Working For Jobs

by Greg Hanscom.

Over the past couple of weeks, the fight between “the 99%” and the powerful Wall Street and Washington elite has devolved into a
street battle between protesters and the police. Black-suited cops have pepper sprayed
peaceful protesters, bloodied kids who blocked New York streets, and clubbed an
old lady. It’s too bad—for everyone involved.

It’s easy to scapegoat people like John Pike,
the UC Davis police officer who doused a group of students with pepper spray—and was promptly escorted, along with the rest of his squad, off of the green
by a group of outraged students. (If all you’ve seen is the pepper spraying, you’ve
gotta watch the scene that followed, captured in this YouTube video. These kids
showed incredible chutzpah and restraint.)

But the problem obviously goes beyond individual officers. “Let’s not pretend that Pike is an
independent bad actor,” Alexis
Madrigal wrote an incisive piece in The
Atlantic. “If we vilify Pike, we let the
institutions off way too easy.”

Writing
in the Guardian,
author Naomi Wolf went so far as to suggest that Congress itself advised—and
the Department of Homeland Security coordinated—a violent nationwide
crackdown in an effort to quell dissent that might threaten lawmakers’
pocketbooks.

Of
course, those crazy kids on the Interwebs just had a great time making a mockery of the cops.

For a little insight into the issue, and some perspective
from the police side of the line, we called Norm Stamper. He was chief of
the Seattle Police Department when all hell broke loose during the 1999 meeting
of the World Trade Organization. He has spent a good deal of the decade since
then trying to make sense of what happened, and doing his best to prevent it
from happening again.

Q. Take us back to 1999 and the first couple of days of the
WTO protests in Seattle.

A. We thought we were ready. We had put in 10,000 hours of
training. We had sent officers around the country. We had studied what had
happened at previous international financial conferences.

Monday [the first day of the WTO meeting] comes and goes
with a few incidents, with many thousands of protesters on the streets. They’re
praising us for our friendliness, our restraint … On Tuesday morning, however,
starting at 2 or 2:30 in the morning, we get reports from our officers that
large contingents of protesters, some of them holding gas masks, were starting
to converge on the downtown area.

When the sun comes up, we get a real sense of how big this demonstration
is … We knew there would be a big crowd, but we had no idea it would number
into the tens of thousands … I remember standing outside the Sheraton and
seeing a thin tan line of sheriff’s deputies who had been assigned to keep
demonstrators out of the parking garage. The Sheraton was key. It was a venue
for the WTO conference. Large numbers of conferees were staying there.

We continued to ask people to leave traffic lanes open in
case we needed, in the event of an emergency, to get a fire truck or a police
car or an aid car in there. Those requests met with rejection. By 9:00, the
intersection was completely clogged. The demonstrators had sat down, locked
arms, and refused to budge.

The police were hopelessly outnumbered. It looked like we
had this huge force, but we had cops only in the hundreds when we needed them
in the thousands.

Q. Were you afraid at that moment?

A. I was not feeling physical fear … I was feeling fear that
this entire thing was going to blow up, get out of hand. The anti-global
message, which personally I supported, would be lost. The focus would be on the
police.

Then I made one of the biggest mistakes of my career.

Q. What did you do?

A. It wasn’t what I did. It was what I did not do. What I did
not do is veto the decision to use tear gas.

The operations commander said, “We need this intersection
cleared.” The field commander said, “We need this intersection cleared.” Why?
Somebody could be in cardiac arrest on the 27th floor of the Sheraton, somebody
could be suffering from a gunshot wound … It was the traditional cop in me who
supported that decision.

Q. What should you have done? Carried them all out?

A. Couldn’t have done it.

We had way too few cops to do what you’re suggesting. So
there was no answer, we thought, other than gas. The [real] answer was,
somebody could get hurt, we may not be able to get a fire engine through this
crowd. But I needed to do a better job of playing the odds.

People got hurt, and a lot of people got gassed over the
next two, three, four days. Nobody got killed—we take that as a large
consolation prize; it would have been very easy to imagine someone getting
killed by an errant rubber bullet to the eye or the head, or people getting
trampled in a crowd … But the police department’s response was inadequate all
around—the strategy, the tactics, the use of chemical agents on nonviolent,
non-threatening demonstrators.

