Veggie customers partner with farm

The investors in Bluestem Farms in Madison, Neb., take their dividends in vegetables.

Both have day jobs in Norfolk, which is about 15 miles north of Madison. She teaches English and speech at the junior high school, and he teaches chemistry and physics at Northeastern Community College.

When they are not teaching, the couple work to develop Bluestem Farms, which they bought from Kim's father, Lyle, in 2000. They raise chemical-free vegetables and hormone- and antibiotic-free beef and chickens.

But there's a twist in their marketing.

The Timperleys have set up a CSA, which stands for Community Supported Agriculture. It's a fancy way of saying they get customers for their produce ahead of time.

Customers, or shareholders, buy a subscription to have fresh vegetables delivered to their homes weekly throughout the growing season.

Timperley said customers typically place their orders in March.

"This way we know how much seed to get and plant," he said, adding that the couple usually plant extra in case they get customers later in the season.

On a Web site called LocalHarvest, the couple breaks down subscriptions this way: $475 for a full family subscription; $400 for a two-thirds family subscription; and $22 for a half-dozen eggs a week.

Members receive weekly deliveries of an assortment of lettuces, greens, peas, radishes and asparagus. Because of their greenhouse, the Timperleys also can supply early tomatoes and cucumbers.

In the middle of the summer come green beans, broccoli and sweet corn. By fall, the deliveries include squash, watermelon, carrots, potatoes and other long-season vegetables.

Customers who subscribe to the winter season have their pick of the stored vegetables from the Timperleys' root cellars as well as fall lettuces and salad mixes from the greenhouse.

People sign up and then wait for the growing season.

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Green roofs start to sprout on urban homes

Every time it rained, Majora Carter cringed. "I lived in mortal terror whenever I thought it was going to rain," Dr. Carter says, remembering how the rainwater seeped from the street into her Bronx brownstone.

Then she and her husband, James Burling Chase, realized that the source of the problem wasn't on the ground, but on the roof. The stormwater system in their neighborhood backed up so quickly that the water rushed straight from their roof to the street – and into their home.

They decided to try a new strategy to fix an old problem: a green roof.

Now, after a substantial renovation, their flat roof has come alive – literally. Flowers and baby sedum are anchored in a thin bed of soil and gravel covering the roof. Golf-ball-sized stones frame this rooftop oasis.

Now their roof will retain about half the rainwater that falls on it, once the sedum matures in about two years. But besides finding a practical solution to a recurrent problem, Carter and Chase wanted a tangible way to show they were "walking the walk" when it came to their environmentalism.

Their home is the first in New York to feature such a roof. Green roofs have taken root on numerous commercial buildings across the country, but now people are exploring the possibility of planting a little shrubbery atop their own homes.

Karen Weber, founder of the green-roof promoting organization, Earth Our Only Home, says there are numerous benefits to green roofs:

•Energy savings of 10 to 60 percent, as the greenery acts as another layer of insulation from heat loss in winter and cooling loss in summer.

•Less noise (extra layers of plants and drainage materials act as insulators) and less greenhouse gas (like any green plants, those on a roof absorb carbon dioxide and give off oxygen).

•Doesn't trap heat from the sun the way conventional roofs do. Conventional roofs can overheat entire cities.

•Attracts pollinators like honeybees and bumblebees, which are often scarce in urban areas.

•Doubles or triples the life of the underlying roof.

But all the benefits must be balanced with the hefty cost. And turning a roof "green" demands more than flipping through the phone book for a contractor.

Warming Revives Flora and Fauna in Greenland

A strange thing is happening at the edge of Poul Bjerge’s forest, a place so minute and unexpected that it brings to mind the teeny plot of land Woody Allen’s father carries around in the film “Love and Death.”

Its four oldest trees — in fact, the four oldest pine trees in Greenland, named Rosenvinge’s trees after the Dutch botanist who planted them in a mad experiment in 1893 — are waking up. After lapsing into stately, sleepy old age, they are exhibiting new sprinklings of green at their tops, as if someone had glued on fresh needles.

“The old ones, they’re having a second youth,” said Mr. Bjerge, 78, who has watched the forest, called Qanasiassat, come to life, in fits and starts, since planting most of the trees in it 50 years ago. He beamed like a proud grandson. “They’re growing again.”

When using the words “growing” in connection with Greenland in the same sentence, it is important to remember that although Greenland is the size of Europe, it has only nine conifer forests like Mr. Bjerge’s, all of them cultivated. It has only 51 farms. (They are all sheep farms, although one man is trying to raise cattle. He has 22 cows.) Except for potatoes, the only vegetables most Greenlanders ever eat — to the extent that they eat vegetables at all — are imported, mostly from Denmark.

