Sandor Katz: The Self-Taught Wild Fermentation Experimentalist (Interview)

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:32:59 GMT

Author and fermentation wiz Sandor Katz. Image courtesy of Chelsea Green Publishing. Makenna Goodman is Community Outreach Coordinator for Chelsea Green Publishing, the publisher of Wild Fermentation, by Sandor Katz, whom she interviewed for this guest post. She is also a guest blogger at Planet Green. The day I first made dilly beans, everything changed. And all because of Sandor Katz. Sandor Katz is a self-taught fermentation experimentalist. To him (and his devoted following--ahem, which includes me and half the people in the room I'm sitting in), live fermented foods are a critically important staple to sustainable human health...not to mention delicious. Ever had sauerkraut? Pickles? Yogurt? Sourdough? Sounds familiar, doesn't it. Well, what about Ethiopian honey wine? Root kimchi? Elderberry wine? Persimmon cider mead? Ginger champagne? Kombucha? If you're dribbling at the mouth, or even a little but intrigued, prepare to enter the world of Sandorkraut.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Voices from Hopenhagen: Andrew Winston

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:20:45 GMT

Image credit: Hopenhagen Editor's Note: This post is written by Andrew Winston, a globally recognized expert on how businesses can profit from thinking green and the co-author of the best-seller Green to Gold. Why Going Green—and the Climate Negotiations in Copenhagen—Matter Now More than Ever For the past few years, the business world has been swept up in a green wave—a rising tide of interest and concern about environmental issues. The Great Recession has not stopped the pressure pushing this wave. Environmental crises such as climate change and water shortages continue to evolve. Mega-forces such as technology-driven transparency and the rise of the consumer in India and China—which will force the price of oil and other resources up over time—continue to advance.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Voices from Hopenhagen: Adam Lowry

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:40:54 GMT

Image credit: Method This guest post is written by Adam Lowry, the co-founder and Chief Greenskeeper of Method Products, Inc. He is also a guest contributor to TreeHugger. There's an old saying that there are two things you never want to see being made: laws and sausage. For certain, one thing that the Information Age has done is expose the inner workings of our political process, and it ain't pretty. It's also shown us that our leaders are just as human and just as flawed as the rest of us. Perhaps as a result, millions of Americans have become disenchanted, or at least apathetic, to the civic engagement that has been America's hallmark.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Voices from Hopenhagen: The NewHouse

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:55:54 GMT

Image credit: Hopenhagen This guest post was written by The NewHouse, a student-run advertising agency from Syracuse University in New York. To our fellow college students, As the leaders of tomorrow, we must find ways to influence the leaders of today. The United Nations Climate Change Conference will determine the fate of our planet, the future landscape of our lives. We as a generation cannot afford to take a passive stance. We must proactively demand the right decisions from our leaders, demonstrate how small acts can accumulate to produce monumental changes, and ensure we are ahead of the race when the baton is passed. We must lead today's leaders so our future will witness more hopeful days.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Voices from Hopenhagen: Paul Shapiro

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:35:16 GMT

Editor's note: This guest post was written by Paul Shapiro, senior director of the Humane Society of the United States' factory farming campaign. Reducing our Global Food-Print When we think about minimizing our contributions to climate change, we may consider switching our light bulbs, driving less, buying local, and more. These are all important and laudable ways to reduce our carbon footprint, but, as Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein notes, "there's no reason to ignore the impact of what we put on our plates." In other words, changing these habits is no excuse for ignoring what's arguably the most important lifestyle choice we can make: reducing our food-print simply by eating lower on the food chain.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Words We Can Believe In: The Hope-ful Power of "Loft"

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:45:19 GMT

Image credit: The U.S. Army/Flickr Richard Greene is a political communication strategist and host of Hollywood CLOUT! on Air America Radio. Tune in nightly for "The Air America/Treehugger Report" on Hollywood CLOUT! at 10:06 p.m. EST/7:06 p.m. PST, Monday - Thursday. Just over one year after we worked our butts off for "Change We Can Believe In" and "Hope" we have found ourselves drowning in "Public Option," "Single Payer," and "Cap and Trade." And Barack Obama's approval ratings plummet. Feels like politics as usual. More importantly, Barack Obama's "Magic" seems to be disappearing. ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Voices from Hopenhagen: Jeunesse Park