Q. I assume that you’ve been watching videos of Occupy
protests and clashes with police. What goes through your mind when you watch
that?

A. There are three scenes that compete for the most onerous.

The UC Davis pepper spraying incident stands out in large
part because of the casualness with which Lt. Pike sprayed those nonviolent
protesters—who were seated, and their heads were bowed. It was very clear
that this was somebody who didn’t feel threatened. There was ample room for the
cops to get around them if they had to get to the other side of the protest.
Here’s a cop who says, “We told you to leave, you didn’t leave, now you’re going
to be punished.” It struck me as punitive and utterly foolish and stupid.

Pepper spray and tazers are alternatives to lethal force. So
we need to ask ourselves: Is this a situation when Pike or any other cops would
pull their guns and start shooting?

We had the batons out and misused in Berkeley. This is traditional
mob and riot control training in action. When I became a cop in 1966, we had
campus unrest, antiwar demonstrations, civil rights uprisings all over the
country. During the long, hot summers, we would march out to the employee parking
lot [in San Diego] to do baton training, then march back … It was very military
… That’s one of the huge issues that needs to be addressed with the culture of
American policing.

Then there’s Oakland—in many respects the worst. The
police were uniformed in all black outfits, wearing catcher’s shin guards and ballistic
helmets. I did not see badges or nametags or anything other than this
incredible, formidable image that looked anything but human. They were standing
there firing tear gas into the crowd. That evoked WTO for me more than any
other of these incidents.

It’s very clear that most law enforcement agencies have
learned little or nothing from 1999.

Q. 1999, sure—what about those long, hot summers in the
1960s?

A. After the ‘60s, we had blue ribbon panels look at the cause
of rioting and the role of police in either instigating or enflaming this type
of emotion. We began the slow, painstaking process of reaching out to communities
and rebuilding the trust that had been lost.

In 1973, I headed a partnership designed to demonstrate that
you could forge an effective partnership with your community, that you could make
decisions in the interest of crime fighting and building a better relationship
with the community. Do the math: You’ve got one cop on a beat of tens of
thousands of people. By building a true sense of responsibility within the
community and in the mutual objectives of law enforcement and citizens, you’re
going to get a much safer community and a much healthier community.

Enter the drug war … The drug war began to chip away at
community policing. Even in very small rural police departments, you have SWAT
teams. You have very small police departments with armored personnel carriers
and military grade weapons and ammunition and military tactics. You hear that somebody’s got half a lid
[about a half an ounce] of weed in their home and you’re going to mount an
assault … It creates a certain attitude that makes the whole thing reducible to
us vs. them.

Then you have the war on terror. The federal government, mostly
under the Bush administration, is handing out military tools, equipment, and weaponry
to local police departments. Nobody who’s seen the images of those towers
coming down or the aftermath of the crash of the plane into the Pentagon or
that field in Pennsylvania is ever going to forget that. Every one of us has a
stake in homeland security. The question is, have we overreacted?

Q. Is the recent response to the Occupy movement creating a new
generation of radicals—and is that such a bad thing?

A. I really do support, 100 percent, the purpose of Occupy.
I am in the 99 percent. I don’t know a single police officer who’s in the 1
percent. We’re all affected by corporate greed and Wall Street malfeasance.
There’s something drastically and seriously wrong with this country. It is affecting
the environment. It is affecting the infrastructure. It is affecting the
dwindling middle class.

It’s wonderful that we now have attention focused on what
the real problem is. That’s just cool. What is not cool is those purporting to
represent the 99 percent who offend large portions of the 99 percent with their
tactics … There’s got to be a way to take this movement and help it evolve so
that it really wins hearts and minds. Then we will see real political and
economic change. We will begin to see social justice.

It’s going to take time to rebuild that trust [between the
police and the Occupy movement]. But it has to happen. Otherwise the focus is
not on corporate greed and people losing their mortgages and their jobs. It
really comes down to this for me: How do we mobilize, organize politically in
such a way that we don’t turn off the critical mass that we need to make change
in this country?

