Sludge Watch ==> Dear Erin - Its about Hinkley

[Maureen Reilly]

Sludgewatch Admin:

And we humans are getting tired of waiting for Erin to do right and help 
save Hinkley from Nursery Products sewage sludge composting site..

Why isn't she at these meetings about Hinkley's sludge plant? Why should 
Nursery Products - a company that was court ordered to stop taking sludge- 
be allowed to start up again 20-30 times bigger?  With fewer controls? In 
the little town of Hinkley...the town that made Erin a milliionaire?

Dear Erin.....
................................................


Be passionate (right now, please)
Sena: Eco Warrior Princess hates waiting for humans to do the right thing

By Sena Christian
senac at newsreview.com

This article was published on 10.11.07.

SN&R buys a building, wants to make it green and pays Sena: Eco Warrior 
Princess to write a weekly column about it.
They tell us in journalism to state the most important thing at the 
beginning, to draw people in immediately. Thats a hard thing to do with 
environmental reporting because all the angles seem critical and nothing 
inconsequential. So I will begin here, on a Monday morning in October, with 
a peek at our future only 28 years from now. Scientists agree that at 450 
parts of carbon-per-million in the atmosphere, climate change will be 
irreversible. We now have 385 parts with an expected increase of 2.2 parts a 
year, which means by about 2035, well hit that magic number. NASA even has a 
phrase for this moment in time when global warming reaches that point of no 
return, when it is out of humanitys control.

Three weeks ago, I was sitting in Bill Graham Civic Auditorium at the West 
Coast Green Building Conference held in San Francisco, listening to Ed 
Mazria, author of The Passive Solar Energy Book and founder of Architecture 
2030, speak. As he spoke of climate changes rapid pace, he showed slides of 
what will happen with just one meter sea-level rise on U.S. coastal cities 
and towns, where 53 percent of Americans live. To sum it up: a whole lot of 
flooding.

But the good news is that there is a silver bullet to stopping climate 
change, he said: If you can stop coal, you can stop global warming. End of 
story.

All the sudden, I was standing on my feet applauding with everyone else. But 
there is bad news, too. Last month, the Bush administration issued proposed 
new rules for coal mining that sanction mountaintop removal, allowing for 
the tops of mountains to be blasted off, filling streams with poison and 
turning beautiful mountains into ruins. Currently, 151 new conventional 
coal-fired power plants are being developed in this country. If all 110 
million households in the United States change a 60-watt incandescent light 
bulb to an eco-friendly compact fluorescent, the CO2 emissions from two 
medium-sized coal-fired power plants in one year would negate this entire 
effort. Thats pretty demoralizing.

If they keep building the coal plants, its over, Mazria said. Do whatever 
you can to get the message across that we need to stop coal.

For Mazria, there is also a silver bullet to stopping our dependence on 
coal: passion.

Maybe the 270 vendors in the exhibit hall displaying their green products 
saw an economic opportunity to exploit. But as I struck up conversations 
with guys selling sustainably harvested lumber and petroleum-free natural 
resin pavement, I came to believe it is passion to do the right thing that 
motivates them more than money.

Patience is not one my strong suits. I have a hard time accepting the 
current state of the environment, especially with reports telling us that 
West Antarctic is shrinking, most polar bears will be gone by 2050 and the 
last time the polar region was this warm was 125,000 years ago, which is a 
timeframe so incomprehensibly big my brain cant even make sense of it. At 
the conference, I was not alone with my impatience. I sensed despair 
underneath the optimism. How do we make 450 parts of carbon-per-million 
translate to practical, immediate knowledge that compels people to action? 
How do we make the phrase, Out of humanitys control actually mean something? 
How do we get enough people to care?

For his part, Mazria asked the audience to meet the Architecture 2030 
challenge to reduce building energy use by a minimum of 50 percent by 2030 
by using energy-efficient designs, adding updated technology and purchasing 
renewable energy. He noted that buildings use 76 percent of all the energy 
produced at coal plants.

During her speech, Erin Brockovich offered another idea. She had us close 
our eyes and picture the place where we wished we were instead, where we 
would find peace and comfort. Nearly everyone raised their hands when she 
asked if we envisioned nature. We need to dream of something before it 
becomes a reality, she said.

This is the Erin Brockovich youre thinking of, the one who exposed that the 
citizens of Hinkley, Calif., were being poisoned by contaminated drinking 
water while PG&E looked the other way. She quoted L. Frank Baum, the author 
of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a book written during the height of the 
Industrial Revolution, to teach children the value of individual thought. 
She told us that we all had the courage, intellect and heart to do whats 
right when it comes to the environment.

She told us not to let setbacks bring us down, ending with a lesson from her 
own life. Along the way, she said, I learned that I was not afraid of a 
wicked witch or a flying monkey, either.