includes food, lodging, and most in-country transportation

Renewable Energy for the Developing World -- Hands-On
Rancho Mastatal, Costa Rica
This is an overview workshop of solar energy technologies for the developing world. Participants will learn how to evaluate each resource and plan for high quality systems. Classroom sessions and labs will supplement field experience. Hands-on projects for 2008 will include building and using solar cookers, installing a methane biodigester, solar-electric projects, and possibly a solar hot water installation. More than half of our time will be spent working on actual projects. The middle day of the workshop will be open for cultural and recreational pursuits in the area.

Take an eco-educational vacation in Costa Rica this winter!
Learn about renewable energy while helping others in the developing world!

Program & Logistics Information:
Ian Woofenden, SEI NW Coordinator
PO Box 1001, Anacortes, WA 98221
360-293-5863, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

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Pachamama Alliance Symposium
Awakening the Dreamer/Changing the Dream
February 9th

The previous symposium in October "sold out," so the symposium is being repeated by popular demand. Mark your calendars and stay tuned for more details.

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Empowered Communication, The Acorn Model, and Integral Sustainability:
Process Tools for Groups and Organizations
February 16 and 17

A "Combo" Workshop presented by Alan Seid. Empowered Communication is a way of speaking that facilitates the flow of communication needed to exchange information and resolve differences peacefully. The Acorn Model is a map for organizational design that integrates peoples diverse gifts into cohesive, effective teams. Integral Theory, pioneered by Ken Wilbur, is a theoretical and practical framework which attempts to honor and include the most knowledge and wisdom from as many sources as possible. We'll discuss it's applicability to our own growth and development, as well as to the field of sustainability.

More details coming soon! Contact: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Website: Cascadia Training and Mediation

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Northwest Climate Change Summit:
Indigenous Healing Solutions
Seattle: This series features Elder Healers from various tribal traditions bringing teachings and ceremony together to create Mother Earth healing circles. All events are free and open to the public.

Thursday February 14, 2008 6PM - 9PM - Daybreak Star Cultural Center
Angaangaq - Eskimo/Kalaallit

Friday February 15, 2008 11AM - 7PM - Daybreak Star Cultural Center (Meals Included)
Angaangaq - Eskimo/Kalaallit

Saturday February 16, 2008 11AM-6PM - Seattle University Student Center 160
Billy Frank Jr. - NW Indian Fisheries Commission/Tom Goldtooth - Indigenous Environmental Network, James Rasmussen, Leon Rattler, Katherine Gottlieb, Native Youth PhotoVoice Project, Haida Heritage Dancers, Kanim/Enick Klan Singers, Angaangaq, Longhouse Media/Native Lens Youth

Sponsored by City of Seattle, Catholic Community Services, and numerous other Seattle orgs. Suggested donation of $20.00 goes towards Mother Earth healing efforts

http://www.eeaw.org

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Recommended Reading & Watching

The Gift of Life
On the Level, by Rick Dubrow, Cascadia Weekly, Dec. 19, 2007
I’d like to discuss your giving during 2008; what do you support and how do you support it? ...Before the New Year Cindi and I hope to create a plan for ’08. We’ll first select a percentage of our combined income; say, for arguments sake we arrive at this 10% figure – our one‐tenth part of something. What portion of this are we already giving in kind through our involvement with RE Sources, Futurewise Whatcom, Sustainable Connections, Sustainable Bellingham, and the Pachamama Alliance?
Should I consider the time I devote to my Weekly column as an in kind donation to my passionate cause of sustainability? Clearly, we’ll have to make these judgment calls.
http://www.a1builders.ws/rss/cascadia_weekly_036.pdf

Run-Of-The-Mill
The Gristle, by Tim Johnson, Cascadia Weekly, Dec. 19, 2007
...the port's first dramatic action as GP property owner was to torpedo inner Whatcom Waterway's federal status as a navigable channel (while, incomprehensibly, lobbying a federal agency to headquarter their marine services here). The idea that a port authority would lobby to remove the option of shipping from its properties would be comical if it weren't so irresponsible...
http://www.cascadiaweekly.com/pdfs/issues/200751.pdf (9.8 MB pdf file - see page 6)