But now that the climate is warming, it is not just old trees that are growing. A Greenlandic supermarket is stocking locally grown cauliflower, broccoli and cabbage this year for the first time. Eight sheep farmers are growing potatoes commercially. Five more are experimenting with vegetables. And Kenneth Hoeg, the region’s chief agriculture adviser, says he does not see why southern Greenland cannot eventually be full of vegetable farms and viable forests.

“If it gets warmer, a large part of southern Greenland could be like this,” Mr. Hoeg said, walking through Qanasiassat, a boat ride from Narsarsuaq, a tiny southern community notable mostly for having an international airport. Two and a half acres near here of imported pines, spruces, larches and firs are plunked in the midst of the scrubby, rocky hillside next to the fjord, as startling as a mirage. “If it gets a little warmer, you could talk about a productive forest with enough wood for logs,” Mr. Hoeg said.

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In the Ashes, Californians Ask How to Defeat the Santa Anas

EVERY devastating fire in Southern California is followed by a period of taking stock: how can the fast-growing exurbs that ring Los Angeles and San Diego protect themselves from the inevitable next big blaze?

Last week, the tension between growth and safety arose again as people in the region began to assess the damage from wildfires that have so far consumed nearly half a million acres, killed seven people, and burned almost 1,800 structures to the ground.

If fire danger was enough to stop development, much of the populated part of California would never have been inhabited. The early Indian tribes understood the threat, and periodically burned meadows and forests to reduce the underbrush, which would otherwise fuel more dangerous firestorms.

Despite the dangers of living in a fire-prone arid basin, developers and home buyers have rarely been deterred, and they are not likely to be in the future, even with the state’s well-organized antigrowth forces. California is expected to absorb 17 million more people in the next four decades.

The key, then, is to find the always elusive balance between hellbent growth and no growth. Even Joel Kotkin, the author of “The New Geography” and an admirer of the economic dynamism of the exurbs, sees the need for limits. “You need to have respect for what nature can do, and then you adjust,” he said. “There certainly needs to be an assessment as to whether in some areas the danger is so great that we may consider not building in that particular place.”

more from the NY Times

Rethinking Fire Policy in the Tinderbox Zone

As Californians sift through the cinders of this week’s deadly wildfires, there is a growing consensus that the state’s war against such disasters — as it is currently being fought — cannot be won.

“California has lost 1.5 million acres in the last four years,” said Richard A. Minnich, a professor of earth sciences who teaches fire ecology at the University of California, Riverside. “When do we declare the policy a failure?”

Fire-management experts like Professor Minnich, who has compared fire histories in San Diego County and Baja California in Mexico, say the message is clear: Mexico has smaller fires that burn out naturally, regularly clearing out combustible underbrush and causing relatively little destruction because the cycle is still natural. California has giant ones because its longtime policies of fire suppression — in which the government has kept fires from their normal cycle — has created huge pockets of fuel that erupt into conflagrations that must be fought.

“We’re on all year round,” said Brett Chapman, a firefighter with the United States Forest Service who worked 15-hour shifts this week in the Lake Arrowhead area east of Los Angeles.

The main problem is that many in California are ruggedly obstinate about the choice they have made to live with the constant threat of fire. Even state officials who are interested in change concede it could take a decade — and more catastrophic wildfires — before it happens.

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Organic Aquaculture: Restoring Natural Production Systems, Changing Lifestyles, and Raising Quality of Life

In today’s world dominated by ‘fast food’, ‘fast money’, and ‘fast habits’, people have obviously taken for granted the quality and safety of the food they eat. What seemingly matters most is not the acceptable safety standards of the food we eat, but just to be able to go through the meal and live another day.

Unknown to people, however, is that the quality and safety of the food they eat have been the subject of intensive studies and critique by concerned communities, institutions and groups which have noted the increase in illnesses and untimely deaths caused by the consumption of food containing toxic substances. Also subjects of criticisms are the unsustainable agricultural and environmental practices related to food production as well as the unfair trading practices of many countries, including the Philippines.

This trend has apparently been compounded by “globalization” where global travel and trade have increased significantly, and consequently the transmittal of biological, chemical and physical toxins in traded food and products, and the rapid contamination of people by all kinds of virulent diseases.

To avert the trend, and promote the best practices in organic farming systems and food safety standards, the German Technical Cooperation-ENRD in cooperation with German DED, Philippine government, and a number of non-government organizations and people’s organizations in Asia and Philippines, have recently gathered in the 1st Philippine Organic Aquaculture Symposium held in Bacolod City, to share the best experiences and insights in the subject fields particularly in the promotion and development of organic aquaculture production.

Dr. Kai Kuhlmann, aquaculture consultant of the DED who was requested by the OPA of the Provincial Government of Negros Occidental to survey and promote Organic Aquaculture in the province and region, said that in contrast to conventional aquaculture, organic aquaculture is an overall system of farm management and food production that focuses on best environmental practices, a high level of biodiversity, preservation of natural resources and application of high animal welfare. It guarantees stable prices of all goods exported to the e.g. European markets and job security for local farmers upon certification of quality standards and being labeled as organically produced products.

more from Bulatlat (Philippines)

Preparing to battle a crisis in the future

Haunted by the knowledge that influenza killed 50 million people in 1918, scientists and public health officials continue to seek ways to head off the next great pandemic.

