blogs: Louisville Grows's blog 

Community Support Agriculture (CSA) is like having a group of farmers do your grocery shopping for you. In its essence, when you join a CSA you pay a onetime fee to take real share in what the local farmers produce and in exchange they bring you a mix of the most nutritious and delicious veges, meets, eggs, milk, syrup, fruit, honey, and basically anything else you may find on a farm. This does a number of important things. First, you get better food for your dollar. Did you know that the products in the grocery store travel an average 1,500 miles to get to your refrigerator? In order for the produce, meets, and dairy to keep through that trip they are harvest before they are ripe and/or preservatives (chemicals in most cases) are added to your food. This robs them of their nutrients as well as the culture they were grown in. By culture I mean you have no idea how that animal you are eating was treated or the chemicals that were put on the plant you are feeding your kids and there is no way for you to get to know the farmer that created the food. I am looking at the produce I got today and it comes from a number of local farms all within driving distance – the syrup even came with an invitation to their farm with directions. I just might go. Second, you share the risk with the farmer. Farming is tricky business. You never know what the weather, pests or diseases are going to do with the crops you decide to grow, and even if you make it to harvest you don't know what the speculative markets are going to pay you for your product. There might not even be anyone to sell to. By joining a CSA you guarantee the farmer a fair price and knowledge of how much to grow. This allows them to concentrate on doing what they do best, producing healthy foods. What's neat is you can belong to one year round allowing you to provide healthy food consistently to your family and friends. I make it seem like you can feed a lot of people on it and that's because you can. I am splitting my share with two other adults and I am not sure we will be able to eat it all. I'll talk more in a later post about the costs and the distribution of this lovely food. So here's what I got in my first drop off. Mustard greens, bok choi, eggs, syrup, broccoli, cabbage, field mix and the most tasty milk I believe I have ever had. The milk came with a bit of cream on the top that, in some confusion, I simply ate with a spoon. It was heavenly. I also signed up for the extra meat so I got around 2 lbs of ground beef. All of the food was grown sustainably, allowed to fully ripen, and the money that I spent stays local instead of going to some far off industrial farm. I took a picture of what I cooked today and it was awesome and probably the best meal I've had in quite a while. For information check out www.louisvillecsa.com and Grasshoppers Distribution. I will write every drop off day about what I got and will drop in some extra information about agriculture, maybe even how to cook some of the least familiar produce.

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It has been estimated that some 200,000 Americans are needed to work with the CDM (clean development mechanism) trading scheme, which we invented, that is built into the Kyoto Protocol. And in a time where we need more jobs this would be a welcome addition. These jobs include project managers, administrative positions, carbon traders, market analysts, verifiers, interpreters, and the list goes on and on. "You basically have a global regulatory system staffed without the world's most talented human resource pool, and it's a big problem," Assaad Razzouk, head of Sindicatum Carbon Capital, said this week. CDM's are basically carbon credits that are created by investment groups or organizations that cannot cut their own emissions. Instead of meeting the “Cap” requirements in a Cap and Trade system, a company can invest in a project in a developing nation that sequesters carbon thus fulfilling their commitment. They are highly regulated to meet certain requirements, which makes the process quite difficult. Parts of the climate talks in Copenhagen are meant to stream-line this process, which brings me to another brief point I would like to make. The overall air of these talks has been diminished due to the lack of committed action on our part even though we are the largest cumulative emitter of carbon. Luckily, President Obama came out and stated that we will reduce our emissions to 17% under 2005 levels, which, although a pretty meager commitment, gets things moving a bit. To give you an idea of how meager it is, Russia has committed to 20% of 1990 levels and China has committed to 40% of carbon intensity. So why aren't we stepping up to the plate? I would point mostly to obstructionists and climate change deniers. Even though the overwhelming majority of scientists, international bodies, American institutions, companies and governments worldwide have recognized the problem/opportunity we still have pockets of the public mislead by talking heads and special interests that don't believe it is happening or, if they do, they believe we are without recourse. Well, the facts are in: climate change is real and it is time to take responsibility to move forward. When have Americans ever been defeatists? Let's debate how to go about it – that conversation I would welcome.

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	Justin Wiseman #250181   wed dec 02 2009 at 5:58 pm         ·  I would like to commend you on the article, well done, but to also point to you the prologue to Michael Chrichton's novel Jurassic Park .....
	Justin Wiseman #250181   wed dec 02 2009 at 5:58 pm         ·  You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There's been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away -- all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years. Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in Arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiati
	Justin Wiseman #250181   wed dec 02 2009 at 5:59 pm         ·  radiation sears the earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It's powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. Do you think this is the first time that's happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive glass, like fluorine. When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago we didn't have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We've been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we're gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.
	Louisville Grows   wed dec 02 2009 at 6:14 pm         ·  I'm with you - I think life would go on, but there's a possibility it would be without us, and I feel a responsibility to the next generations to leave them a better place than I found when I was born.
	Justin Wiseman #250181   wed dec 02 2009 at 6:21 pm         ·  i see your point, i just want this to be shown as what it really is, not us trying to save the earth, but us trying to save ourselves....big difference

