Tips for Making Your Yard Green and Beautiful

The warm weather, longer daylight hours, and blooming tree buds can mean only one thing: spring has finally arrived. Now, with winter behind us, it’s the perfect time to head outdoors and freshen up the yard. In celebration of Lawn and Garden Month this April, beautify your landscape with these easy tips:

Add a “Recession Garden” – An estimated 43 million people are expected to grow their own fruits, vegetables, herbs and berries this year. Growing your own produce can save your family a large amount of money on groceries each year, and some say that fresh, homegrown fruits and veggies taste better than those purchased at the store. Read the rest of this entry »

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Nobel laureate and former Vice President, Al Gore, has a very important message for all of us on Earth Day. It’s about petitioning our Congress to pass green energy legislation that will ultimately jump-start the economy and help solve the environmental crisis both in the states and around the world. We need your support.

An email letter from Mr. Vice President:

Dear Ken,

In order to solve the climate crisis, we can’t just change light bulbs — we need to change laws.

We’re closer today than ever before. Right now, Congress is debating clean energy legislation that will jumpstart our economy and help solve the climate crisis.

On this Earth Day, can I depend on you to support this crucial legislation?

This is the historic comprehensive energy legislation that we’ve been waiting for. It will create millions of jobs and help solve the climate crisis by closing the carbon pollution loophole.

After so many years of inaction and obstruction, it’s incredible that we have finally reached this point. But the legislative process is never easy. With powerful forces fighting hard to maintain the status quo, it will take all of us working together to seize this moment.

Today, you are one of more than two million Repower America members, and tens of millions of Americans, who want to take positive action for our planet. This is it — a chance to demonstrate nationwide support for clean energy to our leaders in Congress, and help to bring about a new economic era based on clean energy.

So please, talk to your friends. Talk to your parents or grandparents. Start a conversation with a co-worker. And ask them to join with you and the millions of other Americans who want Congress to support clean energy jobs by closing the carbon pollution loophole.

Your efforts have brought us this far. I hope you take this opportunity to make this a historic Earth Day.

Thank you,

Al Gore

Take action now or never!

[Yes. I'll get 10 people to sign the petition in support of clean energy legislation within the next week]

[I support clean energy but I'd like to help in other ways]

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The Arbor Day Foundation has selected Geneva Mendoza, a fifth-grade student at Maryetta School in Stilwell, Oklahoma, as winner of the 2009 Arbor Day National Poster Contest. The annual contest for fifth-grade students nationwide is sponsored by Toyota and runs in conjunction with the national celebration of Arbor Day — which will be held Friday, April 24.

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Just a few weeks after President Obama asked Congress to send him legislation “that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America,” The Discovery Channel will air an original one-hour special on the power and potential of cutting-edge green energy breakthroughs poised to take place when Congress rises to the challenge. “Earth: The Sequel,” premieres Wednesday, March 11 at 10 PM (ET/PT) and features Fred Krupp, President of Environmental Defense Fund, as well as numerous clean energy entrepreneurs working to build a viable and highly profitable future for our planet.

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More than one in three honey-bee colonies in the U.S. have mysteriously died over the last three years; a staggering phenomenon scientists have named Colony Collapse Disorder, or CCD.

Because honey bee pollination is required to produce one-third of all the natural foods we eat, honey bees play a critical role in ensuring we have enough food to feed our growing population. Therefore, we must do our part to solve this dire puzzle threatening our food supply and stumping scientists from around the world. Read the rest of this entry »

A builders challenge program, launched in 2008 by the U. S. Department of Energy, is a voluntary energy-savings program with a goal to build homes that achieve 70 or better on the EnergySmart Home Scale. The scale allows homebuyers to determine how the energy efficiency of a particular home compares to the DOE energy efficiency goal and other homes.

The DOE Builders Challenge encourages homebuilders in the US to construct 220,000 high-performance energy-efficient homes by 2012. The 1.3 million homes to be built to the challenge standard between now and 2030 are anticipated to cut carbon emissions equivalent to removing 606,000 cars off the road each year. [U.S. DOE EnergySmart Home Scale]

According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s December 2008 data, California’s Central Valley region ranked the highest in unemployment in the state at 9.5% –the highest in over 13 years and double the unemployment rate a year ago. And the future doesn’t look much brighter with unemployment predictions at 17.5%, and an additional 36,000 layoffs expected in the next 12 months.

Where is the good news in all of these workforce woes? According to the recent environmental scan from the California Community Colleges Workforce and Economic Development Centers of Excellence’s (COE), it may very well lie in the future of the “green” economy and hot occupations that follow in its wake. Read the rest of this entry »

The organizations involved in projects that include empowering residents to clean up New Orleans East for a safe return after Hurricane Katrina and developing a tool to target high-risk homes with lead contamination in Durham, N.C., are amongst the winners of EPA’s first Environmental Achievement Awards. Twelve award recipients include community-based organizations, universities, and state and local governments from nine states. Read the rest of this entry »

Wal-Mart Thursday announced to reduce its plastic shopping bag waste by an average of 33% per store by 2013. This is expected to eliminate more than 135 million pounds of plastic waste worldwide. To help reach this goal, Wal-Mart will reduce the number of bags given out by its stores, promote the use of reusable bags and give customers the ability to keep recycling plastic shopping bags. The announcement was made at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting. Read the rest of this entry »