They are focused mostly on the lethal avian influenza that's spreading among birds and some of their human caretakers from Asia to Europe and Africa.The virus is killing humans at a rate of one every four days - 73 this year - or twice last year's pace. And its spread increases the chance it will swap genes with a human flu virus, producing a hybrid that will be easily spread and deadly among people.

So far, the human toll has been relatively small in a global context. The bird flu virus seems to have a difficult time jumping from birds to people.

But scientists are on alert for signs of a genetic shift that could transform the bird disease into something capable of killing millions, disrupting daily life and commerce across the globe.

Others are looking for the best way to construct a vaccine, or antiviral drugs, to prime our immune systems to grapple with the more dangerous virus that may evolve from the avian flu.

And public health officials are working to devise the most effective ways to slow the spread of a pandemic, to hold mass vaccinations and keep essential services running despite absenteeism.

more from the Baltimore Sun

Berkeley going solar - city pays up front, recoups over 20 years

Berkeley is set to become the first city in the nation to help thousands of its residents generate solar power without having to put money up front - attempting to surmount one of the biggest hurdles for people who don't have enough cash to go green.

The City Council will vote Nov. 6 on a plan for the city to finance the cost of solar panels for property owners who agree to pay it back with a 20-year assessment on their property. Over two decades, the taxes would be the same or less than what property owners would save on their electric bills, officials say.

"This plan could be our most important contribution to fighting global warming," Mayor Tom Bates said Thursday. "We've already seen interest from all over the U.S. People really think this plan can go."

The idea is sparking interest from city and state leaders who are mindful of California's goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020. Officials in San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Santa Monica and several state agencies have contacted Berkeley about the details of its plan.

"If this works, we'd want to look at this for other cities statewide," said Ken Alex, California deputy attorney general. "We think it's a very creative way to eliminate the barriers to getting solar panels, and it's fantastic that Berkeley's going ahead with this."

more from the SF Chronicle

Have lessons of Katrina been learnt?

Has the US learnt the harsh lessons of New Orleans?

The ramifications of the bungled response to Katrina are still felt two years later in the US, both politically and by the people living in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

It has quickly become clear that the White House has no intention of letting events unravel in a similarly chaotic - and public - fashion in California.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and David Paulison, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), are already on the scene.

"What we see now that we did not see during Hurricane Katrina is a very good team effort from the local, the state and the federal government and across the federal agencies," Mr Paulison said.

President George W Bush wants to "witness first-hand" the situation and is due to visit on Thursday, as well as swiftly pledging federal aid to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

After Katrina, he was widely criticised for merely flying over the hurricane-affected areas two days later on his way back from his holiday in Texas to Washington DC.

more from the BBC

Schools Embrace Environment and Sow Debate

Every weekday at 2:30 p.m., a line of luxury sedans and sport utility vehicles idles outside Scarsdale Middle School in Westchester County. Exhaust fumes pollute the atmosphere, even though posted signs decree this a “No Idling Zone” and students berate their parents for violating it.

“I normally do abide by it,” said Loryn Kass, 41, as she hastily turned off her BMW sedan while waiting for her daughter on a recent afternoon. “I totally support it to keep the air clean and fresh for our children.”

The school pickup line has become the latest front in a growing school-based environmental movement that has moved far beyond recycling programs and Earth Day celebrations to challenge long-accepted school norms.

Since 2004, dozens of public and private schools in Westchester and New York City and on Long Island have adopted no-idling zones, switched to plant-based cleaners in their buildings and, to a lesser extent, banned pesticides from playgrounds and playing fields, according to Grassroots Environmental Education, a nonprofit group that began a campaign this month promoting all three measures.

Similar efforts have spread across the country. The Maryland Association for Environmental and Outdoor Education, a nonprofit group, has recognized 163 Maryland Green Schools — nearly one-third of them in the last two years — for taking initiatives like preserving wetlands, banning disposable plastic water bottles or assigning environmentally themed readings.

No effort is deemed too small. In a light-bulb exchange in Southern California, students in 26 schools in San Bernardino and Riverside Counties replaced 15,734 incandescent bulbs — and counting — in their homes with energy-efficient compact fluorescent versions. Officials and educators in California are planning the first Green California Schools Summit in Pasadena in December, expected to draw more than 2,000 school board members, administrators and teachers.

California's age of megafires

There's a reason fire squads now battling more than a dozen blazes in southern California are having such difficulty containing the flames, despite better preparedness than ever and decades of experience fighting fires fanned by the notorious Santa Ana winds. The wildfires themselves, experts say, generally are hotter, move faster, and spread more erratically than in the past.