There are few climate change myths that grab my attention more than the idea that fluctuations in natural solar cycles are the cause for the general warming of the Earth's surface over the past 100 years. Basically the idea is this: there are natural cycles that bring us closer to the sun and natural increases in solar activity that both increase the Earth's temperature. Now, I am not going to argue that the sun has nothing to do with the climate. Of course is does, but the data shows that there has been no trend in solar activity that can account for the increase in temperature we have had, and the data is really good on this point. There are other methods of scientific data collection that can be argued as too small a sample or unproven, but we have been recording data from the suns activities for decades using both space and land based technologies which have not been controversial. For starters, here is an interesting fact. If changes in our relationship to the sun, or if the sun intensifying in some way, was the cause of this overall warming you would expect to see an increase in temperature in all layers of the atmosphere pretty much uniformly. It is like if you put a glass of milk close to a heat lamp. You would expect the whole thing to heat up. Well, what is happening is the lowest layer, the troposphere, is warming while the upper part of the atmosphere, the stratosphere, is cooling. Not quite what you would expect, right? This lines up clearly with the green house effect. The carbon dioxide we put in the atmosphere stays mostly in the troposphere, trapping radiated heat which causes two things. One, in trapping the heat it warms up the troposphere and second it keeps the heat from getting to the stratosphere, which reduces its temperature. Simple, right? But there's more. If the sun was responsible for the overall warming of the Earth then why is it heating up at the same rate at night as it is during the day? The sun hits the Earth's surface in the day time, so shouldn't it be warming up the Earth more when it is day time and then cooling when it's night time? Once again, this can be explained by the green house effect which keeps the heat normally put off by the Earth's surface at night from escaping the atmosphere. Oh, and another interesting point. It is warming more in the winter than in summer. Winter means snow and ice in a great portion of the world, right? Well, snow and ice reflect the sun's rays, which should keep an increase in the sun's effect from having much impact. It's like the reflective board you put in your car window to keep it from heating up. The deal is the rays that are deflected get trapped by green house gases instead of escaping back into space. This causes a heating of the air, which leads to a decrease in ice and snow pact, further decreasing the Earth's ability to regulate its temperature and a marked increase in temperature during the winter. But let's get back to the data. If you look at the data from NASA and BRI you can see that even though there are cyclical fluctuations in solar activity there is an irrefutable overall increase in global surface temperature. Ah, but what about the “The Great Global Warming Swindle”, a movie that supposedly uses this same data to disprove global warming? For one, the graph they point to only looks at sun spot cycles, and two they stop the graph at 1975. You know why they stop the graph there? It is not because they don't have the data. It is because past that point there is no correlation. The line that shows global temperature actually shoots up while the sun spot activity goes sharply down. This is called “cherry-picking”. When someone wants to use data to mislead you they choose only to show you the parts that support their claim, not the whole set that shows a completely different picture. I've included a picture of that very graph with the data added in. So what's the moral of the story? Anytime you are reading an article, even if it supports your preconceived notions, you should look at the root data and reports they cite. Who knows, you might learn something. That's got to be worth something. I will leave you with some quotes from NASA and the Navy: The Sun “Contributes, if anything, a very slight overall cooling in the last 25 years.” And “None of the natural processes can account for the overall warming trend in global surface temperatures.”

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	Louisville Grows   sat nov 14 2009 at 12:51 am         ·  I'd be remiss if I didn't say where the photo came from. It's also probably the best place I've seen for unbiased, fact based, climate change denier rebuttals. Enjoy. http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610
	EdenSprings   mon nov 16 2009 at 3:40 pm         ·  Hmmm....Is it just me, or does that spike in global warming start right about the time Abramson became Mayor?