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:12:34 GMT

Image credit: Hopenhagen Editor's note: This guest post is written by Jeunesse Park, founder and CEO of Food and Trees for Africa. Climate change is still such an abstract concept to so many people, although we all talk about the weather daily. It is often the first topic of conversation. Is this a vestige of memory from a time when we were intimately connected to the earth and her elements?... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Voices from Hopenhagen: Copenhagen With an "H," by Tham Khai Meng of Ogilvy & Mather

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:00:49 GMT

Images courtesy of Hopenhagen/Ogilvy & Mather. This guest post was written by Tham Khai Meng, Worldwide Creative Director, Ogilvy & Mather, as part of the Voices from Hopenhagen series. In explaining the genesis of the name "The Beatles," John Lennon famously wrote, "A Man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them 'From this day on, you are Beatles with an A.'" With its roots in such a story, the name of the band came to reinforce some essential characteristics of the thing it was naming: free imagination, inspired irreverence, and a dose of whimsical humility. Name and band were fused - and the John, Paul, George, Ringo foursome by any other name would not have been so sweet. ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Voices from Hopenhagen: Leda Huta

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:32:52 GMT

Image credit: Hopenhagen.com Editor's note: This guest post was written by Leda Huta, Executive Director of the Endangered Species Coalition. The world's attention is finally focused on the harm climate change presents and serious actions are being taken. While we will all feel the heat soon, some of us are already being impacted. Communities living in low-lying coastal areas know the threat is here now. The same holds true for wildlife. While all wildlife will likely be impacted, some are particularly vulnerable—those species already on the brink of extinction: endangered species. Climate change has begun threatening these endangered wildlife, birds, fish and plants. Melting sea ice, warming oceans, shifting life cycles and migration are impacting polar bears, penguins, coral, salmon and migratory birds.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Voices from Hopenhagen: Ed Begley, Jr.

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 12:10:07 GMT

This guest post is written by author and activist Ed Begley, Jr. as part of our Voices from Hopenhagen series. Earlier this month I attended a sustainability conference at the University of South Florida to speak about green technology. I'm a strong proponent of green tech for anyone who can afford it, having spent the last 40 years working toward achieving a smaller and smaller eco-impact for myself. (I've lived a slower and less expensive life going off the grid, and I'm happier because of it.) While I was there, a class of first-graders from a neighboring school gave me a book they'd made called Earth, Earth, What Do I See? On each page, they'd written and illustrated ways to go green. It was powerful for obvious reasons: here were twenty-some children who wanted to affect the world in a positive way. But it was also incredibly inspiring, because it was symbolic of the kind of shift that's happening right now in the environmental arena, a clear illustration that "going green" is not just a trend or something for the elite, that it's a reality that people are increasingly embracing. ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

The Raw Milk Revolution: The Civil Rights Movement of Food?

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:41:23 GMT

Makenna Goodman is Community Outreach Coordinator for Chelsea Green Publishing, the publisher of The Raw Milk Revolution, by David Gumpert, whom she interviewed for this guest post. She is also a guest blogger at Planet Green. Food regulation is one of the most important issues consumers face today. And for people who are concerned with where their food comes from (and how it got there), milk is now at the center of this debate. And because of its health benefits, many more people are turning to raw milk. Even lactose intolerant folks have found they can digest the un-pasteurized liquid; and it's been said to reduce allergies and asthma in children—ailments that are on the rise in the U.S. But there's one hitch: raw milk is illegal.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Voices from Hopenhagen: Laurie David

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:08:32 GMT

Image credit: Hopenhagen.com This guest post by Laurie David is the first in a series of articles we'll publish from the Hopenhagen movement. We are in much worse shape now than anyone could have anticipated, but we've also never been closer to rallying the world leaders to solving the problem of global warming once and for all. But facts are grim. Experts thought the impact was going to be felt by the next generation, but the fact is, we're feeling it now. It's happening in the US in Texas, in the Midwest, on the East Coast. Alaska is suffering the most extreme consequences right now, with entire villages having to relocate because of melting permafrost and soil erosion. Internationally, the glaciers of Greenland are melting at a more rapid pace than originally predicted. The very existence of the Maldives is threatened by rising sea levels. Kenya and Ethopia are experiencing severe drought. And the list goes on. Not a single continent is untouched by climate change, not a single global citizen will be able to avoid its catastrophic effects.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

With 5 Negotiating Days Until COP15, Keep Pushing for Fair, Ambitious & Binding Climate Deal