The short-term explanation is that the region, which usually has dry summers, has had nine inches less rain than normal this year.

Longer term, climate change across the West is leading to hotter days on average and longer fire seasons. Experts say this is likely to yield more megafires like the conflagrations that this week forced evacuations of at least 300,000 resident in California's southland and led President Bush to declare a disaster emergency in seven counties on Tuesday.

Megafires, also called "siege fires," are the increasingly frequent blazes that burn 500,000 acres or more – 10 times the size of the average forest fire of 20 years ago. One of the current wildfires is the sixth biggest in California ever, in terms of acreage burned, according to state figures and news reports.

The trend to more superhot fires, experts say, has been driven by a century-long policy of the US Forest Service to stop wildfires as quickly as possible. The unintentional consequence was to halt the natural eradication of underbrush, now the primary fuel for megafires.

Three other factors contribute to the trend, they add. First is climate change marked by a 1-degree F. rise in average yearly temperature across the West. Second is a fire season that on average is 78 days longer than in the late 1980s. Third is increased building of homes and other structures in wooded areas.

"We are increasingly building our homes ... in fire-prone ecosystems," says Dominik Kulakowski, adjunct professor of biology at Clark University Graduate School of Geography in Worcester, Mass. Doing that "in many of the forests of the Western US ... is like building homes on the side of an active volcano."

more from the Christian Science Monitor

an interactive google map managed by KPBS in San Diego

Atlanta Shudders at Prospect of Empty Faucets

For more than five months, the lake that provides drinking water to almost five million people here has been draining away in a withering drought. Sandy beaches have expanded into flats of orange mud. Tree stumps not seen in half a century have resurfaced. Scientists have warned of impending disaster.

And life has, for the most part, gone on just as before.

The response to the worst drought on record in the Southeast has unfolded in ultra-slow motion. All summer, more than a year after the drought began, fountains blithely sprayed, football fields were watered, prisoners got two showers a day and Coca-Cola’s bottling plants chugged along at full strength. In early October, on an 81-degree day, an outdoor theme park began to manufacture what was intended to be a 1.2-million gallon mountain of snow.

In late September, with Lake Lanier forecast to dip into the dregs of “dead storage” in less than four months, the state imposed a ban on outdoor water use. Gov. Sonny Perdue declared October “Take a Shorter Shower Month.”

On Saturday, he declared a state of emergency for more than half the state and asked for federal assistance, though the state has not yet restricted indoor water use or cut back on major commercial and industrial users, a step that could cause a significant loss of jobs.

These last-minute measures belie a history of inaction in Georgia and across the South when it comes to managing and conserving water, even in the face of rapid growth. Between 1990 and 2000, Georgia’s water use increased by 30 percent. But the state has not yet come up with an estimate of how much water is available during periods of normal rainfall, much less a plan to handle the worst-case scenario of dry faucets.

“We have made it clear to the planners and executive management of this state for years that we may very well be on the verge of a system-wide emergency,” said Mark Crisp, a water expert in the Atlanta office of the engineering firm C. H. Guernsey.

more from the NY Times

250,000 San Diego households told to flee

San Diego County authorities warned more than 250,000 households to evacuate today as wildfires raged across Southern California for another day, destroying hundreds of structures, clogging highways and sending smoke and ash over a wide area.

Schools were closed and hospitals evacuated by bus, and hundreds of people sought refuge in Qualcomm Stadium and other evacuation centers. Fire officials were stretched to their limits trying to cope with the fast-moving, wind-whipped blazes that burned more than 100,000 acres, or about 156 square miles.

"This is a major emergency," Ron Roberts, chairman of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, told reporters as he outlined the scope of the damage and evacuations.

Emergency officials estimated that more than 250,000 households had been told to evacuate through the "reverse 911" system. At two people per household, that would be nearly 500,000 people, though it was unknown how many had responded to the evacuation call.

The number of evacuations rose steadily throughout the day. Five American Red Cross shelters were jammed, and thousands flocked to Qualcomm Stadium and Del Mar Fairgrounds. Many hotels reported 100% occupancy.

"We have more houses burning than we have people and engine companies to fight them," San Diego Fire Capt. Lisa Blake said. "A lot of people are going to lose their homes today."

more from the LA Times


Map of the fires from Google

Fires in California Kill One and Destroy Buildings

Wind-whipped wildfires feeding on the driest brush in years erupted across Southern California on Sunday, killing one person, injuring four firefighters, destroying and damaging several homes and scorching thousands of acres.

By evening, a dozen fires had broken out from north of Los Angeles to the Mexican border, and firefighters strained to keep up and beat back flames that hurricane-force winds blasted over hills and through canyons.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in seven counties, where flames had burned 30,000 acres.

Thousands of homes in Canyon Country, north of Los Angeles, were threatened by a fire that had engulfed more than 10,000 acres in a few hours. By early evening, the blaze had already burned several homes and other structures and had led to the evacuation of 800 homes.