Catastrophe feared as oceans grow acidic
Corrosive water detected off Washington
Les Blumenthal, The Bellingham Herald, Dec, 18, 2007
Seven hundred miles west of Seattle in the Pacific at Ocean Station Papa, a first-of-its- kind buoy is anchored to monitor a looming environmental catastrophe. Forget about sea levels rising as glaciers and polar ice melt, and increasing water temperatures affecting global weather patterns. As the oceans absorb more and more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, they’re gradually becoming more acidic. Some scientists fear that the change may be irreversible.
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/477/story/266207.html

World food stocks dwindling rapidly, UN warns
Elisabeth Rosenthal, International Herald Tribune
In an "unforeseen and unprecedented" shift, the world food supply is dwindling rapidly and food prices are soaring to historic levels, the top food and agriculture official of the United Nations warned Monday. The changes created "a very serious risk that fewer people will be able to get food," particularly in the developing world, said Jacques Diouf, head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization....Diouf blamed a confluence of recent supply and demand factors for the crisis, and he predicted that those factors were here to stay. On the supply side, these include the early effects of global warming, which has decreased crop yields in some crucial places, and a shift away from farming for human consumption toward crops for biofuels and cattle feed...."We're concerned that we are facing the perfect storm for the world's hungry," said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Program...To make matters worse, high oil prices have doubled shipping costs in the past year, putting enormous stress on poor nations that need to import food as well as the humanitarian agencies that provide it....

"You can debate why this is all happening, but what's most important to us is that it's a long-term trend, reversing decades of decreasing food prices," Sheeran said.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/17/europe/food.php


All I Want for Xmas is 5 Million Tons of Garbage
by Tommi Avicolli-Mecca‚ Dec. 17‚ 2007
Xmas is all about spending. Forget Baby Jesus in his cold manger bed, or those overworked sweatshop elves in the North Pole. When all is said and done, Xmas in America is about one thing and one thing only: Cold hard dollars and cents, the kind that people shell out to show someone how much they love them or to make themselves feel as if they are getting “in the holiday spirit.”
http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=5202

The third rail of world politics
by Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
...the third rail for world politics: overpopulation. This week in an astounding piece in USA Today , the newspaper told us that U. S. fertility rates had returned to the replacement value of 2.1 (that is, 2.1 births per woman on average) after being below replacement since 1971. This was deemed good because "[a] high fertility rate is important to industrialized nations. When birthrates are low, there are fewer people to fill jobs and support the elderly." Ergo, the low fertility rates of Italy, Germany, Japan, Russia, and South Korea (all mentioned in the article) must be bad. These countries were said to be "struggling with low birthrates and aging populations." In fact, some of these low fertility countries are now providing government incentives for larger families.

Within the narrow measures of economic competitiveness and public pension support for the elderly the labels of good and bad might be applicable. But what about the environmental degradation and resource depletion that are resulting from overpopulation in these very same countries? Not a single word!...
http://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2007/12/third-rail-of-world-politics.html

Population, consumption drive global climate change and environmental degradation
Washington State University, published Feb. 7, 2007; archived Dec. 24, 2007
PULLMAN, Wash. – A new study by a Washington State University researcher and his colleagues pinpoints the causes of a recent finding by a working group of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change that global climate warming is due to human activities. The principal factors affecting climate change are the growth of human population and consumption, according to research by WSU sociologist Eugene A. Rosa and his colleagues Richard York, of the University of Oregon, and Thomas Dietz, of Michigan State University.

In fact, their findings suggest the impact of these two environmental stressors is so profound that they may outpace any potential environmental benefits from industrial modernization and improving technologies...The findings by Rosa and his colleagues challenge a number of environmental theories that have emerged over the past decade suggesting that improving technological efficiency and declines in the resource requirements of modernizing nations will ultimately lead to environmental sustainability, offsetting the negative impacts of ever-increasing growth in population and human consumption.