* The last photo was taken more than a decade ago, at the WTO protests in Seattle.

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by Tom Laskawy.

If you want to understand all that is wrong
with our government’s environmental safety priorities, you need only look at
the sad story of the weed killer atrazine. Despite the fact that study after
study has demonstrated its dangers, it remains one of the most commonly used
herbicides in the U.S.—to the tune of 76 million pounds a year.

Atrazine is highly volatile—which means not
only can it leach into groundwater through the fields, but it can become
airborne and drift into waterways. Much of the Midwest’s water supply contains
detectable levels of the stuff. I know a Midwesterner who will proudly declare—tongue firmly in cheek—“we Iowans
drink atrazine for breakfast!”

Laughing aside,
Atrazine is an endocrine disruptor that also appears to cause cancer.
The European Union, concerned about its toxicity, banned the chemical in 2004.
But here in the U.S. you’ll continue to find reports like this one in Brownfield, an industry trade magazine, that
declares that atrazine “is still a viable option for producers to manage weed
problems.”

Atrazine is
manufactured by one of the most powerful agribiz companies in the world,
Syngenta, which profits mightily from herbicide sales. In fact, as the Huffington Investigative Fund discovered, the EPA relied heavily on
Syngenta-funded research to establish the safety of the herbicide. So it should come as no surprise that atrazine
remains on the market and is embraced by large-scale corn growers across the
country (estimates are that it’s applied to 75 percent of corn fields in the U.S.).

Of course, Sygenta
maintains there is no risk to humans or wildlife from atrazine—the company
even put out a video touting its benefits.
Yet a pair of studies have just been released that even the EPA can’t ignore.

The first, appearing in the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, is a review by a team of 22 international
scientists examining a broad range of studies conducted in the laboratory and
in the field that examines atrazine’s status as an endocrine disruptor in mammals,
fish, and amphibians. Their analysis confirmed that atrazine is dangerous at
levels the EPA considers “safe.” Dangerous how? Like this (via ScienceDaily):

… Atrazine
exposure can change the expression of genes involved in hormone signaling,
interfere with metamorphosis, inhibit key enzymes that control estrogen and
androgen production, skew the sex ratio of wild and laboratory animals (toward
female) and otherwise disrupt the normal reproductive development and
functioning of males and females.

Oh, and it also
suppresses immune function.

Perhaps animal
studies don’t faze you. (I mean, who cares about hermaphroditic fish or frogs
that switch sexes?) Well, maybe this study, published in Environmental
Research, will. Researchers from Colorado State University
and the Vermont Department of Health looked at women in farm towns in Illinois
and Vermont. And they found that simply drinking a couple glasses a day of tap
water with detectable but low levels of atrazine was enough to disrupt a
woman’s menstrual cycle and her hormone levels. According to the article in Environmental Health News:

The
women from Illinois farm towns were nearly five times more likely to report
irregular periods than the Vermont women, and more than six times as likely to
go more than six weeks between periods. In addition, the Illinois women had significantly
lower levels of estrogen during an important part of the menstrual cycle.

Tap
water in the Illinois communities had double the concentration of atrazine in
the Vermont communities’ water. Nevertheless, the water in both states was far
below the federal drinking water standard currently enforced by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency.

And the more
glasses of water the women drank, the more screwed up their hormones became.

All the usual
caveats that accompany a single scientific study should apply. But as the first
study I mentioned demonstrated, there is more than ample evidence that atrazine
poses a serious health hazard. And this latest research suggests the danger of
exposure at levels Americans—especially in the Midwest—ingest on a daily
basis.

Now, the EPA is in
the midst of a review of atrazine’s safety—and the reality of the chemical’s
toxicity is leaking out. As Mother Jones noted, an independent panel convened by the
agency to examine the herbicide’s cancer risk provided “a list of cancers for
which there is ‘suggestive evidence of carcinogenic potential’: ovarian cancer,
non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, hairy-cell leukemia, and thyroid cancer”—with the
evidence for a connection to thyroid cancer singled out as “strong.”

