Climate 411

There was an interesting story in Tuesday’s New York Times about a unique weather station in upstate New York next to the Mohonk House resort. Most cooperative observer stations move over time, or the area around them is built up, or the observers and observing methods change. Not so at Mohonk.

At Mohonk, the weather observations are done as they were 112 years ago, and only a handful of people have recorded the over 41,000 readings. Plus Mohonk has an extensive database of wildlife sightings, a 77-year record of Mohonk Lake water quality, and an 83-year record of local phenology (the timing of events such as frost, blooms and migrations) – all observed by the same handful of people. This makes the site’s data uniquely valuable:

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You know how Peace Corps volunteers travel to developing countries offering help where it’s needed? Imagine a corps of interns working at U.S. corporations to help them reduce their environmental footprint, save energy, and save money, and you have the Environmental Defense Fund Climate Corps.

Our Corporate Partnerships team placed MBA students from top business schools at five California companies: Intuit, NVIDIA, Cisco, Yahoo! and Salesforce.com, and at Crescent Real Estate in Houston, Texas. The interns spent the summer making the business case for increasing energy efficiency in company facilities. One intern found that Cisco could reduce its carbon footprint by nearly 300 million pounds and save $24 million over five years by installing smart power distribution units in their labs. For more, check out our "What We Did This Summer" page.

This post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.

On Tuesday, the Senate banking committee held a hearing on how the federal government can improve public transportation options. Federal funding is badly needed. Ridership is skyrocketing due to gas prices, while services are being cut due to lack of funds.

A Wall Street Journal article on the issue summed up with a quote from our own Andy Darrell, vice president for Living Cities:

What we’re seeing around the country is that transit is underfunded and is having a really hard time meeting that demand," Mr. Darrell said. "Our government should be ready to meet that demand, to embrace it."

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What lives when public transportation is used, and dies when it’s not? Potentially all of us.

This message is hauntingly conveyed by a street art installation showing polar bears coming to life as a subway passes beneath them:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/Fdu6AD5Y3D0" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

This post is by Sheryl Canter, an online writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.

I live in New York City, and when I started riding my bike to work last year, I became acquainted firsthand with the obstacles to using this most efficient and green mode of transport. Here’s the short list:

• No sheltered place to park my bike.
• No place to park my bike at all – other bikes chained to all available racks and poles.
• Rules against chaining bikes to city property like trees or poles.
• Theft of anything not locked down – seat, wheels, bell, bike rack, or the entire bike. (Check out this YouTube video: "How to Steal a Bike in NYC".)
• Drivers who ignore bike lanes and seem unaware of how easily they could kill a biker.
• Bikers who ignore traffic laws and come at you the wrong way in bike lanes.
• Car doors that open treacherously into bike lanes.
• Streets with no bike lanes at all.
• Jaywalkers who mistakenly think that bikes can stop as quickly and easily as cars.

Thankfully, help is on the way. New York City has turned decidedly pro-bike under Department of Transportation (DOT) Commissioner Jeannette Sadik-Khan. And the non-profit group America Bikes is helping to bring bike-friendly changes to communities across the country.

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At first I was excited to escape the inferno of August in Washington D.C. for a vacation in Maine, but after three straight days of rain I started to feel a certain amount of self-pity. On the fourth rainy morning, however, a visit to a farmer I used to work for quickly put my woes in perspective. The rain put a minor dent in my vacation, but it put a major dent in the growing season for Maine’s farmers.

Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont all have received exceptional amounts of rain this summer, seriously damaging certain crops. Maine’s raspberry and green bean crops were devastated, and livestock feed crops (grain and hay) could not be harvested due to the wet weather. Many farmers will be paying high prices to truck in feed to replace what was lost.

No particular weather event can be reliably ascribed to climate change. But as I talked to my farmer friend, I began to wonder if this summer’s wet weather was a glimpse into the future for farmers in the region.

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