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:36:00 GMT

The following is a guest post from TckTckTck / Global Campaign for Climate Action chairman Kumi Naidoo. With only five negotiating days left to Copenhagen, and acknowledgement that little progress was made in Bangkok, it's all still to play for. This is the time for civil society to come together across the globe; to unite with one voice and put pressure on world leaders to commit to personally attending the Copenhagen talks and sign a deal that is Fair, Ambitious and Binding. The TckTckTck campaign has brought together an impressive alliance of civil society organizations, including The Red Cross, Greenpeace, Oxfam, WWF and The Union of Concerned Scientists and is amassing the voices of people across the globe. By joining together we can send one message to our leaders that they can't afford to ignore.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

No Impact Man: A Stunt or Not a Stunt? That Is *Not* the Question

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 12:38:53 GMT

No Impact Man movie poster. Image via Ocilloscope Laboratories.
The following is a guest contribution from Colin Beavan, author of the book No Impact Man and the blog of the same name. Last week, Elizabeth Kolbert, a respected New Yorker journalist who writes admirably about issues to do with our climate catastrophe and the environment, wrote a scathing attack on my book, No Impact Man. Sadly, casualties on the battlefield of Kolbert's wrath included not only me, but also the work of JB MacKinnon and Alisa Smith (authors of 100 Mile Diet), Henry David Thoreau (author of Walden) and other writers who used their own experiments in alternative lifestyles as narrative vehicles to, hopefully, propel into the popular discourse vital cultural issues that transcend the particularities of their experiments.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Political Feedback Loops and Climate Change (Opinion)

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 08:00:00 GMT
The following is a guest opinion piece from Mike Livermore, Executive Director of the Institute of Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law. Many scientists are worried about certain greenhouse gas "feedback loops" that could lead to rapid and irreversible climate change. But if the world delays on a climate change agreement it will be political feedback loops we should be nervous about. Only by creating a strong international agreement soon, while international cooperation is at a historic high, can we hope to avoid both the greenhouse gas feedback loops and the spiral that could stop us from doing anything about them. Climate change feedback loops are self-reinforcing cycles; problems that echo off each other and quickly spiral out of control. Here's how it goes: Melting tundra in Siberia releases methane into the atmosphere, which raises the water temperature, which melts sea ice, causing more solar heat to be absorbed by the oceans. The situation snowballs and becomes increasingly harder to contain. ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

IPCC Chairman's Endorsement of 350ppm Goal a Big Boost in Fighting Climate Change: Bill McKibben

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:15:00 GMT
A little less than an hour ago, when Agence France Presse moved a story over the wires, we got the biggest boost the 350.org campaign could ever have hoped for. The UN's top climate scientist, Rajendra Pachauri, said exactly what we've been saying all along: 350 is the number. "As chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), I cannot take a position because we do not make recommendations," Pachauri told AFP when asked if he supported poorer nations calling for atmospheric CO2 levels to be held below 350 parts per million (ppm). "But as a human being I am fully supportive of that goal. What is happening, and what is likely to happen, convinces me that the world must be really ambitious and very determined at moving toward a 350 target," he said by telephone from New Delhi.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Music Plays Vital Role in Greenpeace Activism

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:26:12 GMT
Photo left: Jerry Garcia plays a benefit concert in front of the James Bay, San Francisco Embarcadero, 1977. Photo copyright Rex Weyler. Photo right: James Taylor and Joni Mitchell at the Don't Make A Wave Committee Fundraiser, Vancouver Coliseum, October 1970. Photo copyright Robert Stowe. When rock music came to prominence in the 60s, it was accompanied by a strong sense of optimism, a belief that rock-n-roll could change the world: feelings that rose to new heights at the decade's musical pinnacle, Woodstock. Whether or not any form of pop music can change the world is perhaps still up for debate. What's certain, though, is that music can and always has inspired the people who actually do change the world. That's definitely true of Greenpeace's founders right through to the activists who get involved with Greenpeace campaigns today. In fact, music has meant much more than just inspiration to Greenpeace throughout the years. From a valuable fund-raising tool that helped get the organization off the ground to a means of organizing and an opportunity for activism in and of itself, music has always played a vital role in the work Greenpeace does. ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Vinod Khosla on the Future of Lithium-Ion Batteries and Energy Storage

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:15:42 GMT
This is a guest post by Vinod Khosla, one of the co-founder of Sun Microsystems and a Sillicon Valley venture capitalist with his own firm, Khosla Ventures. Recently, there has been some blog chatter about my comments on the future of lithium ion batteries - my goal here is to clarify my stance. I do believe that these batteries have been over-hyped when discussing technology available today. However, little focus was given to my statement that Khosla Ventures is backing the technology because the "lithium-ion markets are here today. We're investing because there are great markets". So what kinds of technology are we investing in? ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Joel Salatin, America's Most Influential Farmer, Talks Big Organic and the Future of Food