Despite that
evidence, however, the panel’s final statement was the milquetoast
recommendation that the EPA in essence alter its atrazine warning from
“unlikely to be carcinogenic to humans” to “inadequate information to
assess carcinogenic potential.” Um. Really? That’s progress? Because other
than that linguistic alteration, the EPA plans no action any time soon (a fact
that demonstrates the massive pressure they must be under from the chemical
industry).

Damn Syngenta’s profits. There’s simply no excuse for the continued use of this chemical. Yes,
it might make operations simpler for mega-corn farmers, but at what cost? After all, Europe may have plenty of problems,
but failed corn harvests due to a seven-year-old atrazine ban isn’t one of them.

So, can someone
explain to me why the needs of a single company and the convenience of a group
of industrial farmers outweigh the health of millions—yes, millions—of
Americans? Anyone?

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Verengo Solar Plus/Mesa, AZ

Verengo: Helping Deliver the Solar Revolution

Californians lead the nation in energy efficiency—and Verengo leads the way in providing solar solutions to homeowners throughout Southern California. We install only the most intelligent, energy-efficient and dependable products available while providing unsurpassed customer service and workmanship. Plus, in addition to solar panel installation, Verengo offers a range of other energy-saving products—to help you conserve the energy your solar system generates.

We are looking for candidates who are committed to bringing our values to life:
• Trust — we build trust with every interaction.
• Responsibility — we do good and we do well.
• Uncompromising — we deliver what we promise.
• Smart — we learn from experience and find ways to improve.
• Team — we rely on each other to succeed.
• Enthusiastic — we love what we do and have fun doing it.
• Dynamic — we drive and embrace change.

Job Description:
We are currently seeking an innovative and dynamic individual to act as a Call Center Technology Analyst in our Mesa, AZ call center. As a Call Center Technology Analyst, you will be responsible for overseeing technology that drives lead management for call center operations. The individual in this role will strategize with the management team to drive efficiencies in lead management while analyzing current technologies and making recommendations on improvements.

Competencies:
Proactivity. Acts without being told what to do. Brings new ideas to the company.
Organization and planning. Plans, organizes, schedules, and budgets in an efficient, productive manner. Focuses on key priorities.
Communication. Speaks and writes clearly and articulately without being overly verbose or talkative. Maintains this standard in all forms of written communication, including e-mail.
Teamwork. Reaches out to peers and cooperates with supervisors to establish overall collaborative working relationships.
Efficiency. Able to produce significant output with minimal wasted effort.
Aggressiveness. Moves quickly and takes a forceful stand without being overly abrasive.
Calm under pressure. Maintains stable performance when under heavy pressure or stress.
High Standards. Expects personal performance and team performance to be nothing short of the best.
Persistence. Demonstrates tenacity and willingness to go the distance to get something done.
Intelligence. Learns quickly. Demonstrates ability to quickly and proficiently understand and absorb new information.
Analytical skills. Able to structure and process qualitative or quantitative data and draw insightful conclusions from it. Exhibits a probing mind and achieves penetrating insights.
Honesty/Integrity. Does not cut corners ethically. Earns trust and maintains confidences. Does what is right, not just what is politically expedient. Speaks plainly and truthfully.

Job Requirements:
Bachelors Degree required
5 years of experience with Auto/Predictive Dialer Systems (Vicidial preferred)
5 years of experience with lead management technology systems (Leads 360 preferred)
3 years of experience working in a Call Center environment (Sales and Marketing preferred)
Understanding of MySQL and MS SQL is a plus
Experience administering a VoIP phone system for an inbound and outbound Call Center is a plus
Linux based server administration is a plus
Strong analytical and problem solving skills
Must have strong relationship building and communication skills

Benefits:
We offer very competitive benefits to our employees, in addition to a fantastic salary based upon experience. We offer an amazing opportunity to make the world a better place, and you can help us grow our organization quickly. As part of our partnership with Insperity, we offer one of the best available benefit programs for small businesses, including healthcare plans, long-term and short-term disability, holidays and life insurance.

We work to maintain the best possible environment for our employees, where people can learn and grow with the company. We strive to provide a collaborative, creative environment where each person feels encouraged to contribute to our processes, decisions, planning and culture.