Residents battled the flames with garden hoses and shovels while others gave up and fled in their vehicles. Television stations showed images of fire descending on structures with little to stop it, and Los Angeles County rushed to shift firefighters there from another large fire in Malibu that had earlier seemed poised for large-scale destruction.

Chief P. Michael Freeman of the Los Angeles County Fire Department, speaking at the Malibu fire in the late afternoon, said state and local resources “are trying to deal with all these fires, and we are thin.”

Officials have warned for months that the driest year on record has made brush, grown thick from previous wet years, especially susceptible to fires.

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Rising seas inch toward Thailand's capital

At Bangkok's watery gates, Buddhist monks cling to a shrinking spit of land around their temple as they wage war against the relentlessly rising sea.

During the monsoons at high tide, waves hurdle the breakwater of concrete pillars and the inner rock wall around the temple on a promontory in the Gulf of Thailand. Jutting above the waterline just ahead are remnants of a village that has already slipped beneath the sea.

Experts say these waters, aided by sinking land, threaten to submerge Thailand's sprawling capital of more than 10-million people within this century. Bangkok is one of 13 of the world's largest 20 cities at risk of being swamped as sea levels rise in coming decades, according to warnings at the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change held there.

"This is what the future will look like in many places around the world," says Lisa Schipper, an American researcher on global warming, while visiting the temple. "Here is a living study in environmental change."

The loss of Bangkok would destroy the country's economic engine and a major hub for regional tourism.

"If the heart of Thailand is under water, everything will stop," says Smith Dharmasaroja, who chairs the government's Committee of National Disaster Warning Administration. "We don't have time to move our capital in the next 15-20 years. We have to protect our heart now, and it's almost too late."

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As Cases Arise, Schools Act to Ward Off Virulent Staph

As national estimates focus on an increase in serious infections caused by an antibiotic-resistant germ, officials in the Washington region have identified more than a dozen cases among students and are organizing extensive cleanups of numerous schools.

The confluence of circumstances, highlighted by the death of a teenager this week in Bedford County, Va., has put administrators and parents on edge and pushed the superbug, methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, into the forefront of public attention.

Millions of Americans routinely carry staph bacteria on their skin or in their nasal passages and have no problems. And many infections are relatively mild, with the body successfully fighting the germ. But this virulent strain of the microbe can turn minor cuts and sores into life-threatening conditions.

As of yesterday, Montgomery County schools had 14 cases, and lab results were pending in two dozen suspected cases. Anne Arundel County schools have recorded one MRSA infection and have received 57 reports from parents about possible cases. Two cases have been confirmed at Wilde Lake High School in Howard County.

more from the Washington Post

Recycling the Whole House

IF the idiosyncratic, ’40s-era cottage Alice Keller bought in Shoreline, a small city just north of Seattle, had a style, it might be called classic teardown. The ceiling in one room was so low she couldn’t stand up under it. A downstairs bathroom was so narrow she had to wiggle sideways to get to the toilet. None of the windows matched.

“It was livable, and quirky,” Ms. Keller said, “but in ways I didn’t find amusing.”

The place was crying out for a wrecking ball, but Ms. Keller, a 63-year-old retired teacher of English as a second language, who has an environmentally aware conscience, didn’t want to scrap the building materials only to buy new ones. Instead of having her 1,300-square-foot house bulldozed, she hired Jon Alexander, a contractor who shared her environmentalism and was willing to dismantle the home shingle by beam, and build a replacement with the same two-by-fours.

The crew left the garage and a portion of the subfloor intact and broke the concrete driveway into chunks for a back patio. A gas water heater, fiberglass insulation and windows landed at the RE Store, a local nonprofit shop that sells used or excess construction materials. The drywall, shingles and extra concrete went to a recycling center.

Ms. Keller was able to reuse around 90 percent of the original house. “I just like reusing things,” she said. “You can end up with something with more character.”

Due to rising landfill costs, tighter recycling guidelines and the growing trend toward ecologically sound building methods, this sort of home “deconstruction,” as the practice is called, is starting to catch on. About 1,000 homes a year are disassembled this way, according to the Building Materials Reuse Association, a nonprofit educational group in State College, Pa., which reports growing interest in the practice.

more from the NY Times

Coastal planners ready for sea-level rise

By the time today’s babies become elderly, scientists predict that climate change will cause local ocean waters to be at least 3 to 5 feet higher than they are now.

If that happens, South County’s popular barrier beaches will be rolled up against the northern shores of the salt ponds. The sidewalks in Providence’s Waterplace Park will be under water. And coastal salt marshes will be inundated.

This fall, the state agency that regulates coastal development in Rhode Island plans to become one of the first local regulatory agencies in the country to officially recognize the likelihood of sea-level rise and write policies and regulations to prepare for higher water.

