Chevron and Sierra Club to work together?

Sierra Club’s Carl Pope’s debated with Chevron CEO David O’Reilly and got him to agree to come to Washington with him to lobby against the coal lobby. Is that really going to happen?

Listen to the whole debate here.

Updates of hydro fracking near NYC water supply

Via New York League of Conservation Voters:

U.S. Rep Eric Massa announced possible support this week for H.R. 7231, a bill meant to force natural gas producers to reveal the concentrations and contents of the chemicals used in the drilling process.

Congressman Eric MassaBack in 2005, the Bush administration exempted the industry from the 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act, thereby allowing them to practice a process known as hydro-fracturing without having to disclose all chemicals used.

Recently, the issue has come to the fore due, in large part, to a drilling boon of the Marcellus Shale, a geological formation extending (much of it deep underground) from Ohio and West Virginia up into Pennsylvania, the Catskills and the Southern Tier. The entire formation is estimated to contain somewhere between 168 to 516 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

While accessing a natural gas may be a necessity, Massa said during media a teleconference, “I don’t want to be here 25 years from now when you cannot swim in the Finger Lakes or irrigate the fields of your winery with fresh water from a well.”

MTA fare hikes scheduled to start May 31

In case you haven’t heard, it looks like the fare hike and service cuts are going through (I hope none of you take the W).  In general it also appears that a lot of people on the MTA board don’t both to show up to vote (especially the one dating a Beatle), and that many of them don’t use public transportation.  I suggest complaining to any elected person you can think of, though at this point I wouldn’t hold your breath that it’s going to do anything.

Here are the details as they now stand (go to the MTA website for more specifics):

• The LIRR’s service to Belmont ends in late April.
• Subway and bus fares would go up on May 31.
  • Single rides would go from $2 to $2.50—a 25% hike;
  • 7-day unlimited cards would be $31 (currently $25)—a 24% hike;
  • 14-day unlimited cards would be $59 (currently $47)—a 25% hike;
  • 30-day unlimited card would be $103 (currently $81)—a 27% hike;
  • 7-day express bus cards would be $51 (currently $41)—a 24% hike;
  • Pay-per-ride Metrocard bonuses are kept intact (though what the final bonuses are is still undetermined)
• Metro-North and LIRR fares will go up about 23% on June 1.
• Bridge and tunnel tolls increase in July.
• City bus routes are eliminated over the summer; the W and Z lines are eliminated in the fall as the M and G service is cut.

LES Girls Club Earth Day Event - and Volunteer Opportunity!

04/18/09 from 10am-2pm

Earth Day Volunteer Opportunity

Join us as we take part in the Green Apple Festival- a giant “volunteer for Mother Earth” event.

Want to volunteer? Join our Garden Party / Paper Flower Workshop. Help us make carbon neutral, pesticide free, no natural resources wasted and absolutely gorgeous recycled paper flowers! The Lower Eastside Girls Club “Girls Gone Green” Program is seeking 20 volunteers to help our girls make thousands of re-cycled paper flowers to be displayed in our gallery “flower garden” and then presented to our community mothers on Mother’s Day.

Event is April 18th from 10AM-2 PM at 56 East 1st Street between 1st and 2nd Avenue. RSVP to: Jenny@girlsclub.org.

Welcome Lil’ Scrappy!

Hello everyone,
Curious has just gotten greener.  From this day forward, the 5th Floor Laserjet 5000 printer will be filled with 8.5 x 11″ scrap paper, culled from other printers. Ideally, this will be your default printer.  If you need to print on new paper, there are plenty other printers that have new paper in them.  Systems will happily help to set you up if you need to add Lil’ Scrappy (5th Floor Laserjet 5000) or add another printer.

This system will be most effective if everyone chips in to fill the scrap collection boxes with one-sided scrap paper.  There will be boxes by all of the current printer stations to facilitate the process.  The best place to drop the scrap paper is next to Lil’ Scrappy.

We appreciate your cooperation, as does the planet and the Curious pocketbook.

Love,
Green Curious

PS - Lil’ Scrappy is located at the base of the spiral stairs on the 5th Floor.  It is the printer on the left.

curious testing new green servers

From Lewis:

This 1/2-width 1-unit rackmount server consumes only 13 watts (less than 1/4 of your average incandescent lightbulb), drawing 0.2 amps.

The low-power 1GHz CPU is passively cooled, requiring no CPU fan.  The OS is installed on a 16GB compact flash card, instead of a conventional hard disk.  A low-power laptop-style hard disk is also present to house bulk data.

Plenty of horsepower to run a few web sites, a private email server, and domain name services.

http://www.idotpc.com/thestore/pc/home.asp

Chemical induced feminization - officially shrinking taints everywhere

Check out this article from The Independent about how all the endocrine-disrupting chemicals we are using are feminizing animals (including humans) everywhere.

It’s official: Men really are the weaker sex

Evolution is being distorted by pollution, which damages genitals and the ability to father offspring, says new study. Geoffrey Lean reports

Sunday, 7 December 2008

The male gender is in danger, with incalculable consequences for both humans and wildlife, startling scientific research from around the world reveals.

The research – to be detailed tomorrow in the most comprehensive report yet published – shows that a host of common chemicals is feminising males of every class of vertebrate animals, from fish to mammals, including people.

Backed by some of the world’s leading scientists, who say that it “waves a red flag” for humanity and shows that evolution itself is being disrupted, the report comes out at a particularly sensitive time for ministers. On Wednesday, Britain will lead opposition to proposed new European controls on pesticides, many of which have been found to have “gender-bending” effects.

It also follows hard on the heels of new American research which shows that baby boys born to women exposed to widespread chemicals in pregnancy are born with smaller penises and feminised genitals.

“This research shows that the basic male tool kit is under threat,” says Gwynne Lyons, a former government adviser on the health effects of chemicals, who wrote the report.

Wildlife and people have been exposed to more than 100,000 new chemicals in recent years, and the European Commission has admitted that 99 per cent of them are not adequately regulated. There is not even proper safety information on 85 per cent of them.

Many have been identified as “endocrine disrupters” – or gender-benders – because they interfere with hormones. These include phthalates, used in food wrapping, cosmetics and baby powders among other applications; flame retardants in furniture and electrical goods; PCBs, a now banned group of substances still widespread in food and the environment; and many pesticides.
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