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by David Roberts.

Could Americans soon be forced to suffer through rolling blackouts and power shortages because of a heartless, hapless, tyrannical EPA, as conservatives and dirty utilities are suggesting?

The short answer is, no. The long answer is, no. But the long one requires a bit of explanation.

A Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) conference on electrical-system reliability, along with the release of a couple new reports, has revived a simmering dispute over the effects of upcoming EPA regulations.

(Did you nod off just now? Nothing to be ashamed of, it’s a perfectly human reaction to hearing the term “FERC conference.” Splash a little water on your face.)

According to utility execs, grid operators, and politicians from coal-heavy areas, those regulations will force the shutdown of so many dirty old coal plants that we’ll have trouble keeping the lights on. Brownouts! Blackouts! Oh noes!

Polluters are pointing to a new report from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC)—its “2011 Long-Term Reliability Assessment” [PDF]—as evidence that their reliability concerns are warranted. In particular, they are highlighting the sentence wherein NERC says new EPA rules “may significantly affect bulk power system reliability depending on the scope and timing of the rule implementation and the mechanisms in place to preserve reliability.”

Naturally the more enthusiastic conservatives are ignoring the “may” and the “depending on,” but those qualifiers are crucial.

First off, the EPA has written NERC a letter [PDF] pointing out that it is using implausibly strict assumptions about rules that have not actually been written yet. For instance, the vast bulk of the coal-plant shutdowns anticipated in NERC’s assessment are a result of an EPA rule under the Clean Water Act that regulates plants’ intake of cooling water (which can harm fish populations). NERC assumes that all facilities will have to comply with the rule immediately and that they will all opt for closed-cycle cooling systems, which are quite expensive. But as EPA points out, facilities have eight years to comply with the first part of the rule and even longer to comply with the second. Also, EPA has explicitly rejected the option of forcing all facilities to install closed-cycle cooling. So NERC is dramatically overestimating the potential impact.

Second, as several reports have made clear, there are tons of planning and operational tools available to utilities and EPA to help ease the transition and insure that the lights stay on. If a whole bunch of coal plants are shut down all at once, during peak demand season, yes, there could be a problem. But they won’t be! See a newly updated analysis [PDF] from M.J. Bradley & Associates if you’re curious about the details. Or see my post about their 2010 analysis. Or read about a similar report from Charles River Associates. Or a similar one from the Bipartisan Policy Center. And so on. All those analyses agree that phasing out the nation’s dirtiest coal plants can be accomplished without threatening reliability.

Even most of the utilities know it. As the MJB&A report notes, “about half of the
nation’s coal-fired generating capacity and 11 out of the top 15 largest coal fleet owners in the U.S.” have corporate statements on record saying that they are well-positioned to meet EPA requirements. Here’s a compilation of statements (PDF) from utility execs expressing confidence.

It’s helpful to have some historical perspective. Dirty utilities have forecast economic doom and blackouts every time the EPA has ever issued an air or water regulation. Every time! And every single time, they’ve been wrong. As EPA chief Lisa Jackson is fond of pointing out, in its 40-year history, the Clean Air Act has never yet caused an electric reliability problem. I suppose it’s possible that dirty utilities are right this time and independent analysts are wrong, but as a guiding heuristic, “dirty utilities are full of self-serving sh*t” has proven pretty reliable.

The fact is, defenders of clean air have analysis and history on their side. So never mind the fear mongering mainstream media headlines. We can stop poisoning people with ancient, filthy coal plants without shivering in the dark.

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by Brad Johnson.

Cross-posted from ThinkProgress Green.

This Saturday’s Crankshaft cartoon took on global warming, noting that climate change is threatening
Ohio’s iconic buckeye trees, the namesake of the Ohio State Buckeyes.
“Once it starts to affect football, they’ll get moving on climate
change,” one character says:

As greenhouse pollution from oil and coal continues to build, the
Ohio buckeye (Aesculus glabra) is on its way out of the Buckeye State.
Between 1990 and 2006, United States hardiness zones shifted northward,
putting Ohio closer to the southern end of buckeye viability. That
trend will accelerate. A 2007 study by Daniel W. McKenney and other
forest scientists of the effect of climate pollution increases on 130
tree species projects major changes in North American tree populations [PDF],
as practically all of the southern and western United States grow too
warm and arid for nearly all species. The Ohio buckeye’s range, now
centered on Ohio and Indiana, is projected to shrink and shift drastically under business-as-usual scenarios:

Importantly, the destruction of the Ohio buckeye’s traditional range
is not just a long-term phenomenon. Several of the scenarios modeled by
the researchers find major shifts during the 2011-2040 period.

