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Student groups on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus are stepping it up this Earth Day to put on a whole week long series of events that all are welcome to attend!

Later today, the Morehead Planetarium will put on “Our Vanishing Skies” and will then be leading a lighting tour and sky watch at the giant sundial all beginning at 7:30pm!

Don’t miss the official Earth Day speaker and president of Environmental Defense, Fred Krupp, who will be speaking on Wednesday at 7pm in Carroll Auditorium at the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication!!

On Thursday, we’ll get a variety of perspectives on climate change from an interdisciplinary panel on global warming hosted by the UNC Focus the Nation effort with speakers ranging from the head of the Carolina Environmental Program, Dr. Douglas Crawford-Brown to former Sierra Club president, Dr. Robbie Cox! Come join us in Manning 209 at 7pm.

Events will culminate to an Earth Week Fair on Friday from 10am to 2pm when dozens of campus and community groups and businesses will be tabling on Polk Place with information and interactive activities about the environment! The rain location for this event is the Multipurpose Room in the Frank Porter Graham Student Union - Room #1505.

Finally – Saturday and Sunday is the annual Piedmont Farm Tour!!

All events on campus are free and open to the public and a campus map can be found here!

What are your plans for this year’s Earth Day? Please share any events that others may want to attend!

As a student intern with the NC Conservation Network, I thought I’d offer up some non-staff feedback on this year’s annual retreat in Brown Summit, NC.  The retreat was awesome!  The best workshops were those with lots of interaction and participation, with topics like “planning for the future”, “growing your organization financially”, and “building activists:  talking to legislators” (view workshops). There was also plenty of time for networking (or for wandering the beautiful grounds when feeling a little introverted).  One of my favorite networking moments was bonding with other Carolina fans as the Heels beat USC after Dean Naujoks (the Upper Neuse Riverkeeper) managed to successfully rig up a TV antennae.

Another moment that really stood out for me was a conversation that came up while my small group ruffled through a pile of props including a toy pig catapult and a pan flute.  In trying to come up with a skit to represent environmental justice we ended up talking about how the movement should not be treated as a token area for traditional environmental groups to include as a particular topic in their long list of campaigns.  Rather, environmental racism must be actively confronted and addressed within every action and campaign that environmental groups take on.  No individual of any race, age, gender, or ethnicity should have to carry unfair environmental burdens like dealing with hog waste, pesticide exposure, or nuclear reactors; and it is up to us to realize how ubiquitous environmental racism (whether intentional or not) really is… and we have to talk about it!  As I learned in the Understanding Affected Communities workshop with Kathy Knight of the Concerned Citizens of Tillery and Naeema Muhammad with the NC Environmental Justice Network, approaching small town minority communities is a very different business than gaining support from the traditionally supportive middle-class white community; but it is also well worth the challenge so that different environmental groups and affected communities can unite.

Environmental justice was one of several topics that was chosen by attendees as the key issue on the environmental front for the next decade.  Others included energy, land use, land conservation, and climate adaptation.  The skits were hilarious for each topic and Mindy commented later that she had never seen everyone with such big grins as they handed in their nametags and headed home.  Click here to see some pictures from the weekend's festivities.

After a very interesting closing speech about the future challenges of the environmental community at the end of the conference, Grady asked for my thoughts on whether the under-25 age group is showing signs of developing better social networks than older generations.  I hope that with conferences like this one and the enthusiasm that I gathered from older members of the environmental movement, my generation will have the support system needed to network effectively and to help tackle the pressing environmental and social issues facing our world today.  Cheers to a wonderful retreat and to all that came – thanks for making my first time a great one!

Oh – and the cookies were delicious!

This week the Triangle will get to hear from Tyrone Hayes, a biologist and herpetologist of UC Berkeley, on his experience with frog populations as an indicator for cancer risks from contaminated water sources.  He’ll be speaking at NC Central University on Thursday thanks to a collaborative effort between the Department of Environmental, Earth and Geospatial Sciences at NC Central and PESTed.  He will also be speaking on the UNC Chapel Hill campus on Wednesday. 

In an online bio, Hayes explains that he is currently assessing the affects in frogs that have been exposed to the world’s most common herbicide and contaminant of ground and surface water:  Atrazine.  According to Scorecard: The Pollution Information Website, Atrazine is a potential carcinogen.  Hayes is interested in effective public policies that address environmental and social concerns and is in particular

concerned about the adverse impacts of Atrazine on endangered species and on racial/ethnic minorities. Prostate and breast cancer are two of the top causes of death in Americans age 25-40, but in particular Black and Hispanic Americans are several times more likely to die from these diseases.

His experience in biology, environmental justice, and the environmental impacts of pesticides should provide for a fascinating lecture.  Be sure to attend and let us know how it goes!

PS. Check out your county’s pollution profile in English or in Spanish! 

Nearly a month after the “How many legislators does it take to change a light bulb” bill was introduced in California; Australian officials have announced a plan to make incandescent light bulbs illegal in Australia, requiring citizens to go for compact fluorescents.  In addition to using less energy than a traditional bulb, Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs (CFLs) have the great advantage of saving the consumer time and money.  For a bulb to qualify under the government’s Energy Star program, a CFL must use less than 2/3 of the light of a conventional bulb and last up to 10 times longer.  The EPA estimates that if every American changed five incandescent bulbs to CFLs, we could prevent over a trillion pounds of greenhouse gases from going into the atmosphere.  

So why not change a bulb?  Other than a spending a little more up front, people just have to break the habit of buying incandescent bulbs!  And there are now a slew of campaigns urging people to do just that.  In contrast to the top-down, regulatory actions being considered by California and Australia, the newest grass-roots campaign, the “Better Bulb campaign” was launched this week and boasts an alliance between Wal-Mart, Environmental Defense, the EPA, the Department of Energy, some religious organizations, and Yahoo.  According to the Yahoo website, North Carolinians have purchased 485,668 CFLs since New Years day of 2007, the equivalent to keeping 2,704 cars off the road; though we’ve also earned a less than impressive state ranking of 33rd.

As NC gets serious about stemming global warming, do you think that governmental campaigns to make the switch to CFLs are a great start to the reduction of greenhouse gases or is the hype being used to detract from greater issues of energy production?

Last month Durham was officially cited in violation of EPA’s lead-testing policies.  In addition to stepping up their testing and lead abatement procedures, the city is now required to launch a PR campaign to increase awareness about the dangers of lead and the potential sources of contamination.  According to a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, lead can cause neurological problems in children and is correlated with a decline in IQ, learning disabilities, hyperactivity, and violence.  The usual suspects for lead exposure are paint, dust, and soil… though I’ve even come across stories about grasshoppers, candy, and vinyl lunchboxes.

In a campaign aimed to reach every preschool and elementary school in the county, Durham officials will have to take some non-English speaking populations into consideration.  According to the Natural Resources Defense Council's Hidden Danger report, Hispanic children in the United States are twice as likely to get lead poisoning as non-Hispanic white children and it is estimated that 4% of Mexican-American children have potentially dangerous (above CDC action levels) amounts of lead in their blood.  Effective campaigns to reduce lead poisoning in the Latino community must address the potential language barrier; groups like the Lead Poisoning Prevention Program at UNC-Asheville and the NC Rural Communities Assistance Project, Inc. are already helping to bridge this gap and ensure that no child in North Carolina endures the risk of lead poisoning.

Is our state doing enough to ensure the health of children at risk from environmental toxics, particularly those children from non-English speaking families?