This blog is a slight departure from what we normally write about. Instead of concentrating on policy, products, or local events, we felt it was necessary to address some reoccurring questions that arise in our work. The first persistent question would be “What is 'green' and how is it different from 'sustainable'”? The second would pertain to motivation of action: liberal guilt or responsibility. This is not an exercise to see who we can alienate, so if you have concerns about what we are saying please read this thoroughly and leave a comment at the bottom of this page. In a lot of ways “green” and “sustainable” are interchangeable as that they both tend to describe an effort on someone's part to make choices that have a beneficial impact on society and our planet. I will argue, however, that “green” relates more to a determined set of actions or practices where “sustainable” refers to a way of thinking. When someone says they are “going green” they normally mean that they are eating organic, offsetting their carbon footprint, or any other list of prescribed actions you can find in various sources of literature. These actions have come under scrutiny in a number of circles because a majority of them do not address the underlying issues that they claim to address. For instance, if you are eating organic foods from Whole Foods, a company who's CEO is a climate change denier and has spoken against sustainable energy policy, your food still come from an average of 1,500 miles away. In other words, you are addressing the concern of having toxic chemicals in your food, but you are supporting an unsustainable food system, depleting your local economy, and giving your money to a company that actively works to halt actions that address energy concerns and climate change. The interchangeability of these two words has led to some confusion and has somewhat discredited their shared purpose, but let me make it clear: green does not mean that is sustainable, and you have to include both to make reasonable decisions. Now, if I haven't bored you to death already, let me define what I mean by sustainability. A sustainable decision, product, or service is one that can continue into perpetuity. An example of an unsustainable enterprise is using fossil fuels as an energy source. There is simply a limited supply of it which makes it inherently finite and spending our money to research these technologies is a waste of resources that could be spent on developing more promising technology. Also, the production and the use of coal, petroleum, and natural gas destroys communities, the environment, and economies. So, when you are making your decision to get to work tomorrow you might want to think about alternate methods that either do not use or minimizes the use of this fuel. Which leads us into our second question. We all want to be good, responsible people, and there are many different social-economic constraints to the decisions that we make every day. This is where I feel that “going green” falls short. Not everyone can meet the list of prescribed actions to “go green”. Buying a Prius or getting to work, buying groceries, and picking up the kids on a bike just doesn't work for most people. What most people do have is the ability to make informed decisions and demand the same from our representatives in the government as well as in the companies we support with our commerce. Living sustainably means accepting the responsibility of your actions and realizing that they have a collective local and global impact. This has nothing to do with guilt, being liberal or conservative, religious or atheistic, and everything to do with acting as adults. Unfortunately, living sustainable is more difficult than “going green”. It requires research and applying that knowledge to every decision you make while asking yourself if it is good for you, your community, your family, and the world. This includes everything from where you buy your food to how you treat your neighbors. It is a true commitment to a way of life that is more involved and more rewarding. So, we challenge you to first understand what it means to be sustainable and then to pick one area of your life to apply those principles. Believe me, it's not easy, but it is fun and you will find it rewarding in every aspect. If you have any questions feel free to write and we'll do everything we can to help you along your way.

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	Louisville Grows   fri oct 16 2009 at 2:42 pm         ·  PS This picture is of Brown-Forman's garden just off of Broadway and Dixie Hwy. They have done wonderful work. Expect a future blog about this.
	Steppa   fri oct 16 2009 at 3:48 pm         ·  I totally get it and its hard to be gotten as a sustainable application which can be honestly maintained... we do our damnedest though
	Socialist   sun oct 18 2009 at 3:25 pm         ·  Thanks Louisville Grows for the interesting commentary. I'd like to add to the conversation. From the dictionary, "green" in the eco sense means "environmentally sound or beneficial." Acording to Wikipedia, which we all know is the definitive resorce, sustainability means: "... in a broad sense, [it] is the capacity to endure. In ecology, the word describes how biological systems remain diverse and productive over time. For humans it is the potential for long-term maintenance of wellbeing, which in turn depends on the wellbeing of the natural world and the responsible use of natural resources." Therefore, green behavior is supportive of the sustainablity of our community, region, etc, and behavior that does not contribute to sustainability is not green. Trouble is it is very hard to tell sometimes. Are there any good and simple guidlines out there? Socialist
	Louisville Grows   sun oct 18 2009 at 4:38 pm         ·  I'd say you're right in all of your definitions. What is missing then from the conversation is the hijacking of the term "green" that has turned it into what is mentioned in the above article, which creates opportunities for "green washing". I am hoping that it will be more difficult to hijack a concept like sustainability. Where it is easy to take a term like green in all of it's vagueness and control the meaning (ie list of ways to be green, products that are green) it will be hard to take a term like sustainable, which has the meaning rooted in the word, and convince people that a product or action has "the capacity to endure" when it does not. Thanks for the comment.
	christopher hall   mon oct 19 2009 at 10:04 am         ·  made-up crisis? and a few cool years? those few cool years don't do anything to the overall warming trend. the evidence seems fairly irrefutable, if you actually talk to reputable scientists and are willing to have your mind changed. but all the evidence in the world won't change the mind of someone determined to believe whatever nonsense they want to - in fact, studies seem to suggest that they just cling even harder to their beliefs when presented with contradictory evidence. funny, i could have told them that without the need for a big, expensive study.
	Louisville Grows   mon oct 19 2009 at 10:09 am         ·  That's true, normally it does change over grand swaths of time, but what we have seen since the industrial age has been unprecedented. And yes, climate change is a better term as that it is not a uniform process, but the research has been done so if you're truly interested in learning about it here's some good resources: http://www.ipcc.ch/ http://www.nature.com/news/specials/planetaryboundaries/index.html The solution is not in "taxing he[sic] 'rich'" it's in taking responsibility for your actions and the effects they have on other people. So yes, if you company pollutes, then you should have to pay for that damage, and if you pass that cost down to your consumers then it will make more responsible businesses and products attractive. That's capitalism for you. The over simplistic box that you place people in order to quite your own cognitive dissonance does a disservice to your own well being. Good luck to you sir and thanks for the comment.