A simpler 2005 study that modeled the expected shift in range over
100 years due to a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations found that
the Ohio buckeye range would decline [PDF] by 12 to 51 percent this century. At current rates, carbon dioxide concentrations are on track to quadruple.

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Pomona College.
CA – California, Claremont
Pomona College is seeking a talented, energetic, dedicated, and well-organized professional to serve as the Assistant Director, Sustainability and Energy Management. The candidate must be detailed-oriented and comfortable working in…

Salary: NA. Date posted: 11/29/2011

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Conservation Services Group/Westborough, MA

CSG is currently seeking a Software Systems Architect to lead the design effort on a variety of projects in a highly collaborative, fast paced environment. Your role is to design and integrate desktop and web based applications with a high volume data transaction system. You should have expert knowledge designing a highly redundant, scalable enterprise transaction processing system from front end to back end. You should have implemented systems that include multi-vendor database systems and have expert knowledge transferring data efficiently between the two systems.

In addition you should have been a technical lead for a team that developed, and deployed to thousands of users, client facing web applications using Microsoft technology including .Net and Silverlight. In that role you worked with developers and business analysts to create innovate and exciting applications.

You will work closely with product and marketing managers, user interaction designers, and software engineers to develop new product offerings and improve existing ones. This position reports to the Executive VP of Software and Technology.

Responsibilities

•Expert knowledge in analyzing, designing and developing solutions to highly complex problems.
•Strong experience working in all phases of software development, design patterns, and development methodologies including Agile
•Previous experience designing and developing high traffic/enterprise web applications with a focus on performance and scalability
•Previous experience designing and developing high throughput, highly scalable transaction based invoicing systems.
•Expert level knowledge of .Net 3.5 and 4.0 web application development
•Ability to mentor development staff while implementing best practices and improve the development process
•Experience with Service Oriented Architecture and other data bus architectures
•Experience with enterprise e-commerce applications
•Ability to identify risks or problems with current processes and procedures and recommend changes.
•Coordinate training participation for IT team members.
•Other duties as assigned by the EVP Software and Technology

Requirements
•Bachelor's of Science degree, preferably in Computer Science or related field.
•10 – 15 years of experience that is directly related to the duties and responsibilities specified.
•Highly experienced building and implementing model-driven, enterprise-level business solutions.
•Expert knowledge of all phases of software development including design, coding, testing, debugging, implementation, and support of large-scale, business centric and process based applications.
•Highly proficient in a variety of technologies including, but not limited to, .Net, Silverlight, Oracle, MS/SQL, Ajax, HTML, XML, MQ, ETL tools.
•Demonstrated knowledge of and applicability of Object-Oriented techniques and principles.
•Specialization in a functional area or industry domain, including healthcare, insurance, or financial services.
•Demonstrated leadership and/or mentorship abilities and professional communication skills.

Salary Range: Commensurate with experience

Compensation package includes paid holidays, 80% paid medical, 50% paid dental, paid life & AD&D and paid STD & LTD insurance coverage, plus employer matching retirement plan

Please apply online at: http://jobs-csg.icims.com

CSG is an Equal Opportunity Employer

Company
For more than two decades, Conservation Services Group (CSG) has helped Americans make smart energy use decisions an important part of the way they live and work. CSG designs, develops, and delivers innovative, results-driven energy efficiency, energy conservation, sustainability, and renewable energy programs. We bring our experience, expertise, creativity, and commitment to our goals of using environmentally responsible approaches in helping business and home owners lower costs, increase comfort, and improve indoor air quality; and in championing the development and use of renewable, alternative energy. People who work at CSG say that it's a unique kind of organization – one that nurtures individual talents and inspires dedication. We share a commitment to our work and our mission. CSG has a collegial atmosphere, where people respect and encourage each other to help the environment and change the way our country uses energy. How about you; do you see yourself as a part of our team?