The rising waters will require that new buildings in flood zones be constructed at higher elevations, says Grover Fugate, executive director of the Coastal Resources Management Council. He says there should also be changes in the state building code for coastal development and different rules for septic systems. Sewer outfalls and bridges may be affected.

“Climate change will have tremendous implications for us [in Rhode Island],” says Fugate. “Water temperature changes already are affecting the ecosystem. Last year, the shoreline erosion rate doubled to four feet in certain places.”

more from the Providence Journal

Drought-Stricken South Facing Tough Choices

For the first time in more than 100 years, much of the Southeast has reached the most severe category of drought, climatologists said Monday, creating an emergency so serious that some cities are just months away from running out of water.

In North Carolina, Gov. Michael F. Easley asked residents Monday to stop using water for any purpose “not essential to public health and safety.” He warned that he would soon have to declare a state of emergency if voluntary efforts fell short.

“Now I don’t want to have to use these powers,” Mr. Easley told a meeting of mayors and other city officials. “As leaders of your communities, you know what works best at the local level. I am asking for your help.”

Officials in the central North Carolina town of Siler City estimate that without rain, they are 80 days from draining the Lower Rocky River Reservoir, which supplies water for the town’s 8,200 people.

In the Atlanta metropolitan area, which has more than four million people, worst-case analyses show that the city’s main source of water, Lake Lanier, could be drained dry in 90 to 121 days.

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Home Insurers Canceling in East

It is 1,200 miles from the coastline where Hurricane Katrina touched land two years ago to the neat colonial-style home here where James Gray, a retired public relations consultant, and his wife, Ann, live. But this summer, Katrina reached them, too, in the form of a cancellation letter from their home-insurance company.

The letter said that “hurricane events over the past two years” had forced the company to limit its exposure to further losses; and that because the Grays’ home was near the Atlantic Ocean — it is 12 miles from the coast and has been touched by rampaging waters only once, when the upstairs bathtub overflowed — their 30-year-old policy was “nonrenewed,” or canceled.

The Grays signed with a new company, but their case attracted the attention of consumer advocates and, in turn, the New York insurance commissioner, Eric R. Dinallo.

Mr. Dinallo’s sharp rebuke last month of the Grays’ company, Liberty Mutual Fire Insurance Company, reflected a shift in how public officials view a new reality in the homeowners’ insurance business, advocates say.

In the last three years, more than three million homeowners have received letters like the Grays’ as insurance companies, determined to avoid another $40 billion Katrina bill, have essentially begun to redraw the outline of the eastern United States somewhere west of the Appalachian Trail.

more from the NY Times

Global warming: It's the humidity

he world isn't just getting hotter from man-made global warming, it's getting stickier.

The amount of moisture in the air near the surface - the stuff that makes hot weather unbearable - increased 2.2 percent in just under three decades. And computer models show that the only explanation is man-made global warming, according to a study published in Thursday's journal Nature.

"This humidity change is an important contribution to heat stress in humans as a result of global warming," said Nathan Gillett of the University of East Anglia in Britain, a co-author of the study.

Gillett studied changes in specific humidity, which is a measurement of total moisture in the air, between 1973-2002. Increases in humidity can be dangerous to people because it makes the body less efficient at cooling itself, said University of Miami health and climate researcher Laurence Kalkstein. He was not connected with the research.

Humidity increased over most of the globe, said study co-author Katharine Willett, a climate researcher at Yale University. However, a few regions, including the U.S. West, South Africa and parts of Australia were drier.

The finding isn't surprising to climate scientists. Physics dictates that warmer air can hold more moisture. But Gillett's study shows that the increase in humidity already is significant and can be attributed to gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

To show that this is man-made, Gillett ran computer models to simulate past climate conditions and studied what would happen to humidity if there were no man-made greenhouse gases. It didn't match reality.

He looked at what would happen from just man-made greenhouse gases. That didn't match either. Then he looked at the combination of natural conditions and greenhouse gases. The results were nearly identical to the year-by-year increases in humidity.

more from the AP

Seattle’s Recycling Success Is Being Measured in Scraps

Out here next to Steamboat Slough and the lumber mill, piles of garbage from Seattle are lined up in neat rows and blanketed with a fabric similar to that used in high-end Gore-Tex clothing.

What goes in as yard waste and food scraps will emerge two months later as a mountain of loamy compost sold by the bag at garden centers throughout the Pacific Northwest by Cedar Grove Composting. In the process, the waste is ground up, piled up, aerated, dried and sifted. The space-age fabric covering the piles allows air to enter but keeps pungent odors from wafting over the countryside.

“This is the cool side of trash,” Cedar Grove’s founder, Steve Banchero, said of the process, which is on recycling’s cutting edge.

The company, the major composter in this area, will soon have much more trash coming its way because Seattle is making food waste yet another mandatory recycling ingredient in its already long list.

