Energy Star Rating Standards to Tighten

Energy Star Logo

The Environmental Protection Agency recently announced updates to its Energy Star Rating requirements on televisions and cable boxes. The revisions are the first in a list of about 20 products that will receive updates to their Energy Star Rating requirements this year.

Currently, Energy Star rated televisions hold at least 70% of the Market Share. The stricter standards mean, according to the EPA, “substantial overall energy bill reduction, and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions reductions.”

The new standards are requiring a 40% reduction in watt usage. For example, a 60 inch television currently averages about 282 watts, but the come September the same 60 inch TV will be required to use less than 108 watts to receive an Energy Star Rating. Talk about saving a watt!

In its announcement, the EPA states that if all U.S. homes had Energy Star rated TVs and cable boxes under these new requirements, savings would reach $5 billion a year and reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions equal to that of taking over 700 million cars off the road.

Eco-pimp my dirty job

Enjoy a lazy Sunday! by ucumari Although it’d be easy to dismiss “The Lazy Environmentalist” as a simple product placement vehicle for Brita filters and GE CFLs, it can be an entertaining and informative show1. In this Sundance Channel series media personality Josh Dorfman tries to convince small business owners and hobbyists from all walks of life to adopt alternative products and techniques. If you don’t subscribe to this premium channel, recent episodes are also available via Comcast On Demand and clips of episodes can be viewed on the series website. Check it out next time you feel the need to become one with the couch, but there’s nothing good on.

Also for your enjoyment, a 45 minute discussion by Josh to Google employees about his approach to environmentalism:

1. The enlightenment can also be frustrating when many of Josh’s challenges can’t see the forest for the trees, but interspersed are plenty of pleasant surprises.

And the cow goes…

Food Inc.

If you’ve not yet seen the critically acclaimed documentary that some liken to a modern “The Jungle,” PBS will be airing “Food, Inc.” on POV over the course of the next week, starting Wednesday at 9.

Food, Inc. will be accompanied by Notes on Milk, a short variation of the 2007 feature documentary Milk in the Land: Ballad of an American Drink. Ariana Gerstein and Monteith McCollum, whose Hybrid aired on POV in 2002, take a quirky and poetic look at some lesser-known aspects of America’s favorite drink: the industry’s spiritual underpinnings, politics and the struggle of independent farmers. More info»

And for an introduction to our agricultural system there’s Dirt!

Guess “who’s” turning 40?

FIASCOP 15 by Pierre Marcel Given our area’s notoriously schizophrenic weather you could forgive some for celebrating Earth Day a little early or late, but what if you want to observe this round-number anniversary the day of? Otherwise it can be a bit like trying to get excited about trick-or-treating on November 1st.

Here’s a special Earth Day view of our local events calendar to make it easier to find something to celebrate with. Some highlights include:

Also of interest, PBS’ American Experience will be airing a two-hour special on the history of Earth Day on Monday April 19 at 9. It should be in heavy rotation for the remainder of the week. On April 27 at 10 PM, Independent Lens is showing “Garbage Dreams” by Mai Iskander.

Welcome to the world’s largest garbage village located on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt. The Zaballeen (Arabic for “garbage people”) recycle 80 percent of the trash they collect—far more than other recycling initiatives. But now multinational corporations threatens their livelihood. Follow three teenage boys born into the business who are forced to make choices that will impact the survival of their community.

How does your garden grow?

Jen's hands by jbrownell

April is National Garden Month, so get out there and get grubby! It’s an excellent way to get some Vitamin D, and fresh produce. Larger plantings or vines may also shade your home from the brutal sun of summer.

If you don’t have a yard, consider container gardening or applying for a plot in a community garden. Either way, you may want to take advantage of the city’s annual rain barrel sale so that you can water your plants with no-cost chlorine-free water. You can also feed your plants for free with compost available during normal recycling center hours (T&R 4–7:30PM and S 9–4PM) thanks to the city’s compost program and the local businesses and homeowners who contribute their food waste.