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by Claire Thompson.

For all of you poor souls who can’t tell kale and chicken
apart (lord knows it can be difficult), your troubles may soon be over. Chik-fil-A, the country’s
second-largest chain chicken restaurant (after KFC), is pressuring Vermont-based
small-business owner Bo Muller-Moore to drop the phrase “Eat More Kale,” which he’s been
screen-printing by hand on T-shirts and selling online and at local farmers
markets since 2000. Chik-fil-A claims the words—a statement in support of
local agriculture and sustainable food—are too similar to its trademarked “Eat Mor Chikin” ad
slogan, and could cause confusion for its customers and “dilute” its English-challenged brand.

The irony of this artificially inflated conflict is almost
too rich to be true. In an ideal world, Chick-fil-A’s worries would be
legitimate, since Muller-Moore’s goal is to promote healthy eating and support
for small farmers—basically, the opposite of going to Chick-fil-A. In fact, the
chain’s regular customers are probably way more kale-deprived than your average
Vermont locavore, and thus constitute the target audience for a kale publicity
campaign.

Despite the myriad negative health effects connected to a
diet high in fried chicken, brain damage has not (so far) proven to be one of
them, so it’s doubtful that any of these shirts have successfully confused Chick-fil-A
devotees to the point of kale worship.

Imagine how much
healthier we’d be if it were that easy! If all you had to say was “I’m lovin’
arugula, or “tomato-pickin’ good” to convince fast-food addicts to trade a Double Down for a
double serving of heirloom produce. We can dream. Of course, we’d also have a whole new set
of problems: It’s
been noted that if all Americans suddenly started eating the recommended
five servings a day of fruits and vegetables, it would quickly become clear
that our current farming system doesn’t grow enough. 

Though it may be hard to believe that anyone ever told
anyone to eat more anything before Chick-fil-A said it, Muller-Moore recently
applied for a federal trademark for “Eat More Kale” to prevent others from
copying the phrase and design—something he said has happened before. Still,
it’s a little frightening to ponder what an extensive network of spies (er,
market researchers?) Chik-fil-A must employ to have even gotten wind of all this.
Though the shirts’ cult appeal appears to have spread across the world, it’s 121 miles to
the nearest Chick-fil-A from Muller-Moore’s home studio in Montpelier, Vt. It’s not like he’s parading his brash copyright infringement through their
drive-thru.

And, apparently, this isn’t the first time they’ve targeted
him: The letter the company sent Muller-Moore Oct. 4, ordering him to stop
using the phrase and turn over his website to Chick-fil-A, was similar to a
previous one he received from them in 2006. A pro bono lawyer traded letters
with the company on Muller-Moore’s behalf and, when the correspondence stopped
without resolution, he kept making the shirts.

As was the case with various city governments who have had
the gall to fine and arrest urban farmers in recent years (only to backpedal in
response to waves of popular outrage), Chick-fil-A may have underestimated the
power of the internet.  A Change.org
petition launched by Muller-Moore’s friend Jeff Weinstein already has
almost 10,000 signatures, and the story is starting to make the mainstream
media rounds. Who knows? Maybe Chick-fil-A’s paranoid reaction will end up
backfiring and causing the demand for Muller-Moore’s shirts—and,
subsequently, the leafy green they promote—to skyrocket. Like I said, we can
dream.

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Learning on the half-shell

View full post on Grist.org – the latest from Grist

by Greg Hanscom.

I once
worked for a New Yorker who loved to wisecrack that the only difference between
Denver and yogurt was that “yogurt’s got culture.”

Looking
at the Mile High City’s endless sprawl of lookalike Anywhere, U.S.A. subdivisions,
it’s easy to understand where he was coming from. But in a former warehouse
district just off of downtown, an innovative experiment in neighborhood-level
sustainability is underway that could show New York and the rest of the country
what really rocks the house when it comes to eco-centric living.