“The food-waste issue is the new frontier for recycling advocates,” said Kate Krebs, the executive director of the National Recycling Coalition. “It’s the next big chunk.”

Seattle now recycles 44 percent of its trash, compared with the national average of around 30 percent, which makes it a major player in big-city waste recovery. Its goal, city waste management officials said, is to reach 60 percent by 2012 and 72 percent by 2025.

more from the NY Times

Food for thought

Rows and rows of six-foot-high cornstalks stretch over the valley, silhouetting a cloudless, crisp blue sky not yet touched by the sun.

The sounds from within hit the senses first: rustling underbrush, distant laughter, yelled commands and squishy, squeaking rips - like pieces of styrofoam rubbing together - of corn separating from stem.

Then you see them: heads bobbing through the foot-wide rows, disappearing and reappearing every few seconds.

Six workers in rain overalls shuffle back and forth among 3 acres of corn at Heron Pond Farm in South Hampton, N.H., dipping to pick, then dropping the cobs into large plastic buckets. As they work, dew-covered stalks leave scraggy, muddy fingerprints on their legs.

After 45 minutes of culling, the men accumulate a mound of corn that will later be distributed to area schools through a "Get Smart, Eat Local" Farm to School program facilitated by the University of New Hampshire in Durham.

Through the initiative, Heron Pond regularly provides produce to 27 schools - comprising 15,000 students - in Portsmouth, Exeter, Newmarket, Hampton, and Hampton Falls, N.H., among others. Somersworth-based Saunders Fruit Co. distributes most of the vegetables, which so far have included zucchini, corn, summer and butternut squash, tomatoes, potatoes, and spring lettuce.

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China reels after Typhoon Krosa

More than 1.4 million people were evacuated ahead of Typhoon Krosa, which struck Zhejiang and Fujian provinces on Sunday, Xinhua news agency reported.

No deaths were reported and it was later downgraded to a tropical storm.

In Vietnam, meanwhile, the toll from Typhoon Lekima, which struck last week, rose to at least 55, officials said.

Hardest hit were the provinces of Thanh Hoa and Nghe An, south of the capital, Hanoi.

Hundreds of thousands of homes were said to be under water, and a Red Cross official described the situation as "very acute".

Several bombs from the Vietnam War era that were exposed by landslides have been defused by military engineers, local media reported.

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The Ivorian town sinking under waves

Once one of the first points of contact between Africans and the French in what is now Ivory Coast, Grand Lahou is threatened by a combination of climate change and other factors.

Some predict the town will be completely under water within 10 years, and it is widely accepted it is doomed unless drastic action is taken.

If it does disappear under the waves it will be something like a second death for the town.

First the imposing old French colonial buildings were abandoned, and now the current ramshackle houses that sprang up alongside the old French buildings are threatened.

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Organic vegetables find place on urban tables

Elderly Mary Wambui has been a struggling vegetable farmer in Juja until a year ago when she learnt how to triple income from her one acre plot.

Her specialty crops for the last eleven years have been spinach and sukumawiki (kales) because they are fast moving and have a ready market, especially in Nairobi.

For every kilo of spinach she brought to the market in the city, Wambui pocketed Sh5 from middlemen who would then transport the vegetable to their clients; mainly restaurants, hotels and supermarkets.

Today, for every kilo of spinach she harvests, she is assured of Sh15, triple the initial amount. It is not that the price for the produce has tripled, rather Wambui is among thousands of farmers who are taking to growing organic crops.

Organic food may not strike you as a subject that requires attention until it becomes clear that most, if not all, of the vegetables consumed in Nairobi constitute outrageous amounts of disease causing chemical residue.

A survey randomly done within Nairobi by the Kenya Organic Agriculture Network (Koan) and Quest Laboratories — testing for pesticide residues in common vegetables from several Nairobi markets — found that residents are consuming foods with high levels of chemical residues that have negative impact on their health and environment.

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Vast African dump poisons children - U.N.

One of Africa's largest rubbish mountains, the 30-acre Dandora site in Nairobi, is seriously harming children's health and polluting the Kenyan capital, a report said on Friday.

Located near slums in east Nairobi, the open dump receives some 2,000 tonnes of the city's rubbish daily. Maribu storks and other scavengers pick over the noxious heap, while scores of people including children try to make a living off the remains.

The study, commissioned by the Nairobi-based U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP), found that half of 328 children tested had concentrations of lead in their blood exceeding the internationally accepted level.

Exposed to pollutants from heavy metals and toxic substances in soil, water and air, almost half the children tested were also suffering respiratory diseases, including chronic bronchitis and asthma, a UNEP statement said.

Nearly half of soil samples from the area had lead levels almost 10 times higher than unpolluted samples.

"The Dandora site may pose some special challenges for the city of Nairobi and Kenya as a nation. But it is also a mirror to the condition of rubbish sites across many parts of Africa and other urban centres of the developing world," said UNEP head Achim Steiner, exhorting city leaders to remedy the situation.

