From the Saints stadium to Ray Pruban’s Energy Challenge homes, St. Paul is getting its solar energy game on in a big way. Continue reading
Category Archives: environment
Don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air
As smoke from drought-driven Canadian wildfires flows into Minnesota skies and lungs, Tom Lehrer’s “Pollution” reminds me of the work we’ve done and the work we have to do.
If you visit American city,
You will find it very pretty.
Just two things of which you must beware:
Don’t drink the water and don’t breathe the air!
Lehrer sang about pollution back in the 1960s, when rivers still burned and air-polluting, smog-generating particles poured out of every industrial smokestack and auto exhaust pipe. We cleaned up the rivers and air then. We can and must do it again. Continue reading
Filed under environment, food and farming
Save the flying penises
Photo by Bill Damon, published under Creative Commons license.
Wild bees may be in even more peril than managed honeybee colonies, and they are essential to food production.
Because bees pollinate or fertilize crops, entomologist Thomas Seeley called them “flying penises” for plants. Bees are essential for our food supply and our ecological health. According to a May 13 USDA report, summer losses of honeybee colonies now exceed winter losses, for first time. Honeybees not the only, and maybe not the biggest problem: wild bees are in even greater peril than managed honeybee colonies. Continue reading
Filed under agriculture, environment, food and farming
Learning from Irish farms
With stone walls and grazing cattle, Irish farms look like tourist attractions, but farming is still serious business here.
Imagine being paid to maintain fragile land as permanent pasture. Imagine a farm subsidy program designed to support young farmers, small farms and organic farms. Imagine a farm program that declares that 30 percent of direct payments are conditioned on compliance with “greening” criteria, such as crop diversification and crop rotation. All that is part of Ireland’s agricultural economy, where agriculture and food produce 25 percent of the country’s export earnings. Continue reading
Filed under environment, food and farming
Katherine Kersten vs. Pope Francis
Katherine Kersten inspired me to prayer this morning, and by that I mean more than the usual “Oh, God, not her again!” After reading her heated attack on the dastardly new “Church of Sustainability” that threatens sanity, morals, corporate profits and the very existence of the United States of America, I turned to the recent pronouncement by Pope Francis on the very same subject. And I had to wonder: was KK really so exercised over what university students are doing, or was the real trigger for her outrage the decidedly anti-capitalist, pro-environmental teaching of Pope Francis? Continue reading
Filed under environment
Weeds, compost and recycling in St. Paul
After ten days of intensive garden work, I’ve finally beaten back the weeds that tried to take over while I was on vacation. Now I have piles of branches and boxes and buckets of weeds to dispose of. Packing weeds into the car and driving to the compost center seems perverse, and not very environmentally friendly. But it’s my best solution — despite years of trying, I haven’t devised a way to compost successfully at home. The nearby Ramsey County compost center offers both a place to dispose of weeds and branches (and kitchen waste) and a return load of wood chips for mulch. Continue reading
Filed under environment, St. Paul Notes
Bring back the Citizens’ Board — protect Minnesota waters
July 1 will be “a sad day for democracy, a sad day for citizen engagement, open government and environmental protection in Minnesota,” said Jim Riddle at the last meeting of the Citizens’ Board of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency today. That date marks the legislative end of the Citizens’ Board, in retaliation for the board’s 2014 decision to require an environmental impact statement from a proposed 9,000-cow mega-dairy operation in Baker Township, Stevens County near Chokio, Minnesota. Continue reading
Filed under agriculture, environment
Fast Track to nowhere: Part 2 – Throwing caution to the winds
Photo by Wendy Colucci of the CNY Area Labor Federation, AFL-CIO, republished under Creative Commons license.
Despite the secrecy around specific free trade pact provisions in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), we know that “international standards” rule and local / state / national food rules get overruled. In practice, look for weakening European food safety and food integrity rules, and strengthening the hand of agribusiness. The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) summarizes: Agribusiness is “pushing to rollback regulations that hinder their profits at the expense of food safety, farmers and ranchers, consumers and animal welfare.” Continue reading
Filed under agriculture, environment, food and farming
Brendan Behan, Dublin and the Minnesota legislature
Brendan Behan’s poster on a Dublin alley wall has a message you might want to send to the Minnesota legislature, or the U.S. Congress: “I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.” Roads, anyone? Food stamps? Heating assistance? Continue reading
Filed under children, education, environment
Cheap fries, high costs to Minnesota land and water
Photo by 16:9clue, published under Creative Commons license.
Sebeka, Minnesota vegetable farmer Kathy Connell went to McDonald’s last week — not the restaurant, but the annual shareholder meeting. She had a message about pine forests, potatoes and Minnesota water, but McDonald’s shut her out. Connell, along with other Minnesotans and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, is concerned about R.D. Offutt Company’s use and misuse of land and water in northwestern Minnesota’s Cass, Hubbard, Becker and Wadena counties, part of the Pineland Sands Aquifer. Continue reading
Filed under agriculture, environment, food and farming
Mary Turck