The
project, and others like it around the country, started with a simple
observation: While cities have been leaders in the effort to combat climate
change, much of the action within cities occurs at the neighborhood level. “The
neighborhood is a geography, a scale that resonates with people,” says Rob
Bennett, executive director of the nonprofit Portland Sustainability Institute.
“Neighborhoods have always been a powerful and important part of how we view city-building,
and how we view ourselves as citizens.”

Bennett is
among a group of urban thinkers who envision neighborhoods powered by their own
micro-solar or geothermal power grids. They imagine city blocks operate as
single, interconnected systems, saving gobs of energy and resources in the
process, and small manufacturing districts where companies make use of each
other’s waste streams. Planning geeks call them “eco-districts,” and say they’ll
be the next big (or not-so-big) thing in sustainability.

The
project in Denver is the brainchild of Living City Block, a nonprofit that
adopted two square blocks in Lower Downtown (known by locals as LoDo).
Architect Paul Todd says that 20 years ago, the place was a wasteland of
boarded up, Victorian-era warehouses. He and his wife (and architectural
partner), Kirstin Todd, bought a building in 1991
that was slated for demolition. “We removed the entire second floor and most of
the roof,” he says. “We completely rebuilt it from the ground up.”

At about the same time, the city poured money
into the area, tearing out a viaduct that once arched over a nearby rail yard
and putting in walking malls, trees, and bike racks. Today, the area is the
nightlife epicenter for the entire metro area, drawing crowds of shoppers,
revelers, and diners even on weeknights. (Eat it, Yoplait.)

Living City Block president Llewellyn Wells says
government agencies have put a lot of resources into retrofitting and
weatherizing homes in recent years, and an entire industry has sprouted up to
“green up” corporate and college campuses—but little attention has been paid
to retrofitting smaller commercial space, he says. If Living City Block can
figure out a way to retrofit LoDo, it could pave the way for other projects,
tying in everything from energy generation and efficiency to storm water and
waste water management.

“There
are tens of thousands of other neighborhoods like this around the country,”
Wells says.

After an initial round of community meetings and
design charrettes, a vision of the block emerged that would include rooftop
gardens, solar panels, and energy-efficient retrofits. Two buildings—the
Todds’ and one owned by the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado, an environmental
nonprofit—will be tricked out to generate all, or close to all of their own
electricity. By the end of next year, Living City Block expects to cut the
block’s energy use in half. By the time the project is finished, block-wide
savings should be between 75 and 80 percent.

But
turning ideas like these into street-level reality has proven to be harder than
anyone expected. Last year, the Department of Energy awarded Living City Block $600,000
in energy analysis and modeling work. Workers are now outfitting the buildings
with fancy new meters so that the block can monitor its energy savings over
time. But the project still faces some formidable obstacles: To fund the actual
retrofit work, Living City Block and the owners of the LoDo buildings need to
convince a bank to lend them money—a tall order when you consider that the
loan will be leveraged against future energy savings, not business profits.
“Easier said than done,” Wells says.

The
second challenge is equally daunting: holding a group of property owners
together long enough to make something like this work. The extensive legal
issues that come with this kind of communal investment require some kind of
formal governing body, akin to a homeowner’s association—currently, there
isn’t one. And then there are simple questions of leadership and attention span.

“They started out strong, with a lot of enthusiasm,” says Paul Todd.
“But getting everybody together and trying to think about the block
holistically without scaring people about giving up property or development
rights—that has been a big challenge. It’s been tough to get people to show
up to information meetings.”

While Living City Block has a second initiative
underway in Brooklyn, it stepped away from a similar project in Washington,
D.C., this year. Wells will only say that local funding was an issue.

But
Living City Block’s trials and errors offer lessons for other efforts to green
neighborhoods. “We’re pioneers—we’re out there taking the hits.” Wells says.
“We’ve learned that there has to be an involved community on the ground for
this to work. What we care about in the end are better communities, not just
better buildings.”

Stay
tuned for more stories about neighborhood-scale sustainability efforts, from
Portland to Washington, D.C.

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View full post on Grist.org – the latest from Grist

RGS Energy/Louisville, CO

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