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What life is like inside an eco-friendly community

If developers had got their way, Ashley Vale would be just another faceless estate. Sanjida O'Connell meets the Bristol residents who joined forces to create a unique, eco-friendly community.

As you travel by train through Bristol there is one area that stands out from all the city's terraces, graffitied walls and gritty flyovers. It nestles in a green bowl – a patchwork of allotments, a mini nature reserve, a city farm and, at the bottom, a collection of surreal-looking houses made of copper, wood and glass in strange shapes, glinting with solar panels. This oasis of calm is Ashley Vale, a collection of 26 eco-houses that were designed and hand-built by local residents in response to a developer attempting to take over a brownfield site in the St Werburgh's district.

The project began in 2000 when a developer proposed turning a scaffolding yard into a housing estate. Local residents banded together and formed AVAG, the Ashley Vale Action Group, to oppose the development and put forward their own, alternative, vision. They won their case – and the right to build a sustainable, mixed-use community on the yard – but had to work quickly to buy the land.

The idea was to divide the two-acre plot into 26 and sell each section individually. Jackson Moulding, now a self-build consultant, and his partner, Anna Hope, were among the original residents who opposed the developer but hadn't thought about buying a plot themselves. "I got involved because I was working in environmental areas and wanted to push whatever happened here to be sustainable," says Moulding, "I wasn't there to build my own house, but then thought I should be involved." Moulding and Hope were among the last people to end up with a plot of land – one of the smaller sections in an awkward wedge-shape they have turned to their advantage.

Once all the land had been bought, the self-builders formed a co-op and met three times a week for over a year to design houses with their neighbours-to-be. The first problem they faced was that the plot was covered in concrete, which would be difficult to remove and result in landfill. So they decided to keep the concrete and treat it as a raft, building timber frames on top. Everyone had to design their houses themselves. "I read lots of books and doodled on beer mats," says Jonnie Brockwell, an engineer. Hope and Moulding built a very cute balsa model and Ian and Jane Coles, who work for Sustrans, the sustainable transport charity, "drew it out on squared paper and paced up and down other people's houses to find out how big they were".

Most people had no or little building experience, nor were they primarily motivated by the idea of creating their own eco-houses. Moulding, like most of the self-builders, says, "We couldn't even afford to buy a small terrace house in this area – but we knew we could afford a bigger house if we designed and built it ourselves." Ian Coles says: "It was a very steep learning curve. I went from having an IT job to being in charge of a building site."

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Dust Bowl Writ Large?

Climate change and endangered species may dominate the headlines about the planet's health, but a researcher who has been studying soil erosion warns of a similar crisis beneath our feet. The news is worrisome, he says, but a worldwide catastrophe is not inevitable--if agricultural nations quickly adopt the best new farming practices.

Each year, the world's agricultural land loses, on average, about 1 millimeter of topsoil. That might not seem like much, but it takes 10 years for the soil to replace that loss, and any topsoil loss at all makes the land less able to support crops without expensive infusions of chemical fertilizers. To combat erosion's effects, some farmers have adopted less harmful tilling methods, but the vast majority has resisted the best practice of all: no-till farming, which replaces the plow with mechanical seed drills that barely disturb the surface of the soil (ScienceNOW, 7 August). At present, only 7% of the planet's agricultural land receives no-till farming, most of it in North America and South America.

To determine how fast soil is being lost and whether anything can be done to stop or reverse the trend, geomorphologist David Montgomery of the University of Washington, Seattle, has been analyzing the scientific literature on erosion. In the September issue of GSA Today, published by the Geological Society of America, Montgomery draws two conclusions. First, conventional agriculture, which is still practiced widely, creates soil-erosion rates that exceed soil-production rates by up to several orders of magnitude. Second, the application of no-till and organic farming--which naturally builds topsoil--as well as crop rotation, can sustain agricultural productivity while maintaining the fertility of soils indefinitely.

"The longevity of our present society depends not so much on intrinsic limitations to the lifetime of societies, but on the way we treat the land," says Montgomery, the author of Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations. One bright spot, he says, is that the United States and Canada, two of the world's biggest food producers, have adopted soil-conservation farming methods to a great extent. It's "one of the few areas of environmental concern where we are ahead of the curve," Montgomery says. Still, he's concerned about the promotion of corn for biofuels. If not done with care, he says, the trend "risks reintroducing very erosive agricultural methods," thereby switching "an energy system based on mining oil for one based on mining soil."

Soil scientist John Reganold of Washington State University in Pullman calls Montgomery's conclusions "right on" and seconds his warnings about erosion. We're already feeling the effects of agricultural soil loss, he says, especially on hillsides. Grain yields, for example, could be significantly higher if soil erosion rates were cut. Along with no-till methods, Reganold foresees improved soil conservation with organic farming systems and via the development of perennial grains, which do not require reseeding each year.

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