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 08:28:04 GMT
Joel Salatin is a self-described environmentalist capitalist lunatic farmer, or as the New York Times calls him, "the high priest of the pasture." You may remember him from The Omnivore's Dilemma, in which he was profiled at length by Michael Pollan. Salatin's innovative farming system-where the animals live according to their "ness," the earth is used for symbiosis, and happiness and health is key-has gained attention from around the country, and he travels in the winter giving lectures and demonstrations. He is the author of a number of books including Holy Cows and Hog Heaven, Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal, You Can Farm, Pastured Poultry Profit$, and Family Friendly Farming. I talked to Joel Salatin about how he got started farming, his appearance in the new film Food, Inc., the government's role in farm politics, and his ideas on the future of food. Suffice it to say, it's not as simple as conventional vs. organic.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Greenpeace: In Defense of Our Recent Activism Tactics

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 11:55:49 GMT
Image via Greenpeace. Greenpeace has a long history of using peaceful protest to achieve environmental victories
A recent Treehugger poll asked if Greenpeace's tactics were an "acceptable method of communication" or not. Here's our point of view: Non-violent direct action, also referred to simply as NVDA, has played a major role in the many victories Greenpeace has won since 1971, when twelve brave souls set sail for Amchitka, an island off Alaska's coast, to prevent a nuclear test by the U.S. government.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

What Happens After Coal for West Virginia Mountaintop Miners?

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 07:00:00 GMT
I recently returned from a demonstration in Coal River, West Virginia against mountaintop removal coal mining (MTR). While some high profile demonstrators such as Daryl Hannah, Dr James Hansen, and Goldman Prize winner Judy Bonds were arrested, what made this demonstration most poignant was the counter-protest in support of Massey Energy and MTR:... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Oceans of Change: Protecting the Planet's Life Support System

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 08:07:00 GMT
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park was established in 1975 and originally included 5.6% of its area in no-take zones. That was expanded to over 33% in 2004. Photo by Ove Hoegh-Guldberg/University of Queensland This year's World Oceans Day has the theme "one ocean, one climate, one future." This couldn't be a more timely focus. With so much attention on the climate change impacts we can see from land, the drastic changes occurring beneath the waves often go unnoticed. But the Great Barrier Reef is unraveling a tale we need to listen to. ... Read the full story on TreeHugger

TreeHugger Welcomes Guest Contributor!

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 14:12:04 GMT
In addition to our regular contributors and regular guest posters, TreeHugger occasionally publishes articles from guests beyond our regular team. A collection of these is listed below.... Read the full story on TreeHugger

Recent Posts by TreeHugger's Guest

Sandor Katz: The Self-Taught Wild Fermentation Experimentalist (Interview)

Voices from Hopenhagen: Andrew Winston

Voices from Hopenhagen: Adam Lowry

Voices from Hopenhagen: The NewHouse

Voices from Hopenhagen: Paul Shapiro

Words We Can Believe In: The Hope-ful Power of "Loft"

Voices from Hopenhagen: Jeunesse Park

Voices from Hopenhagen: Copenhagen With an "H," by Tham Khai Meng of Ogilvy & Mather

Voices from Hopenhagen: Leda Huta

Voices from Hopenhagen: Ed Begley, Jr.

The Raw Milk Revolution: The Civil Rights Movement of Food?

Voices from Hopenhagen: Laurie David

With 5 Negotiating Days Until COP15, Keep Pushing for Fair, Ambitious & Binding Climate Deal

No Impact Man: A Stunt or Not a Stunt? That Is Not the Question

No Impact Man movie poster. Image via Ocilloscope Laboratories.

Political Feedback Loops and Climate Change (Opinion)

IPCC Chairman's Endorsement of 350ppm Goal a Big Boost in Fighting Climate Change: Bill McKibben

Music Plays Vital Role in Greenpeace Activism

Vinod Khosla on the Future of Lithium-Ion Batteries and Energy Storage

Joel Salatin, America's Most Influential Farmer, Talks Big Organic and the Future of Food

Greenpeace: In Defense of Our Recent Activism Tactics

What Happens After Coal for West Virginia Mountaintop Miners?

Oceans of Change: Protecting the Planet's Life Support System

TreeHugger Welcomes Guest Contributor!