"When we analyze the ability of increasing technological efficiency to counteract the environmental impacts of increasing population and consumption, we find that even if we were to achieve a four-fold increase in efficiency among all nations - which is a very unrealistic expectation - negative environmental impacts still increase, although at a much reduced rate," he said..."There is no magic bullet. The ramifications for our society are potentially profound," he said. "Achieving sustainability may require a fundamental change of values and changes in the way we have been doing things for a very long time."
http://www.wsunews.wsu.edu/detail.asp?StoryID=6286

The Real Answer to Climate Change Is to Leave Fossil Fuels in the Ground
All the talk in Bali about cutting carbon means nothing while ever more oil and coal is being extracted and burned
by George Monbiot
Ladies and gentlemen, I have the answer! Incredible as it might seem, I have stumbled across the single technology which will save us from runaway climate change! From the goodness of my heart, I offer it to you for free. No patents, no small print, no hidden clauses. Already this technology, a radical new kind of carbon capture and storage, is causing a stir among scientists. It is cheap, it is efficient and it can be deployed straight away. It is called … leaving fossil fuels in the ground.

On a filthy day last week, as governments gathered in Bali to prevaricate about climate change, a group of us tried to put this policy into effect. We swarmed into the opencast coal mine being dug at Ffos-y-fran in South Wales and occupied the excavators, shutting down the works for the day. We were motivated by a fact which the wise heads in Bali have somehow missed: if fossil fuels are extracted, they will be used.

Most of the governments of the rich world now exhort their citizens to use less carbon. They encourage us to change our lightbulbs, insulate our lofts, turn our televisions off at the wall. In other words, they have a demand-side policy for tackling climate change. But as far as I can determine, not one of them has a supply-side policy. None seeks to reduce the supply of fossil fuel. So the demand-side policy will fail. Every barrel of oil and tonne of coal that comes to the surface will be burned.
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/11/5771/

Fossil Fuels at Peak, Part 2: Predictions and Current Status
by John Rawlins, Oct. 2006 in Whatcom Watch
Both oil and natural gas supplies will soon be declining worldwide, and in the U.S. we already are experiencing a declining natural gas supply. Declining oil means reducing our transport fuel needs.... There appears to be no near-term combination of techo-fixes for the transport problem, which means we'll drive ever less, spend ever more and use ever more mass transit at a rate of change of about 5 percent per year averaged over the world. That translates to half of today's oil use 14 years after peak, and one-quarter of today's oil use after 28 years. Because of considerations related to world oil available for export, the reality will likely be even more severe in the U.S. we could be facing the one-quarter mark 20 years after peak.
http://www.whatcomwatch.org/php/WW_open.php?id=756

The Peak Oil Crisis: Issues
by Tom Whipple
As 2007 winds down, it is good time to review some of the major issues that those of us following the peak oil story are watching closely.
http://www.energybulletin.net/38527.html

Another Wild Ride in 2008
by Dave Cohen, ASPO
...A lot of new oil (Wikipedia Megaprojects) is scheduled to come on-stream in 2008. Rembrandt Koppelaar's Oilwatch Monthly reports that both the IEA and the EIA are showing a surge in global liquids production as 2007 comes to close. Higher sustained liquids production seems assured in 2008 but some caveats are in order... We can be confident that the oil markets are in for another wild ride in 2008. Supply appears poised to take off but will still fall short of demand increases outside the OECD...Supply will likely increase in 2008, so the world's liquids peak has not yet occurred. Check back in 2010. Gasoline prices may reach $4/gallon in the United States in the Spring, an event that is sure to influence the presidential election...
http://www.energybulletin.net/38518.html

A High-Risk Barrel
Here's a 2005 Peak Oil documentary that's 50 minutes long, and geared toward business and economics. Very well done. Leanan at the Oil Drum writes "It takes you out to the rigs, underwater repairing said rigs, into the labs where the "libraries" of petroleum samples are analyzed and stored, into the office of the then-CEO of Shell, to Saudi Arabia, to a refinery via tanker, onto the NYMEX trading floor, and more."
Watch online: http://novakeo.com/?p=1054&jal_no_js=true&poll_id=10
Or download it to your computer here: http://www.novakeo.com/news/video/high-risk_barrel.rm (Real Media, 30 MB)

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Events and recommended reading compiled by David MacLeod
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website: http://www.sustainablebellingham.org
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