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    Dave Burdick

    Dave Burdick

    Man about Boulder: dailycamera.com, biggreenboulder.com, fridayallweek.com

  • Celine Cousteau: Environmentalism Should Be Taught In Schools

    This morning, we wrote about a contest for?America's Greenest School and 5 Green Tips For Students, and now we come across Celine Cousteau -- that's Jacques Cousteau's granddaughter -- saying kids ought to be taught environmentalism at a young age. First of all, I don't understand why environmentalism isn't part of every curriculum in schools. Not just to plug my father's non-profit, but I really do think the Jean-Michel Cousteau "Ambassadors of the Environment" (www.aote.org) programs are really great for kids.

  • Chewable Pampers: SNL's Disposable Diaper Suggestion

    EcoWonk caught the environmental "message" in this week's Saturday Night Live "Chewable Pampers" sketch: To date, disposable diaper manufacturers of the mainstream have yet to display much concern about what happens to their products in the waste stream: there's not only dioxin from bleaching, but also the virgin pulp from 250,000 trees per year landfilled to the tune of 3.5 million tons along with untreated sewage. If we all had to eat what we wasted, it'd be a different world. WATCH:

  • PETA: Michael Vick Eagles Signing Has Disappointed "Millions Of Decent Football Fans"

    PETA and millions of decent football fans around the world are disappointed that the Philadelphia Eagles have chosen to sign a man who hanged dogs from trees, electrocuted them with jumper cables, held them underwater until they drowned in his swimming pool, and even threw his own family dogs into the fighting pit to be torn to shreds while he laughed. Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. To clarify misleading stories regarding PETA and Michael Vick, PETA withdrew its offer to do a TV spot with Michael Vick last winter when a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) report on Vick's dogfighting activities revealed that he enjoyed placing family pets in the ring with fighting pit bulls and that he laughed as dogs ripped each other apart.

  • Twittering The Air Quality In Beijing

    The embassy data is published on its own Twitter feed, and while the U.S. doesn't actively promote the information, it has slowly been getting more attention from Beijing residents concerned about the city's air quality. "The U.S. Embassy has an air quality monitor to measure PM 2.5 particulates on the Embassy compound as an indication of air quality," says Susan Stevenson, a State Department spokesperson. "This monitor is a resource for the health of the Embassy community." She cautions that citywide analyses cannot be done from a single machine, but because the embassy has the data available, it makes it available to others.

  • Greenmailing: When Unhappy Laborers Use Green Causes To Hurt A Company

    Now, on the surface, requesting that a company conduct environmental surveys before proceeding with a project seems like a pretty straightforwardly good idea. Unions can evidently slow progress on a solar project to a halt, and make going ahead much more expensive--sometimes by up to a staggering 20%.

  • Can We Generate Electricity While Buying Groceries? (VIDEO)

    Energy will be captured every time a vehicle drives over "kinetic road plates" in the car park and then channeled back into the store. The kinetic road plates are expected to produce 30 kWh of green energy every hour -- more than enough energy to power the store's checkouts. The system, pioneered for Sainsbury's by Peter Hughes of Highway Energy Systems, does not affect the car or fuel efficiency, and drivers feel no disturbance as they drive over the plates.

  • BIODISEL FACTS: All You Need To Know

    The following is an excerpt from?The Citizen-Powered Energy Handbook: Community Solutions to a Global Crisis?by?Greg Pahl. Biodiesel, a diverse group of diesel-like fuels, can be easily made through a simple chemical process known as transesterification from virtually any vegetable oil, including (but not limited to) soy, corn, rapeseed (canola), cottonseed, peanut, sunflower, mustard seed, and hemp.

  • Shell Human Rights Abuses Case Delayed (VIDEO)

    The Shell human rights abuses case has been delayed in New York due to court order. More than 13 years after Nigeria executed writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others, a U.S. civil trial of the Shell Oil Company in connection with those deaths has been postponed. Experts say the delay could be because of a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling Wednesday that reinstated the possibility of Shell's Nigerian subsidiary also facing trial in the case.

  • 10 Things You Should Know About Raw Milk

    In recent years, there's been a crackdown on small dairies producing raw milk, designed as an obstacle to the growing legions of consumers demanding healthier and more flavorful milk. Raw milk has been deemed "unfit" for human consumption by the FDA and other government sting operations, and the public propagandized into fearing it. David Gumpert, author of popular blog?The Complete Patient?and forthcoming book?Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America's Emerging Battle Over Food Rights?(Chelsea Green, Oct 2009), asks an important question: How much of the fear-mongering from the pro-pasteurization people is real, and how much is propaganda from Big Agribusiness??Gumpert says?the anti-raw-milk campaign is just another governmental technique to sanitize the food supply—even in the face of ever-increasing rates of chronic disease like asthma, diabetes, and allergies.

