NewsEnvironment
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Pols Show Little Love for Oversight Board
NewsEnvironmentPolitics Jan 31, 2012, by Jacob Pierce 2 Comments
With the 108-page Climate Action Plan awaiting final approval by the Santa Cruz City Council, environmentalists are nursing hopes that a few final items on their wish list will make it into the framework. One such item is creation of a citizens’ advisory board to make sure the city meets its own goals for cutting its emissions. “I envisioned a working group where there were would be committees that were open the public,” says People Power’s Micah Posner. Some politicians are hesitant to say the least. “I think that’s a big, big mistake,” former Mayor Mike Rotkin told city council.
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Santa Cruz Submerged
NewsEnvironment Jan 17, 2012, by Jacob Pierce 3 Comments
A team of snorkelers, boogie boarders and life jacket-clad activists will wander Pacific Avenue for an ocean-themed, only-in-Santa Cruz parade this Tuesday, Jan. 24. And it’s all in the name of climate change education. If temperatures continue rising, experts say much of downtown Santa Cruz could one day be underwater. “All of this is very, very hard to imagine because it’s so scary,” says Transition Santa Cruz’s Michael Levy. “One way to think about it is by laughing.”
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Friends of Santa Cruz State Parks Turns 35
Environment Dec 07, 2011, by Samantha Larson 5 Comments
Friends of Santa Cruz State Parks celebrates 35 years of helping the Santa Cruz community connect with the natural world with an evening of gourmet appetizers, desserts and ocean views at the Dream Inn.
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UCSC Grad Finds Bluebird–Wine Connection
Environment Nov 16, 2011, by Samantha Larson 13 Comments
With its bright blue back and rust-colored chest, it’s easy to see why the western bluebird is a frequent birder’s favorite. Soon viticulturists may number among its fans as well.
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Missing The New Energy Wave
Environment Nov 16, 2011, by Samantha Larson 9 Comments
The turbines planted in 2008 off the coast of Lincolnshire, on England’s eastern edge, brought the United Kingdom’s total of electricity generated from offshore wind turbines to 590 megawatts, enough to power 300,000 homes. Plans to double the growth of the U.K.’s offshore wind farms by 2016 will secure the country as the world’s largest producer of electricity generated from ocean winds. But on this side of the Atlantic it’s a very different story.
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Frances Moore Lappe on Discovering the EcoMind
Environment Nov 09, 2011, by Samantha Larson 1 Comments
Frances Moore Lappé became a leading environmental figure in 1971 with the publication of her bestselling book Diet for a Small Planet. Four decades and seventeen books later, the message of her newest release, EcoMind: Changing the Way We Think, to Create the World We Want, is still relevant.
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Jackel Enterprises Salvages Trees Headed for the Landfill
EnvironmentCommunity Nov 02, 2011, by Samantha Larson 2 Comments
Steve Jackel moseys about the premises of Jackel Enterprises, occasionally interrupting his monologue to point out an irregular slab of Monterey cypress—wood with umber lines that swirl into a speckling of eyes—or a bisected redwood log with burnt bark, evidence of the fire it didn’t survive. Jackel acquired these pieces of lumber because his business involves “urban, suburban and rural forestry.” He salvages trees that would probably otherwise be taken to the landfill after falling on a road during a storm or being cut down to make room for new landscaping.
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Deadly Fish Farm Virus Found in Wild Pacific Salmon
Environment Oct 25, 2011, by Eric Johnson
Margot Stiles, a marine scientist with the conservation group Oceana, calls the breaking news of a salmon-killing virus loose in the Pacific Northwest “horrifying.” Tobias Aguirre, director of the Santa Cruz-based FishWise, agrees that the virus—infectious salmon anemia (ISA)—could have a “devastating” impact on fisheries in the region and beyond.
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County’s Plastic Bag Law Challenged
Environment Oct 19, 2011, by Danny Wool
It has only been a month since the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors voted to ban plastic bags from stores and restaurants in all unincorporated areas of the county. That is all it took for the Save the Plastic Bag Coalition to challenge the law in court. Stephen Joseph, the San Francisco lawyer behind the suit, says that there is no scientifically backed evidence to support the notion that plastic bags are harmful to the environment. “You at least have to have some valid findings,” he says. “But they don’t. They have invalid finding.”
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Santa Cruz Outfit Works Towards Cleaner Oceans
Environment Oct 19, 2011, by Samantha Larson
Jim Holm and Nick Drobac, co-founders of The Clean Oceans Project (TCOP), are thinking big. They’re working toward a multi-step plan to locate, harvest and dispose of plastics that have accumulated in the “great Pacific garbage patch,” or the North Pacific Gyre, the convergence zone where research suggests millions of tons of plastics have collected.
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