If you are lucky enough to have a yard, consider seeking Backyard Wildlife Habitat certification from the NWF. You should also have you soil tested for lead, especially if you plant to grow any root vegetables, herbs or leafy greens for the table. UMass Amherst offers a low-cost “standard test” which will warn you of any problems with lead, as well as provide information about basic plant nutrient levels.

To learn more about the stuff you’ll playing in for the next few months check out Dirt! The trailer is below, and if you missed the recent showing at the Boston Public Library, it will be playing on WGBH soon during Independent Lens. It is currently scheduled for April 20th at 10PM, but will certainly be repeated a few times afterward.

Extreme documentaries

Are there cars in heaven? by eqqman

Last week’s episode of NOVA Extreme Cave Diving was an interesting foray into “blue holes,” and the evidence they offer of paleo-climate. If you missed it, check the website to view it online. Similar, though less-breath taking evidence is offered in a recent paper from Yale.

This week’s Extreme Ice, provides a stunning and more in-depth review of the photographic documentation of glacial melting by James Balog, which we have mentioned before.

Making the Case

enviro-goreThe New York times had an interesting op-ed last Monday by Paul Krugman, Cassandras of Climate Change. It contains a few quotable bits, but they’re large and the piece is short, so I’ll leave it to you dear reader to follow the link.

Krugman mentions Mr. Gore, and his film The Inconvenient Truth, which never quite seemed to live up to the hype… but I do have high hopes for The Age of Stupid, if it ever makes it into general distribution that is. To be honest though, what’s really been driving home a sense of urgency for me recently is PBS, specifically five year old re-runs of Scientific American Frontiers!

A recently aired segment in “Forever Wild?“, which I previously mentioned in passing, makes an excellent case for not mucking with the atmosphere. “Hot Times in Alaska” examines a number of disturbing changes well-underway that even those familiar with the global warming might not be aware of. And a third episode, “Hot Planet – Cold Comfort,” looks at the merits of another movie, The Day After Tomorrow.

All three episodes can be viewed for free online, and are worth reviewing in your spare time, or passing on to others who still don’t quite understand what all the fuss is about. “Hot Times” also happens to be showing Friday night at 9 on GBH Kids.

Everything’s ACES

Aces Still wondering just what ACES a.k.a Waxman-Markley, or “The Climate Bill,” is all about? Perhaps this brief interview with the president of the Alliance to Save Energy will help. Of course, then there’s the question of whether it’s too little too late, too much too soon, or just right? Bill Moyers’ guests this week say it’s not enough. I tend to agree, though I’m not entirely convinced it’s the false start they’d have us believe. Regardless, the summary of Waxman-Markley’s measures seems fairly moderate. Indeed, the building code changes it calls for are only slightly higher than future federal regulations!

P.S. GovTrack has some interesting tools to let you monitor the progress of bills like ACES.

Doing well by doing Goode?

good-600Last week, ABC premiered “The Goode Family” a new animated series from Mike Judge, the creator of “Beavis and Butthead” and “King of the Hill.”

As with his past work, Judge’s main target is political correctness. In King of the Hill he used a gun-toting Christian family from Texas as his target, This time around, the central characters are a family of “tree hugging nutjobs” who have taken political correctness to the n-th degree. Apart from designating their adopted white Afrikaner son an “African American”, the Goodes are also extreme environmentalists.

Their mantra for life is WWAGD “What would Al Gore Do?”

In the light of recent developments in the “green space” including the pronouncement that the green “bubble” has burst, it is interesting to see that making fun of “do-gooders” is now considered mainstream fare. Of course, there’s also the mocking of “helicopter” parenting, Whole Foods style stores, hybrid cars, vegetarianism, campus politics, reproductive rights and the teenage “purity movement.”

Anyway, why not check it out yourself?