  • Green Tips For Beachgoers: How To Stay Safe And Have Fun

    Planet Green?says that the first thing to be aware of is how safe the beach itself is. Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today. When comparing sunscreens, see which ones have loads of ingredients you can't pronounce or wouldn't recognize as a plant and put those back on the shelf.?Planet Green warns against parabens?(ingredients that end in "paraben") and chemicals like oxybenzone.

  • WORLD ENVIRONMENT DAY Is June 5: All You Need To Know

    World Environment Day, which falls on June 5 every year, was established by the UN General Assembly in 1972 -- shortly after the US instituted?Earth Day. United Nations World Environment Day is coming up on June 5th, and in an effort to get things rolling, the organization launched a Twitter contest (that is also a great way to market the earth-focused day) that for each new Twitterer that follows @UNEPandYou before June 5th, a tree will be planted. Hard to say if the US will notice -- we did just have Earth Day, after all, and then there's the weird little issue of the official North American?World Environment Day host city?-- Omaha, Nebraska.

  • Ken Salazar's Department Makeover: Addressing Climate, Bush Shortcuts

    At the same time Salazar is working on those internal issues, he is also at the forefront of Obama's agenda for energy and climate change, which is now being worked on intensively on Capitol Hill. "We have driven through the tangles of the jurisdictional disputes and have now finalized the rules for the development of offshore wind [power] here in the United States.

  • How Vermont And Gainesville Could Revolutionize US Energy

    H. 446 is the first legislation calling for a full system of advanced renewable tariffs in the US to pass the legislature and become law. The bill includes changes to Vermont's Sustainably Priced Energy Enterprise Development Program (SPEED) that would implement a pilot feed-in tariff policy. Vermont's action follows closely on that of the Ontario provincial legislature's groundbreaking Green Energy Act and with several states considering similar legislation, the Green Mountain state could be the tipping point for a rapid succession of feed-in tariff policies across the continent.

  • Lose The Dryer, Save The Money

    Electric clothes dryers are a colossal waste of energy. Six thousand! This is more than a typical heat pump or electric water heater, usually thought of as the hogs of the household. You should plan on getting rid of electric heat dryers and hopefully gas-fired dryers as well if your climate allows.

  • Organic Vs. Conventional: Have You Been Robbed?

    In fact, if all of us knew exactly what "organic" means and the other available alternatives (fast corporate food never being one of them), it is possible we could actually save money and be better informed about the food we're putting into our bodies.

  • Water Footprint: How Much Water Your Stuff Takes

    A T-shirt involved growing cotton, which requires a lot of manual and mechanical work, it had to be turned into cotton as we know it, shipped, cut and sewn, shipped, packaged and labeled and maybe printed on, shipped and then -- voila -- sold! This article originally appeared on?HuffPost.

  • GREEN FEES: College Students Demand To Pay Their Own Way To Renewables

    Green Inc. reports that college students are asking for tuition increases and less beer. OK, maybe just tuition increases, but it still seems unlikely, right? The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education posts a list of universities that have such fees, which generally hover around $3 to $5 a semester but have increased to $40 a term in the case of Northland College in Wisconsin.

  • Washington-Birmingham Rail Could Pay For Itself

    Over the last 30 years, Atlanta and Georgia have led the way for economic success and growth across the New South. This growth, however, has come at a cost as we have seen relentless traffic congestion not just in metro Atlanta but in other metropolitan areas around the Southeast. Become a founding member of HuffPost Plus today.

  • "The Story Of Stuff" Video About Consumption Sweeps Nation's Classrooms (VIDEO)

    According to?the New York Times, "The Story of Stuff" with Annie Leonard has made stats and statistics about consumption palatable to young people (and old people, for that matter). The thick-lined drawings of the Earth, a factory and a house, meant to convey the cycle of human consumption, are straightforward and child-friendly. Which is one reason "The Story of Stuff," a 20-minute video about the effects of human consumption, has become a sleeper hit in classrooms across the nation.

  • New Kansas Governor Caves On Departed Sebelius' Energy Fight

    Former Kansas Governor -- and now Secretary of Health and Human Services -- Kathleen Sebelius just saw some of her legacy tossed out by her successor. A western Kansas utility would be allowed to build a coal-fired power plant under a deal announced Monday that would end a 19-month dispute between the governor's office and the company. Legislators passed four bills clearing the way to construction, but then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius -- now the U.S. secretary of health and human services -- vetoed all four.